Rule of Three (4 page)

How did this happen? Me. The Pea. I was supposed to be the Practical One. Instead, it felt like that first time I’d jumped off the high dive when I was seven. Reckless and brave . . . and exciting.

The part I hated to imagine was telling my family my secret. I tried not to picture Mom and Dad looking at me like I was a Benedict-Arnold-size traitor and Joey gaping like I’d gone stark-raving, Jane-Eyre mad and Alex running from the room, stung, the same as if I’d just slapped her fresh across the face.

“What’s up with you?” Joey asked me in our
room that evening, sitting on a giant green bouncy yoga ball.

“What do you mean? Nothing’s up,” I told her. But my insides were screaming,
I decided to try out for a part in the musical!

“Yah-huh. You’re acting weird.”

“Am not.”

“Yah-huh. I have proof.” Joey handed over her notebook with a list of seven ways I’m acting strange.

“OK, Joey. But you can’t tell. Not anybody. Especially Alex.”

“What? What?” Joey started bouncing on the yoga ball.

“Listen to me. This is a big-time Super Sister Secret. You have to triple cross-your-heart-hope-to-die, quadruple-zip-your-lips promise you won’t tell.”

“I promise. This is so great.” Joey clutched her hands to her heart. “Now I’ll know a secret. Like how Jo, when she meets Laurie, is sure he has a dark secret. A
tragic European
secret.”

“OK, but if you tell . . .”
Snip, snip, snip.
I made scissors with my fingers, threatening to cut off her ponytail.

“Blast and wretch,” said Joey, reaching to protect her ponytail.

I cleared my throat. I coughed. I sputtered. “Guess what? I’m going to try out for the play.”

“You? What play? Not —”

“Once Upon a Mattress,”
I finished the sentence for her.

Joey stopped bouncing. Her face morphed from uncertainty to recognition to horror.

“Alex’s play?” she breathed.

I nodded. “Except it’s not Alex’s play, because she’s not trying out, remember?”

“Wow, you’ll be the best Princess Winnie ever!” Joey said, spinning around the room.

I blushed. “Joey, that’s the lead. I can’t go out for
the lead.
”

“Why not? Sure you can. Your voice is perfect, and you already know all the songs. This is so great. I can just picture you singing ‘Happily Ever After.’”

Joey was saying out loud what I had already been secretly thinking and imagining to myself. “Well . . . maybe I could. Maybe I should. Do you really think so?”

Joey bobbed her head up and down, still flinging herself around the room, humming “Happily Ever After.”

I took a deep breath. The fact that Joey thought I should try out for Winnie felt like a sign. “OK, I’ll do it. I’ll try out — for the lead. But you still can’t tell. Not till I’m ready.”

Joey pretended to zip up her lips. “This is big!” she cried. “This is so big! No wonder you’ve been acting so really weird!”

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE ALEX?

Starring Alex

Me
:
(Entering Stevie and Joey’s room, hearing them talking.)
What’s big?

Stevie and Joey
:
(At same time.)
Nothing!

Me
: Then how come you look so guilty? I can always tell when you guys are keeping a secret, so you might as well just tell me.

Joey
:
(Rearranges stuffed animals on her bed.)
Stevie didn’t go in your room, honest! And she definitely didn’t go in your closet.

Stevie
:
(Makes mad eyes at Joey.)
Joey!

Me
: I didn’t say you guys were in my room. Were you?

Joey
: Never mind. That’s not the real secret, anyway.

Stevie
:
(Throws pillow at Joey.)
Jo-ey!

Joey
: Hey, no throwing pillows. It’s against Sisters Club rules.

Me
: Ha!
(Points at Joey.)
So, my dear Watson, we’ve established that there is, in fact, a secret.

Joey
: A Super Sister Secret!

Stevie
: Joey, a pox on you if you breathe one word!

Me
: It’s OK. You can tell me, Duck. I’m your sister. Was Stevie in my closet, trying on my heels? Is that it?

