“Aw, that’s a darn shame. This is a pretty important session,” she said. “You’ll hafta fill her in later.”

  It was right then that Kate and I had one of those friend-ESP moments. We both had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time: Bet’s pink locker door was still open. If Bet did happen to show up late, she would open her regular locker and give the whole world an inside look at our secret world!

  Before I moved a muscle, Kate leaped down the stairs of the loft. Slam! Mission accomplished, Kate returned to her desk in time to get a tour of the Pink Locker Society Web site. It had way-cool music and one of those fancy intros. Then the bright pink page opened up, but it said only “Coming soon! Very soon!” Nothing like a little pressure.

  The woman on the phone told us it would be “just great” if we could get our first answer up there by “Wednesday or thereabouts.” That was two days away.

  “Ya don’t want to leave gals in the lurch, ya know,” she said.

  Piper mouthed, “We are dead.”

  Kate waved Piper off and asked the woman another question about what it meant for something to be “live” on the Web site. She explained that “live” meant something had been published on the Web site. It was there for everyone to see. No one would be able to benefit from our advice if we didn’t get something live, she said.

  In twenty minutes, she had me thinking that it wasn’t as hard as I thought to run a Web site. The site—www.PinkLockerSociety.org—was already designed for us. It was like a set of blank pages that we needed to fill. We created test questions and answers and watched them instantly fill the front page of PinkLockerSociety.org.

  Kate asked: Q. How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?

  And I answered: A. As much as Forrest McCann tells him to.

  And voila! It was on the front page of the PLS Web site. We quickly deleted it so no one would think we’d lost our minds.

  Piper flew right through our tutorial and asked all kinds of questions about the firewall and whether our servers had received the recent JDK upgrade. She’s scary smart with technical stuff, and she also types way faster than any of us. So it was easy to decide who should be the primary owner of the sweet pink laptop we were allowed to take with us into the outside world. Piper said she’d fix it so that questions submitted to the PLS would come right to our phones.

  “Best of luck to ya, girls,” our computer consultant said. “And Piper, call me if ya have any more questions about what’s going on under the hood!”

  With that, our training was over. It was up to us to start a Web site and continue the Pink Locker Society legacy. I still had so many questions. It would have made me feel better to talk, in person, to some former PLS members. Who was it that Kate knew in the old PLS? Maybe she could tell us what happened all those years ago to shut down the PLS? But most of all, I wanted to know: Why restart now, and why us?

  But in the pink crush of everything, I didn’t say a word. Study hall would be over soon so I hustled to my locker door and checked my mailbox. Edith had printed out the new questions that had come in since Friday. I paused to scan them. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but two of them were similar questions about periods, including one from another eighth-grader. So I wasn’t the only one! Weird body changes, boys, problems with friends, too much homework—these subjects came up a lot.

  There was even one in there from a girl with really big boobs! She wrote:

  This is going to sound weird, but my boobs are ruining my life. They are ENOR-MOOSE boobs. Biggest in the whole school.

  I really had to hurry now. I stood only a moment in the dark of my locker, eager to get back into the light and read the rest of her question. I would give anything to have an ENOR-MOOSE boob problem. I should have stopped longer to listen for people in the hall. If I had, I might not have walked right into Taylor and Clementine’s big fight.

  Taylor’s ever-present sidekick, Tia, was holding the big TV light and working the video camera, as she always did for the MSTV broadcasts. Taylor was this year’s anchor for Margaret Simon TV, our in-school channel that was beamed into all the classrooms once a week, whether you liked it or not. Last year, Clem was the anchor, and it seemed she was not ready to give up her spot. She had mostly used the privilege to film Clem’s Crib, a reality show starring . . . guess who.

  “There’s no rule against someone being anchor two years in a row,” Clem told Taylor, getting right in her face. “We should have an experienced reporter, not just someone who does stories about kittens.”

  “That was just my audition tape. People love kittens, so I knew I’d get the job,” Taylor said.

