Rose was not one to get mad very often.
Especially at her best friend.
Not that she’d ever really had a best friend.
Besides Ida Scoggins.
And she had never gotten mad at Ida Scoggins.
But now she was mad at Mavis for asking Amanda to join their club yesterday. She was also mad at Amanda for saying that mean thing about Mr. Duffy.
Rose’s anger made her feel hot and heavy and dark and bad.
Yesterday Mavis had been her best friend, and now she was someone who wanted Amanda Simm to be in their Best Friends Club.
Why would Mavis want that?
It was true that Mavis didn’t know about Amanda sticking gum in Rose’s hair at church one time. On purpose. And she didn’t know that Amanda had told some kids at school that Rose used to wet the bed. Mavis didn’t know that she and Amanda used to be friends, but now Amanda and those other girls whispered to one another right in front of her.
But then, maybe Mavis didn’t really care about the club as much as Rose had thought she did.
Maybe Mavis would rather go to the mall with Amanda.
Well, that was fine. Rose would stay up here in her bedroom.
She arranged her books in alphabetical order by author.
She cut pictures of dogs out of magazines and glued them into a spiral notebook.
She drew a hummingbird on her wrist with a pen and then tried to wipe it off, leaving a big blue smudge.
Once or twice, she went to the window and pressed her face against the glass to see if Mavis was in the yard. She tried to see the vacant lot across the street, but the roof of the front porch was in the way.
She heard the steady hum of the vacuum cleaner downstairs.
Rose jumped when her mother stepped into her room and said, “For heaven’s sake, Rose, what are you doing up here?”
“Nothing.”
“Then go find something to do. Miss Jeeter needs to get in here.”
“There isn’t anything to do,” Rose said. The very instant that those words came out of her mouth, Rose wanted to take them back.
Gather them up like butterflies in a net.
But it was too late.
Now her mother was telling her all the things there were to do, starting with playing with Amanda Simm and ending with going up the street to see the new garden made by the Junior Garden Club.
Rose plodded downstairs and out the front door. When she stepped out of the air-conditioned foyer and onto the porch, the Alabama heat felt thick and heavy. She gave Pete and Larry each a pat on the head and made her way slowly to the end of the driveway.
She needed to talk to Mr. Duffy.
But how was she going to get past the vacant lot where Mavis and Amanda were probably having a Best Friends Club meeting? Or maybe they were doing gymnastics in Amanda’s front yard with some other girls from Magnolia Estates.
And even if she made it to the gatehouse without them seeing her, Mr. Duffy might not feel like talking to her. He might not say, “Hey, Rose Petal!” or, “What’s shakin’, bacon?” He might not give her butterscotch Life Savers or make up another funny story about how he lost the tip of his finger or any of the other things he always did that made her feel better no matter what.
Rose went back to the front porch and sat on the steps between Pete and Larry. She rested her chin on her knees and closed her eyes and let misery snuggle up beside her. She knew what her mother would say if she saw her sitting here.
“Stop moping, Rose,” she would say.
But Rose didn’t care.
She moped.
And while she moped, a dragonfly flitted among the flowers in the garden beside the screened porch. The neighbor’s fat, grumpy cat sauntered across the lawn. And from somewhere in the woods behind the houses across the street came the loud and mournful howl of a dog.