Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapter from CONFEDERATES DON’T WEAR COUTURE

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2012 by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  Lyrics to “Proud Mary” copyright © 1963 by Jondora Music.

  Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Graphia, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Graphia and the Graphia logo are registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Strohm, Stephanie Kate.

  Pilgrims don’t wear pink / by Stephanie Kate Strohm.

  p. cm.

  Summary: During a summer internship at a living history museum in Maine, fashion-conscious Libby runs afoul of her roommate, investigates a haunted ship, and seeks a romantic hero like those in the historical novels she loves.

  ISBN 978-0-547-56459-3

  [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Historical museums—Fiction. 3. Internship programs—Fiction. 4. Haunted places—Fiction. 5. Maine—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S9188Pil 2012

  [Fic]—dc22 2010045549

  eISBN 978-0-547-82284-6

  v2.0413

  For Mom and Dad, who took me to every museum I wanted to visit, and for Ali, who endured them all

  Prologue

  “Please remind me again why you’re going to pilgrim camp.”

  “Okay, first, it’s not camp. It’s a living history museum studies internship.” I nestled my cell phone between my ear and my shoulder, trying to zip my suitcase closed with one hand. Definitely not working. “And second, ugh,” I grunted. That zipper was like beyond stuck. “Like I’ve said about a million times, I’m not a pilgrim.” I sat on the suitcase and tried to zipper it between my legs. “I’m an eighteenth-century New England colonist on the coastline of the territory now known as the state of Maine. It’s a totally different thing. It’s like mistaking Pucci for Gucci.”

  “Ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

  “That better have been static, Dev, and not a sigh of disgust,” I warned.

  “Sorry, Libs,” he said, “but you know my brain shuts down when you go all History Channel on me.”

  “Mmmrph.” The zipper still wasn’t going anywhere. Did this mean I had to take out a pair of shoes? I couldn’t lose a pair of shoes! I’d already pared down my two shoe racks to like the bare minimum of shoes necessary for basic human survival. Literally, there was only one pair of heels in there. One.

  “It doesn’t even make any sense,” Dev continued. “Living history? What is that? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Isn’t all history . . . dead? Because it’s in the past?”

  “Dev, how many times have I explained this?”

  “I wasn’t paying attention before.”

  I sighed with frustration. “A living history museum is like a recreation of a village from a different time period, with all the museum workers dressed in costumes and doing chores or crafts or trades or whatever . . . Haven’t you heard of Plimoth Plantation? Old Sturbridge Village? Colonial Williamsburg?”

  “So sort of like Toontown in Disneyland, but not fun?”

  “Sort of . . . No, wait! It’s really fun!”

  “It sounds really boring. You just used the word trades.”

  “No, it’s fun, I promise! I mean, honestly, it kind of is like Disneyland,” I said, reconsidering. “It’s not like I’ll actually be living in the eighteenth century. I mean, there are flushing toilets and a gift shop. It just looks like the eighteenth century. A sanitized, tourist-friendly eighteenth century. I’ll be like an eighteenth-century Disney princess! Colonial Cinderella!” Oh, I could see it now. I had the perfect shade of lip-gloss to pull off that all-natural no-makeup makeup look.

  “Libby, Libby, Libbeeeeee, listen to meeee,” he whined. “We could have had so much fun together this summer! Not educational Disneyland fun. Real fun. In New York. New York. Not in Clamhole Harbor.”

  “It’s Camden Harbor.”

  “Whatever.” I could almost hear him shrug through the phone.

  “Camden Harbor is really nice! It’s so cute—like the cutest part of Maine ever. They filmed Carousel there, you know.”

  “They filmed what?”

  “Carousel? The epic love story about mill workers and carnival barkers in a newly industrialized 1870s New England fishing village?” There’s nothing I like better than when romance meets history. Nothing. “The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?”

  “Libby, not all the gays have an encyclopedic knowledge of the American musical theater. It’s not like they hand you a DVD box set of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection in a Liza Minnelli souvenir tote bag when you come out.”

  “Well, they should. I’d totally be gay for a Liza Minnelli tote bag.”

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t apply for the Teen Mode teen internship with me!”

  Here we went again. We’d had this argument about a million times. Dev had entered an essay contest at Teen Mode and won a summer internship for high school students with his searing fashion exposé, “St. Paul-y-ester: So Yesterday.”

  “Um, Dev, I saw The Devil Wears Prada. There’s no way I’d voluntarily subject myself to that. I’m not insane. And there’s no way I would have gotten it even if I did apply! Not all of us benefit from the holy grail of diversity known as being perhaps the only gay Indian high-schooler in like all of Minnesota. How many straight blond girls do you think applied for that internship?”

  “Libby, The Devil Wears Prada is not a documentary. How many times do we have to go over this?”

  I squawked in protest. He ignored it.

  “And you totally could have gotten the internship. You are almost as stylish as me, and that is not something I say lightly.”

