The Secret Cookie Club (7 page)

Grace

“I don't
care
if you think I'll be cold. It's
my
body, and I'm—” The teenage girl who had opened the Rubinsteins' door was talking to someone inside and not looking where she was going until—
bump
—she ran into me and my bicycle on the porch. “Oh—sorry. Who the heck are
you
?”

Without waiting for me to answer, she looked back and called, “Shosh
i-i-i-i
! Some kid's here for you. Hey,
King, get back now, get
down
!” Still barking, the dog lunged toward the door—lunged toward
me
—but he couldn't get around the girl, who I guessed was Shoshi's big sister.

A woman's voice called, “Fine.
Freeze
. See if I care!”

And then the dog squeezed past the girl and jumped up with its paws on my shoulders, knocking me backward. I would have fallen, but the girl grabbed my elbow and kneed the dog out of the way. Before I knew it, the dog was back on all fours, my bike had clattered to the ground, and I had been pulled into the house.

“Shoshi! Get your butt down here!” the girl shouted, then, “Hi, I'm Molly.”

“I'm Grace.”

“Oh,
you're
Grace.” Molly grinned. “I'm leaving. I'll stand your bike up. King won't hurt you. He's just loud. Bye.”

Then she left, and I was alone in the entry hall with an enormous, panting, furry dog that had just tried to knock me down. The only dogs I've ever been around are the cattle dogs at Moonlight Ranch, and they're more
interested in cows than people. Now my heart raced as I stepped away from King . . . with his pink tongue and slobbery teeth. But then he wagged his tail—that's good, right?—and trotted toward me and tried to stick his nose in a very rude place.

“Hey, no!” I pushed him away, and at the same time Shoshi appeared on the stairs.

“Leave her alone!”
she yelled at the dog. Then she told me to come upstairs. On the way, she shouted, “
Mom
! Grace is here!”

So far, my main impression of Shoshi's house was that it was
loud
. Also, to be truthful, it smelled like dog.

In her room, Shoshi gestured for me to sit in her desk chair. Then she kicked a pair of gym shorts out of the way and sat on the rug.

“We'll have to share the laptop,” she said.

I didn't say anything. I was too busy being amazed by Shoshi's bedroom. It was a mess! The bed was a mass of rumpled, mismatched sheets and blankets. The table beside it was piled with silver chocolate Kiss wrappers. The wastebasket overflowed. In the middle of the room
was a card table heaped with crayons, markers, papers, and paint.

I had visited school friends' houses before, and they weren't all as neat as mine, but I had never been in a room like this.

Now Shoshi made her hands into a megaphone and leaned toward me. “
We'll have to share the laptop! Is that okay, Grace
?”

“Oh, uh . . . sure. Sorry. Do you want to see what I've got so far?” I pulled my Walden binder out of my backpack. Shoshi grabbed papers off her desk. Then we traded.

Mrs. Keeran had told me Shoshi was a good student, and now I saw it was true. Her five facts were animals that live around Walden Pond—a fox, a field mouse, a cardinal, a red squirrel, and a black bear. Mine were stories about Henry David Thoreau and four of his friends. I had written more, but if I knew anything about the requirements at Nashoba Elementary School (and I did), hers would be good enough for an A.

I hadn't quite finished reading when Shoshi said, “I drew some pictures, too. Want to see?”

She got to her feet, and we went to look at what was on the table.

“Shoshi,” I said after a minute, “those are amazing!”

“Told you I'm a good artist,” she said.

Instead of regular pictures of animals standing and staring, Shoshi had painted them in action, which made each picture exciting and alive. “I should've let you do all the images,” I said. “You were right.”

Those words popped out because they were true, not because I wanted to say them. I hate being wrong.

Shoshi laughed. “It's okay. You were right too. I was being bossy. It's a problem I have.”

“Did you get in trouble with your parents for the detention?” I asked.

“My parents didn't even say anything,” she said.

“Seriously?”

Shoshi shrugged. “My sister is always in trouble, and my brother plays hockey, which my mom says is practically a full-time job for the parents. Also, they both work. I'm lucky if they remember to go to the grocery store.”

“Seriously?”

Shoshi laughed. “You said that already.”

“I don't have any pets,” I said, “or brothers or sisters either.”

“I love my pets,” Shoshi said, “but you are welcome to my brother and my sister.”

After that, we got back to work. She needed to add more stuff about bears, and I had more to say about Bronson Alcott, an important thinker and the father of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote
Little Women
.

We had been working only a few minutes when I heard footsteps in the hall, and then Shoshi's mom appeared in the doorway. She was tall like Shoshi with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a big gray
UMASS
sweatshirt. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Maybe she had been working in the yard?

“Shosh, I need you to help me corral Blimpy—oh!” She spotted me. “Hello, sweetie. I didn't know we had company.”

Shoshi rolled her eyes. “Mo-o-om! This is Grace? I told you she was coming over? We are doing that Walden thing?”

“Right. Of course. Got it,” said Shoshi's mom. Then she nodded at me. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Grace, and I'm sorry to cut this short, but we were due at the vet five minutes ago.”

