Best Kept Secret by Debra Moffitt Page B

“Right away, we started getting threats. There were rumors circulating that we were going to publish the actual photos, which was dumb because mimeograph machines can’t reproduce photos. They use a stencil-like thing. Anyway, we got out one more issue: PINK LOCKER SOCIETY IN DANGER! Within a week, our office was ransacked by Lord-knows-who and they took the mimeograph machine.”
    â€œThis peculiar object,” Bet said in her voice-over, “is a mimeograph machine.”
    It looked like something you’d see in the Smithsonian. In the photo, the shiny, metal device was a cross between a big keyless typewriter and the meat slicer they use behind the counter at the deli. It had a hand crank on the side, Bet explained, so a person (in this case, a Pink Locker Lady) could spin it around and churn out the copies.
    â€œThe Pink Locker Ladies had only one means of spreading their message in 1976, and this was it,” Bet said.
    The copies came out damp and the ink printed a periwinkle blue, but it was a lot cheaper than a printing press, Bet said.
    Patricia said the Pink Locker Ladies tried to find another mimeograph machine and come up with the money to take The Pink Paper to a printer, but to no avail.
    â€œWe faded away, just like they hoped we would,” Patricia said. “But that one young lady from Yale—she did make it to the Olympics. And sports for girls finally did get up to snuff here and everywhere else.”
    From there, Bet closed out her broadcast.
    â€œThe vandals who struck in 1976 broke into the PLS office with a clear intent to silence them,” she said, as a photo of an old Pink Paper dissolved into black on the screen. But just when you thought it was over, the black turned to pink. Pink Locker pink.
    After the report ended, we sat in the quiet for a moment, but then the comments and questions started flying.
    â€œWhoever shut them down could be the same people who are threatening us now!” I said.
    â€œYou figured that out all by yourself, did you?” Piper said, falling back into our old habit of teasing each other.
    â€œThat was an awfully long time ago,” Kate said. “Whoever they were are probably long gone—old or moved away to another state.”
    â€œI agree,” Piper said. “It was one message. Let’s keep on pinkin’ on.”
    â€œOur Pink Lady did tell me this,” Ms. Russo said. “You girls should keep on helping other girls. Keep working, but be careful.”
    Once again, I was trying to put together a puzzle. At least now, I had a few more pieces. Or maybe they weren’t pieces so much as branches, branches of our pink family tree.

Twenty-six
    From the moment I woke up, my stomach did a back handspring every time I thought of it: Forrest soon would be inside my house. The parents would be off talking parent stuff, and the entire evening would stretch out before us. If I was a woman of action, I wasn’t when it came to Forrest McCann. Jittery as I was, I should have gone for a run before they came over, but we all overslept because the power had gone off in the night. We woke up to clocks that were flashing at us or no longer accurate by an unknown number of hours.
    As soon as we were up and moving, my mother drafted me and my father into a housecleaning marathon. I swept out dust bunnies and sanitized bathrooms. My Dad vacuumed and uncluttered each room so that it looked nothing like it did on a typical day. And Mom, well, she did what she always did before guests arrived: She complained.
    â€œWhy do I do this to myself, Peter?” she asked my dad. “I love to have a dinner party but I hate the prep work.”
    Mom was cutting vegetables that would be speared on the kebabs. She had already set out the s’mores ingredients in an artful fashion on a sectioned tray. And she set the table for seven—the three of us and the four of them. There were candles and, especially as orangey