#80: Mallory Pike, #1 Fan
Planning my wedding is going to kill me, you guys. The stress has gotten so bad I needed to take out some aggression on a suitable punching bag - and who's a more suitable punching bag than Mallory, really. Tally ho!
“I love English class. I really do,” says Mallory, lest we spend even one sentence of this book mistaking her for a cool person. Thank god that’s out of the way. She’s especially excited right now because her teacher, Mr. Williams, is giving them a dibble assignment: they have to think about what career they might like to pursue one day and somehow express it in written form. It can be anything they want - a short story, a play, a series of poems. I would have given my left arm for a chance to make my middle school English teacher regret ever thinking up this assignment, and it would begin with “Ode to a Ringling Brothers Weasel Tamer.” I’ve found through years of careful trial and error that when teachers say, “Be creative,” they don’t really mean it.
Mallory knows just what career she wants to cover for her project, because she’s always wanted to be a children’s author. Not that it occurs to her to just turn in one of the children’s stories she’s already written, which would technically be creative, fall within the boundaries of the assignment, and require no extra work whatsoever. She’s too busy lapsing into a daydream about seeing her name on the cover of her very own book for the first time. Mallory is EXACTLY the kind of person who gets ripped off by a vanity publisher, I’m afraid. One thing she doesn’t like to imagine, though, is her picture on the book, because she hates the way she looks. She says she doesn’t have "a monster face or anything,” but she’d rather not have a picture, because “Why spoil a good book?” I think it’s safe to say that if the sight of your face on the back flap ruins the entire reading experience, claiming you don’t have "a monster face or anything” kind of loses its significance.
While Mallory muses, Mr. Williams tells them they better think of something good, because this assignment will comprise the entire marking period and count for 80% of their grade. Oh, bullshit. I was a creative writing major in college and I still think that spending an entire marking period on one “creative” project with no academic content is crap. Besides, this whole thing is like Modern Stupidity Redux - sixth graders do not know what they want to be when they grow up. I still wanted to be a marine biologist in sixth grade, and three years later I took my first actual biology class, happily accepted my hard earned C minus at the end of the semester, and never took another science class in my life.
Mallory and Jessi discuss the assignment after class, and of course Jessi is going to do hers on ballet, because she doesn’t plan to be a professional ballerina unless it means that the ghostwriters would have to give her a personality. Mallory says she doesn’t have any idea what she’s going to do. She sure is going to make a great professional writer when she can’t even think of anything to write about for her writing assignment on writing.
She muses about it all the way home, dodging all those wacky Pike kids with their Skip-Its and squiggle balls and catcher’s mitts, until Haley Braddock calls for Vanessa and gives Mallory an idea. You see, Haley is a member of the Kids Can Do Anything club, a group of goody-two-shoes that organizes food drives and recycling projects instead of vandalizing things like the good lord intended children to do. And Mallory can include the club in her project! “It seemed like a natural connection,” she says. ...I’m sorry, what? How is that remotely connected to writing a paper about becoming a writer? Allow me to burst your rainbow-tinted bubble, Mal-writers are not philanthropists. Not even children’s authors. We are a high-strung, self-centered, hateful lot. We frequently drink. It also tells you something about how good an idea this is that, despite its glaring and obvious connections to this project, Mallory can’t even think of a way to work it in.
Mal takes a break from all the brain busting about how to include other people’s children in a project that has nothing to do with other people’s children to read a book. The book is about a girl named Alice who lives in a poor farming town with her four brothers and wants to be an actress. Mallory assures us that this is hysterical, but naturally she does not describe it in a way that makes it sound remotely funny. By the end, she’s sobbing because she’s so sad the book is over, but this tells us more about Mallory’s chemical imbalance than how good the book was. She decides to write the author, Henrietta Hayes, right then and there, to ask her if she IS Alice. Thus begins a Very Special Plot in which Mallory, future author, can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. Christ, it’s sad.
Oh, no! She spent so much time writing her fawning letter that she’s about to be late for the BSC meeting! She does a baseball slide into Chapter 2 just as the clock hits 5:30, thus avoiding the wrath of Kristy and telling me it’s safe to skip the next 12 pages. Nothing at all happens until the last page of the chapter, of course, when Mary Anne takes my advice and suggests that Mal just write another children’s story. THANK YOU. Mal whines that she can’t include the Kids Can Do Anything (Except Drive, Vote, Marry, Smoke, Join the Army, Purchase Cough Syrup, See R-Rated Movies, or Stay Up Past 10:30) Club that way. Kristy, always ready to butt in with a mindbendingly stupid idea, suggests she write a play featuring the Kids Club and get them to perform it. ...I’m sorry, WHAT? How is that even SORT OF REMOTELY connected to this project? She doesn’t want to be a DIRECTOR, Kristy. Mallory, of course, thinks this is a fantastic idea, because Mallory would not know a good idea if it bit off her enomous, misshapen nose.
The next day, Mal trots over to the elementary school to talk to the Kids Club supervisors, Ms. Simon and Mr. Katz, about her play idea. They ask what the play will be about, and Mal has to admit that she hasn’t actually, technically, per se, thought about it or anything like that, but does it really matter? Ms. Simon snots that she’d like it to be educational. Yeah, well, I’d like sixth-graders to do something educational in English class, too, so get in line, lady. I think they could start by learning the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Mal points out that a play itself can be a learning experience, and Ms. Simon says that they’re a service-oriented group, so putting on a play just for the sake of it is not what they do. It’s apparently against the rules for the kids to do anything remotely fun, in solidarity with all the starving orphans in Africa who never have any fun or something. I have no idea why Mallory is even asking permission from a teacher for this. They put on some sort of kiddie activity every week without asking permission from anyone, so why she doesn’t just write a play and open it to whatever kid wants to be in it is beyond me.
Well, because then this book would be lacking in goody-goody activism, of course. Mal gets an idea and blurts out that the kids could perform the play for people in hospitals and nursing homes. Ms. Simon promptly jizzes in her pants, of course, and runs away with putting together a whole show and having Mallory teach the history of theater to all the kids and waving goodbye to the speck in the distance that is relevance to Mallory’s actual English project. Bye-bye, relevance!
Mallory goes home and writes her proposal for the project, thusly, “I am writing a play for kids because I’ve never written a play for kids but I want to be a writer and sometimes writers have to be ready to write a play for kids in case they need to.” She continues on for another page that she admits isn’t entirely honest, which is that watching children act would allow her to observe how they behave, which will help her write about them better. Of course, she says, she doesn’t really need a play to observe kids, because she lives buried under about 25 of them. True, Mal, but I think your audience would rather read about regular kids, instead of some sort of ape children raised by slovenly, ill-mannered wolves.
Mal thinks this sounds highly educational and is totally pumped when she hands it in the next day and Mr. Williams asks to see her after class. She actually imagines that he is going to tell her that this is the most original and well-thought-out proposal he has seen in 25 years of teaching and, guys, this is so sad. SO sad. Luckily, I don’t have time to shed a tear for poor pathetic Mallory, because what Mr. Williams actually tells her is that her proposal sucks. HA HA HA HA HA. He gently points out that it isn’t very career oriented and she isn’t going to learn anything about writing from it, then lies that it’s a good beginning but needs to be expanded. Whatever, I know teacher lip service when I hear it. He is totally going to go home and say to his wife, “You will not BELIEVE this stupid shit I had a student turn in today.”
At home, Mallory feels like she’s lost faith in her ability to come up with a decent idea, but she just can’t bear to give up on her play idea and wonders how she can make it big enough for the project. Yes, it’s not as though the BSC has EVER had an event for kids that wasn’t related to school. You certainly can’t, say, do a school project unrelated to children and still have the play just for fun. I don’t think she should lose faith in her ability to come up with a decent idea, because she clearly had none to begin with.
Just then, Vanessa comes to bring her a letter, and OMG, IT’S FROM HENRIETTA HAYES. I hope she included a bad-luck charm in it. It starts off “Dear Reader” and addresses nothing specific to Mallory’s letter, and our Mal, always quick on the uptake, realizes after about three rereads that it’s a form letter. Oh, well, that’s just about as good as a threatening chain letter. Mallory gets all depressed for a minute, until she checks the postmark and realizes that it come from Stamford. OMFG! Stamford’s right nearby! Mallory could totally call Henrietta Hayes on the phone, unsolicited, and drill her about her life! And then she can write all about Henrietta’s personal life and how it compares to her own as an up-and-coming writer! Yeah, that’s not at ALL inappropriately creepy and intrusive. Famous people don’t exist just for your enjoyment, Mal.
