To The Power Of Three

Third grade
7

Josie Patel, assigned to the front row because she was the smallest student in Mrs. Groves’s third-grade class, steeled herself not to look back as Seth Raskin and Chip Vasilarakis chose teams for kickball. If she swiveled her head the tiniest bit, it would be apparent that she cared, and nonchalance was the only thing Josie had going for her on that first day at Meeker Creek Elementary School.

As each pick went by and she remained unchosen, she reminded herself that she was a new girl, the only new girl in a room where everyone else seemed to be old friends. She was a short, skinny new girl with what she was just beginning to suspect was a disastrous haircut-boyishly short, an attempt to tame her cowlicky curls. Clearly she was going to be the last or next to last called. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter, that she wouldn’t always be new, judged solely by her size and her strangeness and her stupid hair. Still, it hurt. She felt odd-looking, with her dark skin and darker hair. Her old school, back in Baltimore, had been so small that differences hadn’t mattered as much. Here she was the only dark-skinned girl. There was an African-American boy and three girls who were what Josie thought of as real Asians-Chinese and Japanese, with pretty, pretty hair, straight and shiny-but no one who looked like Josie.

“What are you?” a ghostly pale redheaded girl had asked her that morning before the bell rang.

“American,” Josie said, although she knew what the girl was trying to determine.

“I mean your parents. Are they from Mexico or someplace like that?”

“They’re American.”

“Are you adopted? You look like Minetta, in Mrs. Flippo’s class. She had to fly here on a plane from India when she was a little baby, and the plane ride was, like, a whole day. She flew through seven time zones.”

“My grandparents’ parents were from India,” Josie admitted. “But my dad was born in Chicago.”

“So you’re not adopted.”

“No.”

“Oh.” The redheaded girl’s tone suggested this was a failing on Josie’s part. She had a flat, thin face with watery blue eyes that looked even smaller behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m adopted.”

The redheaded girl abandoned her, going to whisper with a dark-haired girl from another class. That was okay. Josie didn’t want to be friends with them anyway. The redheaded girl was funny-looking, and her friend had a sneaky look. She wouldn’t settle for them. The redheaded girl was Seth Raskin’s last pick, leaving Josie for Chip, who made a face and said, “Her, I guess.”

Given the last slot for at-bats, Josie was worried she wouldn’t get a turn before recess ended. What if she never got a turn? What if the game started over from the beginning, every day, and she was always at the end of the line, and the bell rang just as she approached the plate? At least being last gave her time to study Seth’s fast, underhanded rolling style. The ball was the standard red rubber one, lighter than a soccer ball, but it gathered a stinging, intimidating force when kicked hard enough. Josie could tell which kids had played soccer by the way they approached the ball, where they placed their toes.

When her team was sent to the field, she was sent to far, far right, the loser’s spot.

Few of the girls were any good. One on Seth’s team was especially bad, her feeble kick sending the ball only a few feet from home plate. Tagged out at first, she made an elaborate curtsy, turning her incompetence into comedy. The other students seemed to like her, Josie noted, despite the fact that she made the last out, giving Josie’s team another turn. Fourth in line now, she prayed, literally prayed, that she would get up to the plate before the end of the inning.

She did, with runners on first and second, one out. “I could take your turn,” Chip offered. “I mean, if you don’t feel like it.”

“I feel like it,” Josie said.

She let the first ball roll by, paying no attention to the groans behind her. It had too much spin. The second pitch came flat and direct, and she booted it into right field, straight at the redheaded girl, who didn’t even try to catch it, just covered her face with her hands and squealed as the ball rolled away, the other outfielders chasing it. “Binnie!” her teammates yelled, in a way that made it clear they did not find her antics humorous. Josie scampered home. “Hey, she’s good,” Seth said accusingly, as if Chip had tricked him by not choosing her until last.

“I played soccer in the city,” she panted out. “My coach wanted me to be on a travel team, but my mom works and can’t do all that driving.”

