I was glad my regular school day was over, it felt like it had gone on for forever. I felt kind of tired all day because I hadn’t slept very good last night. Yesterday in Band, the teacher, Mr Balfort, got mad at me because I kept messing up my part in the “Liberty Bell March” we were learning, and then he said that this kind of thing happens if you don’t practice enough. I mean he was kind of right that I didn’t practice enough, but it was so embarrassing when he said that with all the other kids there listening and looking at me. Last night I practiced my part for a half hour, but I was still having trouble with it, so it was really frustrating. When I got into bed I kept thinking about that and worrying that if I kept messing it up he would get even angrier, because he did get angry at us a lot. I also worried about the Math test today, because I always wanted to do good on tests to impress my teachers, because tests always seemed to be really important to them, and I could see their eyes twinkle a little when they handed a test back to you where you got a really good score.

So this morning in Unified Studies, the teacher, Mrs Woods, just talked about the Revolutionary War, all stuff I already knew about the “turning points” – crossing the Delaware, the Battle of Saratoga, Valley Forge, and the Battle of Yorktown. I mean I could have told everybody else in class about those things. So I just stared out the windows bored. And then she talked about the “themes” in the “Johnny Tremain” book we had read, becoming a grownup, pride versus being humble, and patriotism during the Revolutionary War. Cal, Craig and I had already talked about that book a bunch walking home together so I just didn’t want to hear it all again.

I took the test in Math, which was okay, but was harder because I was tired. There was one problem, that when I talked to Duncan, Beth and Abby after, I realized I had messed up. I was mad because I wanted to get everything right.

Then in Homeroom, Ben said he saw me talking to Abby by our lockers in the hall, and then he, Danny and Lance started teasing me about that. I said she WASN’T my girlfriend and that I didn’t even really like her, which wasn’t true, but it seemed the only way to try to convince the three of them to stop it. I was afraid that Lance would say something about it to Myrna, and since she knew Abby, she would tell Abby and then Abby would get all worried about it, get mad at ME, and not talk to me anymore.

French was boring, but at least it wasn’t Band today because it was an “M” day.

And then in Phys Ed we were inside in the gym, and we had to do that rope climb so the teacher could write down our scores for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. I HATED that, because the rope went up twenty five feet to the ceiling of the gym, and whenever I tried it and got about halfway up I’d look down and get scared and the teacher would say “don’t look down” which made me feel worse like I was a wussy. And then I felt EVEN WORSE when Martin, who was pretty fat, had to try to climb it which he couldn’t do at all. I felt embarrassed for him, which was strange because back in elementary school my friends would say bad things about Martin and I would too sometimes. But now, somehow, I just felt bad for him.

In science the teacher talked about cell division, which I had already figured out and in Art I messed up my water color painting that we had to turn in at the end of class. So I was SO glad when that last bell FINALLY rang.

It was Tuesday again, so instead of walking home from school with Teddy and Craig, I stayed for Math Club which met in the Cafeteria. Even though I was tired, I was happy to do it, because it was a lot more fun than school, even Math class.

It was strange meeting in the cafeteria, because we were kind of a small group, just 16 of us kids today with the two teachers, our Math teacher Mr Kubiak and another teacher Mr Petrov, sitting around five tables in the big cafeteria room that had maybe thirty tables. Abby and Ducan were in the club too, and Beth had been the last two times but wasn’t there today.

There were a couple other seventh grade kids that I didn’t know from other schools, plus a bunch of eighth and ninth graders who looked way older than us seventh graders and especially me, because I was a year younger than the other kids in my class. I knew what grade they were all in because Mr Kubiak went around at the beginning of each meeting and had us all say our names and what grade we were in. I was happy there weren’t any cool kids there, though I figured there wouldn’t be, since cool kids, especially cool boys, didn’t like being good at school stuff. That was a big reason I kept going to the club after that first time three weeks ago, no cool kids.

I also liked talking to Beth and Abby, because all three of us liked talking about math stuff. And Abby especially, because we’d lived across the street from each other for the past two years so we were kind of becoming friends, though we would never really talk to each other when other kids were around. But if I was out playing in my front yard, and Abby came out of her house or was walking home from somewhere and saw me, and there were no other kids around, except maybe David, she’d wave and I’d wave back. She might even stop and walk over to where I was and maybe ask me a question about math stuff like whether I’d finished my homework or how I did on the quiz or the test. Then after I told her we’d maybe even talk about stuff that WASN’T about math. I mean I didn’t have a CRUSH on her, like I sort of did for that girl Rose in my Homeroom, who I didn’t even dare talk to.

