Pig City (2 page)

“Pig ice cream?” questioned Allison. “Yuck-ola!”

Laura wore the cap every day for a week. Her parents got used to it. Everybody in school made some dumb comment about it, but soon they got used to it, too. By the end of the week, it had become a part of her. She would have looked strange without it.

“We'll be in the Dog House!” Laura shouted, then slammed the door behind her.

Tiffany and Allison were waiting in the backyard, sucking on grape popsicles. They liked coming to Laura's because there was always good food to eat.

The Dog House was big enough for a dog the size of an elephant. It was built by Laura's father and her oldest brother over fifteen years ago. Laura had two brothers and one sister, but they were much older than she was. None of them lived at home.

It was called the Dog House because from the outside it looked like a giant doghouse with a door. Also, the name of the first club to use it was The Dogs.

Since then, it had been home to The Paul
McCartney Fan Club, The Spiders, The Cowgirls, The Destroyers, The Erasers, The Devils, and now a new club: Pig City.

Laura was the president of Pig City. Allison said she should be mayor and not president because it was a city and not a country, but she was outvoted. Tiffany was vice-president and Allison was secretary. So far, they were the only members.

They entered the Dog House. Tiffany plopped down on a purple bean bag chair. Allison sat on a bed covered by a black-and-white checked bedspread. Laura sat in a swinging bamboo chair that hung from the ceiling.

There was also a bookcase, a television, two lamps, a coffee table, and various other odds and ends, mostly odds. Nearly everything came from garage sales.

Nothing electrical worked, which didn't matter since there were no electrical outlets. They had a battery-operated cassette tape recorder if they wanted to listen to music.

Laura made a fist with her right hand, then raised it and held it lengthwise against her nose, like a pig's snout. Allison and Tiffany did the same. Then they all solemnly lowered their fists. It was the secret Pig City salute.

Pig City was a secret club. It had to be. Clubs were no longer allowed at Laura's school. Earlier in the year there were several clubs, but a parent complained because her child couldn't join one. After that, clubs were no longer allowed.

“You're first, Allison,” said Laura.

Allison blushed.

“What'd you bring, Allison?” asked Tiffany.

Allison removed a photograph from her jacket pocket and set it on the coffee table. “You don't have to stare at it!” she exclaimed.

It was a picture of her when she was three years old, naked in the bathtub.

“I got it out of my parents' album,” she said. “Can you believe it? They used to show it to everyone who came over! I'd be sitting right there in the room with them, and they'd show the album to their friends, with that picture in it. ‘How adorable,' they'd say. ‘How precious.' Every one of my parents' friends has seen my butt!”

Tiffany laughed.

“Aw, how adorable,” said Laura.

“It's not funny!” said Allison. She turned the picture over.

Laura had a jewelry box that looked just like an old-time pirate's treasure chest. She opened it and placed Allison's picture facedown on the torn red felt.

“Your turn, Tiffany,” said Allison. “And it better be something good.”

“It's better than yours,” said Tiffany. “I mean worse.”

Tiffany's lips were purple from the grape popsicle. She unfolded what looked like the front page of a newspaper. A huge banner headline proclaimed:

Allison and Laura laughed. Laura moved to the bed next to Allison, and they read it together.

Tiffany, the world-famous spaghetti eater, is ticklish. That's right, ticklish! It has been conclusively established by our team of expert ticklers that she is ticklish all over.

A finger under her chin will cause her to giggle for hours. Squeeze her sides and she will jump six feet in the air. Touch a feather to her toes and watch her writhe on the floor in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Tickle her armpits at your own risk!

Caution: Do not tickle her while she is eating spaghetti, or she will dump her plate on your head.

“It's not funny!” said Tiffany. “Everybody who reads that stupid thing tries to tickle me.”

“Where'd it come from?” Allison asked.

“Oh, my uncle had it made at a carnival we all went to. He wrote it himself, of course; it's so stupid.”

