The Secret Language of Girls by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Flanneryand Marylin just needed to communicate.
    As it turned out, Marylin and Flannery were not in the mood to communicate that afternoon. They let Kate follow them into the house and upstairs to Marylin’s room, but whenever Kate tried to talk to them, they acted like she wasn’t even there. Kate sat with her back against Marylin’s purple love seat, which Kate had helped Marylin pick out at the furniture store the year before. Marylin and Flannery sat on Marylin’s bed and talked in especially loud voices, as if they wanted to make sure that Kate wasn’t missing a word, even though she was sitting only five feet away.
    “You don’t have to yell,” Kate said after a few minutes. “It makes you sound ridiculous.”
    Flannery looked around the room. “Did the wind just blow through here?” she asked Marylin.
    Marylin giggled. “I think I felt a little breeze, now that you mention it.”
    Kate stood up. “You are acting like children,” she told them, sounding exactly like her mother when she yelled at Kate and Tracie for fighting. “You think this hurts my feelings, but it doesn’t.”
    “Blow, wind, blow!” Flannery said, falling backward as though she’d been hit by a tornado. Marylin flopped against her pillows, shrieking with laughter.
    Kate shook her head. To think she had been happy when Flannery had moved into their neighborhood. To think she had turned to Marylin and said, “I hope they have a girl our age,” when they saw a family moving into the Savoys’ old house a month before school started.
    “I have no idea why you’re doing this,” Kate said, her last effort at getting some response before she left in defeat. “I have absolutely no idea.”
    Marylin rolled over and looked at Kate. Fora tiny second Kate thought she saw panic in Marylin’s eyes.
    It occurred to Kate that Marylin had no idea why she was doing this either.

    By Thursday Kate was used to Marylin and Flannery ignoring her, which is why it didn’t bother her at all anymore. After three days she was practically a professional when it came to being ignored. Kate picked up her lunch from the counter, grabbed her backpack, and went out the front door. So what if no one talks to me? she thought as she walked up the street. She’d rather read a book anyway. Talking to people was a complete waste of time, in Kate’s opinion.
    “Max is following you!” Courtney yelled at her, running across her front yard, her Pocahantas lunch box thumping against her leg. “Are you taking Max to school with you, Kate? Because he’s following you!”
    Kate looked over her shoulder. Sureenough, Max was lumbering up the road behind her. Kate sighed. Max was not the sort of dog you could just order to go home. Max never obeyed orders. He’d flunked out of dog school because he never did anything he was told. He was also not the sort of dog you could let follow you to the bus stop. You never knew when Max would decide to lie down in the middle of the road and take a nap.
    Kate turned around and stomped toward Max, grabbing him by the collar when she reached him. She pulled him to her house, muttering under her breath about stupid dogs and the stupid things they did. Max gave her an innocent look.
    By the time Kate had shoved Max into the house and headed back for the road, she could see that the bus had reached the stop in front of Flannery’s house. Now Kate would have to stand at the edge of her own driveway and get on the bus with Courtney, who wentto the elementary school next door to Kate’s middle school. They should not put elementary school kids and middle school students on the same bus, in Kate’s opinion, especially since Kate’s getting on the bus with Courtney would give Flannery the opportunity to say loud enough for everyone to hear, “Don’t the first graders look cute today?”
    “Kate, Kate, look at this!” Courtney said, sliding in next to Kate on the sticky bus seat. Courtney held out a piece of paper with a drawing