Debutante Hill

by Lois Duncan

  Lynn was afraid to meet her brother’s eyes, for fear the gratitude would be too obvious on her face. She waited tensely for Paul’s answer.

  It was a moment in coming. When he did speak, it was slowly.

  “I—I can’t, Ern. I’ve already promised to take Brenda Peterson.”

  “Hey, what’s the big idea?” Ernie said in surprise. “Lynn sat home all Christmas while you beaued around the Peterson girl. This is the big dance of the year, of any year, for that matter. How can you refuse to take her?”

  “Well, when you put it that way—” Paul turned to Lynn. “I want to take you, you know that. The thing is, I started taking Brenda to the Christmas parties and kind of got stuck in the role of escort. When she asked me if I’d take her to the Presentation Ball, I couldn’t get out of it very well. Besides, at the time you and I—”

  “I know,” Lynn said hastily.

  “So I said I would, and she could never in the world get another escort this late. She’s got her dress and shoes and everything, and they have been rehearsing the presentations for weeks. If Brenda doesn’t make her debut now, because she doesn’t have an escort, she’ll be the laughing stock of the school.”

  “And what about Lynn?” Ernie demanded, angry now.

  “Don’t you owe her anything? It’s just great to be the Good Samaritan, but you can carry the thing too far. You’re a good guy, Paul, and I know you’ve helped me out plenty of times, but Lynn’s my sister, and I think she’s getting the rough side of this deal.”

  Paul said, “I don’t know. I—I just don’t know. I want to do the right thing.”

  He looked so miserable and confused that Lynn felt a quick surge of sympathy. After all, this was Paul, Paul as she knew him best, warmhearted and eager to help everyone who seemed in need of him. It was the way he was and the way he would always be, and if she wanted Paul, she must take that too, because it was part of him. Perhaps even the part that had made her fall in love with him in the first place.

  So now she smiled and gave his good hand a quick pat.

  “That’s all right,” she said, as easily as she could. “Of course, you can’t back out now. I understand.”

  Ernie shot her a glance of complete amazement. “But I know you want to go to the Ball! You’re dying to—”

  “Please, Ern,” Lynn said softly. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but this is something between Paul and me—for us to decide.”

  Ernie shook his head in bewilderment. “I’ll never understand women.”

  He turned toward the door, and Paul rose to follow him. He gave Lynn a last, almost pleading look.

  “You do understand? I mean, you know it’s not that I don’t want to take you.”

  Lynn said, “Don’t worry. I understand. I really do.”

  And she did. That was the hard part of it. She could not be angry or resentful with Paul because she did understand. He had made a promise, and a promise meant a lot to Paul—more, perhaps, than it did to other people.

  And yet the anger and resentment were there, deep inside her. They needed only a breath to stir them into flame, and that breath came an hour later, when the doorbell rang again.

  Lynn had been playing checkers with Dodie. The sound of the bell startled her, and then she sprang to her feet with a thrill of joy. It’s Paul, she thought. He’s come back! He’s thought it over and changed his mind. That’s the only reason he would come back this evening!

  Which was why it was so much more of a shock to open the door and see Brenda Peterson.

  The two girls stood looking at each other a moment. Then Brenda said, “May I come in?”

  “Why, yes,” Lynn replied automatically. “Please do. I—I was just surprised to see you.”

  “I suppose you are.” Brenda stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her. “I won’t sit down. I can’t stay long enough for that. Mother’s outside, waiting for me in the car. I’ve come to apologize to you for the things I said about you at school.”

  Lynn opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again. There was nothing she could think of to say.

  “I really did think you must have some connection with the theft,” Brenda continued awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to spread a story that was untrue. But now that I think back on it, to be perfectly honest, I guess I did kind of jump on the situation and—and sort of push it. You were always so popular, Lynn, and I never was. You—well, I’ve heard people speak of you as Princess of the Hill. Maybe I was jealous. I was never accepted in anything unless my mother engineered it.”

