Glitter Girl (13 page)

For Jules, the days between her big fight with Kat and her birthday on Saturday couldn't pass fast enough. There were a couple of moments at school when Kat seemed like she might have wanted to talk or apologize or something, but those moments passed fairly quickly. Jules figured it would be tough to take back anything that was said by either of them, so maybe it was best she didn't say anything for a while.

But just as she was getting ready to forgive and forget, and maybe even make the first move herself, she saw Kat hanging out with those two airheaded harpies Zoe and Darcy. It positively drove her up a wall. On Thursday, they'd come wandering into Ms. Tate's class twenty minutes late with smug grins on their faces like they were getting away with something so naughty. It made Jules want to puke and immediately sent all thoughts of trying to work things out with Kat out of her head. Let her apologize first. Then, we'll see.

Instead she had her own birthday to plan. And even though Kat wasn't going to be there, this was going to be a big deal. So on Friday afternoon as Ms. Donovan had arranged, the entire Shakespeare Club piled into one of the parents' mininvans and headed to the high school. Everyone was excited about looking through the drama department's costumes to figure out what they were wearing to the Renaissance Faire.

Jules sat next to her friend Rory Retzlaff, a slightly tubby, sandy-haired boy she had a bit of a crush on because he was so funny. He always talked about how he was going to be running away to join the Renaissance Faire himself someday.

“You're so full of it!” Jules laughed at him as the van pulled out of the Willkie parking lot.

“You just wait!” said Rory. “Next year you guys will be coming to see me.”

“As what? Court jester?”

“I don't know. Maybe I could be a falconer or something.”

“Yeah,” laughed Jules, “I hear falconry is a real growth industry, right up there with high tech.”

“You laugh now, but who'll be laughing when my birds are trained to do surgical strikes against my mortal enemies?”

For a brief moment, Jules entertained a fantasy of Rory's imaginary falcons attacking Kat and her band of Glitter Girl hangers-on. She imagined training the falcons to snatch those hideous spangled engineer's hats off their empty little heads and keep flying until they dropped them all into nearby Mirror Lake. However the fantasy abruptly ended when she thought about the possibility of exposing the innocent marine life in the lake to such toxically high levels of lameness. The environmentalist in her couldn't bear to do it, even in her mind.

In the front passenger seat of the minivan, Jules saw that Ms. Donovan was busy texting someone on her cell phone. She looked a little upset. Ms. Donovan had been a little extra moody as they were getting ready for the Faire, but Jules had just thought that was because her teacher was going to be on the hook if any of the costumes were damaged or lost. Maybe all this texting meant something else. Maybe boy trouble.

The short van ride to the high school was over quickly. Ms. Donovan stuffed her cell phone into her purse and practically barked at the students to get out. As Jules hopped out of the van with Rory, she thought she saw Ms. Donovan wipe a tear out of her eye.

“Is everything okay, Ms. Donovan?” Jules asked.

“Yes, fine,” the teacher answered, wiping away a second tear and taking a deep breath. “‘Let me not think on it,'” she said, quoting from
Hamlet
. “‘Frailty, thy name is woman.' Come on, kids, let's go.”

Ms. Donovan turned on her heel and led the small group of students into the costume shop behind the theater. The theater department at the high school was famous for its lavish productions and had been awarded a big grant from the state a few years ago to improve the arts education in the city. So going into the costume shop was simply amazing. It was like stepping back in time. There were gorgeous turn-of-the-century dresses from last year's production of
Hello,
Doll
y
! And over there, the simple peasant clothes from two seasons ago when they did
Fiddler
on
the
Roof
. But three racks down was the real treasure trove—the Shakespeare stuff. The members of the club were drawn magnetically to the costumes.

“They're just soooo beautiful!” Jules said, holding up a much-too-big taffeta gown that must have been worn by somebody royal in one of the plays. Jules was mesmerized.

“Jules what do you think?” Rory said, wandering around in a donkey's head costume from
A
Midsummer
Night's Dream.

“I think you're wearing the wrong end of the donkey,” Jules said.

“Ha, ha.” Rory laughed and turned and nearly ran over Gwen Roswell, who was trying on some slippers that didn't quite match her gown.

“Were we born in the wrong century or what?” said Jenny Burcher, looking at the rack of clothes in front of her.

“Yeah, except for the pestilence and plague, it was a real charmer,” said Jules, whose romantic streak was about a half inch deep at best.

“But they were
so
well-dressed!” said Jenny. “And the men were all so chivalrous! Putting down their cloaks so that their lady could walk across a mud puddle. Can you imagine?”

“Chivalry is dead, ladies,” came Ms. Donovan's severe voice from two racks away. “Now let's make our selections so we can go.”

Jenny and Jules looked at each other. Awkward!

