“Library Gang, Yearbook, Newspaper, Helping Hands Service Group, Hobby Club,” Marcie read off the list. “Madrigal Singers (audition only), Jazz Band (audition only), Drama Club, Art Club, Cooking Club, Creative Writing Club, Whiz Kids Club, and then there’s a bunch of boring stuff like Auto Repair. Why would anybody who didn’t have a driver’s license want to learn auto repair?”
“To get prepared for the future,” Brittany said. “Or if they wanted to steal someone’s car. You know, they could figure out the wiring and everything.”
Kate went over the list in her head. She knew her mom would let her pick only one thing, since Kate was the sort of person who liked to join clubs, but didn’t actually like going to club meetings. She’d gotten kicked out of Girl Scouts in fifth grade because she missed seven meetings in a row. Kate had found that at the end of the school day, she preferred going home and reading rather than heading to the cafeteria, where the meetings were held every other week, the custodian mopping around everyone’s feet as they made add-a-bead necklaces and sit-upons. Her mom had gotten really mad at her when she’d gotten kicked out of Girl Scouts, since she’d spent a lot of money buying Kate a uniform and a handbook.
“I’m going to do Cooking Club,” Timma said. “You get to make all this awesome stuff. Like fudge brownies and pumpkin pie and snickerdoodles.”
“They ought to call it the ‘Let’s Get Fat’ Club,” Marcie sneered. Marcie was always bragging about what a naturally thin person she was, but as Kate watched her scarf down five Oreo cookies, she had to wonder how long that would last.
“Let me see that paper,” Kate said to Marcie, reaching her hand across the table. She scanned the list, mentally checking off the clubs she would never join, such as Madrigal Singers—she was an okay singer, but she hated wearing long dresses, which the Madrigal Singers had to do at their concerts—and Hobby Club, which she had heard was filled with boys who collected stamps and built replicas of Hogwarts out of toothpicks. Really, there were only two clubs Kate could imagine joining, Drama Club and the Creative Writing Club. Only she knew Drama Club was out of the question, because you did a lot of stuff on nights and weekends, and Kate’s parents were totally against that.
Besides, Kate thought if she joined the Creative Writing Club, she might get feedback on her lyrics. Lyrics were a kind of poetry, right? Maybe there would be other songwriters in Creative Writing. Maybe they could start a singer/songwriter/guitar player club. At the high school where Kate’s sister Tracie was a sophomore, they had a Friday night coffeehouse, where people came and read poems and sang songs they’d written and played guitar. Acoustic guitar, Tracie had pointed out, not electric, but that was okay. Maybe Kate would switch over to acoustic guitar. Maybe the kids in the Creative Writing Club could start a Friday night coffeehouse at Brenner P. Dunn Middle School.
The girl who made the Creative Writing Club presentation after school at Club Day didn’t strike Kate as the singer/songwriter/guitar player type, but Kate thought she shouldn’t judge people by appearances. This girl, who was wearing a denim jumper over a black turtleneck shirt and a pair of scuffed brown clogs, might be making a statement. She might be saying, You don’t have to be glamorous to be a writer, you just have to have a deep soul and a few black items in your wardrobe. She could possibly have a guitar, Kate told herself as she signed up for the Creative Writing Club after the meeting, and shelves full of poetry books. Poets wore black all the time.
I bet she’s got a pair of black boots in her closet almost exactly like mine, Kate thought as she walked toward the front of the school to catch the activities bus, but she’s too shy to wear them. Kate told herself she could be a good influence on the denim jumper girl. Don’t be afraid to wear big boots, she’d tell her after she’d gotten to know the girl a little bit. Don’t be afraid to be different. Different is better. Different is much more interesting.
Different, Kate thought as she climbed on the bus, is everything.