It was a promising start. Yet being athletic was not enough to win Josie friends, not at first. All it gave her was some breathing room those first few weeks, as the girls studied her and she studied them back, trying to figure out where she might fit.

The boys would have been happy for her company, for Josie was not only agile but fearless, doing tricks on the monkey bars that few other third-graders dared. But Josie had already decided that she did not want to be one of those girls who have boys for friends. Her best friend back in Baltimore, Parson, had been a boy, and the grown-ups had been stupid about it, asking when they were going to get married. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She preferred a best friend, but all the girls in Mrs. Groves’s class already came in pairs. And while some of the girls began to court her-offering her stickers and pogs, which were very big then, inviting her to sit with them at lunch-the two she liked best didn’t seem to notice her at all.

Perri Kahn-the thin girl from the kickball game, the one who had curtsied-and Kat Hartigan had a calm, quiet way about them, as if they were visiting the third grade from some far more desirable place. They were not the prettiest or most fashionable girls. They were not mean or bossy, although Perri’s words were often sharp, shooting down the dumber kids with sharp one-liners. (Lifted from television, Josie would come to find out, but that was allowed. It was okay to copy a television program, as long as you thought of it first. Copying the copier was what was unforgivable.) Kat, who wore her blond hair in fat pigtails, was super nice to everyone and therefore forgiven for her consistent A’s, about which she was borderline apologetic. “Hey,” she said to everyone, even Josie, and it made Josie happy in a way that she could never have explained, getting her own personal “Hey” from Kat Hartigan.

Finally, the week after Halloween, a wonderful thing happened. Strep throat made its way through Meeker Creek Elementary, and Perri was out of school for an entire week. Well, it wasn’t wonderful that Perri was sick. But her absence gave Josie a chance to slide into the empty seat opposite Kat during lunch, something that no one else had thought to do.

“Hey,” Kat said, and Josie thought she detected a note of happy surprise in Kat’s usual greeting, as if she had been nervous about being alone.

“Hey.” Josie, who had fantasized about a day when Kat Hartigan might want to talk to her, realized she had not planned on anything to say next. “Do you always wear your hair in braids?”

Kat touched one of her fat plaits, so blond it was almost white. “My mom says I have to wear it this way if I want to keep it long. Otherwise it’s too much trouble, and she says I’ll have to get it all cut off.”

“My mom made the barber give me this cut because my hair’s so curly, but I’m going to grow it back out. It’s already grown two inches since school started.” Josie was sure of this, for she pulled a lock from her forehead every night and measured it with the purple ruler from her pencil case.

“I wish I had curly hair.”

“It tangles even worse than straight hair. Even with cream rinse, it tangles.”

Another silence fell, but it was more companionable, filled with chewing and discreet inspection of each other’s lunches. Kat had Lunchables, which were new at the time and the height of coolness. Josie had a turkey sandwich topped with a special kind of homemade relish. Her father and mother took their lunches to work, and they were firm believers that thrift should be balanced with small indulgences. So Josie’s sandwich was fresh-roasted turkey on bakery bread from Graul’s, her dessert a collection of iced petit fours. Without being asked, Josie pushed two toward Kat, who seemed delighted by this tribute, yet not particularly surprised.

“Where did you live? Before here?”

“ Baltimore. In the city.”

“That’s where my dad grew up, but I’ve always lived in Glendale.”

“Cool,” Josie said, hoping it was the right thing to say. It must have been, because Kat then asked, “Do you want to come over to my house?”

“I have a sitter. My mom works. And I have gymnastics on Tuesdays, down at Gerstung.” Gerstung was a serious gym, the kind whose students sometimes went on to the Olympics, and Josie’s mom always said she should aim high.

“I have horseback riding lessons on Wednesdays. What about Thursday? If you asked, could you come over on Thursday?”

