by Meg Cabot
Unlike me, Erica, Caroline and Sophie were all super excited about our field trip, and especially about our prairie outfits. Caroline loved the nightgown I’d brought her. She put it on right over her T-shirt and leggings, the way I was wearing mine.
And I guess it was kind of fun to be wearing nightgowns outside, even though we were fully dressed underneath them. Sophie looked especially silly in hers, since her nightgown had Hello Kitty on it, a pattern it’s unlikely a girl in the 1850s would actually have worn, since they didn’t have Hello Kitty in those days.
And Erica’s mom had insisted on putting Erica’s hair in a bun, and sticking a big bow on the top, so she looked a little like a French poodle (though I didn’t tell her so, of course. It’s rude to tell someone they look like a French poodle. Unless they are, in fact, a French poodle. That’s a rule).
‘You look great, Allie!’ my friends kept saying. My mom had done my own hair in braids.
I didn’t feel like I looked great though.
I just didn’t feel excited about this field trip like my friends did. I think I was sort of hollow inside. Like the wall Mewsie was hiding in.
‘Cheer up, Allie,’ Caroline said as we walked to school. ‘I’m sure Mewsie will be fine. And just think about what we’ve got to look forward to when we get to school!’
What we had to look forward to? Endless boredom? And Mary Kay Shiner?
‘A bus!’ Erica cried, reminding me, knowing my weakness for buses.
‘School buses,’ Sophie said, ‘are considered the safest vehicles on the road.’
This wasn’t cheering me up at all.
‘But there are no seat belts,’ I reminded her. I said this because I’d been secretly hoping our bus would hit a bump so big that Cheyenne would go flying into the air, her hoop skirt sailing up over her head, and all the boys would see her underwear.
Except that Cheyenne would probably like this.
Although maybe she’d conk heads with Brittany Hauser, knocking them both unconscious.
Then we’d have to turn the bus round and come back.
And we wouldn’t have to sit through any boring bread-baking or kickball-making demonstrations!
‘But school bus seats are compartmentalized, high-backed, well-padded, and anchored for crash protection,’ Sophie said, quickly warming to the topic. ‘And designed with the safety of the occupant in mind, no matter what size. Seat belts could increase the risk of serious neck and abdominal injuries in the case of a crash, and could hamper the bus driver’s efforts in helping passengers to make a quick exit from the vehicle.’
We all stared at Sophie. She really did read too much about disasters.
Not that I cared. I didn’t care about anything. All I wanted was to get this field trip over as quickly as possible so I could get home to Mewsie.
Oh, Mewsie! If only I had a cellphone! That way I could call Mom a million times during the day to check on Mewsie’s progress to make sure he was all right.
‘Maybe,’ Caroline said, when I voiced this desire out loud, ‘it’s better that you don’t have a cellphone, Allie.’
When we got to school, we only saw a few people from our class wearing prairie clothes. Elizabeth Pukowski had on a longish dress that you could tell had once been a flower-girl dress (that she’d grown out of. She kept pulling at it).
And Joey Fields had rolled his jeans up to his knees to make them look like knickerbockers (of course), and had on a furry hat that he said was made of one hundred per cent ‘real faux raccoon skin’ that his uncle had loaned him.
Elizabeth and Shamira came rushing up to us, laughing – they’d each done their hair in Laura Ingalls braids, like mine – full of admiration for our look.
‘Are those nightgowns!’ they cried. ‘That’s genius! I wish we’d thought of that!’
So it was kind of hard not to feel proud. Even though the nightgown idea had been Missy’s.
But of course we didn’t tell anyone that.
And then Rosemary came up to us (not wearing any costume at all, of course), and said, ‘Allie. Check it out.’
She pointed towards the parking lot.
And there it was, all gleaming and yellow. The driver was leaning against it in the sun, drinking a mug of coffee.
I have to admit, my heart skipped a beat.
And it got kind of hard to remember that I had left my cat at home in (maybe) mortal danger, and that in a little while I was going to have to see Mary Kay Shiner and Brittany Hauser and go to what was probably one of the most boring places on earth.