Grace

Blimpy turned out to be the Rubinsteins' cat. To avoid being put in his carrier, he had scooted behind the clothes dryer and gotten stuck. Shoshi, being smaller than her mom, was supposed to squeeze back there and pull him out.

Shoshi argued that she and I had work to do, and besides, Blimpy was Molly's cat.

There was more yelling. I realized no one was actually angry.
This was just the way the family communicated. Finally, Shoshi said, “Oh, all right, but don't blame me if I flunk sixth grade.”

Mrs. Rubinstein's reply was to hand her daughter gardening gloves in case Blimpy tried to fight back.

“We can meet Monday after school,” Shoshi told me as she tugged on the gloves and I zipped my backpack.

“At my house,” I said.

“
Now
who's bossy?” Shoshi put her hands on her hips, but she was smiling.

I rode my bike home in a very good mood. In the family room, my mother hugged me as if I had returned from jungle exploration. Then she asked me to tell her all about Shoshi's house.

I shrugged. “We did homework. Now she has to help her mom take the cat to the vet.”

“Ah,” said my mom, “so they have a cat as well as that big dog.”

“Lots of people have pets, Mom. I would like to have a cat.”

My mother shook her head. “Cats are just a lot of fur
and trouble for nothing. If you need something to cuddle, you have your stuffed animals. If you need something to talk to, you have your father and me.”

I laughed. Truthfully, I was glad I was not at this moment wrestling a cat. “Hey, Mom—when you drove by before, were you checking up on me?”

“Checking up on you? Of course not. I had to go to . . . uh, the store. We were out of something.”

“Out of what?”

“Milk,” my mom said. “Dish soap. Oh—I almost forgot. Something came for you in the mail.”

The something was a shallow box like a gift box from a fancy store, most of it plastered in silver tape. In two small squares of untaped surface area were written my address and the return address, Lucy Ambrose, Los Angeles, California, 90035.

My cookies!

I used the bread knife to cut the tape. As she watched me work, my mother cringed. “Be careful!
Please
be careful!”

Finally, I succeeded in making three long slits so I could unfold the top. “Ready?” I asked.

My mom nodded, and I lifted the flap to reveal what looked like a box full of popcorn with several sheets of paper on top. The top paper read
Please compost the popcorn
in grown-up handwriting, probably Lucy's mother's. One of the other papers looked like the cookie recipe, and there were some crayon drawings. I moved them aside and dug down to see the cookies—so many cookies!—each one wrapped in waxed paper.

“What kind are they?” my mother asked.

I pulled one out, unwrapped it, and breathed the delicious smell of chocolate chips, brown sugar, and vanilla.

“My favorite!” My mother smiled.

“Hey!” I said. “The box was addressed to
me
.”

“I brought you up to be generous,” said my mother.

“We'll spoil our dinner,” I said.

“Not with one cookie,” said my mother, “or possibly two. See? It's a good thing I went out for milk.”

*  *  *

The cookies were delicious—just the right amount crisp and chewy. Using maximum willpower, my mother and I each ate only one before dinner and two after. My dad doesn't
like nuts, poor guy. He didn't get any.

It wasn't till later in my room that I looked at the drawings Lucy had enclosed. The first one wasn't really a drawing but more of a sign written in marker. It read:
These Cookies Are for Vanquishing the Enemy!

The other three were crayon drawings by the three kids Lucy babysits. One, titled “Shoshi,” was a black scribbled blob with red eyes and pointy claws. Arlo had signed his name to it in careful block letters.

The second, also labeled “Shoshi,” showed a stick figure with pink lips and orange flames shooting out of its head. It was signed “Mia.”

The third, signed “Levi,” showed a tiny, many-legged bug that was about to be squashed by a pink shoe. There was an arrow to the bug labeled “Shoshi,” and an arrow to the shoe labeled “Grace.”

Looking at the two Shoshi monsters and the Shoshi bug gave me a funny feeling. Things had changed since I wrote to Lucy. Shoshi wasn't my friend exactly, but she didn't seem so scary anymore either.

Still, the drawings were funny, and they reminded me of Lucy. There was extra space on my bulletin board now, so I got thumbtacks out of my desk and put the three of them on display.

Grace

In a thousand years, I never would have predicted what happened on Monday at lunchtime: Shoshi and her minions asked me to eat with them!

Before I answered, I did some quick thinking. At Nashoba Elementary, only losers buy lunch in the cafeteria, but sometimes my parents run out of time in the morning and the losers include me. Today I had a lunch from home, so that was okay, but it brought up
the second question. What kind of sandwich was in it? I like tuna, but it's stinky. You couldn't eat it sitting with people you didn't know that well. Then I remembered: Today's sandwich was turkey.

“Okay,” I told Nell. It was a warm day for October, so we went to eat outside at the picnic tables under the shelter. I felt funny sitting down with them. I was pretty sure other kids were looking over and whispering.
What is that runt Grace Xi doing with those other girls? She is not supposed to have any friends.

But maybe I was imagining that. Maybe all along when I had thought people were talking behind my back, I was imagining it.

We unpacked our lunches, and the first thing I noticed was no cookies in mine. Mom must have forgotten about them. The next thing I noticed was that Shoshi had a tuna sandwich! With pickles! And nobody even pinched her nostrils to make fun of her, either.