by Betsy Haynes
That's fine, thought Katie, tease on. Keep it up until we get the signature of every girl who goes to Wacko.
In the midst of the turmoil that was swirling around her booth, Katie glanced up at Tony. He was still hanging back, not joining in the boys' fun. Katie's gaze suddenly locked with his. Before she could look away she noticed the questioning look in his eyes.
CHAPTER 10
The Fabulous Five marched into the school administration office on Monday morning.
"Good morning, girls," said Miss Simone. "You're bright and early. If you're here to ask about your petition, I've got some bad news for you. I talked to Mr. Bell and he feels there aren't enough names to justify starting a new class. I'm sorry." She gave them a sympathetic smile. Then she whispered, "I argued as hard as I could for you, but there really weren't very many signatures."
"Would eighty-three more help?" asked Katie, putting the stack of napkins and pieces of paper caught together with a rubber band on the counter. Miss Simone's eyes opened wide at the sight of the stack of paper. "Is it okay that they're on these things?" Katie asked. "We didn't have our petitions with us when everybody decided to sign."
The secretary pulled the rubber band off the package and thumbed through it.
"It's all we had at the time," Christie explained.
"And we know that some of the napkins have mustard and relish on them," said Beth. Then she added quickly, "But you can still read the names."
Miss Simone smiled at them. "I'm impressed that you got so many. I'll have to check them for duplications, then I'll give them to Mr. Bell. Maybe he'll reconsider."
"Great!" shouted Katie. Then remembering where she was, she added in a whisper, "I mean, that's nice."
Katie knew that something strange was going on the moment she stepped into the cafeteria. The rest of The Fabulous Five noticed it at the same time. They all stopped in their tracks together like a precision drill team.
"Look at that," said Melanie. "The girls are all sitting at one end of the room and the boys are all at the other."
"Yeah," said Jana. "It's just like the parties we used to have at Mark Twain Elementary."
It was true, thought Katie. Except for Kaci Davis, a ninth-grader, who thought she was queen of the school, and Taffy Sinclair, who had gone to Mark Twain with The Fabulous Five, the girls were all sitting with girls and ignoring the boys. It was unbelievable.
"Oh, well," said Jana. "I was going to sit with Randy today. I guess I'd better not, the way things look in here."
"Not if you don't want to be called a traitor," agreed Christie.
"Darn!" complained Melanie. "A whole lunch period without talking to a boy. I'll die."
"You'll survive," Katie retorted.
As the girls got on the line to buy food and drinks Katie saw Tony sitting with Richie Corrierro and Bill Soliday. Richie had poked the most fun at the girls on Saturday for starting their own club. Did that mean that Tony also thought they were silly for doing it? It was like a blow to the pit of Katie's stomach to think he did. She had always thought he was fair. Hadn't he even stood up against Max McNatt, Geena's older brother, when he was picking on Clarence Marshall? Why wasn't Tony standing up for her?
The tension between the girls and the boys lasted for the rest of the day. Usually, couples such as Matt Zeboski and Mona Vaughn, or Curtis Trowbridge and Whitney Larkin, walked in the halls holding hands, but today it was as if the boys and girls didn't even know each other.
Katie felt relieved when the last bell of the day rang and she didn't have to watch the tension any longer. She decided to go straight home rather than go to Bumpers and see more of the same thing.
On the way, she thought about how tough it must have been when Gwyneth Plum was young. Women couldn't vote, and girls weren't expected to do anything but get married and have babies. They couldn't even take the classes they wanted without fighting for them and being thought of as oddballs. Katie felt a growing admiration for women like Gwyneth. They had had to face worse conditions every day.
When she reached her house, Katie noticed Mr. Dracovitch's car parked outside. Willie and the science teacher were sitting in the kitchen with the time capsule in front of them on the table. It was always a shock for Katie to see Mr. Dracovitch's naturally blond hair after seeing him at school, where he always wore his black wig.
"Hi, sweetheart," said Willie. "I was just showing Mark the things that were in your time capsule. "He's very interested in them, aren't you, Mark?"