  Lynn was flustered. She did not know what to say. The entire year long she had disliked this girl with all the passion that was in her. Because of Brenda, she had suffered through the unhappiest few months of her life. She had even lain awake nights, thinking of unpleasant things to say to her if the opportunity ever arose. But now, suddenly confronted with her, Lynn could think of nothing to say at all.

  Dodie, however, was never one to be speechless. She had followed Lynn into the hall and now stepped to her sister’s side.

  “You never had to be like that,” she said sharply. “You let your mother engineer things. You just drifted along and let her run things for you and never even tried to be a person yourself. No wonder people didn’t like you; there just didn’t seem to be anything there to like.”

  “Dodie!” Lynn was horrified. “How can you say something like that—to anybody!”

  Brenda’s pale little face grew a shade paler. But she accepted the statement without cringing. “I realize that now. This year, for the first time, I’ve had friends, people who liked me and wanted me with them.” The words rang familiarly in Lynn’s ears. She wondered where she had heard them before and then, suddenly, she heard Dirk’s voice saying the same thing. He had said, “If you’re not part of things, it can make you feel awfully good having somebody act like he wants you.”

  They were lonely, she thought. Lonely. Both of them—such different people—in such different circumstances—and both of them were lonely.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Brenda was still talking. “It was as if, for the first time, I really belonged. You can’t imagine how I felt when Mother first told me that Paul Kingsley, the most popular boy in town almost, had called to ask to take me to the debutante parties.”

  “Paul called you?” Before Lynn could stop her, Dodie had burst again into the conversation. “Oh, honestly, Brenda, you can’t make us believe that. We know for a fact that your mother was the one who called Paul.”

  “What?”

  “Dodie—” Lynn cried helplessly, “don’t—”

  But Dodie was not to be halted. “It was a pretty sneaky trick too! You knew he was the kind of boy who would help anybody in trouble, so you got your mother to phone him and say that you couldn’t get anybody else to take you to the dance. And all the while Paul was supposed to be going steady with my sister.”

  Brenda’s face was dead white. “That’s not true! I never told Mother to phone Paul! I thought—she told me—” Her chin trembled. “Then that’s why—I wondered—I couldn’t imagine why he would date me when nobody else ever had. I—I actually believed—it was because he liked me.”

  “He does like you!” Lynn cried, frightened at the sight of the girl’s stricken face. “Don’t listen to Dodie, Brenda—she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Paul does like you. He’s told me so himself.”

  But Brenda was not listening to her. She had turned toward the door and was fumbling with the knob. “I’m sorry,” she said again in a muffled little voice. “I guess I owe you two apologies, one because of the business of the wallet and one for Mother’s calling Paul. I hope you believe me, Lynn. I didn’t know about that. I thought—all along I thought—he asked me!”

  And then she was gone, running down the steps and across the lawn to the waiting car. She might have been crying, it was hard to tell. If she was, it was silent crying, because Lynn could hear her voice, small and steady acro
ss the night, as she joined her mother in the car.

  Mrs. Peterson asked, “Did you and Lynn straighten everything out between you?”

  And Brenda said, “Yes, everything’s straight now,” and got in and shut the door.

  “Well,” Dodie shifted uneasily from one foot to another, “I guess maybe I overdid it a little.”

  “I guess maybe you did.” Lynn regarded her sister coldly. “How could you, Dodie? How could you have said such cruel, horrible things?”

  “They were true,” Dodie defended herself. “You know they were. Mrs. Peterson did arrange for Paul to date Brenda. Your whole year has been ruined because of that Peterson girl. Why should you be so concerned about her precious feelings?”

  “I don’t know,” Lynn answered slowly, surprised herself. “Maybe because I was cruel to her too, you know. I didn’t think of it as cruelty at the time, but it was. For years I snubbed her and left her out of things and joked about her with the others behind her back, and I never thought how she might be feeling about it. I never stopped to think how lonely she might be.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dodie said in a small voice. “I guess I let my tongue get away from me. It seems to be a fault of mine.”

