Only Girls Allowed (4 page)

This was getting more intriguing—the thought of undercover Pinkies walking among us at school.

“Can girls text in their questions?” Piper asked.

“Sure, sure. I think so, anyway. We've hired a technology consultant to get you girls set up. Goodness knows, I wouldn't know where to begin.”

“What if we give the wrong advice?” I asked.

“Oh, you won't, dear,” she said.

I wasn't convinced. If someone or some book had all the answers about PBBs, I would be happy to learn, I thought. But before we could ask who or where we'd find such a thing, the voice said, “Check your mailboxes on the way out. You already have your first client for the year. I printed out the e-mail for you. Good luck, and think pink!”

But I had a question on the tip of my tongue: How could I, someone who knows almost nothing about PBBs, give advice about them? In fact, I could give advice only about one B—bras. And even that was limited to what my mom told me about training bras.

I had a few other questions for the mysterious woman on the other side of the phone: Who was she, this grandmotherly person who never told us her name? How were we going to run a Web site? Why were we picked for this job? Who brought the snacks?

When the speakerphone fell silent, Bet was the first to speak.

“Are we getting graded on this?”

Piper and Kate both laughed, but I didn't know if Bet was serious or making a joke. And who was Bet anyway? I wondered if she would be hanging out with us now. Me, Kate, and Piper were the Gleeful Threeful, as my mom always called us. It had been that way ever since we were toddlers. Our moms met at Yoga Baby class and we'd been entwined like pretzels ever since.

“I am so totally jazzed about this,” Piper said, spinning around in a high-backed chair at the conference table. “I feel like a business tycoon in here!”

“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked.

Before Kate could answer, we heard the bell ring. It was 2:10, the end of study hall. Instantly, pink lanterns I hadn't
noticed before switched on. They were posted above our locker doors, like torches to light our way. It lit up the doorways so we could see our mailboxes too.

Our individual doors—with our names on them—were in three of the four walls. I originally thought we formed a triangle, like a mysterious pyramid. But Bet's door and my door shared the same wall. At best, the four of us formed same kind of trapezoid.

“Call me tonight!” Kate called as we split up to go back through our lockers. Before I opened the pink door, I grabbed a thick stack of papers from my mailbox—a plastic pocket at my locker door. It was sort of like the mailboxes I'd seen in the teachers' lounge. Then I took a big step up, carefully clearing the step I fell down on the way in.

The inside of my locker was dark. And I wondered how I would pop out of it unnoticed. I waited for the sounds of people walking past to fade away, slowly pulled up on the inside latch, and stepped back into the real world as the light spilled in.

 

On the bus ride home, I sat alone and started reading my PLS mail. I devoured it, looking for more information that would make this picture come into focus. Even though I knew more than I did on the first day of school, it was still pretty fuzzy. There was some helpful stuff in my stack of mail, including a short history of the PLS.

There was a calendar that included our regular meetings (every school day during study hall) and the word combination for each day. Next up was R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The packet also included an entire pad of hall passes in case our work took us out of the office during study hall. (Cool!) And there was a key labeled “elevator.” (?!) Then I came to the e-mail printout about our first assignment. It
said our first client was a sixth-grade girl, identified only as MG, who submitted the following question:

 

Dear PLS,

I'm in sixth grade, and my best friend already has her period. I want mine but also sort of don't. I need to know
exactly
when it will come. It needs to come soon and not at school for the first time. Please help! I don't know what to do, and I can't talk to my mom. Too embarrassing!

Your friend,

MG

The question hit me like an ice cream headache. Just when I was starting to think I might like this Pink Locker Society stuff, POW! Here I was, an eighth-grader, and not only did I not have the answers to MG's question, I was still waiting for
my
period. I couldn't imagine sitting around that big conference table in the PLS office, admitting to Piper and Bet that I didn't have my period and dreaming up some answer for the 6GG.

I was pretty sure I was the only eighth-grader who had this problem, but only Kate knew I was still waiting. Piper always assumed that I had mine. She even once asked me for a pad because she forgot hers at home. Luckily, I always keep them with me, just in case. But before I could get too deep into MG's question or think much about my situation, I read an instruction in bold type on the title page of the file:

STOP. Do NOT answer any client's question until you have read the PLS Rule Book.

I leafed through my thick bundle of mail and fished out a slim gray book. It looked used, like something you'd find in your grandma's attic. But finally, here were the rules. They began on the first inside page.

Failure to read and follow each of these rules will result in immediate dismissal!

At this point, I wasn't sure I even wanted to be in the Pink Locker Society, and this was telling me how easy it would be to get kicked out. Still, the handbook was a happy discovery. Here's what the handbook said on page four:

 

1. Enter the PLS office only during study hall—five minutes after the final bell.
   
2. Give high-quality advice. Don't guess. Learn and share your knowledge.
   
3. The PLS is a secret organization. Do not talk about your work or give the pink locker combination to
   anyone
   under
   any
   circumstances.
   