A week later, Claudia comes along with Mallory to the Goody Goody Club meeting to help explain to the kids what they’re going to do. Mal actually whips out index cards to address a bunch of nine-year-olds and lectures them on the fine art of acting and the difference between plays and novels. They’re fourth graders, not mentally handicapped, Mal. They probably know things like the difference between plays and novels, and the difference between fiction and - oh, wait. Naturally, this section is clunkily narrated by Claudia, who looks around while Mal drones and notes that among our more familiar charges is Danielle Roberts, the little girl who got leukemia in an earlier book I never read. I really think the ghostwriters should go back to Creative Writing 101 and learn the basics, such as that in a first-person story, you cannot have sentences like “Claudia admired the way Danielle didn’t spend time feeling sorry for herself.” We are in Mallory’s head, and Mallory has no way to know what Claudia is thinking. If anything, really. (I myself always imagined the inside of Claudia’s head to be a television test pattern or maybe a little “Gone Fishin’” sign. But seriously, guys, the writing in this book is fucking ABYSMAL and the editing is worse, because I’ve spotted three serious grammatical errors and it’s only Chapter 4. I despair.)
Ms. Simon pipes up that the kids now have the choice to either be in Mal’s play or make Christmas decorations. Awesomely, the entire club is not exactly clamoring to be in Mal’s farce, and half of them, including Claudia, opt for the decorations instead. Mal’s left with four kids she doesn’t know, plus Danielle, Sara ( aka Sarah) Hill, Becca, Charlotte, and someone named Buddy “Barret.” Jesus christ, editors. Also: Becca and Charlotte performing onstage? In front of an audience? VOLUNTARILY? Has this ghostwriter even READ a BSC book before?
Mallory makes them read a Henrietta Hayes play to see how well they act, and I think this kind of obsession is the first step down that slippery slope to stalking. Sara(h), Charlotte, Becca, and Buddy are good, of course, because only the nameless kids that don’t worship the Cult are allowed to suck at things. Danielle is the best, though. Of course. Just once I want to see a TV show or a movie or a book where the kid with cancer isn’t the plucky hero. Just once. They don’t have to be little shits or anything, but just a normal kid that can’t really act would be fine.
As Mal and Claudia leave, Claudia asks what Mal is going to write her play about. Mallory doesn’t know, but she thinks it has to be autobiographical. Now that she’s read most of the Alice books, she’s more convinced than ever that Henrietta Haynes really is either Alice or Alice’s mother, because they’re just too REAL to have been made up. Ohhhhh dear. She’s still waiting for Henrietta to answer her letter demanding she drop everything and do her project for her, but she’s confident that Henrietta will answer. “I had a very strong feeling my letter would capture her interest this time,” Mal says. “From her books, Henrietta Hayes didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would leave a kid stuck when it came to a school project.” God, I hope they find her in a few months, buried helplessly under thousands and thousands of form letters, mumbling, “She wouldn’t leave a kid stuck...they’re so REAL...”
Then God smiled on me, because she does in fact have another form letter waiting for her when she gets home. Aha.
She isn’t soured on Henrietta’s lack of enthusiasm, though, because there are still Alice books to read. Later that night, under the covers, with a flashlight, because that’s what dorky kids do in books. I had no idea that my parents were so subversive in letting me stay up as late as I wanted as long as I was just in bed reading. Then again, my parents didn’t force me to run their homemade daycare center, either, so that’s already two ways that my parents suck less than the Pikes.
Once she finishes, Mal grows wistful that her family doesn’t all hold hands and sing Christmas carols and love each other the way that Alice and her family do. Except for...all the books where they do. Her mind begins to race - Alice would never give up just because she was getting silence and form letters and restraining orders! When Alice can’t stalk through a door, she stalks through a window!
Mallory has a brain wave and decides that since the letters came from Stamford, she could just look up Henrietta Hayes in the phonebook. Henrietta Hayes is going to be moving and switching to an unlisted number shortly, I suspect. And OMFG - guess what, guys?! Henrietta lives IN STONEYBROOK! Right near Dawn and Mary Anne! For fuck’s sake, who DOESN’T live in Stoneybrook? I suspect Jimmy Hoffa is hiding out on Bradford Court.
Mal writes a third letter right then and there: “I’ve written you before. My problem is that this time, I need you to write me back a real letter. It’s important because my class project, which counts for almost my whole grade for this marking period, depends on it.” Well, whose fault is that? Here’s a hint: NOT HENRIETTA’S. Entitlement is an ugly, ugly thing.
Mal is all jittery the next morning, darting around and writing “SUPERDIBBLY IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE FROM YOUR NUMBER ONE FAN” all over the envelope and shit. She gets out a couple more Henrietta Hayes books at the library, along with “The Basics of Playwriting,” which opens by offering Hemingway’s advice to write about what you know. I wouldn’t take advice from a person who was friendly with Fidel Castro and then blew his own brains out with a shotgun, but that’s just a personal preference. She thinks that this means that Henrietta Hayes will write back, because she must be such a funny, happy person based on her books. Maybe she’d like to STAY that way by not associating herself with you, Mal. She reads the line again and it hits her - if she should write about what she knows, she can write her play about the Pike family! Dammit, Ernie! SEE WHAT YOU DID?
Four days later, “a sick feeling churned” in Mal’s stomach, because she’s the proud recipient of a third identical form letter. HA. HA. HA. HA. Unfortunately, Mal still doesn’t get that no means no, because in the latest Alice adventure, Alice stomped into a Hollywood producer’s office, demanded an audition, and actually got it because she’s just so spunky. God, and people think MY generation is the entitled one? I think we only inherited the snottiness of our predecessors. Clearly, Mal thinks, she just needs to stomp right into Henrietta Hayes’s home and demand her attention, and Henrietta will find this charming and spunky. Oh god.
She pedals flat out to the other side of town right then, but she can’t find 312 Morgan Road right away - just 310 and then 314. There are some thick trees and a small path between them, though, which Mallory turns down “on a hunch.” I like how Mallory thinks basic common sense is actually her superior intuition.
Henrietta’s house is tucked way back in the woods, which just screams “I am an open and friendly person, please knock on my door and ask me inappropriate personal questions,” I feel. Nobody answers Mallory’s knock at first, so she prepares to leave another goddamn note, which Henrietta will undoubtedly turn right over to the police. Just as she’s about to leave and go hire a skywriter, though, Henrietta answers the door and kindly asks what’s going on.
“I’m Mallory Pike. Didn’t you get my letters?” she blurts out. Subtle AND classy! Henrietta’s like, “Um, no? Do you think Santa Claus reads all his own mail too?” Mal thinks she’s blown it, but Henrietta’s good people and invites in this pathetic, gawky eleven-year-old. I mean, CLEARLY she’s screaming for a decent adult role model in her life.
Henrietta is about 47 cats away from a living stereotype, it turns out - lots of art and plants and a teakettle and probably Emily Dickinson rotting away in the attic. She puts on the tea and asks Mal what exactly is up with the creepy intrusion. Mal tries to explain without sounding like an ingrate that she wrote a bunch of letters, and Henrietta finishes she’s just been getting form letters back.
Henrietta, with some wistful violin music playing in the background, sadly explains that she feels so terrible about the form letters, but answering her fan mail was turning into a full time job and sometimes she’d sit down to answer a letter only to find out it was a year old, and she “had to come up with a solution, and that solution was the form letter.” Come up with that all by yourself, didja there, Henny? Seriously, I think Moses sent the celebrity form letter to his fans.
She tells Mal that she understands how unsatisfying it must be to get a form letter, but isn’t it better than being ignored? Mal agrees that it is, but it seems to me that they amount to the same thing. I mean, the options are either that she read Mal’s letters pleading for a personal response and STILL sent her the same form letter, or she didn’t read it at all. Mallory actually manages to come to the same conclusion, but Henrietta assures her that she would have read it “eventually.” She keeps a bunch of form letters ready to go and drops one in the mail as soon as she gets a letter, then actually reads it once she has time. Come on, how long does it take to just READ a letter? If I’m not writing a snark, I can knock off an entire BSC book in under thirty minutes; a sheet of looseleaf that some sixth-grader wrote “NUMBER ONE FAN” all over will take you the length of time it takes to shuffle inside from the mailbox. Maybe all the fan mail went unanswered for so long because Henrietta’s just a lazyass.
Mallory describes her project to Henrietta, and old Henny basically comes unglued with glee and falls all over herself wanting to help. Yes, she’s far too busy to even read a couple of notes, but she certainly has days to devote to a random and possibly dangerously obsessed kid.
Well, I suppose she does have the time, because Mal interviews her right then and there and learns that she works six hours a day: four hours writing and two outlining new projects. What the hell, I often write six hours a day IN ADDITION TO EIGHT HOURS A DAY AT MY REAL JOB. And she doesn’t have to get up early and shower, because she works at home and has no coworkers to offend, and she doesn’t have a husband or children or pets to take care of or spend time with, so basically, I think Henrietta “Woe, I don’t have time to read my own mail even though I can work, get a full night’s sleep, and STILL piss away 10 more hours every single day” Hayes can fuck right off. All you fellow busy peeps, can I get an amen?