Josie and Kat, raised in an era where the simplest afterschool playdate required planning and permission, both understood the negotiation that had to be completed before Josie could visit Kat’s home. Josie’s mom would have to call Kat’s mom, to make sure that Kat really could bring a friend home from school and that Kat’s mom or some other adult would be there. Josie’s mom would pick her up on her way home from work, while the sitter stayed with Josie’s new baby brother, Matt. The two mothers worked this out by telephone that very evening.

Josie, who watched worriedly as this conversation took place, saw a strange look pass over her mom’s face during the call.

“You didn’t tell me,” she said after hanging up, “that Kat was Katarina Hartigan.”

“Yes I did, I absolutely did, I told you that her full name was Katarina but everyone calls her Kat.” Josie was frantic at the idea that such a trivial matter could deny her this afterschool date.

“Don’t get so upset, Josie. I just meant…she’s a Hartigan. Her grandfather started Glendale. He built our house.”

“Really?” Josie had a vision of Kat and her family in hard hats, pushing wheelbarrows, smoothing concrete between layers of bricks as if icing a multitiered cake. In Josie’s mind the Hartigans were all blond and quite small, just like her-helpful, puttering elves from a fairy tale. She imagined Kat on a ladder, hammering up shutters.

Given that the Hartigans owned Glendale, at least in Josie’s mind, she assumed their house would be the biggest and grandest, nicer than even the best houses her parents had inspected before moving here. But the house to which Mrs. Hartigan drove them on Thursday afternoon was old and strange, a lumpy stone structure that looked like a place you’d go on a field trip. The house was odd inside, too, with tiny rooms, low ceilings, rough plaster walls, and wooden floorboards that creaked underfoot. The kitchen, into which they entered from a side door-the Hartigans had no garage, just a circular driveway-was the only room of any size, and it felt crowded, for it was trying to fill the role of three rooms-kitchen, dining room, den.

Yet the things inside the Hartigan house were notable-a huge television set, a refrigerator with glass doors, a bright red stove.

“Aga,” Mrs. Hartigan said when she saw Josie staring at it, and Josie nodded as if she understood. Mrs. Hartigan had white-blond hair like Kat’s, only she wore it loose, almost to the middle of her back. She dressed in what Josie thought of as a Gypsy-ish way-a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and a gauzy, almost transparent skirt worn over velvet leggings. She gave the girls a snack-cranberry juice and Fruit Roll-Ups-and sent them to the family room to amuse themselves. Here, unlike the other homes in Glendale, the family room was not off the kitchen but in a separate room on the second floor. Kat had plenty of toys that were new to Josie, including a small chest of dress-up clothes.

The girls arrayed themselves in Mrs. Hartigan’s cast-off dresses and shoes.

“What should we be?” Kat asked Josie.

“Be?”

“Perri usually makes up a story.”

“Oh.” Josie was not very good at making things up, but Kat seemed so sure she could that she felt obligated to try. “We could be…lion tamers.”

“We’re lion tamers?” Kat indicated her dress, a long peach-colored gown that she said her mother had worn in a wedding.

“Lady lion tamers. And models.”

Josie thought Kat would laugh at this unlikely idea, but she seemed delighted. “We’re modeling clothes when a lion gets loose, and they call us to come get it.”

“But we don’t use whips. We…we talk to the lions and ask them what they want. And they say they want pizza.”

“I love pizza,” Kat said. “Do you go to Fortunato’s?”

Josie shook her head. “No, my mom and dad make their own, from scratch. But we get Domino’s sometimes.”

“Fortunato’s is in the city. My dad orders the pizzas half baked and brings them home and puts them in the oven to finish them, and it’s like having delivery, only it’s really hot. No one delivers out here. No one good. We have them every Friday night. Do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow night?”