Different, it turned out, could also be sort of irritating. “My name is Madison LaCarte,” the denim jumper girl said at the first meeting of the Creative Writing Club, which took place on Thursday. “I’m related to Phyllis Petrie LaCarte, the famous author of historical novels, who is my great-aunt.” Madison took a moment to look proud before adding, “I am following in her footsteps, of course. I have four hundred and twenty-nine pages of a novel set in medieval France. I would be happy to make copies for anyone who’s interested, for the price of ten dollars, which covers all copying costs.”
No one was interested, which did not surprise Kate one bit. You could tell just by looking at Madison LaCarte, who was once again wearing a jumper, this one made from tan corduroy material covered with red and yellow autumn leaves, that she was the kind of person who did tons of research and would include every fact she found in her book. You could also tell that her book would be incredibly boring, even if the writing was okay. Sadly, Kate was pretty sure now that Madison LaCarte did not have black boots or play guitar.
The other people in the Creative Writing Club had more potential. There were twelve of them besides Kate, ten girls and two boys. A few of the seventh-grade girls she knew from fifth and sixth grade, and one of the boys, Seamus Williams, had played on her coed soccer team in fourth grade. There was a girl dressed all in black Kate had never seen before, who introduced herself by saying she was new this year and was a terrible writer. A few girls giggled when she said that, and the new girl glared at them. “I bet you’re all Ernest Hemingway,” she sneered. “I bet you’re all the greatest authors ever.”
When it was Kate’s turn to introduce herself, she said, “I’ve always liked writing. Mostly what I’ve written in my life is poetry, and now I’m writing a lot of song lyrics, since I also play guitar.”
She looked around expectantly, waiting for the other songwriters and guitar players to announce themselves. But no one said anything. They just smiled at Kate like they thought what she said was nice, but not of particular interest to them personally. Kate held in a sigh, trying not to feel too disappointed. The girl next to her began introducing herself, saying her name was Lorna and she liked poetry too, especially the poems of Langston Hughes and Shel Silverstein. That made Kate feel better because she also liked poems by Langston Hughes and Shel Silverstein. She looked at Lorna’s shoes. Tennis shoes. New. White with a red stripe. Kate decided to take the red stripe as a sign that the girl was an original thinker.
During the next person’s turn, Kate felt someone looking at her. She shifted her eyes left, then right, but couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. She sat very still. She could sense that whoever was looking at her was sitting slightly behind her, but not all the way at the back of the room. Kate swiveled her head to the left and back, and that’s when she caught him. He was an eighth grader who’d only said, “I like to write,” when he introduced himself to the group and wouldn’t elaborate when Ms. Vickery, their club adviser, had asked him to. “I just like to write, that’s it,” he’d said.
He’d said his name was Matthew Holler, and now he was staring at Kate. Kate thought about staring back, but she wasn’t brave enough. Matthew Holler had hazel eyes and long, dark eyelashes and dark eyebrows, and he had to be almost six feet tall. He was beautiful, Kate realized suddenly as she stole another glance at him, although not everyone would notice this fact about him. Marylin, for instance, would notice his hair, which was too long to be respectable, even if it was wavy and a gold color that most girls would die for, and she’d notice his black T-shirt with a picture of the Ramones across the front. Kate did not know who the Ramones were, but they looked kind of weird and frightening. They looked like a band Flannery would like.
She didn’t know why Matthew Holler was staring at her, and she wondered if he would say something to her when the Creative Writing Club meeting was over, but he didn’t. He was the first person out of the room when Ms. Vickery said that was all for now, be sure to bring some writing to share for next week. He brushed past
Kate’s desk, and she smelled a clean, fresh smell, like he’d just taken his shirt out of the dryer. Kate watched Matthew Holler walk out of the room, his head bent forward, hands shoved in his pockets. She’d never had a boy stare at her that way before. She wondered if he played guitar.
At the next Creative Writing Club meeting, people read something they’d written, three poems or up to five pages of a short story. Madison LaCarte read five incredibly boring pages from her novel, and when Ms. Vickery asked if there were any comments, there was dead silence. Finally, when Kate thought the room might explode from everyone wanting to say how awful Madison’s five pages had been, Matthew Holler raised his hand.