Joey
:
(Imitating
Little Women
.)
“What cunning little heels! You have to have heels!”

Me
: Jo-ey?

Joey
: She wasn’t
not
in your closet.

Me
: Precisely, Watson. Just as I thought.

Stevie
:
(Biting on end of hair.)
Enough about secrets! Didn’t you have something you wanted to tell us?

Joey
: I know — why don’t we make this a Sisters Club meeting?

Stevie
: Yeah!

Joey
:
(Holding up stuffed animal hedgehog.)
Hedgie can be our mascot, instead of Sock Monkey.

Me
: OK. Sisters, Blisters, and Tongue Twisters. Official meeting of the Sisters Club, now in session.

Joey
: Hey, we didn’t hook pinkies!

Everybody
:
(Hooking pinkies.)
Sisters, Blisters, and Tongue Twisters.

Joey
: This is so cool! It’s just like the Pickwick Club — that’s the secret society Jo and her sisters have in
Little Women.
I could be Augustus Snodgrass and Stevie —

Me
: Pickwick Club! Might as well call it the Pick-Your-Nose Club.

Joey
: C’mon, you guys. Let’s bare our souls and tell the most appalling secrets, like they do in the Pickwick Club.

Me
:
(Wrinkling nose.)
Whatever. Look, we have to go with Dad to pick up Mom from work. They’re taking us to House of Cheese for pizza, so we don’t have much time.

Joey
: Yum!

Stevie
: So what’s up?

Me
: Well, I have some exciting news. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I decided . . . Are you ready for this? . . . I’m going to try out for the play after all. I decided just to go for it, so I’m going to go out for the lead in
Once Upon a Mattress.

Joey
:
(Looks at Stevie, mouth open.)

Stevie
:
(Looks at Joey, turns beet red.)

Joey
: The lead? Did you say the lead?

Me
: Sure. Why not? Why are you acting so weird?

Joey
: You mean the princess?

Me
: Yes, the princess. Of course, the princess. What else
but
the princess?

Joey
: But what about — what about how you hate musicals?

Stevie
: And what about how you can’t sing?

Me
: Thanks a lot!

Joey
: In front of people, she means.

Me
: So I take a few voice lessons. The music teacher at school might help me or something. What do you think? Isn’t it exciting?

Stevie
: Yeah, thrilling.

Joey
: That’s — that’s — that’s . . . great.

Me
: What’s wrong? I thought this would be big giant news.

Stevie
:
(Sarcastically.)
News flash! Alex Reel is going to star in yet another play for like the one-millionth time!

Me
:
(Standing in doorway, about to leave.)
Well, you don’t have to act so snot-faced about it. Geez! You’re my sisters. I thought you’d at least be happy for me. And you guys wonder why sometimes I don’t want to be in the Sisters Club.

Dad
:
(Calls upstairs.)
Time to go pick up Mom!

Joey
: Wait! Don’t go yet. The meeting’s not over. Stevie has something she wants to tell you. Don’t you, Stevie?

Stevie
: Um, yeah. Good luck.

On the way to Mom’s studio, I let it sink in
that Alex was going out for the play. Really and truly. My excitement over trying out myself had gone out of me, like air out of a day-after party balloon.

What goes up must come down.

I stared out the window. Fog. Gray January fog. No mountains in sight. Usually the snowcapped peaks of the Three Sisters, like frosted cupcakes, were silhouetted against the purple-streaked sky. No drama in the skies today, just inside me.

We get three kinds of gray skies in Oregon: white-gray, light-gray, and gray-gray, and today was gray-gray. I could imagine Joey spouting
Little Women:
“‘There is always light behind the clouds.’”

Not today.

Now the fog had gone to twilight, which was turning to night.

The backseat was quiet. Not the dreamy kind of quiet when you stare lazily out the window and all’s right with the world. The frozen quiet like a wall between two sisters that feels hard as ice.