Henrietta frowns once she’s finished answering Mallory’s questions, feeling unsure whether she’s given Mallory “a good sense of what the life of a writer is really like.” Well, she makes enough money writing to support herself without a day job and she isn’t drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon, so I would say no. But this is a BSC book, so instead of shrugging, kicking Mal out, and forgetting about the whole thing, she offers Mallory a job as an assistant while she’s busy with some big projects. What was she planning to do if some headcase hadn’t shown up on her doorstep, I wonder? Oh, wait, they both claim it’s “fate” that brought them together. So if a headcase hadn’t shown up on another headcase’s doorstep, I suppose.
Mal reports bright and early to her job the next day, and the first order of business is for Henrietta to show her where she works - at a typewriter, of course. She also has a teakettle and no microwave, so I don’t know why Mal finds the lack of a computer surprising. Henrietta admits that she could get a computer, but “this typewriter seems like high technology. I bought it only last year and I still can’t believe how amazing it is. I can read two sentences on this print display here and change them as much as I like before printing.” Someone should tell her that she can read an infinite number of sentences on a computer and change them as much as she likes before printing, including making the font bright pink and translating the whole thing to ancient Sanskrit, but the poor woman would probably have an aneurysm. I’m not remotely tech savvy and can barely operate my own iPod, but for some reason I’m incredibly irritated by people who can’t even try to keep up with basic technology. That right there, THAT’S probably my generation’s snottiness kicking in.
Mallory checks out the bookshelves next, and it turns out that Henrietta is a personal friend of Amelia Moody, another author that Mallory once made a complete ass of herself over. She comes to Stoneybrook frequently, of course. Seriously, do you think you can back out of your driveway in Stoneybrook without running over a celebrity?
Mal’s first official project will be to do some filing, which is so extensive that the file cabinets have to be kept in another room. I have no idea what sort of paperwork she has that would be that extensive - my own personal shelf of “writer crap” contains, at present, a thesaurus from the 1950’s that has some hilariously inappropriate synonyms in it, a blank notebook left over from an experiment where I was going to try writing without a computer for one week, a copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, a Pilates DVD, and a cat toy.
As they head for the cabinet room, Mallory spies a pink ruffly bedroom and asks if it belongs to Henrietta’s daughter. Henrietta pales and turns all “STAY AWAY FROM THE WEST WING IT’S FORBIDDEN” and “THIS DOOR MUST ALWAYS STAY CLOSED NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN” and Mal pretty much wets herself - “I just...thought...” Henrietta manages to smooth herself out enough to say that it belonged to her daughter Cassie, but Cassie’s dead now. I think this calls for an Open Mouth, Insert Foot.
Mal gets on with her filing in total silence, the better to think about how her own house hasn’t been silent in eleven years. Even when the family’s away, I imagine the plumbing weeps bitterly. She stops to take a phone call from Henrietta’s editor, who talks like the editor of the Daily Bugle and thinks her idea for an Alice Anderson reunion book is HOT HOT HOT. Mallory gets so excited that she races into Henrietta’s office to interrupt her, even though the whole point of an assistant was to take the calls that would normally go to the answering machine during her writing time. So, thus far, having an assistant has actually made her life LESS convenient and also dredged up painful memories. THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT ALLOW STALKERS INTO YOUR HOME.
Luckily, Henrietta wasn’t actually busy writing - just cradling a framed photo of her dead daughter. I wonder if that counts toward her six hours. Instead of flinging it at Mallory’s head for the interruption, though, she’s excited about the call and admits that she got the Alice reunion idea from Mallory. Deciding to write another book just because a fan told you to isn’t exactly an idea, there, Henny. Another graduate of the Kristy Thomas School of Great Ideas, I see.
She invites Mallory to stay for dinner and then calls her a cab so she won’t have to ride her bike home in the dark. Apparently cabs are very posh in Stoneybrook, because when Mal gets out she looks around, “hoping people were watching me and wondering what Mallory Pike was doing arriving in a cab.” I’m frankly shocked that Stacey didn’t randomly appear to remind us that there are cabs in New York.
Inspired by her brain-busting day of filing, she goes right upstairs, ignoring the general circus that is her house, to begin work on her play. It’s based on her, of course, but “fictionalized a little so no one would be offended.” Her play opens with a girl named Valery Spike who, according to her clumsy sister “Ranessa,” got all the looks, the brains, and the talent in her huge family. Unfortunately, she has no time to write Great Literature, because her siblings Ranessa, Ricky, and Margarita are busy flinging poo at each other or something, and her mother Mrs. Spike needs her to paint the house, repave the driveway, and give birth to a few more children. Mallory is proud of this opening because it has everything - comedy, in the form of the poo-flinging mongrels, and tragedy, in the form of “the poor writer burdened with an insensitive, needy family.” Oh, there’s tragedy, all right.
The next day at the Goody Goody Club meeting, the kids can’t help but notice that the characters seem to have strangely similar names to Mallory’s own family. Becca asks if Ranessa is supposed to be Vanessa, and Mal blurts that as of right this second, Ranessa’s name is now Jill. Somehow the kids remain convinced that it might be Vanessa. You just can’t pull anything over on those meddling kids.
Mallory admits that it might be Vanessa, but all great writing is autobiographical, right? Stacey, who is along for the day, asks about Peter Pan - was J.M. Barrie a flying man-child? (Sources say maybe.) Mal snots that J.M. Barrie isn’t considered one of the world’s great writers. Oh, bitch did NOT. Undeterred, Stacey asks about Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web then. Mal dismisses them as “fantasy,” because...fiction is only autobiographical except when it’s not, I guess. Besides, she says, Stuart Little lived in an apartment in Manhattan! Stacey’s eyes go blank as she dreamily says that she loves that about the book, and that whenever she saw a mouse - of which there are many in New York, mind - she thought it might be Stuart Little. Apparently all you have to do to win an argument with Stacey is to point and yell, “Look, it’s New York!” and run like hell. This also works with Claudia and Little Debbie and with Kristy and Jodie Foster.
Mallory and Stacey begin running the kids through the play, which mostly involves Myron, Atlas, Gordon, Ricky, Margarita, Delaware, and Jill alternately acting like assholes and telling Valerie how smart and beautiful and kind and self-sacrificing she is. It’s pretty much as amazing as it sounds. Stacey wonders if the Pike family won’t take it a little hard, and Mallory wants to know what the hell she’s supposed to write about if not her family. Stacey suggests perhaps making up some other people, and Mal shrieks that that would be “a big lie.” I’m not even being sarcastic, I truly don’t get how she could be this stupid. How could you get to be in the sixth grade, supposedly smart, a good reader, want to be a WRITER, and don’t understand what fiction is? Stacey tells her to be prepared for trouble, then, but Mallory’s stubborn. She’s stuck with the Spike family whether she likes it or not, because it’s the law.
The next day in English, Mr. Williams checks in with Mallory’s project. He says it’s coming along, but wants to know what she’s found out about Henrietta Hayes from other sources. She durrs, “Other sources? Why do I need other sources? I’m talking to the actual person, remember?” I...kind of agree with her, actually. I mean, it’s not a research project, it’s a creative project. But then this plot wouldn’t go anywhere, because Mr. Williams needs to ominously tell her to check out biographies and newspaper clippings, because people don’t always tell you everything about themselves. Could Henrietta Hayes be...hiding something? And by “hiding,” I mean “something obviously public enough knowledge to appear in biographies and newspaper clippings, which you’d think someone who claims to be the world’s biggest fan of a person would have already read.”
She concedes that Mr. Williams might have a point and heads off to the library after school. Mrs. Kishi is there to help, and offers up that Stoneybrook keeps files on all the local authors. Of which there are many. Of course. Stephen King’s just driving past SMS with John Grisham imbedded in his grille again, I see.
Mallory gets set up at the copier with a People magazine profile of Henrietta Hayes, which is sarcastically titled “The Happiest Writer.” Because her life sucks, see. Parents and brother died in a fire, foster child since the age of three, angry marriage, bitter divorce, custody battle, daughter died in a hit and run. The headline writer at People is fucking MEAN, you guys. They get in a little dig at her stories always having such happy endings despite her shitty shitty life, which is maybe supposed to be ironic, as if no children’s author has ever thought of writing a happy ending before.
Mallory is gobsmacked, though - lies! All lies! How DARE Henrietta write about happy families when she never had one! That big fat PHONY! If good writers draw on their own lives, she thinks, then Henrietta Hayes must not be a good writer after all. Yes, her book were beautifully written and full of real emotions that made her laugh and cry, but they can’t be any good unless they were the god’s honest truth because OTHERWISE YOU’LL BE THROWN IN JAIL AND YOUR PENIS WILL FALL OFF. TRUEFAX. She dazedly stumbles out of there, wondering what Ernest Hemingway would think. I think he would have spit appreciatively and then shot an elephant.
