The Luckiest Girl Read online

  “That does sound sort of familiar.” Shelley ran through the names of all the male poets she could think of. Browning, Keats, Longfellow, Sandburg—Mr. Sandburg? “Hartley, you’re right!” she exclaimed, and wondered why she sounded triumphant when she had lost the argument. “It’s dead poets that you don’t call Mister. Jonas Hornbostle is alive so it is all right to call him Mister.”

  Together they rewrote the interview. Hartley read the new version. “That’s good,” he said seriously. “Mrs. Boyce should give you an A on it. It tells a lot about the poet—about his being tired and impatient and all possibly because he knows he is not very good at reading his own poetry—most people don’t think of a poet as being that human—and it tells what was wrong with a cub reporter’s interview. It is different from most school interviews.”

  “Thank you, Hartley,” said Shelley, pleased by his approval. “The Bastion does seem to publish a lot of silly interviews.” She should know. She was still embarrassed by the memory of the interview she had given.

  “A silly interview in the school paper is such a permanent fixture in San Sebastian that nobody really sees it anymore,” said Hartley jokingly, “just like—”

  “—a cannon from the first World War in the park,” finished Shelley.

  “Exactly,” agreed Hartley, laughing.

  “When I first arrived, I thought a cannon was such a funny thing to put in a park,” Shelley said, “and now it seems a perfectly natural part of the landscape.”

  Luke closed his catalogue of motorcycle parts and stood up. “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night,” said Shelley. “I hope we aren’t driving you away.”

  “No,” answered Luke good-naturedly. “I smelled cake baking and I thought I would see if Katie had taken it out of the oven yet.”

  The room was silent. Shelley and Hartley had no reason to discuss the interview any longer. Shelley looked at the boy beside her and a tiny thought, a thought that she felt was disloyal, intruded. It was a relief to be free of Ping-Pong, to sit and talk to a boy about something that interested them both instead of batting that exasperating little ball back and forth. Why, I’m having fun, thought Shelley, surprised—more real fun than I ever had with Philip.

  Katie appeared, bearing a tray with two pieces of cake and two cups of cocoa. Shelley, touched by the sight of her in her fresh dress and carefully cleaned shoes, said easily, “Katie, why don’t you join us?” When Philip had come she had always wanted to show him off to Katie and then get him out of the way before Katie could do or say something awkward. It was different with Hartley. He would understand about Katie. Of course he would, and Shelley had been foolish not to explain about Katie on the refrigerator long ago.

  Katie was obviously delighted to be invited to share Shelley’s evening with a boy. She carried in another piece of cake and another cup of cocoa and sat down at the end of the long table.

  “Blue frosting looks sort of funny on a cake,” she said shyly. “I thought it would look prettier.” She ate carefully, taking small bites and sitting up very straight. Just watching her made Shelley feel good.

  “Blue frosting is good,” said Hartley. “You could call it Surprise Frosting. Everyone expects something flavored with mint to be green, so when you bite into blue frosting and find it mint flavored, it is a surprise.”

  Shelley could see that Katie was pleased, and she knew that Hartley understood that Katie was thrilled to be included and was trying to act grown-up. Katie was even more pleased when Hartley ate a second piece of cake.

  Shelley studied Hartley thoughtfully. She liked a boy who would go out of his way to be nice to a junior high school girl. When they had finished eating they all carried their dishes into the kitchen. Hartley was the kind of boy who was at ease in the kitchen. He rinsed and stacked the plates as if working at the Michies’ sink was the most natural thing in the world. It was easy to picture him helping with a batch of fudge and enjoying himself if a girl could think of no better way to entertain a boy.

  When they had finished with the dishes, Shelley and Hartley returned to the living room. Katie went upstairs to her room, and from the garage came intermittent pop-pops from Luke’s motorcycle. At last Shelley felt that she could talk freely to Hartley. “Do you remember that night we went to Vincente to eat the doughnut holes?” she asked, determined to be forthright.

