The Secret Cookie Club (4 page)

My nana is my grandmother. Maybe I never told you that before. My mom and I live with her in her house.

Change of topic. (“Change of topic” is something my mom says, usually when things get hairy and she's afraid Nana might leave the room or yell.) Does
Moonlight Ranch seem like it was a long time ago to you? Do you think about it and me and Olivia and Emma?

Now you have to write back. Maybe you noticed at camp that I am the only kid in the universe who doesn't have her own phone. Also I am the only kid who doesn't have a laptop or a tablet or even a computer at her house. My nana says electronics are sapping our brainpower and turning us into a nation of empty-headed twits. I am not telling you this to be pathetic (honest!!!) but to explain that you can't text me or message me or e-mail me like you would a normal person.

You will have to write me a letter. But then it will all be worthwhile because after I get it YOU WILL GET COOKIES!!!

Love ya always,

Lucy

P.S. I saw you and Vivek saying good-bye on the last day of camp. Did he give you a present? You can tell me. I would never blab!

Grace

As I read, I answered Lucy's questions in my head:

Yes, Moonlight Ranch seemed like a long time ago.

Yes, I was busy.

No, I didn't think about Lucy, Emma, and Olivia very much.

(And if sometimes I thought about Vivek, I would never tell.)

Most of all, Lucy's letter reminded me that I did have friends.
This made me feel so much better after my disaster day that I decided to read it again. My stomach wasn't in a knot anymore, so I went to the cupboard, got out three Oreos, and ate them. Then I sat down in the plaid recliner in the family room, and put the letter in my lap. I was just going to close my eyes for a second before I re-read it, but the next thing I knew, my father's hand was shaking my shoulder.

“Gracie? Are you sick? What's wrong?”

“I got this letter.” I held it up as if it explained everything. “It's from Lucy.”

“You should go to bed early tonight,” my father said.

I shook my head and yawned. “I have to get ready for Mr. Sterling tomorrow”—Mr. Sterling is my math tutor—“and I have to practice piano and do vocabulary building.”

“Have you eaten?” Dad asked.

“Uh . . . some carrots? After school.” It's true that the carrots were really Oreos, but my father didn't need to know that.

“You will never get big on carrots,” Dad said. “Let me
microwave something, and we'll eat together. I think, for once, it would not kill you to skip a day of piano practice.”

I took my backpack up to my room, then went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. When I came back downstairs, I could smell tomato sauce, and my dad was serving squares of something with bubbling cheese on top.

“Eggplant parmesan.” My father shrugged. “Its label reported the highest calorie count of any of the boxes in the freezer.”

We sat at the island and ate together. The food was salty and a little slimy, but I was hungry and my stomach remained calm. While we were eating, Mom came home. Usually, I am practicing piano when she comes in, and Dad spoke before she had a chance to.

“Grace is taking a break from piano for today,” he said. “We are not going to discuss it. And she has had a lovely letter from Lucy at camp. You remember Lucy?”

My mother would never contradict my father in front
of me, so she only raised her eyebrows about piano. Then she said, “Lucy's mother was the one wearing shorts and boots?”

“That's the one.” My father nodded.

If both my parents remembered Lucy's mom's clothes, did everyone else remember how my parents had matched?

Loyally, I said, “Lucy's mother is pretty.”

My mother's response was to ask how Lucy was doing in school, and I told her Lucy was babysitting.

By this time my mother had made herself a cup of tea and sat down with my dad and me. “It's too bad Lucy has to work when she could be taking music lessons or something,” she said.

Once when I was little I saw a show on Disney where a grandmother character called her granddaughter a “snot-nosed brat.” I was shocked! My family would never use words like that. But at the same time, it gave a name to the part of me that sometimes wants to be bad: Snot-Nosed Grace.

Now Snot-Nosed Grace spoke up: “I think I would
like to work. I would like to have money of my own.”

As expected, my parents' response was immediate. “Don't we give you anything you want?” my dad asked.

“You don't need money,” my mother said.

“But,” my father added, “we must not judge the ideas of other families. We don't know everything.”

“Don't we?” my mom asked, and I thought maybe she was serious, but then she winked at my dad, and they laughed . . . and so did I.

Grace

Friday counted as an okay day at school. We were supposed to meet for the first time in our Walden pairs, but—luckily—art cleanup went too long and then the school day was over. I had time before chess club and could have asked Mrs. Keeran to change out Shoshi for Kelly then, but I lost my nerve. I promised myself I would do it on Monday.

It was the next morning, Saturday, that I sat down
at my desk to write to Lucy and felt bad that I didn't have fragrant purple stationery or stickers or a pink pen or anything fun the way she did. All I had was regular lined notebook paper and a blue Bic pen. I hoped Lucy wouldn't mind.