Josie did but knew that this, too, would have to be negotiated. Her mother was reluctant at first, saying it wasn’t polite to wear out one’s welcome. But her father saw how much she wanted to return and agreed to come home early, if Mrs. Patel would run over and pick Josie up when the playdate was over. Yet when Mrs. Patel came to collect Josie Friday night, she didn’t hurry Josie out to the car but stayed for the glass of wine that Mr. and Mrs. Hartigan offered, oohing and ahing over the Hartigans’ house.

“It’s great that you kept this old farmhouse the way that it is,” she told Mr. Hartigan. “It’s a gem.”

Mr. Hartigan, a dark-haired man with glasses, ducked his head and nodded. “It’s the original Meeker homestead, goes back to the early eighteenth century, maybe the late seventeenth.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “I can’t believe I married into Hartigan Builders and I have to live in this relic.”

“What’s a relic?” Josie asked Kat.

“Something old,” Kat said. “Old but nice.”

“Something old,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “Dale’s family moved out here when the boys were in high school, and he’s still sentimental about it, even though the family only lived here a few months before taking over one of the model homes.”

Josie wasn’t sure what “sentimental” was, but Mrs. Hartigan made it sound like a very bad thing indeed.

“It’s a historic landmark,” Mr. Hartigan said. “Where do you live, Mrs.-”

“Susie,” Josie’s mother supplied when she realized he was fumbling for her name. “We’re in Glendale Meadows.”

“That was my father’s first development. I love those houses-they’re so simple and efficient.”

“And tacky,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “Oh, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean-It’s just that Thornton ’s early stuff seems a little dated to me. All that redwood and rectangles. Very seventies.”

“We keep telling ourselves they’ll be historic landmarks by the time our children are grown,” Mrs. Patel said, laughing. “But we were willing to live in a mobile home if that’s what it took to get into this school district.”

“Glendale Meadows is what Glendale was supposed to be,” Mr. Hartigan said. “Affordable, energy-smart houses for middle-class families. The original vision for Glendale included apartments and even Section 8 housing. But my father’s partners cared only for maximizing profits. They talked a good game, but once they got the public water and sewers, they abandoned the idea of mixed-income housing.”

“Honey, your dad did the right thing. I mean, it was all very utopian and sweet, but people leave the city to get away from poor people. You don’t want to live next door to people with cars up on blocks and old appliances in the backyard. The farmers out here are bad enough.”

“Can we take our dessert to the family room?” Kat asked, and her parents nodded. The girls carried their bowls of ice cream to the television set, leaving the adults with their wine and boring conversation.

“This tastes funny,” Josie said, forgetting that it wasn’t good manners for a guest to comment on food.

“Oh, it’s low-fat, sugar-free,” Kat said. “My mom says I need to watch what I eat.”

Perri’s strep was so bad that she stayed out of school another week. Later Josie would come to learn that Perri never got sick the way other people did, the two-or three-day kind of way. Her colds bloomed into pneumonia, her sprained ankles ended up being borderline fractures. So Kat was Josie’s for another week. They ate lunch together every day and were given permission to make another playdate, even though the Patels had not yet been able to reciprocate, as Josie’s mom kept insisting they must.

Seth and Chip noticed that the two girls were spending time together and decided to taunt them. They would sing to the girls, during lunch and recess:

Other students picked it up and sang along. It took all Josie’s concentration not to break down in tears. It wasn’t so bad, being called short. Certainly she had heard much worse-monkey-face, for example. Her real fear was that Kat would stop doing things with her, rather than risk hearing that song over and over. But Kat merely shook her head and laughed. “I’m not fat,” she said. “Just big-boned, my mom says.” She told Seth to stop. And the strange thing was-he did. Josie was beginning to realize that everyone craved Kat’s approval. Was it because her grandfather had built all their houses? Because she got straight A’s? But none of this was enough to explain the effect that Kat had on people.