  “Of course. The night you talked about the pomegranates,” said Hartley. “Does San Sebastian still seem like a beautiful place to you after the smudging we went through?”

  Shelley spoke seriously. “It was unpleasant at the time, but you know, I think it was exciting the way the whole town cared about the oranges. Every time I eat an orange I’ll think about that cold spell and the way the boys who worked in the groves came to school greasy and tired and fell asleep in class and the teachers didn’t even say anything. I’ve never lived where people were concerned about crops before. I mean, I have read about damage to wheat or something in the papers, but I never understood how the people felt before.”

  Shelley was silent for a moment. She wanted to bring the conversation to its starting point. She looked straight into Hartley’s dark eyes. “I’ve always wanted to explain why I acted so sort of funny when we said good night that time after we went to Vincente,” she said, and noticed Hartley suddenly look as if he were on his guard. She did not care. She had to explain, because the matter had been on her conscience so long. “That night I happened to look up and see Katie looking through the open transom—you know how the refrigerator is against the door we never use between the living room and the kitchen. She was kneeling on top of the refrigerator watching us say good night so she would learn how to act when she has dates. I was so embarrassed I—well, I just acted funny, is all. It seems silly now, but that is the way it was.”

  Hartley threw back his head and laughed. “So that’s what was the matter! I didn’t know why you were suddenly acting so stiff and formal. I thought you had had a good time and I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought maybe you didn’t like it when I came right out and said I liked you so soon, or something.”

  “Oh, no,” said Shelley, relieved that she had finally explained. “I was terribly pleased to come to a strange town and get to know a boy who liked me right off.”

  “And then you seemed so interested in Phil,” Hartley went on, “that I didn’t feel I should ask you for another date.”

  “I was interested in him,” admitted Shelley, looking down at the table. This was touching on a painful subject. “He is one of the nicest fellows I have ever known, but I don’t know—I guess we don’t have an awful lot in common.” Until Shelley spoke the words it had never occurred to her that she and Philip did not have much in common. They had really found very little to talk about. She had not enjoyed Philip himself as much as the admiration of the other girls who liked him and the thought that he looked like the kind of boy her mother would like her to know. She frowned a moment before she said, “You know, now I’m not sure it was Philip I liked so much after all. I think maybe it was just that I saw him that first day of school and I was so excited to be in San Sebastian with real palm trees and oranges growing on trees and everything. He was so good-looking I just thought he was the boy I had always wanted to meet. In my mind I turned him into the boy I wanted him to be. And he wasn’t at all. He doesn’t even want to go to college. I really feel sorry for him.” She stopped, afraid she might have said too much. She did not want to criticize Philip.

  Hartley raised one eyebrow and said wickedly, “You looked at me the first day of school, too.”

  “I don’t mean that you aren’t good-looking, too,” Shelley said hastily. “You are, you know, in a different way.”

  Hartley grinned at Shelley, enjoying her discomfort. “I understand exactly what you mean about Philip. And you know something else? I think maybe you liked him because he was not the boy at home you were telling me about—the one who always said, ‘Penny for your thoughts.’”<
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  “I guess you’re right,” said Shelley thoughtfully.

  Hartley leaned closer and spoke softly. “I still like you, Shelley.”

  Shelley looked into Hartley’s serious brown eyes and was ashamed. She had maneuvered this evening just so she could write to her mother about another boy to make her mother think she had lost interest in Philip because of Hartley. She was trying to use him to shield her own mistake. And that was all wrong.

  “I like you, too, Hartley,” said Shelley honestly, realizing how much she really did like him. How foolish she had been not to understand this before. Little things should have told her, things like her boredom with Ping-Pong and the way she rushed to confide in Hartley about her D in biology because she knew he would understand how important good grades were. She recalled a remark Mavis had made about the boy she called the Great White Hunter, something about girls in their teens always fancying themselves in love with the wrong boy. Shelley had not really fancied herself in love with Philip—her feeling had been excitement at knowing a new boy and pride in showing others that he liked her—but now she understood what Mavis meant.