During school, even though there were only ten lockers between hers and mine so we saw each other there a lot, it was hard to talk to each other, because there were always so many other kids around. The only classes we had together were Math and Band. In Math, Beth was in the class too, and the two of them were like best friends, so in the few minutes before or after class when kids could talk to each other, they mostly talked to each other, unless I asked one of them a question. And in Band, you could only really talk to the kids you sat next to, and both of them sat on the other side of the room.

But here in Math Club it was so much better, because most of us seventh graders, including Abby and Beth, sat at the same table, and because it wasn’t regular school, we could all talk to each other as much as we wanted to. I mean, we mostly talked about math, and the game, because that’s why we were there, but that was okay, at least we could talk.

When Beth was at Math Club, Abby always sat next to her and they’d talk to each other a lot, but just a little bit to all the rest of us boys at our seventh-grade table. It was like when boys and girls made their OWN choices about who to hang out with and do stuff with, boys pretty much did stuff with other boys and girls with other girls, like they were two different teams. When I went to the park I always played with other boys – baseball, football, basketball, tennis, or just hanging out and talking. And when I got together with other kids my age at someone’s house, that was usually all boys too, unless my friend who lived there had an older sister that decided to talk to us. And it seemed like girls were the same way. They would hang out in the park together talking around the play equipment or at the top of the big hill or riding their bikes together. When Abby had friends come over to her house, like Beth and Myrna, they were always all girls. And Molly had even had her birthday parties the last two years only inviting other girls.

It was interesting what Abby did at today’s club meeting, since Beth wasn’t there with her. Abby was shy like me, and at the club meetings when Beth was there too, they pretty much sat together all the time. At the meeting today she sat next to ME all the time, like I was her substitute friend for Beth. Since Beth wasn’t there, Abby and Matilda were the only girls at the club, and I knew that girls were sometimes uncomfortable when there were only or mostly just boys around.

I guess she could have decided to sit with Matilda, because she was the other girl, but Matilda was a ninth grader and kind of strange. She was really smart, but she wasn’t very nice and thought she was the smartest person in the world and everyone else was pretty stupid. And ninth graders, like Matilda, seemed way older than us.

The main thing we all did at Math Club was play math board games. There were two games that Mr Petrov said had recently been made by this UofM professor guy named Layman Allen. One was called “Equations” and the other “On-Sets”. In the first club meeting three weeks ago, Mr Petrov had explained to us how to play the Equations game, then OUR Math teacher, Mr Kubiak, had explained the other one, On-Sets. Of course, each game had a rulebook, like my Avalon Hill board games, so you could use that to learn the rules too, or look up any rules you weren’t sure about.

I wouldn’t say these math games were as fun as my Avalon Hill games, at least for me, because they weren’t about something that happened in the history of the real world that you could pretend was happening again, and maybe CHANGE that history. And you didn’t get to move things around on a map of part of the real world. But I really liked math, and these games were A LOT more interesting than just doing a bunch of math problems.

Some of the kids in the club were super into trying to win all the time, especially that ninth-grade Matilda girl, so it wasn’t as much fun to play with them, because you really felt like they were playing AGAINST you rather than WITH you. Duncan was kind of that way too. But Abby wasn’t, and the other two seventh-grade kids in the club, Milton and Sam, weren’t either. So us seventh graders sat at the same table and sometimes Duncan would play with us, though sometimes he’d try to play with some of the older kids who were really into winning and being against each other.

It was interesting, because the two games had pretty much the same board and the same rules, just different sets of cubes that you rolled and played with, with different stuff on them. The boards for both were what the rules called “mats”, and each game’s mat had the same six sections.

