Fifteen (8 page)

Silently the two made their way through the stream of students toward Jane's English classroom. I've got to say something, Jane thought wildly. Something light, something casual, something that would let her know for sure and yet not reveal to Stan how important this was to her.

When they reached the door of Room 214, Jane turned to Stan. This was the moment. Somehow, words came out of her mouth, and they were not at all the words she had meant to speak. “George
asked me to go to the dance Friday, but I said I already had a date,” she blurted out.

An expression—could it be relief?—crossed Stan's face. “Hey, that's swell!” Stan was enthusiastic about something; just what, Jane was not sure. She stared at him, shocked by his reaction.

“If you have a date we can trade dances,” Stan went on.

“But I don't,” Jane cried out in spite of herself. “I thought—”

The bell clanging through the hall stopped Jane from saying any more, but she could not help giving Stan one stricken look. His expression changed from enthusiasm to bewilderment, embarrassment, and, worst of all—how could she bear it?—pity. Silently Jane fled into Room 214, and Miss Locke, her English teacher, closed the door behind her.

The efforts of Miss Locke to teach clear thinking in English composition were wasted on Jane during the next hour. Squinting modifiers, dangling participles—who cared? All she could think about was herself and Stan. Now it was all so painfully clear. Now, when it was too late to undo what she had done. Stan had asked another girl (What girl? Who could she be?) to go to the dance, when she
had assumed he would ask her. And she had let him know she expected him to ask her, and now he felt sorry for her. Never in her life had Jane felt so hurt, so humiliated.

Of course, Stan had a right to ask anyone he pleased to the dance. But she had thought…she had wanted…she had been so sure. He was everything she liked in a boy. Oh, how could Miss Locke stand there and go on about squinting modifiers? How could she care? The irony of it all, having to sit through Miss Locke's lesson in clear thinking after she had been so dumb! Stan was so nice to be with and she had been so sure…. But she had no right to be sure. She knew that now. If only she had known it before she spoke to Stan. Stan, who now felt sorry for her, poor little Jane Purdy, the girl who got her hopes up, just because he had had a few dates with her and had bought her a back-scratcher. A back-scratcher! How silly it seemed now. How could she have taken it so seriously? A back-scratcher!

But even though Stan had asked some other girl to go to the dance, even though he felt sorry for her, Jane could not dislike Stan. It wasn't his fault she was so stupid. She could never, never face him
again, but she still liked him. She would avoid him in the hall, keep her books in Julie's locker, forget him if she could. A few dates, and one wonderful week at school, and now she was no longer Jane Purdy, Stan's girl, a girl who belonged. She was plain Jane Purdy, a nice girl but nobody special. It was all over.

Now if she were the kind of girl Marcy was, nothing like this would ever happen. If she were like Marcy, Stan would want to take her to the dance and would have asked her for a date way ahead to be sure no other boy would ask her first. And then the thought came to Jane that Stan might be taking Marcy to the dance. She remembered the way they had talked together in the Chinese restaurant. But no, he couldn't be taking Marcy. She would have heard about it before now—unless everyone was trying to keep it from her so her feelings wouldn't be hurt.

Jane stared blankly at the blackboard while Miss Locke wrote with squeaking chalk, “Some members of the class I know are not paying attention.” Miss Locke always liked to relate her examples to the experience of her students. Several girls laughed politely.

“Jane,” said Miss Locke, pointing to the sentence with the chalk, “can you tell us what is wrong with this sentence?”

Jane forced her eyes to focus on the blackboard. The words were meaningless. “I'm sorry, Miss Locke,” she said. “I guess I wasn't paying attention.” This brought a loud laugh from several boys in the back of the room and a titter from the rest of the class.

“Elizabeth, will you tell Jane what is wrong with the sentence?” asked Miss Locke.

“‘I know' squints,” answered Liz promptly. “The sentence should read, ‘I know some members of the class are not paying attention' or ‘Some members of the class are not paying attention, I know.'”

Jane tried to look as if she were absorbing this bit of knowledge, but all the time she was thinking desperately, Will I be so dumb about boys when I am sixteen? Will I still be so dumb?

