Free The Secret Language of Girls by Frances O'Roark Dowell Page A

made it, she might have to choose between Kate and Flannery. Sometimes Marylin felt like a rope being pulled in a tug of war. She didn’t know how to get out of the middle, or how to change things.
    Marylin didn’t even know if she wanted to change things. She was very particular about her life. She liked to know how things were going to be from one day to the next. That’s why it drove her crazy when her mother told her in the morning she would make meat loaffor dinner and then her dad decided at five thirty to make spaghetti. It changed the whole tone of Marylin’s day.
    Aunt Tish was standing at the kitchen sink and peeling potatoes for potato salad when Marylin got home. Marylin hopped up onto the counter next to her to watch.
    “You were a cheerleader once, right?” she asked Aunt Tish. Marylin had decided she needed to get the real scoop on cheerleading before she committed herself to something that might completely upset her lifestyle and cause her to care too much about her hair.
    Aunt Tish raised her arms into a V and jumped high in the air, yelling, “Rah! Go! Cougars!”
    Then she resumed her potato peeling.
    “Is that a yes?” Marylin asked.
    “T. R. Little High School, the junior varsity squad,” Aunt Tish confirmed, nodding. “I did a mean handstand.”
    Marylin leaned over and pulled a potato peel from Aunt Tish’s hair. “Did it change your life? Cheerleading, I mean?”
    Aunt Tish thought for a moment. “A little, I guess. It made me more popular and gave me the opportunity to hang out with some pretty snooty girls. But you know what really changed my life?” Aunt Tish’s voice grew light and airy, as though she were describing a dream. “The men on the moon.”
    “You mean the man in the moon, don’t you?” Marylin wondered if the potatoes were leaking fumes that were going to Aunt Tish’s head.
    Aunt Tish laughed. “No, I really mean the men on the moon. I was supposed to go to this horseback-riding camp right before I started tenth grade, but then the astronauts walked on the moon and I was hooked! I watched everything on TV, and instead of begging for a saddle, I begged for a telescope.
    “Did you want to become an astronaut too?”Marylin tried to imagine Aunt Tish in one of those big white astronaut suits, but it was hard to picture. Aunt Tish was more the tailored jacket and jeans type.
    “For a little while I did,” Aunt Tish said as she started cutting the potatoes into cubes. “But then I realized I didn’t really want to walk on the moon; I just wanted to look at it. It captivated me.”
    “What’s captivating about the moon?” Marylin asked, hopping off the counter. This conversation was not teaching her much about cheerleading, she had decided.
    Aunt Tish put down her paring knife. “The moon is captivating because it is always changing, but it’s always there.” She smiled. “Unlike your uncle Nick, who was just always changing.”

    “Here,” Kate said on the bus the next morning, dropping a book onto Marylin’s lap before shetook her usual seat behind Marylin and Flannery. It was a copy of A Tale of Two Cities.
    “What are you giving me this for?” Marylin asked.
    “Because it’s more important to care about your brain than to care about your hair,” Kate said. “That’s my new motto.”
    Flannery rolled her eyes. “She is so weird,” she said to Marylin in a loud whisper. “I really think we should just ignore her.”
    Marylin reached down and stuck the book in her backpack next to her nature studies binder and her math homework. “Why should we ignore her?” she whispered back without looking at Flannery. “It’s no big deal.”
    “I can hear every word you’re saying,” Kate said from behind them.
    “That’s why we should ignore her,” Flannery said.
    Marylin really didn’t think ignoring Kate was necessary, but you had to be careful aboutrejecting Flannery’s ideas. “I’ll think about it, okay?” she said, smiling her most