The next Monday, it’s Kristy’s turn to help Mallory out at the Goody Goody Club play practice, and the entire cast of the Spike Family Farce is doing a pretty decent job of acting as stupid as the Pikes normally do, knocking each other over, wandering around with buckets on their heads, and beating each other with Skip-Its. I have no idea how much of this is actually in the script, since the ghostwriters’ idea of how kids act “wacky” is generally about as accurate as Mal’s play.
I guess an unflattering amount of it is scripted, because the Pike kids suddenly storm the auditorium in protest. Mal wants to know how they know the play is about them and even Claire is like, “You changed ‘Jordan’ to ‘Gordon,’ moron.” They claim slander, but honestly, if you take out the part where Mallory is a beautiful witty martyr, the rest of it sounds pretty accurate. Nicky claims he never got a bucket stuck on his head, but Mal reminds him he did get a laundry hamper stuck on his head. I rest my case. She refuses to change it, claiming AGAIN that an author’s work must be autobiographical. Her siblings threaten to picket the play as the work of an “untalented nut.” I cannot disagree.
Also, instead of suggesting a snack break or something, Kristy decides that the rest of the cast needs to do jumping jacks while the Pikes argue. Kristy needs to get shanked.
Mallory is still pissed when she shows up at Henrietta’s house the next day - Henrietta unsarcastically calls her a ray of sunshine, but Mal hates her anyway for “lying in her books.” I’m running out of ways to call Mallory an idiot here, guys. Also kind of a bitch, since she basically just stormed into this woman’s life uninvited and then had the audacity to get pissed at her for mourning her own daughter in the manner she wished. She tries to think of a way to bitch out Henrietta for her evil duplicity, and gets an opening when Henrietta mentions the Alice reunion book.
Mal wants to know how much of Henrietta’s childhood shows up in the Alice books, which is a really mean question when you consider she knows the answer. Henrietta mildly answers that none of it does, because her childhood sucked, and Mallory jumps right in that Alice must be Cassie then. Henrietta is less mild when she reminds Mallory that she does not want to talk about Cassie. Mal jumps right to Henrietta’s ex-husband. What, she thinks HE must be Alice? What she really wants to know, she says, is exactly what part of Henrietta’s life is in the Alice books.
“Why was I asking her these cruel questions?” Mallory wonders to herself. “Was I trying to torture her or something?” Obviously she is, because she suddenly plows on shrieking how incredibly CRUEL it is to LIE TO HER READERS with her BOOKS FULL OF LIIIIES. Henrietta does not stare at her like she has fifteen heads like I would have, but instantly and awesomely pulls herself together and snaps that they aren’t SUPPOSED to reflect her life, and you ought to try looking up fiction in the dictionary, you stupid, vapid little girl. In my imagination she also shoots ice from her eyes and freezes Mallory’s face.
She has to take a convenient phone call just then, and Mal takes the opportunity to scribble down a resignation note and get the hell out of there before Henrietta snaps her like a twig. This is probably for the best.
The next day, the Pike kids are still picketing Mallory’s room for her stupid play, claiming it’s full of lies. Wait, what do they care if it’s full of lies? That would make it FICTION and therefore NOT ABOUT THEM. (This maaaay be a tiny sore spot with me. My mother once blew up at me because I wrote a short story in which the mother character - who was truly and honestly not based on her - was a bitch, and I was like, “Why are you so quick to see yourself in the villain? If the character is nothing like you, then why would you think it’s supposed to be you at all? Isn’t that your own hang-up?” and we didn’t speak for like a month and it was truly the dumbest argument I have ever had outside of the interbutts.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the picket line. Mama Pike finally intervenes and wants to see the play to decide how bad it is. It doesn’t bode well that she’s dismayed that they’re called “the Spikes.” I can’t wait until she gets to the part where she’s a lazy child-abusing slave driver.
Mal’s life is further turning to shit at play practice, where most of her actors are dropping out under threat of their classmates, the Spike kids. Jessi (who, despite being Mallory’s best friend, has not shown up in this entire book except to say something stupid about ballet) manages to convince them to agree that they’ll stay in the play if Mama Pike says it isn’t offensive. If she says it is, they’re walking.
Mama Pike shows up and the kids act their hearts out. I think the most egregious offense is Ranessa Jill’s soliloquy, to whit: “Valery, Valery, what could it be? Why am I not more like thee? With wit so quick, and heart so kind, surpassed by only your brilliant mind.” Oh, Mal. I don’t have to say anything. God will judge. By the time they get to the end, Mama Pike is not happy and thinks it is, in fact, pretty insulting. She says nothing about her own unpleasant role, but I imagine her disapproval will be known come Christmastime. Mallory desperately says she’ll rewrite it and get all her siblings to approve it to keep the cast from walking, but is dismayed that she’s allowing others to take away her eternal truth. Even though she didn’t seem to have a problem making her character stunningly beautiful despite looking like she just slimed out from under a bridge in real life.
Chapter 13! God, we’re almost there. Mallory gets the final approval she needs from Margo, with just two rehearsals to go. I’m so glad someone was thinking of the poor kids who now have to learn a completely different play with no notice, especially while the plunky lead’s white cell count is plunging by the minute. Mallory hasn’t got time to celebrate, though, because her project is due in only four days and it isn’t done - but how can she finish, when Henrietta’s writing isn’t based on her life and Mallory’s writing was so unpopular that her own family tried to disown her? It’s a pickle, all right.
Needing advice, Mal calls Jessi, who I swear only exists in this book to dispense wisdom like Glinda the Good Witch. She tells Mal that life is like a science experiment: you never know what you’re gonna get. I think she should have gone with the “stupid is as stupid does” speech. As in “Stupid is as stupid believes that fiction is required by law to be true.” But hey, she reasons, sometimes you learn more when things don’t happen the way you hypothesized, right? Mal says she doesn’t know what she learned, but “I’m going to hang up now and think some more about what you said.” From now on, I am ending every phone conversation that way. Screw “I gotta go” or “Love you, bye!” or “Laaater, bitch.” It’s gonna be, “Okay, I’m going to hang up now and think some more about what you said.”
She stares at the page for a while, and then slowly begins to write about how, when she focused on making everything exactly true, everybody hated her and claimed how untrue it was. When she focused on just writing a good story with good characters, she produced a good story with good characters. Fancy that. When she comes to the part about Henrietta Hayes, she realizes that she probably ought to give her another chance, because her family gave HER another chance. I don’t see why she needs another “chance” when she never owed Mallory anything in the first place, but this is probably why I’m not a children’s author. That and the swearing.
Of course, Henrietta is pretty much just hovering around by the front door waiting for Mallory to come back, where she must have been for the past week or two. She invites Mal in and jumps right to the point - Mallory’s wrong, writing doesn’t have to be autobiographical. But Mal is also right, because good writing DOES draw on certain universal truths. The emotions and experiences have to be real. Well, yeah, that’s what Hemingway MEANT when he said to write what you know, but he probably thought that people would be smart enough to read between the lines. Ernest Hemingway never met Mallory Pike.
Henrietta says she DID actually model Alice’s family after a foster family she stays with, and Mal mumbles, “So it WAS true,” and says she feels like an idiot. The fact that THAT’S why she feels like an idiot says she has still learned nothing from this experience. Henrietta says she really might write a true story about her childhood now, but first she has to finish that Alice reunion book. Tonight! But she still needs ideas! Will Mallory stay and help? Oh for fuck’s...
Chapter 14! Jesus, when did this recap get to be 13 pages long? No wonder I never get anything done. Okay, wrapping it up. It’s the day of Mal’s big play! Which is, for some reason, being performed in the elementary school auditorium after school, instead of the whole “performing for hospitals” thing that was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PLAY. Plucky Danielle holds the whole thing together with ad-libbing when no one knows any of their lines, which isn’t such a shame because the play is boring as SHIT. No, seriously - “Vanessa” comes in and reads a poem to “Mallory,” then “Mrs. Pike” pokes her head in and asks “Mallory” to babysit and it’s basically just a regular rambling, pointless day at the Pike house. I think the real liar in this book is whoever told Mallory that this version is better.
After the play, Mr. Williams comes backstage to tell Mal it was the best project in the whole class (baaaarf), followed by Ms. Simon and Mr. Katz, who want her to write a hip, updated version of A Christmas Carol for the kids to perform at the hospital over Christmas.
...SO WHAT WAS THE GODDAMN POINT OF THIS SUBPLOT?
Henrietta’s there too, of course, to let Mallory know that she’ll be listed in the acknowledgments of the new Alice book. She damn well BETTER be if her ideas are in it. Kristy’s frothing at the mouth because it’s almost club meeting time, and Mal invites everyone over to have the club meeting and a celebratory pizza party at her house. Where...no one will call, because they’ll be calling Claudia’s house. No one is exactly bursting with intelligence in this outing, but I’m okay with that, because there is not one single babysitting job in this entire book. Mallory sends everyone out of the auditorium ahead of her so she can look at the empty stage and think about what a lucky, lucky person she is that her autobiographical stories don’t have to include ugly divorces and dead daughters. Very insightful, Mallory. I’m going to hang up now and think about that for a while.
