The Luckiest Girl (6 page)

Shelley had to raise her voice to speak above the babble in the room. “I don't mean the actual hole in the doughnut,” she explained. “I mean the
dough that is cut out of the doughnut to make the hole. At home the doughnut shop cooked them along with the doughnuts.”

“You mean we could really buy doughnut holes?” asked Hartley.

“Yes,” answered Shelley. “We sold them at the school I came from. Two for a nickel, and they were very popular.”

“Doughnut holes have been nominated!” announced Hartley.

“I move the nominations be closed!” shouted half a dozen students.

“I second it!” everyone seemed to say at once.

Doughnut holes were chosen unanimously and one of the girls volunteered to make all the arrangements with a doughnut shop in Vincente. Shelley felt the crimson of her embarrassment turn to a flush of pleasure as everyone smiled at her, the new girl with the good idea. Now she belonged.

When the bell rang and the meeting was adjourned, Hartley sought out Shelley, who was finding it very pleasant to feel like a member of the class. “Thanks for the swell idea,” he said. “I didn't know there were any new ideas left for selling things. Where are you headed for?”

Shelley consulted her schedule. “Biology lab.
Room 211. I guess everyone thought I was crazy at first, but I thought every town had a doughnut shop.”

Hartley grinned at her. “What we needed was some new blood around here.”

“That's me,” answered Shelley. “A regular transfusion.”

“Maybe you and I should drive down to Vincente sometime to sample the doughnut holes,” said Hartley.

“Maybe,” answered Shelley, smiling. He had said maybe and she did not want to be any more definite than he. Even so, she felt heady with success. She had walked right into a new school and had made herself a part of the class the very first day. And now the president of the class was walking down the hall with her and she almost had a date with him.

“Here's where I'm going. Chemistry. Right next door to biology,” said Hartley.

“Bye,” said Shelley with a smile. Hartley had not really made a date but she was not worried. Latham, Lathrop. She would see him often. If only he were the tall boy with the sunburned nose…

Shelley entered the biology laboratory, a room that was so hot she felt stifled. The study of a lab
oratory science, one of the requirements for college entrance, was to be a new experience for her. She sat down at one of four vacant chairs at a table that was covered with a film of dust that had been partially erased by the arms and notebooks of a previous class. The room was on the west side of the building and the shades were drawn almost to the sills to keep out the afternoon sun.

A girl, tiny and as alert looking as a sparrow, sat in the chair opposite Shelley. “Hello,” she said with a friendly smile. “That was a wonderful idea you had about doughnut holes.” Then before Shelley could answer she called to someone behind Shelley, “Hi, Phil! Here's a chair.”

Shelley turned and saw two boys. One was tall and heavy and one of the healthiest-looking boys Shelley had ever seen. He looked as if he ate steak three times a day. The other was the boy with the sunburned nose.

“Hi, Jeannie,” they both said. The heavy boy sat in the chair beside Jeannie and the other boy sat beside Shelley. From the look of disappointment on Jeannie's face, Shelley knew that this boy must be Philip.

Shelley smiled at Philip, who glanced down at the tabletop for an instant before he flashed her
the shy, lopsided grin that made Shelley skip a breath for the second time that day. He was perfect, she decided instantly, and glanced away, realizing that Jeannie's sharp eyes had missed neither her smile nor Philip's grin. Philip. Shelley was intensely aware of him even though she dared not look at him.

A man stepped behind a counter at the front of the room and addressed the class. “If you will do me the honor of giving me your attention—”

Oh, dear, a man teacher, thought Shelley. They were always harder than women teachers, especially when they were the sarcastic type.

“I will pass around this diagram of the tables. Sign your names in the appropriate spaces,” continued the teacher, whose name was Mr. Ericson.

Why, that means we will have these seats for the whole semester, thought Shelley. She would sit beside Philip for a whole term. What luck. What glorious luck! She glanced quickly at Philip, hoping that Jeannie would not notice. What a nice-looking boy he was. And that sunburned patch on his nose—there was something so—so touching about it.

Shelley forced her attention back to her teacher, who was saying, “Biology is, as I hope you already
know, the science of living things….”

Of course I know, thought Shelley, drowsy in the heat. Her thoughts drifted. Dear Mother and Daddy, she mentally wrote. Today was the first day of school. I liked all of my teachers except my biology teacher and I am not sure about him. The nicest boy named Philip sits next to me in biology. He is very good looking….