After you rolled all the cubes, like you would dice, to see which sides came up, you would put them all in the “Resources” section to start the game. Then whoever went first would pick one or two cubes from the Resources section and put them in the goal section, to make a number that the equation had to equal to, like “5” or “13”. Then each player would take turns taking one cube from “Resources” and putting it in either the “Forbidden”, “Permitted”, “Required” or “Equation” section. If you put a cube in the “Forbidden” section, it couldn’t be used to make the equation that equaled the goal. If you put it in the “Permitted” section, then the cube could be used in the equation but didn’t have to be. If you put it in the “Required” section, it had to be used. When you decided to try to make an equation and win, you put a cube in the “Equation” section, then you had to use it and all the cubes in the “Required” section, and any cubes you wanted in the “Permitted” section to make an equation that equaled the goal.

So in the Equations game, if the goal is “23”, the equation could be something like “3 x 6+2 – 1”, using less space around the plus to do that first, then more around the times to do that second, and the most around the minus to do that last.

That was one way you could win, but the other way was by “challenging” when another player messed up, what they called in the rules “flubbing”. Like when a player moved a cube to Forbidden that made it impossible to make an equation anymore that equaled the goal, or when they had enough cubes in the Required and Permitted sections to make an equation but didn’t.

The other game, On-Sets, used the same mats with the same sections as Equations, plus one more section called “Restrictions”, and pretty much the same rules. Like the other game it had a bunch of cubes that you rolled to make the resources to build equations. But instead of the cubes having just numbers and “arithmetic operators”, like plus, minus, times and divide, some cubes had either big colored dots and others had “set operators”, like union, intersection, complement and minus. The game also had cards and you’d turn over maybe six of them, or more, at the beginning of each round that defined the universe for that round. Each card had one or more of those same colored dots on them like the ones on the cubes, so when you rolled the cubes, each colored dot that came up was a set of all the cards in your universe with that same colored dot. So the first player would set a goal of how many cards should be in the equation set, then we’d all try to create an equation that made a set with that many cards.

Most of the older kids who had been in the club last year had learned to play the Equations game, so they really liked that one. Duncan liked it too, but he liked playing with the older kids because he was super smart at math, smarter than me, and liked to play harder, what that ninth-grade Matilda girl called “cutthroat”. Cutthroat was when you were really against all the other players and really into saying “challenge” when the other players flubbed and not helping them at all.

But the other game, On-Sets, most of us seventh graders liked even better, because it was about Set Theory, which was what we were learning about in our advanced Math class, and seemed pretty cool.

So we had our seventh-grade table where we played that game, though there were a couple older kids that liked it too and would sometimes play at our table with us. And we didn’t play so cutthroat like a lot of the older kids. If one of us in the middle of a game was about to make what looked like a bad move, the rest of us might let them know rather than just wait quietly and then say “challenge” when they made it. I mean Duncan liked to play cutthroat with the older kids, but it didn’t feel right to me when I watched the older kids play Equations that way.

Thinking about boys hanging out with other boys and girls with other girls, I realized that Molly and I being best friends had been pretty unusual, and even Molly had told me, when we spent all that time sitting at the top of the sand dune at Longnook Beach talking, that since she and I had stopped seeing each other very much, all her friends now were girls, including her new best friend. And other than Molly, all MY friends had been boys.

But Abby was kind of becoming my friend too, since we would talk sometimes in front of our houses when other kids weren’t around to see us. Mom had even invited her to my tenth birthday party and she and Molly were the only girls my age there. I kind of wondered why I had a crush on Rose and not her, but I figured having a crush on a girl might be different than liking her.

It was only where the GROWNUPS were in charge, at school, in the classrooms, that boys and girls HAD to be together, and they still didn’t talk or do things together, except maybe tease each other, unless the teacher said they had to, like for an experiment or something. Even though boys and girls sat in desks next to each other we were still like two different teams.

But I also knew that a lot of older kids, like in high school or college, were boyfriend and girlfriend. I’d seen college students on campus walking and holding hands, or even hugging and kissing each other sometimes. And my old babysitter Margie, when she was in high school, had said that there was a lot of that boyfriend girlfriend stuff there.

And I guess that was going to start happening too in junior high, because some boys had crushes on girls and girls had crushes on boys. Sometimes I would happen to see some older boy and girl sneak off somewhere at school together, where no one else was, probably to kiss each other or maybe even make out. Even though Lance in my homeroom called Ramona a “slut”, he said he’d made out with her over the summer, and I think he still had a crush on her and she still had one on him. AND I think I even was starting to have a crush on that girl Rose in my homeroom, though I’d never really talked to her.

