Jessi and the Awful Secret

by Ann M. Martin

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the redhead. “We don’t really belong here. Our mothers made us come. You can just ignore us.”

  I hadn’t expected that reply! “Well, as long as you are here, why don’t you join in?” I suggested.

  “No, we’d rather not,” said the blonde matter-of-factly.

  I glanced up to the front of the room and saw Mme Dupre watching me. Now what? I thought. “We’d really like for everyone to cooperate,” I said.

  “Don’t mind us a bit,” said the redhead, in a tone that was oddly old-sounding. “You attend to the others. We’ll be fine.”

  I suddenly thought of those mothers I sometimes see shrieking at their kids in the supermarket. “You have to do it because I said so!” they yell. When I see them I say to myself, I’ll never be like them. But suddenly I understood how those mothers might be feeling.

  “Please join the class,” I begged.

  Just then, I noticed Mme Dupre approaching. “Ladies, if you cannot participate, please go out in the hallway,” she said in a no-nonsense voice.

  The girls looked at one another. “Will you tell our mothers?” the blonde asked.

  “Your mothers will be told not to send you back to class next Tuesday, yes,” replied Mme Dupre.

  The next thing I knew, the girls had moved apart and were touching their toes. “Jessi, walk among the children and make sure they are in the correct position,” she instructed me. I was glad I didn’t hear a hint of criticism in her voice because already I felt badly about having failed at my first official volunteer assignment.

  After the warm-up exercises, Madame put on a tape of the musical score from the movie Fantasia, and told the kids to move to the music. Watching them was a riot. Some of them were out-and-out silly. Others were so deadly serious that it was just as comical.

  Madame gave us volunteers the job of walking around, asking each kid his or her name, then writing it down and rating them as dancers on a scale of one to five. Five was to mean “lots of natural potential,” and one was to mean that the child seemed stiff and off-beat. Two, three, and four were somewhere in the middle. “Don’t worry if you overlap and observe the same children,” she told us. “I’ll put all the results together tonight, and I like to have more than one opinion.”

  As I walked through the room with my paper and pencil, I decided that most of the kids fell into the two, three, and four ratings. There were a few exceptions, though. For example, the kid named Devon was being seriously silly — twirling around with his arms held out wide so that he batted other kids out of the way. Still, something in the way he moved with the music made me rate him a five.

  And, surprisingly, the quiet little girl who said she hadn’t taken classes (her name was Martha) appeared to have some mastery of basic ballet steps and a lot of grace. She got a five from me, too.

  The two whispering friends (the redhead was Nora and the blonde was Jane) just sort of bobbed up and down as they talked. I gave them both a one.

  The plump, blonde fan of Jazzy Jo Dupre and the Fly Boys (who was named Yvonne) had a hilarious style which consisted of bouncing around wildly, her head shaking and her hair flying everywhere. I just had to rate her a five, too.

  The time zoomed by. Before I knew it, parents started to gather in the doorway to pick up their kids. For the first time that day, I became aware that these were very underprivileged people.

  The kids seemed so high-spirited and happy that I hadn’t thought of them as “underprivileged.” Now something in the parents’ faces reminded me of that. Even though a lot of them were dressed neatly and smiled as they watched the end of class, something in their eyes was different from what I see in the eyes of the parents picking up their kids at Stoneybrook Middle School. Was it sorrow? Tiredness? A bit of both? It was hard to describe, but it was definitely there.

  It made me sad.

  And then it made me glad I’d volunteered to help teach the class.

  We handed our evaluation sheets to Mme Dupre as the kids left the room. She thanked us and said we’d all been very helpful.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Mary said to me.

  “It was,” I agreed. “Some of those kids are real characters.”

  We began walking toward the dressing room. “But whatever on earth is Mme Dupre going to do with all those kids?” Mary wondered.

  “I know what you mean. Is she just going to let them dance around for an hour and a half every day?” I replied. “They won’t learn much that way.”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Mary said.

  In the dressing room we met up with the rest of our regular class. “How did it go?” asked Katie Beth.