“The writing’s pretty good, but it’s all facts and no story,” he said after Ms. Vickery called on him. “If I want to read history, I’ll read a history book.”
Kate sat back in her seat, stunned. She’d been thinking the same thing, only she hadn’t been able to find the exact way to say it, unlike Matthew Holler, who’d nailed it right on the head. She turned to look at him, but he was doodling in his notebook. Look at me, Kate tried to ESP-message him, but he didn’t.
“Well, I think you’re very much mistaken,” Madison told Matthew, her voice catching a little in her throat. Kate thought Madison might be about to cry, but it looked like that kind of crying that happened when you were so furious it was either cry or start screaming at the top of your lungs. “Anyway, what makes you so great? Let’s hear what you wrote.”
Madison crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the rest of the group, smirking. Matthew Holler shrugged and picked up his notebook.
“It’s a haiku,” he said. “That means—”
“A haiku is a form of poetry that originated in Japan,” Madison jumped in. “Five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third.”
“Why don’t you let Matthew handle this, Madison?” Ms. Vickery said.
Madison harrumphed under her breath.
“Yeah, whatever, what she said,” Matthew continued. “Anyway, this is called ‘October Night’:
“Cicada alone
Left to sing in the bare trees
Where did the sun go?”
It was not the poem Kate would have expected from a boy who looked like Matthew Holler. It was like a sad, sweet note played on a violin, held two seconds longer than the rest of the music. Kate wished she could raise her hand and say this, but she thought it would sound stupid when it came out of her mouth. Still, when she saw that Madison was about to say something, Kate jumped in, because she wasn’t about to let Madison LaCarte, the most boring writer in the world, ruin the poem for everyone else.
“That’s really beautiful,” Kate said. Her face suddenly felt hot, but she forced herself to keep talking. “I mean, it’s exactly the way the end of October makes you feel.”
The girl next to her, Lorna, nodded. “I liked it a lot too,” she said. Several other girls nodded and murmured, “Me too.”
“Why does the cicada wonder where the sun went when it’s night?” Madison asked. “Isn’t that kind of a stupid question?”
Kate looked at Matthew, who shrugged away Madison’s remarks, like he wasn’t interested in defending his poem. “It is what it is,” he said.
“Nice work, Matthew,” said Ms. Vickery, ignoring Madison’s hand, which had popped up again and was wriggling wildly in Ms. Vickery’s direction. “Now, who would like to read next?” She surveyed the room. “Kate?”
“Uh, I’m not sure I’m totally ready to read,” Kate said, even though she had two new Dallas songs in her binder, freshly printed out on crisp, twenty-pound bond paper in Palatino Linotype font. She was about to say, “No, maybe next week,” when she felt Matthew Holler looking at her. She turned to look at him, and he mouthed Read at her. Yeah? she mouthed back, and he nodded.
She looked at Ms. Vickery. “Uh, it’s song lyrics,” she explained. “I’ve been mostly writing songs, like I said last week.” She cleared her throat and wished her hands weren’t so shaky. “Uh, okay, I guess I’ll start reading.”
She read the lyrics to “A Little Bit of Something Sweet,” a song about Dallas running into a girl he used to know back in fifth grade, only now she’s fourteen, like Dallas, and the sort of girl like Kate would like to be, funny and smart-mouthed, nice underneath her tough exterior. She liked the chorus of the song a lot, which if she were singing the lyrics, she would have sung three times, once after each verse, but since she was speaking, she only read the chorus once:
“A little bit of something sweet
Underneath the saltiness
Tenderhearted beneath the calluses
A taste of something you can’t forget.”
Madison raised her hand. “You said ‘something’ twice. That’s repetitive.”
