The Wild Girls by Pat Murphy

Author:Pat Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

CIRCUS OF CHAOS

“What did you write about?” I asked Fox the next day. I hadn’t written my second assignment yet, and I only had one day left.

She looked uncomfortable. “Talking in front of a bunch of people,” she said, a little sheepishly.

I nodded slowly. I knew she didn’t like that. When it came to doing some things, she was fearless: she’d catch a snake or walk through a dark culvert. But she wasn’t so good with people.

“You did fine when we read our story,” I said.

“That’s because we were wearing war paint,” she said. “It wasn’t really me. I was hiding behind the war paint.”

That made sense. I had felt the same way. The lipstick war paint had changed us into the wild girls, and the wild girls weren’t afraid of anything.

“What are you writing about?” she asked me.

“I don’t know. I can’t come up with anything. I tried writing about talking with my dad—that was scary. But it didn’t seem like the right kind of scary.”

“I felt kind of stupid writing about being scared of talking in front of a crowd,” Fox said. “But it was something that really scared me. What really scares you?”

I recognized that question. It was one of the questions Verla had written on the board. “If I could figure that out, I could write something,” I said, a little annoyed.

“If you don’t know the answer, make something up,” she said. That was something else Verla said.

“Okay, then—spiders.” I did think spiders were creepy.

“Why?”

“Because they have too many legs.”

“What else scares you?”

“Monsters.”

“What kind of monsters?”

“The kind with lots of sharp teeth. They used to hide in my closet when I was a little kid.”

She nodded as if she knew those monsters. “What else scares you?” She acted like she was going to keep on asking the same question forever.

“Listening to my mom and dad fight,” I said.

“Yeah? Why does that scare you?”

I bit my lip, feeling like I had said more than I should. Listening to my parents argue made my stomach hurt, made me hide in my room. It really did scare me. I didn’t know why, exactly. But I could make something up. “Because my father turns into one of those monsters that hide in the closet,” I said. “The kind with big teeth.”

Fox sat up straight in the easy chair, suddenly grinning. “Now that’s scary,” she said.

I nodded slowly. “I remember hearing my mom tell him, ‘You don’t have to bite my head off.’”

“A monster with sharp teeth and a really big mouth,” Fox said.

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