So after we played a bunch of rounds of On-Sets at our seventh-grade table, it was time to go. Duncan ended up walking home with this eight-grade kid Francis, who he’d played equations with at another table. The two other seventh graders lived on the other side of Stadium Boulevard so they headed out together to go that way. I got up to walk home by myself and looked at Abby.

“Well I guess I’ll see you tomorrow”, I said. Abby looked at me, and I remembered that girls usually didn’t like to walk by themselves. I figured I should ask her if she wanted to walk with me but I got shy all of a sudden.

“We might as well walk together”, she said, “No one will see us and think we’re girlfriend and boyfriend.” I nodded.

“That’s cool”, I said. Trying to sound like it was no big deal, even though it kind of was, for me at least.

We headed up the driveway by the portable classrooms to Copley. It was that time of day when the sun had almost set and it made the trees with their brown and orange leaves all shiny golden. Luckily it had been an “M” day so we didn’t have to carry our instruments along with our books. She had her books in one arm nestled against her chest like girls did. I had mine under my arm on my right side like boys did. I remember someone had said that if a boy walked with a girl he should offer to carry her books. But that seemed kind of stupid, because she just had her notebook and two textbooks that she looked pretty comfortable carrying against her chest, and I had MY notebook plus THREE textbooks which were under my arm, and already kind of uncomfortable to hold them all. Besides, she wasn’t my girlfriend or anything.

“I like Math Club”, she said, “Our teacher, Mr Kubiak is nice. Though I wish there were more girls.” Tonight there had only been her and Matilda, since Beth didn’t come.

“Yeah”, I said, “That would be better.” She seemed surprised that I said that.

“You wish there were more girls too?” she asked, like I’d said something she didn’t expect. I suddenly felt embarrassed.

“I mean it’s not like I’m girl crazy or anything”, I said, thinking about the Beach Boys and their song “California Girls”, “But I get that you maybe feel uncomfortable around so many boys with only one other girl.”

“Yeah”, she said chuckling, “Crazy Matilda.” I chuckled too and nodded.

“Crazy Matilda”, I said, “But if I was in a club that was mostly all girls, with just maybe one other boy, that’d be weird too for me.” She seemed happy all of a sudden.

“It’s nice that you get that”, she said, “Most boys don’t.” And suddenly I felt happy too, that she and I could talk like Molly and I used to talk, that we didn’t have to be on different teams, at least when no one else was around. I was quiet for a minute, thinking.

“I’m sorry your mom and dad got divorced”, she said, “That sucks.” I nodded and was surprised she even knew that, but I guess mom probably told her mom, because they talked all the time out in the yard. I was also kind of surprised that she used a swear word, but I liked that she did, like maybe she was being more like her real self, and she wasn’t worried that she shouldn’t say stuff like that to a BOY.

“Do boys swim without swimsuits in gym class?” she asked, “Someone said that, but I couldn’t believe that was true.” I couldn’t believe she even asked me THAT.

“It’s SO weird”, I said.

“So it IS true”, she said, “Oh my god! I would be TOTALLY embarrassed!”

“Yep”, I said. I was kind of embarrassed to even be talking about it, with a girl even, but it was also kind of nice to be able to talk about it with SOMEBODY.

“They give us these tanksuits to wear”, she said, “It’s pretty creepy. They make us take off all our clothes and then they look at our bodies and pick out a suit that they think fits us. You know, it depends on how tall we are and whether we’ve got…” She waved her hand over her chest, “You know.”

“Yeah”, I said, nodding really quickly, like we didn’t need to talk about this anymore, though another part of me was kind of EXCITED talking about it.

“You probably think I’m strange talking about this stuff”, she said, “But I’m SO curious and no one ever talks about it.” I DIDN’T think she was strange, in fact, I LIKED IT that she was talking about that kind of stuff, and I didn’t want her to feel bad.

“No, it’s okay”, I said, “I get it. I have stuff I wonder about that no one ever talks about.” As soon as I said that I got really worried that maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that.

“Yeah?” she said, “Like what?” Damn, I thought, NOW what am I going to do? I got quiet, thinking. She got quiet too, but turned her head to look at me, waiting for me to say something.

I looked up at the trees above, leaves all glowing gold, from the sun all yellow there off to the west, not quite set yet. This time of day always had a kind of magical energy to it, and no one else was around. It felt like we were the only two people in the world, a special magical world, and we could talk to each other like Molly and I did up on the dunes at Longnook Beach. So I said something I always thought that I hadn’t told anybody, I don’t think even Molly.