Shelley wondered what Philip's last name was and where he lived. And wouldn't it be wonderful if he really was on the basketball team and she got to wear his letterman's sweater (did boys let girls wear their sweaters down here the way they did at home?) and everybody thought how lucky she was. Dear Rosemary, Shelley began another mental letter. Today I met the most wonderful boy. He sits next to me in biology lab and he has the nicest grin. You would be simply mad about him….

Shelley came out of her daydream long enough to sign the seat chart and to learn from it that the other girl at the table was Jeanne Jones, the boy who looked as if he lived on steak was Frisbie Gerard, and Philip's last name was Blanton. Philip Blanton. And he was going to sit beside her for an eighty-minute period for a whole semester. If only the room were not so oppressively warm….

Shelley propped her chin on her fist and stared dreamily out the window, below the partially drawn shade, at the top of a palm tree. An honest-to-goodness palm tree in San Sebastian, California. Why, the closest she had ever been to a palm tree was in church on Palm Sunday when she had been given a bit of dried palm leaf. This was a real live palm tree. Shelley knew it was real, but she had difficulty making it seem real because here nothing seemed very real. It was all so unreal and so perfect—living on North Mirage Avenue, the wonderful Michies who hung out the washing by the light of the moon, the enthusiasm of her class at her suggestion of a doughnut hole sale, Philip beside her in biology lab for a whole semester. Philip, who was the kind of boy every girl dreamed of meeting. It was all like a happy dream and this was going to be a wonderful year, she knew. Her world was full of sunshine and friendly people and nothing could possibly happen to spoil it. Shelley was sure of that.

Drowsy in the new climate, Shelley felt as if she were drifting through her first week in San Sebastian in a beautiful dream of sunny days, blue skies, and strange faces—faces that grew less strange as each day passed. It was a happy week. Everyone was friendly and with the exception of the sarcastic Mr. Ericson, Shelley liked her teachers. She found it pleasant to study at the black desk with the gilded flatirons for bookends and to know that Luke and Katie were studying at the dining-room table downstairs. Luke asked her help with his Latin and Shelley enjoyed helping him find the main verb in sentences similar to those she had translated the year before. Katie
would drop into her room to tell her about her struggles with a book report. (“The teacher says we have to tell something about the author and I don't know anything about the author. Do you think it would be all right if I just made something up?”)

And then there were letters from home. “Shelley dear,” wrote her mother. “The house has seemed so quiet since you left. Every time the telephone rings I expect it to be a call for you. We miss you but are so happy you are enjoying…” “Dear Shell,” wrote Rosemary. “Having fun lolling about under the palm trees? Guess what? Jack walked home from school with me today, not that I think you'd care. I'm just reporting the facts, ma'am. Anyway, he talked mostly about you….” “Dear Shelley,” wrote Jack. “Holy cow! School doesn't seem the same with you way off down there.” Shelley giggled. Holy cow! Poor Jack. It seemed as if she had known him a long, long time ago.

However, there was one thing about her first week of school that bothered Shelley. That was Philip. He always greeted her with his shy grin and although he sat beside her for the eighty minutes of biology laboratory, he did not offer to start a conversation. Shelley purposely left her notebook
in her locker so that she could ask to borrow paper from him. This would give her two opportunities to talk to Philip because, of course, she would have to return the paper. He loaned her the paper but somehow this did not lead to the conversation she had planned. Instead, Philip talked across the table to Frisbie while Jeannie's smile showed she had missed nothing.

“Say, Friz,” Philip said before class toward the end of the week. “Do you think we can get that topsoil moved on Saturday?”

“Sure,” answered Frisbie. “If we start early enough.”

“What do you mean, move topsoil?” asked Shelley. After all, sitting there at the same table she couldn't help overhearing the conversation, could she? And it didn't hurt to be friendly, did it?

“One of our neighbors who is going to put in a back lawn had a load of topsoil dumped on his driveway and Phil and I are going to move it for him,” answered Frisbie. “We have formed a company. Blanton and Gerard, Contractors If the Job Isn't Too Hard. You know, pick-and-shovel work, tree cutting, wood splitting. Things that take brawn but not brains.”

Shelley laughed. “Where is the topsoil you are going to move?” she asked Philip directly.

“Up the street a few blocks,” he answered pleasantly, and opened his textbook.

Jeannie smiled wickedly across the table at Shelley.

Darn him, anyway, thought Shelley. What was the matter with him, acting like a yup-and-nope character in a Western. She did not think he was unfriendly. He was only shy, and it was going to be up to her to find a way to make him less shy.

