#21: Mallory and the Trouble with Twins
You guys, I had to do it. Mallory is such a sad, hilarious loser in this book that it’s been one of my all-time favorites since I was six. The pages are actually falling out, I love it so much.
It’s long. It’s profane. It’s coming up after the cut.
Open scene: The Pike brood is on their way to Washington Mall to buy shoes, with the all the bitching, name calling, hair pulling, and eye gouging that entails. I don’t know why you would buy eight pairs of shoes at once; that doesn’t seem economically sound. Did everyone’s shoes just fall apart at exactly the same time? Why not buy them as needed so you’re not dropping a good 300 bucks on footwear all at once? Then again, I should not question Mama Pike’s technique, because I’m not the idiot who thought having eight kids in six years was economically sound.
Mallory, naturally, is so responsible that she figures out the seating arrangement in the car that will result in the least bloodshed. I want to snark her for it (who takes such smug pride in being a supermom to seven brats before you’ve even hit puberty, instead of listening to headphones and pretending like you’re not related to them like a normal eleven year old?) but honestly, I’d probably do the same just to get them to shut up for five minutes. So I’ll settle for snarking Mal’s dorkiness once they arrive, when she informs us that “the mall is another world...I hardly know where to look.” You guys, I don’t think Mal gets out much; a bunch of stores clumped together is the most exciting thing she’s ever seen. I want to cry for her sometimes.
The brood is off to Antoinette’s Shoe Tree first, where Mallory has to get boring old loafers instead of what she wants, which are “extremely cool pink shoes with green trim.” First of all, Mal, Jem called and she wants her kicks back. Second...why not? My mom’s rule was that I could get any shoes I wanted, but I had to wear them as long as I would wear the sensible shoes. Maybe if Mal had to wear the pink and green monstrosities every day for a few months and realized what a dork she looked like, she’d think more carefully about choosing her purchases and get the loafers without complaint next time. Ever think of THAT, Mama Pike?
Afterwards everybody splits up to do their own thing, and Mal takes Claire and Margo. Instead of say, looking at clothes or toys the way a normal person does at the mall, Mallory announces that they are going to watch people get their ears pierced. You’re going to...seriously? I mean, I get that she wants to get HER ears pierced, but sitting around watching other people get it done is not exactly a substitute for that, is it? I would be so creeped out if I were getting my ears pierced and some chick was pressed against the window watching me. I think Mallory has some sort of bizarre fetish. Mal does not disprove this theory by letting us know that she could find her way to the ear-piercing boutique blindfolded. She immediately becomes WAY too interested in the girl at the boutique getting her third hole done, and I’m really uncomfortable with this. Luckily, Claire and Margo agree, by screaming and threatening to barf, respectively, and Mallory could just DIE, she is so embarrassed. For a supermom, she sure is stupid about kid-friendly activities. Who would have thought that children wouldn’t like watching other people get holes punched in their bodies?
Chapter 2! As a little twist on a theme, Logan will be appearing at this week’s expository meeting and everyone’s way uncomfortable because they can’t talk about birth control and vaginal discharge the way they normally do. Logan tries to answer the phone at one point, and Kristy freaks out because she doesn’t want to take clients by surprise if a male voice answers the phone. Because if a dude answers the phone, they’ll immediately be so shocked and offended that they’ll hang up and never do business with the BSC again. I think Kristy needs some soothing horse tranquilizers. (Also, I’ve heard a 13-year-old boy’s voice before. The clients would probably assume it’s Mary Anne on the line.) Saved from the horror of speaking to Logan, then, Mrs. Arnold is safe to call and arrange a short-term regular sitting gig with Mallory for the twins. How not-at-all plot devicey!
The next day, Mallory stands nervously on the Arnolds’ doorstep before being greeted by the Children of the Damned. They’re frou-frou’ed up in completely identical ruffles, lace, and jewelry, because Mrs. Arnold is looking forward to spending thousands of dollars on therapy in about six years, and just to add insult to injury, they have matching “bowl cuts.” I look at the cover again and realize that Mrs. Arnold must literally put bowls on their heads and cut around it, because those kids’ hair looks really unfortunate. Damn. Not as unfortunate as Mrs. Arnold, though, because she prances in wearing “two necklaces, a pin, bracelets on each wrist, rings, earrings, and even an ankle bracelet. Her stockings were lacey, and...practically everything she wore had a bow on it. There were bows on her shoes, a bow on her belt, a bow in her hair, and a bow at the neck of her blouse. Her sweater was beaded, and she hadn’t forgotten to pin a fake rose to it…her earrings were in the shape of ladybugs, one of her necklaces spelled her name - Linda - in gold script, her pin was in the shape of a mouse, and the bow in her hair was a ribbon with a print of tiny ducks all over it.” I amend my original statement to: Holy. Damn. I literally cannot form an accurate mental picture of this outfit because the human brain can only hold seven to nine pieces of information in their short-term memory. She perfumes on out of there, leaving me in a haze so deep I can barely remember where I am. Seriously, what the hell was I doing? Oh, yes. Focusing on what a dumbass Mallory is.
She’s fine for, oh, ninety seconds while the twins root through the Kid-Kit, but then Mal crams her foot down her throat by exclaiming how cute and matchy-matchy they are, which apparently triggers the switch from Good Twin to Evil Twin. They take off their ID bracelets and begin speaking in tongues and flailing around- and seriously, if I were standing in that horror novel of a bedroom, with those creepy children, and they suddenly started doing that, I probably would have fled the house screaming, so begrudging props to Mallory for just standing there like an idiot. They taunt her - Mal is getting OWNED by a couple of eight-year-olds - and she undermines her own authority all, “I can’t tell you apart!” and “Which one are you?” Mal, jesus, just pretend you know who they are and don’t address them by name at all. (I routinely forget people’s names while they’re in the middle of introducing themselves. I have learned a few tricks.) She only figures out which twin is which by trying to make one play the piano and assuming it’s Carolyn when she can’t. Because Marilyn couldn’t just PRETEND to not know how to play just to fuck with Mallory some more. I certainly would, if I were her.
The next day Jessi and Mal sit at Casa Pike, and it’s apparently the easiest sitting job in the world, what with everyone miraculously entertaining themselves with movies, board games, and science projects. Shouldn’t baby-sitting be like this more often? Do children really need constant stimulation from adults? Don’t they ever just read or watch TV or something? I had a lot of baby-sitters when I was younger and not one of them organized the neighborhood children into a marching band and somehow I didn’t burn the house down. Anyway, this dose of realism is actually fairly boring, because it gives Mallory and Jessi time to bitch about how their parents treat them like babies. Which totally mystifies me, because they’re both trusted with an awful lot of responsibility for their younger siblings and the kids they sit. (I’m 22 - DOUBLE THEIR AGE- and my sister STILL doesn’t trust me to baby-sit my infant nephew.) I mean, they’re in sixth grade; what exactly do they want here that their parents won’t allow? Driver’s licenses? 30-year-old boyfriends? Free-flowing liquor and nose candy? Their line of wishful thinking is cut short by Margo and Claire coming downstairs dressed alike, and they discuss how dibbly fresh it is to pretend to be twins. This is so subtle.
Mallory must have had another fantastic day with the Arnold twins, because her next notebook entry begins, “What pains! What rotten pains!” Oh, dear, I hope she washed her mouth out with soap for that kind of language. When she shows up, Mrs. Arnold notices as she breezes out the door that the twins have switched their bracelets, and...thanks for the confirmation that she can tell her own kids apart, but a) how conspicuous are these bracelets that you can read them at a glance? and b) seriously, if she knows that ID bracelets are the only way other people can tell her children apart and she still makes no effort to differentiate them other than to stick nametags on them, this woman is so oblivious it’s frightening. Her fix is meaningless, though, because they second she leaves the bracelets are off and Mallory’s clueless, which must just wrap her in warm familiarity.