Because I was finally going to be riding on a bus! A real school bus! With windows you could put down and stick your hand out of (even though that was terribly dangerous) and seats you didn’t have to buckle yourself into!
When the bell rang, I felt really torn between excitement and horror. Because I knew we wouldn’t be marching into school with the rest of the student body.
We’d be marching out to our bus.
Which was exciting.
But that bus would be taking me to Honeypot Prairie.
With Mary Kay Shiner.
Horrible.
‘All right, class,’ Mrs Hunter said, because instead of standing quietly like we were supposed to while waiting in our lines, we were all buzzing with nervous anticipation. ‘I know how excited you are all to get to Honeypot Prairie . . .’
Uh . . . not really.
‘. . . and you all look very nice in your period costumes from the eighteen fifties.’ As she said this, Mrs Hunter gave a kind smile to me, Caroline, Sophie and Erica. We all looked at one another and laughed, as did the rest of the class.
‘But I still need to take attendance,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘Which I’m going to do out here, before we lea—’
It was right then that we heard a car door slam.
‘Wait!’ we heard a familiar voice cry.
We all looked round to see a vision in yellow racing towards us from the car that had just dropped her off.
It was Cheyenne.
But Cheyenne looking as none of us had ever seen her before.
Rule #11
If You Can’t Say Something Nice, Just Keep Your Mouth Shut. Really.
Cheyenne had on a hoop skirt, all right, just like she’d said she was going to wear. It was gigantic, sweeping out like a bell all around her, as yellow as a buttercup.
But that wasn’t all she had on.
No, she also had on a matching yellow jacket (cinched tightly round her waist), a yellow parasol dangling from her wrist, little yellow gloves and a great big yellow sun bonnet.
Cheyenne looked like something out of a book.
No . . . something out of a movie.
We weren’t the only ones to see her though. The whole school saw her.
And immediately began whispering about her.
Since this was exactly what Cheyenne had planned by arriving so late (of course), she got exactly what she had always wanted: all the attention from everyone.
‘I’m here,’ Cheyenne yelled, running to her place in line. ‘Sorry I’m late, Mrs Hunter. It took forever to get my corset laced up.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Hunter said, staring at her, ‘I would imagine so.’
No one could stop looking at Cheyenne. She wasn’t just something from another time:
She was something from another universe.
‘Cheyenne,’ Marianne said worshipfully. She reached out to touch Cheyenne’s hair, which she’d had curled into ringlets, just like Belle, from the movie of Beauty and the Beast, in the ball scene. ‘You look so pretty.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Cheyenne said. She looked out at Patrick Day from beneath her eyelashes. ‘It was nothing.’
But if Cheyenne had expected her new look to make Patrick fall madly in love with her and send her flowers, just like that David guy had done to Mrs Hunter, she was destined to be sadly disappointed.
Patrick turned towards Mrs Hunter, looking outraged.
‘Mrs Hunter,’ he y
elled, ‘is Cheyenne going to get more extra credit than we are, because her costume is so much fancier?’
Patrick’s period costume consisted of a red flannel shirt and jeans, exactly what we’d been going to wear before Missy had come up with the nightgown idea!
‘No, Patrick,’ Mrs Hunter said, checking Cheyenne as present on her attendance sheet. ‘Everyone gets the same amount of extra credit for effort, no matter how authentic their costume.’
Cheyenne sucked in her breath. ‘But, Mrs Hunter,’ she began to whine.
‘Ha,’ Patrick said to her with a sneer. ‘Good luck fitting on to the bus in that thing.’
Patrick had a point. It was unclear how Cheyenne was going to fit through the door, let alone on to a seat, in her gigantic hoop skirt.
Not that she seemed to care. She was clearly feeling very happy with herself. When she saw us in our nightgowns and aprons, she smirked and asked, ‘Going to a slumber party?’ which sent M and D into gales of hysterical laughter.
