Fabulous Five 019 - The Boys-Only Club

by Betsy Haynes

  Katie's room was on the second floor at the back. She looked up. High overhead on a branch that was far too high for a swing now hung two tattered pieces of rope.

  Mrs. Goddard, my teacher, says someone may find a time capsule a long time after the person who made it is dead. That kind of makes my skin crawl.

  It made Katie's skin crawl, too, to think about it. She closed the notebook and put it and the other things back into the box. She wanted to read the rest of what Gwyneth had to say, but she didn't want to do it kneeling in the backyard. She quickly planted the tulips in the hole where the time capsule had been, and went into the house.

  "What's that, sweetheart?" asked Willie as Katie moved some papers and set the metal box on the corner of her desk.

  "It's a time capsule."

  Willie's eyebrows arched. "A what?"

  "A time capsule. Can you believe it? I found it buried under the tree out back where I planted your tulips."

  "Oh? Let's see."

  Katie went through the items one by one, telling Willie about each in turn. She could see the interest building in her mother's eyes as she explained about the porcelain doll, the pictures, the lace handkerchief, the rubber teether, and the blue-green marble. Finally, she came to the notebook, which she had intentionally left for last.

  "And Gwyneth Plum wrote this," she said, handing it to her mother.

  Willie slowly thumbed through the pages. "This is interesting. It just might make a good article I can sell to the paper. Would you mind if I did one after I finish what I'm working on?"

  "That's a great idea," replied Katie.

  Later, in her room, Katie took the notebook out of the box again and flopped on her bed to continue reading.

  What should I tell you about me next? Well, I kind of go with Tommy Rawls, although we've never been alone. Mama wouldn't allow that. He's really cute. I'm going to put a picture of him in my time capsule.

  Tommy made me mad the other day, though, and I'm not speaking to him. I told him I wanted to be a doctor when I grow up, and he said that colleges don't let girls in medical school so I might as well forget it. He said it was because girls couldn't understand all the scientific things they teach. I said, girls are as smart as boys, and he said it was a proven fact that they aren't.

  "Darn!" Katie exclaimed. "Don't put up with that, Gwyneth. You're as good as he is any day of the week."

  Well, I told Tommy that it wasn't true. There were, too, girls in medical school, although not as many as men. People don't give girls the chance to show how smart they are. I also told him I didn't want to speak to him again until he changed his attitude. Boys are so immature.

  Way to go!" cried Katie. Her opinion of Gwyneth Plum was soaring, and now she didn't want to put the notebook down. Katie had heard about women having to fight for the right to vote, to be paid the same as men, and to be treated like more than just housekeepers. In fact, she had read that at one time if a woman was married and inherited money or property from her parents, it automatically belonged to her husband. But she hadn't thought about what it would be like to be a girl way back then. This was like talking to another kid just like herself who had lived through it.

  "Katie! Dinner's ready," Willie called.

  Katie tore a piece of paper out of her own notebook to mark her place and put Gwyneth's book in the drawer of her table. She'd do her homework after she ate and if she still had time, read more of what Gwyneth Plum had to say.

  CHAPTER 4

  "A time capsule?" asked Christie excitedly. "In your own backyard?" The Fabulous Five were standing at their favorite place by the fence on the grounds of Wakeman Junior High the next morning.

  Melanie's eyes were open wade in amazement. "Was it from an alien from outer space who landed here thousands of years ago?"

  Katie laughed. "No, silly. It wasn't from any alien from outer space. It was from a girl named Gwyneth Plum who buried it in 1918. The amazing thing is she was thirteen when she did it."

  "What does it look like? What's in it?" asked Jana.

  "It's a metal box about so big." Katie illustrated the dimensions with her hands. "And inside there was a porcelain doll, some pictures, a lace handkerchief, a baby's rubber teething ring, a marble, and a notebook." She went on to describe the pictures and what she had read so far in the notebook.

  "Did Gwyneth say whether she and Tommy got back together?" asked Beth.

