The Luckiest Girl Read online

  “We use towels for everything—dusting, mopping up whatever gets spilled, wiping the dog’s muddy feet,” said Tom.

  The moon, rising above the eucalyptus trees, shone even brighter. I wonder where the moon is in the sky at home, Shelley wondered as she picked up another towel and clothespin; but no matter where it was, she was sure that no one else was hanging out a washing by its light. It seemed too bad when she thought about it. It was such a lovely way to hang out a washing. Shelley pulled the last towel out of the basket, and as she pinned it to the line she decided that if it were not for Katie, she would like living here. So far she enjoyed the customs of the natives. Tom was friendly, Mavis comfortable, Luke shy and quiet, but Katie…Shelley could not bring herself to like Katie wholeheartedly. And she not only had nine months of Katie’s company ahead of her, but she was supposed to be a good experience for her, which probably meant to be a good example.

  From inside the house came the frisking notes of Pop Goes the Weasel.

  “Katie!” shouted Tom. Pop Goes the Weasel turned into the rhapsody.

  Later that evening after she had unpacked her trunk and taken her turn at the towel-filled bathroom, Shelley was sitting on her bed in her pajamas, putting her hair up in pin curls. The edge of the India print spread was not even hemmed, she noticed. She was thinking that at home everything was hemmed when she heard a knock at her door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Katie entered. She was wearing a full red-and-white printed skirt and a white blouse with little buttons like strawberries down the front. In her hand she carried a half-eaten banana. She twirled around so that the skirt stood out. “See my dress for the first day of school!” she said, and her face shone with pleasure. “Mommy bought it for me and I wasn’t even hounding her.” She sank down on the bed beside Shelley and took a big bite of banana. “You know something?” she said, sounding wistful even though her mouth was full. “I wish my hair looked nice like yours.”

  “Why, thank you,” answered Shelley, pleased by this compliment.

  “Do you have a permanent?” asked Katie.

  “No, my hair is curly if I coax it,” replied Shelley. “It may take a lot of coaxing here, because the air is so dry.”

  “Do you have lots of boyfriends at home?” asked Katie bluntly.

  “Not lots.” Katie’s admiration made her feel attractive and popular, a pleasant feeling for any girl to experience.

  “I wish Mommy would let me have a permanent,” said Katie wistfully, running her hand through her straight dark hair. “Pamela—she’s my best friend—has permanents all the time. If I ever have a daughter my age I’ll let her have all the permanents she wants.”

  That sounds familiar, thought Shelley with a twinge of amusement. She wondered if Katie kept a list.

  “Katie!” Tom’s voice rang out. “Bedtime!”

  “Yes, Daddy,” answered Katie in her exhausted voice. She stuffed the rest of the banana into her mouth. “Night, Shelley,” she said, her voice muffled. “And I really am sorry about the olive. I just couldn’t resist it.”

  “Oh, well, I guess everyone has to be a greenhorn or tenderfoot or something sometime,” answered Shelley, this time forgiving Katie. When Katie had gone, she turned off the light and slipped into bed. She lay enjoying the fragrance of the lemon blossoms below her window and listening to the strange night sounds—the rustle of eucalyptus leaves, the dry rattle of palm fronds, the sound of tires on the road, the friendly creaks of an old house settling for the night, and in the distance the blat-blat of a diesel train. Where were the lonesome whistles, the a-hooey, a-hooey of song writers, Shelley wondered. Nobody wrote songs about the blat-blat of a diesel train, but then it wasn’t a lonely sound.

  Shelley smiled in the darkness, her uneasiness about living with a strange family now completely banished. The only thing wrong with Katie was her age. She was thirteen years old. Now that Shelley understood this, she knew that everything was going to be all right after all. She was going to like living in a house with a cat in a hamper and mice in the kitchen and a family that hung out the washing by the light of the moon.

  But tomorrow was the first day of school….

  Chapter 3

  The morning heat made Shelley languid, and feeling as if she were moving in slow motion, she walked down the creaking stairs to join the family for breakfast.

