Sophie Hartley and the Facts of Life (2 page)

“Mom, you're brainwashing her!” Sophie said.

Maura said only, “Okay!” and dug in with her spoon.

“I hope the cat food killed her taste buds,” said John.

“Yeah, Mom, really,” Thad said. “Forcing that stuff on a defenseless child.”

Sophie reached into the box of cereal she'd grabbed and took a handful. “Sophie, sit at the table, please, and use a bowl. You know better.” Their mother was now cutting up an apple for Maura and didn't turn around. “And Thad . . . get a glass.”

“I'm done.” Thad popped the last piece of bagel into his mouth and brushed the crumbs off his hands over the sink. “No mess, no fuss. You don't even have to clean up after me.”

“How considerate of you,” said Mrs. Hartley.

“I don't know why you're so formal,” Thad said, lifting his letter jacket off the back of a chair. “Everyone I know eats on the bus or when they get to class.”

“I know. And does homework on the bus and puts on makeup,” their mother said. “I guess we're a proper, old-fashioned family. You're lucky I don't make you wear a tie to breakfast.”

Sophie put the cereal box and a bowl on the table and sat down.

“What's with girls and their hair, anyway?” Thad asked.

“‘Girls'?” Nora echoed, coming into the room. She put her stack of books on the counter before she headed for the refrigerator. “
Who
had the fit last week because John used up his foam mousse?”

“Give me a break,” said Thad. “He used it as snow around his Lego fort. Emily paid twelve bucks for that can.”

Emily was Thad's new girlfriend. His “girlfriend of the month,” as Nora called her. Nora said Emily was the kind of girl whose parents bought her a new SUV after she rolled the first one and who got a manicure every two weeks. Since Nora complained about the Hartleys' used car all the time and spent most of her babysitting money on manicures, Sophie would have thought Nora would admire Emily.

All Sophie knew was that since Thad had started going out with Emily, he'd been paying a lot more attention to his clothes and hair. Luckily, he didn't cry about them.

“Emily got cheated,” John said. “It only lasted a few minutes.”

“Nice hair, Nora,” said Thad.

Nora gave her head a self-conscious shake.

“Too bad it's starting to rain.”

Nora checked the window over the sink, shrieked, and ran back upstairs.

“Thad, really!” Mrs. Hartley snapped. “You're sixteen years old! When are you going to be mature enough not to say every single inflammatory thing that comes into your head!”

“What?” Thad protested. “It
is
starting to rain.” A horn honked in the driveway. Thad picked up his gym bag, said, “Emily's here—got to go,” and bolted. The mudroom door slammed behind him.

In the silence that followed, Mrs. Hartley looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Is it asking too much for
one
of my children to exhibit a bit of self- control?” she said. “I don't expect it all the time, but every once in a while?”

Sophie didn't say anything. When she was little, she'd thought her mother was addressing God when she talked to the ceiling. Now she knew Mrs. Hartley was talking to herself. Sophie had learned (the hard way) that the safest policy was to stay quiet and let the moment pass.

Besides, even if she
could
think of a time when she'd exhibited self-control lately and told her mother about it, Nora would probably overhear her and call her “Little Miss Sunshine.” She called Sophie that so often that she'd shortened it to “LMS.”

Sophie had to work hard not to show how annoying it was.

“One time, even?” Mrs. Hartley pleaded.

“Okay!” said Maura.

Mrs. Hartley laughed. “Thank you, Maura. It's nice to know one of my children listens to me. You don't talk back, either.” Mrs. Hartley gave Maura a loud kiss and unsnapped her bib. “Sophie, if you're finished, would you go and see if your father wants anything before I leave?”

Sophie put her bowl into the dishwasher and headed for the stairs.

“And tell him that one tiny broken bone doesn't mean he can't get up and dressed!” her mother called.

Sophie went up the stairs and down the hall to her parents' bedroom.

Mr. Hartley had arrived home unexpectedly three days before. He was supposed to be moving a family to Florida, but one of the men who worked for him had dropped a couch on Mr. Hartley's foot. It had broken a small bone. Now Mr. Hartley had to wear a plastic boot for ten days and couldn't drive or lift heavy things.

