I was pretty sure I was the only eighth-grader who had this problem, but only Kate knew I was still waiting. Piper always assumed that I had mine. She even once asked me for a pad because she forgot hers at home. Luckily, I always keep them with me, just in case. But before I could get too deep into MG’s question or think much about my situation, I read an instruction in bold type on the title page of the file:

  STOP. Do NOT answer any client’s question until you have read the PLS Rule Book.

  I leafed through my thick bundle of mail and fished out a slim gray book. It looked used, like something you’d find in your grandma’s attic. But finally, here were the rules. They began on the first inside page.

  Failure to read and follow each of these rules will result in immediate dismissal!

  At this point, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be in the Pink Locker Society, and this was telling me how easy it would be to get kicked out. Still, the handbook was a happy discovery. Here’s what the handbook said on page four:

  Enter the PLS office only during study hall—five minutes after the final bell.

  Give high-quality advice. Don’t guess. Learn and share your knowledge.

  The PLS is a secret organization. Do not talk about your work or give the pink locker combination to anyone under any circumstances.

  The PLS is not a clique. To honor our history of grace and kindness, be a friend to all.

  If you get in a jam, issue a PLS-SOS.

  I understood some of the rules completely, but others left me completely clueless. What on earth was a PLS-SOS? If it meant a desperate plea for help, I was ready to ask for one right now—even before the school bus I was riding on stopped at my street. At that moment, the bus did stop. We were at the entrance to Forrest’s neighborhood. I looked up to lovingly follow the back of his head down the aisle and down the bus stairs. It was then that he turned around in his seat, found me three rows back, and said, “Hey” before turning to leave. This particular hey from Forrest, combined with the extra effort involved in turning around, was practically an aloha.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a quick or witty response. He just caught me so off guard. I guess my eyes were focused on the front of the bus, watching him leave, so I called out, “Watch your step!” That’s right. Instead of saying something cool or funny, I yelled out what it says on that big sign right next to the bus driver. I immediately ducked my head and wished I could hide completely, like a turtle in its shell.

  You might guess I spent all that loooooong weekend thinking about the PLS and talking about it with my friends. But you would be wrong. I spent most of the weekend thinking about what (actually, who) I usually think about most—Forrest Charles McCann. Here’s the deal: Forrest is not my boyfriend. He never was my boyfriend, and he shows no signs of wanting to be my boyfriend. In fact, one big sign that he does not want to be my boyfriend is his very real girlfriend, Taylor Mayweather.

  Yes, that Taylor.

  The one who embarrasses people as, like, her hobby. Still, my crush on Forrest runs deep and feels important. These feelings started small way back when Forrest’s family and my family used to vacation together. My heart always tells me this will go somewhere, even if it’s taking the long way. I liked dwelling on the rumor that Taylor was completely flirting with this guy Gabe, who was nice and geeky-smart. Some people said she was two-timing Forrest. I could only hope it was true and that he would eventually break up with her.

  Kate doubted this would happen. She also was not as impressed with Forrest’s hey to me on the bus.

  “You fall into a mysterious office in our school, then find out you’re part of a secret society,” she said. “And you still want to talk about what Forrest might have meant when he said hey?”

  Easy for Kate to say. She’s had the same boyfriend (princely Paul) since fifth grade. Not so for me. And anyway, this was a hey worth analyzing. It seemed logical to me that the PLS—remarkable as it was—couldn’t push Forrest from my daydreams. No matter what I was thinking about, most roads led back to Forrest. I could bring almost any subject back to him.

  Example: A toothpaste commercial with a hot guy in it. The Forrest Connection? He once told me he brushes his teeth with warm water. Weird!

  Example: Someone says our football team is supposed to be really good this year. The Forrest Connection? Easy! Forrest is on the football team.

  Example: Mom says we’re going to Cedar Park Shopping Plaza. The FC? We will be driving right by Forrest’s house. Hopefully, he’ll be out front mowing the lawn.

  Example: I’ve just been selected by a secret society that meets behind pink locker doors. The FC? What if he sees me climbing inside? Or, on the bright side, maybe I could sneak him into the PLS office, just for a quick peek.

  That last one is sooooo tempting, because when you are in love with an eighth-grade boy, you really need to come up with things to talk about. Maybe you already know that eighth-grade boys really don’t talk that much. Oh, sure, you hear them laughing and talking with their friends or sometimes with their coaches. But just put one of them alone with one girl (especially a nervous one who likes him). If, on top of your nerves, you don’t have a single thing to talk about, the silence will bruise your heart and leave you with nothing—absolutely nothing—to analyze later.

  I heard that kind of silence the last time Forrest and I were alone together. We were on the seventh-grade ski trip and accidentally ended up sharing the same chairlift. The pairing was a shock, but I tried to recover quickly and take advantage of our time together. It went about as well as the “Watch your step!” catastrophe on the bus.

  Why is it OK for girls and boys to be friends until third grade, and then everything gets totally weird? That was the year when people started saying that Forrest and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, which we were not. Not really. We were just friends who could play knock out on the basketball court at recess, or we’d sometimes play desktop football with one of those folded-up triangles of notebook paper. Maybe he got tired of answering the boyfriend-girlfriend rumors, because he stopped hanging around me and started hanging out only with the boys. Even when he came to our house, he’d hang out with the grown-ups or with his younger brother. And then came Taylor.