  Do you see why I can’t stand her?

  “And besides, my real show isn’t about kittens. It’s much edgier than that,” she said.

  “Yeah, right. You’re about as edgy as a kitten, Taylor. But you are sneaky. What a coincidence that I was out of town when you guys had your supposed meeting,” Clem said.

  “Not my problem,” Taylor said, flipping open a gold compact to check her lip gloss.

  MSTV was organized as a student club and overseen by our art teacher, Ms. Russo. She also does the school plays, teaches interpretive dance, and once brought in a live sheep for us to sketch. She’s a little kooky and lets the kids run the show, literally.

  Clem (being Clem) probably expected to get the anchor job again, no questions asked. No one looks better on camera, that’s true. But the gossip around school was that Taylor grabbed control at a summertime meeting for kids interested in the TV club. Clem was in Bali on a photo shoot, apparently. With Tia on Taylor’s side (Tia knows how to work the camera and edit the video), what else did she need?

  When I popped out of my locker, I’d like to say Taylor and Clem were so locked in battle that neither one noticed me. No such luck. Clem did look rattled, though. Her face—usually a porcelain pale—looked pink and angry. But it was Taylor who saw me first, lowering her compact to get a better look. When my two feet hit the floor, I looked up, and she was looking right at me. Tia’s video-camera light illuminated Taylor so that, from where I was, her white-blond hair glowed like an angel. Tia cut the light, and Clem spun around to see me, too.

  “What were you doing in your locker?” Taylor snapped.

  “I was just . . . getting stuff,” I stammered.

  “With the door closed?” Taylor asked.

  “I’m late,” I said, breaking into one of those awkward speed walks. I acted like I had somewhere to be, but the first bell hadn’t even rung yet.

  “There’s your next big story, Taylor,” Clem said, tossing her head in that top-model way, “—people who hide in their lockers. Film at eleven.” Then Clem flicked her stick-straight hair over her shoulder and left Taylor and Tia alone in the hall with the video camera running.

  Bet was waiting for us outside at the end of the day, as the buses stacked up against the curb. I knew she was short, but she looked even smaller next to the buses. Her long black hair was swept back in a red headband. She wore skinny black jeans and a red denim jacket. Around her ankle she wore a tiny gold anklet with a red stone, probably a real ruby, that dipped down over her delicate anklebone. Her face looked pained, like it might crack, and she held her head as if there were a book balanced on top of it.

  “How was the meeting? Please, excuse me for not being there. Sincere apologies.”

  “Where were you?” Piper asked sharply.

  “I . . . I had something I needed to do, ” Bet stuttered.

  “You missed computer training, but we can show how it all works,” Kate said.

  “Um, okay, well, I’m not sure I’d be very good with computer stuff anyway. Maybe I could just do office tasks. Stuff envelopes or answer the phone?”

  “The phone might ring once a day, and no one stuffs anything,” Piper said. “Well, Jemma stuffs her bra, but I don’t think she needs help.”

  Piper hugged me around the shoulders to show she was kidding.

  “Aren’t you just hysterical,” I said in a monotone.

  “Bet, maybe you don’t want to be part of the PLS,” I said, watching for her reaction as my words hit the air.

  Bet’s brown eyes looked into mine. She looked hurt. You would have thought someone had just accused her of bra stuffing.

  “Jem, don’t push her out the door,” Kate said.

  Kate seemed fine about not including Bet in our lunch meeting, but now good-deed Kate was in the house.

  “I’m not pushing her out the door,” I said. “I’m just saying the PLS is optional.”

  Knowing I already hurt Bet’s feelings, I continued, trying to soften my position.

  “I mean, it is a lot of work, and it will leave less time for studying.”

  This time, Bet kept her eyes squarely on a crack in the sidewalk at her feet. The truth was, I would have liked to push her out. But Kate, being Kate, insisted.

  “Bet, we’re meeting at the college library at six thirty to do some research. Meet us there and we’ll fill you in.”

