Sophie Hartley and the Facts of Life

by Stephanie Greene

  East was the other high school in town. Thad went to West. There was a fierce rivalry between the two. “We beat those losers every year in football and soccer,” Thad said. “I can’t believe a girl would choose a debate-team wimp over an athlete.”

  “It’s an outrage,” said Nora.

  Thad shot her a look. “Girls,” he said disgustedly. He stood up and shoved his phone into his pocket. “Come on, John. Let’s go to the garage and lift some weights.”

  “Yeah. Girls,” John echoed.

  “Where are you two going?” Sophie heard their dad ask.

  “To where there are no girls,” said John.

  “See what I mean?” Nora said. “And you think Dad can change anything?”

  “Well, we got Mom there in plenty of time,” Mr. Hartley reported proudly as he came into the family room. “This break is going to be good for her. She started having last-minute jitters in the car, but I told her to relax.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “What could go wrong in a week?”

  Sophie and Nora looked back at him.

  “What?” Mr. Hartley’s smile faded as he saw their faces. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

  “Help,” Nora bleated as she fell over sideways on the couch. “When’s Mom coming home?”

  On Monday at lunchtime, Sophie told Jenna and Alice about Thad and Emily.

  “That’s nothing,” Jenna said. “One time, my brother Sam broke up with a girl he took to a party by texting her from the bathroom.”

  “I’m telling you right now,” Sophie said. “I’m not having anything to do with the boy-girl thing when I get older.”

  “I think you have to,” said Alice. “Everyone has to go through that stuff.”

  “Don’t start that again,” said Jenna.

  “What’s Destiny doing?” said Sophie.

  They all looked over at the next table. With Hailey trailing her, Destiny was walking behind the row of seated girls, handing out slips of hot-pink paper. “One for you . . . and one for you . . .” Destiny reached the end of the table and crossed to where Sophie, Alice, and Jenna were seated.

  “And one for you, Alice, in case you change your mind,” Destiny said. She put a slip in front of Alice and gave a little pinch to the shoulder of Alice’s T-shirt. “I love your tie-dyeing. So cute.”

  “What is it?” Sophie asked after Destiny moved on.

  “I don’t know,” said Alice.

  “Try reading it,” Jenna said.

  Alice blushed furiously as she read it. “It’s just something dumb,” she said.

  “We knew that,” said Sophie, “but what?”

  “A reminder about her meeting on Friday.”

  “What an idiot,” Jenna said. “She knows you’re going to Sophie’s.”

  “I know.” Alice hurriedly stuffed the note into her lunch bag.

  “So why aren’t you tearing it up?” said Sophie.

  “Destiny might be insulted.”

  “Who cares?” said Jenna. “Tear it into tiny pieces and throw them in the air like confetti. That’ll show her.”

  “I’ll get in trouble with the lunch monitor if I do that,” Alice said. She reluctantly pulled out the paper and looked at it. “I’m supposed to RSVP,” she said miserably.

  “Yeah, right,” said Jenna.

  Sophie looked at Alice without saying anything. Under Sophie’s watchful eye, Alice slowly stood up and went to throw the paper into the garbage.

  “Come on, Alice,” Sophie said when Alice got back. “We’ll feel better after we do yoga.”

  Destiny and Hailey passed them in the hall. “By the way,” Destiny said to Alice, “I saw what you did with my note. I didn’t mean it about your T-shirt. Tie-dyeing is so nerdy.”

  “Wah-wah,” said Hailey.

  “I hate Destiny,” Alice said as Destiny and Hailey disappeared through the gym’s double doors.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to say you hate anyone,” said Jenna.

  “When it’s girls like Destiny, who are mean to people for no reason, she can,” Sophie said. She put her arm around Alice’s shoulders. “She’s just jealous because you and me and Jenna are best friends. Let’s go be trees.”

  Sophie got on the computer as soon as she got home so she could finish her homework before Nora arrived. That way, while Nora was glued to the computer doing hers, Sophie could sneak up to her room and find the book.