  She sounded so ashamed of herself that Lynn did not have the heart to scold her any further. “What’s done is done,” she said as lightly as she could. “I know you were angry on my account and just didn’t think. I don’t suppose too much harm was done. And—thank you for being so loyal, Dodie.”

  But when Lynn went back into the living room and tumbled down onto the sofa, Brenda’s face swam in front of her, small and colorless and big-eyed. She picked up a book and stared at the pages without really seeing them. She heard the soft little voice again—“I thought all along that he was asking me!”

  Perhaps she did, Lynn thought. Maybe her mother didn’t tell her. It is just the sort of thing Mrs. Peterson might do—arrange for an escort for her daughter and then not mention the fact. Mrs. Peterson was so used to running things that she ran Brenda automatically, without even thinking about it, always so certain that she was doing what was best.

  And was it best? Perhaps, in a way it was. Lynn thought back upon the girl Brenda had become in the past year. What was it Ernie had said about her? “Since the debutante parties started, she’s been like another girl, kind of sparkly and bright-looking, almost pretty.” And that from Ernie, who never had eyes for any girl except Nancy.

  Going with Paul could do that for a girl, Lynn knew, because she had often felt it herself. Being liked and accepted by a crowd, having a handsome, popular boy dating you—it could make you believe in yourself when nothing else could.

  It’s turned Brenda into a real person, Lynn thought now. All the kids seem to like her. Maybe if I hadn’t been so busy hating her, I might have liked her myself.

  She tried to focus her attention on the book, but her mind kept slipping away from it and turning back to Brenda.

  I do wish Dodie hadn’t said what she did tonight, Lynn thought regretfully. After all, Brenda came here to apologize. That must have been hard enough for her to do, without having all that other business thrown in her face. I hope it didn’t hurt her too much.

  She thought, I wish we could go back half an hour and start over again.... But, of course, that was impossible.

  16

  When she woke up the next morning, Lynn had the uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong. For a moment, she could not remember what it was. Then, suddenly, it came back to her—the scene with Brenda the night before—and now, in the bright morning light, it seemed doubly unnecessary and unpleasant.

  I could call her, Lynn thought, and apologize.

  But she knew there would not be much point in that. The damage had been done. Calling to hash things over would do nothing but make matters worse.

  Pushing the incident from her mind, Lynn dressed and went down to breakfast.

  Everyone else was already at the table when she came in.

  “—so that will be that,” Dodie was saying.

  “What will be what?” Lynn asked, sitting down and picking up her glass of orange juice.

  “Dodie says,” her father answered with an undisguised note of satisfaction in his voice, “that she and her friends aren’t planning to be debutantes next year.”

  “They’re not!” Lynn exclaimed. “But, Dodie, I thought you said you’d die if you couldn’t be a debutante.”

  “Maybe I did,” Dodie admitted placidly. “But a person can change her mind, can’t she? And a lot of things have happened this year.”

  “Like Ronnie Turner?” Ernie’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Looks like our baby sister is growing up, Lynn.”

  “Looks like,” Lynn agreed. But the surprise remained. “Is that the reason, Dodie? Because you don’t think Ronnie would be included at the parties?”

  “Oh, that’s part of it,” Dodie admitted, “but it’s not just Ronnie alone. It’s that a lot of nice kids would be left out because their families didn’t have the right backgrounds. Until I met Ronnie and his friends, I didn’t know those kids counted. But they do. Some of them are nicer than the kids from the Hill.”

  Lynn nodded, thinking of Anne and her friends.

  “But what about the rest of your crowd? Do they feel the same way?”

  “We’ve been talking about it,” Dodie answered. “Some of them agree with me and are going to stay out, just for the principle of the thing. Some of the others who have fathers in the Rotary with Daddy,” she gave her father a sideways glance, “have run into disapproval at home. I can’t imagine why!”