The twins suggest hide and seek, and there’s a bit where Mallory finds a twin and lets her have a snack, then finds another (or the first, again) and gives her a snack too, then finds another one again and is like, “Fuck y’all, I found two twins and gave out two snacks and I don’t give a damn who they went to.” God strike me dead, that was kind of a smart tack, because they just ignore her the rest of the sitting job. Actually, I don’t know what she was going on and on about in her notebook entry; I mean, the twins are annoying little shits, but nothing gets broken and no one gets in trouble and they end up just entertaining each other, so it doesn’t strike me as the worst sitting job in history. Mallory is kind of a whiner.
Claudia actually has it much worse on her job with the twins the next day, and a much better opening to her notebook entry at that: “Well excuse me for living but waht is it whith these twins?” Waht indeed. She takes the approach I would have gone with, by telling them straight off the bat that she doesn’t give a damn which one is which, because they’re just going to play with each other and ignore her anyway. Claudia > Mallory. She’ll know who’s who at 11:00, she continues, because the piano-playing twin is going to get picked up by her carpool to go to practice, and hands in the air if you saw where this was going. Yeah, of course the piano teacher calls all, “...the hell? This twin is tone deaf?” I hope Carolyn was bored out of her mind listening to other kids play the piano all afternoon.
Claudia continues to be awesome by drawing a smiley face on the remaining twin’s hand so she can still tell them apart, although I don’t know what difference that makes at this point, because they just ignore her the rest of the afternoon anyway. When Mrs. Arnold comes home, she’s a complete hosebeast all, “CLAUDIA YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF OUR CHILDREN HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN.” I will tell you how this could happen: You are a shitty, shitty mother. You can’t help having identical twins, but you CAN help the fact that you do everything in your power to make them impossible to differentiate. You intentionally treat them as one entity and then get pissed when other people can’t parse it. And you yell at the babysitter for something your children did and which was completely and totally beyond her power to prevent, because your preemptive measures made sure she couldn’t. Mrs. Arnold sucks ass.
The next day at the BSC meeting, we have hit the jackpot, because Mallory is obsessed with everyone’s clothes. Claudia’s looking boss with her hair fixed in “a million braids which were pulled back and held in place behind her head with a column of puffy ponytail holders.” She looks like Flavor Flav in my head. Disappointingly, the rest of her outfit is just a “shirt she painted herself,” “tight pants,” and “push down socks.” That is the exact outfit I wore for the entire 1992-1993 school year. I expected better from you, Miss Creeaytiv.
On the up side, Mary Anne is wearing “a short plum-colored skirt over a plum-and-white-striped bodysuit. The legs of the bodysuit stopped just above her ankles, and she’d tucked the bottoms into her socks.” Oh, snap, guys, remember bodysuits? I always had those ones that snapped at the crotch so you had to completely undress yourself to pee. However, I have never seen nor heard of a bodysuit that had legs - holy crap, that’d be one inconvenient, unforgiving outfit - and when I googled for “bodysuits” to attempt a picture, I came up with some hits that would make Mary Anne faint. I think it’s safe to say the bodysuit craze is dead in all but the most hardcore BDSM circles, and that sane people everywhere are dancing on its grave, because Mary Anne is dressed like the bastard child of Grimace and the Hamburglar. I think ANM must live in a magical place where she has never seen anyone wearing clothes, ever, and can only speculate what they might be like. She is also wearing suspenders, which Mal covets, and which is especially funny later in the book when Marilyn says that she doesn't want to wear things with suspenders anymore because they're too babyish. As an aside, the twins also have their ears pierced on the cover. Two eight-year-olds who are dressed by their mother are cooler than Mallory.
Mallory also lets us know that if she became rich, she would “copy Dawn Schafer’s entire outfit.” You might expect something really Claudia-level batshit with that introduction, but Dawn is just wearing an oversized blue and green shirt, a green skirt, and clogs. (“I’d never seen a person actually wearing clogs...Dawn was the only kid in school who could get away with wearing them.” Except Claudia, I guess, who would make earrings out of them.) Hey, Dawn’s wearing Birkenstocks! That’s actually pretty character appropriate! But apart from those, I don’t get what’s special about this outfit. Mallory doesn’t own any shirts or skirts? When her parents buy her clothes, she specifically picks out ones that are boring and ugly so she can bitch about it? ...Actually, never mind, that does sound like Mal.
Mal finally stops crushing on other girls long enough for a powwow about the twins, and normally I hate the “let’s solve all our charges’ problems instead of letting their parents handle it” device, but in this case it might be true, since Mrs. Arnold’s head is so far up her own ass she has intestinal blockage. Kristy, hilariously, is like, “No offense, Mal, but until Claudia witnessed them in action, I thought you were just a crap babysitter.” The great thing about that is that it’s TRUE: the twins only went nuts because Mal made an ass out of herself. Notice that Kristy and Mary Anne had both sat for them before with nary a problem.
They discuss the peculiarity of twins and how people must tell them how cute they are all the time, and Mallory jumps in to say that no one will ever call her cute until she gets a haircut and pierced ears. Jesus, dealing with her on a daily basis must be so very tedious. “Hey, she’s pretty.” “You know who’s not pretty? Me.” “I think there’s something in my contact lens.” “Why won’t my parents let meeee get contact lenses?” “Guess what? I’m going to have a baby!” “Speaking of babies, my parents treat me like one!” God. Luckily, Kristy, continuing to be awesome in this meeting, shuts her down with the equivalent of “STFU, little girl, we’re discussing business, not your pathetic lack of self-esteem.” I think some BSC fundage would be well spent to pay someone to follow Mallory around all day and tell her that.
At her next sitting gig, Mallory’s feeling crabby about being such a naked-earlobed loser, and when the twins start their usual twin talk routine, Mallory lobs back some pig Latin at them. They have matching foot-stomping hissys about it, and Mallory says she’ll teach them how to speak it if they tell her who’s who and speak English to her. So just like that, they show her that they have moles on opposite sides of their faces, which is the easiest way to tell them apart. I know kids can be weird and fickle and their thought processes aren’t always that of normal humans, but this still makes no sense to me. They’re like, “Please tell us apart! We’re sick of looking alike!” which...dude, she’s been trying to tell them apart all along. And if you’re sick of looking alike, then taking advantage of it isn’t exactly helping, geniuses. I think Mrs. Arnold has fucked them up beyond all hope. It’s lucky that they have had this special fake-language bonding moment, because now Mal says yes when Mrs. Arnold comes home and asks her to help out at the twins’ birthday party, instead of screaming, “Uck-fay ou-yay!” and fleeing the scene.
Chapter 9, random sideplot time! Kristy’s babysitting her siblings while Watson and Elizabeth are at an estate sale, so Karen and David Michael invite the Papadakises over to play while Kristy helps Andrew learn his lines for the school play. Poor Andrew is not interested in being a roller skating bear or being on stage at all, but Kristy tells him that being in the play is his job, like their parents’ jobs. I find that a really unhealthy line of reasoning to take. Being on stage makes him miserable, and he isn’t doing it to learn anything, or to make money, and he doesn’t have the choice not to do it. Andrew’s preschool sucks. This could scar him for life. At least if he’s anything like me and had to play a shoe in the second grade play, “The Old Woman and the Shoe.” I don’t want to talk about it.