  The trouble was that Nora arrived home soon after Sophie. “Hurry up on that thing,” Nora said as she came into the room.

  The Hartleys kept their computer in the family room. Thad had saved enough money from his summer job to buy himself a laptop, but Nora and Sophie had to share. John played games on it only on the weekends.

  Even with only two of them using the computer, they usually bickered over whose turn it was. Mrs. Hartley had gotten so sick of it, she’d said she was going to put up a time sheet if she heard one more argument about it.

  Nora and Sophie had resorted to arguing in whispers. They kept their voices low now, just to be safe.

  “Not yet,” Sophie whispered. “I’ve only been on it for ten minutes.”

  “So?” Nora hissed. “I have an important report to write.”

  “I have important homework, too, Nora.”

  “Take it from me: Nothing is that important in fourth grade.”

  “It is too!”

  “You’re such a brat,” Nora said.

  “I am not.”

  “You are too.”

  Their voices had risen without their realizing it.

  “I’m too old to be a brat,” said Sophie.

  Nora snorted. “What does age have to do with it?”

  “Only babies and little kids are called brats. Ten is too old.”

  “Too old? Are you joking? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I don’t?” Sophie said. She quickly typed “brat” on the computer. “See?” she said, pointing to the definition that appeared on the screen. “‘Brat: an ill-mannered, annoying child.’” She sat up straight. “I am not a child.”

  “You’re not a child? Who are you kidding?” Nora peered furiously over Sophie’s shoulder and jabbed at the screen. “What about this one, then? The second definition. ‘An ill-mannered, immature person’!” Nora read triumphantly. “That’s you, Sophie.”

  “I am not immature!” Sophie yelled.

  “Oh, dear. Little Miss Sunshine’s losing her temper.”

  “And stop calling me that! I’m sick of it! It’s you who’s immature. You’re a bigger brat than I am, too!”

  “Oh, that was a mature thing to say.”

  “I hate you sometimes, Nora.”

  “Well, I hate you all the time, Sophie.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Mr. Hartley was standing in the doorway with an apron over his sweatshirt and an amazed look on his face. “What are you two doing?” he asked.

  Nora and Sophie looked at each other and then back at their father.

  “We’re having a conversation,” Nora said.

  “We’re talking,” said Sophie.

  “No.” Mr. Hartley advanced into the room. “That was not a conversation. That was not talking. What that was was arguing—very loudly, and in a very immature way—about which one of you was more immature.”

  Nora and Sophie glanced at each other again.

  “Is this how you always talk to each other?” Mr. Hartley asked.

  “Well, yeah,” said Nora.

  “Most of the time,” Sophie said.

  “No wonder your mother’s so irritable these days,” their dad said. “Listening to you two is enough to make anybody irritable.”

  Sophie and Nora were oddly united. If they had been confronted by their mother, each of them would have rushed to put the blame on the other one. They didn’t dare try that with Mr. Hartley.

  “If I hear one more word about whose turn it is on that thing,” he said, “I’m going to pull the p
lug for the rest of the week. You can find a quill and some ink and do your homework the old-fashioned way.”

  Sophie and Nora remained in an uneasy silence after he left the room.

  “The rest of the week”?

  Their dad had definitely sounded like he meant it.

  “I’ll be off in twenty minutes,” Sophie whispered.

  “You’d better be,” Nora whispered back. She picked up her books. “Heaven help us,” she sighed. “When’s Mom coming home?”

  seven

  Sophie almost chickened out. Even putting her hand on the knob of the door to the attic stairs felt dangerous. If Nora caught her, she was dead meat.

  Clutching the pile of laundry that someone had left on the stairs below and Sophie had swooped up so that in the event Nora caught her, she could tell Nora she was putting away clean clothes, Sophie opened the door and started up the steps. They didn’t have carpeting, so she had to tread softly. When a step creaked, Sophie stopped and listened. There wasn’t a sound. She hurried the rest of the way to the top, before she could lose her nerve.

  Good. Both doors—the door to Nora’s room and the door to the storage room across the hall—were open. Sophie was pretty sure she couldn’t be legally charged with trespassing if Nora’s door was open. If it came to that. Calling the police, that is.