Mr. Ericson called the class to order and Shelley languidly opened her book. It must be difficult for a boy to be as shy as Philip. He probably felt uncomfortable around girls. Well, she would go right on being friendly toward him and maybe he would stop her in the hall sometime when Jeannie and Frisbie weren't around to hear what he said. He would look down at her with that shy grin of his and turn red and look embarrassed and say, “Shelley, I—I wondered if you were doing anything Saturday night.” And she would smile to put him at his ease and say gently, “Why, no, Philip, I'm not—”

“When Shelley Latham decides to join the class,” said Mr. Ericson, “we shall begin.”

The class laughed and Shelley felt herself blushing. If only she were not stuck with this man for a biology teacher when everything else in San Sebastian was so pleasant. Oh, well…The lab was so hot in the afternoon sun. It was so hard to concentrate. Shelley's mind drifted again, this time to all the cool things she could think of—maidenhair fern growing along the streams in the woods, trilliums blooming through the last crusts of melting snow in the mountains, dark caves hollowed in the cliffs at the bottom of a waterfall where she had stood and watched the rainbows in the thundering curtain of water between her and the sunshine. Cold, cold water…

 

That evening Shelley was introduced to another Michie custom. Because Mavis bought groceries for the whole week on Friday, supper on Thursday was always made up of the accumulation of leftovers—the one helping of beef Stroganoff, the last of the spaghetti, the one tomato, the heel of the roast. Mavis also served a platter of scrambled eggs “to fill in the cracks.”

Halfway through the meal Shelley turned to Tom and asked, “Is there a boy on the basketball team named Philip Blanton?”

“Well, Shelley,” answered Tom with a quizzical smile. “You, too?”

“I'll say he's on the basketball team,” said Luke enthusiastically. “Last year he was just about the best forward in the whole county, is all. And he was only a sophomore.”

“And all the girls are mad about him,” added Katie with equal enthusiasm, “but he never bothers with any of them.”

“I just wondered,” said Shelley hastily, helping herself to three tablespoons of creamed tuna fish that had been served in a custard cup. “He sits next to me in biology and he is so tall I thought he must be on the basketball team.”

“He is, Shelley. He is,” said Tom.

“You're sure lucky to get to sit next to him,” said Katie. “Do you think he'll ask you for a date?”

“Oh, Katie, don't be silly,” said Shelley with a forced laugh. Katie was always so blunt.

“It would be just wonderful if he would,” said Katie wistfully.

“He won't,” said Luke flatly. “He isn't going to waste his time on girls.”

Oh, is that so, thought Shelley, even though she was afraid Luke might be right. Philip was not like a lot of athletes, the chesty kind who lounged
around on the front steps at school and gave the girls they bothered to speak to that you-lucky-girl look, as if the girl should feel honored to be noticed by someone with a block letter on his sweater. Philip was pleasant and courteous to everyone, but in a reserved way. It wouldn't hurt to encourage a boy who was shy, would it?

“Katie dear, clear the table,” said Mavis. Katie sighed wearily while Mavis said, “For dessert we have leftover devil's food cake, macaroons, one serving of vanilla ice cream, two servings of chocolate ice cream, and frozen pineapple. I have to get rid of it so I can defrost tonight.”

“Did Katie bake the cake?” asked Luke.

“Yes, I did,” said Katie, lifting a plate as if it were very, very heavy.

“Did you bake it from mix or from scratch?” Luke wanted to know.

“From cake mix,” said Katie. “It won't poison you. Besides, lots of boys would be glad to have a sister who baked a cake.”

Shelley nibbled at a macaroon and wondered how she could help Philip overcome his shyness as far as she was concerned.

Shelley was glad when Friday afternoon arrived. The days were so warm she found it increasingly
difficult to stay awake in class, particularly in the biology laboratory. It was so hard to be alert when all she wanted to do was put her head down on the table and take a nap. When it came time to go to the office of the school paper to pick up her copy of the
Bastion
, she was tempted not to bother. She had to force herself to take the extra steps, and when she presented her student body card, she accepted the paper without much interest. As she walked toward her locker she glanced at the paper and saw that it contained the usual articles found in the first issue of a school paper—a welcome from the principal, a welcome from the student body president, a picture of the captain of the football team, an editorial about not throwing lunch sacks on the lawn.

Then halfway down a column called “The Roving Reporter” a name leaped out at Shelley. Her drowsiness disappeared as she read with wide-awake interest. “Looking forward to next winter's basketball season is Phil Blanton, San Sebastian's right forward. Draping his six-foot frame over a garbage can by the gym, Phil revealed that he believes San Sebastian stands a good chance of trouncing Vicente when basketball season rolls around. In the meantime he
expects to keep busy with the firm of Blanton and Gerard, Contractors If the Job Isn't Too Hard. When your reporter queried Phil about his interest in girls, he answered, ‘Girls? Never heard of them.' However, his partner, Friz Gerard, who was draped over the next garbage can, was heard to comment, ‘Except when they come from up North and take biology.'”

