Best Kept Secret
Authors: Debra Moffitt
PINK LOCKER SOCIETY IN DANGER!
The big angry-looking headline screamed at us from a thirty-year-old copy of
The Pink Paper
. We found this shred of evidence at the library, but it tells us nothing. At some point in history, someone took a black marker and blotted out all the words of the article. Only the headline remains readable on the copy we made from the archives. Long ago, the Pink Locker Ladies cranked out
The Pink Paper
using typewriters and some old-timey printing method. Today, we carry on their mission, but we use a Web site called www.pinklockersociety.org. Now (as then), our specialty is answering questions about the PBBs (periods, bras, and boys).
Back in the
Pink Paper
days, something strange happened and the Pink Locker Society ceased to exist. We don't know exactly what happenedâand the not knowing eats at us. Well, mostly me. I like to know what I'm getting into. And I definitely didn't know what I was getting into on the first day of school, when I found that peculiar pink locker door on the inside of my regular locker. Piper, Kate, Bet, and I stepped inside, and we learned that we had been inducted into the new and improved Pink Locker Society. It was now
our
job to give girl-to-girl advice.
We loved itâdelivering answers on all kinds of questions girls have, especially the ones they're too shy to ask their moms or even their older sisters. For a time, we were a phenomenal success. But then Taylor Mayweather decided to hack into the site and made all kinds of rude comments about the girls we were trying to help. (Yes, the very same Taylor Mayweather who is dating my lifelong crush, Forrest McCann.)
So the school principal shut down our Web site, our parents were aghast, and it seemed like everyone just wanted us to forget the Pink Locker Society ever existed. But then the principal returned our pink laptop, thinking we might “put it to good use.” He was thinking schoolwork, but a tiny butterfly of an idea flew into our heads: Kate, Piper, and I decided to restart the PLS ourselves. And we have. Too many girls need answers. We, your faithful members of the Pink Locker Society, will not let you down.
Think pink!
Jemma, Kate, and Piper
Contents
Pink Locker Society in Danger!
One
By eighth grade, your bike can take you almost anywhere you want to go, even to the street where your biggest crush lives. Mention a bike ride and your parents are likely to say, “Sure, go ahead,” since it is a healthy and low-tech (or is it no-tech?) activity. Not that
I
would ever go 1.3 miles out of my way just to glimpse the gray-green two-story colonial that my crush, Forrest McCann, calls home.
OK, I've done it. More than once. Did it today, in fact, under a cloudy November sky. And what I saw when I pedaled past Forrest's house nearly knocked me off my two wheelsâa For Sale sign poking out from the lawn.
This was monumental. Forrest had always been part of my plan. I know it's a little weird for me to think we have a chance, since Forrest is still with Taylor Mayweather. But we've known each other foreverâsince preschoolâand we might be destined to end up together.
We've had our moments, you know. Already, this year, there was that time on the bus, the other time when we were scrunched together inside the same locker (a long story), and most recently, we had a laundry room moment that gave me plenty to think about, but no real answers. Before I fall asleep at night, I turn that moment over and over in my head, like a lucky penny.
But when I see him at school, I totally clam up. I can't even spit out a hi or hey when I see him in the halls. I just nod awkwardly in his direction. He usually nods back, but sometimes he doesn't see my nod and I wonder if people are wondering who I'm nodding at. Or maybe they are laughing at how I'm the victim of an unreturned nod.
Those times when FCM gives me a nod, I'm reminded that Forrest and I share a secret. A big one. Forrest Charles McCann knows about the pink locker. And he knows I'm in the Pink Locker Society. In fact, thanks to me, he was interrogated about the PLS by Principal Finklestein. It was just before Principal F. pulled the plug on our secret group. I had been dying to tell Forrest that Kate, Piper, and I have restarted the PLS without anyone's permission.
But before I could get up the nerve to have that conversation, the For Sale sign changed everything.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
“KATE!”
I nearly shrieked my best friend's name into the phone as I explained what I just saw. At this point, I had biked my way around the corner from Forrest's house. I was shielded from the autumn sun by a stand of old gnarled trees. In the trunk of one of them was a plum-sized hole, like the kind you see in cartoons. I might have wondered what was in that hole if I wasn't so desperately worried that Forrest McCann was about to leave my life forever.
“Calm down,” Kate said in her yoga voice. “Try to take cleansing breaths. Watch your stomach rise and fall.”
“Kate Parker, I don't have time to find my inner peace. This is the end of my life!”
Kate is my
best
friendâbut sometimes she just does not get it. It must have to do with the fact that she always has a boyfriend. She used to be with Paul, but now she's going out with Brett.
“Kate, if Forrest moves away, how am I going to follow through on my two-year-plan to make him like me and finally dump Taylor?”