Kate looked down at her desktop. She noticed someone had written MEET ME AT THE END OF THE WORLD in red ink, and she wished she had time to think about this, what it might mean, who might have written it. Unfortunately, she was too busy feeling like the dumbest person on Earth. Whose stupid idea had it been to join Creative Writing Club, anyway? Why did she, Kate Faber, think she could write? Now, Matthew Holler, he was clearly a writer. Everybody recognized it immediately. Kate? She was just repetitive. And the word she’d repeated, “something,” wasn’t even an interesting word. It was a nothing word—
“Are you crazy?”
Kate looked up. Next to her, Lorna was glaring across the room at Madison LaCarte, her hands gripping the edge of her desk. “That was great!” Lorna exclaimed. “I can’t believe someone our age wrote it. So what I’m trying to figure out is, why are you so critical of everyone? It’s like you think you own this club, just because you were in it last year.”
To Kate, it looked like Madison LaCarte actually crumpled, like a piece of tissue paper in the rain. Her shoulders slumped and her head drooped and the air seemed to go out of her entire body. When she looked back up, her face was flushed a deep red. “I’m sorry,” she said in a subdued, but still sort of dramatic, voice. She paused a couple of seconds before saying, “And by the way, I know I use too many facts. I just hate to let any research go to waste.” Then she looked at Kate. “And I actually thought your song was pretty good, even if I mostly listen to classical music.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. “I think once you put a little more story in your story, it will be good too. You write good sentences.”
Madison LaCarte straightened up and beamed. “That’s what my great-aunt Phyllis always says.”
Next to her, Kate could hear Lorna stifling a giggle. Kate knew better than to look at her, or she’d start laughing too. A few seconds later Lorna nudged Kate with her elbow, and when Kate looked at her, Lorna rolled her eyes. Kate rolled her eyes back. And when she felt Matthew Holler looking at her, she turned straight around and grinned at him, a big, widemouthed grin.
Matthew Holler leaned his head back and smiled at the ceiling. Then he sat up again and looked at Kate. He looked at her without smiling, straight on and serious, until Kate had to look away. When the meeting was over, he left again without saying a word.
That night Kate tried to write a new song about Dallas, but she couldn’t.
For some reason, Dallas didn’t seem so real to her anymore.
The next day at lunch, Kate, Marcie, Timma, Amber, and Brittany were joined by Keith Lawton, an eighth grader who managed the girls’ volleyball team and who could usually be found around groups of seventh-grade girls. Each day he chose a new table of girls to sit with and handed out advice to his lucky audience, who were usually thrilled to have an eighth-grade boy’s attention. Kate personally didn’t trust Keith Lawton. She suspected he’d been rejected socially by people his own age.
“Ladies! Ladies! Don’t everyone fight over me! There’s plenty to go around!” Keith said, scootching in next to Amber, a sack lunch in one hand, a book bag that looked like it weighed fifty pounds in the other. “Anyone want to share their fries?”
Kate listened, half-interested, tearing the crusts of her cheese sandwich into little pieces. Keith was saying that if you wanted to make changes, you should go through the appropriate government channels, and that the vegetarians should run for Student Government instead of interrupting everyone’s lunch.
“I’m going to run for a seventh-grade representative seat,” Marcie announced, which was news to Kate. “I think there are a lot of changes that need to be made at this school.” She looked expectantly at Keith, waiting for him to approve of her decision, but he was looking off in the distance and not paying attention to Marcie’s political ambitions.
“Oh God, look who it is.” Keith pointed down the aisle between cafeteria tables. He rolled his eyes. “Kelly Fisherman. Why her parents don’t send her to some kind of clinic is beyond me.”
Kelly Fisherman weighed around two hundred pounds and had weird skin growths on her neck and face. In Kate’s opinion, her personality was even more of a shambles than Madison LaCarte’s. Kate thought that even if Kelly Fisherman were thin as a rail, she would probably not be a very popular person. She had a terrible temper and actually yelled at people when they made her mad, which Kate had seen her do just the week before, after a girl had missed a really easy basket in PE.
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be Page 5