It was also hard for Katie to get used to her mother calling Mr. Dracovitch Mark. It seemed too familiar, even though they had had several dates to museums and other cultural stuff.
"Yes, very interested," confirmed Mr. Dracovitch. "As a scientist I deal with a lot of facts, and it's great to find some information that actually tells you in a very personal way about someone who lived years ago. You're able to get into their lives more deeply than by just looking at a few artifacts."
Katie nodded, but deep down, something about what Mr. Dracovitch had said bothered her. She wasn't sure that she wanted him to know everything Gwyneth had written in her notebook. It felt like betraying a friend's secret.
Suddenly Willie brightened. "Guess what, honey? I stopped by the office that registers property deeds, and I found out where the Plums moved after they left here. It was to Lincoln Street." She dug through the pockets of her jacket. "Here's the address—nine zero zero four. Unless they moved out of town, her family may still be there, because I couldn't find any record of them moving again."
Katie felt a thrill of excitement when she took the address. Maybe this would lead her to Gwyneth.
"If you'd like, Mark and I can drive you over there after dinner," her mother volunteered.
Mr. Dracovitch was turning the porcelain doll over in his hand.
"That's okay," said Katie. "I'll ride my bike." The truth was, she didn't want Mr. Dracovitch to come along. It seemed as if he was becoming more and more involved in her and her mother's lives, and Katie didn't have much to say about it.
CHAPTER 11
The sky was still light when Katie reached the address on Lincoln Street. It was a one-story house with gray siding. Thick pillars supported the roof of the big screened-in porch. The house was definitely old enough for Gwyneth Plum to have lived in.
Katie walked her bike up the sidewalk and leaned it on its kickstand. She punched the doorbell and waited. No one answered, and she rang it again. Still no answer. She decided to walk around the side of the house.
At the back gate, she saw a woman kneeling in the yard working. "Hello!" she called.
The older woman got up and shielded her eyes to see Katie. "Hello, young lady."
The woman doesn't look as if she's in her eighties, thought Katie.
Katie gave her a big smile. "My name is Katie Shannon, and I'm looking for someone named Gwyneth Plum. Does she live here?"
The lady opened the gate so Katie could come in. "I'm Mrs. Oliver. No one with that name lives here now, but some Plums lived here a while back." She walked back toward her gardening.
Katie followed. "Gwyneth moved here in 1918. My mom checked it out. I thought she just might still be living here."
"Is this a school project?" Mrs. Oliver asked, sinking to her knees and picking up her trowel.
"No, ma'am," answered Katie. "I'm just trying to find her."
"Well, my parents bought this house from the Plums. The Depression was just ending so it must have been around 1935. I shouldn't tell you this," Mrs. Oliver said with a twinkle in her eye, "because you'll figure out how old I am, but I was eight when we moved in. The Plums had a grown daughter whose name I can't recall."
"Did she look like this? asked Katie, pulling the picture of Gwyneth out of her shirt pocket and handing it to Mrs. Oliver.
She looked at it for a moment, squinting. "I couldn't say. I only saw her a couple of times, and she was quite a bit older than that. There is some likeness, though."
"Do y
ou know if she was married?"
Mrs. Oliver cupped her chin in her hand. "Hmm. No, I don't think so. There was just the daughter and her mother. These are pretty flowers, don't you think?" she said, picking up a pot she had been working on for Katie to see.
"They're very pretty," said Katie. "Wasn't there a father?"
"No, just the two ladies. I believe the mother was widowed. Things were pretty tight for them. They had to sell the house to make do."
Katie's shoulders sagged with disappointment. Gwyneth had lived here with her mother, but she'd moved out a long time ago. Katie still had a million questions whirling through her brain. Had Gwyneth's father been killed in the war, after all? Had Gwyneth ever gotten married? What had happened to Gwyneth Plum after she and her mother moved from here?
"You can't imagine how beautiful this yard will be soon," Mrs. Oliver was saying. "Those dogwood trees will be glorious with blooms, and the azaleas over there will be bursting with color."