  Hartley put his hand over Shelley’s. “Good,” he said. “We like each other. That makes it unanimous.”

  Shelley laughed. “Two votes and it is unanimous.” She felt a sudden urge to talk to Hartley about everything in the world—school, and their plans for the future, and people they had known, and the mistakes they had made that had once seemed painful and now seemed funny. She wanted to make up for all the time they had lost.

  But as Shelley sat with Hartley’s hand over hers, she was disturbed by an elusive unhappy feeling. She liked Hartley, but Philip still liked her. Poor Philip, who had flunked biology and lost his chance to play basketball because of her.

  Chapter 14

  Spring, warm and gaudy, came to San Sebastian. One day was no season at all and the next day was spring—a spring unlike any Shelley had ever known. Wildflowers bright as paint spilled by children colored the hills. Geraniums washed clean of dust bloomed brilliantly while vines and low plants that clung to the ground brought forth crimson and magenta flowers that shimmered in the bright spring light. The orange trees, covered with bridal blossoms, filled the town with rich perfume. Shelley had not known that anything in the world could be as fragrant as San Sebastian in the spring.

  The perfume of the groves grew stronger at night and as she lay in bed consciously enjoying every breath, Shelley thought how different this was from spring at home. An Oregon spring meant fresh green leaves unfolding on the birch trees that lined Shelley’s street. It meant rain soft as pussy willows and fat robins pulling worms out of the wet lawn. It meant trilliums in the woods and lilies of the valley in the backyard. Shelley was happy, now that she was rid of homesickness, to lie in bed and enjoy two springs, gaudy and delicate, one in reality and the other in memory.

  Hartley replaced Philip on Saturday nights and Shelley was not sorry. She felt gloriously free of that plonking little Ping-Pong ball. When she and Hartley discovered they both enjoyed working double-crostics, they spent several evenings prowling through the Michies’ reference books trying to find Cotton Mather’s wife’s maiden name or a colloquial expression of three words meaning to be in good health—the second letter had to be n and the last letter k. Shelley was delighted. She had always enjoyed puzzles and word games but she had not expected a boy to enjoy them too.

  Once when one of the puzzles called for the name of the chief room in a Roman house, Shelley printed the word atrium in the proper spaces and was reminded of her first school dance a long time ago. “Hartley, is this a peculiar way to spend an evening?” she asked suddenly.

  “Of course not,” he answered. “We’re both having fun. Why do you even ask?”

  “I was just thinking about the first time I ever went to a school dance,” she explained. “I went with a boy from my Latin class, the studious type, and we spoke Latin as much as we could.”

  Hartley laughed delightedly. “Whatever did you find to say?”

  Shelley giggled. “I don’t suppose our conversation was exactly witty. I remember saying that the floor of the gymnasium was divided into three parts. You know, like all Gaul in Caesar, but I had to cheat a little, because I didn’t know the Latin for gymnasium, so I just pronounced it with what I hoped was a Latin accent. And we said things like, ‘Is drummer cum diligentia laborat.’”

  “Don’t all drummers work diligently?” Hartley asked, laughing.

  Shelley laughed with him. “It was funny, wasn’t it?” she remarked, thinking that now the whole incident seemed like something that had happened a long time ago when she was practically a child, and she wondered why she had been so upset by her mother’s amusement. Because she had felt so unsure of herself, probably.

  Shelley enjoyed Hartley’s companionship. Once he arrived late in the morning with a picnic lunch and drove Shelley to the mountains to see the wild lilac covered with blossoms the color of blue smoke. They picnicked beside a stream. “So you can see that we really do have water in California,” Hartley explained. Shelley, who had always had to pack the lunch when she picnicked with a boy, was charmed. She did not, however, talk about her dates with Hartley to any of the girls at school except Jeannie. She could not help feeling guilty, with Philip working doggedly beside her in the biology laboratory and—she supposed—studying with equal doggedness at home on weekends. When Hartley asked her to go to the school carnival with him, Shelley accepted although she did not feel quite right about it, knowing that Philip could not go.

