Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out (4 page)

Even though she wasn’t my true friend.

On the other hand, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was this or nothing.

I grabbed the book and ran downstairs.

“Here,” I said, practically throwing it at Uncle Jay.

He looked down at what he held.

“Good choice,” he said, and went over to the dining room to begin wrapping it in that day’s comic section from the newspaper. Really. The funny pages!

When I groaned, he looked at me. “What?” he said. “It’s recycling. Very environmentally correct of you.”

When he was done, he handed me the book and said, “Have a good time.”

“I will.” I was beginning to feel excited about going to the party again, now that I had a present and had actually seen the limo.

Uncle Jay was right. It didn’t matter how expensive your gift was.

What mattered was that it came from the heart.

I grabbed my overnight bag, kissed Uncle Jay good-bye, and hurried outside. I was, I decided, going to have the time of my life.

Boy-crazy Girls Don’t Understand That Not All Boys Are Great

“Your little brother,” Brittany Hauser said when I’d finally pried Kevin out of the limo and climbed in myself and shut the door, “is kind of cute.”

There was a general chime of agreement.

This, I knew, was a very good omen. Most people (who don’t actually have to live with him) think my little brother Kevin is very cute. I could almost, in fact, forgive Kevin for the horrible thing that he had done, blabbing my secret to Marianne’s little sister, since he had come out and won over the girls in this limo for me.

It wasn’t the easiest audience, either, since it included not only Brittany Hauser, the ringleader of the “Allie Stinkle” episode, but also Mary Kay Shiner, my ex-best friend, who’d once told the whole school that I kept a book of rules (which I don’t think is weird at all. What I think is weird is people who
don’t
keep a book of rules. How can you know how to act if you don’t know what the rules are?).

“Ha, thanks,” I said.

I’ll admit, I was a little nervous. The chauffeur (the limo was driven by a chauffeur! He had a uniform and a special hat and everything!) had come around when I’d dragged my suitcase up to the limo and put it in the trunk, then held the door open for me. Like I was a movie star or something! No one had ever done this for me before.

And then, when I got into the limo, I’d found five pairs of eyes staring at me — not counting Mrs. Hauser’s, because she was sitting in the front seat with the driver.

There was Brittany, of course, the birthday girl. And Courtney Wilcox, Brittany’s ex-best friend, who’d been replaced by
my
ex-best friend, Mary Kay Shiner, who was sitting on the other side of Brittany.

And there were two other girls I remembered from our class in Walnut Knolls Elementary: Lauren Freeman and Paige Moseley.

All the girls were dressed super stylishly, with lip gloss and little purses and — I should have known — high-heeled zip-up boots.

I looked sadly down at my cowboy boots. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard I try, I can never win. This should be a rule.

“Hi, Allie,” Mrs. Hauser called from the front of the car. It was like she was a million miles away. Seriously, that’s how long the limo was. The seats in the back were so long, we could all have lain down on them and had room to spare. “It’s lovely to see you.”

“Hi, Mrs. Hauser,” I called to her. “Thank you very much for having me.”

My mom told me that
Thank you very much for having me
is what you say when someone invites you to a birthday party. It’s a rule.

“You’re so welcome,” Mrs. Hauser said. “I understand that your parents are out of town?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Saying
yes, ma’am
and
no, sir
are other things my mom and dad told us we have to say to grown-ups when we’re invited somewhere. That’s another rule.

“Well, I hope you’re having fun with your babysitter,” Mrs. Hauser said.

“We don’t have a babysitter,” I said. “It’s just my uncle Jay. It was going to be my great-aunt Joyce, but she threw her back out washing her cat.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Hauser said. She knew all about washing cats, having a show cat of her own, Mewsie’s mom, Lady Serena Archibald. “I hope she’ll be all right. And please let your mom know when she gets home how much I enjoyed her review of
The Mirror Is Myself.”

“Oh, I will,” I said. Even though I knew my mom had hated that movie.

“How’s Mewsie?” Mrs. Hauser wanted to know.

“Mewsie’s fine!” I said. I was so glad Mrs. Hauser had asked. Since her cat, Lady Serena Archibald, was Mewsie’s mom, that made Mrs. Hauser Mewsie’s grandma. “He’s so cute! The other day, he was chasing his tail, and — ”

“That’s enough questions, Mom!” Brittany said, and pulled on my arm so that I sank down on one of the long seats next to her and Mary Kay, and opposite Courtney, Lauren, and Paige.

“She talks so much,” Brittany said, about her mom. Loud enough for her to hear, too! “It’s so annoying!”