Perri came back to school in mid-November. Pale, even thinner than before, she had dark shadows beneath her blue eyes that made her look angry and pretty at the same time. Perri was not pink-and-white beautiful like Kat, but there was something about her face, the eyes in particular, that made people want to look at her. Josie thought she resembled an old-fashioned girl, perhaps someone from Puritan times, which they were studying just then in preparation for Thanksgiving. The first day Perri was back, Josie waited nervously in the cafeteria to see if Kat would drop her now, if Perri would insist on a return to their closed-off twosome, but Perri accepted Kat’s decision that Josie should be their friend.

“Three is an excellent number,” Perri said. “All the best books are about groups of three. Nancy Drew has two friends. And my mom read me these books while I was sick, about three girls in Minnesota in the olden days, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. Betsy wants to be a writer, and she’s kind of the leader, so I guess I’m Betsy.”

“Am I Tacy or Tib?” Kat asked eagerly.

“Tacy, because she has the prettiest hair.” Perri paused. “And because Betsy and Tacy were friends first.”

Perri wasn’t being mean, only accurate, Josie thought. She and Kat had been friends first.

“So Josie is Tib.”

“Yes. Although Tib had blond hair. They were always forming clubs, too. Do you want to start a club?”

“Sure,” Kat said.

“Sure,” Josie echoed.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. They had to go to the playground now, although Perri was excused because of her recent illness. She was allowed to stay inside and read, with a teacher’s supervision. Josie would have been miserable under such circumstances, but Perri was clearly delighted for a chance to skip recess.

“We’ll decide on the club Thursday,” Perri whispered. “At Kat’s house.”

Thursday afternoon was warm and bright, one of November’s lingering surprises, and the three girls left the Hartigans’ farmhouse with a basket of Fruit Roll-Ups and string cheese packed by Kat’s mom. Under the rules they could not cross major streets without a grown-up. This meant they could not go north, toward Old Town Road, the major road that wove through much of Glendale. And the cul-de-sacs that lay to the east and south were of little interest, although one family did have a basketball hoop.

However, there was a wooded area behind the Hartigan farmhouse, and there were no rules forbidding them access to this, although Kat said they were supposed to watch for deer ticks in the summer. With the trees bare, they felt they had to walk as far as possible for privacy, all the way to the creek for which their school had been named. But no one had said they couldn’t cross the creek, Perri pointed out, so they did, jumping from rock to rock. On one flat but mossy stone, Kat slipped a little, so her leg went into the water up to her shin. Kat laughed, but her fall seemed to make Perri nervous, and she took forever to cross. Only Josie crossed quickly and dryly, leaping with her usual fearless grace.

Once across the creek, they found a place where someone had held a campfire a long, long time ago. “Teenagers,” Perri said. “They probably did drugs here.” Kat and Josie nodded solemnly, having heard many stories about teenagers and the strange things they did. Felled trees formed a ring of benches, and Perri took a seat on one of these, indicating that Kat and Josie should do the same.

“It smells funny here,” Josie said. “Like poo.”

“The Snyders’ farm is over there,” Perri said. “Binnie Snyder smells like poo. Haven’t you noticed?”

Binnie was the redheaded girl who had wanted Josie to be adopted, the last-chosen girl now that everyone knew what a good athlete Josie was. But Josie didn’t remember that she smelled any way in particular.

“Her father is scary,” Kat said. “He comes after people with a shotgun if they put even a foot on his property. So we have to be careful and not walk too far.”

“That never happened,” Perri said. “That’s a made-up story.”

“It did. He chased my father off.”

“My dad says that’s because your dad keeps trying to buy the Snyder farm and he doesn’t want to sell.”

It was the first time that Josie had seen any kind of disagreement between Perri and Kat, and she found it fascinating and frightening at the same time.

“Well,” Kat said at last, “wanting to buy something isn’t a reason for someone to chase you with a gun. All you have to do is say no. “

They all could see the logic in that.

“I think,” Perri said, “that our club should be named after the three of us, but it should be, like, a code. So we can talk about it but no one knows we’re talking about it. We should take two letters from each of our names, so it sounds like an Indian tribe. So we’ll be…the Pe-ka-jos.”