  "Not yet," replied Katie. "And he's so mean I'm not sure I want them to. I had a lot of homework last night, and I haven't finished reading what she wrote. It's pretty long."

  "That's neat," said Melanie. "It's like a real-life soap opera that took place even before they had television."

  Christie frowned. "1918? Did they even have radios then?"

  "I bet they didn't," said Beth. "That's almost before they had electricity."

  "Wouldn't it be fun to make a time capsule ourselves?" said Katie. "We could bury it someplace for someone to find years from now. It would be neat to think that people who live fifty, maybe a hundred, years in the future would know about The Fabulous Five."

  "Maybe even hundreds or thousands of years!" exclaimed Melanie. "What could we put in it?"

  "If we had a box big enough, we could put you in it," teased Christie. Melanie punched her playfully on the shoulder.

  "Someone could donate their Fabulous Five T-shirt, for one thing," said Beth.

  "Not me," said Jana. "I wouldn't give mine up for anything. Maybe we could chip in and have another one made."

  "What about putting in some gum from the gum tree?" asked Melanie, referring to the tree where everyone stuck their wads of gum before going into the school.

  "Eeeyew!" the others cried, and made faces in unison.

  "We don't want to gross them out," said Jana. "Why don't we all think about it and decide later. I say, whatever we put in should tell whoever finds it something about each of us."

  After talking to her friends about the time capsule, Katie felt more cheerful than she had since lunchtime yesterday. But as she rounded a corner on the way to her first class, she bumped into Tony and her dark mood returned.

  "Yo, Your Honor!" he said with a big grin.

  Katie's heart softened at the sight of his smiling face, but she tried hard not to show it. After all, she reminded herself, he was the one who would rather play computer games with the boys instead of going to the movies with her on Friday night. "Hi," she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  He fell in step with her and tried to look her directly in the eyes. She turned her head. "You're mad at me, aren't you?" Tony asked. The smile faded from his face.

  Katie straightened her shoulders and stiffened her back. "No. Why would I be angry at you?"

  "You've got me," he said, shrugging. "Is it because I said I couldn't go to the movies with you Friday?"

  "You've got better things to do. I understand that."

  He didn't speak for a few steps. "I didn't say I had better things to do," he said finally in a stiff tone. "I said I had already told the guys I'd play computer games. I didn't know I had to get permission."

  Katie could feel the heat working its way up from under her collar. "Who said you had to get permission? Not me."

  Tony stopped in his tracks, and Katie brushed on past him toward her class, trying not to look back. Her emotions felt all jumbled. It was infuriating that Tony was insensitive enough to join the boys-only club, but at the same time being mad at him made her feel terrible inside.

  For the rest of the day it seemed as if everywhere Katie went, something went wrong. First, she found out she had done the wrong problems for math homework, then all her books fell out of her locker between classes when she was hurrying because she was late.

  Her blood was still boiling when she reached her gym class. She sat down on the bench in the locker room with a thump and started taking off her shoes.

  "I think Bill Soliday likes me." It was Alexis Duvall talking to Heather Clark. "He kept making little
paper airplanes and throwing them at me in study hall when Mrs. Karl wasn't looking."

  "He's cute," said Heather. "You're lucky. Maybe he'll ask you for a date."

  "I wouldn't be surprised," answered Alexis. "I pretended he was making me angry, but I threw the planes back, and I'm sure he knows I thought it was cute."

  Lisa Snow joined in. "I wish I could get Richie Corrierro to pay attention to me. Do you think it would help if I started throwing things at him?"

  "Have you thought about throwing yourself at him?" asked Melinda Thaler with a grin. She pulled her gym suit on over her head. As her head popped out of the top, she said, "Maybe he'd catch you and you could say, 'Oh, Richie, you're so big and strong.'"

  "That's not a bad idea," said Heather, chuckling. "And baby talk might help, too. Oh, Wichie, you're so big and stwong," she said, fluttering her eyelids and pursing her lips. Their laughter filled the locker room.

  "Is that all you can think about?" snapped Katie. "There's more to life than boys, you know."

