Read Online Poison at the PTA by Laura Alden - Free Book Online Page B

is right.” I’d been a hockey fan since I’d grown out of my sister’s old figure skates and laced on my dad’s old hockey skates. I’d been eight at the time. In those days there were no girls’ hockey teams, but for years I’d spent winters playing pond hockey until it grew too dark to see the puck. My mother had been marginally horrified that her dainty daughter was out playing a contact sport with boys, but my dad had laughed and convinced her to let me play.
    My children chewed contentedly, and it wasn’t until I handed out the second pieces of pizza that I went back to the earlier subject. “So, Oliver, what is she like?”
    He went still. “Who?”
    Jenna opened her mouth, but I quelled her with a look. “Is there a new girl in school?” I asked. Oliver had a penchant for getting a crush on the new girl, and I wasn’t aware of any family who’d recently moved into town. There’d been a couple of families who’d moved into the area in August—PTA presidents made it a point to know these things—but that was far too long ago for the New Girl effect.
    “She’s beautiful,” Oliver said, sighing. He put his chin on his hand and ignored the double olive piece of pizza in front of him. “She smiles all the time and has this happy kind of laugh that makes you want to laugh, too.”
    I shot a look at Jenna. She shrugged.
    “What does she look like?” I asked.
    Oliver considered. “She’s always wearing pretty earrings. She wears shoes that make noise, you know,
tick-tick-tick
, and she makes her hair do really neat things.”
    My son had a crush on a girly girl? It had been bound to happen at some point, but he was only nine, for heaven’s sake. I envisioned a girl wearing purple and pink, a girl who was happy to wear dress shoes, a girl whose mother had the time and patience to learn updos. I’d never learned anything beyond a French braid, and even those tended to look lumpy. “What’s her name?”
    “Ms. Stephanie,” he said dreamily.
    Ms.? Wait a minute. . . . “Are you talking about Stephanie Pesch? Your new vice principal?”
    He nodded. “Isn’t that the prettiest name? Steph-ah-knee.” He drew the syllables out long. “Steph-ahhh-kneee.”
    Jenna rolled her eyes. “I told him she probably doesn’t know he exists, but he keeps doing those gaga eyes and making up songs.”
    I looked at her. “It wasn’t all that long ago that you had a crush on someone much older than you. Remember?” Her immediate blush told me that, yes, she did remember, and she’d rather not talk about the weeks she was enamored of Eddie Sweeney, the NHL hockey star who’d done a local hockey-skills clinic.
    Oliver was looking interested in the ancient history. Time for a new subject. “So, how is hockey going?” I asked my daughter. “Your team did well over the holidays at that tournament. Are you working on any new drills?”
    Jenna took another piece of pizza and didn’t answer at first. I waited. She saw me waiting and took a huge bite, a classic delaying tactic since she knew I wouldn’t make her talk with her mouth full. I laid my fork down and waited while she chewed. When she swallowed, I asked, “Jenna, what’s the matter?”
    She looked at her pizza, looked at me, saw what my face looked like—a Mom-combination of patience, endurance, and answer-me-or-there’ll-be-trouble—and put her slice down on her plate. “There’s a new girl,” she muttered.
    “And?”
    “She’s a goalie.”
    Ah. Goalie was Jenna’s position, the only position she’d ever played or wanted to play. She was a very good goalie and her goals-against average was the lowest in her league. “Is she good?” I asked.
    “She’s from Minnesota.” The despair in Jenna’s tone said it all.
    “I see.” And I did. Minnesota was a hockey state. Strong learn-to-skate programs, strong youth programs, strong middle school and high school programs, strong adult programs, and there were ice rinks everywhere. Jenna