Only Girls Allowed by Debra Moffitt

answering questions, if we couldn’t answer them all. I suggested a lottery, but Katethought we should read them all and answer the most urgent ones. In the end, we resolved just to keep doing our best.
    But it did not seem to me like we were doing our best on Friday, when Piper and Bet weren’t doing any work at all. They bolted in during study hall and scooted upstairs to the loft. I ignored them for a while. But then I started to worry that if Piper and Bet were suddenly best buddies, maybe Bet was up there right now telling Piper about the Forrest incident.
    â€œWhat are they doing up there?” I finally asked Kate.
    â€œPiper’s helping her with her makeup, for the contest. Didn’t she tell you?”
    â€œThe contest—the MSTV contest?”
    â€œRight. I hope she wins,” Kate said.
    â€œBet’s going up against Taylor?”
    â€œTaylor and everyone else who’s trying to get their own show,” Kate said.
    This was an odd development. I wasn’t Bet’s biggest fan, but I would root for her over Taylor any day.
    Piper came bounding down the steps from the loft, holding her big professional-looking makeup case. Bet followed her, walking slowly and wearing a trim navy blue dress. Her eyelashes were curled and her lips were a soft pink.
    â€œI don’t know if I can do this,” Bet said.
    â€œSure you can,” Kate said.

 

    Assemblies go one of two ways at Margaret Simon: They’re either horribly dull, or everyone gets sooooooooo into it that it’s completely rowdy and Principal Finklestein threatens all kinds of punishments until it’s over. The anchorperson contest turned out to be one of the wild ones.
    It was kind of like a reality TV show where everyone is competing and there’s something big at stake. Taylor auditioned first and showed a new round of
Gotcha!
clips, hoping to make an impression on the audience. Thankfully, there was no footage of me this time. Unlike the ones in her first show, these clips seemed very inside-jokey, and sometimes it wasn’t clear which part was the “Gotcha!” part. Some of the kids featured didn’t go to our school, so they just didn’tpack the same punch. Quickly, the audience grew so rowdy you couldn’t hear much of what was going on.
    The restlessness started to take shape and turned into a chant that began at low volume but rose loud and clear: “Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing!” When nearly everyone seemed to be saying it, I joined in, too—after checking around to make sure Forrest wasn’t anywhere nearby. I didn’t want him to see me being mean.
    Principal Finklestein intervened, of course, and when Taylor’s segment ended, there was some brief, polite applause. A few people booed, which made me wonder if they would boo for Bet too.
    Clem was next. She put a new spin on her old show,
Clem’s Crib.
This one was
Around the World with Clem Caritas.
In it, she showed the camera her favorite fashion souvenirs: a batik sarong from Bali, a sickly expensive purse from L.A., some rose soap that “someone really lovely” gave her in Paris. You get the idea. Clem received no boos, and at the end people cheered for her so that her name stretched to two syllables. “Cleh-em! Cleh-em!” But I think they cheered because she was great to look at no matter what she was talking about.
    The other entrants received pretty much the same excited response. There was the kid who did magic tricks. Not bad, actually, but it didn’t seem like he knew enough tricks to do a weekly show all year long. One girl performed a one-woman play,
Me and My Dog, Sophie.
It wascute and funny, and, afterward, people in the audience shouted “Woof! Woof! Woof!” I thought she might win. A dog in cute little people clothes would be a hard act to follow. Bet was next.
    Her video began to roll, and I felt a shiver as I saw images of the Pink Locker Society Web