Free Sophie Hartley and the Facts of Life by Stephanie Greene Page B

silently.
Don’t spoil things, Mom. Not now.
    â€œOkay. I said I will, and I will.” Nora frowned.
    Say
date,
say
date, Sophie urged.
That’ll make Nora happy again.
    â€œI wish you were too,” Nora said. “Except you’d probably want to take pictures and I’d die of embarrassment.”
    Nora listened for another moment, and then her smile came back and she laughed. “Okay,” she said. “I love you, too.”
    Sophie couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Nora tell their mother she loved her. This wonderful mood couldn’t go on much longer.
    It was now or never.
    Â 
    When Nora walked past Sophie’s room before dinner as Sophie was lying on her bed reading, Sophie called, “Nora?”
    She didn’t have a clue as to what she was going to say.
    There was a short silence and then Nora appeared in her doorway. “What?” she said. She glanced at her watch. “You have exactly ten seconds. I have to go up and try on the skirt I bought for Sammy’s party.”
    Sophie shut her book and sat up. “Do you remember the movie?” she asked.
    Nora looked puzzled.
    â€œSome girls say ‘the
movie.
’”
    Nora’s face cleared and she laughed. “Oh, the
movie,
” she drawled, sounding just like Destiny. “Don’t tell me they make girls watch that in the fourth grade these days.”
    â€œNo, it’s still the fifth grade,” Sophie said. “But the fifth graders saw it today, and now all the fourth-grade girls are dying to know what it’s about.”
    â€œThe lead-up to that thing is so embarrassing.” Nora came in slowly and sat on the end of what had been her bed when they’d shared the room. “For a whole year before, everybody dreads it, but it’s not so bad when you finally see it. Well, it’s kind of weird when you’re watching it, but you get over it.” She stopped. “You don’t want me to tell you about it, do you?”
    â€œNonononono,” said Sophie.
    â€œWhew.”
    â€œIt’s just that there’s this girl, Destiny . . .” Sophie told Nora about Destiny’s meeting and Alice’s invitation and what Destiny had said about the facts of life and being immature. “Now, whenever she and Hailey walk past us, they pretend they’re crying like babies.”
    â€œShe sounds like Lisa Kellogg,” Nora said. “In the fifth grade, Lisa went around telling everyone that if she ever got a French poodle, she was going to name it Nora after my hair. She and all of her friends made barking noises when I walked by. I still can’t stand her.”
    â€œSo you understand,” Sophie said. Then, sheepishly: “Oh, and it kind of ended up that I’m holding a meeting too.”
    â€œYou’re holding a meeting when you’re completely clueless?” Nora said. “I don’t know how you get yourself into these things.”
    â€œI don’t know either,” Sophie said. “But there are going to be about ten girls and they’ll all be looking at me and I don’t know what to tell them. All I need are a few things I can say. Most girls my age don’t want to know
every
thing. At least, the girls coming to my meeting don’t. They just want to know a tiny bit. Two key words or something. That’s all I need.”
    Thad popped his head in the door and looked interested. “Two key words about what?” he said, with his uncanny older-brother knack of knowing exactly when his sisters didn’t want him around.
    â€œDon’t say anything,” Sophie begged Nora.
    â€œPoor Sophie,” Nora told him. “The fifth-grade girls went to see that movie today that we were all forced to watch. Don’t you remember? The one about ‘the beauty of human development,’ as they called it.” Nora snorted. “Who do they think they’re