Only Girls Allowed (2 page)

Oh, yeah, did I mention he was Taylor Mayweather's boyfriend? I wonder what she would think if she knew Forrest was my “line partner” in preschool? Seriously! When we were four, we had to hold hands all the time. Taylor didn't arrive on the scene until fifth grade, and I still haven't forgiven her for what happened that year. I'll tell you this much: It involved me, a slumber party, and a bowl of warm water.

My new locker let out a breath of cool air, and I stood for a minute to enjoy its emptiness, like a brand-new apartment all my own. So many possibilities. My mind was buzzing with all the organizing and arranging I wanted to do. But before I could reach for a roll of tape to start putting up my favorite pix, I saw it. On the back wall of my locker, staring right at me—it was the front door to another locker.

This one was hot pink and shiny. Attached to the pink door was a note:

Shhh!

You are now a member of the Pink Locker Society.

More details to come.

Shhhhh!

Remember that stuff about the dividing line in life? Draw mine here. I inhaled a short, sharp breath, dropped my armload of books, and slammed the door. I even thought about leaning against it the way they do in cartoons. Was somebody in there? Should I have opened that pink door? Was this a joke? All my stuff lay in a heap while everyone else busied themselves with interior locker design.

Clem looked at me coolly. If she wasn't such an ice princess, I might have pulled her down to my height and showed her the inside of my locker. Instead, I collected myself and looked away as though everything were fine. As for Forrest, he didn't notice me (big surprise) or my gasp. I tore around the block of lockers, looking for someone I could tell.

 

No surprise who I was looking for—Kate (BFF1) and Piper (BFF2). I turned left, and since everyone still had their heads in their lockers, I started scanning the backs of heads for Piper's auburn ponytail and Kate's brown braid. Nothing. I turned the next corner and found them both. They were standing close together, almost touching, as they stared into a locker. They looked like they were studying a painting at an art museum.

“Guys!” I gasped, a little out of breath. But they only made eye contact with me for an instant, before turning back to the locker.

“I just . . . (pant) found something crazy in . . . (pant) my locker.”

This time, they looked up and locked eyes with me.
They said nothing, but they parted so I could step in between. We bunched close, the three of us, like flowers on the same stem. All six eyes saw the same thing—a shiny pink locker door. Same note, too.

I felt hot and woozy, the way I sometimes did before a test, or when Forrest brushed by me. I looked around and didn't see anyone else standing around in amazement. Some were still taping and stacking, but most seemed to be finished with their locker work and were beginning to head down the eighth-grade hallway.

“There's one in Kate's locker, too,” Piper said. “I'm opening mine.”

“No way!” I said, pulling her back by her shoulder. “It says ‘More details to come.' We have to wait.”

“And it says ‘Shhh!' too.”

“But it does
not
say ‘Do not open,' ” Piper said, “so I'm opening it.”

She looked like she was feeling for something under a bed. I heard her tug on a metal latch, but it wouldn't open.

“It's locked,” Piper said.

“No duh. It's a lock-er,” Kate said. “You need the combination.”

Piper stuck her head way inside the locker, popped back out again, and said, “This lock has letters on it instead of numbers.”

Just as I was about to have a look for myself, the bell rang for first period. People scattered. Piper shrugged and
Kate walked toward her locker. I rounded the corner and saw my stuff still in a heap. I quickly turned the combo on my locker.
Chunka-chunk.
It opened. Without looking, I threw my stuff inside and went to class.

 

For a few days, we didn't know what to do. Piper kept tugging on the pink locker door, but it was always locked. Kate Googled the Pink Locker Society and found something in the archives at our local university, where her dad works. Trouble was, you needed a password to see it. And me, well, I pretty much tried to avoid my locker. When I absolutely had to open it to get something, I acted like there was a hungry beast asleep inside. I was very quiet and pulled my books out gently. I closed the door firmly but never slammed it.

Aside from discovering the pink locker, eighth grade wasn't starting out all that magically. I didn't understand geometry; Forrest had not said so much as
hi
to me despite thirteen locker encounters; and I still hadn't gotten my
you-know-what. On the bright side, the new gym teacher was nice and said, after we ran a lap, that I should consider going out for track.

Did you know
aloha
means more than one thing? It's hello, good-bye, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's even a technical term that has to do with sending radio and satellite messages. So what did I mean when I said aloha to eighth grade?” I meant hello, bring it on, let's chow down at the buffet of exciting times in store for me, Jemma.

Eighth grade was my chance (finally!) to be popular. Not Taylor Mayweather or Forrest McCann popular—and definitely not as popular as Clementine Caritas. But I wanted the easy-peasy popularity that just about every eighth-grader gets to have just by being one of the oldest kids at school. We are owed it. But how popular can you be when you're me—the only girl in eighth grade who's afraid of her locker?

 

On Thursday, the “Shhh!” note in my locker was replaced by a new one. It was printed on pretty pink stationery, and the lettering was fancy, like a wedding invitation. It said:

First meeting of the Pink Locker Society
Friday at 1:35
P.M.
To open your pink locker, use the following letter
combination: S-E-R-V-E. This combination will be
activated
only
from 1:35
P.M.
to 1:36
P.M.
The meeting begins five minutes after the start of the
study-hall period. You have been excused from study hall.
Enter through your
own
pink locker door! If too many girls are
climbing through the same locker, it attracts attention.

We looked at each other, then back to the locker, and at each other again.

“We have to go
through
the locker door? Through to where?” I asked.

Nobody answered, but Piper smiled widely. “This is unbelievably cool. It's like Harry Potter or something.”

“But Margaret Simon isn't Hogwarts,” said Kate. “We're
normal
girls. It's not like we can do magic or something.”

“Not yet . . . ,” Piper said, flicking her pencil at me like a magic wand.

I grabbed her pencil and gave her an exasperated look. “Nobody is doing any magic. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not going in there tomorrow. Notice how it doesn't say anything about when the meeting is
over
? We could be stuck in there forever!”

Kate pointed out that the note said we were excused from study hall, so it sounded like we'd be out at 2:10 for our next class. Sometimes Kate was cautious like me, but not this time. She was going. And Piper couldn't be stopped.

“I'm not saying I'm not nervous, but I think we should go,” Kate said. “It really is an honor.”

“What do you know about it, Kate?” I snapped. “We don't even know what the Pink Locker Society is.”

“I know a little,” Kate said. “All I can say is that I know it's a good thing.”

 

Did you ever have a friend who always reads every little instruction on the inside of the board-game box? The friend who already knows how to play but reads the directions every time to improve her grasp of each little rule? If you're not properly spinning the spinner or discarding your cards the right way or adding up how much the bank owes you, this girl will let you know. That girl is me.

I like rules. Piper could care less what the rules are. And Kate falls somewhere in the middle, which is good because she keeps Piper and me from having a billion arguments. So far there were no rules for the Pink Locker Society other than to be there the next day at exactly 1:35
P.M.

That night on the phone, I tried to squeeze more information out of Kate about the PLS, but she wasn't talking.

“I can't say,” Kate said. “Just show up tomorrow at 1:35. I'm bringing my camera.”

 

For the first time in recorded history, the school day was going fast. Too fast. Before I knew it, I had finished lunch and we were just one period away from the Pink Locker Society meeting. I really wanted to know how we had been excused from study hall. What if it wasn't true? Did I really want to get detention for skipping class?

Math flew by like it's never flown before. I never thought I'd ache for another parabola, but I was disappointed when Mr. Ford said that was all for today. He told us to use our first study hall of the year wisely.