  “But Mommy, Pamela’s mother lets her stay up to watch the Hit Parade,” Katie was saying. “I don’t see why I can’t.”

  “Good morning, Shelley!” Tom’s voice would have carried across a basketball court. “You’re just in time to help bring in the washing.”

  Shelley smiled. At home washing was hung out in the morning, not brought in.

  “Go on, Katie, help Luke and Shelley,” said Mavis, who was standing over a skillet of bacon while Tom supervised the toast he was making under the broiler.

  “Well, I don’t care,” said Katie as the three went out into the backyard. “I don’t see why I never get to do the things Pamela and the other girls get to do.”

  “Pamela is a creep,” said Luke concisely.

  “She is not!” retorted Katie. “She’s smooth.” Katie unpinned a sheet and stuffed it into the laundry basket. “Pamela lives in a ranch house with two bathrooms.”

  “She’s still a creep,” said Luke.

  Shelley enjoyed the feel of the rough clean towels that shone so dazzlingly in the morning sun. As she folded them, she looked around the yard by daylight. The house, she now discovered, was set in the middle of a large piece of property—how large she could not guess. Perhaps it was an acre. At least it was the size of eight or ten city lots at home. The yard was a pleasant tangle of trees, shrubs, and vines, most of them strange to Shelley. A double garage with a room above it—Mavis’s studio, Shelley learned later, where she had her potter’s wheel—stood at the back of the property, and in the garage Shelley could see Luke’s motorcycle. Both tires were flat, one fender was missing, and it looked so battered she wondered how he ever expected to get it to run.

  At the side of the house under the eucalyptus trees that bordered the driveway was a child’s slide. In front of the slide, near the end of a single rope suspended from the top of one of the trees, dangled a ring, the kind children swung on in parks. Katie dropped a sheet into the clothes basket and walked over to the rope. She took the end of it in her hand, climbed the slide, grasped the ring, and swung out over the road with her hair and skirt flying.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be helping!” yelled Luke.

  “I have to wait till it stops, don’t I?” answered Katie. Gradually the rope stopped swinging and Katie dropped to the ground.

  “Breakfast!” called Tom.

  After breakfast Tom was the first member of the family to leave for school with his lunch in a paper bag. Then Luke, with his paper bag, left earlier than was really necessary, and Shelley suspected he did not want to be seen walking to school with her. It was funny how much younger a fifteen-year-old boy could be than a sixteen-year-old girl. Then Pamela appeared at the kitchen door and Shelley could see what Katie meant about Pamela’s being smooth. She was small and trim. She made Katie, in her full red-and-white skirt, look brown and sturdy but awkward in a nice way, like a teddy bear in a dirndl. The two younger girls set off in the direction of the junior high school.

  It was Shelley’s turn to go forth with her brown paper bag in hand.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” advised Mavis with a smile. “I’m sure you’ll make a lot of friends.”

  Shelley did not like her feelings to show so plainly to Mavis. “I’m not worried,” she answered lightly and untruthfully.

  As Shelley walked to school she thought nervously of new girls who had transferred to her high school at home—the homesick girl from the South whose honey-thick accent had so amused the class the first day of school that the girl had looked as if she were about to cry. And a girl who was so determined to establish herself with the right
crowd that she made a nuisance of herself with those who were popular, snubbed those who were not popular, and succeeded only in making herself lonely and unhappy. And that new girl who was so eager to be noticed that she took off her shoes the minute school was out and walked barefooted to the bus, explaining that she simply hated wearing shoes. Everyone had laughed good-naturedly at this, and the crisp autumn days soon put an end to her pose.

  Naturally I’m not going to do any of those silly things, Shelley told herself as she walked along the road through the orange groves. She would be extracautious about everything she said until she had made some friends. And she would make friends. Of course she would. Everyone had friends.

