Sophie Hartley and the Facts of Life (3 page)

“I know about a lot of movies,” Sophie told Destiny. “Which one are they seeing?”

“Sophie . . .” Alice tugged at Sophie's sleeve.

“What?!”

Alice looked as if she were ready to die of embarrassment. Her face and neck were bright red. “It's not that kind,” she whispered.

“See?” Destiny said with a flick of her hair. “Even
Alice
knows.”

It took all of Sophie's self-control to pretend she hadn't noticed that Destiny was insulting both her and Alice and to say calmly, “So, what kind is it?”

“It's about . . . you know . . .” Alice fluttered her hands nervously up and down in front of her chest and stomach. “Your
body.
”

“What about it?”

“You know . . . how it changes and everything.”

“Oh.” Sophie suddenly thought about the book Mrs. Hartley had bought for Nora a few years ago. As soon as she'd gotten it, Nora had started acting secretive and private, even undressing in the bathroom when she'd always changed in front of Sophie before. Nora had told Sophie the book was about “your
body,
” in the same kind of voice Alice had just used, and said that Sophie was too young to look at it. Whenever her friends came for a sleepover, Nora said they had “girl business” to discuss and locked Sophie out of their room. Sophie had pressed her ear to the keyhole many times, but all she'd ever heard was whispering and giggling.

The way Alice was blushing and squirming now, giggling wasn't far behind.

“We don't care about that stuff,” Sophie told Destiny.

“Alice does.” Destiny looked pointedly at Alice and said, “Hailey's older sister saw the movie last year and said it was
disgusting.
”

“If it's a disgusting movie, my brothers have probably seen it.” Jenna slipped the yo-yo into her pocket as she joined them. “That's the only kind of movie they like to watch.”

“Your
brothers
saw the movie?” Destiny clapped her hands over her mouth again and then shrieked, “That is
so
embarrassing! Wait till I tell Hailey!”

She rushed over to a dark-haired girl who was wearing the same exact headband Destiny wore and grabbed her hands.

“Why is that so embarrassing?” Jenna said as they continued down the hall.

“Destiny was talking about the movie the fifth-grade girls are watching next week,” Sophie said. “Boys don't watch it.”

“It's about
poo-berty,
” Alice whispered excitedly.

“My brothers joke about that all the time, except they say
pew-berty,
” said Jenna.

“I hate that word,” said Sophie.

“It's too embarrassing to say out loud,” said Alice.

“If you ask me, it should be
P-U-berty
.” Sophie pinched her nose shut. “I'm sick of the whole thing.”

“You sound so funny.” Alice giggled. She pinched her nose, too, and said, “P-U-berty.”

“You can say that again,” Jenna said. “P-
U
- berty.”

They burst out laughing. It was a relief, saying it that way. It made the idea feel funny instead of embarrassing.

“I have an idea.” Sophie halted when they got near their classroom. “Only the three of us will say it like that. Every time anyone else says it the other way, or even talks about it, we'll look at one another and remember it.”

“Right. And raise our eyebrows the way Mrs. Stearns does, but we won't say a word,” Jenna added. “It'll be our secret signal.”

She raised her eyebrows until they almost disappeared under her bangs. Sophie raised hers, too. Alice tried, but all that happened was that her eyes opened wide while her eyebrows moved so close together, they were almost touching. Sophie and Jenna laughed harder.

“Sounds like an interesting conversation,” Mrs. Stearns said as she swept past them on her way into their classroom. “Time to come in, ladies.”

The girls trooped in, giggling, behind their teacher. Sophie covered her mouth with her hands and wiggled excitedly. “‘Your brothers saw the
mooooo-vie?
'” she mimicked. “Destiny's so ridiculous. She acts like she's so much older than us.”

“She
is
older than us,” Jenna said. “When we played lacrosse, Destiny thought she should be the captain because she's supposed to be in the fifth grade. She said it wasn't fair her parents kept her back in kindergarten.”

“Not fair to us, you mean,” said Sophie.

 

“Boys and girls,” called Mrs. Stearns. “Before we go to lunch, I have an announcement.”