At first, everyone in the family had been happy to see him. They weren't used to having him around for ten whole days. Except for a week during the summer and at Christmas, Mr. Hartley spent only two or three days at home between jobs.

It wasn't long, however, before the fact that all he did was lie on the couch in his sweatpants, reading or watching TV and calling for people to bring him things, had gotten on Mrs. Hartley's nerves.

Last night after dinner, when they'd been watching one of their favorite programs in the family room, Mr. Hartley had asked if someone would make him a sandwich. Sophie started to get up, but her mother held out her hand. “Stay,” she ordered. “Your father isn't so wounded that he can't fix his own snack.”

“I don't mind,” Sophie said.

“Sit.”

Sophie sat. “I don't see why you hate the idea of having a dog so much,” she grumbled. “It would be well behaved with
you
around.”

“Thank you, Sophie, but your mother's right,” her dad said. “I can make it myself.”

Nora snorted when Mr. Hartley made a brave show of struggling to his feet and limping into the kitchen.

“Where do you keep your bread?” he called after a few minutes.

“
My
bread?”

Sophie and Nora exchanged glances.

“Why is it
my
bread?” Mrs. Hartley shouted. “Perhaps if you made your own sandwiches more often, you'd know where we keep
the
bread!”

There was silence in the family room except for the sound of the TV until Mr. Hartley reappeared in the doorway. “And where, pray tell,” he asked in

an innocent voice, “do you keep your mayonnaise?”

Sophie saw the mayonnaise jar tucked inside his shirt and had to cover her mouth so she wouldn't laugh. When they were little and lost something like a sock or a shoe or a mitten, their dad would show up with the item hanging from an ear or perched on top of his head and say, “I wonder where it can be.” It always made them laugh.

Last night, Mrs. Hartley hadn't cracked a smile.

“Dad?” Sophie called now as she got near her parents' bedroom door.

“Come in!”

Her father was dressed and sitting on their bed. Sophie sat down beside him.

“Was that Nora I heard running back up to her room?” he asked.

“It's raining,” Sophie said. “She blew dry her hair straight.”

Her dad looked at her.

“Nora hates her curly hair.”

“I'm afraid she got that hair from my mother,” he said.

Mr. Hartley's mother had died before Sophie was born. Her dad kept a wedding picture of his mother and father on his dresser. Sophie and Nora used to prop it up when they played with their dollhouse and pretend their grandparents were the dolls' parents. Nora had named them Mr. and Mrs. Witherspoon because she thought it sounded fancy.

Sophie glanced at the framed photo now. It could have been Nora in the picture.

“Nora likes to blame it on Mom,” Sophie said. “She wants to get her hair straightened, but Mom says it's too expensive.”

“Let me guess,” Mr. Hartley said. “Thad was the one who pointed out it was raining.”

“Right.”

“I'm catching on.”

“You are,” said Sophie. “Nora argues with everyone these days.”

“I'm afraid our Nora's going through a prickly patch,” her dad said. “It's her age.”

“Does everyone fight when they're teenagers?”

“Not necessarily. I didn't. But I only had one brother, your uncle Pete. He was a lot older, so I looked up to him.”

“Like John and Thad.”

“Exactly.” Her dad patted her knee. “Don't worry. I don't think you'll be a fighter, Sophie. You're a glass-half-full kind of person.”

“Don't say that around Nora. It'll make her mad.” Sophie stood up. “Need me to tell you where Mom keeps her coffee?”

Her dad laughed and reached out to tousle her hair, but Sophie ducked. “Don't touch it,” she said. “I want it the way it is.”

“It looks as if you have a family of mice in there.”

“Close.”

“I'm afraid yours is going to curl, too, if it's raining,” her dad said.

“The curlier the better,” Sophie said firmly.

Jenna and Alice were waiting for Sophie in front of the school. The three of them had been walking into the building together since they'd become best friends at the beginning of second grade.

Jenna was holding her iridescent orange yo-yo. It was her newest hobby. She carried it everywhere.