“Well, maybe you'll have to speed up your plan.”
Kate is always saying things like that, but I have my own way of doing things. Forrest and I go way back, which complicates the situation. I can't just walk up to him and declare my love. There are rules here and I'm following them.
I hung up with Kate, who promised to call me later. Sometimes I get the feeling that she's tired of me talking about Forrest. I guess I don't blame her, but talking about him is one of my favorite things to do. So I quickly pressed speed dial 3 and got Piper.
“Come
onnnn,
Jem. Why don't you just talk to him? And ask what the deal is with the For Sale sign. I mean, that's what I'd do. It's not that hard.”
Easy for Piper to say. She attracts boys everywhere she goes. Once, she got a new boyfriend during a trip to the grocery store with her mom. They met in produce and by the time they reached the dairy aisle, they were a couple.
“
I
can't just talk to Forrest.”
“Why not? I talk to him all the time. He's really into his guitar these days. He's even talking about not playing football next year to have more time for his band.”
Forrest has a band? Where have I been? And why does Piper know so much about him?
Piper knows me well. When I didn't respond to her, she jumped in with more of her Piperesque straight talk.
“You should just go for him. Actually, you should have gone for him ages ago. But especially after everyone found out Taylor was the one who hacked the Pink Locker Society Web site,” Piper said.
Oh, Piper, you are right, but I just can't admit that you are right.
“Jem, I'm just saying you can't wait forever.”
I knew this was technically true, but I couldn't imagine doing anything more than I was currently doingâthinking about making a move. I suddenly felt a buzz of suspicion about Piper. Then I heard itâan actual buzz.
But it wasn't in my head. The loud buzzing was headed straight for me, from that funny tree with the hole in its trunk. It was home to a very angry family of bees. Angry at me, apparently. They spilled furiously out of that hole in a straight lineâa real “beeline.” I flapped my arms like a bird and started running. They filled the air in front of me, and I felt them ping-pong off of me as I darted and dashed. Some collided with my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and ran. But where could I go? I opened my eyes, crossed the street in a sprint, and lunged at the only familiar house in sight.
Two
This must be a dream. This must be a dream.
I found myself, of all places, in Forrest's backyard. Like a prowler. What was I thinking, running hereâthat I'd outsmart the bees? But it seemed to work. They were finally gone. It was only when I stood still, on Forrest's back porch, that I felt the painâstings, and more than one. I had one on each arm, which I didn't think was so bad, considering. Before I could collect my thoughts, Forrest's mother saw me out back. It was then that I felt the third sting, right above my lip.
“Jemma, honey! What in heaven's name?”
Vera McCann could be my future mother in-law, and Forrest could have been anywhere, but right then I was just glad to see anyone who knew what to do. I was sweating and out of breath, so it was hard to explain what I was doing there.
“Bee stings. I was riding my bike and, and⦔
As I trailed off, Mrs. McCann swept into action. She took me inside, pulled a premade ice pack out of the freezer, and carefully pulled out the stingers. With that taken care of, we sat down in awkward silence at her kitchen table. I could feel my lip puffing up.
“Let me see.”
When I lifted the ice to show her, she winced, so I knew it wasn't good.
“Keep the ice on it. I'll call your mom.”
She went to find the phone, I guess, and left me alone in the kitchen.
I was alone in Forrest McCann's kitchen
. Even in my bee-stung state, I wanted to open the pantry and see which kind of cereal he ate for breakfast. It had been a long time since I'd been in their house. Our parents are friends, but our families don't get together like we used to when we were little. Too shy to snoop, I stared at the cabinetry and started thinking of my bike and how I just left it on the side of the road, by the buzzing tree.
I should go get it,
I thought.
I got up, still a little shaky, and looked for Mrs. McCann. I took a slow step into the living room, calling her name, and then I heard loud footstepsâ
boom, boom, boom.
Forrest McCann was in the house. It was as if he dropped a barbell on each step as he pounded his way down from the second floor. He landed at my feet.
“Hey,” he said, giving me an understandably confused look that said
Why are you in my living room?
“Hey,” I said, still holding the ice to my lip.
“What happened to you? Did someone punch you?”
“No. I was riding my bike,” I said, a completely incomplete explanation.
“You fell?”
“Bees,” is all I could say before I was rescued by Mrs. McCann, who was holding her car keys.
“I told your mom I'd run you home. Forrest, can you go get Jemma's bike? Where is it, honey?”
“Around the corner, by the Cavannas' house,” I said.
But Forrest just stood there, his expression sending the message that he would need more information.
“Bees,” Mrs. McCann called out to him as she pulled me out the front door. “The poor girl was stung by a hive of bees.”