When the bell finally brought to a close the period that she should have devoted to clear thinking in English composition, Jane knew that she could not face Stan. She dawdled over her books at her desk and then, with her back turned toward the door, paused by the blackboard to ask Miss Locke some hastily composed questions about the next day's assignment. On Tuesday Stan had to leave school in a hurry to start his Doggie Diner route. When five minutes had clicked by on the electric clock, she was sure that Stan was gone and that she was safe.

Abruptly Jane thanked Miss Locke and fled down the hall to Julie's locker. “Julie, something
awful has happened. I'll tell you on the way home. May I keep my books in your locker?” The whispered words came out in a rush.

Julie looked at her in surprise. “Why, sure. You can use my locker anytime. You know the combination.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What happened?”

“I can't tell you here,” said Jane. “Julie, do me a favor. Go to my locker and get out all my books.”

“All right. If you want me to.” Julie looked mystified, but she did as Jane asked. Jane selected the books she needed for her homework, stored the rest in Julie's locker, and hurried out of the building with her friend.

“Quick, tell me,” begged Julie. “I can't stand the suspense any longer.”

Miserably Jane poured out the story.

Julie was silent while she considered the implications of Jane's problem. “How ghastly!” she said at last. “How perfectly ghastly!”

“Yes,” agreed Jane unhappily. “I don't know what to do. At least I didn't come right out and tell anybody he was taking me to the dance.”

“I wonder who he is taking,” mused Julie.

“I don't know,” said Jane. “The way things get around school you'd think I'd have heard by now.
And what I can't understand is why he's taking someone else. We'd been getting along so well and having such fun together. And he took me to the city and—and everything….” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the way Stan had looked at her when he ordered the hamburger for her in Chinatown.

“Maybe he has to take the boss's daughter, or something,” suggested Julie.

“No, that isn't it,” said Jane gloomily. “His cousin owns the Doggie Diner and if he has a daughter she's probably about two years old.”

“Maybe he's taking his sister.” This was farfetched, but Julie was trying to be comforting.

“No, one is too old and the other is too young. Anyway, Stan isn't the type to take his sister to a dance.”

The two girls walked in silence, Jane lost in humiliation and Julie quiet out of sympathy for her friend. When they reached Julie's house, Julie said, “Come on in for a Coke. Maybe we can think of something.”

“No, thanks. Not today,” answered Jane, and hesitated. “Julie, do you think…Stan could be taking Marcy?”

Julie looked serious. “I don't know. I hadn't
thought of that, but it's a possibility. She talked to him a lot that night in Chinatown.”

“Do you suppose you could sort of ask around and find out who she's going with?” This was a favor Jane did not like to ask, even from Julie, but she felt she had to find out. “But don't let anybody know I want to know,” she cautioned.

“Sure, Jane, I'll try to find out and let you know. And say, I just had an idea. Buzz might know somebody who needs a date,” said Julie. “Maybe he could arrange something for you.”

“No, it wouldn't be the same,” said Jane. She could not let it get around school that Buzz was trying to dig up a date for poor little Jane Purdy, the girl Stan Crandall used to go with. Maybe she wasn't one of
the
crowd, but she still wasn't the kind of girl who had to have dates dug up for her. Besides, if she couldn't go to the dance with Stan, she didn't want to go with anyone.

“No, I suppose it wouldn't be the same,” agreed Julie.

Feeling more lonely than ever, Jane hurried home to the privacy of her own room. She threw her books on the bed, untied the ribbon that held her back-scratcher to the edge of her mirror, and flung the piece of carved wood into her wastebas
ket. She stared at it lying among the lipstick-smeared Kleenex and, after a moment of hesitation, took it out again and hid it at the back of a drawer under a pile of sweaters. Then she sat down on her bed and yanked the needles out of the Argyle sock she had been knitting. It was not very good knitting, anyway. The sock was grubby from being raveled and reknit so many times to correct mistakes and, no matter how often Jane read the directions, the yellow strips that ran across the green diamonds refused to go straight. Jane found a gloomy satisfaction in jerking out the stitches. There, she thought, when the last stitch was unraveled. There goes Stan out of my life. It was all over and done with, and all there was for her to do was to forget him.