4. The PLS is not a clique. To honor our history of grace and kindness, be a friend to all.
   
5. If you get in a jam, issue a PLS-SOS.
   

 

I understood some of the rules completely, but others left me completely clueless. What on earth was a PLS-SOS? If it meant a desperate plea for help, I was ready to
ask for one right now—even before the school bus I was riding on stopped at my street. At that moment, the bus did stop. We were at the entrance to Forrest's neighborhood. I looked up to lovingly follow the back of his head down the aisle and down the bus stairs. It was then that he
turned around
in his seat, found me
three rows back
, and said, “Hey” before turning to leave. This particular
hey
from Forrest, combined with the extra effort involved in turning around, was practically an aloha.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a quick or witty response. He just caught me so off guard. I guess my eyes were focused on the front of the bus, watching him leave, so I called out, “Watch your step!” That's right. Instead of saying something cool or funny, I yelled out what it says on that big sign right next to the bus driver. I immediately ducked my head and wished I could hide completely, like a turtle in its shell.

 

You might guess I spent all that loooooong weekend thinking about the PLS and talking about it with my friends. But you would be wrong. I spent most of the weekend thinking about what (actually, who) I usually think about most—Forrest Charles McCann. Here's the deal: Forrest is not my boyfriend. He never was my boyfriend, and he shows no signs of wanting to be my boyfriend. In fact, one big sign that he does not want to be my boyfriend is his very real girlfriend, Taylor Mayweather.

Yes,
that
Taylor.

The one who embarrasses people as, like, her hobby. Still, my crush on Forrest runs deep and feels important. These feelings started small way back when Forrest's family and my family used to vacation together. My heart
always tells me this will go somewhere, even if it's taking the long way. I liked dwelling on the rumor that Taylor was completely flirting with this guy Gabe, who was nice and geeky-smart. Some people said she was two-timing Forrest. I could only hope it was true and that he would eventually break up with her.

Kate doubted this would happen. She also was not as impressed with Forrest's
hey
to me on the bus.

“You fall into a mysterious office in our school, then find out you're part of a secret society,” she said. “And you still want to talk about what Forrest might have meant when he said hey?”

Easy for Kate to say. She's had the same boyfriend (princely Paul) since fifth grade. Not so for me. And anyway, this was a hey worth analyzing. It seemed logical to me that the PLS—remarkable as it was—couldn't push Forrest from my daydreams. No matter what I was thinking about, most roads led back to Forrest. I could bring almost any subject back to him.

Example: A toothpaste commercial with a hot guy in it. The Forrest Connection? He once told me he brushes his teeth with warm water. Weird!

Example: Someone says our football team is supposed to be really good this year. The Forrest Connection? Easy! Forrest is
on
the football team.

Example: Mom says we're going to Cedar Park Shopping
Plaza. The FC? We will be driving
right by
Forrest's house. Hopefully, he'll be out front mowing the lawn.

Example: I've just been selected by a secret society that meets behind pink locker doors. The FC? What if he sees me climbing inside? Or, on the bright side, maybe I could sneak him into the PLS office, just for a quick peek.

That last one is sooooo tempting, because when you are in love with an eighth-grade boy, you really need to come up with things to talk about. Maybe you already know that eighth-grade boys really don't talk that much. Oh, sure, you hear them laughing and talking with their friends or sometimes with their coaches. But just put one of them alone with one girl (especially a nervous one who likes him). If, on top of your nerves, you don't have a single thing to talk about, the silence will bruise your heart and leave you with nothing—absolutely nothing—to analyze later.

I heard that kind of silence the last time Forrest and I were alone together. We were on the seventh-grade ski trip and accidentally ended up sharing the same chairlift. The pairing was a shock, but I tried to recover quickly and take advantage of our time together. It went about as well as the “Watch your step!” catastrophe on the bus.

Why is it OK for girls and boys to be friends until third grade, and then everything gets totally weird? That was the year when people started saying that Forrest and I
were boyfriend and girlfriend, which we were not. Not really. We were just friends who could play knock out on the basketball court at recess, or we'd sometimes play desktop football with one of those folded-up triangles of notebook paper. Maybe he got tired of answering the boyfriend-girlfriend rumors, because he stopped hanging around me and started hanging out only with the boys. Even when he came to our house, he'd hang out with the grown-ups or with his younger brother. And then came Taylor.

So it had been
years
since we'd really talked when the ski lift brought us together. It was a long ride up a steep mountain on a cold, sun-splashed morning. I started slowly, asking him how he was.

“Okay,” he said.

“I love to ski, don't you?”

“It's cool,” he said.

“Your skis are really nice.”

“They're rentals,” he said.

“My mom wanted me to wear a helmet today, but I said no.”

“You should,” he said, knocking the hard plastic of the helmet on his own head.

“Yeah, but I didn't want it to squish my hair, because then it gets all flat and stuff.”

To that, Forrest had nothing to say. What could he say, really? What does a guy know about helmet hair? We spent the rest of the ride in silence, as I searched the landscape
desperately for something to talk about. But there was nothing to say about the tops of trees or the few clouds in the sky. We climbed higher and I could feel the temperature fall. The soft snow cushioned what little sound there was from other skiers and snowboarders below. My ears popped. Then the lift stopped, as it sometimes does when a little kid can't get on or someone drops a pole. We bobbed together on the thick cable. The quiet hung there with us, and I was sure that I was blowing my one chance with Forrest. I thought about what Kate and Piper would do in the same situation.