“I love English class. I really do,” says Mallory, lest we spend even one sentence of this book mistaking her for a cool person. Thank god that’s out of the way. She’s especially excited right now because her teacher, Mr. Williams, is giving them a dibble assignment: they have to think about what career they might like to pursue one day and somehow express it in written form. It can be anything they want - a short story, a play, a series of poems. I would have given my left arm for a chance to make my middle school English teacher regret ever thinking up this assignment, and it would begin with “Ode to a Ringling Brothers Weasel Tamer.” I’ve found through years of careful trial and error that when teachers say, “Be creative,” they don’t really mean it.
Mallory knows just what career she wants to cover for her project, because she’s always wanted to be a children’s author. Not that it occurs to her to just turn in one of the children’s stories she’s already written, which would technically be creative, fall within the boundaries of the assignment, and require no extra work whatsoever. She’s too busy lapsing into a daydream about seeing her name on the cover of her very own book for the first time. Mallory is EXACTLY the kind of person who gets ripped off by a vanity publisher, I’m afraid. One thing she doesn’t like to imagine, though, is her picture on the book, because she hates the way she looks. She says she doesn’t have "a monster face or anything,” but she’d rather not have a picture, because “Why spoil a good book?” I think it’s safe to say that if the sight of your face on the back flap ruins the entire reading experience, claiming you don’t have "a monster face or anything” kind of loses its significance.
While Mallory muses, Mr. Williams tells them they better think of something good, because this assignment will comprise the entire marking period and count for 80% of their grade. Oh, bullshit. I was a creative writing major in college and I still think that spending an entire marking period on one “creative” project with no academic content is crap. Besides, this whole thing is like Modern Stupidity Redux - sixth graders do not know what they want to be when they grow up. I still wanted to be a marine biologist in sixth grade, and three years later I took my first actual biology class, happily accepted my hard earned C minus at the end of the semester, and never took another science class in my life.
Mallory and Jessi discuss the assignment after class, and of course Jessi is going to do hers on ballet, because she doesn’t plan to be a professional ballerina unless it means that the ghostwriters would have to give her a personality. Mallory says she doesn’t have any idea what she’s going to do. She sure is going to make a great professional writer when she can’t even think of anything to write about for her writing assignment on writing.
She muses about it all the way home, dodging all those wacky Pike kids with their Skip-Its and squiggle balls and catcher’s mitts, until Haley Braddock calls for Vanessa and gives Mallory an idea. You see, Haley is a member of the Kids Can Do Anything club, a group of goody-two-shoes that organizes food drives and recycling projects instead of vandalizing things like the good lord intended children to do. And Mallory can include the club in her project! “It seemed like a natural connection,” she says. ...I’m sorry, what? How is that remotely connected to writing a paper about becoming a writer? Allow me to burst your rainbow-tinted bubble, Mal-writers are not philanthropists. Not even children’s authors. We are a high-strung, self-centered, hateful lot. We frequently drink. It also tells you something about how good an idea this is that, despite its glaring and obvious connections to this project, Mallory can’t even think of a way to work it in.
Mal takes a break from all the brain busting about how to include other people’s children in a project that has nothing to do with other people’s children to read a book. The book is about a girl named Alice who lives in a poor farming town with her four brothers and wants to be an actress. Mallory assures us that this is hysterical, but naturally she does not describe it in a way that makes it sound remotely funny. By the end, she’s sobbing because she’s so sad the book is over, but this tells us more about Mallory’s chemical imbalance than how good the book was. She decides to write the author, Henrietta Hayes, right then and there, to ask her if she IS Alice. Thus begins a Very Special Plot in which Mallory, future author, can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. Christ, it’s sad.
Oh, no! She spent so much time writing her fawning letter that she’s about to be late for the BSC meeting! She does a baseball slide into Chapter 2 just as the clock hits 5:30, thus avoiding the wrath of Kristy and telling me it’s safe to skip the next 12 pages. Nothing at all happens until the last page of the chapter, of course, when Mary Anne takes my advice and suggests that Mal just write another children’s story. THANK YOU. Mal whines that she can’t include the Kids Can Do Anything (Except Drive, Vote, Marry, Smoke, Join the Army, Purchase Cough Syrup, See R-Rated Movies, or Stay Up Past 10:30) Club that way. Kristy, always ready to butt in with a mindbendingly stupid idea, suggests she write a play featuring the Kids Club and get them to perform it. ...I’m sorry, WHAT? How is that even SORT OF REMOTELY connected to this project? She doesn’t want to be a DIRECTOR, Kristy. Mallory, of course, thinks this is a fantastic idea, because Mallory would not know a good idea if it bit off her enomous, misshapen nose.
The next day, Mal trots over to the elementary school to talk to the Kids Club supervisors, Ms. Simon and Mr. Katz, about her play idea. They ask what the play will be about, and Mal has to admit that she hasn’t actually, technically, per se, thought about it or anything like that, but does it really matter? Ms. Simon snots that she’d like it to be educational. Yeah, well, I’d like sixth-graders to do something educational in English class, too, so get in line, lady. I think they could start by learning the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Mal points out that a play itself can be a learning experience, and Ms. Simon says that they’re a service-oriented group, so putting on a play just for the sake of it is not what they do. It’s apparently against the rules for the kids to do anything remotely fun, in solidarity with all the starving orphans in Africa who never have any fun or something. I have no idea why Mallory is even asking permission from a teacher for this. They put on some sort of kiddie activity every week without asking permission from anyone, so why she doesn’t just write a play and open it to whatever kid wants to be in it is beyond me.
Well, because then this book would be lacking in goody-goody activism, of course. Mal gets an idea and blurts out that the kids could perform the play for people in hospitals and nursing homes. Ms. Simon promptly jizzes in her pants, of course, and runs away with putting together a whole show and having Mallory teach the history of theater to all the kids and waving goodbye to the speck in the distance that is relevance to Mallory’s actual English project. Bye-bye, relevance!
Mallory goes home and writes her proposal for the project, thusly, “I am writing a play for kids because I’ve never written a play for kids but I want to be a writer and sometimes writers have to be ready to write a play for kids in case they need to.” She continues on for another page that she admits isn’t entirely honest, which is that watching children act would allow her to observe how they behave, which will help her write about them better. Of course, she says, she doesn’t really need a play to observe kids, because she lives buried under about 25 of them. True, Mal, but I think your audience would rather read about regular kids, instead of some sort of ape children raised by slovenly, ill-mannered wolves.
Mal thinks this sounds highly educational and is totally pumped when she hands it in the next day and Mr. Williams asks to see her after class. She actually imagines that he is going to tell her that this is the most original and well-thought-out proposal he has seen in 25 years of teaching and, guys, this is so sad. SO sad. Luckily, I don’t have time to shed a tear for poor pathetic Mallory, because what Mr. Williams actually tells her is that her proposal sucks. HA HA HA HA HA. He gently points out that it isn’t very career oriented and she isn’t going to learn anything about writing from it, then lies that it’s a good beginning but needs to be expanded. Whatever, I know teacher lip service when I hear it. He is totally going to go home and say to his wife, “You will not BELIEVE this stupid shit I had a student turn in today.”
At home, Mallory feels like she’s lost faith in her ability to come up with a decent idea, but she just can’t bear to give up on her play idea and wonders how she can make it big enough for the project. Yes, it’s not as though the BSC has EVER had an event for kids that wasn’t related to school. You certainly can’t, say, do a school project unrelated to children and still have the play just for fun. I don’t think she should lose faith in her ability to come up with a decent idea, because she clearly had none to begin with.
Just then, Vanessa comes to bring her a letter, and OMG, IT’S FROM HENRIETTA HAYES. I hope she included a bad-luck charm in it. It starts off “Dear Reader” and addresses nothing specific to Mallory’s letter, and our Mal, always quick on the uptake, realizes after about three rereads that it’s a form letter. Oh, well, that’s just about as good as a threatening chain letter. Mallory gets all depressed for a minute, until she checks the postmark and realizes that it come from Stamford. OMFG! Stamford’s right nearby! Mallory could totally call Henrietta Hayes on the phone, unsolicited, and drill her about her life! And then she can write all about Henrietta’s personal life and how it compares to her own as an up-and-coming writer! Yeah, that’s not at ALL inappropriately creepy and intrusive. Famous people don’t exist just for your enjoyment, Mal.