Several of the boys slammed their books shut and stood up, ready to bolt at the sound of their teacher's voice. Mrs. Stearns shook her head at them and said, “Stay seated for a minute, please.”

There was a lot of grumbling as they settled back down.

“Starting next week,” Mrs. Stearns said when the room was quiet, “the fourth grade is going to be given an alternative to your usual gym class.”

“Video games?” Matt Majercik said hopefully.

“Nice try, Matt.” Mrs. Stearns looked around the room. “As part of a special program, Ms. Bell, the guidance counselor, is going to teach you yoga twice a week for a month. She teaches a children's course on the weekends.”

“Yoga's for girls,” David O'Neill said disgustedly.

“No, yoga is for everyone,” said Mrs. Stearns. “Football players do yoga. It can greatly improve your balance, your coordination, and your flexibility.”

“What's that?” the girl behind Sophie asked.

“Touching your toes,” said Sophie.

“I can touch my toes—easy.” Across the aisle, Caleb lifted up his foot and touched the end of his sneaker. “See?”

“Sophie and Caleb.” Mrs. Stearns waited for a moment before she went on. “People, it's important to keep an open mind about this. According to Mr. Duncan, yoga is a lot of fun and not hard to do.”

Another class groan.

Mr. Duncan was the gym teacher. Every year at the beginning of the national physical fitness month, he told them that climbing to the ceiling while holding on to a rope in each hand was fun too.

“Yoga helps create a feeling of inner peace and harmony,” Mrs. Stearns went on, “and can help people develop
self-control.
”

Sophie could have sworn Mrs. Stearns fixed her with a beady eye when she said that part, but maybe not. Sophie knew she wasn't the only one in her class who had a problem with self-control. Almost everyone in the fourth grade could have done with a lesson.

“I'm going to leave this sign-up sheet on the corner of my desk,” Mrs. Stearns said, waving a piece of paper in the air. “If you want to try yoga, sign it. If you don't, you'll play volleyball for the next four weeks.”

“I'm doing volleyball,” Jenna said when everyone stood up to get in line. “My brothers are the ones who should take yoga if it's good for self-control.”

“I don't like all the jumping up and down you have to do in volleyball,” said Alice. “It feels like my brain's rattling around inside my head.”

Sophie didn't like volleyball, either. Ever since the time she'd gotten bonked on the head in third grade, she couldn't help but duck when the ball came anywhere near her. It made the kids on her team mad. And since her mother had wished for one of her children to show self-control only this morning, yoga couldn't start a minute too soon.

Sophie was the first one to sign up.

Sophie offered to read to Maura before dinner that night. She liked reading to Maura. She got to revisit picture books she'd loved when she was little without Nora saying, “Aren't you a little old for that?”

Sophie was convinced she could teach Maura to talk in full sentences if she read to her enough, too. Her mother didn't seem at all worried that Maura barely talked. She said Maura would do it in her own time. But Alyssa, a girl in Sophie's class, had a two-year-old sister, and Alyssa said she talked nonstop.

Right now, Sophie was reading Maura her favorite book for the third time. It was about a mouse that was afraid of the wind during a storm because it thought the wind was the voice of an invisible monster.

When Sophie got to the end, Maura took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say, “Again.”

Sophie started again. She nearly had the words memorized. “‘“Please be quiet,” the tiny mouse squeaked,'” she read in a high-pitched mouse voice. Then, in a deep voice, “‘But the wind wouldn't be quiet. It moaned and groaned. It rattled and roared.'

“‘“YOU GREAT BIG BULLY!” the tiny mouse squeaked,'” Sophie read. “‘“WHY DON'T YOU PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE!”'”

Sophie always shouted this line. Maura got excited every time. She bounced up and down now in Sophie's lap and clapped her hands.

“Come on, Maura,” Sophie said encouragingly. “You say it with me this time. ‘“You great big bully!”'”

Maura only laughed.

Before Sophie had to read the book all the way through for the fourth time, Mrs. Hartley called them to dinner. Sophie and Maura arrived in the kitchen with Thad and John hard on their heels. Mr. Hartley was standing at the counter, opening the lids of two boxes containing large pizzas.