Luckily, this sideplot has time to go nowhere as Karen and Hannie come in dressed alike, playing twins. How believably coincidental. Kristy decides to surprise them by putting on her matchy dress too, but when she comes in they’re like, “This game sucks now.” This leads Kristy to the conclusion that being twins actually isn’t much fun, instead of the correct conclusion, which is that she sucks and spoils other people’s games.
Dawn, Mary Anne, and Mallory kick off the next chapter with a notebook entry about the twins’ birthday party:
Mary Anne: “So what do you think of the twins, Dawn?”
Dawn: “I think they’re brats, Mary Anne.”
Mallory: “Oh, but they aren’t. I’ve got them all figured out.”
Mary Anne: “You’re prejudiced, Mal. You’ve been sitting for them.”
That’s right, folks. Knowing someone because you’ve spent more time around them than other people have makes you “prejudiced.” All those people who hated the Ramseys actually just knew them well enough to realize they were black. But I’m detracting from the relevant point, which is, why the hell are they having a conversation on the page? Are they just silently passing around the notebook to write to each other instead of speaking like normal humans? The method to the notebook scares me a little.
The three of them show up early to help the Arnolds set up, and there really doesn’t seem much to do that two competent adults couldn’t handle on their own. Seriously, why would you throw your eight-year-olds a party so big that you can’t manage it yourself? That’s just unnecessary. Then again, since we’ve established that the BSC works for peanuts, the Arnolds were probably able to hire three of them for the entire day for a buck seventy five.
Mallory helps the twins get dressed - matchily, of course - and redeems her earlier stupidity by suggesting that they dress differently, but they don’t because their mother wouldn’t like it, apparently. They have fun for most of the party, but when they unwrap their presents, they start getting crabby because they receive fifteen identical gifts. Well, really, seeing as how it’s the kids’ parents who have to buy these gifts, I don’t feel that sorry for them. My sister and I aren’t even twins and we often got the same thing from people who didn’t know us that well, because otherwise there’s just whining and hair-pulling about who got what gift. In a legendary family video, she actually knocks me down and starts hitting me because I got the “better” Cabbage Patch Doll. I think the only reason we didn’t just get coal for Christmas is because there would have been a fight about whose lump of coal was bigger.
Mallory turns out to be the only one who gives the twins different gifts - a piano pin for Marilyn and a book of science experiments for Carolyn. You know what sucks more than getting the same thing as your sister? Only being known as “the one who plays the piano” or “the one who likes science.” I didn’t usually mind getting the same thing as my sister if it was something cool, but I can’t say I loved getting nothing but cat-related gifts from distant relatives for fifteen years because the only thing they knew was that I was “the one who liked cats.” Anyway, the twins really don’t do anything bratty aside from look grumpy because their mother keeps posing them together for pictures, so Dawn was, as usual, just being a gigundo bitch.
At her sitting job the next day, the twins show off their other birthday gifts to Mallory, which are of course more of the same things. I feel more annoyed at the Arnolds for giving their own kids matching gifts, since they ought to know them well enough to pick out something better, but since they’re all really nice expensive toys, I still don’t feel that sorry for them. Also - it’d be one thing if they gave them both toys that only one of them would like, but they both seem to enjoy their fancy dollhouses and stuff, so see my earlier point re: fighting. NOTHING causes arguments like getting a gift that your sibling really wants too. It’s just self-preservation at this point.
Mallory takes this moment to tell the twins that her brothers are identical triplets, and you’d really think this is information she would have revealed sooner, when she was trying to make them like her. They’re like, “So then why did you think we were so cute? That’s why we hated you, you know. And that other stupid girl who sat for us.” Mallory: “But you ARE cute.” Twins: “Oh, we misunderstood! Sorry!” Again: No. Sense. They decided to be evil to all babysitters because one girl called them cute, even though loads of people have said that to them before? And they thought that her desperately trying to tell them apart meant that she didn’t care enough to tell them apart? She repeats her original statement (“Matchy matchy is cute!”) and it...somehow now means something different? I should never have children. I really don’t get them.
Mal suggests that she help the twins talk to their mother - “Talk to her about what?” they duh, and Mal has to explain to them that they aren’t, like, legally required to dress alike. Seriously: MENTAL ABUSE, what these children have been through. When Mrs. Arnold comes home, Mallory and the twins explain that they’d like to pick out their own clothes and be thought of as two people, and Mrs. Arnold totally mists up instead of getting pissed that a sixth-grader is telling her how to raise her children. Okay, it’s kind of adorable. Except for the part where Mallory wants to be the one to take them shopping for new clothes. Isn’t that a rite of passage a mother might like to share with her children? At the very least, I don’t think that I would give my eight-year-olds a wad of money and drop them off at the mall under the sole supervision of someone who probably doesn’t even wear a bra yet. But Mrs. Arnold is kind of retarded, I think.
On the way home, it occurs to Mallory that - just like the Arnolds! - she could actually ask her parents for a haircut and pierced ears, instead of moping around whining about it. Wait, she spends all this time bitching about how she’s not allowed to do anything when she doesn’t even KNOW that she’s not allowed to do it? SERIOUSLY? She says she’s “getting like Kristy Thomas, with all my ideas,” as if asking her parents permission for something she wants is an actual idea, instead of basic common sense. Mallory is a sad, sad little person.
She plans out a great strategy involving bargaining and sucking up to her parents instead of just, you know, ASKING, which usually works pretty well. She thinks her parents are “wizards” because they immediately figure out what she’s up to. No, Mal, they are just not stupid, unlike you. I know from experience - your parents are either going to say yes or no. You are not going to trick them into agreeing to anything they wouldn’t have agreed to anyway. But she’s got to go ahead with the bargaining anyway, “cleverly” asking for pierced ears, a haircut, contact lenses, and a new wardrobe, knowing that she’ll only get the ears and hair out of the deal. The Pikes are appropriately gobsmacked by this audacity, and Mallory’s next trick - before her parents say anything, mind - is to hang her head and whine about what a baby she is. Yes, THAT’S the tack I would take when I’m trying to convince someone of my maturity.
(I have to take a minute here and say that I kind of don’t get this whole thing, because aren’t the Pikes supposed to be the freewheeling, laid back parents? I mean, my parents were pretty strict, and I got my ears pierced when I was five - and second holes when I was nine - and contacts when I was ten, and Mallory is, admittedly, more responsible when I was at that age. And I still have eyes and ears, amazingly. I think everyone here is WAY overthinking some things that are not really a big deal.)
They give in right away on the ears and hair, because Mallory offers to pay for them herself and they are not stupid. Wait, do the Pike kids never get haircuts or something? Ever? She couldn’t have gotten it cut off when she was due for a trim anyway? It doesn’t cost per inch, you know. They gallantly allow Mallory to buy her own clothes too - Imagine! Allowing someone to spend the money she earns herself! - and again...they don’t buy her clothes? Ever? Jesus, she’s the oldest; she can’t even get hand-me-downs. I think the Pikes have hit on an amazing parenting strategy - never give your kids anything they need until they’re so desperate that they’ll pay for it themselves, then they think you’re awesome for allowing it at all. It’s win-win.
Of course, she’s just got to call Jessi and gush, and Jessi says that if Mal gets her ears pierced, then “I’ll really stick out at meetings.” ...Right, Jess. THAT’S why you stick out. Because of your naked earlobes. (Incidentally, that doesn’t even make sense, because Kristy, Mary Anne, and Dawn don’t have pierced ears either. Do you guys ever get the feeling that Jessi’s just LOOKING for persecution sometimes?) Jessi decides to ask her parents for pierced ears too, because god forbid she have to continue to face the blatant earlobe-ism that has marred our society.