“Did you really dump a plate of spaghetti on his head?” asked Laura.

“No!” Tiffany scowled. “That's another one of his so-called jokes that he thinks is funny. He always makes fun of me because of
one time
when we went to an Italian restaurant I got spaghetti sauce on my clothes. Of course, he thought it was hilarious.”

Laura got a peacock feather out of a blue vase on top of the bookcase. She held it menacingly over Tiffany, who was somewhat trapped in the bean bag chair.

Just the sight of the feather made Tiffany giggle. “Get away,” she squealed.

Allison reached over and squeezed Tiffany's side. She jumped out of the chair.

Laura put the feather back in the vase and placed Tiffany's newspaper article in the treasure chest.

“Your turn, Laura,” said Tiffany.

Laura took a folded piece of notebook paper out of the back pocket of her blue jeans and dropped it onto the coffee table. She returned to her swinging bamboo chair.

Allison unfolded Laura's paper. “Wow,” she said, then handed it to Tiffany.

Declaration of Love

I, Laura Sibbie, declare, now and forever,
that I'm in love with my teacher, Mr. Doyle. I
dream about him all the time, and if I was
older, I'd like to marry him.

With all my heart,

Laura Sibbie

Tiffany gasped.

“Mr. Doyle?” asked Allison. “You're kidding!”

“I never lie,” said Laura.

“I guess he's all right for a teacher,” said Tiffany.

Laura placed her Declaration of Love in the treasure chest. She raised her fist to her nose. Tiffany and Allison did the same. Laura spoke. “If any one of us ever tells anybody anything about Pig City, the other two will show her secret to the whole school!”

They lowered their fists.

Wednesday morning Laura sneaked into the school building before school started. The main doors were locked, but she knew of a side door that would be open. She cautiously looked around, then walked boldly toward Mr. Doyle's room as if she had every right to be there.

Her school was once what was known as an “open school.” There were no walls between the classrooms. But, in the last few years, the administration had done their best to “close” it.

Large wooden bookcases now separated one room from another. The door to Mr. Doyle's room was a yellow curtain hung between two metal closets. Laura pushed through.

Mr. Doyle wasn't there. She knew he wouldn't be. He was sitting at a table in the teacher's lounge drinking coffee and talking to the other teachers. That's where he was every morning. She sometimes fantasized about sitting there with him, drinking coffee and
talking about interesting and important topics. She thought it sounded very romantic.

In the upper right-hand corner of the blackboard was the word DICTIONARY. Laura felt a pang of terror as she looked at that word. It was the most feared word in Mr. Doyle's class.

She picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in big letters in the center of the board:

She set down the chalk, then walked back through the school and out the side door. Safe outside, she breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Someone tapped her shoulder.

She spun around.

“Oink, oink,” said Gabriel.

She forced a smile.

Gabriel was a boy in her class. Ever since she started wearing her Pig City cap, he said, “Oink, oink,” to her whenever he saw her.

She wondered if he had seen her come out of the building. She decided it didn't matter. Gabriel wouldn't tell on her. He never told on anyone, even though everybody was always telling on him.

Gabriel had copied more dictionary pages than
anybody else in Mr. Doyle's class. That was Mr. Doyle's unique method of punishment. When kids got in trouble they had to copy a page out of the dictionary. They had to copy everything on the page, including the Latin origins and all the pronunciation symbols.

Laura hated the little upside-down e's the worst. She had copied fives pages over the year. She figured Gabriel had probably copied a whole dictionary by now.

“Oink, oink,” he said again.

She turned and walked away. Her hair swished around behind her, just missing his face.

Allison and Tiffany came across the blacktop. They raised their fists to their noses. Laura returned the salute.

They tried to decide whom else to ask to join Pig City. They finally settled on Kristin because she was smart. The problem was how to ask her while still keeping the club a secret.

Laura didn't tell them about her message on the board. She wanted it to be a surprise.