  “Well, I can!” Dr. Chambers said with a roar of delighted laughter. “I’ve been hounding those poor fellows all year about how undemocratic this debutante business is. I guess maybe I’ve got some results.”

  “Anyway,” Dodie continued, between mouthfuls of toast, “there are so many of the Hill crowd who don’t want to be debs for one reason or another that there aren’t enough left to have a decent party. So I guess that will be that.”

  Mrs. Chambers shook her head. “Poor Mrs. Peterson, having her pet project fold in its second year. She’ll be heartbroken.”

  “I doubt it,” Lynn said. “After all, her whole point was to bring Brenda into society, and she’s done that, so she’s accomplished her purpose.”

  At the mention of Brenda, guilt flared up within her again. But the harm has been done, she told herself determinedly. There’s no sense in worrying about it now.

  The day dragged by slowly. Paul phoned during the morning. He suggested they go out to dinner the following evening and then to a movie and maybe dancing afterward. Lynn knew he was trying to make up to her for taking Brenda to the Ball.

  She agreed to his plans, trying to sound enthusiastic and somehow failing.

  “Hey,” Paul said in a worried voice, “you’re not mad, are you? I mean, you said it was all right for me to take Brenda tonight.”

  “I know I did,” Lynn told him. “No, of course I’m not mad. Have a good time, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You know, you don’t have to sit home,” Paul continued. “You don’t need an escort for the Ball, if you’re not a debutante. You could go with your folks. That way, you’d get to see the girls make their debuts and be in on all the excitement.”

  Lynn sighed. “You know the way Daddy feels about the debutantes. He’d never go to the Ball, even if I begged him to. The plans for tomorrow night sound grand, though. We’ll have a lot of fun.”

  “Sure we will,” Paul said heartily. “Well, I’ll see you then.”

  “See you then,” Lynn echoed. But tomorrow seemed forever away as she replaced the phone and wandered aimlessly back, to her room.

  She considered going over to Nancy’s, but she knew her friend would be busy getting ready for her debut. Even Ernie had been forbidden at Nancy’s this morning and had gone out to play tennis with some other boys. Lynn sighed and decided to straighten her dresser drawers,
a chore she had been putting off for weeks. At least it would fill the time.

  She finished the drawers by noon and started on her closet. When that was finished, she sat down and wrote two letters she had owed for ages and sewed some buttons on a blouse and manicured her nails.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Dirk stopped by. He did not even come in, just stood on the porch and talked a moment, but there was an ease about him she had not seen before. For once, he did not seem to be fighting her or himself or anyone. All the complex emotions that had formerly boiled within him—resentment and pride and anger—seemed to have given way to a kind of quiet.

  He did not say much. He just held out his hand and said, “Thanks for everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lynn replied softly. She took the hand he offered her and returned the pressure of his fingers.

  “Paul told you how it all worked out, didn’t he?”

  “He stopped by last night,” Lynn said. “He told me all about the fight and the jewelry you found. And he said Brad admitted taking Brenda’s wallet.”

  “He admitted taking the jewelry, too,” Dirk said. “I’ve been down at the police station all morning. They wanted to know all about Brad. There wasn’t much I could tell them, though, except that he was a guy who wasn’t as lucky as I was. He didn’t have a family and friends to straighten him out when he got headed in the wrong direction.” He did not release her hand. He stood holding it a moment, as though trying to think how to put something into words. Finally he said, “Paul Kingsley’s a pretty swell fellow. I see why you fell for him. I didn’t know him before, but I see it now—why it would be a guy like that over me.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t—” Lynn started to withdraw her hand, but Dirk tightened his grip.

  “No, wait. Let me finish. I just want you to know I’m not giving up. I’m going to work like the dickens to be the kind of a guy a girl like you would care for. I mean, heck, I’ve got expensive tastes. I can’t settle for an ordinary girl; I want a princess! I guess I’d better buckle down and earn one.”