“Shopping day!” Mallory announces as we segue to chapter 13, and indeed it is. The twins are finally not dressed like they just creeped off the set of “Double Bloodbath VI” and they are quite happy about it. Me too, guys. At the mall, Marilyn tries on a pink mohair sweater but tosses it back to the shelf when she realizes it’s $135, and sweetie, that’s why you price check before the dressing room. That way you won’t fall in love with something before realizing you can’t have it, and also you don’t run the risk of snagging the fabric on your necklace and unraveling the damn thing all over the dressing room and having to pay for it anyway. Just saying. Carolyn, wanting as she does to dress “cooler,” goes for “a neat white sweat shirt with a glittering yellow moon and two stars on the front,” and I think my mom used to own that same sweatshirt that she made herself. With puff paint. “Cool” must not have meant the same thing back then.
She drags them off to the Merry-Go-Round next, where your teeth rot out and you have a glycemic fit just from walking in the door. I mean where they sell cutesy accessories. My mistake. While the twins squeal over the disgusting adorableness of unicorn pins and sparkly barrettes, Mallory gets herself and Jessi matchy-matchy earrings. For PIERCED EARS! And then - and I snarked on this once before in the main comm, which I would link to if I weren’t so terribly lazy, but it’s so epic it bears repeating - Mallory goes to the sport shop, where she “bought...blue pushdown socks!” Socks. So exciting that they require an emphatical ellipsis AND an exclamation point. I imagine that in the TV special of Mallory Pike’s life, she will be shown sticking her hand into a bag and beginning to pull it out in super slow motion, and we’ll see just a flash of blue before a smash cut to commercial break. When we come back - having anxiously bitten our nails bloody in the interim - the socks will be revealed, the soundtrack will soar, Jack Nicholson will spontaneously appear to give her an Emmy, and Child Protective Services will haul off the Pikes for neglecting their child so badly that she weeps with joy when she BUYS HERSELF A GODDAMN PAIR OF SOCKS. They can share Mrs. Arnold’s cell. Jesus.
Anyway, the twins decide to change into their new outfits before their mother picks them up, and she almost drives into a storefront when she sees them. I flip back to see the part where they bought something from the Heidi Fleiss Juniors section, because surely she can’t be having such a cow just over seeing her children wearing two different outfits. Can she? CAN SHE? What is WRONG with this woman? Mallory thinks they’re going to be just fine, and does not add the “...after many years of therapy” part out loud.
Oh my god, guess what, you guys? Jessi got permission to get her ears pierced too! And Claudia got permission for another hole in one of her ears! (Only one? The Kishis drive a hard bargain.) Of course this must turn into an official BSC outing, and I’m frankly shocked that Kristy didn’t find a way to bring along fifteen screaming children and make it “The BSC Junior Bodymodding Extravaganza” or something. But my predictable world is righted again when Charlie, who obviously isn’t getting any, drives them all the way out to the mall a few days later. It suddenly occurs to me that my parents (who, if you remember, let me pierce my ears and get contacts when I was still in elementary school) would not let me ride with my 17-year-old boyfriend in his brand new Mustang when I was 15. There is no way in HELL they would have let me ride with a teenager in a car called the Junk Bucket when I was only 11. But then, this is Stoneybrook, where eighth-graders are way more responsible than parents and spend their money on things like pushdown socks.
That Kristy is such a hoot, she playfully suggests that they not do ear-piercing right away, but Mallory puts a stop to that thought by crapping her pants. She wants us to know that she has “waited more than eleven years for this moment,” and you guys. She is actually implying that she came out of the womb and into existence with no direction in life other than to get some decorative holes punched in her body. Everything about this book is so depressing.
They show up at the ear piercing boutique and announce that they’re getting their ears done, and the woman is just like, “Sure, whatever.” With no parent or note or anything. At eleven years old. Jesus, I got a tattoo the day before my eighteenth birthday, and my mom was with me, verbally vouching for me and offering to sign something, and they actually made us go over to the bank to get her signature officially notarized before they would do it. Then again, that’s probably because I went to a good, highly recommended tattoo place and they went to a kiosk in the mall to get pierced by a woman who’s probably just killing time between smoke breaks.
Mal and Jessi pick out earrings to get punched with, and Claudia comes with an earring of her own, which the woman tells her she can use once it’s sterilized. I think they must not actually sterilize it, though, because they only way I can think of to sterilize an earring is with a lit match, and I think that a big wad of papier-mâché going up in flames would merit at least a mention. Or maybe not, because Mallory cannot look at anything but the wonder of her own ears, and she would like us all to know that she “felt incredibly cool.” Not that she IS cool, but for a single brief moment, she can feel like only the second-biggest loser on the planet while Claudia the Queen of Awesome passes out in the ear-piercing chair. Let Mallory have this moment. She has so little in her life to be proud of.
Once Claud’s recovered, the new sex kittens are about to saunter on out of there to be swooped upon by every male in the state, who can apparently smell a girl with pierced ears from forty yards, when Dawn suddenly yells that she wants her ears pierced too. I swear to god, I am going to keep up a running tally of how often “stubborn,” “idealistic,” “independent” Dawn caves to peer pressure. I will put down good money here and now that it’s at least once in every book. She scrambles off to find a pay phone, and her mom immediately gives her permission to get not one, but two sets of holes. This is supposed to be a big deal, but really, if you’re going to allow your kid to get pierced ears, what the hell difference does it make if they get one or two? Sharon is the only sane parent left in Stoneybrook, I think. Compared to the Arnolds and the Pikes, she’s the goddamn mother of the year. The BSCers finish off this day of excitement with lunch at Burger King, and Kristy grandiosely announces that the food is being paid for out of the club treasury. Considering they all contribute to the treasury, every one of them is just paying for her own lunch. Magnanimous gesture, there, Kristy.
Chapter 15 would like to remind us that Mallory may FEEL cooler, but she’s still really immature, since she feels to need to announce her haircut, which isn’t exactly a surprise, with an honest-to-god “ta-DAH,” then raise her hand before speaking to Kristy (“how kindergarten of me,” she admits), and absolutely has to hook pinkies and say “jinx” with Jessi when they speak at the same time. It’s the law, you guys. I should probably be more understanding because she IS only eleven and I was every bit that childish at that age, but dammit, I did not go around proclaiming how I deserved to be treated like I was 17 while acting like I was nine.
Anyway, Kristy’s acting mysterious and secretive, and it turns out she and Mary Anne got the others new earrings, then Claud is all “WAIT I DID TOO,” and then Mal’s like, “OH ME TOO...uh, just for Jessi, though.” Smooth. Dawn gets earrings in the shape of California and another with "California oranges" on them, “Claud’s earrings looked like artist’s palettes, Jessi’s were ballet shoes, and mine were horses, because I like to read about them.” Just in case we think she got horse earrings because they think she IS a horse. These gifts bug me, see my earlier point, re: being “The one who...” It’s like they have no personalities aside from being from California, art, dancing, and reading about horses. Although it could just be that I actually really hate pierced ears, because I eventually took mine out and let them grow closed.
I take it all back when they open Claudia’s earrings, though, because she “had collected little charms and strung together these wild bunches of miniature Coke cans, eyeglasses, forks, animals, you name it, and added feathers and beads.” Holy shit, those are EARRINGS? How cumbersome and heavy and, you know, ugly would those be? Because Claudia, unlike, Mallory, is thoughtful, she also made clip-on versions for Kristy and Mary Anne, who probably threw them in the trash on the way out. Can you picture Kristy, of all people, wearing those? I had to breathe into a paper bag for a little while. Jessi is also more thoughtful than Mallory and opens her book earrings after the meeting, and she’s like, “Just like yours! So we can be twins!” Shockingly, I think Jessi is even more immature than Mal in this book. I think she said she wants to be “just like” Mallory about five times in this book. That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
And that’s a wrap, folks.