Sophie flushed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘For your information, girls in the eighteen fifties whose fathers were settlers here didn’t have very much money, Cheyenne. That’s why they came here . . . to be farmers, and live off the land. We’re just being historically accurate.’
‘Well, Hello Kitty isn’t very historically accurate,’ Cheyenne said, opening her parasol and twirling it around.
All of our mouths popped open when Cheyenne said that.
Sophie turned even redder.
I couldn’t believe how mean Cheyenne could be sometimes!
‘Come on you guys,’ Erica said, rushing in to stop a fight before it started. ‘It’s all just for pretend anyway.’
Cheyenne and M and D, who weren’t even wearing costumes, snickered and turned away.
I could tell it was going to be a long day. That’s the thing about girls like Cheyenne, Brittany Hauser and especially my ex-best friend Mary Kay Shiner: they never learned the rule about how If you can’t say something nice, just keep your mouth shut. Really.
But I didn’t have time to think about this (much less write it down in my rules notebook in my backpack) because suddenly:
It was time to get on the bus.
Which we were supposed to do in an orderly manner.
But I can’t really say there was anything orderly about the way I latched myself on to Rosemary, or the way we ran for the seats she had told me were the best ones: above the rear wheels . . . or the way we catapulted ourselves into them with sighs of relief.
I just couldn’t help myself. Something good had to come out of this day.
‘I was so worried,’ I said as I sank into the deep padding of the bus seat, ‘that those guys would get these seats!’
Stuart and Patrick, who had pushed their way ahead of us – Mrs Hunter having been distracted by Cheyenne not being able (of course) to fit through the bus door with her enormous skirt – had opted for the seats in the last row.
Rosemary looked back at the boys contemptuously.
‘Those guys are amateurs,’ she said. ‘Those seats are the worst. Especially if someone pukes. No air circulation.’
‘Wait,’ I said, freezing. ‘You think someone is going to throw up?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Rosemary said with a shrug. ‘On the bus? Someone always does.’
No one had ever mentioned someone throwing up on any of the field trips my classes had taken before.
Of course, not having ever been on one myself, I wouldn’t have known this.
‘Thanks for waiting for us, you guys,’ Sophie said sarcastically, sinking into the seat in front of us, along with Caroline and Erica. ‘We got stuck behind Cheyenne.’
‘Yeah,’ Caroline said with a certain amount of relish. ‘It look five minutes to get her loose.’
It seemed to take even longer than that to get everyone seated (even though our class isn’t that big) and for the bus to finally get going. That’s because there was some kind of paperwork for Mrs Hunter to fill out and then give the bus driver, Mr Curtiss.
As Mrs Hunter was doing this, I watched her out of the window (we were so high up! Bus windows are way higher than the windows of any other sort of transport I’ve ever been in. You can see everything).
That’s how I noticed something.
‘Hey, you guys,’ I said. ‘Look at Mrs Hunter’s hand.’
Everyone got up on their knees and looked out of the bus windows.
‘So?’ they asked.
‘She has a new ring,’ I said.
It was true. On the third finger of Mrs Hunter’s left hand was a brand-new diamond ring I’d never seen her wear before. It sparkled in the sun as she was signing things on the clipboard Mr Curtiss had given her.
Elizabeth Pukowski gasped.
‘That’s an engagement ring,’ she cried. ‘Mrs Hunter is engaged!’
‘No she’s not,’ I said. I have no idea why I said that, though. How would I know whether or not Mrs Hunter was engaged? Newly engaged people did wear a ring on the third finger of their left hand. Harmony told me this once.
‘Yes she is,’ Sophie said. ‘That’s an engagement ring. Cheyenne was right! That David guy must have proposed to her. Oh, it’s so romantic!’
‘You guys,’ Rosemary said, ‘are going to make me be the one to puke.’
I kind of agreed with Rosemary.
‘It’s a good-quality diamond,’ Elizabeth Pukowski said. ‘My uncle is a jeweller, so I would know.’