A week later, Claudia comes along with Mallory to the Goody Goody Club meeting to help explain to the kids what they’re going to do. Mal actually whips out index cards to address a bunch of nine-year-olds and lectures them on the fine art of acting and the difference between plays and novels. They’re fourth graders, not mentally handicapped, Mal. They probably know things like the difference between plays and novels, and the difference between fiction and - oh, wait. Naturally, this section is clunkily narrated by Claudia, who looks around while Mal drones and notes that among our more familiar charges is Danielle Roberts, the little girl who got leukemia in an earlier book I never read. I really think the ghostwriters should go back to Creative Writing 101 and learn the basics, such as that in a first-person story, you cannot have sentences like “Claudia admired the way Danielle didn’t spend time feeling sorry for herself.” We are in Mallory’s head, and Mallory has no way to know what Claudia is thinking. If anything, really. (I myself always imagined the inside of Claudia’s head to be a television test pattern or maybe a little “Gone Fishin’” sign. But seriously, guys, the writing in this book is fucking ABYSMAL and the editing is worse, because I’ve spotted three serious grammatical errors and it’s only Chapter 4. I despair.)
Ms. Simon pipes up that the kids now have the choice to either be in Mal’s play or make Christmas decorations. Awesomely, the entire club is not exactly clamoring to be in Mal’s farce, and half of them, including Claudia, opt for the decorations instead. Mal’s left with four kids she doesn’t know, plus Danielle, Sara ( aka Sarah) Hill, Becca, Charlotte, and someone named Buddy “Barret.” Jesus christ, editors. Also: Becca and Charlotte performing onstage? In front of an audience? VOLUNTARILY? Has this ghostwriter even READ a BSC book before?
Mallory makes them read a Henrietta Hayes play to see how well they act, and I think this kind of obsession is the first step down that slippery slope to stalking. Sara(h), Charlotte, Becca, and Buddy are good, of course, because only the nameless kids that don’t worship the Cult are allowed to suck at things. Danielle is the best, though. Of course. Just once I want to see a TV show or a movie or a book where the kid with cancer isn’t the plucky hero. Just once. They don’t have to be little shits or anything, but just a normal kid that can’t really act would be fine.
As Mal and Claudia leave, Claudia asks what Mal is going to write her play about. Mallory doesn’t know, but she thinks it has to be autobiographical. Now that she’s read most of the Alice books, she’s more convinced than ever that Henrietta Haynes really is either Alice or Alice’s mother, because they’re just too REAL to have been made up. Ohhhhh dear. She’s still waiting for Henrietta to answer her letter demanding she drop everything and do her project for her, but she’s confident that Henrietta will answer. “I had a very strong feeling my letter would capture her interest this time,” Mal says. “From her books, Henrietta Hayes didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would leave a kid stuck when it came to a school project.” God, I hope they find her in a few months, buried helplessly under thousands and thousands of form letters, mumbling, “She wouldn’t leave a kid stuck...they’re so REAL...”
Then God smiled on me, because she does in fact have another form letter waiting for her when she gets home. Aha.
She isn’t soured on Henrietta’s lack of enthusiasm, though, because there are still Alice books to read. Later that night, under the covers, with a flashlight, because that’s what dorky kids do in books. I had no idea that my parents were so subversive in letting me stay up as late as I wanted as long as I was just in bed reading. Then again, my parents didn’t force me to run their homemade daycare center, either, so that’s already two ways that my parents suck less than the Pikes.
Once she finishes, Mal grows wistful that her family doesn’t all hold hands and sing Christmas carols and love each other the way that Alice and her family do. Except for...all the books where they do. Her mind begins to race - Alice would never give up just because she was getting silence and form letters and restraining orders! When Alice can’t stalk through a door, she stalks through a window!
Mallory has a brain wave and decides that since the letters came from Stamford, she could just look up Henrietta Hayes in the phonebook. Henrietta Hayes is going to be moving and switching to an unlisted number shortly, I suspect. And OMFG - guess what, guys?! Henrietta lives IN STONEYBROOK! Right near Dawn and Mary Anne! For fuck’s sake, who DOESN’T live in Stoneybrook? I suspect Jimmy Hoffa is hiding out on Bradford Court.
Mal writes a third letter right then and there: “I’ve written you before. My problem is that this time, I need you to write me back a real letter. It’s important because my class project, which counts for almost my whole grade for this marking period, depends on it.” Well, whose fault is that? Here’s a hint: NOT HENRIETTA’S. Entitlement is an ugly, ugly thing.
Mal is all jittery the next morning, darting around and writing “SUPERDIBBLY IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE FROM YOUR NUMBER ONE FAN” all over the envelope and shit. She gets out a couple more Henrietta Hayes books at the library, along with “The Basics of Playwriting,” which opens by offering Hemingway’s advice to write about what you know. I wouldn’t take advice from a person who was friendly with Fidel Castro and then blew his own brains out with a shotgun, but that’s just a personal preference. She thinks that this means that Henrietta Hayes will write back, because she must be such a funny, happy person based on her books. Maybe she’d like to STAY that way by not associating herself with you, Mal. She reads the line again and it hits her - if she should write about what she knows, she can write her play about the Pike family! Dammit, Ernie! SEE WHAT YOU DID?
Four days later, “a sick feeling churned” in Mal’s stomach, because she’s the proud recipient of a third identical form letter. HA. HA. HA. HA. Unfortunately, Mal still doesn’t get that no means no, because in the latest Alice adventure, Alice stomped into a Hollywood producer’s office, demanded an audition, and actually got it because she’s just so spunky. God, and people think MY generation is the entitled one? I think we only inherited the snottiness of our predecessors. Clearly, Mal thinks, she just needs to stomp right into Henrietta Hayes’s home and demand her attention, and Henrietta will find this charming and spunky. Oh god.
She pedals flat out to the other side of town right then, but she can’t find 312 Morgan Road right away - just 310 and then 314. There are some thick trees and a small path between them, though, which Mallory turns down “on a hunch.” I like how Mallory thinks basic common sense is actually her superior intuition.
Henrietta’s house is tucked way back in the woods, which just screams “I am an open and friendly person, please knock on my door and ask me inappropriate personal questions,” I feel. Nobody answers Mallory’s knock at first, so she prepares to leave another goddamn note, which Henrietta will undoubtedly turn right over to the police. Just as she’s about to leave and go hire a skywriter, though, Henrietta answers the door and kindly asks what’s going on.
“I’m Mallory Pike. Didn’t you get my letters?” she blurts out. Subtle AND classy! Henrietta’s like, “Um, no? Do you think Santa Claus reads all his own mail too?” Mal thinks she’s blown it, but Henrietta’s good people and invites in this pathetic, gawky eleven-year-old. I mean, CLEARLY she’s screaming for a decent adult role model in her life.
Henrietta is about 47 cats away from a living stereotype, it turns out - lots of art and plants and a teakettle and probably Emily Dickinson rotting away in the attic. She puts on the tea and asks Mal what exactly is up with the creepy intrusion. Mal tries to explain without sounding like an ingrate that she wrote a bunch of letters, and Henrietta finishes she’s just been getting form letters back.
Henrietta, with some wistful violin music playing in the background, sadly explains that she feels so terrible about the form letters, but answering her fan mail was turning into a full time job and sometimes she’d sit down to answer a letter only to find out it was a year old, and she “had to come up with a solution, and that solution was the form letter.” Come up with that all by yourself, didja there, Henny? Seriously, I think Moses sent the celebrity form letter to his fans.
She tells Mal that she understands how unsatisfying it must be to get a form letter, but isn’t it better than being ignored? Mal agrees that it is, but it seems to me that they amount to the same thing. I mean, the options are either that she read Mal’s letters pleading for a personal response and STILL sent her the same form letter, or she didn’t read it at all. Mallory actually manages to come to the same conclusion, but Henrietta assures her that she would have read it “eventually.” She keeps a bunch of form letters ready to go and drops one in the mail as soon as she gets a letter, then actually reads it once she has time. Come on, how long does it take to just READ a letter? If I’m not writing a snark, I can knock off an entire BSC book in under thirty minutes; a sheet of looseleaf that some sixth-grader wrote “NUMBER ONE FAN” all over will take you the length of time it takes to shuffle inside from the mailbox. Maybe all the fan mail went unanswered for so long because Henrietta’s just a lazyass.
Mallory describes her project to Henrietta, and old Henny basically comes unglued with glee and falls all over herself wanting to help. Yes, she’s far too busy to even read a couple of notes, but she certainly has days to devote to a random and possibly dangerously obsessed kid.
Well, I suppose she does have the time, because Mal interviews her right then and there and learns that she works six hours a day: four hours writing and two outlining new projects. What the hell, I often write six hours a day IN ADDITION TO EIGHT HOURS A DAY AT MY REAL JOB. And she doesn’t have to get up early and shower, because she works at home and has no coworkers to offend, and she doesn’t have a husband or children or pets to take care of or spend time with, so basically, I think Henrietta “Woe, I don’t have time to read my own mail even though I can work, get a full night’s sleep, and STILL piss away 10 more hours every single day” Hayes can fuck right off. All you fellow busy peeps, can I get an amen?