It’s long. It’s profane. It’s coming up after the cut.
Open scene: The Pike brood is on their way to Washington Mall to buy shoes, with the all the bitching, name calling, hair pulling, and eye gouging that entails. I don’t know why you would buy eight pairs of shoes at once; that doesn’t seem economically sound. Did everyone’s shoes just fall apart at exactly the same time? Why not buy them as needed so you’re not dropping a good 300 bucks on footwear all at once? Then again, I should not question Mama Pike’s technique, because I’m not the idiot who thought having eight kids in six years was economically sound.
Mallory, naturally, is so responsible that she figures out the seating arrangement in the car that will result in the least bloodshed. I want to snark her for it (who takes such smug pride in being a supermom to seven brats before you’ve even hit puberty, instead of listening to headphones and pretending like you’re not related to them like a normal eleven year old?) but honestly, I’d probably do the same just to get them to shut up for five minutes. So I’ll settle for snarking Mal’s dorkiness once they arrive, when she informs us that “the mall is another world...I hardly know where to look.” You guys, I don’t think Mal gets out much; a bunch of stores clumped together is the most exciting thing she’s ever seen. I want to cry for her sometimes.
The brood is off to Antoinette’s Shoe Tree first, where Mallory has to get boring old loafers instead of what she wants, which are “extremely cool pink shoes with green trim.” First of all, Mal, Jem called and she wants her kicks back. Second...why not? My mom’s rule was that I could get any shoes I wanted, but I had to wear them as long as I would wear the sensible shoes. Maybe if Mal had to wear the pink and green monstrosities every day for a few months and realized what a dork she looked like, she’d think more carefully about choosing her purchases and get the loafers without complaint next time. Ever think of THAT, Mama Pike?
Afterwards everybody splits up to do their own thing, and Mal takes Claire and Margo. Instead of say, looking at clothes or toys the way a normal person does at the mall, Mallory announces that they are going to watch people get their ears pierced. You’re going to...seriously? I mean, I get that she wants to get HER ears pierced, but sitting around watching other people get it done is not exactly a substitute for that, is it? I would be so creeped out if I were getting my ears pierced and some chick was pressed against the window watching me. I think Mallory has some sort of bizarre fetish. Mal does not disprove this theory by letting us know that she could find her way to the ear-piercing boutique blindfolded. She immediately becomes WAY too interested in the girl at the boutique getting her third hole done, and I’m really uncomfortable with this. Luckily, Claire and Margo agree, by screaming and threatening to barf, respectively, and Mallory could just DIE, she is so embarrassed. For a supermom, she sure is stupid about kid-friendly activities. Who would have thought that children wouldn’t like watching other people get holes punched in their bodies?
Chapter 2! As a little twist on a theme, Logan will be appearing at this week’s expository meeting and everyone’s way uncomfortable because they can’t talk about birth control and vaginal discharge the way they normally do. Logan tries to answer the phone at one point, and Kristy freaks out because she doesn’t want to take clients by surprise if a male voice answers the phone. Because if a dude answers the phone, they’ll immediately be so shocked and offended that they’ll hang up and never do business with the BSC again. I think Kristy needs some soothing horse tranquilizers. (Also, I’ve heard a 13-year-old boy’s voice before. The clients would probably assume it’s Mary Anne on the line.) Saved from the horror of speaking to Logan, then, Mrs. Arnold is safe to call and arrange a short-term regular sitting gig with Mallory for the twins. How not-at-all plot devicey!
The next day, Mallory stands nervously on the Arnolds’ doorstep before being greeted by the Children of the Damned. They’re frou-frou’ed up in completely identical ruffles, lace, and jewelry, because Mrs. Arnold is looking forward to spending thousands of dollars on therapy in about six years, and just to add insult to injury, they have matching “bowl cuts.” I look at the cover again and realize that Mrs. Arnold must literally put bowls on their heads and cut around it, because those kids’ hair looks really unfortunate. Damn. Not as unfortunate as Mrs. Arnold, though, because she prances in wearing “two necklaces, a pin, bracelets on each wrist, rings, earrings, and even an ankle bracelet. Her stockings were lacey, and...practically everything she wore had a bow on it. There were bows on her shoes, a bow on her belt, a bow in her hair, and a bow at the neck of her blouse. Her sweater was beaded, and she hadn’t forgotten to pin a fake rose to it…her earrings were in the shape of ladybugs, one of her necklaces spelled her name - Linda - in gold script, her pin was in the shape of a mouse, and the bow in her hair was a ribbon with a print of tiny ducks all over it.” I amend my original statement to: Holy. Damn. I literally cannot form an accurate mental picture of this outfit because the human brain can only hold seven to nine pieces of information in their short-term memory. She perfumes on out of there, leaving me in a haze so deep I can barely remember where I am. Seriously, what the hell was I doing? Oh, yes. Focusing on what a dumbass Mallory is.
She’s fine for, oh, ninety seconds while the twins root through the Kid-Kit, but then Mal crams her foot down her throat by exclaiming how cute and matchy-matchy they are, which apparently triggers the switch from Good Twin to Evil Twin. They take off their ID bracelets and begin speaking in tongues and flailing around- and seriously, if I were standing in that horror novel of a bedroom, with those creepy children, and they suddenly started doing that, I probably would have fled the house screaming, so begrudging props to Mallory for just standing there like an idiot. They taunt her - Mal is getting OWNED by a couple of eight-year-olds - and she undermines her own authority all, “I can’t tell you apart!” and “Which one are you?” Mal, jesus, just pretend you know who they are and don’t address them by name at all. (I routinely forget people’s names while they’re in the middle of introducing themselves. I have learned a few tricks.) She only figures out which twin is which by trying to make one play the piano and assuming it’s Carolyn when she can’t. Because Marilyn couldn’t just PRETEND to not know how to play just to fuck with Mallory some more. I certainly would, if I were her.
The next day Jessi and Mal sit at Casa Pike, and it’s apparently the easiest sitting job in the world, what with everyone miraculously entertaining themselves with movies, board games, and science projects. Shouldn’t baby-sitting be like this more often? Do children really need constant stimulation from adults? Don’t they ever just read or watch TV or something? I had a lot of baby-sitters when I was younger and not one of them organized the neighborhood children into a marching band and somehow I didn’t burn the house down. Anyway, this dose of realism is actually fairly boring, because it gives Mallory and Jessi time to bitch about how their parents treat them like babies. Which totally mystifies me, because they’re both trusted with an awful lot of responsibility for their younger siblings and the kids they sit. (I’m 22 - DOUBLE THEIR AGE- and my sister STILL doesn’t trust me to baby-sit my infant nephew.) I mean, they’re in sixth grade; what exactly do they want here that their parents won’t allow? Driver’s licenses? 30-year-old boyfriends? Free-flowing liquor and nose candy? Their line of wishful thinking is cut short by Margo and Claire coming downstairs dressed alike, and they discuss how dibbly fresh it is to pretend to be twins. This is so subtle.
Mallory must have had another fantastic day with the Arnold twins, because her next notebook entry begins, “What pains! What rotten pains!” Oh, dear, I hope she washed her mouth out with soap for that kind of language. When she shows up, Mrs. Arnold notices as she breezes out the door that the twins have switched their bracelets, and...thanks for the confirmation that she can tell her own kids apart, but a) how conspicuous are these bracelets that you can read them at a glance? and b) seriously, if she knows that ID bracelets are the only way other people can tell her children apart and she still makes no effort to differentiate them other than to stick nametags on them, this woman is so oblivious it’s frightening. Her fix is meaningless, though, because they second she leaves the bracelets are off and Mallory’s clueless, which must just wrap her in warm familiarity.