“Watch this,” she said as Sophie came up to them. Jenna jerked her hand back and sent the yo-yo down the string. It hovered above the pavement, spinning, until she jerked her hand again. The yo-yo sped back up the string and settled neatly into her palm.

The girls started into the building.

“Isn't that cool?” Jenna said. “It's called ‘sleeping the yo-yo.'”

“I tried the yo-yo when Thad had one, but I stunk,” said Sophie.

“The trick I'm learning now is even better,” Jenna said. “It's called ‘walk the dog.' Wait till you see it.”

“You've got something in your hair, Sophie,” Alice said, reaching out.

“Don't touch it!” said Sophie. She covered the delicate gray feather she'd found on the sidewalk with her hand. “I want it there. It's supposed to look like a bird's nest.”

“On purpose?” said Alice. “What'd your mom say?”

“My mom's bored with hair,” Sophie said as they went into the school. “Nora cries all the time about hers being curly, and Maura screams whenever Mom tries to comb hers. Mom probably wishes we were all bald.”

“My mom says we're at the age when we need to start thinking about hygiene,” said Alice. “If I wore a feather in my hair, she'd have a fit.”

“What's hygiene?” said Jenna.

“You know, wearing deodorant and things like that,” Alice said. She blushed. “She bought me a deodorant called Summer Breeze. It smells pretty.”

“I wish your mom would talk to some of the boys in our class,” said Jenna. “Especially after recess.”

“You're wearing deodorant?” Sophie said. “Let me smell.” She leaned forward, sniffing Alice like a dog. “Summer Breeze . . . I smell barbecued hot dogs.”

“Sophie! You're embarrassing me,” Alice said, pushing her away.

“You get embarrassed about everything,” said Jenna. She was making the yo-yo travel up and down the string while they walked. “Next Halloween, you could wear brown and go trick-or-treating as a tree, Sophie,” she said. “And if you found a whole bird's egg, you could put that in your nest. Or maybe a hard-boiled egg, so it wouldn't break.”

“Good idea,” said Sophie. “I could wear green gloves for leaves.”

“I might go as an Olympic yo-yo champion,” Jenna said.

“I don't think they have yo-yos in the Olympics.”

“They should,” Jenna said. “They have Ping-Pong.”

“Next year, we get to go to the fifth-grade Halloween dance,” said Alice.

Sophie and Jenna looked at her.

“What? It's supposed to be a lot of fun,” Alice protested.

“More fun than getting free candy?” said Sophie.

“Nothing's more fun than getting free candy,” said Jenna.

Sophie had a flashback to the night the week before when Nora had found out that a girl she knew was having a party and she, Nora, hadn't been invited. “Take it from me. All dances and parties do is make girls cry,” she said. “Boys make them cry, too.”

“Boys don't cry, but girls and parties sure make them act weird,” said Jenna, who had three older brothers.

They turned in to the hallway to Mrs. Stearns's room. A group of girls was clustered outside one of the fifth-grade classrooms. One of them whispered something that made the rest of them shriek. Destiny, another fourth grader, broke away from the group when she spotted Sophie, Jenna, and Alice and hurried toward them.

“Uh-oh, bad news,” Sophie said. “Either that or something mean.”

Last year, the three of them had decided Destiny was a snob. At the beginning of fourth grade, she was nice to Jenna because they were on the same lacrosse team. But when Destiny wanted everyone on the team to wear a ponytail and Jenna refused, Destiny had unfriended her.

The three of them had gone back to thinking she was a snob.

“Darn!” Jenna said now. Her yo-yo dangled lifelessly near the floor. She stopped to wind it back up.

“Guess what?” Destiny said breathlessly, rushing up to Sophie and Alice.

“What?”

Destiny looked around to make sure no one was listening. “The fifth-grade girls are going to see
the movie
next week,” she whispered. She stood back and slapped her hands over her mouth as if to suppress a shriek. Her eyes were huge.

“What movie?” said Sophie.

“You're kidding! You don't know about
the movie?
” Destiny's hands dangled at her sides and her mouth dropped open as if Sophie had just said the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. Sophie was glad she had so much practice in not showing when she was annoyed.

“Sophie . . .” Alice said.