  "Like what?" asked Marcie Bee. "Maybe one of Bumpers' super hot-fudge sundaes, but that's about it!"

  Katie stood up as tall as her five-foot height would let her. "You could think of how it looks when you go chasing after boys. They think you can't live without them. Where's your pride?"

  The conversation had attracted the attention of everyone in the locker room by that time, and girls were gathered in a circle around Katie and the others. Katie saw Laura McCall and the rest of The Fantastic Foursome watching her from the back row. Laura and her three friends Funny Hawthorne, Tammy Lucero, and Melissa McConnell had been causing trouble for The Fabulous Five ever since the two cliques had met on the first day of school.

  "My pride goes right out the window on Friday and Saturday nights," Alexis said with a laugh. "I'd rather die than sit at home while everyone else is at the movies or eating pizza at Mama Mia's. I'd do anything for a date with Bill Soliday."

  "I'd carry Richie's books for a week for one date," said Lisa.

  "I can't believe this," said Katie.

  "Well, what about you?" challenged Melissa McConnell. "You date Tony Calcaterra, and he's as macho as a guy can get."

  Katie gulped. She had been waiting for The Fantastic Foursome to give her a hard time, and Melissa had jumped at the first chance. It was true that Tony acted macho, but he wasn't any more macho than a lot of other boys at Wakeman. People just didn't understand him. "He's not really macho," Katie declared. There was a chorus of hoots from the other girls.

  "All right, vat's going on in here!" It was Miss Wolfe, the gym instructor. "Everyvun out or I'll make you do laps around de chimnasium. Out! Out!" The girls scattered in front of her frantically waving arms.

  Katie hurried to finish dressing. She was relieved at being rescued, but still she felt like the lone crusader.

  CHAPTER 5

  Katie was still upset over what had happened before gym when she walked into Bumpers after school. It didn't help matters any when Clarence Marshall and Joel Murphy each playfully took her by one arm and raised her off her feet. "Let me down," she said through clenched teeth.

  They did just that, depositing her standing in the seat of one of the bumper cars that gave the restaurant its name. Everyone in the place laughed as she climbed out of the car. It was all she needed.

  "I could break their necks!" Katie said angrily as she pulled up a chair to join Christie, Beth, Marcie Bee, and Dekeisha Adams at a table.

  "Boys are so immature," said Dekeisha, sympathizing with her. "It's a well-known fact that they mature slower than girls."

  That's exactly what Gwyneth Plum said, thought Katie. Boys certainly hadn't changed since her time.

  "Girls are also smarter than boys," added Marcie. "At least most of them."

  Christie took a bite of the mixed chocolate and vanilla ice cream cone she was eating. "I think it's because they haven't discovered they can think about something besides sports and horsing around. They're really not dumb."

  "It's all the same thing," said Katie. "Like Dekeisha says, they're immature."

  "But what would we do without them?" Beth laughed. "They're all we've got."

  "That's the trouble," replied Marcie. "And they know it."

  At that moment, Katie saw Tony come in and walk to the serving line with Beth's boyfriend, Keith Masterson. Tony was laughing at something Keith was telling him as if he hadn't a care in the world. Katie stood up. "I've got to go." She didn't want to have to watch Tony having fun with other people.

  When Katie reached home, she said hello to her mother, took Libber in her arms, and went to her room. There, she sat at her table with the cat in her lap, softly scratching its head and thinking.

  It was amazing how things could seem so right and then all of a sudden so wrong. She and Tony had had a super weekend together with a gang of kids at the mall, and she had been thinking how many new friends she had made since she started junior high school and how much fun it was to be with Tony. She was finally beginning to feel as comfortable at Wacko as she had felt at Mark Twain Elementary.

  Katie took Gwyneth Plum's notebook out of the table drawer and opened it to the place she had marked and started to read again.

  I don't know what it's like for you, whoever you are reading this, but it's not too great being a girl right now. One of the worst things ever is in the winter when I have to wear long underwear under my dress. I pull my long stockings up to hide them. The big problem is, there's no place to take them off when I get to school and my desk is near the coal stove. I get all hot and itchy and can hardly sit still. Mrs. Goddard keeps giving me angry looks.