  Sophie shook herself. She was being dramatic. It was only because their dad was so mad at them. If Nora caught her and they got into another fight, all heck would break loose. There was no telling what Mr. Hartley would do, and Sophie didn’t want to find out.

  She tiptoed into Nora’s room, went over to the bookshelf, and scanned the titles. Body, body, body . . . Nope. Nothing. Where would Nora have hidden it? Sophie looked around the room.

  Aha—under the bed! As Sophie crouched to look, the same stair that had creaked before cried out. She leaped to her feet and spun around as Nora appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “What are you doing up here?” Nora said furiously. Thankfully, she whispered it. She obviously didn’t want to get into more trouble with their dad, either.

  “I thought you were on the computer!” Sophie whispered back.

  “I forgot my notes!”

  “I’m helping Dad by putting away clothes,” Sophie whispered. “I thought these were yours.”

  “Yeah, right. Like I’m wearing Maura’s pajamas these days,” Nora hissed, plucking at the clown material in the middle of the pile.

  “I mean, I’m supposed to put them in the footlocker in the storage room. Maura’s too big for them.”

  “The storage room is over there,” Nora said in a deadly quiet voice. She pointed.

  “I know where the storage room is,” Sophie said with as much dignity as she could muster.

  “Omigod!” Nora slapped her hands over her face. “You’re wearing shoes!”

  Nora was right. In her haste to find the book, Sophie had ignored both Nora’s ironclad rule about no shoes and the basket Nora had left at the bottom of the stairs where visitors were meant to leave theirs. Sophie saw the long black marks from her rubber soles on the white floor near the door and picked up speed.

  “Shhh, I’m going. Don’t yell. Remember Dad.” She scurried into the storage room across the hall and dumped the clothes on the floor as Nora watched. Slipping off her shoes, Sophie waved them in the air. “Happy now?” she said, and escaped quickly down the steps.

  “If you scratched the stairs, I’m going to kill you!” Nora hissed after her. She must have spotted the scuff mark on her floor, because Sophie heard a gasp, followed by a stifled shriek.

  Sophie ran as fast as she could on tiptoe down the hall and into her room. She closed the door and leaned with her back against it for a moment before leaping across the room to lie on her bed and rest her head on Patsy’s stomach.

  Patsy’s comforting purr reminded her of the “Om” they’d listened to on a CD at the end of yoga. Sophie lay still, feeling her heart slow down, until Patsy struggled to get out from under the weight of Sophie’s head. Then Sophie moved over and stared at the ceiling.

  All of this near-death-by-sister drama because of a movie.

  A dumb movie, a movie that embarrassed everyone before anyone had even seen it. And now she, Sophie, was holding a meeting about it when she still didn’t know anything.

  Why did P-U-berty feel so embarrassing? Even thinking about saying it that way didn’t help much anymore. Maybe if she said it three times fast.

  Puberty, puberty, puberty.

  Yuck.

  “Good going, Dad.” Thad sniffed appreciatively as he came into the kitchen after practice. “That smells like something we can actually eat.”

  Mr. Hartley had taken his meat loaf out of the oven. Now he was taking out the baked potatoes, one by one, wearing Mrs. Hartley’s flowered oven mitts. “I used your mother’s recipe,” he said. “Since John set the table and the girls got the rest of it ready, you can take cleanup.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Thad turned on the tap to wash his hands. “How’s your foot? You’re not limping anymore.”

  “Much better,” Mr. Hartley said. “I’m beginning to think Mom planned the whole thing so she’d be free to go to Chicago.”

  Maura was sitting on the floor, patting Patsy. At the mention of Mrs. Hartley, she took her thumb out of her mouth and said, “Mommy?”

  “Mommy will be home soon,” Nora told her. “I hope.”

  Mr. Hartley had kept Maura home from daycare for the afternoon and let her play with pieces of wood in the sawdust while he’d cleaned up his workshop. She had the happy, slightly dazed look of a toddler who could easily fall asleep sitting up.