Katie looked where she was pointing. There were green buds pushing out on the branches of the trees and shrubbery. Between two of the dogwoods stood a tall tree. Katie looked up into its branches.
"Was there ever a rope swing in that tree?" Katie asked.
Mrs. Oliver squinted at it. "Yes, there was. It was there when we bought the place. My sister and I used to swing in it, but it was kind of old and my parents made us stop. They were afraid the ropes would break."
Katie felt a rush of excitement. "Mrs. Oliver, was there ever anything planted under that tree? Like flowers, I mean."
"I don't remember, dear. Why?" Katie repeated the story about Gwyneth Plum's time capsule as the older woman listened intently.
When Katie was finished, Mrs. Oliver struggled to her feet and went to a small tool shed in the corner of the yard. She returned with a garden spade and handed it to Katie. "Here. You're welcome to dig under that tree to see what you can find. You might want to try between those two roots. Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall that something might have been planted there. My sister and I probably trampled whatever it was."
"Thanks!" Katie said excitedly.
Each time Katie dipped the tip of the shovel into the soil, her anticipation grew along with the size of the hole. Soon she had dug a small pit two feet wide and two and a half feet deep, but she still hadn't found anything. Finally, when it grew too dark to work any longer, and Katie felt exhausted from her efforts, she stood up.
Mrs. Oliver patted her on the shoulder. "Gwyneth Plum must be very important to you. You can dig somewhere else, if you'd like."
Katie shook her head and started refilling the hole.
When Katie arrived home, her mother was sitting on the corner of the couch, her feet curled under her, reading a copy of Publishers Weekly.
"Hi, Mom."
"Oh, hi, Katie. Did you have any luck on Lincoln Street?"
Katie told her about her visit with Mrs. Oliver.
"She sounds like a nice person, Katie. I'm sorry you didn't find Gwyneth, though."
"Me, too," Katie said. "I didn't even learn that much more about her life." Katie's face clouded. "Although I think Mr. Plum did die in the war." She paused for a minute, then asked, "Mom, what was it like living with Dad?"
Willie smiled. "It was wonderful. He was a very nice man," She reached for Katie's hand and pulled her down to a seat on the couch next to her. "We had a lot of fun together."
Katie leaned her head on her mother's shoulder. "What kind of a man was he, though? I mean, did he want you to stay home and have babies? Did he play cards with other men?"
Willie looked at her for a moment. "No, to both your questions. He did like to do some things by himself, though. It used to bother me a little when we were first married, because I wanted to be around him all the time. He liked to go fishing at four or five o'clock in the morning, and sometimes he wouldn't get back until the afternoon. I'd be pacing the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West when he got home." Willie made an ugly face and pretended she had claws. "Then I'd hear the car door slam and your father would come walking to the door with this little half-smile on his face, like he had a special secret. That bothered me, too, until I realized that he needed those fishing trips.
"Finally, I was able to talk to him about it, and he said he loved me very much, but we were still two separate people. He had fallen in love with me because I was a separate person, and he wanted me to stay that way. That way when we were together, the two of us added up to more than one, and we were better because of it.
"I thought about it, and I knew he was right. That's when I went back to journalism school. He was proud of me when I did. That had a great deal to do with my feelings about women being able to pursue a career, if they wanted to."
Katie saw tears in her mother's eyes, but she didn't look sad. She hugged her around the waist. Willie hugged back.
"Would you have minded if he belonged to a men-only club?" Katie asked.
"Not if it was just some men who were friends getting together. That's different from some exclusive men's clubs where they get together and make business deals. Sometimes men need to be alone, too, just like you and I do or you and your Fabulous Five friends do."
"I hadn't thought about it that way," Katie said slowly.
Just then the telephone rang. "I'll get it." Katie jumped up and ran to the kitchen.
"Hello."
"Katie?"
"Yes."
"This is Christie. We've got a problem."
"A problem? What's wrong?"
"My mother says we can't have our club meeting at our house on Saturday. There are too many girls. They won't fit."