“It always seems to me”, I said, “That it’s like a war at school between boys and girls. Like we’re on different teams, or even different armies on different sides.” She looked worried, like she was trying to figure out if that made sense to her. Now SHE looked up at the trees and the sky to think.

“Yeah… hmmm”, she said, “I don’t know. Sometimes girls say the worst things to other girls, but yeah… I guess so.” We had come to the end of Copley and turned right for that super short part on Woodside.

“Like what you said before”, I said, hearing my voice get excited, “If anyone that knew us at school saw us talking like this they’d tease us that we were boyfriend and girlfriend or like talking to the enemy.”

“Yeah you’re right”, she said, still thinking, “Like talking to the enemy, a traitor, a Benedict Arnold.” I guess us seventh graders had ALL just learned about him in our Unified Studies class talking about the Revolutionary War, even though she was in a different one than I was.

“But boys and girls are supposed to LIKE each other”, she said, “And get all crushes and kissyface like Archie, Betty and Veronica in the comics. When does THAT start happening?” I made kind of a silly face and shook my head.

“I see some ninth graders doing stuff like that when no one’s watching them”, I said.

“What, are you SPYING on them?” she asked, pretending she was shocked.

“Not on purpose!” I said, feeling a little embarrassed again, “I guess I just happened to be where they couldn’t see me.”

“Uh hunh”, she said, kind of like I was pretending that I wasn’t spying on them when I really was. “But what did you see?” she asked, like it WAS okay if I WAS spying as long as I told her. But I suddenly got super shy.

“It’s embarrassing”, I said.

“Did they kiss each other?” she asked, “On the lips?” I nodded.

“Did he like… touch her?” she asked. I nodded.

“Kind of”, I said.

“Where?” she asked. I waved my hand in front of the two sides of MY chest.

“REALLY?” she said. I nodded.

“Second base… so they were making out”, she said. I guess girls knew those rules too about first base and second base. That was good to know.

Then I suddenly felt like the house I was walking by wasn’t familiar and I looked around. At the same time Abby did too.

“Geez”, she said, “We missed our turn!” We were still walking on Woodside instead of crossing the street and heading down Wallingford, so we turned around and crossed the street. That giant house across Wallingford had its yard all full of leaves.

I pointed at the house and said, “I think that’s the biggest house we walk by.” She looked and nodded, but then turned her head back to look at me next to her like she wanted to say something but she wasn’t sure. I looked back at her like I was asking “what?”

“Are you going to go to the Sock Hop?” she asked. I had just heard about it in Homeroom a couple days ago, I guess everyone had. It was like a dance Friday evening in the school gym where everyone had to take off their shoes. That sounded kind of crazy, but kind of exciting crazy. Like getting naked, but only taking off your shoes to see your feet in socks, that people at school never saw. I’d seen dances on TV shows and movies, and the boy always had to ask the girl if she wanted to dance, and then what if she said no. And everyone would be there in the same big room watching what you did, and maybe tease you about it the next Monday in school.

“I don’t know”, I said, “Are you?”

She shook her head slowly, made a funny face and rolled her eyes around and said, “I don’t know either. Beth wants to go, and she wants Myrna and me to go too so she’ll have some friends there. But Myrna said she wants to go with her new friend, Rose. You’re in their Homeroom, right?” I nodded.

I guess Abby and Beth and Myrna were still close friends. I remember spying on them from behind the bushes in the alley behind Abby’s house when the three of them sat on their back patio, when we had all our secret clubs last spring. So Myrna and Rose were good friends.

“Rose seems really nice”, Abby said, “Really shy.”

“Yeah”, I said, “Rose seems really nice. She hangs out all the time with Myrna in my Homeroom, but I’ve never really talked to her very much.” Abby nodded.

“Boys and girls don’t talk to each other”, she said, shaking her head, “WE probably wouldn’t be talking if any of our friends were around.”

“We probably wouldn’t”, I said, chuckling, enjoying thinking that we were having a secret conversation that was against the rules.

“Myrna said that Rose said that she likes you”, she said. THAT was pretty shocking, because I kind of had a crush on HER, and if she maybe had one on me too, what would happen if we were both at the Sock Hop and I asked her to dance or something.