  When John had arrived home from school, he’d complained it was no fair that Maura had gotten to stay home for part of the day and he hadn’t, so Mr. Hartley had promised he’d give him a surprise after dinner. John was seated at the table now, systematically biting off the ends of the french fries on his plate before lining them up in a neat row.

  “It would be nice if you waited for the rest of us, John,” said Mr. Hartley. He lifted Maura into her highchair as Sophie put a glass of milk at each place. Nora finished tossing the salad and put it in the middle of the table.

  “I have to put my spit on them or Thad will steal them,” John said.

  “Nice, Thad,” Mr. Hartley said as he sat down.

  “I’m teaching him important survival skills, right, John?” Thad said. “That’s what older brothers are for.”

  “I thought they were to annoy their younger sister,” Nora said.

  “I’m glad you said that, Nora,” Mr. Hartley said pleasantly as he picked up his fork. “I thought we’d try something new in the way of conversation tonight.”

  Uh-oh. Sophie and Nora looked at each other. This had to have something to do with them.

  “In the interest of family harmony,” Mr. Hartley went on, “and also out of respect for your mother, we’re going to practice talking pleasantly to one another for the entire meal.”

  “‘Pleasantly’?” Nora said.

  “All the way through dessert?” said Sophie.

  “What does Mom have to do with it?” said Thad.

  “You guys are wearing her down, Thad,” Mr. Hartley said. “The way you talk to one another is ridiculous. You snipe at one another, you insult one another . . . I haven’t heard one of you say something nice or supportive to another since I got home.”

  “But . . .” Sophie started.

  “No buts, Sophie. And it’s no good trying to blame the other guy,” Mr. Hartley said. “You’re all guilty.”

  Sophie slowly closed her mouth.

  “Nice try, LMS,” Nora said under her breath.

  “That’s exactly what I mean, Nora.”

  Nora looked down at her plate.

  “No wonder your mother is worn out,” Mr. Hartley said. “I would be too if I had to listen to you all the time.”

  It was weird, hearing their dad talk like this. He was saying what their m
other always said, but it sounded different when he said it. Everybody was not only listening to him, but hearing him—Sophie could tell. Nora and Thad weren’t jumping in and saying something sarcastic, the way they normally would have.

  “So here’s the deal,” their dad said. “From now on, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.”

  Nothing but nice? That could lead to a very quiet dinner.

  “Only tonight, right?” Nora said. “You can’t mean forever.”

  “Let’s see how it goes,” said Mr. Hartley. He sounded a lot more cheerful about the idea than everybody else at the table looked. “Not bad, if I do say so myself,” he said, eating a bite of meat loaf.

  They silently watched him chew. Mr. Hartley took another bite and smiled. When it looked as if no one else was going to say anything, Sophie said, “It’s delicious, Dad.”

  She didn’t care if Nora glared at her. It was delicious. Besides, it was the only nice thing Sophie could think of to say. Every time she started to think, all that came into her mind was how on earth she was going to steal Nora’s book without getting killed. Now it was someone else’s turn.

  Sophie glanced around the table. She could practically hear the gears in everyone’s brain working. Dinner was starting to feel like third-grade Spanish. Ms. Brioso had come to their classroom twice a week. She’d taught them how to count and say things such as “Hello” and “How are you?” and “My name is . . .”

  One day she announced they were going to speak Spanish for the entire lesson. No English. Ms. Brioso said she would start.

  “Hola,” she’d said. “¿Cómo está usted?”

  There was a long silence. Kids looked around uneasily, hoping someone else was going to answer. Finally, a voice said, “Bueno.”

  Another silence. Then another voice: “Bueno, bueno.”

  When a third voice said, “Bueno, bueno, bueno,” and all of the kids started to laugh, they went back to speaking English.

  Now Thad was the first one to break the silence at the table.

  “Did you speak to Mom today?” he said.

  “I did,” said Mr. Hartley. “She said she’s having a good time but that she’s doing a lot of sitting around, listening to people say the same things over and over again.”