Just then, though, the car started up. So maybe Mrs. Hauser didn’t hear how rude her daughter was being. I took the opportunity to look around.

Sad as I was about how I hadn’t gone with Erica and those guys and how I’d worn all the wrong things, I still couldn’t believe it. I was finally in a limo!

It was even better than I’d thought it would be. First of all, there was a TV in it, right in the back of Mrs. Hauser’s seat. It was on, and it was playing Hannah Montana’s concert movie (only the sound was turned way down).

Second of all, there were blinking lights everywhere. The whole inside of the car was bathed in purple. There was a bar — a real bar! — with every kind of soda you could think of to drink, with real glasses that tinkled as the car drove along, and a little refrigerator with a glass door. The inside was all lit up so you could see what kind of snacks they had, like Snickers and M&Ms and potato chips and little jars of nuts.

Weirdest of all, the roof over our heads was nothing but twinkling little stars going on and off in all different spots, like airplane lights, only they made shapes, like the constellations…except instead of rotating around the earth slowly, the way the constellations do, they were going by at, like, a thousand miles an hour, all over the roof of the limo.

Brittany must have noticed me admiring this, since she said, “Your little brother was really interested in the moon roof, too. I let him work the controls. It goes at different speeds. The buttons are right here, see?”

She showed me the console, which was right behind where she was sitting. I was probably as excited to push the buttons as Kevin had been, but I tried to control myself, since I am a fourth-grader, not a kindergartner.

Still, it was so cool! One button made the twinkling stars on the roof change speed in their twinkling, and another changed their color. Another one changed the color of the lights on the inside of the car. They turned from purple to pink, then pink to gold, then white, then blue, then red.

“We thought purple was prettiest,” Paige told me in a friendly way. It was clear they’d been playing with the buttons the whole way across town to pick me up.

“Check out this one,” Brittany said, and pushed another button. A screen went up between our seats and the front seat where her mom and the driver sat.

“See ya, Mom!” Brittany yelled, and she and Mary Kay started cackling.

“Oh, Brittany,” Mrs. Hauser said, rolling her eyes just as the screen went all the way up and she vanished from view.

“Good riddance,” Brittany said, like she was glad to be rid of her mom. Which I thought was kind of mean, since she hadn’t actually been bothering us, as far as I could tell.

Brittany pushed another button, and the sound to the Hannah Montana concert movie turned way up. Then she pushed another, and the lights around us all started going crazy, like they do at the skating rink when it’s couples-only skate.

Then Brittany turned to me and said, “Caramel corn?” She had a whole bag she’d taken from the mini refrigerator. I could tell, because it was the same size as the empty space in the fridge.

“Thanks,” I said, and took a big handful. It was delicious.

“So,” Brittany said, as I was chewing. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

I nearly choked on my popcorn, I so wasn’t expecting this question.

“Uh.” I looked around at the other girls. They were all staring at me super intently, waiting for my answer. Mary Kay, who usually started crying at the drop of a hat, showed no sign of doing so now, to my surprise.

I wasn’t sure what the right answer was. I mean, at Pine Heights, fourth-graders aren’t allowed to have boyfriends and girlfriends, by order of Mrs. Hunter and Mrs. Danielson, the fourth-grade teachers. I hadn’t heard about any fifth-graders going with each other, either. It simply wasn’t stylish at Pine Heights for people — with the exception of Cheyenne O’Malley — to do that. It just wasn’t that kind of school.

When I’d left it, Walnut Knolls hadn’t been, either.

But who knows what had happened since I’d left? Maybe it had become a total boyfriend-girlfriend kind of school. Maybe Brittany was going with Scott Stamphley now.

It was weird, but the idea of Brittany going with Scott Stamphley sort of made me want to throw up the caramel corn I was eating.

It also made me not want to give her the book I’d picked out so especially for her anymore.

I really didn’t know how to answer her question. If I said I didn’t have a boyfriend, was she going to say I was immature, like Cheyenne O’Malley always did? On the one hand, I didn’t care. But on the other hand, twenty-four hours is a long time to have to put up with someone. I didn’t want to start off my visit with Brittany on the wrong foot.

Then, when I really thought about it, I realized that, technically, I’d
almost
had a boyfriend. I mean, Joey Fields
had
wanted to go with me.

Even if Cheyenne O’Malley had talked him into it. And I’d said no because he is basically the weirdest boy on the entire planet.

But there was no reason those girls had to know that.

“I guess I could have had a boyfriend,” I said slowly. “If I’d wanted one. Because there was this kid who liked me. But I didn’t want to go with him. Because I think fourth grade is too young to be tied down.”

I had totally heard that line, about not wanting to be tied down, in a movie once.