  “It was an experience,” I said, laughing.

  She gave a snort. “I’ll bet! An experience I could live without.”

  “No, it was fun, really.”

  As I spoke to Katie Beth, I noticed Mary taking off her leotard. She frowned as she gazed into the mirror. “I am getting to be such a pudge,” she fretted.

  “You definitely have a few pounds to lose,” said Mindy Howard as she joined the conversation. “Get them off and you’ll see how much easier it is to do those jumps. Don’t you think that’s true, Jessi?”

  “I don’t know. I never really —” I began. But just then Carrie came into the dressing room.

  “So? Were the kids total monsters?” she asked.

  “No, but we sure have our work cut out for us,” I replied.

  Mary laughed. “You can say that again!”

  Kristy hadn’t bargained for two extra kids when she went to her job at the Papadakises’. But she didn’t really mind finding Nancy and Karen there playing with Hannie. Since Karen is her stepsister, Kristy was glad to see her. And she knows Nancy very well. The three girls are all seven years old and are practically inseparable, which is why they call themselves the Three Musketeers.

  The Papadakises live right across the street from Kristy, so she’s the one who usually takes the jobs with them. That day, when Kristy arrived, the kids were already in the middle of a game called “Let’s All Come In.” It’s a making-believe, dress-up game which is supposed to take place in a hotel. As soon as Kristy shut the door behind Mrs. Papadakis they swept her right into their play.

  “Hurray!” cried Hannie. “Now Sari doesn’t have to be the Bill Capstin anymore.” (She meant bell captain.) Kristy laughed when she saw Sari, who is just two, propped up on pillows behind the coffee table. The older girls had plopped a big captain’s hat on her head — I guess to make her look official. Sari was busy scribbling on a pad (which was supposed to be the hotel registration book).

  Karen plucked the cap from Sari’s head.

  “Here,” she said, handing the cap to Kristy.

  “Sari was filling in for you, but she’s not too good at this game. All she does is mess up the sign-in book and ring the hotel bell.”

  As if Karen’s words had reminded her, Sari began smacking the call bell on the coffee table and shouting, “Bell! Bell! Bell!”

  “See what I mean?” said Karen.

  “Well, I’m here to take over now,” said Kristy as she sat behind the coffee table. “Sari can be my assistant.”

  Kristy looked around at the kids who were all dressed in costumes. Karen wore a purple satin robe over her regular clothing. Her eyes were smudged with dark eyeshadow and her hair was teased up like a fright-wig. Hannie wore a small hat with a veil, a pair of her mother’s shoes, and a lace shawl. Nancy had clipped a long fake blonde braid to her brown hair, and was wearing lots of red lipstick. A length of white tulle was wrapped around her shoulders. “Who’s at the hotel today?” Kristy asked.

  “Nobody yet,” Nancy told her. “We’re starting all over now that you’re here.”

  “I see the bellhop is on the job,” Kristy noted.

  Nine-year-old Linny (who is a boy, by the way) was dressed in his father’s oversized blazer. “I don’t want to be the bellhop, Kristy,” he complained. �
��They said I have to. Do I?”

  “Why don’t you let him be something else?” Kristy suggested to the girls.

  “Then who will carry the suitcases?” Hannie asked.

  “You don’t have any suitcases!” Linny shouted.

  “Pretend suitcases!” Hannie shouted back. “Don’t you know this is a pretend game?”

  “I don’t want to stand around and carry air,” Linny insisted.

  “Here’s an idea,” Kristy interrupted. “Linny, why don’t you be the bellhop for the girls, and then you can check in as someone else after they’re done.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Linny agreed sulkily.

  With that crisis solved, the game began. Karen was the first to check in. She stooped over and looked about warily as she pounded on the call bell. “Yes, can I help you?” Kristy asked.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” Karen replied in a crackly voice.

  “Oh, now I do!” Kristy cried. “It’s you, Mrs. Mysterious. You look a little different than usual.”

  Karen leaned across the desk to Kristy. “Hannie doesn’t have as good costume stuff as Daddy has at his house,” she whispered seriously. “I did the best I could.”