  It was on the Saturday of the carnival that Shelley received a letter from her mother in the same mail in which Mavis received a letter from her mother, Mrs. Stickney.

  Shelley’s letter concluded with a worrisome paragraph. “Jack came over this evening,” Mrs. Latham wrote. “I was so glad to see him. He is such a nice boy and I have missed him while you have been away. He wanted to know when you would be home. I told him Daddy and I were going to drive down to get you and that we planned to take in Yosemite and the redwoods on the way home but we expected to be back the end of June. He was pleased to hear this and said he wanted you to go to the mountains with him and his family over the Fourth of July.”

  Jack. Shelley read the paragraph again. Her mother did not say she had accepted the invitation for Shelley, but Shelley was sure she had. Naturally her mother would not want to see her sitting at home on a day when other girls would be away on picnics or trips to the beach or mountains. But Jack—oh, well, as Rosemary said, a boy in the hand was worth two in the bush or any old port in a storm. But Shelley was not entirely successful in persuading herself that this was true. She might have believed it at one time but not since knowing Hartley. However, if her mother had accepted for her, there was not much she could do about it but go to the mountains with Jack and his family. She knew what it would be like, though. A crowd of people would come up from the city and there would be whispered questions about Shelley and Jack. Jack’s mother would smile and whisper that Shelley and Jack were going steady. Everyone would smile back and there would be half-heard remarks about that was the way kids did things these days—now when I was in high school…Shelley would hate every minute of it.

  “Goodness!” exclaimed Mavis, looking up from her letter. “Mother will arrive this weekend. Honestly, I can’t understand why she absolutely refuses to send letters airmail.” There was considerable exasperation in her voice. “Shelley, I wonder if you would mind picking some fresh flowers for the dining room and for the coffee table while I make up the bed in the corner bedroom. Mother is apt to turn up at any hour of the day or night.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Shelley, and went about the pleasant task. She chose some wild California poppies that were blooming among the weeds at the back of the Michies’ property and arranged some of them in a brown mug that Mavis had made. The rest she set in a green pitcher of Mexican glass for the dining-room table. She was pleased with the effect of bo
th her arrangements. They were gay and casual, suited to the Michie household.

  Not long after Shelley had finished with the flowers, an old car pulled into the driveway with a crunch of tires on gravel.

  “Hello, Mother!” called Mavis from an upstairs window. “I’ll be right down.”

  Shelley joined the family at the side of the house, where a tall gray-haired woman was getting out of the car. It was obvious that she knitted. While Mrs. Stickney kissed her daughter and grandchildren, Shelley stared at her dress. It was knit round and round in random stripes of yarn of every imaginable color.

  “That’s some dress you are wearing,” remarked Tom, after he had hugged his mother-in-law.

  “I call it my coat of many colors,” replied Mrs. Stickney. “I told myself there must be something I could knit out of all those odds and ends of yarn, so I knit this. It’s the most practical thing in the world for traveling. Nothing shows on it and I just keep turning the skirt around and it never bags in the seat.”

  “That’s my girl,” said Tom, and kissed Mrs. Stickney on her cheek. “Luke, get your grandmother’s luggage out of the car.”

  “And this is Shelley,” said Mrs. Stickney, taking Shelley’s hand in hers.

  “How do you do?” said Shelley, as she took her eyes off the fascinating dress.

  While Luke pulled three suitcases out of the car, and a large knitting bag that Katie eyed with distrust, Mavis said, “Mother, aren’t you ever going to get a new car? That one is so old I worry about your driving it on the highway.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Stickney. “I understand that car and that car understands me.”

  “It’s a car, Mother,” said Mavis. “Not a horse.”

  “Anyway,” said Mrs. Stickney, “if I keep it long enough, some old car collector is bound to offer me a lot of money for it.” It was easy to see she was a woman with a mind of her own.