‘Stop talking about it,’ I said. I wished I’d never even brought up the ring. I should have kept it to myself. The best way to keep people from talking about a certain subject is not to bring it up yourself. That’s a rule.
‘Why?’ Caroline asked. ‘It’s nice that Mrs Hunter has found love with an old friend.’
No it isn’t, I thought. Old things bring nothing but trouble. That’s another rule!
Look at my house:
Because it was old, it had gotten dry rot.
And now the shingles had to be replaced for six thousand dollars, and my cat had disappeared into the wall and wouldn’t come out, possibly endangering her life.
And look at this field trip to Honeypot Prairie, an old place, where they taught you boring, old-timey things that weren’t useful to anyone. Because of that Cheyenne had dressed up like an old-timey girl and was being nasty to everyone.
Not to mention that we were about to go pick up a bunch of my old classmates from my old school, including my old best friend Mary Kay, who’d ruined my last field trip for me and was probably going to ruin this one for me too.
See? Old things only brought trouble!
If you asked me, we should just get rid of everything old!
I especially thought this when the bus – which didn’t go over any bumps at all the whole way to Walnut Knolls Elementary School, or at least any that I even felt, so I never got to see Cheyenne fly up with her hoop skirt over her head. A total disappointment! – pulled up in front of my old school.
And who should be the first person from my old class to get on it?
None other than Brittany Hauser, who took one look at me and said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Allie Stinkle!’
Rule #12
Old Things Bring Nothing but Trouble
‘Allie Stinkle,’ Patrick Day burst out from the back of the bus. ‘Good one!’
Brittany glanced at him. I saw her smile.
I could tell this was going to be a really terrible day, just as I’d suspected all along.
And who was standing right there behind Brittany? My ex-best friend Mary Kay Shiner, of course.
She was pretending like she didn’t see me.
But I totally knew she did from the smile she had on her face. It was the same smile she’d worn when our third-grade teacher had asked, on the morning of the trip to the Children’s Museum, where my permission slip was, and I’d said, feeling my heart explode in terror, ‘Mary Kay said she handed it in!’
And Mary Kay ha
d said, ‘Oh, no, Allie. Remember? I gave it back to you to hand in.’
Only she’d never given it back me.
I knew exactly what she’d done with it. Lost it. Accidentally (on purpose), of course.
And she’d worn that exact same little I’m sorry (but not really) smile she was wearing now.
Behind Mary Kay were three other girls from my old class – Lauren Freeman, Paige Moseley and Courtney Wilcox.
Courtney I’d kind of become friendly with ever since Brittany’s disastrous birthday party. Courtney had told me she’d only hung out with Brittany and her cronies because there were no other girls in her class to be friends with.
Seeing me on the bus now, she smiled at me . . . only not in a fake way like Mary Kay. I smiled back.
All the girls, including Brittany and Mary Kay, were wearing period costumes almost as elaborate as Cheyenne’s, only they didn’t have hoop skirts. They had on white aprons with lace trim that matched the lace on the pantaloons that peaked out beneath the bottom of their gingham prairie dresses. They also had big sun bonnets that hung down their backs from ribbons that matched the colour of their dresses.
Brittany’s was yellow, like Cheyenne’s. Mary Kay’s was pink, Lauren’s blue, Paige’s red and Courtney’s was green.
I could tell they hadn’t gotten those out of their closets, like we had our costumes. I wondered where they’d found them.
Not to mention how much their parents had paid for them.
Now Brittany looked down at me and said with a smirk, ‘Nice nightgown, Stinkle.’
That was when Cheyenne let out a sharp bark of surprised laughter. Patrick Day and Stuart Maxwell grinned, obviously looking at me in a whole new way . . . like, this is the girl who’s been telling us to shut up and sit down all year? Allie Stinkle?
Why me? I wondered. Really. What had I ever done to deserve all this?
That was when Rosemary, sitting beside me, stood up in her seat. She was nearly six inches taller than most kids our age under normal circumstances.
And standing on the wheel well, she was even taller.