  “You look great,” Kristy whispered back.

  Karen resumed her Mrs. Mysterious character (which is her favorite person to be in this game). “I’m all worn out,” she sighed. “I have just come from meeting with the Addams Family. That family is a scream, if you know what I mean.”

  “I can imagine,” Kristy replied. “How did your meeting go?”

  Karen smiled. “It was wonderful. Morticia served us deviled eggs and finger sandwiches for lunch. The fingernails were very crunchy!”

  “Eeeewwww!” Hannie and Nancy giggled together.

  “Sign in here,” Kristy said, turning to a fresh page in the notebook.

  Karen bent over the book and scratched in a large X on the top line. She turned to Linny. “Bellhop, there are my lizard-skin bags,” she said, pointing to imaginary suitcases.

  Linny sighed and flapped the dangling sleeves of his long jacket as he trudged over to where Karen pointed. He pretended to pick up two suitcases. Then he headed for the stairway.

  “Bellhop!” Karen shouted in her Mrs. Mysterious voice.

  “What?” Linny asked, annoyed.

  “You forgot a bag.”

  Rolling his eyes, Linny went back for the third imaginary lizard-skin suitcase.

  Just then, the doorbell rang. “Time out,” said Kristy, pulling herself up from her seat. She ran to the front door and pushed aside the long curtain covering the narrow, full-length window next to the door. A girl with short curly blonde hair, big blue eyes, and a ski-jump nose stood outside. It was Shannon Kilbourne.

  “Hi,” Kristy said, opening the door for her.

  “I stopped by your house and your grandmother told me you were over here,” she explained as she stepped into the hall.

  “What’s up?” Kristy asked.

  Shannon shrugged. “Nothing. I just wanted to say hi and maybe hang out. If that’s okay?”

  “Sure,” said Kristy. “As long as you don’t mind checking into the weirdest hotel on earth.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Shannon.

  “Come on, you’ll see,” Kristy replied. When they returned to the living room, Sari was once again banging on the bell and Linny stood, pouting, with the jacket thrown on the floor. The girls didn’t look too happy, either.

  “Linny says he won’t be the bellhop,” Hannie told Kristy.

  “No problem,” Kristy said. “I went to the employment agency and got a new bellhop. This is Shannon the bellhop.”

  Shannon cast Kristy a confused look, but she played along. “Is this my uniform?” she asked, pointing to the rumpled jacket.

  “Yes, it is,” said Kristy as she sat down behind the coffee table again. “Once you put it on, you will be entrusted with the suitcases of our honored guests. Is that okay?”

  “No problem,” said Shannon, putting on the jacket.

  Immediately, Linny’s face brightened and he ran up the stairs. “Be right back,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Who is our next guest?” asked Kristy.

  “Make her stop ringing the bell,” said Hannie, pointing to Sari.

  Kristy pulled a sheet from the sign-in book. “Here, Sari, draw on this awhile,” she said. Luckily, Sari took the suggestion and lost interest in the bell.

  When Hannie approached the desk, Kristy recognized her character since it’s the one she usually plays. “Ah, Mrs. Noswimple! What brings you here today?”

  “Why, my Rolls Royce brought me, of course,” answered Hannie. “I am on my way to visit Baron Von-von-von-von and his wife the Red Queen.”

  “Can a baron marry a queen?” Kristy asked.

  “Of course,” answered Hannie in her haughtiest voice. “It happens all the time nowadays.” Hannie turned to Shannon. “Bellhop, I’ll need my ballgown puffed up for tonight. See to it, will you?”

  Shannon made a small bow and tried hard not to laugh. “Right away, madame.”

  After Mrs. Noswimple checked in and Shannon picked up her bags, Nancy entered the room. She was Princess Veronica from the land of Harmonica. This was a brand-new character. Princess Veronica was apparently in flight from an evil wizard who insisted she play the harmonica all day and all night. “My cheeks hurt, my mouth gets dry, my face is all puffy. It’s horrible!” she confided to Kristy the bell captain.