“Myrna thought that was funny”, she said.

Since she said that, I figured I’d ask a question that I had wanted to know about for a long time, about the whole stupid thing with the pencils at the end of sixth grade last year at Burns Park. To show the other cool kids in my class how cool I was, I had gotten these special embossed pencils made that said “Myrna loves Martin” to embarrass Myrna, who all us boys thought was our main enemy among the girls. Then Frankie and Stuart convinced me that we should secretly put one in the mailboxes at Myrna’s and all her friends’ houses. It was all that spying, secret clubs and secret agent stuff we were into last year. I had also given one of the pencils to Billy, which turned out to be my biggest mistake, because he and Gill had put it in Myrna’s desk at school. When she found it in her desk, she showed it to the teacher, who figured out that probably Billy and Gill had done it. So when she had Gill stay behind after class to talk to her, he probably told her I had made the pencils, because he was a chicken and always ratted on everybody. So I ended up getting in trouble, and Myrna found out too.

So I asked the question, “Does Myrna still hate me for making those pencils last year?” Abby laughed through her nose and shook her head.

“She was mad at you for a LONG time about that”, she said, “Because she actually kinda liked you.” Then she looked at me fiercely, “But if you ever tell her that I’ll KILL you!”

I liked her showing me that fierceness, and I shook my head back and forth really fast and said, “I promise, I won’t!” She smiled.

“So…”, she said, thinking while she said it, “What music do you like? Who’s your favorite group?” We boys talked about music that way a lot. I was glad that girls did too.

“Oh wow”, I said, looking up at the ceiling of glowing leaves way above us, “I like lots of kinds, but I guess mostly rock n roll and Motown.”

“So Motown”, she said, “Vandellas or Supremes?” I had had this same discussion with a lot of my friends.

“I can’t choose”, I said, “They’re both SO good.”

“I know, right?” she said, “I can’t choose either.” She smiled, liking that we were kind of thinking the same. “And Smokie and Stevie and Marvin and the Temps of course.”

“Oh yeah”, I said, “Of course.”

There was that moment where we just looked at each other. Was she the new Molly, I wondered. I remembered the two of them, her and Molly, at my tenth birthday party playing one side of our table-top hockey game against the various boys. But then I remembered the rest of her question.

“And my favorite group?” I said, “I’d have to say the Beatles. My brother and I have like six of their albums.”

“My brother and I have SEVEN now”, she said. “Do you have Revolver? My brother just got that one for his birthday.”

“No”, I said, “We don’t have that one yet, but I heard it over at Frankie’s house. It’s REALLY different.”

“Yeah”, she said, nodding her head and opening her eyes wide, “It REALLY is. I don’t know.” She said that last thing like she really didn’t know if she liked it. I mean I’d only heard the whole thing that one time at Frankie’s house, though I’d heard “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby” over and over on jukeboxes.

“Wow”, I said. I couldn’t even imagine NOT LIKING a new Beatles album, especially the last three. Each one WAS really different, but that’s what made you want to hear them. And it wasn’t like any of the songs were like your favorite of all time, but they were all interesting, with stuff I hadn’t thought about.

“What about favorite songs?” she asked.

“I don’t know if I can say just one that I like BEST”, I said, “But maybe ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Cherish’. My dad even likes that one.”

“Yeah, those are great”, she said, “My favorite is ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’. I got the forty-five at Discount Records. I play it over and over. It gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.”

“Yeah”, I said, “That one’s great too. That’s the Temptations, right?” She smiled, shook her head and laughed through her nose.

“No, silly”, she said, “That’s the Four Tops!”

At first I didn’t like it that she called me “silly”. But then it hit me, that the way she said it was like she liked me, the way Molly used to say it to me sometimes. Girls said “silly” that way to their good friends. I’d heard Abby, Beth and Myrna say it to each other when I used to spy on them talking on Abby’s back patio. Molly used to say it to me too.

“Oh yeah”, I said, smiling now, “I forgot.”

“So if you DO go to the Sock Hop, are you going to ask anyone to dance?” she asked. That was quite a question, but she had answered my question about Myrna and even told me something secret, so I figured I should say something. I got scared that maybe she had a CRUSH on me, and she might want ME to ask HER to dance.