“I'd hardly call that ‘preparing dinner,'” Mrs. Hartley was saying as she took plates out of the cabinet and put them on the counter.

“He had it delivered, too,” Nora said.

“Whose side are you on?” said Mr. Hartley.

“Don't knock it, Nora.” Thad helped himself to two slices. “It beats his world-famous chicken chow mein.”

In the past, whenever Mrs. Hartley had gone away for a night and left their father in charge, Mr. Hartley had immediately bought the largest can of chicken chow mein he could find, heated it up, and poured it over dry Chinese noodles.

Luckily, she left them for only one night at a time.

“That stuff looks like spiders in slime,” said John.

Sophie thought that was a perfect description, but she felt sorry for her dad. She thought it was nice that he'd offered to fix dinner. Nothing he did these days seemed to make their mother happy.

“Chow mein's not so bad,” she said loyally.

“‘Chow mein's not so bad,'” Nora mimicked. Then, under her breath, “LMS.”

“What's ‘LMS'?” said John.

“Nora's swearing at me,” Sophie told him.

“Nora said a swear, Nora said a swear,” John sang.

“Nora,” Mrs. Hartley said tiredly.

Nora rolled her eyes and carried her plate to the table.

“‘That stuff' is bean sprouts, John, and they're good for you.” Mr. Hartley sat down at one end of the table. “You children are getting to be an ungrateful bunch.”

“What have I been trying to tell you?” said Mrs. Hartley. She put a bowl of salad on the table and sat down at the other end.

Sophie looked from her mother to her father. They sounded as if they were agreeing and arguing at the same time.

“Guess what I signed up for today in school?” Sophie said. “Yoga. It's supposed to be good for self-control.” She looked hopefully at her mother, but Mrs. Hartley was busy putting salad onto John's plate.

“You, taking yoga? That's a joke,” Nora said. “It involves exercise. You realize that?”

“I know it does,” Sophie said.

“You stink at exercise,” Nora said.

“Yoga's different.”

“Tae kwon do's better,” said John.

John had started taking lessons at the White Tiger Tae Kwon Do Center near his school. He practically lived in his white uniform. The top had a drawing of a snarling tiger on the back.

John was up to his yellow belt and proud of it. He'd even started referring to himself as “White Tiger.” Whenever anyone in the family got mad, John would place the palms of his hands together, bow slightly, and say, “White Tiger says, ‘Do not use angry words.' White Tiger says, ‘Use hands and feet.'”

They'd all quickly learned that even though he was skinny, John's bony feet could hurt when strategically directed at their shinbones.

“I'm learning how to break a board in half,” John announced.

“Why would anyone want to break a board?” said Nora. She was methodically cutting her pizza into neat squares. “You're a nut basket, John.”

“Yeah, and like he's the only one in the family,” said Thad.

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Thad,” Nora said.

“Please.” Mr. Hartley held up his hand. “Could we get through one dinner without any bickering? I've had four nights of it in a row. I find I have a low tolerance for it.”

“And I don't?” The arctic winds in their mother's voice wafted over the table. Judging from the look on her face, that wasn't a good thing for Mr. Hartley to have said. “Do you think I like it, having to listen to this all the time,” Mrs. Hartley said to him, “while you're blissfully alone on the road somewhere?”

“Blissfully alone”? Wasn't that insulting to the children?

“Alone in the cab of my truck or in a motel with paper-thin walls, you mean?” said Mr. Hartley. “I'd hardly call that ‘blissful.'”

“At least you're alone.”

That was
definitely
insulting to the children. Sophie looked at Nora and Thad for confirmation, but they kept their heads down.

“It wasn't so bad when they were younger,” Mrs. Hartley went on, as if “they” weren't sitting there listening. “I could send them up to their rooms. Now look at them.”

Her parents actually turned and looked at them. Sophie was shocked. They didn't look at John and Maura, only at Sophie and Nora and Thad. One at a time, too. Long, pointed looks that were decidedly unfriendly.

It was Mr. Hartley who finally broke the silence. “I guess we have to keep them,” he said.