  But Shelley felt less brave as she approached San Sebastian Union High School, a tan stucco building with a missionlike tower in the center and a row of scraggly palm trees across the front. The lawn was colorful with the gay cotton dress of the girls, so different from the girls at home, who would be wearing their newest sweaters and skirts. Shelley was aware of the curious stares of the other students as she walked up the front steps of the school. Everyone was so tanned that Shelley felt pale—it had been a wet summer at home. There was something else different, too. The students seemed older, and then Shelley remembered that there were no freshmen here. The ninth grade attended junior high school. Among the tan faces there was not a single face that Shelley had ever seen before and yet somewhere among them were her companions for the next nine months. She made her way through the crowds of students busy renewing acquaintances after their summer vacation, to the office, where she found—thank goodness!—that her records had arrived from her school at home and where she was assigned to a registration room.

  It was on her way to this room that Shelley first saw the boy. He was standing in the hall talking with a group of boys, and Shelley knew at once that this was the boy she wanted to meet. She did not know why, but there was something about him that she liked at once. He was tall, with fair hair bleached by the sun, and he was deeply tanned except for a red patch on his nose where the tan had peeled off. It was not just his looks that attracted Shelley. It was something else about him. Perhaps it was the way he stood, which seemed almost graceful, or perhaps it was a sort of dignity about him. Shelley did not know. She only knew that here was a boy she wanted to meet and at the moment there was nothing she could do about it. A girl could not go up to a boy in the hall, tap him on the arm, and say, “Excuse me. I want to meet you.”

  Reluctantly Shelley walked away from the boy, located her registration room, and slid into the first vacant seat she saw. Chattering stopped for a moment as students glanced at the new girl. She stared at her hands, clasped on the desk in front of her. She wanted to begin to make friends but she did not know how to start.

  Someone tapped Shelley on the shoulder and she found herself looking at a dark-haired boy with lively brown eyes who was sitting across the aisle.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said as if he were cautioning her. “I have it—your last name begins with L.”

  “Why, yes,” she admitted. “But how did you know?”

  “I’m psychic,” he said modestly.

  “Don’t let him kid you,” said someone behind Shelley. “We are grouped alphabetically. This room is L’s, M’s, N’s, and a couple of stray O’s. He’s just lucky he chose the right letter.”

  “She didn’t take my hint,” observed the brown-eyed boy.

  “What hint?” asked Shelley.

  “All right, I’ll say it right out loud,” answered the boy. “What’s your name?”

  Shelley could not help laughing at having missed something so obvious. “Shelley Latham,” she replied. “I’m spending the winter with the Michies.”

  “You mean Slats Michie, the basketball coach?” asked the boy.

  “Why, yes,” answered Shelley, “only I didn’t know he was called Slats.”

  Everyone was interested. “He’s a swell guy,” said a boy.

  “You’re sure lucky,” remarked a tall girl, “living in the same house with the basketball coach.”

  Why, it’s going to be easy, thought Shelley. All she had to do was say she was spending the winter with the coach’s family and everyone was interested. She wondered why she had not thought of this before.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the brown-eyed boy.

  “Hartley Lathrop,” he answered as a teacher entered the room.

  The teacher read the names on the roll and asked the students to take seats in alphabetical order. Shelley found herself sitting in front of Hartley.

  “Latham, Lathrop,” he whispered. “I’ll always sit behind you.”

  Unconsciously Shelley put her hand to the back of her hair to make sure it was in order.

  “Your hair looks fine,” he whispered, making Shelley feel extremely foolish.

  It seemed to Shelley that she spent the rest of the day hunting for her classrooms and trying to make a few faces in this building full of strangers seem familiar. Students were friendly and interested in the new girl but Shelley could not feel that she belonged. Even the sight of Hartley would have helped, but he was not in any of her classes. Latin, English, physical education, lunch period. While Shelley ate her sandwiches on the lawn, she was included in the conversation of a group of girls. She tried to remember if she had seen any of them during the morning but she was not sure. When their conversation turned to their summer vacations, Shelley felt like an outsider, a paleface among the natives.

