The Red Blazer Girls (28 page)

“Beautiful. The Red Blazer Girls, eh? I like that.” Father Julian nods his approval. “Me too. It has a nice ‘ring’ to it, if you'll excuse the pun.”

I will. Just this once.

When my book bag and I oh-so-casually stroll into Perkatory a few minutes later, my three best friends greet me like a conquering hero and demand the details.

“It was Malcolm's idea, really. He's been convinced for a long time that Winterbottom was stealing stuff from the church, but he couldn't prove it. This was our chance to really stick it to him. The mood ring was his idea, but
this
was mine.” I stretched out the paper doll note on the table.

“That is so perfect,” says Leigh Ann.

Margaret hugs me. “It's
so
perfect that I'm jealous I didn't think of it.”

“Boy, he must be steamed,” Rebecca says. “Getting his butt kicked by a bunch of kids.”

“Yeah, I would give anything to have seen the look
on his face when he read this,” Margaret says. “I
should
be mad at you for not letting us go with you. You could at least have taken a picture.”

I slap my palm to my forehead. “Oh, man! I shoulda taken his picture! Can you
imagine
how awesome that woulda been? Like right at the moment he's reading the note?”

Everyone agrees: it's a shame. A pity, really. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

I hold up my phone with a waggle of my eyebrows. Cut!

I really hope my teachers don't say anything truly life-changing, because my classes are flying past like the blur of taxis speeding through a yellow light. I am running on adrenaline, caffeine, and about four hours less sleep than normal. I am
so
looking forward to a weekend-long crash. Only one obstacle remains—the Dickens banquet—and then I can sleep. Wonderful, glorious, sumptuous sleep.

We run through the skit one last time right after school, and Leigh Ann pronounces us officially ready. Rebecca and Margaret both promised to go home before the banquet, so Leigh Ann and I have some time to just hang out together, wandering through Bloomingdale's, sharing her iPod, and talking about you-know-who.

“Have you decided what to do about the boy?” she asks as we ride the escalator up to the shoe department.
“Because I feel a little responsible for, well, whatever is going on with you guys. I'm really sorry, Soph. I should have said something when he called me that day. If I had known—”

“No, I jumped to
all
kinds of conclusions.”

“So now what?”

I make a face. “I dunno. I've been completely avoiding him for the past three days. He's been calling and texting, but I haven't returned any of them. He probably hates me by now.”

“Somehow I doubt that. When he
stops
calling—that's when you should start to worry. Why don't you call him right now? What do you have to lose?”

“My mind? I mean, I'm kinda nervous about the skit, and I'm really tired. My brain's going to melt if I even try to think right now. If he shows up tonight—which I seriously doubt—I'll talk to him. For now, let's just have a look at some shoes. That doesn't require thinking.”

That is, unless you're trying to calculate the cost of a cute pair of sandals that are 25 percent off their original price of $34.99, less another 15 percent, plus tax. I set them on the counter with $25 and cross my fingers.

So now what? I'm sure you're all wondering what will happen next. Will a bunch of seventh graders win the Dickens skit competition for the first time ever? Will Elizabeth and Malcolm—and their daughter, Caroline—
show up? Will they make up?And what about Raf ? Will he surprise me by turning up after all? And what will I say to him? Should I save all this for a sequel? Put on something red and turn the page for just one more chapter. Pretty please.

The curtain goes up, or over, or whatever it does, at seven-thirty sharp, and Mr. Eliot, wearing a rumpled, moth-eaten black coat with tails, a dusty top hat, and a fairly realistic beard, takes the stage at St. Veronica's twelfth annual Dickens of a Banquet. The guests are seated at round tables with white tablecloths and rented china and candlesticks while we wait in the stuffy, filthy space behind the stage. With the noise from the twenty-some girls with us, the whirring of the fans, and the constant clinking of silverware on plates, we miss most of Mr. Eliot's opening monologue, a mixture of Dickens's and his own “humor.” C'est la vie.

An hour earlier, while Rebecca, Leigh Ann, and I waited for Margaret in the hallway outside the auditorium, we ran into Mr. Eliot and gave him the big news. He was really excited and wanted to see the ring, but it was with Margaret, who was uncharacteristically
late. When she finally showed up, something was different about her. She hardly said anything, answering our questions with one-or two-word answers and managing only a forced, grim smile when Rebecca did her dead-on imitation of Mr. Eliot. She looked like she had been crying but insisted that she was fine. Margaret isn't like me. My emotions are right out there for everybody to see, but she holds most of hers in. When the time came to go backstage, she sat off by herself, staring at the toes of her shoes. Once every few minutes she took a small flowered card out of an envelope and read it in the dim light, slowly shaking her head.

Finally, I just can't take it anymore. “I'm gonna give it another try.”

“You want us to come?” Rebecca asks.

“Give me a minute alone with her.” I wander over and sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

After about a minute of silence, she says quietly, “I'm Pip.”