  It was, in fact, this sense of style that had brought us together. As Dev had said the day we’d met almost three years ago in freshman English at St. Paul Academy, we were “an island of pastel in a sea of gray.” Apparently, neither of us had gotten the memo that every other student at SPA would be clad in a gray North Face fleece. Who knew that private schools were where fabulous went to die? Gossip Girl it was not.

  “Plus,” he added thoughtfully, “Teen Mode probably needs some non-size-zero diversity! You could be their token size six.”

  “Thanks, Dev. That’s sweet.”

  “Imagine it, Libby,” he whispered seductively. “Right now, we could be running around the big city in Lanvin loafers and Prada pumps!”

  “That is tempting, Dev,” I agreed, “but it’s your dream, not mine. Think about it. What does anyone who loves history secretly want? A time machine. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really. And since that’s not possible, this is as close as I’ll get. A real living history museum. Yes, Prada is nice, but I’ll be spending the summer in full period costume, churning butter in a corset.”

  Technically, the term corset was more commonplace
in the nineteenth century, but being perfectly accurate and saying “stays” might send Dev into history overload.

  “And this is appealing?” he asked skeptically.

  “Yes, Dev.” I sighed.

  “God, you’re such a big nerd, sometimes I forget why I’m friends with you.”

  “Because no one else loves you enough to bake you butterscotch blondies as a Project Runway marathon snack.” I shifted the cell phone to my other shoulder.

  “Seriously. Seriously?” Dev asked again. “You’re turning down Hermès for hoop skirts?”

  “Your knowledge of fashion history is truly appalling. The first patented hoop skirt didn’t show up in the United States until 1846.”

  “Somehow I have a feeling Teen Mode doesn’t care if I don’t know what a bum roll is.”

  “Probably right,” I agreed. Even though he’d only proved my point further, because bum rolls had gone out of fashion with Queen Elizabeth. The first one.

  “What if I need you?” he demanded. “Do I have to send a carrier pigeon?”

  “No, of course not.” I tutted. “It’s not a forced labor camp. I’ll have my cell phone the whole time. I promise. It’s not like anyone actually thinks it’s the eighteenth century. They’re historians, not Amish.”

  “Please, Libby,” he begged, “don’t leave me! There’s no way I can make it through the summer without you.”

  “Oh, please, Dev. You made it through the first thirteen years of your life without me before I switched from public school to SPA. I think you’ll be fine for three months. And you’ll be in New York! Not home in St. Paul, but in glamorous New York! You’ll come back with all these great stories and amazing clothes, and be all set to have the fiercest senior year ever. There’ll be so much fabulous, you won’t know what to do with yourself. Come on, you’re gonna replace me with Anne Hathaway in like five minutes.”

  “Again, Libby, The Devil Wears Prada—not a documentary. Anne Hathaway does not, in fact, work at Mode. Or Teen Mode, which is where I’ll be.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “And if I’m replacing you with anyone,” he interrupted, “it’s that Hottie McSexypants Gucci Pour Homme model.”

  “You have my total permission to do that. Urgh!” There! I’d finally gotten my suitcase closed.

  “Um, what was that?” Dev asked nervously.

  “What?”

  “That weird grunting noise. What are you doing over there?”

  “Oh, I was having some trouble zipping my suitcase, but I did it.”

  “Hmm, let me guess. Wardrobe not quite fitting into that charming pink luggage set?”

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  “See?” he crowed triumphantly. “There’s no way you can do this, Libby! You just can’t! Pilgrims don’t wear pink!”

  “I don’t wear that much pink!” I yelled into the phone. “And I’m not a pilgrim!”

  He’d already hung up.

  One

  “This is my closet?”

  “No, this is our closet. This is your closet half.”

  Whatever it was, it was tragic. Not-my-closet was a rickety IKEA construction that had been sloppily partitioned in half. The empty half was tiny, and the other equally tiny half held a pair of cargo shorts, two T-shirts, and a polo shirt, which I gathered belonged to the girl currently eyeing my pink luggage with an air of disdain.

  “That’s a big suitcase. What did you bring?” She folded her arms across her frolicking otter T-shirt.

  “Um, clothes and shoes and . . . stuff,” I finished lamely, unzipping my suitcase. It exploded, shooting three sundresses and a polka dot bikini across the room.

  My new roomie—a skinny, sallow girl with ashy brown hair—snorted and rolled her eyes.

  “I’m Libby,” I introduced myself, retrieving the bikini from the pastel quilt it had landed on across the room. Somehow they had managed to fit three beds in this tiny room. And the “closet,” of course.

  “Ashling,” she responded, still standing in the middle of the room, watching me unpack.

  “What a pretty name,” I said, trying to be friendly, although I privately thought it sounded like the name of a gremlin. She already hated me, and all I’d done was accidentally turn my suitcase into a bikini launcher. Ashling turned and silently sat on her olive green bedspread, watching. No, “watching” was too benign—this was a full-on malevolent glare. I kept unpacking, stuffing as many hangers as possible into my tiny sliver of closet. The whole thing was beyond awkward. It felt like some sort of weird performance art piece: Girl Unpacking, Series One. Or a psychological experiment: The Effects of Observation on Process of Unpacking. Case Study: Female, Age 17. But the watching eyes making me the most uncomfortable weren’t, in fact, Ashling’s.

