Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

It was the last Sunday in August, and they had not seen each other for almost a month. Kat’s family had gone to Rehoboth, while Perri’s folks had taken her to New York City, where, as she kept telling them, she saw five plays in seven days. Josie hadn’t gone anywhere, except to a dreary day camp. Her parents had spoken of a long weekend in West Virginia, but something had fallen through, Josie wasn’t quite sure what, and her parents had bought her a trampoline instead, much to the neighbors’ disgust. “They’re not safe, you know,” Mrs. Patterson told Josie’s mother. “About the only more dangerous thing you can have on your property is a pool.” Josie’s mother just shrugged and said Mrs. Patterson’s children didn’t have to play on it.

In mid-August, Josie’s grandparents had arrived from Chicago, and that was fun, although their foreignness had embarrassed Josie when they went to places like the mall or Moxley’s ice cream. She didn’t know what was worse, her grandmother’s sari or her bindi . Still, it was nice to have such a rapt audience for her trampoline tricks, although Grammy Patel seemed a little shocked by some of the things Josie did. “Is it safe? Is it nice ?” she had asked Josie’s mom, who had assured her that Josie was trained to do these amazing things and no one cared if an eleven-year-old girl’s limbs were exposed. Josie had flown into the summer sky, tucking and turning and twisting, and her grandparents had clapped their cautious, bewildered approval.

But now, with school beginning, Kat and Perri were finally back. In acknowledgment of the reunion’s importance, Josie’s mother had provided cupcakes-extremely fancy ones, from Bonaparte’s in the city-and helped Josie pack them in a wicker basket lined with a napkin. There were six cupcakes in all: two with pink frosting, two with white, two with orange. The white-frosted ones had devil’s food bases, while the others were plain vanilla cake.

“Everyone should choose one first,” Josie said. “And then we’ll go in reverse order to choose the second, so it’s fair.”

“It’s not fair to the one in the middle,” Perri objected. “The one in the middle always goes second, while the other two both get to go first at least once.”

“But my way, if there’s one kind you really want, you’ll get it. And the middle person has a choice between the last two, while the one who goes last has to take what’s left.”

“But what if the last two are the same kind? That’s not a real choice.”

“ I’ll go second,” Kat said, ending the disagreement, as she so often did.

Perri nodded, picking a devil’s food with white icing. Josie wanted to point out that Kat’s going second did not mean Perri necessarily got to go first, but she had provided the cupcakes, so she should act as the hostess. Her mother was big on those kinds of manners.

Kat took an orange one. Josie picked a devil’s food, then a pink, leaving a pink and an orange. Kat began to reach for the pink one, but after a quick glance at Perri, whose gaze was fixed on the pink with an almost unsettling ferocity, Kat chose the remaining orange instead.

“I didn’t know you liked orange that much,” Josie said. “Not enough to pick it twice.”

Kat shrugged, glancing sideways at Perri, as if seeking her permission for something. Perri was already licking the pink frosting from the top of her cake, so there was no going back, or trading.

“Your mother should have gotten two kinds, not three,” Perri said. “Then we all would have had the same.”

At least my mother buys cupcakes, Josie wanted to say. Perri’s mother was big on healthy foods-fruit, yogurt, granola bars, and not even the good ones but dry, dusty things that stuck in the throat.

But Josie did not want to risk ruining this moment of reunion and celebration. She lifted her cupcake as if it were a goblet, the kind of gesture that Perri usually thought to make. “A toast! A toast to…Kat not having to go to Deerfield!”

“To Kat!” Perri echoed. “To middle school! To Seth Raskin!”

They giggled at that. Seth Raskin was now the best-looking boy in their grade. Perhaps he had always been, but that information had begun to interest them only in the past year. They were all too aware that girls in middle school, the advanced ones, went with boys. And while they swore to each other that this was not something they wanted to do, if one were to have a boyfriend, Seth Raskin would be the one to have.

“To me!” Kat said, raising her orange-topped cupcake, her laugh spilling out.

“No, like this,” Perri said, changing the game, taking charge. She took her second cupcake, the devil’s food one, and smashed it into her face, so her nose was covered with white icing. Josie did the same thing with her white-frosted cupcake. Kat, however, hesitated.

“Drink, knave!” Perri commanded. “Drink deep from your cup…cake.”

This made Josie laugh so hard that she had to roll on the ground, pine needles gathering in her hair and sticking to the frosting on her face.

“You look like a cat,” Perri howled, and Josie laughed harder, arranging the pine needles so they did, indeed, resemble whiskers.

“ I’m Kat,” Kat said, and she scooped up some pine needles, but she couldn’t make whiskers because she still hadn’t smashed her cupcake in her face. Josie’s mother was always saying that Kat was dignified. Josie wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but she thought it had something to do with how Kat was less prone to silliness than Josie and Perri were. Kat was, however, a wonderful audience for their antics, egging them on. Perri tried to say funnier things, while Josie did cartwheels and climbed trees, all for the honor of hearing Kat’s giggle.

“Drink, my lord,” Perri said, her hand closing over Kat’s and pushing the cupcake up toward her face. “Drink the mead of Hammond Springs Middle School, or you’ll have to go to Deer-field.”

Kat hesitated, and Perri did it for her, not only pushing the cake into her face but giving it a little twist. Kat’s eyes opened wide, and she looked for a moment as if she might cry. Instead she laughed, using her fingers to wipe the frosting from her face. Yet it was a softer, more controlled version of her usual laugh, and the girls, in a swift shift of mood not uncommon to them, were suddenly quiet and reflective.

“We get our own lockers in middle school,” Kat said. “With combinations. I’m worried I’m going to forget mine.”

“We could share our combinations,” Perri said. “And then if one of us forgets, we’ll be okay.”

“We might not be in all the same classes,” Kat said. “Or even have the same lunch hour.”

“Oh?” Perri said. “Can’t your dad fix that, too?”

If there was a hint of challenge in Perri’s voice, Kat chose not to hear it. “No,” she said. “I don’t think my dad would worry about that, as long as I’m in Hammond Springs. Deerfield may be new, but Hammond Springs has the proven teachers, my dad says. He says Deerfield was built for newcomers.”

“If Deerfield had been the good school, would your dad have worked it out so Josie and I went there?”

“Sure,” Kat said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But he would have.”

I was a newcomer, Josie thought. What was wrong with being a newcomer? But that was three years ago. Mr. Hartigan must mean the people in the newer developments, the ones that had created the need for Deerfield. Mr. Hartigan hated these places, so much larger and grander than the houses the Hartigan Group had built. Kat’s grandfather had sold the business this year, and Mr. Hartigan had started his own company, renovating old buildings in the city. He was tired of showing people how to live, he told the other adults. He was going to settle for helping them work and shop.