  As the princess was signing in, a tremendous blast of music made everyone turn to the stairs. Linny came bounding down wearing sunglasses, a black T-shirt, and a red bandana wrapped around his head pirate-style. Heavy rock was blaring from his portable tape player.

  He leaped from the bottom step and spread his arms wide. “It’s me, Johnny Rocket!” he exclaimed. “I’m bringing my rocking dance fever to your hotel!” He boogied to the center of the room, swinging his tape player as he jumped around like some sort of demented rock star.

  The girls caught the “dance fever” right away. Kristy and Shannon burst out laughing at the sight of the kids bopping around in their costumes, legs flailing and arms swinging in time to the pounding beat. Even Sari rocked rhythmically from side to side along with them.

  “I guess they don’t need us anymore,” Kristy said to Shannon, shouting over the loud music.

  “I guess not,” Shannon agreed.

  “Did you get a chance to call Stacey or Dawn or anybody?” Kristy shouted.

  “Yeah,” Shannon replied with a smile. “I’m meeting Stacey and Claudia downtown on Saturday. Dawn might come, too.”

  At that moment, Sari tumbled over and started to cry. Kristy hurried to her and snatched her away from the gyrating dancers. “Gee, nobody told me about it,” Kristy said, rubbing Sari’s back soothingly.

  “We just assumed you were busy,” Shannon told her. “Do you want to come?”

  Kristy sat on the couch and held Sari in her lap. “I can’t. I’m baby-sitting on Saturday.”

  “You can join us another time,” Shannon said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” replied Kristy. “Another time.”

  On Friday, I was glad to get to my dance class. I was used to attending twice a week and discovered I missed having that second class. My muscles hadn’t tightened up, and I hadn’t forgotten anything. But still, I suddenly understood why more girls hadn’t volunteered to help Mme Dupre. Missing class made them a bit anxious.

  My own anxious feelings surprised me as I stood pliéing (that’s “plee-ay-ing”) at the barre. I’d thought I didn’t care about falling behind, but I guess I’m more competitive than I’d realized.

  Really, though, I didn’t have to worry. Once class began I saw that I hadn’t missed much, and I danced the same as always.

  Well, almost the same.

  One time I teetered during my arabesque and I misstepped on a simple assemble at the end of class. (That’s a basic jump.)

  I didn’t mess up beca
use I’d missed Tuesday’s class, though. I messed up because I wasn’t completely concentrating on my dancing. I kept watching Mary Bramstedt.

  Ever since Tuesday in the dressing room, I couldn’t quite get Mary and her diet out of my mind. Something about that bothered me, though I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

  Now I was noticing a lot of things about Mary that I hadn’t been aware of before. For example, she constantly checked her image in the ceiling-to-floor mirror which took up the entire wall opposite the barre.

  Okay, all dancers do that. That’s what the mirror is there for — so we can check that we are standing straight and in the right position and so forth. But it was different with Mary. She would study herself when she was in line waiting to dance, or during breaks.

  You might be thinking, “Oh, how conceited of her,” but it wasn’t vanity. She didn’t seem to be admiring herself. She seemed to be worrying about her appearance. I noticed that she was constantly pinching her waist and her stomach.

  After class that day, one of the other volunteers, the redhead named Darcy, waited out in the hall. “Jessi, Mary,” she called to us as we filed out.

  “Hi,” I said, a little surprised. After all, I’d never spoken to Darcy before.

  “Listen,” she said. “Sue and I were talking with Vince and Raul and we decided to go out for a bite after class next Tuesday. We figured us volunteers should get to know one another. Do you want to come?”

  “Sure,” I said. I probably answered a little too quickly, but no one at dance school had ever asked me to do anything with them. I was kind of flattered.

  “Where are you going?” Mary asked.

  “We figured we’d go to the Burger King on the corner,” Darcy told her.

  “I don’t know.” Mary hesitated. “That’s not the kind of food I usually eat.”

  “None of us does. At least, not very often,” said Darcy. “But it’s the closest place and it’s cold out. One time won’t kill you.”