Haylee went on, “I don’t know if you even realize it because you’re still a little girl, but boys look at us differently. We have sex things to discuss now, things you can’t appreciate or might be embarrassed by.”
“That’s not so,” I said. “Boys can’t tell unless you or someone else tells them or you suffer bad cramps in front of them.”
Haylee looked at Melanie and shook her head, as if to say, Don’t pay attention to her. She’s a child.
It felt as if a pot of boiling water was steaming in my chest. “We’re not supposed to say bad things about each other,” I reminded her.
She shrugged. “It’s not something bad, Kaylee. It’s just a simple truth. You’re still a child.” She turned to Melanie. “She’s very jealous, of course. She’s been wearing the same pad for a week and studies it for a drop every night.”
They both laughed.
“I do not!”
“You’re not wearing a pad without having a period?” Haylee asked.
I was so shocked that she would talk about what Mother wanted me to do that I couldn’t speak.
“See?” she told Melanie.
They laughed again.
“Mother would be very mad at you for saying that, Haylee.”
“I don’t think you’ll tell her just to get me in trouble, will you? You know how she hates the idea of one of us trying to get her to love her more. You’ll end up in the pantry with the jars of pickles and jelly.”
Melanie laughed again, and they walked away before I could think of something nasty to say. The frustration felt like a belt being tightened around my chest until I couldn’t breathe. She was right. I would never tell Mother anything bad about her, even though I felt such a strong urge to do so and have that smug look wiped off her face.
There wasn’t any other way Mother would learn about this quickly, either. She had stopped assisting the second-grade teacher after our first two years and did not know that Haylee was making a point of not sitting with me at lunchtime. Without Mother in the school, Haylee tried to avoid me all day. She was always whispering and laughing with the other girls, none of whom I particularly wanted to be with anyway. She started flirting with some older boys, too, and couldn’t wait to tell me who liked her.
“That should tell you something about us, Kaylee,” she said. “They don’t even look at you, do they?”
I didn’t answer, because she was right, but I did think the reason they were looking at her was that she was practically throwing herself in front of them.
Despite not wanting to, I did feel left out, even immature. The more Haylee gloated, the more miserable I felt. I was afraid I might never catch up to her socially. I did become best friends with Sarah Morgan, whose grades were as good as mine and Haylee’s, even a little better. Although she looked like she wouldn’t get her first period for another ten years, Sarah was pretty. She had what I thought of as an angelic face because of her soft, gentle, and caring eyes, her porcelain complexion, and her perfect nose and lips. She had diminutive, doll-like features and was a good two inches shorter than we were. I thought she might still look like a girl only ten years old even when she was a senior in high school.
In the fifth grade, Sarah suddenly had to wear glasses. Haylee was ready to pounce on that and make fun of her, but her mother bought her very stylish frames, and contrary to what Haylee thought, most of the girls admired them. Sarah seemed incapable of getting into an argument, and whenever Haylee said something unpleasant to her, which was often, she simply smiled, as if Haylee was someone to be pitied. Of course, that only made Haylee angrier. I liked Sarah’s wit and the way she couldn’t be intimidated, something I longed to master ever since we had entered Betsy Ross.
Haylee and I hadn’t been given our own rooms at home yet, so it was still especially important to Mother that neither of us brought home someone the other didn’t like. Whoever it was had to be shared and equally liked. I had to make a deal with Haylee in order to invite Sarah over on a Friday to have dinner with us and spend the night.
“You can have her this Friday, but I have Melanie on Saturday,” she proposed. I was actually a little afraid of Melanie Rosen by now, and not just because she and Toby Sue had gotten us to smoke and look at dirty magazines. She had developed faster than we had, and I heard stories about her seeing boys in the junior high, meeting secretly and “doing things.”
“You shouldn’t be friends with her after the trouble we almost got into because of the smoking, Haylee. Melanie is one of those peers Mother warned us about. She’ll get you into more and more trouble, and you won’t be able to lie your way out of it like you did with the smoking. We’ll both be grounded for weeks, even months!”
“Don’t you say anything like that ever, especially in front of Mother,” she warned me, with those big eyes and clenched fingers. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”
I didn’t, but Haylee wasn’t shy about saying negative things about Sarah in front of Mother. She was so clever and careful about it, though, that it looked as if she was telling Mother things just to protect us.
“We’re her only friends,” she told Mother. “She’s so shy that she’s actually someone to be pitied.”
“Well, then, maybe it’s nice that you’re being her friend,” Mother said, which disappointed Haylee.
“Other girls and even boys ask all the time why we’re friends with her,” she whined. “We’re afraid we’ll lose friends because they don’t like to be around her and don’t invite her to anything.”
Mother looked at me.
Although I wasn’t going to speak up and say that Haylee was lying or even exaggerating, I was sure Mother could see my unhappiness with what Haylee was saying.
“What did I tell you about not letting your peers pressure you into making bad decisions?” Mother asked Haylee. “You don’t look to them for advice or guidance. You look to each other. I’ve brought you up to have each other’s best interests first and foremost, not the interests of your friends.”