  As I walked to my bus, my worries quickly switched from Bet to Forrest. What if Taylor had already told him what she saw? I could just imagine her saying, “Oh my gosh, you should’ve seen Jemma today, she’s so weird. She was hiding inside her locker!”

  Bet didn’t show at the library, and I could tell Kate blamed me. Kate almost always does the right thing. If you have a friend like Kate, you know how that is. I love her for being honest and kind, but sometimes I feel like I can’t compare.

  Could I have been more welcoming to Bet? Sure. But I didn’t like that our trio of friends had suddenly become a quartet.

  At the library, it looked for a minute like Piper wouldn’t come either, but she finally arrived and we picked a study carrel away from all the people working so quietly. We searched the library—and online—for information about periods. It turns out that periods are pretty complicated. In books, people call them a hundred different things: menstruation, menarche, menses. (I’ve heard it called “Aunt Flo” and “the curse,” which it definitely is not, because if it were, why would I want it so bad?) The books’ explanations for what actually goes on inside the body were so technical (“the shedding of the endometrium,” blah, blah, blah) and did not help us answer MG’s question at all. But finally, after searching a bunch of books and Web sites, we had some information for her—and me.

  Piper, Kate, and I were feeling good now that we had an answer for our first client. I couldn’t tell if I was just relieved over the comforting information we’d found about periods or if I was happy to be able to help someone. It was nice to think of MG out there feeling better after she read our answer.

  “This could be fun, I think,” I whispered across the table.

  “Yes, but what do we tell the girl with the enor-MOOSE boobs?” Kate whispered back.

  “That’s easy. I know all about that,” Piper said, pushing her chest in our direction. Then, in dramatic fashion, she shared her three tips for girls blessed with big bazooms:

  Do the cleavage check. Stand in front of a mirror and bend over. If you can see down your shirt, don’t wear it.

  Wear a supportive bra that’s the right size.

  If someone looks too long at your chest, say, “Yo, my eyes are up here.”

  I was excited that we now had two answers ready for the Pink Locker Web site. We still had a little time before my mom picked us up, so Kate headed over to the archives and told Piper and me to take up the third client question about whether or not to tell your crush you like him.

  We couldn’t find a single book in the library that gave advice about the tell-or-not-tell issue. But Piper and I agreed that people have been asking this question for a long time. Even really old stories, like the ones my mom sometimes reads to me out loud, seemed to be about love. Piper reminded me that this plot had been well explored by several TV shows. I was not at all sure whether it was better to love someone secretly or to reveal that love and very possibly get your heart squished.

  I also wasn’t sure that Piper would be much help on the subject. Sure, she knew what it was like to be crushed on, since so many boys liked her. But I didn’t think she had a Forrest McCann on her mind all the time. It was as if she read my mind with what she said next:

  “You know, everyone has a Forrest McCann.”

  For a minute, I was worried that she was going to tell me she also liked Forrest, which would pretty much eliminate me from having any chance with him. But then she continued.

  “I like someone right now and I don’t know whether to tell him,” Piper said. “On the one hand, you want to know if he likes you, too. But what if he doesn’t?”

  Whoa. We shared more common ground than I thought. Who was her Forrest McCann? And what about Jamie Welch, who was supposedly her boyfriend right now?

  Finally, she gave up the name.

  “It’s Jonah Zafron,” Piper said.

  “You’re thinking of telling the movie star Jonah Zafron that you have a crush on him?”

  “Don’t you think he would want to know?” she said, giving me that flirty look she used so well on cute boys.

  Before I could remind her how old Jonah was or that he already had a girlfriend, Kate returned from the archives with a stack of papers. She slapped them down in front of us, and together we read the headline of The Pink Paper, published in October 1976. In big, blaring type, it said: PINK LOCKER SOCIETY IN DANGER! But the headline was all we could read. Every line of the article had been blacked out.

