Pretty Is

Hannah and I looked at each other. It was like what she’d just said—about figuring out who we really were—was some kind of challenge. A dare.

It wasn’t something I said out loud, or even understood completely. But I could feel it. Hannah and I weren’t made in the same molds as Laura and Monica, and it was time for us to prove we were different. Time to stop acting the way everybody expected us to act.

Somehow I knew Hannah was thinking what I was thinking, and my eyes were shining with the same dare that was in her eyes. We were daring ourselves to do—what?

“Let’s do something,” I said. I jumped up from the bed, pushing my hair back restlessly. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“I don’t know.” I felt myself sinking a little. Without someone driving us, there was nowhere interesting to go. “I wish we could drive.”

We were quiet for a minute. I kicked off my sandals and clenched my toes in the carpet.

“I know!” Hannah said. “We can go somewhere right here—in the house. There’s nobody else here.”

I stared at her. I was thinking maybe she was onto something, but I didn’t know exactly what. “Where is everybody? ”

“Mom’s getting groceries, Laura’s at her cello lesson, and Jake’s off somewhere with his friends. Cool—I like never get to be in the house by myself.”

“But,” I said uncertainly, “it’s just your house. I mean, what can we do that’s, you know, special?”

I grinned back at her. Even though I didn’t think it was such a thrill to go in Laura’s room, I remembered that a couple of weeks earlier Laura had gotten mad about Hannah borrowing something without asking, and she’d started locking her door all the time. Even if she was in there with the door open, she told Hannah she had to knock first and say “May I come in?” This made Hannah mad as a wet hen, as Mama would say.

It was one of those old-fashioned keys with no jagged edges, just a smooth shaft with a handle on one end and a piece of metal like a tiny flag on the other. This made sense because Hannah’s house was really old.

“I think so. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. I just found it yesterday.” She explained that she’d found a bunch of old keys in a box in the attic, four of them just alike. She’d brought down one of them and it worked perfectly in her own door, so she figured that the same key must work for all five bedrooms. Laura must have the fifth key.

We grinned at each other, and three seconds later we were at Laura’s door. I tried the knob, and sure enough it was locked. Hannah was so excited she fumbled with the key. “Let me do it,” I said impatiently.

“Hey, it’s mine,” she answered, so I backed off. Then with a little sound like a creaky spring, the key turned, and Hannah pushed the door open.

It was dim inside; the blue-and-white-checked curtains were half closed around the still fan on the windowsill. The bed was made up without the tiniest wrinkle. There was a tall white dresser, a metal music stand, a desk with books and papers neatly stacked.

“She keeps it perfect even though nobody sees it,” I whispered, awed. I’d always thought being neat was just so you wouldn’t be embarrassed if somebody came to visit.

Hannah started opening drawers, pawing through the stuff on the desk. The clothes in the drawers were all carefully folded and stacked, even the socks, and this gave me an idea. “Let’s mix up all her socks. She won’t even look for them till fall, and then she’ll think she’s going crazy.” I started pairing a blue sock with a white one, a black with a gray, and carefully refolding them.

Hannah smiled approvingly but wasn’t really interested. I had the feeling she was after something more important. She put a Beatles disk in Laura’s CD player, an expensive one that no one but Miss Perfect herself was allowed to touch. “Yellow Submarine” filled the room.

“What if your mom comes back? Or Laura?” I worried. “We won’t hear them coming.”

“Laura’s going shopping after her lesson. And my dear mother takes forever at Food Lion, plus—aha!”

“What?” I demanded. Hannah, beside a drawer with sweaters tumbling out, was holding a book with no words on the cover, just a picture of a pink sunset reflected in a lake.

“I knew she had a diary,” Hannah said triumphantly. “I heard her telling one of her friends. This is it.”

The title page said:

Diary of Laura Jean McLaren
Shipley, North Carolina
June 1, 2003—

She had filled up about half of the book’s lined pages, all in purple ink, in neat (of course) cursive, with big loops and some extra curlicues.

“This is great,” Hannah said. “She would absolutely die if she knew I’m reading her diary.”

I had a moment’s doubt. “Well, it is kind of private. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t ...”

“You don’t have to, but I’m going to. After all the things she’s done to me?” Hannah’s eyes were fierce. “Anyway, she’ll never find out,” she said, adding wickedly, “unless I decide to tell her.”

She sat down on the bed and started turning the pages slowly, skimming. My sock project suddenly seemed dumb, and I closed the drawer. Then I just stood there for a minute, my hand on the drawer pull. Reading someone’s diary was wrong, I was pretty sure of that.

As if she had heard my thoughts, Hannah looked up at me. It was a narrow-eyed look, a sizing-up look. “You wouldn’t tell her, would you?”

I went limp. Well, I thought, I wasn’t searching for the diary, and I didn’t find it or open it. I’d just be looking over Hannah’s shoulder; she was the one who would really be reading it. I wouldn’t even touch it.