Jules found a costume that fit her decently—a dark green costume that the character Portia wore in the
Merchant
of
Venice.
Jules really liked that character because she had a lot of spunk and she wasn't going to let people push her around. At one point in the play, she even disguises herself as a man so that she can plead a case in court. Her mom the lawyer would especially like that part. Anyway, the costume fit. Well, it
nearly
fit if she did some strategic stuffing in the chest area. Plus, it wasn't too frilly or girly like some of the others, so she figured it would more than do the trick for Saturday.

After another thirty minutes, everyone had pretty much settled on a costume and was ready to head back to Willkie. The group had turned positively giddy after an hour of trying on Elizabethan costumes. Even Ms. Donovan seemed to have gotten over whatever bee might have been in her bonnet. She had chosen a lovely dress that Ophelia wore in
Hamlet
before she went lovesick crazy and tossed herself in the river. Jules just had to hope her teacher's mental state was a bit better than that. This
was
, after all, the twenty-first century.

On the ride home, all the students started to sing a song they knew from Madrigals, “This Sweet Merry Month of May,” even though it was the middle of October. Jules sang along for a bit and smiled:

This
sweet
and
merry
month
of
May,

While
Nature
wantons
in
her
prime,

And
birds
do
sing, and beasts do play

For
pleasure
of
the
joyful
time

As she listened to the mostly in-tune laughing voices that filled the van, she thought that she really
didn't
need to have Kat at the Faire anyway. These were her
real
friends, weren't they? The ones who didn't let their heads get turned by something as dumb as Glitter Girl. By the end of the ride she had almost convinced herself it was true.

Almost.

Saturday. The Day. The Date. It had been circled on both Kat's and Jules's calendars (although for totally different reasons) for some time.

Kat woke that bright fall morning with a mixture of excitement, queasiness, and anticipation. It was that roller-coaster feeling again. Sort of like she felt when she had gotten the ride home from Kyle, which seemed like a lifetime ago. Kat knew that whatever happened, she would be able to divide the rest of her life into two easily defined sections: “Before Saturday” and “After Saturday.” It wasn't quite Pearl Harbor Day or the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, but it was close enough for a fourteen-year-old girl in the middle of Indiana.

The launch party didn't officially begin until the afternoon, but Chelsea had called the night before and made it clear that she wanted all her Alpha Girls there no later than noon. That would give her the chance to go over what they were supposed to do and where they were supposed to stand during the show. Kat was looking forward to meeting the other girls, after hearing about them for so long. She felt sure they would hit it off right away, since they had so much in common. It would be nice to get a look at what these other Alpha Girls were like. What would an Alpha Girl from Alaska be like? From California? From Idaho? Who knew? That was part of the excitement of them all being together in one place for this big launch party.

Since TeenZone was going to carry the whole show live, there would be no retakes if she happened to win and flub up her speech. She wasn't that worried about that part. She had always done well in speech class, and while she wasn't much for reciting Shakespearean verse like Jules was, she had practiced her speech with Chelsea and her mom enough so that she'd be ready if her name were called.

Kat tossed on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and went downstairs for breakfast. She had slept late, and she wasn't really hungry, so she just grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and left it at that. Her mom had gone to get her hair done on the off chance she'd be on camera during the show, so Kat was on her own again. She flopped on the sofa with her yogurt and watched a little TV while she ate.

Nothing that was on really sparked her interest that morning, and it was weird to think that in a few hours' time,
she
was going to be the one on TV. She had been on TV only once before, a few years ago. It was on a local news show called
Indiana's Best Kids!
when they did a spot on the neighborhood recycling program that she and Jules had started. Well, Jules had started it mostly. But Kat had helped out and they both got to be interviewed by one of the reporters from Channel 5.

It seemed like such a long time ago, but it was only when they were in the fifth grade. Kat had a theory about years when you are a kid. They were like dog years, with one year counting for maybe seven or eight. Then when you get to high school, the years slow waaaaaaay down some more, and it's like a lifetime to get through those four years of school. Kat figured that when people got older, like thirty, things would speed up again. And by the time you get to be a senior citizen like Kat's grandparents, you would just wander around the house and wonder where all the time had gone.

Speaking of the time, Kat checked the clock over the big-screen TV in the living room. It was already 10 a.m. That gave her plenty of time to get to the school, but she knew she had one more errand to run before she went anywhere. She looked to the kitchen table, where the enormous Shakespeare book was sitting. It was wrapped now in some special paper she had sold a few years ago as a fund-raiser when she had been in Girl Scouts. She only broke out that paper on special occasions these days, since there wasn't much of it left and it was really expensive. But there was enough at least to cover the book, and she had made one of her homemade cards to go along with it.