Katie was stunned. Why hadn't she thought of that? No one's house would hold the number of girls that had signed up. What on earth were they going to do?
CHAPTER 12
The next morning when The Fabulous Five gathered at their meeting spot by the school fence, they all looked crestfallen. "We're sunk!" wailed Melanie. "We're the ones who got everyone to join."
"Hey, I know the perfect spot," said Beth, putting her hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle. "Why don't we have our girls' club meeting at the YMCA? You know, the Young Men's Christian Association."
"Ha, ha," said Katie sarcastically. "Come on, let's hear some real ideas."
"What about Mark Twain Elementary?" suggested Jana. "Would your mother let us use the gym, Christie?"
"I'm sure she would, but Mark Twain might be too far for the kids from Riverfield and Copper Beach."
"Maybe we should talk to Laura and see if she has any ideas," said Christie.
"There's only one place that I can think of," said Katie. "Wacko. I'll talk to Laura about it, but I don't know what else she could suggest. Why don't we ask Mr. Bell if we can use the gym on Saturday evening."
"Someone would have to be there to open and close it," said Christie.
Beth zipped up her jacket, which was covered with Indian designs and rawhide strings. "We can ask. He can only say no. Let's meet at the office before lunch again and talk to Miss Simone." They all agreed.
Just then Clarence Marshall, Joel Murphy, and Richie Corrierro came wandering across the school grounds toward The Fabulous Five.
"Hi, team!" said Richie. The three boys were grinning from ear to ear. The Fabulous Five eyed them suspiciously.
"Well, what are we going to talk about?" asked Clarence.
"Talk about?" asked Katie. "What do you mean 'talk about'?"
"We decided we want to join The Fabulous Five club," said Joel. "What are we going to talk about?"
"Yeah," Clarence said. "Are there any initiation ceremonies?"
"Initiation ceremonies?" asked Jana incredulously. "What do you mean?"
Richie Corrierro chuckled. "Well, since you five don't think it's right for boys to have clubs that exclude girls, we're sure you wouldn't exclude boys from The Fabulous Five. When's our next meeting?"
The girls looked at each other in amazement. "We're not a club,
" said Katie.
"You've got a name, haven't you?" said Joel.
"And you have meetings, don't you?" said Richie.
"And I remember that you did all kinds of things for self-improvement back in Mark Twain Elementary," said Clarence. "There might be one or two ways I can improve myself."
"Yes, but—" Beth interjected.
"Then you're a club," said Joel. "Look it up in the dictionary."
"We want to join, and if there aren't any initiation ceremonies, I guess we're in. Right, fellow Fab Fiver?" Richie put his arm around Melanie, and she shrugged it off.
"Yeah," Clarence said. "We'll be eating lunch with you guys from now on, and we'll meet you right here by the fence every morning. Hey, it's really great to be fabulous. I always wondered how it would feel."
The boys turned and put their arms around each other and went off singing, "Oh, it's great to be a Fab Five! And it's great to be alive! Hi, ho, a merry oh, it's great to be a Fab Five." The girls stared after them.
"I don't believe this," said Christie.
Melanie shook her head. "Me either. Am I really in the same club as Clarence Marshall? I'll kill myself."
"Clarence thinks there might be one or two ways he can improve. I think there are a zillion ways," said Jana.
"Katie! Look what you've done to us!" squealed Beth.
"What I've done to us?" Katie's mouth dropped open.
"Yes," said Melanie. "You got us to tell everyone that it's not right to have exclusive clubs. And now we are one."
"Don't get excited," said Jana, coming to Katie's defense. "Those boys are just acting dumb. They don't really want to be in The Fabulous Five." The others stared at her as if they weren't so sure. Katie gulped and crossed her fingers behind her back.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Bell hasn't made a decision yet," said Miss Simone when The Fabulous Five marched into the school administration office a few minutes later. "You just brought the extra names in yesterday. You need to give him a little time to consider it."
"We're not here about the petition, Miss Simone," said Katie. "We were wondering if it would be possible for our girls' club to meet in the gym on Saturday night."