  “I, um, love your cat posters,” I said, trying again. I didn’t love them. They were beyond hideous. There were cats all over the walls in Ashling’s third of the room. One read HANG IN THERE! and had a tiny white kitten clinging to a branch. The other said FRIENDS and showed two kittens sharing a milk shake. And then there was a series of big-eyed kittens in flower pots staring at me. Creepy.

  “Thanks. I love cats.” Victory! She spoke, and this time it was only moderately hostile. “Do you have a cat?”

  “Well, no. But I do really love animals. At home, in Minnesota, we have two dogs. Beagles. They’re really cute. They’re like part of the family; my mom’s totally nuts about them. She keeps trying to get my dad to help her shoot them for the Hound Holiday Fun Photo Contest and stuff, because she says she needs him to run the tungsten light, but he has this thing against putting animals in sweaters, so . . .”

  I trailed off as I caught sight of Ashling. Clearly, I’d made a fatal error in choosing the opposite side in the eternal dog vs. cat debate. The stare I received was so cold, I could feel icicles forming on my ears. Ashling picked up a book, pulled out her bookmark that read, I kid you not, “Cats Are Little People in Furry Suits!,” and started reading. The door to communication had been slammed shut. Fine. At least I had tried. I started building a shoe tower at the bottom of my closet.

  “Why do you have so many shoes?” Ashling arched an eyebrow over the top of her book, which appeared to be a Sisters of the Quilt Amish romance. I imagined it probably involved a lot of repression and meaningful glances beneath bonnets. Ashling, however, had clearly not gone the Amish route and decided to shun me, as the silent treatment had been short-lived.

  “Well, you need a pair of shoes to go with every outfit.” I balanced a pair of gladiator-inspired gold sandals on top of some cream ballet flats.

  “I have a pair of shoes to go with every outfit.”

  “You do?” The bottom of her closet looked pretty empty to me.

  “I don’t know what you need all those for. You only need two pairs. Tevas. Sneakers. They go with everything.”

  I couldn’t formulate a response. She did not seriously just say “Tevas” to me. Ashling returned to reading. Maybe Dev was right. Maybe I couldn’t do this. If everyone in Camden Harbor thought Tevas were all-occasion footwear, I’d have to steal a canoe and paddle to New York. I’d reach the Hudson eventually, right?

  “Hi.” Someone else entered the room. Our third roommate, I surmised. “I’m Suze.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose and stuck out her hand. “The Research and Curatorial intern.” She sort of looked like a librarian, but not in a bad way—in a cool, sort of Velma from Scooby-Doo in plastic-framed glasses way.

  “I’m Libby.” I took her hand and smiled. “The Education and Interpretation intern.”

  “I’m the real Interpretation intern,” Ashling piped up. The cat bookmark was back in and the book was closed. “Education and Interpretation is basically just babysitting the camp kids. Not real Historical Interpretation, like me,” she sniffed.

  “Ummm . . . okay,” I said.

  “Let me show you.” Ashling motioned me over. “Suze has already seen this, but I think you could really learn
something.”

  Suze raised her eyebrows and nodded, like I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Which I didn’t. Ashling pulled a giant book out from under her bed. She patted the space next to her and I sat down. The cover read “My Historical Interpretation Scrapbook” in puffy letters and featured a black-and-white photo of a frowning Ashling in eighteenth-century dress.

  “I am Susannah Fennyweather, the daughter of a whaler, and an aspiring suffragette,” she explained.

  “Suffragette? Aren’t you like a hundred and twenty years early for that?” I asked. The term suffragette hadn’t been coined until like 1906.

  “I am a woman ahead of my times.” No kidding. She was so ahead of her times, she might as well have been a cyborg. She flipped a page. It was a seemingly endless series of Ashling dressed as Susannah Fennyweather: in a garden, under a tree, with a parasol, by the water, at a ball, in the snow, on horseback, drinking tea, opening presents, eating a biscuit . . .

  “Have you seen the rest of the house?” Suze asked, stopping the parade of Susannah Fennyweathers. Thank God.

  “Just this little room.” Just this tiny annex of Satan’s kingdom.

  “I know it’s a bit cramped.” Suze shrugged. “This is usually a double, apparently, but they had to force a triple due to budget issues. I hope you don’t mind that I took the built-in shelving over my bed.”

  I looked. It was less space than my closet half. “Don’t mind at all,” I answered truthfully.

  “Libby couldn’t have fit all her really important things like shoes in there,” Ashling remarked snidely, still gazing at her Susannah Fennyweather portraiture.

  “Why don’t I show you around?” Suze suggested.

  “Please,” I said gratefully.

  We stepped over the threshold from one set of warped wooden floorboards to another. Once upon a time, it must have been a beautiful house. Now, however, it could have used a bit of work. The paint was peeling on the whitewashed wooden clapboards outside, and the floor was so uneven you had to watch your step to avoid face-planting.