When the bell rang, they lined up and marched into class. Laura heard everybody ahead of her laugh at PIGS RULE! She laughed, too. If she hadn't, Mr. Doyle would have known she was the one who had written it. That was why he hadn't erased it yet. She knew how his
mind worked. He wanted to see who didn't laugh.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to try to outsmart me, Mr. Doyle, she thought.

He would have had to get up very early if he wanted to get up before Laura. Her alarm went off at 5:43. It took her an hour just to shampoo, comb, brush, and blow dry her hair.

“Laura, will you come up here, please,” said Mr. Doyle.

She stood up, lifted her cap, shook her hair back, and put the cap back on. She walked confidently to his desk.

“Do you know anything about this?” he asked.

She had to be careful not to tell a lie. She read aloud from the blackboard. “‘Pigs … Rule …' What about it?”

“Why don't you tell me,” said Mr. Doyle.

“How would I know?” she asked.

He smiled. “It's written on your hat.”

Laura took off her cap and carefully studied the front of it. Then she looked at the board. “My hat doesn't say ‘Pigs Rule', Mr. Doyle. It says ‘Pig City.'” She brushed her hair back off her face and put the cap back on.

He stared at her.

She smiled innocently back at him. She thought he
was extremely handsome when he was being serious.

He was tall and very thin. He had a pale face with sunken cheeks and very cute, curly brown hair. She thought he looked like he read lots of good books.

“Do you know who wrote it?” he asked.

“It couldn't have been a pig,” said Laura. “Pigs can't write.”

“No, but sixth-grade girls can,” he said.

“I know,” said Laura. “We learned how to print in the first grade.”

He told her to go back to her seat.

She turned around, swishing her hair behind her. She smiled at Tiffany and Allison. They were obviously very impressed. She raised her fist to her nose, then quickly lowered it. They did the same.

Her desk was on one side of the room, Tiffany's was on the other side, and Allison was in the middle at the front. Mr. Doyle had learned at the beginning of the year to keep those three girls separated. She sat down.

“Linzy, will you erase the board, please,” said Mr. Doyle.

Laura felt a little jealous as she watched Linzy erase the board. Linzy sat at the desk closest to Mr. Doyle and was always doing things for him. She was teacher's pet. She was the only person in the class who hadn't copied at least one dictionary page.

I wouldn't want to be teacher's pet, anyway, thought Laura. That's sickening. I can be in love with him without having to be his pet.

She put her hands behind her head, leaned back, and smiled contentedly.

Outside at recess, Allison and Tiffany were all excited. They thought PIGS RULE! was the greatest thing they'd ever seen.

“There's Kristin,” said Allison.

Kristin was bent over, drinking from the water fountain. They walked up behind her.

“Hey!” Tiffany shouted.

Kristin jumped, and then had to cough out water that went down the wrong way. She turned around to face them.

She wore big red glasses that covered almost half of her mousy little face.

She was cute, but everyone thought she'd be cuter if she didn't have to wear glasses. Everyone was wrong. It was the glasses that made her look so cute. Everyone also thought she was very intelligent. That wasn't true, either. It was her glasses that made her look smart.

Tiffany, Laura, and Allison formed a semicircle around her. She stood with her back against the brick
wall, next to the water fountain just outside the library.

“We have a question to ask you,” said Tiffany.

“Okay,” said Kristin.

“Only we can't ask you the question,” said Allison, “until we know your answer.”

“How can I answer until I know the question?” Kristin asked.

“You just have to answer yes or no,” Allison said.

“But you can't change your mind,” said Tiffany.

“So what is it?” Laura demanded. “Yes or no?”

“What?” asked Kristin.

“Yes or no?” asked Tiffany.

“I have to know the question,” Kristin insisted.

“Only if your answer is yes,” said Allison. “If your answer is no, then you'll never know the question.”

“Yes or no?” asked Tiffany.

“I don't know!”