Brittany and Mary Kay exchanged glances.

“See?” Brittany said to Mary Kay. “I told you. You owe me five dollars.”

Finally, Mary Kay looked like the old Mary Kay I knew so well. Her eyes filled up with tears.

“It’s not fair,” Mary Kay said, digging around in her purse. “Everyone’s got a boy who wants to go with them but
me
!”

“My mom said that your mom said a boy wanted to go with you,” Brittany informed me smugly. “But Mary Kay didn’t believe me.”

I didn’t care about this. I needed to find out which boy wanted to go with Brittany. Suddenly, it was super important to me.

“Oh?” I asked casually. “So people are going with each other at Walnut Knolls?”

Lauren and Paige and Brittany all screamed. I noticed Courtney didn’t scream. Courtney was just sitting there, playing with her necklace. Mary Kay was, as usual, trying not to cry.

“No!” Lauren explained, laughing. “No one goes with anybody at Walnut Knolls. All the boys there are so immature!”

Suddenly, I felt much, much better. I didn’t even mind the crazily blinking lights anymore. I dug my hand into the bag Brittany held for more popcorn.

“Last weekend we went to Lauren’s cousin Jake’s bar mitzvah,” Brittany explained, “and there were some cute boys from the middle school there.”

“One of them even asked Brittany to dance,” Paige said teasingly as Brittany blushed. Really! I’d never seen Brittany blush before…

…although it only became obvious that’s what she was doing when the lights in the limo went white.

“He was just a sixth-grader,” Brittany said.

“And he didn’t know you were a fourth-grader,” Mary Kay pointed out, not very nicely.

“Shut up,” Brittany said, also not very nicely.

It was kind of weird being around these girls. They were a little mean to each other. Not like Erica and Caroline and Sophie, who were more supportive of one another. Even Rosemary, who wasn’t interested in things like boyfriends and dances, would have had friendlier things to say than these girls.

“I can’t believe a boy asked you to go with him,” Brittany said, looking at me —
me!
— admiringly, “and you turned him down, Allie.”

If Brittany had had the slightest idea who the boy was — that he usually barked instead of talked, and that I had to sit next to him all day long, and that he stole all of Mrs. Hunter’s Boxcar Children books and generally drove me crazy — she would not be saying this.

But
boy-crazy girls don’t understand that not all boys are great.
That’s a rule.

“Yeah, well,” I said, trying to look casual and sophisticated. I was in a limo, after all, eating caramel corn, so this wasn’t hard. “When you’re around boys as much as I am, you kind of get used to it. At my new school, my teacher put me in charge of the boys.” This wasn’t technically a lie, either. Rosemary and I are in charge of all the boys in the last row of Room 209. “Because of my little brothers, she thinks I kind of have a way with them.”

“You are so lucky,” Paige breathed. “I wish I could change schools and get to sit with boys!”

“Are they cute?” Lauren wanted to know.

Cute? Joey Fields, who had only recently started remembering to wash his face and comb his hair in the morning before school? Patrick Day, who liked to pick his nose (and yes, possibly even eat it)? Stuart Maxwell, who tried daily to draw the most disgusting pictures of zombies that he could, and thus gross me out?

“Totally cute,” I lied.

“Lucky!” all the girls cried in unison.

The thing was, they were never going to find out that the boys in Room 209
totally
weren’t cute. So who even cared? And the things I was saying weren’t
total
lies. If you didn’t know them, Joey, Patrick, and Stuart might
seem
cute…

…the same way that boy at Lauren’s cousin’s bar mitzvah had thought Brittany
seemed
older than a fourth-grader.

And the other thing was, if you didn’t know Brittany, you might think she
seemed
nice, too.

Except that I knew she totally wasn’t.

Another person I got the feeling knew she totally wasn’t was Courtney Wilcox.

Oh, Courtney had come to Brittany’s party and all.

But it didn’t seem like she was super friendly with Brittany or with any of her other friends. She laughed in all the right places, and she joined us in raiding the limo’s fridge.

But she didn’t seem to have that much to say. Mostly, she just sat there and played with her necklace and stared at the blinking lights.

Brittany acted nice to me, though, all the way to the Glitterati store in the city. It was amazing. She treated me as if we’d always been best friends, and the thing with Lady Serena Archibald and my shoving a cupcake in her face had never happened. Even Mary Kay acted nice to me — not quite as nice as Brittany, though, since I don’t think Mary Kay had quite gotten over the fact that she and I had once been best friends and used to play lions and ride bikes together, and now we hadn’t spoken in months, thanks to her telling everyone about my book of rules…