The twins suggest hide and seek, and there’s a bit where Mallory finds a twin and lets her have a snack, then finds another (or the first, again) and gives her a snack too, then finds another one again and is like, “Fuck y’all, I found two twins and gave out two snacks and I don’t give a damn who they went to.” God strike me dead, that was kind of a smart tack, because they just ignore her the rest of the sitting job. Actually, I don’t know what she was going on and on about in her notebook entry; I mean, the twins are annoying little shits, but nothing gets broken and no one gets in trouble and they end up just entertaining each other, so it doesn’t strike me as the worst sitting job in history. Mallory is kind of a whiner.
Claudia actually has it much worse on her job with the twins the next day, and a much better opening to her notebook entry at that: “Well excuse me for living but waht is it whith these twins?” Waht indeed. She takes the approach I would have gone with, by telling them straight off the bat that she doesn’t give a damn which one is which, because they’re just going to play with each other and ignore her anyway. Claudia > Mallory. She’ll know who’s who at 11:00, she continues, because the piano-playing twin is going to get picked up by her carpool to go to practice, and hands in the air if you saw where this was going. Yeah, of course the piano teacher calls all, “...the hell? This twin is tone deaf?” I hope Carolyn was bored out of her mind listening to other kids play the piano all afternoon.
Claudia continues to be awesome by drawing a smiley face on the remaining twin’s hand so she can still tell them apart, although I don’t know what difference that makes at this point, because they just ignore her the rest of the afternoon anyway. When Mrs. Arnold comes home, she’s a complete hosebeast all, “CLAUDIA YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF OUR CHILDREN HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN.” I will tell you how this could happen: You are a shitty, shitty mother. You can’t help having identical twins, but you CAN help the fact that you do everything in your power to make them impossible to differentiate. You intentionally treat them as one entity and then get pissed when other people can’t parse it. And you yell at the babysitter for something your children did and which was completely and totally beyond her power to prevent, because your preemptive measures made sure she couldn’t. Mrs. Arnold sucks ass.
The next day at the BSC meeting, we have hit the jackpot, because Mallory is obsessed with everyone’s clothes. Claudia’s looking boss with her hair fixed in “a million braids which were pulled back and held in place behind her head with a column of puffy ponytail holders.” She looks like Flavor Flav in my head. Disappointingly, the rest of her outfit is just a “shirt she painted herself,” “tight pants,” and “push down socks.” That is the exact outfit I wore for the entire 1992-1993 school year. I expected better from you, Miss Creeaytiv.
On the up side, Mary Anne is wearing “a short plum-colored skirt over a plum-and-white-striped bodysuit. The legs of the bodysuit stopped just above her ankles, and she’d tucked the bottoms into her socks.” Oh, snap, guys, remember bodysuits? I always had those ones that snapped at the crotch so you had to completely undress yourself to pee. However, I have never seen nor heard of a bodysuit that had legs - holy crap, that’d be one inconvenient, unforgiving outfit - and when I googled for “bodysuits” to attempt a picture, I came up with some hits that would make Mary Anne faint. I think it’s safe to say the bodysuit craze is dead in all but the most hardcore BDSM circles, and that sane people everywhere are dancing on its grave, because Mary Anne is dressed like the bastard child of Grimace and the Hamburglar. I think ANM must live in a magical place where she has never seen anyone wearing clothes, ever, and can only speculate what they might be like. She is also wearing suspenders, which Mal covets, and which is especially funny later in the book when Marilyn says that she doesn't want to wear things with suspenders anymore because they're too babyish. As an aside, the twins also have their ears pierced on the cover. Two eight-year-olds who are dressed by their mother are cooler than Mallory.
Mallory also lets us know that if she became rich, she would “copy Dawn Schafer’s entire outfit.” You might expect something really Claudia-level batshit with that introduction, but Dawn is just wearing an oversized blue and green shirt, a green skirt, and clogs. (“I’d never seen a person actually wearing clogs...Dawn was the only kid in school who could get away with wearing them.” Except Claudia, I guess, who would make earrings out of them.) Hey, Dawn’s wearing Birkenstocks! That’s actually pretty character appropriate! But apart from those, I don’t get what’s special about this outfit. Mallory doesn’t own any shirts or skirts? When her parents buy her clothes, she specifically picks out ones that are boring and ugly so she can bitch about it? ...Actually, never mind, that does sound like Mal.
Mal finally stops crushing on other girls long enough for a powwow about the twins, and normally I hate the “let’s solve all our charges’ problems instead of letting their parents handle it” device, but in this case it might be true, since Mrs. Arnold’s head is so far up her own ass she has intestinal blockage. Kristy, hilariously, is like, “No offense, Mal, but until Claudia witnessed them in action, I thought you were just a crap babysitter.” The great thing about that is that it’s TRUE: the twins only went nuts because Mal made an ass out of herself. Notice that Kristy and Mary Anne had both sat for them before with nary a problem.
They discuss the peculiarity of twins and how people must tell them how cute they are all the time, and Mallory jumps in to say that no one will ever call her cute until she gets a haircut and pierced ears. Jesus, dealing with her on a daily basis must be so very tedious. “Hey, she’s pretty.” “You know who’s not pretty? Me.” “I think there’s something in my contact lens.” “Why won’t my parents let meeee get contact lenses?” “Guess what? I’m going to have a baby!” “Speaking of babies, my parents treat me like one!” God. Luckily, Kristy, continuing to be awesome in this meeting, shuts her down with the equivalent of “STFU, little girl, we’re discussing business, not your pathetic lack of self-esteem.” I think some BSC fundage would be well spent to pay someone to follow Mallory around all day and tell her that.
At her next sitting gig, Mallory’s feeling crabby about being such a naked-earlobed loser, and when the twins start their usual twin talk routine, Mallory lobs back some pig Latin at them. They have matching foot-stomping hissys about it, and Mallory says she’ll teach them how to speak it if they tell her who’s who and speak English to her. So just like that, they show her that they have moles on opposite sides of their faces, which is the easiest way to tell them apart. I know kids can be weird and fickle and their thought processes aren’t always that of normal humans, but this still makes no sense to me. They’re like, “Please tell us apart! We’re sick of looking alike!” which...dude, she’s been trying to tell them apart all along. And if you’re sick of looking alike, then taking advantage of it isn’t exactly helping, geniuses. I think Mrs. Arnold has fucked them up beyond all hope. It’s lucky that they have had this special fake-language bonding moment, because now Mal says yes when Mrs. Arnold comes home and asks her to help out at the twins’ birthday party, instead of screaming, “Uck-fay ou-yay!” and fleeing the scene.
Chapter 9, random sideplot time! Kristy’s babysitting her siblings while Watson and Elizabeth are at an estate sale, so Karen and David Michael invite the Papadakises over to play while Kristy helps Andrew learn his lines for the school play. Poor Andrew is not interested in being a roller skating bear or being on stage at all, but Kristy tells him that being in the play is his job, like their parents’ jobs. I find that a really unhealthy line of reasoning to take. Being on stage makes him miserable, and he isn’t doing it to learn anything, or to make money, and he doesn’t have the choice not to do it. Andrew’s preschool sucks. This could scar him for life. At least if he’s anything like me and had to play a shoe in the second grade play, “The Old Woman and the Shoe.” I don’t want to talk about it.
Luckily, this sideplot has time to go nowhere as Karen and Hannie come in dressed alike, playing twins. How believably coincidental. Kristy decides to surprise them by putting on her matchy dress too, but when she comes in they’re like, “This game sucks now.” This leads Kristy to the conclusion that being twins actually isn’t much fun, instead of the correct conclusion, which is that she sucks and spoils other people’s games.