  After lunch period came that part of the day set aside for activities. The morning bulletin had said that class meetings would be held at this time, so Shelley made her way alone to the study hall on the second floor, where her class, the Low Elevens, was meeting. Even being a member of the Low Elevens seemed odd. At home she would have been called a Fifth-termer. Shelley slipped into a seat near the door. At home she would have known everyone in her class and would not have this left-out feeling. At home Jack would probably be sitting beside her. What was she thinking about anyway? She didn’t want Jack to sit beside her. She wanted to be in San Sebastian, didn’t she? All right then. All she needed was a little time.

  And then Shelley saw the face that she knew she would not forget. It was the face of the boy she had seen in the hall that morning. Now he was leaning against the windowsill, talking to two other boys. She wondered if the three of them might be on the basketball team, because they were all tall and athletic looking. A girl spoke to him and the boy flashed her a shy, lopsided grin that made Shelley skip a breath, even though the grin was not meant for her.

  “Will the meeting please come to order?” It was Hartley Lathrop who spoke from the front of the room.

  Shelley forced herself not to stare at the tall boy by the window.

  “We will dispense with the reading of the minutes,” announced Hartley, “because this is our first meeting and we don’t have any.” This brought loud applause from the boys in the class.

  “Our first problem is to raise some money for our class fund,” Hartley went on, “and since we have always done it by selling something on the front lawn at noon and since we have permission from the office to sell something a week from Monday, does anyone have any suggestions as to what we should sell?”

  “I nominate Sno-cones,” someone called out.

  “No! No!” protested several voices all at once. “Everybody sells Sno-cones.”

  “Order!” shouted Hartley. “Sno-cones have been nominated and if everyone will please be quiet we will have some more nominations and then take a vote.”

  “Dixie cups!” someone called from the back of the room.

  Shelley glanced at the boy by the window. She could not take much interest in the class meeting became she felt like an observer instead of a participant. At home all the classes would have raised money at the annual Spring Festival in the park next to the school. First there would be the crowning of the queen. Every year Shelley’s mother remarked, “Shelley, wouldn’t it be fun if you were
chosen queen of the Spring Festival when you are a senior? You are just as pretty as any of the girls.” And every year her mother was puzzled when Shelley answered, “It takes more than being pretty and anyway, I don’t want to be Festival queen.” After the queen was crowned, the girls’ gym classes would wind the maypole. It would be a lovely spring day—unless it rained and the whole thing was moved into the gymnasium. Each class and club would have a booth and there would be nail-driving booths and candied-apple booths and phonograph-record-breaking booths, and all the kids from the elementary school would come running when their school was out and feel grown-up to be mingling with high school students. Shelley remembered one time when she was working in a booth….

  Suddenly, almost without thinking, Shelley stood up to make a nomination.

  Hartley recognized her and grinned. “Miss Shelley Latham wishes to speak.”

  Everyone—even the boy by the window—knew her name now. Shelley moistened her lips and spoke. “I nominate doughnut holes.”

  For a fraction of a second the room was silent and Shelley had a panicky feeling that she had made some terrible mistake. Then the room was filled with a shout of laughter. Shelley felt her face turn crimson as she stood there, too paralyzed by surprise to sit down. They were laughing at her. These horrible Low Elevens, as they called themselves, were laughing at her. The whole horrible roomful. She hated them! Every single one of them. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the boy by the window looking at her and laughing with the rest of the class. The boy she wanted to meet.

  “Order! Order!” shouted Hartley, and when the room finally quieted down, he said, “Thanks for the joke, Shelley. Any more nominations?”

  “But I’m not being funny,” Shelley cried out in dismay. “I meant it.”

  The president of the Low Elevens looked puzzled. “How can we sell something that doesn’t exist?” he asked.

  “But they do exist,” protested Shelley, and all at once the whole situation was clear to her. The students of San Sebastian High did not know about doughnut holes. Maybe the town was too small to have a doughnut shop. Of course. Why, they must have thought she was talking like a character out of Alice in Wonderland.