Henrietta frowns once she’s finished answering Mallory’s questions, feeling unsure whether she’s given Mallory “a good sense of what the life of a writer is really like.” Well, she makes enough money writing to support herself without a day job and she isn’t drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon, so I would say no. But this is a BSC book, so instead of shrugging, kicking Mal out, and forgetting about the whole thing, she offers Mallory a job as an assistant while she’s busy with some big projects. What was she planning to do if some headcase hadn’t shown up on her doorstep, I wonder? Oh, wait, they both claim it’s “fate” that brought them together. So if a headcase hadn’t shown up on another headcase’s doorstep, I suppose.
Mal reports bright and early to her job the next day, and the first order of business is for Henrietta to show her where she works - at a typewriter, of course. She also has a teakettle and no microwave, so I don’t know why Mal finds the lack of a computer surprising. Henrietta admits that she could get a computer, but “this typewriter seems like high technology. I bought it only last year and I still can’t believe how amazing it is. I can read two sentences on this print display here and change them as much as I like before printing.” Someone should tell her that she can read an infinite number of sentences on a computer and change them as much as she likes before printing, including making the font bright pink and translating the whole thing to ancient Sanskrit, but the poor woman would probably have an aneurysm. I’m not remotely tech savvy and can barely operate my own iPod, but for some reason I’m incredibly irritated by people who can’t even try to keep up with basic technology. That right there, THAT’S probably my generation’s snottiness kicking in.
Mallory checks out the bookshelves next, and it turns out that Henrietta is a personal friend of Amelia Moody, another author that Mallory once made a complete ass of herself over. She comes to Stoneybrook frequently, of course. Seriously, do you think you can back out of your driveway in Stoneybrook without running over a celebrity?
Mal’s first official project will be to do some filing, which is so extensive that the file cabinets have to be kept in another room. I have no idea what sort of paperwork she has that would be that extensive - my own personal shelf of “writer crap” contains, at present, a thesaurus from the 1950’s that has some hilariously inappropriate synonyms in it, a blank notebook left over from an experiment where I was going to try writing without a computer for one week, a copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, a Pilates DVD, and a cat toy.
As they head for the cabinet room, Mallory spies a pink ruffly bedroom and asks if it belongs to Henrietta’s daughter. Henrietta pales and turns all “STAY AWAY FROM THE WEST WING IT’S FORBIDDEN” and “THIS DOOR MUST ALWAYS STAY CLOSED NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN” and Mal pretty much wets herself - “I just...thought...” Henrietta manages to smooth herself out enough to say that it belonged to her daughter Cassie, but Cassie’s dead now. I think this calls for an Open Mouth, Insert Foot.
Mal gets on with her filing in total silence, the better to think about how her own house hasn’t been silent in eleven years. Even when the family’s away, I imagine the plumbing weeps bitterly. She stops to take a phone call from Henrietta’s editor, who talks like the editor of the Daily Bugle and thinks her idea for an Alice Anderson reunion book is HOT HOT HOT. Mallory gets so excited that she races into Henrietta’s office to interrupt her, even though the whole point of an assistant was to take the calls that would normally go to the answering machine during her writing time. So, thus far, having an assistant has actually made her life LESS convenient and also dredged up painful memories. THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT ALLOW STALKERS INTO YOUR HOME.
Luckily, Henrietta wasn’t actually busy writing - just cradling a framed photo of her dead daughter. I wonder if that counts toward her six hours. Instead of flinging it at Mallory’s head for the interruption, though, she’s excited about the call and admits that she got the Alice reunion idea from Mallory. Deciding to write another book just because a fan told you to isn’t exactly an idea, there, Henny. Another graduate of the Kristy Thomas School of Great Ideas, I see.
She invites Mallory to stay for dinner and then calls her a cab so she won’t have to ride her bike home in the dark. Apparently cabs are very posh in Stoneybrook, because when Mal gets out she looks around, “hoping people were watching me and wondering what Mallory Pike was doing arriving in a cab.” I’m frankly shocked that Stacey didn’t randomly appear to remind us that there are cabs in New York.
Inspired by her brain-busting day of filing, she goes right upstairs, ignoring the general circus that is her house, to begin work on her play. It’s based on her, of course, but “fictionalized a little so no one would be offended.” Her play opens with a girl named Valery Spike who, according to her clumsy sister “Ranessa,” got all the looks, the brains, and the talent in her huge family. Unfortunately, she has no time to write Great Literature, because her siblings Ranessa, Ricky, and Margarita are busy flinging poo at each other or something, and her mother Mrs. Spike needs her to paint the house, repave the driveway, and give birth to a few more children. Mallory is proud of this opening because it has everything - comedy, in the form of the poo-flinging mongrels, and tragedy, in the form of “the poor writer burdened with an insensitive, needy family.” Oh, there’s tragedy, all right.
The next day at the Goody Goody Club meeting, the kids can’t help but notice that the characters seem to have strangely similar names to Mallory’s own family. Becca asks if Ranessa is supposed to be Vanessa, and Mal blurts that as of right this second, Ranessa’s name is now Jill. Somehow the kids remain convinced that it might be Vanessa. You just can’t pull anything over on those meddling kids.
Mallory admits that it might be Vanessa, but all great writing is autobiographical, right? Stacey, who is along for the day, asks about Peter Pan - was J.M. Barrie a flying man-child? (Sources say maybe.) Mal snots that J.M. Barrie isn’t considered one of the world’s great writers. Oh, bitch did NOT. Undeterred, Stacey asks about Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web then. Mal dismisses them as “fantasy,” because...fiction is only autobiographical except when it’s not, I guess. Besides, she says, Stuart Little lived in an apartment in Manhattan! Stacey’s eyes go blank as she dreamily says that she loves that about the book, and that whenever she saw a mouse - of which there are many in New York, mind - she thought it might be Stuart Little. Apparently all you have to do to win an argument with Stacey is to point and yell, “Look, it’s New York!” and run like hell. This also works with Claudia and Little Debbie and with Kristy and Jodie Foster.
Mallory and Stacey begin running the kids through the play, which mostly involves Myron, Atlas, Gordon, Ricky, Margarita, Delaware, and Jill alternately acting like assholes and telling Valerie how smart and beautiful and kind and self-sacrificing she is. It’s pretty much as amazing as it sounds. Stacey wonders if the Pike family won’t take it a little hard, and Mallory wants to know what the hell she’s supposed to write about if not her family. Stacey suggests perhaps making up some other people, and Mal shrieks that that would be “a big lie.” I’m not even being sarcastic, I truly don’t get how she could be this stupid. How could you get to be in the sixth grade, supposedly smart, a good reader, want to be a WRITER, and don’t understand what fiction is? Stacey tells her to be prepared for trouble, then, but Mallory’s stubborn. She’s stuck with the Spike family whether she likes it or not, because it’s the law.
The next day in English, Mr. Williams checks in with Mallory’s project. He says it’s coming along, but wants to know what she’s found out about Henrietta Hayes from other sources. She durrs, “Other sources? Why do I need other sources? I’m talking to the actual person, remember?” I...kind of agree with her, actually. I mean, it’s not a research project, it’s a creative project. But then this plot wouldn’t go anywhere, because Mr. Williams needs to ominously tell her to check out biographies and newspaper clippings, because people don’t always tell you everything about themselves. Could Henrietta Hayes be...hiding something? And by “hiding,” I mean “something obviously public enough knowledge to appear in biographies and newspaper clippings, which you’d think someone who claims to be the world’s biggest fan of a person would have already read.”
She concedes that Mr. Williams might have a point and heads off to the library after school. Mrs. Kishi is there to help, and offers up that Stoneybrook keeps files on all the local authors. Of which there are many. Of course. Stephen King’s just driving past SMS with John Grisham imbedded in his grille again, I see.
Mallory gets set up at the copier with a People magazine profile of Henrietta Hayes, which is sarcastically titled “The Happiest Writer.” Because her life sucks, see. Parents and brother died in a fire, foster child since the age of three, angry marriage, bitter divorce, custody battle, daughter died in a hit and run. The headline writer at People is fucking MEAN, you guys. They get in a little dig at her stories always having such happy endings despite her shitty shitty life, which is maybe supposed to be ironic, as if no children’s author has ever thought of writing a happy ending before.
Mallory is gobsmacked, though - lies! All lies! How DARE Henrietta write about happy families when she never had one! That big fat PHONY! If good writers draw on their own lives, she thinks, then Henrietta Hayes must not be a good writer after all. Yes, her book were beautifully written and full of real emotions that made her laugh and cry, but they can’t be any good unless they were the god’s honest truth because OTHERWISE YOU’LL BE THROWN IN JAIL AND YOUR PENIS WILL FALL OFF. TRUEFAX. She dazedly stumbles out of there, wondering what Ernest Hemingway would think. I think he would have spit appreciatively and then shot an elephant.
The next Monday, it’s Kristy’s turn to help Mallory out at the Goody Goody Club play practice, and the entire cast of the Spike Family Farce is doing a pretty decent job of acting as stupid as the Pikes normally do, knocking each other over, wandering around with buckets on their heads, and beating each other with Skip-Its. I have no idea how much of this is actually in the script, since the ghostwriters’ idea of how kids act “wacky” is generally about as accurate as Mal’s play.
