The Secret Language of Girls (12 page)

Paisley hadn’t watched TV in five years. She had been too busy backpacking all over the world with her mother, whom Paisley referred to as Phoebe.

“Phoebe really liked Tunisia, but I liked Italy
the best,” Paisley told Kate one afternoon as they sat under the beech tree by the kickball field and braided friendship bracelets for each other. “I know that’s what everyone says and it’s a totally boring choice, but I can’t help it. Italy is where the best food is. Much better than in New Zealand or Pakistan.”

Kate nodded, as though she had some idea of what the food tasted like in New Zealand or Pakistan.

“I liked the bread in Germany, but once I got really sick on a piece of wienerschnitzel I ate in Freiberg,” Paisley continued. “I mean, I threw up all over this lady on the train. So Germany is definitely not on my top-ten-best-food-countries list.”

Paisley, it turned out, had lists for everything. She had a list of all the books she had read, and one of her favorite restaurants, and one of the birds she had spotted while hiking in the Pyrenees. She even had a list of all the
boys she had kissed. So far there was only one name on that list: James. Paisley had met James at a travelers’ hostel in England. All she really remembered about him was that he had been very polite.

“He kissed me and then he shook my hand,” Paisley said as she handed Kate her finished friendship bracelet. “It was a very English thing for him to do.”

Kate examined the bracelet’s blue-and-green weave and then held out her arm so Paisley could tie the bracelet around her wrist. She felt like a princess receiving a present from a good fairy. Kate was beginning to think there was something magic about Paisley. For one thing, the mysterious force seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. In fact, when Paisley was around, the mysterious force seemed to loosen its grip on everyone.

Kate had first noticed this the week before when, in front of everyone, Andrew O’Shea
had walked over to their table right before the end of lunch. Andrew usually sat with Trevor Parlier and Jason Frey. They were the sort of boys who were always dropping their lunch trays by accident and tripping over cracks in the sidewalk. Trevor Parlier had something wrong with his feet and had to wear special shoes, and Jason’s sweaters always smelled kind of funny, like maybe he let his dog sleep on them.

“Hey, Paisley,” Andrew said brightly, adjusting his glasses, “you think you could look over my social studies paper on Greece for me? I figured since you’ve been there and everything, you might be able to tell me if my report is any good or not.”

“Sure,” Paisley answered with a smile. “Bring it on over.”

Kate looked around the table to see if Marcie, Amber, and Timma were making gagging faces or rolling their eyes. But no one
seemed the least bit concerned, even when Trevor and Jason followed Andrew back to their table. They all actually laughed when Trevor said, “I tried reading Andrew’s paper, but it was Greek to me.”

“I read this book last summer about this girl who lived in ancient Greece,” Paisley said as she took Andrew’s paper from him. “It was really cool. See, her parents were slaves. . . .”

Everyone leaned toward Paisley as she told the story. Jason Frey reached over and gently plucked a piece of lettuce off of her collar. Amber smiled at Trevor.

There was no doubt about it. Paisley was magic.

Kate’s parents had unplugged the TV after they caught Tracie watching an R-rated movie on a cable channel. Mr. and Mrs. Faber were against young girls watching R-rated movies.
There will be time enough for that later, they told their daughters. There will be plenty of time when you girls are grown up to fill your brains with junk.

Paisley’s mom had a bumper sticker on her VW bug that read
KILL YOUR TELEVISION
. Kate saw it the day Phoebe came to pick up Paisley after lunch to take her to the orthodontist. Paisley was going to get braces.

“Purple ones,” Paisley had told Kate on the phone the night before. “I’ll be the only kid I know with purple teeth.”

After Kate got off the phone, she picked up her copy of
Bridge to Terabithia
and plopped down on the couch in the living room. The TV stared blankly at her from the corner. That was another thing about TV, Kate thought. It never had any kids on it with purple braces. All the moonbeam-blond sisters had perfect teeth. So did Kate, for that matter, but just then she wished her bicuspids
had been a little bit crooked. Kate would choose blue braces, to go with her eyes.

“Hey, it’s Purple Paisley!”

Robbie Ballard leaned over from his desk at the beginning of social studies and made a face in Paisley’s direction. Robbie Ballard was one of the cute boys who said nice things only to the middle school cheerleaders.

“I know,” Paisley said laughing, her purple braces flashing beneath the classroom’s fluorescent lights. “Phoebe says I look like a petunia.”

“Phoebe? Phoebe?” Robbie Ballard squawked. He poked Wes Porter in the side. “Phoebe says Purple Paisley looks like a petunia!”

“Yuck! Yuck!” Wes Porter croaked back. Behind him, Mazie Calloway and Marylin giggled.

Paisley shrugged, still smiling. “Phoebe likes flowers,” she said. She didn’t sound the least bit offended.