  So it had been years since we’d really talked when the ski lift brought us together. It was a long ride up a steep mountain on a cold, sun-splashed morning. I started slowly, asking him how he was.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I love to ski, don’t you?”

  “It’s cool,” he said.

  “Your skis are really nice.”

  “They’re rentals,” he said.

  “My mom wanted me to wear a helmet today, but I said no.”

  “You should,” he said, knocking the hard plastic of the helmet on his own head.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want it to squish my hair, because then it gets all flat and stuff.”

  To that, Forrest had nothing to say. What could he say, really? What does a guy know about helmet hair? We spent the rest of the ride in silence, as I searched the landscape desperately for something to talk about. But there was nothing to say about the tops of trees or the few clouds in the sky. We climbed higher and I could feel the temperature fall. The soft snow cushioned what little sound there was from other skiers and snowboarders below. My ears popped. Then the lift stopped, as it sometimes does when a little kid can’t get on or someone drops a pole. We bobbed together on the thick cable. The quiet hung there with us, and I was sure that I was blowing my one chance with Forrest. I thought about what Kate and Piper would do in the same situation.

  Kate was good at telling stories, and she would have reminded Forrest of something funny that happened when we were younger. There were tons of possibilities. The Halloween in kindergarten when our moms made us dress as a bride and groom. The time we had a wiener roast while camping and ate hotdogs that were charred black on the outside and icy in the center. (We called them “hotdogsicles.”) I actually had plenty of material, plenty of topics. There were field trips and mean teachers and so many other things we had seen together over the years. But not a single one of them came to mind on that ski lift.

  As for Piper, well, you know what she would have done in my place. She would have told him that she liked him, flat out. And then she would have looked at him through her long eyelashes. He would have melted, as most guys do when Piper flirts with them. But me, I couldn’t even glance in his direction, let alone attempt that chin-down, gaze-up, bat eyelashes thing Piper does. I refocused my energies on what I’d say when we hopped off the lift at the top. I sooooooo wanted to say something like “Have a great run” or “See you at the bottom.” But I ended up saying nothing. Why? Because at the top of the hill, someone stopped me dead in my tracks. She was waiting for Forrest, her fur-trimmed hood the perfect frame for her face flushed pink with cold. It was Taylor Mayweather.

  Our plan for Monday was this: We would have our own pre-meeting, without Bet, at lunch, giving us time to collect our thoughts before our real meeting at 1:35. The girls had given me tips and even had me practice the pink locker combination that morning. At lunch, I sat down with my pizza and milk and was ready to talk about the PLS. Here’s what I wanted to go over:

  None of us has an assigned room for study hall. Discuss the potential negatives, such as getting caught and having less time to do homework.

  What happens if we are in the secret office during a fire drill?

  Ask the group: Can I show someone (like, say, Forrest McCann) the PLS office as long as I don’t give out the combination or “discuss our work,” as prohibited in rule three?

  But Kate and Piper wanted to get right to work on MG’s question.

  Great, but don’t ask me. No-period girl has zero advice to give about periods.

  I tried to stay very quiet and took tiny bites of my pizza so I could be chewing every time there was a break in the conversation.

  “I got mine in sixth, so I think we should tell her to start worrying if she doesn’t get hers by the end of the year,” Piper said, spearing a forkful of her Caesar salad.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think we should be telling her to worry,” Kate said. “We should just tell her to hang in there. You can’t schedule it like a dentist appointment. Periods happen when they happen.”

  Kate looked at me knowingly.

  “Yeah, but shouldn’t she go to the doctor if it, like, never comes? Maybe there’s something wrong with her,” Piper said.

  They went back and forth for a while and couldn’t decide what to say to MG. When they turned to me, I pointed to my chewing mouth and shrugged. But as the conversation went on, I started to feel a little better. The truth was, here were two girls who had their periods, and even they didn’t know what to tell MG. So my not knowing was beginning to seem like less of a big deal. Of course, this was also a problem, because if we couldn’t give MG a good answer, maybe we wouldn’t cut it as the new members of the Pink Locker Society.

  When the girls turned to me for, like, the forty-fourth time, I had just swallowed the last square inch of my pizza. Kate’s eyes widened as they turned to me, knowing how I didn’t want to talk about this one. But luckily, the rules were there to bail me out.

  “Well, rule number two says: ‘Give high-quality advice. Don’t guess. Learn and share your knowledge.’ We better do some research at the library or something.”

  “Where did it say that?” Piper asked.

  “In the handbook, page four.”

  I held my breath, but they both agreed.

  “Ugh, the library,” Piper said.

  “I love the library,” Kate said. “We can go tonight.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  We stood up and, as I did, I took note of where Forrest was in the cafeteria—sitting with the other football players and Taylor, as usual. I would have to pass right by them on my way to take back my tray. I allowed myself a quick glance—long enough to notice that Taylor was not only sitting at his table, she was sharing his chair!

