Free Good Graces by Lesley Kagen

pocket. “What’re ya doin’ for the parade this year?” she asks. “Are ya just gonna watch or are ya gonna find something to decorate?”
    Before I can answer, the new counselor, perky Debbie Weatherly, juts her head in between us and says, “Were you girls just talking about the Fourth?” She knows darn well we were. She’s been buzzing around us like we’re daisies and she’s a bee. Like we’re Mouseketeers and she’s Roy. “Did you hear that we’re having a party the day before the parade and there’s going to be plenty of decorating and it’s all free!”
    “Free?” Mary Lane says with a lot of suspicion, but because I’m her best friend, I can also hear the hope in her voice. I don’t know why, but her family seems poorer than the rest of ours. “Ya givin’ away bikes, too?”
    The counselor slaps the top of her legs and yips, “Free bikes? Ha . . . ha . . . ha . You slay me.”
    Peppy Debbie doesn’t know how close to the truth that is. You don’t ever want to be the one crossing Mary Lane. While I like her for her patience with my flights of imagination and her love of animals and we both watch the same television shows, the part of her that makes her Troo’s best friend is what they have in common—a love of revenge.
    Mary Lane shoots back at Debbie, “For your information, I don’t need a bike. I was just makin’ sure ya weren’t givin’ any away. I’d have to tell my butler to build another room onto the mansion to keep it in if you were.” (By butler, she means her father, whose middle name really is Butler so she uses that one a lot. And by mansion, she means the drafty old Lane house, which is on the largish side, but needs a ton of repairs.)
    Debbie’s face goes blank. I’ve seen this happen before. Mary Lane’s no-tripper stories can hypnotize you if you’re not used to them. People’s eyes go glassy, and if they have a slack jaw like Debbie does, it will go as unhinged as the Latours’ back gate.
    “You New York turd,” my sister yells from behind me. “Quit hittin’ so high over my head!”
    The tide has turned at the tetherball pole. Willie’s got my sister right where he wants her and it’s making her foot-stomping mad. It’s never a good idea for Troo to get so worked up. I’ll have to rub her back for over an hour tonight and she’ll make me sneak into the kitchen to get cookies out of the jar and will eat them on my side of the bed if I don’t do something. I step up to her side and start helping her out against big-boned Willie.
    Between hits, O’Hara shouts, “Two against one! Do something, Debbie!”
    A gasp goes through the line of kids. What I’m doing is against playground rules, but what Willie just said is worse. He knows better than to ask an outsider for help.
    Snapping out of the trance that Mary Lane’s story put her in, Debbie is about step in and referee. But when she comes marching toward Troo and me, Mary Lane takes the banana peel out of her pocket, tosses it on the ground and up, up Debbie goes. She doesn’t fall down, but her arms are flapping like mad when she stumbles back to Mary Lane and asks, “Why . . . what did you do that for?” like she can’t imagine, and really, she can’t. I don’t think she understands us Westsiders. We aren’t like the rich people who live on the opposite side of the city like she does. We can get especially hard to deal with during the summer when we get even hotter under our collars. We don’t have Lake Michigan to cool us off the way Eastsiders do.
    “I’m tellin’ ya for the last time,” Mary Lane warns Debbie. “Keep your stuck-up nose outta our business. We don’t need your help. We fight our own battles around here.”
    Willie O’Hara hollers again, “But . . . they’re cheatin’!” and smashes the tetherball with all he’s got.
    No matter how hard we’re hitting, the O’Malley sisters are just not strong enough to keep the ball from winding up to the top of the pole with