Apparently, some boy in ninth grade had seen Faye and Patty meeting up with Pearly, and now, as those things go, the whole school knew about it.
Fat-headed Spencer yelled, "Hey, why you girls hanging out with that flea-ridden cub? Are we not good enough for you anymore?"
Faye warned him, poking him with her finger, "Don't call her a cub, she's a girl, just like us!"
"Not quite like you!" Spencer said.
"Shut up, Spence," Claudette told him. She linked arms with Faye and Patty, and together they walked up to the school's entrance, while groups of kids looked at them and talked low.
"What's the girl's name?" asked Claudette. Pearly, they told her. "Well, I'd like to meet her one of these days. Pay Spence no mind, I never do. You should hang out with whoever the heck you want."
She seemed genuinely interested in the lemurian girl, while Faye was sure she was about to make some joke and laugh in their faces, any second now. But she didn't.
Some kids made dumb remarks about Faye's curious new friend, but no one seriously bugged her about it. By the end of the day most students had moved on to the next order of business (some joker had superglued all Mrs. Perlmutter's things to her desk: her books, papers, pens, even her reading glasses).
Faye and Patty weren't completely reassured yet that things would work out. Now that all the kids knew, it wouldn't take long for all the grown-ups to know. The girls didn't believe it was forbidden to make friends with a lemurian, but something not being forbidden didn't make it acceptable to everybody. Some adults were sure to give them grief about it. They could be so huffy.
Next morning Patty told Faye how her parents had warned her never ever to go the shantytown where the lemurians and the Mexicans lived, but they didn't forbid her to see Pearly again. Faye was relieved, since Patty was that rare kind of girl that listened to her parents.
At the end of the school day Patty came running and told Faye that Mr. Branch, the history teacher—that same history teacher who had looked for books on Lemurian culture for her—had talked to her about Pearly. Mr. Branch had a friend, he had told Patty, who taught in Springfield, Illinois. For a few hours per week this man would teach a small class of lemurians—several states allowed for lemurians to get some form of education. Mr. Branch then asked Patty if her 'little friend' would like to join them in class someday. Not officially as a student, of course, but as a visitor. He would have to ask the school principal, but he believed it would be okayed. Patty had thanked him heartily, and said she was sure Pearly would love that. The girl could already read and write, she had said, having been taught by her brother.
Hanging out with Pearly almost every afternoon meant Faye and Patty had been getting behind on their homework a bit. Trying to finish it early in the mornings was a drag, so they started to invite Pearly up to Faye's room, where they could study. (Patty said her home was maybe a bit too crowded, what with her four siblings, and her room maybe a bit too small to accommodate three girls. This made no sense to Faye, but she said okay. She wondered if maybe Patty hadn't told the whole truth about how her parents had reacted to her being friends with a lemurian...)
Pearly had worn her oversized sweater and her baseball cap on her way to Faye's, but she had ridden her bike in the brightness of the afternoon. Most people, she said, hadn't paid any attention to her, one woman had stared at her, and Pearly had waved, and the stupefied woman had waved back. Pearly had to laugh hard when she told her friends this. She didn't seem too worried about humans anymore, now that she had met so many nice ones.
That first dinner date at Faye's had been a success. It had started off quite awkward. Everybody spoke as if they were in a play. Faye's parents, Pearly, even Faye herself spoke as if they acted the parts written by someone who knew what people were supposed to say, but had never actually talked to anybody. Except the twins, they had no idea how to act like anybody but themselves. (Samuel and Sandy had been diagnosed with the Kanner's Syndrome at the age of six. The doctor had advised Faye's parents to have the boys institutionalized. When he also spoke to them about the promising effects of aversion therapy (which sounded like training a dog to do tricks) and of shock therapy, they decided to talk to another doctor. This new doctor spoke of 'Autistic Disturbances' and had taken Faye's father aside, to explain to him the 'Refrigerator Mother Theory': it was the lack of maternal warmth that had caused these Autistic Disturbances. They had quite had their fill of doctors after that.)
Faye thought it was pretty funny seeing them sitting next to each other. Her brothers, who were so very common looking but sometimes seemed to come from another planet, while Pearly looked so outlandish, while she acted like a perfectly normal girl without a care in the world.
Pearly enjoyed the quirky questions the twins asked her ("Do you think a duck can swim in a cloud?"), and the twins acted no more peculiar than usual, as if they had lemurians for dinner regularly.