  Katie covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. She could just see the girl in the picture sitting in class next to a hot potbellied stove, sweating and scratching.

  Also, after supper I have to wash a huge stack of dishes. Not just supper dishes, mind you, but the dishes from the whole day. Mama says that's my job because I'm a girl. I don't think it's fair that my brother Robert, who's fifteen, doesn't help. John is too young.

  "Can you believe that?" Katie asked Libber. "That's ridiculous. It's massive discrimination."

  But one thing that Mama doesn't want me to do, which I do anyway, is read her magazines with the romance stories in them. She hides them in the bottom drawer of her bureau, and when she's at the neighbors', I get them out and read them. Once Robert almost caught me doing it. I'll be in deep trouble if she finds this and reads about it.

  Gwyneth and Melanie would like each other, Katie thought to herself with a grin. Melanie was totally boy crazy, and she was always talking about romance.

  Another thing I don't like is having to take sewing and cooking. The boys get to take fun things like manual shop and build birdhouses and tables and things like that. Cooking and sewing are boring.

  I told Mrs. Goddard that, and she laughed at me. She said when I grow up, I would probably get a good job making ladies' hats or typing in an office. She said that's what ladies do. I get tired of hearing what ladies can and can't do. Why can't we do what we want like boys?

  Good question, thought Katie, shifting Libber in her lap so she was more comfortable. Come on Gwyneth, stick up for your rights.

  Do you know that after I had the argument with Tommy about wanting to be a doctor I told some of my girlfriends about it, and they thought I was silly? That made me all the madder. They're the silly ones, not me. I hope things are different or you. You're lucky.

  If you only knew, Gwyneth, Katie thought, thinking back over her conversations with other girls over the last two days. Some things hadn't changed at all.

  Well, I decided it was time to do something about people's thinking girls are inferior to boys. I started a club at school for the advancement of girls' rights. I call it Girls' Rights are Important Too. The letters spell GRIT. Isn't that funny?

  Katie straightened up in her chair as she read. What a great idea Gwyneth had had.

  Actually I mean for the name to be serious. I
t's going to take a lot of grit to get people to listen to us.

  So far I've got Ginny Booth, Mildred Waxman, and Margaret Glavin to join. We had our first meeting at my house, and I said we should start a campaign for girls to be able to take manual shop. Ginny and Mildred voted for that, even though they said they didn't know why anyone would want to take shop anyway. I told them it was the principle of the thing.

  Katie curled a strand of her red hair around her fingers. "I bet we'd like Gwyneth," she told Libber. "She's turning out to be our kind of girl. Gutsy." The cat squinted its eyes at her and purred softly.

  Gwyneth's organization of the girls' club reminded Katie of what she had read about the first women's rights convention. It had been held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 and was the first time women had met in a single place to plan on how to get equal rights with men. Gwyneth's GRIT sounded like a miniconvention of thirteen-year-old girls.

  Boy, thought Katie, in some ways Gwyneth's world was a lot like ours, but in a lot of other ways, it had certainly been a lot tougher. She couldn't imagine having to wear long underwear and sit by a hot stove.

  "Oops!" said Katie, looking at her watch. It was time to get downstairs to set the table for dinner. She would have to get back to Gwyneth Plum later.

  She put the marker back in the book and closed it regretfully. She was enjoying reading it, and something Gwyneth had written had given Katie an idea. A very interesting idea that she needed to think about. Katie patted the notebook as a way of saying thanks and went to set the table.

  CHAPTER 6

  "Gee, Katie, I don't know what Mr. Bell would say." A frown creased Christie's forehead, and she brushed her blond hair away from her face. "You can always ask him."

  "Sure," Katie said. "I'll just march in and say, 'Hey, Mr. Bell. I've got a super subject I think you should add to Wacko's list of classes next year.'" She rolled her eyes. "Somehow I don't think I'll convince him."