The Luckiest Girl (10 page)

“Am I?” asked Shelley dreamily. “Well, good night, Katie.” She went to her room and, without turning on the light, stood at the window looking out into the soft, dark night. She recalled how she had felt at thirteen. Nothing had seemed right. The girls were taller than the boys and at dancing
class, even when there were enough boys to go around, the girls had really led, because the boys all seemed too confused to learn the steps. And clothes had never fitted properly. And at thirteen there never seemed to be anything to do, because at thirteen a girl is too old for toys and not old enough for dates. Now that she looked back on that age, Shelley knew that she was glad to be through with it, to have said good-bye to so many things.

Shelley smiled in the darkness. Katie was right. She was lucky to be sixteen. She was the luckiest girl in San Sebastian, because she was sixteen and Philip Blanton liked her. Shelley was filled with a wonderful feeling of excitement as if something was about to happen, something more wonderful than anything that had ever happened before. Something magic.

After Shelley's first date with Philip, each day seemed more golden and more spellbound. The sun shone and the sky was clear. The oranges were ripening. Violets and iris bloomed in November, Shelley discovered, and felt sorry for these poor confused California flowers that did not know they were supposed to bloom in the spring.

The leggy plants beside the back door put forth scarlet leaves and Shelley saw that these plants that she had thought so ugly were poinsettias. Poinsettias higher than her head! Until now she had seen them only in pots and thought that was the way they always grew.

At the same time the spreading gray-green tree
that overhung the two-story garage began to burst with buds, clusters of tiny greenish yellow balls, and Shelley discovered that this was an acacia tree. At home acacia blossoms were bought in bunches at the florist shop and she had supposed that an acacia was a small bush. As Shelley stood under the poinsettias and looked up at the acacia tree, she felt like Alice in Wonderland after she had drunk from the bottle labeled Drink Me and found everything the wrong size because she was shrinking. Yes, San Sebastian was a magic place.

And the most magic thing about Shelley's new life was Philip. Whenever he saw her at school he smiled his slow grin, detached himself from the group of boys he was talking to, and came to smile down at her and say a few words while the other girls watched enviously. On Friday afternoons he had a way of seeming suddenly to remember that the next day was Saturday and of asking her for a date just when, after an agony of anticipation, she was sure he had forgotten. Sometimes they went to the movies and sometimes they played table tennis on the dining-room table. Although it was Philip whom she liked and not Ping-Pong, Shelley found her game improving. Philip showed no interest in any other girl and Shelley, busy with her life at the
Michies', was not interested in any other boy. She was completely happy.

Hartley, of course, Shelley saw every day, because he sat behind her in her registration room. Although their relationship had never been quite comfortable since they had said good night under the interested eye of Katie, he was always fun to talk to. Hartley was—well, good old Hartley.

One afternoon in biology lab, while Shelley and Jeannie and the two boys who sat beside them were getting their microscopes out of the cupboards and opening their notebooks, Jeannie said, “I'm in charge of decorating the gym for the barn dance. I hereby appoint the three of you to be on the committee. If we round up a bunch of others it shouldn't be too much work.”

“I'd love to,” said Shelley. This was one of the things she liked best about San Sebastian High. The chairman of a committee was formally appointed, but after that arrangements for school activities were casual and usually resulted in anyone's taking part who wanted to.

“You've talked me into it,” Frisbie told Jeannie, “if you'll go to the dance with me.”

“Of course,” agreed Jeannie. “Why else would I ask you to be on the committee?”

“I thought maybe you wanted me for my muscles,” said Frisbie, “to lift bales of hay or something.”

“Maybe the four of us could double date,” suggested Philip, his eyes on the rubber band he was playing with.

“I think that would be fun,” said Shelley, delighted that for once Philip was asking her ahead of time.

“Well, what do you know!” exclaimed Frisbie. “Phil is finally going to break down and go to a school dance. After all these years.”

“Aw—” muttered Philip.

Shelley could not help smiling to herself. It was nice to know she was to be the first girl Philip took to a school dance. It made her feel special.

“Does anybody know where we can borrow any authentic old wagon wheels?” asked Jeannie.

“There's one leaning against the front of practically every ranch house in town,” said Frisbie. “Phil and I can probably round up a few.”

Mr. Ericson interrupted the conversation. “If the cozy coterie at the table by the door will adjourn, we shall turn to the topic of the day—osmosis. Jeanne, will you please define ‘osmosis'?”