I guess an unflattering amount of it is scripted, because the Pike kids suddenly storm the auditorium in protest. Mal wants to know how they know the play is about them and even Claire is like, “You changed ‘Jordan’ to ‘Gordon,’ moron.” They claim slander, but honestly, if you take out the part where Mallory is a beautiful witty martyr, the rest of it sounds pretty accurate. Nicky claims he never got a bucket stuck on his head, but Mal reminds him he did get a laundry hamper stuck on his head. I rest my case. She refuses to change it, claiming AGAIN that an author’s work must be autobiographical. Her siblings threaten to picket the play as the work of an “untalented nut.” I cannot disagree.
Also, instead of suggesting a snack break or something, Kristy decides that the rest of the cast needs to do jumping jacks while the Pikes argue. Kristy needs to get shanked.
Mallory is still pissed when she shows up at Henrietta’s house the next day - Henrietta unsarcastically calls her a ray of sunshine, but Mal hates her anyway for “lying in her books.” I’m running out of ways to call Mallory an idiot here, guys. Also kind of a bitch, since she basically just stormed into this woman’s life uninvited and then had the audacity to get pissed at her for mourning her own daughter in the manner she wished. She tries to think of a way to bitch out Henrietta for her evil duplicity, and gets an opening when Henrietta mentions the Alice reunion book.
Mal wants to know how much of Henrietta’s childhood shows up in the Alice books, which is a really mean question when you consider she knows the answer. Henrietta mildly answers that none of it does, because her childhood sucked, and Mallory jumps right in that Alice must be Cassie then. Henrietta is less mild when she reminds Mallory that she does not want to talk about Cassie. Mal jumps right to Henrietta’s ex-husband. What, she thinks HE must be Alice? What she really wants to know, she says, is exactly what part of Henrietta’s life is in the Alice books.
“Why was I asking her these cruel questions?” Mallory wonders to herself. “Was I trying to torture her or something?” Obviously she is, because she suddenly plows on shrieking how incredibly CRUEL it is to LIE TO HER READERS with her BOOKS FULL OF LIIIIES. Henrietta does not stare at her like she has fifteen heads like I would have, but instantly and awesomely pulls herself together and snaps that they aren’t SUPPOSED to reflect her life, and you ought to try looking up fiction in the dictionary, you stupid, vapid little girl. In my imagination she also shoots ice from her eyes and freezes Mallory’s face.
She has to take a convenient phone call just then, and Mal takes the opportunity to scribble down a resignation note and get the hell out of there before Henrietta snaps her like a twig. This is probably for the best.
The next day, the Pike kids are still picketing Mallory’s room for her stupid play, claiming it’s full of lies. Wait, what do they care if it’s full of lies? That would make it FICTION and therefore NOT ABOUT THEM. (This maaaay be a tiny sore spot with me. My mother once blew up at me because I wrote a short story in which the mother character - who was truly and honestly not based on her - was a bitch, and I was like, “Why are you so quick to see yourself in the villain? If the character is nothing like you, then why would you think it’s supposed to be you at all? Isn’t that your own hang-up?” and we didn’t speak for like a month and it was truly the dumbest argument I have ever had outside of the interbutts.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the picket line. Mama Pike finally intervenes and wants to see the play to decide how bad it is. It doesn’t bode well that she’s dismayed that they’re called “the Spikes.” I can’t wait until she gets to the part where she’s a lazy child-abusing slave driver.
Mal’s life is further turning to shit at play practice, where most of her actors are dropping out under threat of their classmates, the Spike kids. Jessi (who, despite being Mallory’s best friend, has not shown up in this entire book except to say something stupid about ballet) manages to convince them to agree that they’ll stay in the play if Mama Pike says it isn’t offensive. If she says it is, they’re walking.
Mama Pike shows up and the kids act their hearts out. I think the most egregious offense is Ranessa Jill’s soliloquy, to whit: “Valery, Valery, what could it be? Why am I not more like thee? With wit so quick, and heart so kind, surpassed by only your brilliant mind.” Oh, Mal. I don’t have to say anything. God will judge. By the time they get to the end, Mama Pike is not happy and thinks it is, in fact, pretty insulting. She says nothing about her own unpleasant role, but I imagine her disapproval will be known come Christmastime. Mallory desperately says she’ll rewrite it and get all her siblings to approve it to keep the cast from walking, but is dismayed that she’s allowing others to take away her eternal truth. Even though she didn’t seem to have a problem making her character stunningly beautiful despite looking like she just slimed out from under a bridge in real life.
Chapter 13! God, we’re almost there. Mallory gets the final approval she needs from Margo, with just two rehearsals to go. I’m so glad someone was thinking of the poor kids who now have to learn a completely different play with no notice, especially while the plunky lead’s white cell count is plunging by the minute. Mallory hasn’t got time to celebrate, though, because her project is due in only four days and it isn’t done - but how can she finish, when Henrietta’s writing isn’t based on her life and Mallory’s writing was so unpopular that her own family tried to disown her? It’s a pickle, all right.
Needing advice, Mal calls Jessi, who I swear only exists in this book to dispense wisdom like Glinda the Good Witch. She tells Mal that life is like a science experiment: you never know what you’re gonna get. I think she should have gone with the “stupid is as stupid does” speech. As in “Stupid is as stupid believes that fiction is required by law to be true.” But hey, she reasons, sometimes you learn more when things don’t happen the way you hypothesized, right? Mal says she doesn’t know what she learned, but “I’m going to hang up now and think some more about what you said.” From now on, I am ending every phone conversation that way. Screw “I gotta go” or “Love you, bye!” or “Laaater, bitch.” It’s gonna be, “Okay, I’m going to hang up now and think some more about what you said.”
She stares at the page for a while, and then slowly begins to write about how, when she focused on making everything exactly true, everybody hated her and claimed how untrue it was. When she focused on just writing a good story with good characters, she produced a good story with good characters. Fancy that. When she comes to the part about Henrietta Hayes, she realizes that she probably ought to give her another chance, because her family gave HER another chance. I don’t see why she needs another “chance” when she never owed Mallory anything in the first place, but this is probably why I’m not a children’s author. That and the swearing.
Of course, Henrietta is pretty much just hovering around by the front door waiting for Mallory to come back, where she must have been for the past week or two. She invites Mal in and jumps right to the point - Mallory’s wrong, writing doesn’t have to be autobiographical. But Mal is also right, because good writing DOES draw on certain universal truths. The emotions and experiences have to be real. Well, yeah, that’s what Hemingway MEANT when he said to write what you know, but he probably thought that people would be smart enough to read between the lines. Ernest Hemingway never met Mallory Pike.
Henrietta says she DID actually model Alice’s family after a foster family she stays with, and Mal mumbles, “So it WAS true,” and says she feels like an idiot. The fact that THAT’S why she feels like an idiot says she has still learned nothing from this experience. Henrietta says she really might write a true story about her childhood now, but first she has to finish that Alice reunion book. Tonight! But she still needs ideas! Will Mallory stay and help? Oh for fuck’s...
Chapter 14! Jesus, when did this recap get to be 13 pages long? No wonder I never get anything done. Okay, wrapping it up. It’s the day of Mal’s big play! Which is, for some reason, being performed in the elementary school auditorium after school, instead of the whole “performing for hospitals” thing that was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PLAY. Plucky Danielle holds the whole thing together with ad-libbing when no one knows any of their lines, which isn’t such a shame because the play is boring as SHIT. No, seriously - “Vanessa” comes in and reads a poem to “Mallory,” then “Mrs. Pike” pokes her head in and asks “Mallory” to babysit and it’s basically just a regular rambling, pointless day at the Pike house. I think the real liar in this book is whoever told Mallory that this version is better.
After the play, Mr. Williams comes backstage to tell Mal it was the best project in the whole class (baaaarf), followed by Ms. Simon and Mr. Katz, who want her to write a hip, updated version of A Christmas Carol for the kids to perform at the hospital over Christmas.
...SO WHAT WAS THE GODDAMN POINT OF THIS SUBPLOT?
Henrietta’s there too, of course, to let Mallory know that she’ll be listed in the acknowledgments of the new Alice book. She damn well BETTER be if her ideas are in it. Kristy’s frothing at the mouth because it’s almost club meeting time, and Mal invites everyone over to have the club meeting and a celebratory pizza party at her house. Where...no one will call, because they’ll be calling Claudia’s house. No one is exactly bursting with intelligence in this outing, but I’m okay with that, because there is not one single babysitting job in this entire book. Mallory sends everyone out of the auditorium ahead of her so she can look at the empty stage and think about what a lucky, lucky person she is that her autobiographical stories don’t have to include ugly divorces and dead daughters. Very insightful, Mallory. I’m going to hang up now and think about that for a while.