Kat nodded, but Josie said, “Pe-ka-jos? That sounds like those little dogs, the ones with the smushed noses. What about Ka-jope?” She thought she was being clever, not trying to put her own name first.

“Because that will look funny, written down. Besides, Pekajo was a real tribe that lived in Maryland a long, long time ago. We learned about them in social studies before you came.”

Kat looked puzzled, as if trying to recall this lesson. Josie wasn’t fooled, though. She may not have been at Glendale, but she had been in Maryland, and her old school was a good one, more advanced than Meeker Creek.

“Well, if we name ourselves for a real tribe, then it’s not a secret code. It’s just…dumb.”

“Yours is dumb, too. It doesn’t sound like a tribe at all.”

They sat in silence, glaring at each other. Finally Kat spoke.

“What about Ka-pe-jos? It sounds like Navajo, sort of, if you pronounce the j like an h.”

Perri and Josie nodded, pleased with the compromise.

“Now we take a vow.” Perri began, “We, the founding tribal council of the Ka-pe-jos…”

Kat held her right arm straight in front of her, palm down, and Josie followed.

“Not like that,” Perri said. “You look like Nazis.” She put her right hand over her heart. “We, the founding tribal council-”

“But now it’s just like the Pledge of Allegiance,” Kat pointed out.

Perri adjusted her arm yet again, folding her hands as if she were praying. But she shook off that posture before the others could say anything. “We should join hands and stand in a circle.”

Kat had to suppress a small giggle, earning a frown from Perri, but Josie had no problem feeling serious and grave.

“We, the founding tribal council of the Ka-pe-jo tribe, pledge to…um, be good friends and warriors, taking care of one another as best we can. We will do good deeds in the world when possible. All for one and one for all.”

“Isn’t that the Three Musketeers?” A new version of the film had just been released on video, one with all of Josie’s favorite actors.

“So?”

Josie had no real objection. “Just saying.”

“All for one and one for all. This is our vow.”

“This is our vow,” Kat and Josie repeated in unison.

Dry leaves rustled and cracked. The girls turned and saw two girls, redheaded Binnie Snyder and the dark-haired second-grader who often trailed her on the playground. The two clutched sheaves of autumn leaves to their chests. They looked embarrassed, which Josie thought odd. Kat, Perri, and Josie were the ones who had been caught holding hands, reciting vows. Binnie and Eve were just two girls in the woods, gathering leaves. But they turned and ran.

“They’re doing the extra-credit project,” Perri said, her tone outraged. “Binnie is such a suck-up. She’s always competing to be first in class.”

“Well, she’s not,” Kat said in her mild, reasonable way. “She wasn’t even chosen for gifted-and-talented. She’s only good in math.” Binnie could multiply huge numbers in her head, in fact, but she made terrible faces while she did it.

“But they were spying on us. They’ll tell our secrets. We have to make sure they don’t.”

“How do you do that?” Josie asked, even as Kat nodded.

“You’ll see,” Perri said.

In school the next day, Perri passed a note to Kat, who sat between Seth and Chip. She smiled, refusing to show it to the now curious boys. Yet she left the folded bit of paper on her desk when she went up to the board to do her seven-times table. Chip swiped it, giving a short bark of a laugh, then slipped it to Seth as soon as Mrs. Groves stopped looking at them.

By the end of the week, everyone at Meeker Creek Elementary knew that Binnie Snyder and Eve Muhly had been pretending to be bears in the woods and had gone to the bathroom outside, wiping themselves with leaves. Some said they even had rashes on their bottoms, because they had foolishly used poison oak or sumac. Binnie insisted that it was Kat and Perri and the new girl who had been acting queer in the woods, holding hands and chanting, but it sounded weak, compared to what everyone now knew, or thought they knew, about Binnie and Eve.

“Was it wrong, what we did?” Josie asked Perri and Kat.

“They shouldn’t have been spying,” Perri said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Kat said.