“I don’t know”, I said, which I guess was how I started out answering most uncomfortable questions, “Maybe…”. I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

“That Rose in your homeroom?” she asked.

I was SO surprised she said that. Part of me felt relieved that she hadn’t asked me to ask her. Part of me was sad that she hadn’t. Being an older kid could get really complicated!

“Uh…”, I said, “I guess so.”

“I think she’d say yes”, Abby said, “though Myrna says she’s really shy, even more than you are.” I didn’t like that she thought I was shy. I didn’t want to be shy. Shy wasn’t very cool.

“How about you?” I asked. It was only fair that she say so after asking me that question AND saying I was shy.

“I don’t know”, she said, looking up at the trees above us, which was exactly the same thing I had said to her, and feeling nervous now, so I laughed through my nose and she looked at me kind of fiercely, but kind of pretend fiercely.

“What?” she asked, then smiling because I think she knew why I laughed.

“You know but you don’t want to tell me”, I said. She laughed through her nose again.

She tilted her head looking at me and said, “You’re BAD!” I liked the idea of being bad like that, and that she thought I was. I’d much rather be bad than shy. Bad was cool.

“If you must know”, she said, her eyes twinkling now, “This guy Henry in MY Homeroom. I don’t even know his last name. At least I’ve TALKED to him.” Her eyes twinkled some more and she said, “Rose’s last name is Bertrand, by the way.”

“Okay”, I said.

“If you go, and you swear to ask Rose to dance”, she said, “If I go, I’LL swear to ask Henry to dance.”

I kind of laughed nervously and said, “Okay, I guess.”

“No GUESS”, she said fiercely, “A swear is a swear.”

“Okay”, I said, “I SWEAR!”

“ME TOO”, she said, stopping and turning toward me, “Let’s shake!” She stuck out her right hand like to shake hands. That’s what grownups did and I guess what you were supposed to do when you made a deal. So I stuck out MY right hand and took hold of hers. Suddenly we were holding hands, and I could feel the energy going up my arm, even though it wasn’t like boyfriend girlfriend holding hands but just making a deal. STILL, we were holding each other’s hand. There was just a second where I could tell that she could tell that we were both thinking the same thing. Then she squeezed my hand harder and really shook it, up and down.

She finally let go, and laughing with her mouth now said, “Hey… what are secret friends for?” We were on Hermitage now, about to turn right onto Ivywood.

“You know”, I said, “Remember last year when we all had the secret spy groups? Billy used to call this street ‘Secret Granger’, because it was across Ferdon from regular Granger.” She nodded.

“Yeah”, she said, “Those dumb secret groups you guys had. Which one were you in?”

“All of them”, I said with pride. “Each group thought I was in THEIR group and I was just pretending to be in the other groups to spy on them. All of them, except for yours.”

“Ours?” she said, opening her eyes wide, “We didn’t have a group! You guys thought we had a group?”

“Yep”, I said, “Billy even said it had a name.”

“What was that?” she asked.

“It was ‘G.R.E.A.T.’”, I said, “Which he said stands for ‘Girls Rule Everywhere Always Triumphs’, but I figured he’d made it up himself.” I had never heard her laugh SO loud.

“That’s pretty good”, she said, shaking her head, “I guess Billy’s not a TOTAL idiot!”

“He made that up, right?” I asked.

“Of course”, she said, making a silly face, holding her nose up in the air, and using a silly voice, “We girls were too sophisticated to make THOSE kind of silly silly groups.”

“We DID figure you guys were always spying on us”, she said, “I assume you were.” We were really having fun now.

“I’m sworn to secrecy”, I said.

“And I think maybe my brother was spying for you guys”, she said, her eyes narrowing.

“I’m sworn to secrecy”, I said again.

“Ah ha”, she said, “I thought so. I’ll make sure he’s properly punished for that.” He was her younger brother, so I understood the need to “punish” your younger brother.

So we walked by Cal’s and Craig’s houses and came to Ferdon. Instead of walking down Granger and Baldwin and across the Park, we figured we’d be safer walking down Ferdon and then down Wells. There was less of a chance our friends who might be in the park would see us. We continued to talk about last year and I told her about all our secret groups and all the stupid stuff we did. Now that we were in junior high – with eight classes, crushes, making out, “sluts”, asking girls or boys to dance, and more – all that stuff we did last year just seemed so silly and childish.