“Osmosis is the movement of molecules
of water and dissolved substances through semipermeable membranes,” answered Jeannie promptly.

For this she had Shelley's admiration. Shelley was sure that Jeannie's mind had been entirely on the dance. That was where Shelley's mind had been. Fortunately Mr. Ericson had not asked her the question.

The afternoon of the barn dance Philip came to pick up Shelley in his father's car. In the backseat was a pair of wagon wheels, each labeled with the name of its owner.

“One of those wagon wheels is Pamela's mother's,” said Katie as she looked admiringly at Philip's green sweater with the yellow block S and the yellow stripe on the left sleeve. Katie always managed to be on hand when Philip arrived and Shelley enjoyed showing him off. “You'd better take good care of it. Pamela's mother had to look all over before she found it in an antique shop. They are awfully hard to find.”

“Don't worry,” said Shelley. “We'll take good care of the rare old antique.”

As they drove to school, Shelley noticed that the sky was cloudier than she had ever before seen it in San Sebastian. There had been a shower or two
since she had come to California and once it had rained hard in the night, but this was the first time that she had seen threatening rain clouds. She did not know why she was surprised. It was really winter, although to her, because there had been no autumn leaves and no frost, it did not feel like winter. It did not seem like any season at all, and the brooding clouds seemed out of place in the sky.

The clouds did produce rain, though, and suddenly. Large drops spattered flatly against the car and all at once rain was being dumped on San Sebastian. The windshield wipers wagged furiously and then more slowly, as if the weight of the unexpected rain was too much for them.

Shelley rolled the window down a few inches. “M-m-m,” she breathed. “Smell the rain and feel the wonderful damp air. I feel as if I were absorbing it like a sponge.” Now her hair would curl without so much coaxing.

Philip laughed. “Maybe you'll begin to swell up,” he said as he parked the car near the gym under a pepper tree that made a lacy green curtain, shutting them off from the street. He turned off the windshield wipers. Rain beat down on the car and flowed down the windshield, blurring the outside world.

“Hi, Webfoot,” Philip drawled, turning toward her.

“Hi.” Shelley half whispered the syllable. They were so alone and Philip was so close. She was aware of him, clean and tan in his letterman's sweater, as she never had been before. She was aware of the rough wool of his sweater and the stripe on his sleeve just five stitches wide, the texture of the block S like thousands of tiny French knots, the clean white T-shirt, the golden tan of his skin, that tiny mole just below his left ear lobe…. Shelley did not know why, but she felt frightened.

Philip took Shelley's hand in his. His hand was thin and hard, the way a boy's hand should be. “Shelley—” he began, and stopped.

Shelley managed to raise her eyes to his. She knew with a panicky feeling that he was about to kiss her.

Philip, lowering his eyes in his shy way, looked down at her hand in his. “Nothing,” he said quietly. Slowly he released her hand. The moment was over.

Shelley realized she had been holding her breath and tried to let it out quietly so it would not sound like a sigh. Enclosed in the car, even with the rain beating on the roof, she was sure he could hear her
breathe and perhaps hear her heart beat. She struggled to swallow without sounding as if she were gulping. It was funny how being alone with a boy and close to him could be so exciting and at the same time so embarrassing.

“Maybe we better run for it,” she said reluctantly. “I mean—we can't just sit here all afternoon, can we?”

“Maybe we better.” There was reluctance in Philip's voice, too.

“It's awfully wet out.” A silly thing to say, with the gutter running like a river.

“Yes….” Philip was looking at her. She could feel it. “It's pretty wet.”

All right. They agreed it was wet.

“Here.” Philip pulled off his sweater. “You'd better wear my sweater or you'll get soaked. That sweater of yours is pretty thin.”

“But what about you? You'll get wet.” Philip's sweater was a temptation to Shelley.

“If I get too wet I have a sweatshirt in my locker in the gym.” Philip draped his sweater around Shelley's shoulders.

“In that case, all right.” Shelley slid her arms into the too-big sleeves, which made her feel fragile, like someone who needed to be protected from the
elements. The wool, which was rough against her skin, smelled pleasantly of Philip.

Another couple ran past the car toward the gym. They were wearing slickers, and soldier hats folded out of newspaper. The girl, who carried her shoes in her hand, was barefooted.

“Wait till I get the wagon wheels out,” said Philip as he ducked out of the car.