Saturday, October 17

Dear Lucy,

Thank you very much for your nice letter. Please forgive me for not replying sooner. You are right that I am busy. But what I am busy with is more boring than babysitting for Arlo, Mia, and Levi. (Please give them my regards.)

You said you think I must have lots of friends here, but I do not. What I do have is one enemy. Her name is Shoshi Rubinstein, and she is in my class at school, and she hates me. I did not do anything to make her hate me, except she also takes ballet with me,
and Mademoiselle G, our teacher, told me I have nice posture on the same day she told Shoshi to stop slouching.

Shoshi is unusually tall. I cannot help that. Can I?

So now Shoshi and her tall, slouchy friends giggle and whisper when I walk by, and I think they have a bad nickname for me, too, but I don't know what it is. I think Shoshi is a mean girl (we learned about them in our anti-bullying unit), and I have noticed that mean girls always have lots of friends. Have you noticed this too? They clump together like lint.

Change of topic. :^)

I think I would like to have a job and to be in charge of something like you are in charge of Arlo, Mia, and Levi. Do you supervise their games? Do you speak to them in a foreign language, and if so, which one? Do you encourage them to exercise so they
will have strong muscles and healthy hearts?

Here are the answers to your questions.

Yes, we are still friends. In fact, you are one of my only friends and you are 2,983 miles away. (I looked it up.)

Now that you have reminded me, I miss my bunkmates at camp and Hannah, too.

Thank you for remembering the Secret Cookie Club. But if you are too busy, you do not have to make me any cookies. I do not want to put you to any trouble. It is enough that you thought of me and wrote a nice letter.

Sincerely, Your Friend Grace Xi

P.S. If you are making Hannah's grandpa's chocolate chip cookies, I would like pecans in them.

P.P.S. What Vivek gave me was not serious.

When I read my letter over, I thought of crossing out the part about lint because it was definitely Snot-Nosed Grace talking, and would Lucy realize when she read it that I am not really the nice person she thinks I am? It was too bad we couldn't talk the way we used to after lights-out, but Lucy hadn't even given me a phone number, and when I checked the camp directory that Moonlight Ranch gave to our family at the end of the summer, there wasn't a phone number there either—only an address. How strange.

In fact, Lucy seemed so far away (well, she was) and her life so different from mine that I couldn't imagine it. She might as well live in a grass shack on a street made of sand in a village surrounded by palm trees.

Grace

After the flag salute Monday morning, Mrs. Keeran announced we would absolutely be meeting in our Walden pairs that afternoon. So, when the bell rang for lunch, I went up to her desk.

“Yes, Grace? What can I do for you?” Mrs. Keeran is the only African-American teacher at my school. She almost always wears her long hair pulled back and a pair of beaded clip-on earrings that match her outfit.
Today they were magenta to match the roses on her cardigan.

I had practiced what I was going to say in bed the night before. “Hi, Mrs. Keeran. Would it be okay if you changed it so I am Kelly's partner for the Walden project instead of Shoshanna's? I am sure Shoshanna wouldn't mind.”

Shoshanna is Shoshi's real name. No one calls her that, but I did because I was making a formal request.

“Ri-i-i-ight,” Mrs. Keeran said. “And why is it you'd like me to do that?”

I wasn't prepared for that question. For a moment, I stared at a Massachusetts wildlife photograph on the bulletin board behind Mrs. Keeran's desk. It showed a black bear about to tackle a beehive. I had seen the picture every day since school started but never thought about it till now. Would the honey be worth all those stings?

“Grace?” Mrs. Keeran said.

“Because I hate Shoshi,” I answered, and then I felt
my face flush. Why had I said that? It was the fault of the picture—it distracted me!

“Hate is a strong word,” said Mrs. Keeran.

“Not hate,” I said quickly. “I mean, Shoshi and I . . . we are not compatible.”

Mrs. Keeran nodded. “I've noticed some tension between the two of you. But may I tell you something in confidence? Before you skipped a grade, Shoshanna was usually the best student in the class. I think it's been hard on her having you here.”

I looked at my toes. Hard on Shoshi? What about hard on me when she whispers behind my back?

“So I thought perhaps,” Mrs. Keeran went on, “if you worked together and got to know each other, you'd learn to like each other. You're both hardworking and serious about your studies. You both take ballet. And if you can't learn to
like
each other”—Mrs. Keeran must've noticed me frowning—“at least you could learn to practice tolerance.”

“
Please
can you switch us, Mrs. Keeran?” I knew I sounded babyish, but I was desperate.

Mrs. Keeran set her jaw. “Let's give my way a try, shall we?” she said. “If you and Shoshi really can't get along at all during the planning, we'll see what we can do about changing partners before the field trip.”