“I know. And I'm Herbert. And Leigh Ann is Joe.”

“I don't mean the skit.”

“I don't understand.”

“I
am
Pip.” She finally makes eye contact with me. “I am not a good person.”

“Margaret, what are you talking about? Is this some kind of Method acting thing? Are you just getting psyched up for our skit?”

“No, I really mean it. You should not be friends with me, Sophie. I am a poor excuse for a human being.”

“That's ridiculous. You're an
amazing
human being and the best friend I've ever had. What are you talking about?”

“Read this.” She hands me the envelope.

I remove the card and open it, but I can't read a word. “Is this Polish?”

She takes the card from my hand. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“What does it say?”

“It's an early Christmas present from my grandmother. She's going back to Poland next week. Remember that violin camp in the Berkshires I told you about—the one I'm dying to go to next summer? Well, Mom told her about it, and she has been saving every penny for months. Yesterday she signed me up and paid for
everything
. And the worst part is, Mom told me that she even sold some of her jewelry, because she didn't have enough money. My parents offered to reimburse her for part of it, but she wanted it to be a special gift from her to her
special
granddaughter.” Tears pour down Margaret's face, and she is shaking as she looks at the card again. She sobs as she reads, “‘Even when you're a famous violinist, you'll always be my little petunia.’ That's what she called me when I was still in Poland. Her little petunia.”

By now, Rebecca is next to me and Leigh Ann has her arms around the inconsolable Margaret.

“And look how I treated her. Just like Pip did with Joe.”

“Margaret, this is crazy. You are not a bad person.”

“And you know,” Rebecca begins, “Pip turns out all right in the end. Hey, don't everybody look at me like that. I finished the book.”

“That's right. I'm still not saying you're like him, but Pip knows he has made some mistakes, and he makes up for them by becoming the
real
Pip again, not the phony version he was in London. Look, you said your grandmother will be in town for another week, and then you guys will probably go to Poland at Easter, so you have lots of time. You can totally make it up to her.”

Margaret's sad, wet eyes look up at me. “You really think so?”

“I do.”

A snooty eighth-grade wannabe producer, carrying a clipboard and wearing one of those Britney-style headsets, interrupts us. “Aren't you guys the seventh graders? You're on in five. Oh, and good luck.” She smirks.

She is exactly what we need to break our mood. We stand in a circle and put our hands in the center, with Margaret's left hand and the Ring of Rocamadour on top.

“For Margaret,” I say.

“For us,” Leigh Ann adds.

“For Frodo!” Rebecca cries, raising her fist.

*  *  *

We wait behind the curtain, listening to Mr. Eliot's introduction.

“This group of particularly brave girls are the only seventh graders in tonight's program. They have adapted the scene from
Great Expectations
in which Pip, who has moved to London to become a gentleman, is visited by Joe, his brother-in-law and closest friend from his humble childhood. In a rather short time, Pip has become a bit of a snob, and he is embarrassed by the country bumpkin Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, Rebecca Chen, Leigh Ann Jaimes, Sophie St. Pierre, and Margaret Wrobel in …
Great Expectations
!”

Rebecca has the easy part. As Biddy, all she has to do is read as she pretends to write her letter to Pip, informing him of Joe's impending arrival. And then she goes offstage to watch the rest of us sweat.

The first part of the scene is really funny. Poor old Joe is not used to wearing nice clothes or being around “gentlemen,” and he is really awkward, which makes Pip totally uncomfortable. And Joe never does figure out what to do with his hat; no matter where he sets it, it falls to the floor. He tells the story of a church clerk who has left the church—“had a drop,” as he puts it—and joined a group of traveling actors. Pip's roommate, Herbert (played by
moi
), enters and offers him a choice of coffee or tea, and even that decision is unbearably difficult for him. It is only my second-best
acting performance of the day, but I manage to maintain my British accent throughout and exit stage right, where I watch the second half with Rebecca.

After Herbert's exit, the scene turns more serious as the negative changes to Pip's nature become more and more apparent. Joe insists on calling Pip “sir,” and soon after he explains his reason for the visit—to give Pip a message from Miss Havisham that Estella wishes to see him. Then Joe gets up to leave.

“But you are not going now, Joe?”

“Yes I am,” said Joe
.

“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”

“No I am not,” said Joe
.

Leigh Ann moves close to Margaret and takes her hand. People in the audience actually set their forks and knives down to listen.

“Pip, dear old chap,”
Leigh Ann, as Joe, starts,
“life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say … Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all today, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes … You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe … And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old
chap. God bless you!”
Leigh Ann touches Margaret's Pip on the forehead and then turns and walks away, joining Rebecca and me in the wings. Margaret is alone onstage, and she looks positively haunted by Leigh Ann's last lines. She turns to the audience to deliver her short final monologue.

“I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he spoke these words than it could come in its way in heaven. He touched me gently on the forehead and went out. As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighboring streets; but he was gone.”