Dawn, Mary Anne, and Mallory kick off the next chapter with a notebook entry about the twins’ birthday party:
Mary Anne: “So what do you think of the twins, Dawn?”
Dawn: “I think they’re brats, Mary Anne.”
Mallory: “Oh, but they aren’t. I’ve got them all figured out.”
Mary Anne: “You’re prejudiced, Mal. You’ve been sitting for them.”
That’s right, folks. Knowing someone because you’ve spent more time around them than other people have makes you “prejudiced.” All those people who hated the Ramseys actually just knew them well enough to realize they were black. But I’m detracting from the relevant point, which is, why the hell are they having a conversation on the page? Are they just silently passing around the notebook to write to each other instead of speaking like normal humans? The method to the notebook scares me a little.
The three of them show up early to help the Arnolds set up, and there really doesn’t seem much to do that two competent adults couldn’t handle on their own. Seriously, why would you throw your eight-year-olds a party so big that you can’t manage it yourself? That’s just unnecessary. Then again, since we’ve established that the BSC works for peanuts, the Arnolds were probably able to hire three of them for the entire day for a buck seventy five.
Mallory helps the twins get dressed - matchily, of course - and redeems her earlier stupidity by suggesting that they dress differently, but they don’t because their mother wouldn’t like it, apparently. They have fun for most of the party, but when they unwrap their presents, they start getting crabby because they receive fifteen identical gifts. Well, really, seeing as how it’s the kids’ parents who have to buy these gifts, I don’t feel that sorry for them. My sister and I aren’t even twins and we often got the same thing from people who didn’t know us that well, because otherwise there’s just whining and hair-pulling about who got what gift. In a legendary family video, she actually knocks me down and starts hitting me because I got the “better” Cabbage Patch Doll. I think the only reason we didn’t just get coal for Christmas is because there would have been a fight about whose lump of coal was bigger.
Mallory turns out to be the only one who gives the twins different gifts - a piano pin for Marilyn and a book of science experiments for Carolyn. You know what sucks more than getting the same thing as your sister? Only being known as “the one who plays the piano” or “the one who likes science.” I didn’t usually mind getting the same thing as my sister if it was something cool, but I can’t say I loved getting nothing but cat-related gifts from distant relatives for fifteen years because the only thing they knew was that I was “the one who liked cats.” Anyway, the twins really don’t do anything bratty aside from look grumpy because their mother keeps posing them together for pictures, so Dawn was, as usual, just being a gigundo bitch.
At her sitting job the next day, the twins show off their other birthday gifts to Mallory, which are of course more of the same things. I feel more annoyed at the Arnolds for giving their own kids matching gifts, since they ought to know them well enough to pick out something better, but since they’re all really nice expensive toys, I still don’t feel that sorry for them. Also - it’d be one thing if they gave them both toys that only one of them would like, but they both seem to enjoy their fancy dollhouses and stuff, so see my earlier point re: fighting. NOTHING causes arguments like getting a gift that your sibling really wants too. It’s just self-preservation at this point.
Mallory takes this moment to tell the twins that her brothers are identical triplets, and you’d really think this is information she would have revealed sooner, when she was trying to make them like her. They’re like, “So then why did you think we were so cute? That’s why we hated you, you know. And that other stupid girl who sat for us.” Mallory: “But you ARE cute.” Twins: “Oh, we misunderstood! Sorry!” Again: No. Sense. They decided to be evil to all babysitters because one girl called them cute, even though loads of people have said that to them before? And they thought that her desperately trying to tell them apart meant that she didn’t care enough to tell them apart? She repeats her original statement (“Matchy matchy is cute!”) and it...somehow now means something different? I should never have children. I really don’t get them.
Mal suggests that she help the twins talk to their mother - “Talk to her about what?” they duh, and Mal has to explain to them that they aren’t, like, legally required to dress alike. Seriously: MENTAL ABUSE, what these children have been through. When Mrs. Arnold comes home, Mallory and the twins explain that they’d like to pick out their own clothes and be thought of as two people, and Mrs. Arnold totally mists up instead of getting pissed that a sixth-grader is telling her how to raise her children. Okay, it’s kind of adorable. Except for the part where Mallory wants to be the one to take them shopping for new clothes. Isn’t that a rite of passage a mother might like to share with her children? At the very least, I don’t think that I would give my eight-year-olds a wad of money and drop them off at the mall under the sole supervision of someone who probably doesn’t even wear a bra yet. But Mrs. Arnold is kind of retarded, I think.
On the way home, it occurs to Mallory that - just like the Arnolds! - she could actually ask her parents for a haircut and pierced ears, instead of moping around whining about it. Wait, she spends all this time bitching about how she’s not allowed to do anything when she doesn’t even KNOW that she’s not allowed to do it? SERIOUSLY? She says she’s “getting like Kristy Thomas, with all my ideas,” as if asking her parents permission for something she wants is an actual idea, instead of basic common sense. Mallory is a sad, sad little person.
She plans out a great strategy involving bargaining and sucking up to her parents instead of just, you know, ASKING, which usually works pretty well. She thinks her parents are “wizards” because they immediately figure out what she’s up to. No, Mal, they are just not stupid, unlike you. I know from experience - your parents are either going to say yes or no. You are not going to trick them into agreeing to anything they wouldn’t have agreed to anyway. But she’s got to go ahead with the bargaining anyway, “cleverly” asking for pierced ears, a haircut, contact lenses, and a new wardrobe, knowing that she’ll only get the ears and hair out of the deal. The Pikes are appropriately gobsmacked by this audacity, and Mallory’s next trick - before her parents say anything, mind - is to hang her head and whine about what a baby she is. Yes, THAT’S the tack I would take when I’m trying to convince someone of my maturity.
(I have to take a minute here and say that I kind of don’t get this whole thing, because aren’t the Pikes supposed to be the freewheeling, laid back parents? I mean, my parents were pretty strict, and I got my ears pierced when I was five - and second holes when I was nine - and contacts when I was ten, and Mallory is, admittedly, more responsible when I was at that age. And I still have eyes and ears, amazingly. I think everyone here is WAY overthinking some things that are not really a big deal.)
They give in right away on the ears and hair, because Mallory offers to pay for them herself and they are not stupid. Wait, do the Pike kids never get haircuts or something? Ever? She couldn’t have gotten it cut off when she was due for a trim anyway? It doesn’t cost per inch, you know. They gallantly allow Mallory to buy her own clothes too - Imagine! Allowing someone to spend the money she earns herself! - and again...they don’t buy her clothes? Ever? Jesus, she’s the oldest; she can’t even get hand-me-downs. I think the Pikes have hit on an amazing parenting strategy - never give your kids anything they need until they’re so desperate that they’ll pay for it themselves, then they think you’re awesome for allowing it at all. It’s win-win.
Of course, she’s just got to call Jessi and gush, and Jessi says that if Mal gets her ears pierced, then “I’ll really stick out at meetings.” ...Right, Jess. THAT’S why you stick out. Because of your naked earlobes. (Incidentally, that doesn’t even make sense, because Kristy, Mary Anne, and Dawn don’t have pierced ears either. Do you guys ever get the feeling that Jessi’s just LOOKING for persecution sometimes?) Jessi decides to ask her parents for pierced ears too, because god forbid she have to continue to face the blatant earlobe-ism that has marred our society.