But the next day Jane found it was not easy to forget someone she had to work so hard to avoid. She had to get to her classes early and by devious instead of direct routes to keep from running into Stan. At noon she did not go to the cafeteria but sat instead on the steps of the gym and nibbled at a sandwich and an apple from home. She found, too, that she not only had to avoid Stan, but everyone else as well. She could not face the questions the other girls might ask her about the dance or
their speculations when they heard she had not been asked by Stan. It was a lonely week. And as the week wore on the silence of the Purdy telephone told her that Stan was avoiding her too. In a miserable sort of way she was glad. She never wanted to see him or talk to him again. Never. Especially if he was taking Marcy to the dance.

On Friday evening, while Jane was picking at her dinner, the telephone rang.

“Arf arf!”
barked Mr. Purdy.

“Pop!” pleaded Jane in real anguish as she left the table. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother frown ever so slightly and shake her head at her father. Mr. Purdy looked surprised and then indicated by his expression that he understood something was wrong.

So Mom has guessed, thought Jane, as she picked up the receiver. Now her family and her school and probably all of Woodmont knew that something was wrong between her and Stan. As she had expected, the call was from Julie.

“Did you find out?” Jane asked in a dull voice.

“Yes, finally,” answered Julie. “I had a hard time, because I didn't like to come right out and ask anybody. You know. So I sort of had to go around with my ear to the ground. And then I happened to be
walking past the drugstore and I heard a girl say something about Marcy and I slowed down—”

“Julie, just tell me. Is Stan taking Marcy?” Jane begged.

“No,” said Julie. “Marcy is going with that cute boy in the school bus crowd, the one that broke up with that girl who wears the tight skirts—”

“I know the one,” said Jane. So it wasn't Marcy. That was something.

“That was only half of what I called about,” Julie continued. “Mrs. Lashbrook called for a sitter for Nadine this evening. It's awfully short notice, but I wondered if you would want the job.”

Since I'm not doing anything else—Jane finished the sentence silently. Julie might as well have said it right out loud. “I guess so,” she said halfheartedly. Nadine, an eleven-year-old bookworm, was no trouble to sit with. “What time?”

“Mr. Lashbrook will pick you up at seven,” Julie told her.

“Okay,” said Jane. She hesitated before adding, “Have a good time tonight, Julie. And Julie, call me in the morning and tell me about…everything.”

“Sure,” agreed Julie, and the sympathy in her voice was genuine. “I'll call you the first thing and…let you know.”

Numb with misery, Jane assembled a stack of textbooks to take to the Lashbrooks' for the evening. Their house was quiet, Nadine would be buried in a book, and this would be a good chance to do a lot of studying and try to make up for the poor grades she had earned so far in the semester. She would put Stan and dates out of her mind and devote her time to her studies. No more C's or even B's for her. From now on she would get straight A's. She would be known throughout Woodmont High as Jane Purdy, the brain. Her name would be engraved on the silver scholarship cup in the trophy case at school. She would write intellectual essays for Manuscript like Liz Galpin, instead of childish articles entitled “Springtime in Yosemite National Park” or “My Experiences as a Babysitter.” She might even submit a series of haikus if she could get them to come out in seventeen syllables. Or sonnets might be better. Fourteen lines of poetry would give her more scope than seventeen syllables. If a new boy came to Woodmont High he would wonder who this attractive Jane Purdy was who made such wonderful grades. And everyone would say, “That is Jane, our top student, straight A plusses, who has such a brilliant career ahead of her that she can't waste
her time on boys.” When she finished high school she would have a selection of scholarships to choose from. She would go to one of those Eastern women's colleges….

Jane recalled her English II teacher, who once said sarcastically, when Jane had failed to look up
albeit
in the dictionary during the study of
As You Like It
, “Jane Purdy, have you no intellectual curiosity?” Well, she may not have had any intellectual curiosity in English II, but she did now.