  If you were to visit www.PinkLockerSociety.org, here’s what you’d see today. Ta-dah! Our first answers for our first clients:

  To MG, the girl who was worried about not getting her period:

  Dear MG,

  You can breathe a sigh of relief: Plenty of girls do NOT have their periods by sixth grade. The first period happens during puberty, which can start between ages eight and thirteen. But the key word is START. Some girls start at eight and some start at thirteen. After it gets going, puberty takes a while and lasts for a few years. Most girls get their periods between the ages of ten and fifteen. Everyone is different, but your period usually happens about two years after your breasts start developing.

  Unfortunately, periods don’t come by appointment. You won’t know until it arrives. If your first period (aka “Aunt Flo”) arrives for the first time when you’re at school, don’t panic. Instead, be prepared by keeping a couple of pads in your backpack or locker. If you need help, ask a friend or a female teacher. If you stain your clothes (this hardly ever happens, because first periods are usually light), wrap a sweater or sweatshirt around your waist until you can change.

  And we understand how you feel about your period. It’s OK to want it and it’s OK to not want it, even at the same time! Anything new is weird for a while. It’s also more than OK to talk about your feelings with your mom or another girl or woman you are close to. If you need some questions answered, why not ask someone who knows Aunt Flo quite well!

  Think pink!

  The PLS

  I keep track of all my major successes in life. The list is not that long, but I’m happy to say that I think today is one of them. We answered not only MG’s period question but also the one about big boobs and the one about crushes.

  We used Piper’s advice about getting your chest stared at. Thank you, Piper!

  And what about the crush question?

  After a lot of thought—and a conversation with Kate’s older sister—we offered this advice to the person who wrote that they kinda-sorta wanted to tell their crush about their true feelings.

  Dear DM,

  People have been asking your question for hundreds of years, and the answer is not crystal clear. Crushes are called crushes for a reason. They can hit you hard! And it can feel amazing to learn that your crush likes you, too. Imagine Christmas morning and your birthday combined. Woo-hoo! But when the person doesn’t have a crush on you, it can feel like a dozen rainy Mondays all at once.

  The good news is that crushes are like playing make-believe. It’s probably been a long time since you did that! But crushes are a way of imagining, thinking about, and even testing out what it is like to fall in love. So it’s up to you if you want to take a risk and see if your crush likes you, too. Are you feeling brave? Or maybe you’ll decide that your crush is more fun kept as a secret. The only thing we know for sure is that this won’t be your last crush.

  Happy crushing!

  The PLS

  We felt really good to post those answers. But we felt even better when we went to the PLS office, signed on to our computers, and saw that the Web site had gotten more than one hundred visitors by lunchtime! I even heard some girls talking about it in the bathroom. Not only that, but lots of people sent us e-mail thanking us. Here are a few:

  OMG, you guys soooooo rock. I was very worried about “Aunt Flo,” and now I know exactly what to do when she makes her first visit. Thank you! Thank you!

  Signed,

  A not-so-nervous-anymore seventh-grader

  I have had a crush on someone for a long time and now I feel mucho bettero.

  Your friend—BBallGRL98

  Thank you, PLS! I am feeling less worried and much more un-shy now about periods. I think I might ask my mom about it. After all, she was young once. I’ve seen pictures!

  Keep up the good work,

  MG

  DM, the crush girl, and the girl with the big boobs hadn’t written back yet, but I hoped they liked our answers. Walking around school, I felt different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I guessed this confident feeling must be what it feels like to be popular. I was sort of a celebrity, even though no one knew who I was.

  A person can get used to almost anything, my mother often says. She’s even written a poem about it—one of the many I don’t completely understand. On one hand, it’s great that people can adapt and get used to new stuff. Kate, Piper, and I quickly got used to the fact that we were part of a secret society. In the same way that I trundle off to the caf for lunch at 11:47, I now go to my locker every day at 1:35 and crawl inside (and try not to get caught on the way out).