Shelley followed him. The rain was cold against her face and legs but she did not care. She took one of the wagon wheels from Philip and together they raced, rolling the wheels like hoops ahead of them. They arrived at the door of the gym wet and laughing. Inside, the committee and Mr. Lutz, the teacher of commercial subjects and sponsor of the dance, were hard at work.

“Hi, there,” called Jeannie. “Trickle in and go to work. We're leaning the wagon wheels around the bandstand.”

Shelley ran her finger through her damp hair and looked around. Wires had been strung from one end of the gym to the other, and over the wires hung yards of blue cloth that hid the ceiling and hung down over the windows. Although the cloth did not succeed in looking like the sky, at least it diminished the gymnasium look, particularly in
the dim light produced by the spotlights. Sheets of brown paper had been tacked up at the end of the gym, where members of the art class were painting barn scenes with poster paint.

A girl who was painting a row of cheerful, smiling cows stood back to look at her work. “Talk about contented cows,” she said admiringly.

“They may be contented,” said Frisbie from the top of a stepladder where he was adjusting a spotlight, “but they are knock-kneed.”

“It's the effect that counts,” answered the girl.

Leaving a trail of wet footprints behind them, Shelley and Philip rolled their wagon wheels to the bandstand, where Jeannie and two other girls were making a scarecrow.

“I'm going to change into my sweatshirt,” said Philip, and went off to the locker room.

Shelley was pleasantly aware that the other girls were looking at her in Philip's sweater with the sleeves pushed up above her elbows so they would stay up. Although it was not the custom in San Sebastian for a girl to wear a letterman's sweater (Shelley had found that out the first week of school), still there was something special about a boy even lending a girl his sweater with a block letter—especially when the boy was Philip.

Philip came running out of the locker room in his sweatshirt, dribbling an imaginary basketball. He stopped, caught it, and made what was obviously a difficult shot.

A cheer went up from the committee.

“Isn't that sweater awfully damp to be wearing around?” asked one of the girls, whose name was Arlene. She was in Shelley's English class and was the kind of girl who enjoyed catching the teacher in mistakes.

“Not especially,” answered Shelley lightly. She did not mind the girl's jealousy a bit. Not one little bit. She went to work pinning a pair of garden gloves to the scarecrow's sleeves.

“Hey, Friz,” yelled one of the boys. “You're giving us too much light.”

“I'll fix it,” Frisbie yelled back.

“Now wait a minute,” said Mr. Lutz, coming over to Frisbie's stepladder. “What we need is more light, not less.”

Voices rose in protest. “Aw, Mr. Lutz, nobody wants to dance around in broad daylight!” “Aw, Mr. Lutz, that's no fun.” “Be a sport and let us dim them some more.”

“I'm prepared to be scientific about this.” Mr. Lutz pulled from his pocket a light meter, the kind
amateur photographers use, and held it up toward the spotlight. “Sorry,” he said, squinting at the red indicator on the meter, “but the light meter has to read one foot-candle for each spotlight. It's a rule.” Then he grinned. “I have to keep one step ahead of you kids.” The boys grumbled good-naturedly and went back to work.

The afternoon went quickly for Shelley. Reluctantly she took off Philip's sweater, but not before she was sure everyone had seen her wearing it. It was such wonderful fun to be part of behind-the-scenes. This had never happened to her at home. She enjoyed every minute of the committee's clowning. One of the boys caught Arlene and put a dab of red poster paint on the tip of her nose while she squealed, “Let go! You're hurting me!” and everyone knew Arlene enjoyed it. And when it came time to sprinkle the special powder for dance floors on the floor of the gymnasium, Shelley joined the others in running and sliding. What fun she would have writing home about this! Dear Rosemary, she would write. I had the craziest afternoon. We were having a barn dance at school and Philip and I were on the committee…. Dear Mother and Daddy, This afternoon Philip and I helped decorate for the barn dance at school.
He is such a nice boy. I know you would like him a lot….

Finally, when the work was done and Mr. Lutz was off someplace seeing that the stepladders were put back where they belonged, Jeannie looked around thoughtfully. “I wish we had some hay,” she remarked to Philip and Frisbie. “It doesn't seem like a real barn dance without a few bales of hay.”

“That's easy,” answered Frisbie. “I know where we can get some. You know that place up near the mountains that has the horses? I know the man who owns it.”