By the time Jane arrived at the Lashbrooks' she was filled with a comfortable feeling of martyrdom. The Lashbrooks were among her favorite babysitting customers. They always came home before midnight, they always had the right change to pay her, and they lived in a gracious old redwood house set in a grove of redwood trees in the hills. The wood-paneled living room, fragrant with eucalyptus wood burning in the stone fireplace, was inviting, and Jane looked around the room with pleasure. She liked the worn Oriental rugs, the comfortable chairs slipcovered in faded linen, the mellow furniture waxed until it glowed and flickered in reflected light from the fire. Tonight there was a brass bowl of apples on the coffee table, and the open curtains framed a view
through the redwood trees of Woodmont below and the bay and the city in the distance.

Nadine, a pale, spindling child, was curled up in a chair with a book. “Hello, Jane,” she said, barely lifting her eyes from
The Pinto Stallion Revolts Again
long enough to peer at her sitter through her glasses. From time to time she sniffed. Nadine was allergic to cats and house dust, and although the Lashbrooks did not keep a cat, no one had ever figured out what to do about house dust.

“We should be home by eleven. The number is beside the telephone in case you want us,” said Mrs. Lashbrook. Noticing Jane's pile of books, she added, “You may use Mr. Lashbrook's desk if you wish,” and cleared a pile of papers out of the way. “Good night, girls. Go to bed at nine, won't you, Nadine?”

“Yes,” said Nadine, turning a page and reading avidly.

Jane sat down at the big desk that faced the room and the view, and briskly prepared to study. She opened her notebook, got out several sheets of paper, and pulled her English book out of the stack of texts. Brilliant students did not waste time. Then she read the assignment. “Rewrite a scene from
Julius Caesar
in modern English.”
Feeling pleasantly intellectual to be spending part of her evening with Shakespeare, Jane flipped through the book until she found the play.

Nadine gave a loud sniff, rose from her chair, and without raising her eyes from her book, walked across the room, took an apple from the bowl on the coffee table, returned to her chair, and curled up again.

You'd think she'd trip over something, thought Jane, and turned to Shakespeare. Nadine gave a loud sniff and crunched into the apple.

Jane read, “Act One. Scene One. Rome. A street. Enter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners.” There didn't seem to be anything to change about that. It was modern enough. She read on. “
Flavius
. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home! Is this a holiday?” Jane considered this. Because she was full of intellectual curiosity this evening, she consulted the cast of characters to see who this Flavius was. He was a tribune. Some sort of old Roman army officer, she thought, although today a tribune sounded more like a newspaper.

Nadine sniffed again, chewed noisily, and stopped abruptly.

Jane waited. Well, go on and chew, she thought. Finish the bite. Nadine turned a page and, except
for the snapping of the fire, the room was silent. Suddenly she began to chew vigorously once more.

She must have come to an exciting part of the story, Jane thought. Now to get back to Shakespeare. “Hence! home, you idle creatures” in modern English? Jane stared out the window at the lights on the bridges, strung like two golden necklaces across the bay. After a moment's thought she wrote down, “
Flavius
. Scram!” She looked critically at her work. This was not right. This did not fit into the picture of herself as a brilliant student. Miss Locke had said modern English, not slang.

Nadine had eaten the skin off the apple and was now gnawing her way around the core in a series of rapid nibbles without pausing to take the apple away from her mouth. Nibble, nibble, sniff. Silence.

Well, go on, thought Jane, distracted from
Julius Caesar
. Go on, chew it. Nadine prolonged the silence and suddenly began to eat again. Nibble, nibble, nibble, sniff. Jane relaxed. She crossed out “Scram” and wrote down, “
Flavius
. Go home.” Somehow that was not the effect she wanted to achieve, either. This old tribune Flavius should be more forceful. He shouldn't sound as if he were
ordering a dog out of a begonia bed. No, this was not the sort of thing a brilliant student would write. However, if Flavius could sort of orate instead of just yelling, “Go home,” it might sound more intellectual. Jane wondered if Miss Locke would object to the addition of directions. “
Flavius
(orating). Go home.” Most likely Miss Locke would not approve. She would want her students to think of a forceful phrase that would convey the meaning without directions. That was Miss Locke for you.