“Shopping day!” Mallory announces as we segue to chapter 13, and indeed it is. The twins are finally not dressed like they just creeped off the set of “Double Bloodbath VI” and they are quite happy about it. Me too, guys. At the mall, Marilyn tries on a pink mohair sweater but tosses it back to the shelf when she realizes it’s $135, and sweetie, that’s why you price check before the dressing room. That way you won’t fall in love with something before realizing you can’t have it, and also you don’t run the risk of snagging the fabric on your necklace and unraveling the damn thing all over the dressing room and having to pay for it anyway. Just saying. Carolyn, wanting as she does to dress “cooler,” goes for “a neat white sweat shirt with a glittering yellow moon and two stars on the front,” and I think my mom used to own that same sweatshirt that she made herself. With puff paint. “Cool” must not have meant the same thing back then.
She drags them off to the Merry-Go-Round next, where your teeth rot out and you have a glycemic fit just from walking in the door. I mean where they sell cutesy accessories. My mistake. While the twins squeal over the disgusting adorableness of unicorn pins and sparkly barrettes, Mallory gets herself and Jessi matchy-matchy earrings. For PIERCED EARS! And then - and I snarked on this once before in the main comm, which I would link to if I weren’t so terribly lazy, but it’s so epic it bears repeating - Mallory goes to the sport shop, where she “bought...blue pushdown socks!” Socks. So exciting that they require an emphatical ellipsis AND an exclamation point. I imagine that in the TV special of Mallory Pike’s life, she will be shown sticking her hand into a bag and beginning to pull it out in super slow motion, and we’ll see just a flash of blue before a smash cut to commercial break. When we come back - having anxiously bitten our nails bloody in the interim - the socks will be revealed, the soundtrack will soar, Jack Nicholson will spontaneously appear to give her an Emmy, and Child Protective Services will haul off the Pikes for neglecting their child so badly that she weeps with joy when she BUYS HERSELF A GODDAMN PAIR OF SOCKS. They can share Mrs. Arnold’s cell. Jesus.
Anyway, the twins decide to change into their new outfits before their mother picks them up, and she almost drives into a storefront when she sees them. I flip back to see the part where they bought something from the Heidi Fleiss Juniors section, because surely she can’t be having such a cow just over seeing her children wearing two different outfits. Can she? CAN SHE? What is WRONG with this woman? Mallory thinks they’re going to be just fine, and does not add the “...after many years of therapy” part out loud.
Oh my god, guess what, you guys? Jessi got permission to get her ears pierced too! And Claudia got permission for another hole in one of her ears! (Only one? The Kishis drive a hard bargain.) Of course this must turn into an official BSC outing, and I’m frankly shocked that Kristy didn’t find a way to bring along fifteen screaming children and make it “The BSC Junior Bodymodding Extravaganza” or something. But my predictable world is righted again when Charlie, who obviously isn’t getting any, drives them all the way out to the mall a few days later. It suddenly occurs to me that my parents (who, if you remember, let me pierce my ears and get contacts when I was still in elementary school) would not let me ride with my 17-year-old boyfriend in his brand new Mustang when I was 15. There is no way in HELL they would have let me ride with a teenager in a car called the Junk Bucket when I was only 11. But then, this is Stoneybrook, where eighth-graders are way more responsible than parents and spend their money on things like pushdown socks.
That Kristy is such a hoot, she playfully suggests that they not do ear-piercing right away, but Mallory puts a stop to that thought by crapping her pants. She wants us to know that she has “waited more than eleven years for this moment,” and you guys. She is actually implying that she came out of the womb and into existence with no direction in life other than to get some decorative holes punched in her body. Everything about this book is so depressing.
They show up at the ear piercing boutique and announce that they’re getting their ears done, and the woman is just like, “Sure, whatever.” With no parent or note or anything. At eleven years old. Jesus, I got a tattoo the day before my eighteenth birthday, and my mom was with me, verbally vouching for me and offering to sign something, and they actually made us go over to the bank to get her signature officially notarized before they would do it. Then again, that’s probably because I went to a good, highly recommended tattoo place and they went to a kiosk in the mall to get pierced by a woman who’s probably just killing time between smoke breaks.
Mal and Jessi pick out earrings to get punched with, and Claudia comes with an earring of her own, which the woman tells her she can use once it’s sterilized. I think they must not actually sterilize it, though, because they only way I can think of to sterilize an earring is with a lit match, and I think that a big wad of papier-mâché going up in flames would merit at least a mention. Or maybe not, because Mallory cannot look at anything but the wonder of her own ears, and she would like us all to know that she “felt incredibly cool.” Not that she IS cool, but for a single brief moment, she can feel like only the second-biggest loser on the planet while Claudia the Queen of Awesome passes out in the ear-piercing chair. Let Mallory have this moment. She has so little in her life to be proud of.
Once Claud’s recovered, the new sex kittens are about to saunter on out of there to be swooped upon by every male in the state, who can apparently smell a girl with pierced ears from forty yards, when Dawn suddenly yells that she wants her ears pierced too. I swear to god, I am going to keep up a running tally of how often “stubborn,” “idealistic,” “independent” Dawn caves to peer pressure. I will put down good money here and now that it’s at least once in every book. She scrambles off to find a pay phone, and her mom immediately gives her permission to get not one, but two sets of holes. This is supposed to be a big deal, but really, if you’re going to allow your kid to get pierced ears, what the hell difference does it make if they get one or two? Sharon is the only sane parent left in Stoneybrook, I think. Compared to the Arnolds and the Pikes, she’s the goddamn mother of the year. The BSCers finish off this day of excitement with lunch at Burger King, and Kristy grandiosely announces that the food is being paid for out of the club treasury. Considering they all contribute to the treasury, every one of them is just paying for her own lunch. Magnanimous gesture, there, Kristy.
Chapter 15 would like to remind us that Mallory may FEEL cooler, but she’s still really immature, since she feels to need to announce her haircut, which isn’t exactly a surprise, with an honest-to-god “ta-DAH,” then raise her hand before speaking to Kristy (“how kindergarten of me,” she admits), and absolutely has to hook pinkies and say “jinx” with Jessi when they speak at the same time. It’s the law, you guys. I should probably be more understanding because she IS only eleven and I was every bit that childish at that age, but dammit, I did not go around proclaiming how I deserved to be treated like I was 17 while acting like I was nine.
Anyway, Kristy’s acting mysterious and secretive, and it turns out she and Mary Anne got the others new earrings, then Claud is all “WAIT I DID TOO,” and then Mal’s like, “OH ME TOO...uh, just for Jessi, though.” Smooth. Dawn gets earrings in the shape of California and another with "California oranges" on them, “Claud’s earrings looked like artist’s palettes, Jessi’s were ballet shoes, and mine were horses, because I like to read about them.” Just in case we think she got horse earrings because they think she IS a horse. These gifts bug me, see my earlier point, re: being “The one who...” It’s like they have no personalities aside from being from California, art, dancing, and reading about horses. Although it could just be that I actually really hate pierced ears, because I eventually took mine out and let them grow closed.
I take it all back when they open Claudia’s earrings, though, because she “had collected little charms and strung together these wild bunches of miniature Coke cans, eyeglasses, forks, animals, you name it, and added feathers and beads.” Holy shit, those are EARRINGS? How cumbersome and heavy and, you know, ugly would those be? Because Claudia, unlike, Mallory, is thoughtful, she also made clip-on versions for Kristy and Mary Anne, who probably threw them in the trash on the way out. Can you picture Kristy, of all people, wearing those? I had to breathe into a paper bag for a little while. Jessi is also more thoughtful than Mallory and opens her book earrings after the meeting, and she’s like, “Just like yours! So we can be twins!” Shockingly, I think Jessi is even more immature than Mal in this book. I think she said she wants to be “just like” Mallory about five times in this book. That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
And that’s a wrap, folks.