It was Paisley’s turn to give her social studies report to the class. Instead of having her do a regular report on just one country, Mrs. Watson had asked Paisley to discuss all the different places she and Phoebe had traveled. Paisley lugged a large shopping bag to the front of the room. The first thing she pulled out of the bag was a long strand of beads.

“Phoebe and I got these in Kenya, in a place called Samburu,” Paisley began, handing the beads to Matthew Sholls in the first row. “The day we got them, this little brown dog tried to adopt us. See, we were hiking through this village . . .”

Everyone in the class sat mesmerized as Paisley continued to talk and pass around the things she pulled from her shopping bag. Here was a red-and-yellow serape someone had given Phoebe in Ecuador. Next came a turban like the kind bedouin men wore in Egypt.
Everyone laughed and clapped when Matthew Sholls tried on the kilt Paisley had picked up in Yemen; it was called a futa, and men wore them all the time there.

“That was fun,” Paisley told Kate after social studies, when they were sitting at their usual cafeteria table by the “Olympic Dreams of the Sports Superstars” mural. “I’d forgotten I had half that stuff. Phoebe and I were up practically all night digging through storage boxes.”

“I really liked your report,” Andrew O’Shea said, sitting down next to Paisley. “One day I’m going to go to all those places too.”

“Weren’t you afraid of catching some terrible disease?” Marcie wanted to know. Marcie was the sort of person who worried a lot about catching terrible diseases.

“I heard camels are really stubborn,” Jason Frey said, scooting a chair in between Amber and Timma. “Is that true?”

“Did you ever ride in a caravan?” Trevor
Parlier asked as he dropped his lunch bag down next to Kate’s.

“Great braces, Paisley.”

Everyone looked up. Mazie Calloway was standing in the aisle next to Paisley’s chair.

“Why don’t you come over and sit with us?” Mazie asked Paisley, nodding toward the middle school cheerleaders’ table. “Ashley wants to check out your braces. She might get some just like them.”

Paisley smiled her purple smile. “Why don’t you come sit over here?” she asked Mazie. “We can make room for everyone.”

I will remember this day for the rest of my life,
Kate thought as she watched a gaggle of moonbeam-blond middle school cheerleaders with lizard-skinny legs troop with their lunch trays toward Kate’s table.

“There’s room for everyone,” Paisley said as she pulled more chairs to the table. “Plenty of room.”

Later Kate wished Paisley’s social studies report hadn’t been such a big hit. Maybe if Paisley had just handed around postcards from her travels, Mrs. Watson and Ms. Carter-Juarez, the school principal, would not have decided Paisley should be in a magnet school for Accelerated Children.

“Accelerated Children? What does that mean?” Kate asked the night Paisley called to tell her about the new school. “Do you have motors stuck on you to make you go faster?”

“I think it just means they let you work at your own pace,” Paisley explained. “I hope the kids there think purple braces are okay.”

Kate knew that wherever Paisley went, the kids would think her purple braces were okay. Paisley had that effect on people. She made you forget about stupid stuff like cheerleading and who was supposed to sit at what table. Hanging out with Paisley the last few weeks,
Kate had realized how much stuff like cheerleading and talking about kissing boys bored her. It occurred to her that maybe she was the one who was leaving Marylin behind, when she’d always thought before that Marylin was the one who had left. It made her feel a little guilty, to be honest. Poor Marylin, fated to live such an automatically boring life while Kate got to do all kinds of interesting stuff with Paisley.

The next day at lunch the cafeteria felt like Paisley had never been there. The middle school cheerleaders sat at their table in the first row by the emergency exit door and pretended that no one else existed. Kate saw Andrew O’Shea trip over thin air and nearly drop his lunch tray on the way to his old seat by Trevor Parlier and Jason Frey. It seemed that as soon as the mysterious force had found out Paisley was at a different school, it had taken over again.

“I heard that Mazie’s dad owns the Fairview Country Club,” Amber said chewing on a carrot. “He’s not just a member; he owns it.”

“I wonder what her house is like,” Marcie said. “Do you think her mom is nice?”

Kate picked at her turkey sandwich. It looked flat, as though the mysterious force had gotten into her bag and squashed her lunch.

I’ve had just about enough of this,
she thought.

Kate carefully wrapped up her squashed turkey sandwich and put it back in her lunch bag. Then she stood up.

“Where are you going?” Marcie asked. “Are you sick?”

Kate marched resolutely to Andrew O’Shea’s table. “Scoot over,” she told Trevor as she pulled up a chair. “Anyone want to trade for a turkey sandwich?”

Then she turned and looked toward her old table by the “Olympic Dreams of the Sports Superstars” mural. Marcie, Amber, and Timma
were staring at her, their faces full of wonder.

“Well?” Kate called to them, raising her eyebrows as high as they would go. “What are you waiting for?”