Why, that's me. Shelley quickly reread the paragraph. “‘Except when they come from up North and take biology.'” The words could mean only one thing—Frisbie knew that Philip liked her. And since Frisbie was Philip's best friend and business partner, who could know him better? There it was in black and white for the whole school to see, Philip liked her.

Blessings on thee, Frisbie Gerard, thought Shelley, and her footsteps were light as she walked out of the building and through the orange groves. When she reached her room she lay down on her India print spread (at home she would have been expected to turn the spread back) and held the paper up over her head to read the words of the Roving Reporter a third time. And a fourth. Surely these were the most interesting words ever printed and surely they would give Philip the push he needed.

It occurred to Shelley that this was the first Friday night in a long time that she did not have the prospect of a date for the weekend. At home she would have seen Jack whether she wanted to or not. Now she felt pleasantly carefree. Jack was over a thousand miles away, she had no date, and anything might happen. Maybe when Philip read the interview in the paper he would get up his courage to telephone. Maybe this very evening.

Later, when supper was over and Shelley and Luke had washed the dishes while Katie fed Sarge, the dog, and Smoky, the cat, Mavis remarked, “I don't know where this week has gone. I sprinkled the clothes but I haven't had a minute to do any ironing.”

“Let's do it now,” said Tom promptly. “Come on, everybody, we're going to iron.”

Amused, Shelley followed the family into the laundry, where Tom lit the gas that heated the old-fashioned mangle and Mavis prepared to iron at the ironing board.

“Shelley, you take the other ironing board,” directed Tom. “Katie, you and Luke feed the flat things into the mangle while I run it.”

Obediently Shelley plugged in the iron and selected a sport shirt while Mavis started to iron
one of Katie's blouses. Tom operated the lever that raised the top of the mangle. “Now!” he ordered, and simultaneously he and his two children fed napkins into the mangle. This was the secret of the fresh napkins at each meal. Tom brought the top down on the heated cylinder and the napkins rolled in and came out ironed. They ran the napkins through to fold them, laid them aside, and reached for more unironed linen. “Now!” Tom ordered, and the operation was repeated.

Why, ironing is fun, marveled Shelley, running her iron in and out around the buttons on the sport shirt and feeling a little like a child who has finally been asked to the party. Once the telephone rang, and Shelley started. At home Friday night calls were almost always for her. This one was not. She finished ironing the shirt and hung it from the top of the door on a hanger. As she turned back to the ironing board she noticed the head of the six-point buck. “Is that the deer's head Mother says you took to college with you?” she asked Mavis.

“Yes, it is,” answered Mavis, and laughed. “Your poor mother. I'm afraid I was a terrible trial to her.”

“Why?” asked Shelley, finding it difficult to imagine Mavis a trial to anyone.

“I was so untidy and our room in the dormitory was so small,” explained Mavis. “I used to hang my one hat and my scarves on the antlers, because they were so handy, and every week your mother would take them down just before room inspection. She was so fastidious—she always looked as if she had just stepped out of a shower into freshly ironed clothes.”

Shelley smiled, thinking that her mother still looked that way. Maybe that was why she had not wanted Shelley to wear a dirty slicker. She wanted Shelley to look the way she had looked when she was a girl. The words that Shelley had not spoken the day she threw the roses into the Disposall came back to her now. But Mother, I am not you. I am me.

“But Mommy, why did you take a deer's head away to school?” asked Katie from the mangle.

Mavis laughed. “Why does a girl that age do anything? A boy I thought was perfectly wonderful shot the deer and had the head mounted for me, and naturally I couldn't bear to leave such a precious gift at home.”

“And you've kept it all these years?” exclaimed Shelley, and realized at once that her reference to all these years was scarcely tactful.

Mavis burst out laughing. “It isn't easy to get rid of the mounted head of a six-point buck.”

“Were you madly in love?” asked Katie.

“Girls in their teens always fancy themselves in love with the wrong boy,” said Mavis, smiling. “However, this boy came to visit me at school, took one look at Shelley's mother, and lost interest in me.”

“He did?” Shelley was amazed at this glimpse of her mother's girlhood. “But didn't you mind?”

“A little at first,” admitted Mavis, “but I think I was really relieved to get rid of him, because he wanted me to hunt jackrabbits with him. Anyway, he helped make up for your mother's disappointment that weekend.”