  As if she knew I was watching, Taylor threw back her head and laughed like Forrest had said the funniest thing she’d ever heard. I tried to look away but just couldn’t. Then, for a flash, Forrest saw me. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t not smile, either. His in-between expression was even harder to figure out than the hey from the bus. Watch your step, Taylor, I thought. Yeah, right. You know who should watch her step? Me.

  Later that day, at study hall time, I confidently opened my locker and waited until everyone else had drifted away. When I was alone, I thrust my hand in to open the pink locker and grabbed the combination dial. I was prepared for the lighting issues this time with my key chain that has a little green flashlight on the end. With one hand, I sent a bolt of green light toward the combination dial. With my other hand, I spelled out R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I was in. I even closed the door quietly and stepped ever so carefully down the too-tall step and placed both feet securely on the thick rose rug.

  In fact, I was the first girl in the office and was able to look around without any distractions for about thirty seconds. What I saw made me feel once again like I was dreaming. The old-lady furnishings and the dusty tarps were gone. It was spotlessly clean and completely renovated. It looked like a ritzy hotel suite. The place could have been on TV or in the movies, like if someone was running a modeling agency.

  On one side of the room, there was now a U-shaped pink couch with a glass table in the center. Floral arrangements had been added to the now-dust-free conference table. The old pink phone had been replaced by a sleek black model. Silver appliances gleamed from the kitchen. Lifting my head toward the loft (aided this time by my glasses), I could see a row of computers giving off a green glow.

  The only trace of the old office was a pile of machines at the foot of the stairs. Turns out they weren’t sewing machines after all. They were typewriters: super-old black ones with no power cords and newer (but still old) electric ones that were aqua and must have weighed fifty pounds each.

  Kate was next to arrive, and she just stood in one spot, taking in all the changes. Piper arrived next. “No way!” she said of the sparkling new faucets, stone countertops, and monogrammed hand towels. Not PLS, as you might expect, but P, J, K, and B—one for each of us.

  “Who is paying for this?” Piper wanted to know.

  “The Pinkies, apparently,” Kate said as she picked up a note that had been left next to the snacks on the table.

  We watched her scan the note. As she held it up, I could see through the back side of the rose-colored stationery. The writer had the formal, forward-leaning handwriting of a teacher or grandmother.

  “It says that we’re the new generation of the Pink Locker Society, and they wanted to give us a ‘well-appointed, comfortable place to work,’ ” Kate said.

  “May I?” Piper said, pinching a corner of the note and taking it.

  “Hmmm . . . ‘For reasons you can understand, those who have endowed the new PLS shall remain anonymous.’ And it’s signed ‘Edith.’ ”

  “She must be the one who called us the first day,” I said, “She never gave her name.”

  “So the retired Pinkies have some dough. That’s good news,” Piper said.

  “Hey, where’s Bet?” Kate asked. “She’s missing all the fun.”

  Long after the golden minute had passed, Bet was still nowhere to be found. We went to her locker and opened it from the office side. It was dark.

  “Should we, like, look for her or something?” Piper asked.

  “Did anyone see her today?” Kate asked.

  I hadn’t, but I also hadn’t really looked. The truth is I would have liked it better if it was just the three of us. Having a fourth person, who was a complete stranger, made everything more confusing. Like at lunch today, we decided to go to the library, and now we’d have to bring her up to speed and invite her along, etc.

  Before we could even begin to really search for Bet, the conference-table phone rang. I picked it up and clicked the red button so everyone could hear. It was a new voice coming in crystal clear over the new phone. This one was a younger woman with a Minnesota accent. That’s where my dad’s from.

  “Hiya, girls,” she said. “Things are lookin’ pretty good there, eh?”

  We murmured our agreement.

  “Okey-doke. Is everybody ready to do a little high-tech work today?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure?” I said, a little wary.

  “Ah, that’s great! Why don’t ya move upstairs where the computers are and put me on the phone up there?”

  “Will do,” I said.

  Up in the loft, we turned on the speakerphone, and there she was again.

  “Pretty nice setup, wouldn’t ya say?” she asked from the speaker box. “Ya got the Infinitrix 3,000 system up here, the same computers they use in the White House.”

  It was awfully nice in the loft. The computer desks were whitewashed wood, and the chairs were those fancy super-comfortable ones that they sell in the back of magazines for eight hundred dollars. “Whose behind is worth eight hundred dollars?” my mother would say when she saw those ads. But you just felt important sitting down in a chair like that. The PLS computers started up quickly—nothing like the chugging old computer we had in our basement family room.

  After we all sat down and logged in, the woman on the phone told us that she was going to give us a “lickety-split” lesson in how to run the Pink Locker Society Web site. All we needed to do was learn a few basics and we’d be able to do it on our own. In other words, we soon could post MG’s answer. If we had an answer for her.

  But before our computer lesson could get going, the woman on the phone stopped and asked us where Bet was. We had all created usernames and passwords for our new computers.

  “I don’t see her signed in here,” she said.

  “She didn’t show,” Piper said. “We opened her pink locker, but she wasn’t there.”