When she bought the book, she had hoped it would help smooth the rough waters caused by the slumber party. Well, those rough waters had turned into an all-out hurricane. She wasn't sure any book, even one with such beautiful binding and illustrations, could ever calm this kind of storm. Whether it would or not wasn't the point. The point was, she wanted to give it to Jules for her birthday.

She had looked on the Internet for a Shakespeare quote that would say just how she felt, but none of them quite seemed to fit the bill. Instead, she simply wrote:

I hope you have a happy birthday. Let's talk soon.

Kat

It wasn't much, but it was the best she could come up with in the situation.

After she finished her yogurt, she tossed the spoon into the empty sink and grabbed the present from the table. She was hoping she could give it to Jules in person before she headed out to the Faire with her Shakespeare friends. In a way, though, she was kind of hoping she could just leave it on the steps and leave the ball in Jules's court. With so much going on, Kat wasn't sure if she was up for any more Jules drama this morning, good or bad.

As she moved toward the door, she could hear the familiar “bounce, bounce, swish” of Kyle out in the driveway working on his game.
Great
, thought Kat,
Kyle. Another big bowl full of Awkward Flakes this early in the morning
. Kat took a deep breath, wiped a few stray hairs out of her face, and then headed out the door and across the cul-de-sac.

Kyle saw her coming but didn't stop shooting the ball. His free throw clanged noisily off the rim.

“Follow-through!” he said to himself angrily.

Kat didn't quite know what to say. “Hey, Kyle,” was as good as anything else she could come up with, so that is just what she said.

“Oh, hey,” said Kyle, pretending to just notice her for the first time. “How's it going?”

“Okay,” said Kat, uncomfortably shifting from one foot to the other. “Is Jules around? I got this birthday present for her.”

“Oh uh, no. She and her friends have already gone over to Ms. Donovan's place to get into costume and practice their song and stuff.”

“What about you? Are you going to the Faire?”

“Oh, we kinda had a family party here last night. Doublets and sonnets aren't really my thing.”

“Yeah, mine either,” Kat said, grateful to have something they could agree on.

She took a deep breath. After all the weirdness at school the last time she saw him, she knew she just had to say something to Kyle.
Something.

“I guess you heard Jules and I had a fight.”

Kyle paused for a moment before he took his next shot. “Yeah, maybe I did.” The ball flew awkwardly out of his hand and missed the basket altogether. Air ball. It bounced down the inclined driveway and stopped right at Kat's feet. She picked up the ball and gave it her best girl throw back to him. It wasn't much of a toss and Kyle had to lunge to his right to catch it. He shot the ball again.

“You know, I saw what you said about Jules on that video. She's right to be mad at you. I'd be mad at you too.”

Kat was embarrassed but tried not to let it show. “I can't believe she showed you that.”

“She didn't have to. In fact, I'm sure she never would. But it's all over the Internet now. It's got like 30,000 hits already.”

Kat couldn't believe it. So 30,000 people, 30,000
strangers
had already watched what she had said on her porch a few nights ago? It was too unreal. Her head was spinning. For a fleeting instant, she wondered if it would hurt her chances to be chosen the next Glitter Girl. But then she thought about Jules and how positively
mortified
she would be if she knew people were watching her and laughing at what Kat had said about her.

“Look,” said Kyle, “I know Jules is different. She's not like your other friends. But she's a good kid. In fact, don't tell her this, but she's probably the best kid I know. And I think you know that too. And she would never give her friendship to someone who doesn't deserve it.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying you need to start deserving it again.”

Kat didn't know what to say. She just stood with her arms folded around the massive book, watching Kyle shoot the ball. She breathed deeply.

“Well, anyway,” she said, “can you give this to Jules for me?”

She held out the book, but Kyle didn't even look at her. “Just put it in the backseat of the Mustang. We're all going out for dinner when they get back. I'll give it to her then.”

“Okay,” she said, not knowing what else to say. She walked to the edge of the driveway, and opened the car door, laying the book on the empty seat. Kyle didn't say anything more after she had done that, so Kat was left with nothing to do but make an awkward retreat back to her house. When she got to the bottom of the driveway, Kyle finally stopped shooting the ball for a moment.

“Hey, Kat,” he said.

Kat turned quickly.

“I hope you win today.”

“What?”

“The Glitter Girl thing. I hope you get it. I know it's important to you.”

“Thanks,” said Kat. But as she turned to walk toward the house, she wondered if she really should have thanked Kyle. Was he really being sincere? Or was he taking a jab at her and her priorities? Suggesting that Glitter Girl was more important to her than her friendship with Jules. She turned back to look at Kyle, hoping something in his expression or the way he was shooting the ball would let her know if he was being sarcastic. But he was gone.

What wasn't gone was the bad feeling that was bubbling up inside Kat. Was it guilt? Insecurity? Shame?
Ooooh. Darn that Kyle.
She wished she'd never gone over to begin with. She stomped up the steps into her house and slammed the door.