by Mary Bard
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 1955 Mary Bard
All rights reserved.
This text has been slightly edited from the original with permission of the copyright holder.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Two Lions, New York
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Two Lions are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
“Fireflies,” which appears on page 185, is copyright © 1924 by Perry Mason Company.
ISBN-13: 9781477827161 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1477827161 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781477821138 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1477821139 (paperback)
Book design by Virginia Pope
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914205
Contents
Introduction by Nancy Pearl
Chapter One The Pink House
Chapter Two A French Friend
Chapter Three Saturday
Chapter Four Co Co Attends the School
Chapter Five A New Code
Chapter Six The Boys Have a Code Also
Chapter Seven The French and American Picnic
Chapter Eight May Day
Chapter Nine The Lookout
Chapter Ten A Rainy Date
Chapter Eleven A Moonlight Adventure
Chapter Twelve Suzie Has a Good Idea
Chapter Thirteen Boy Crazy
Chapter Fourteen Mrs. Medlin Comes to the Rescue
Chapter Fifteen Surprises
About the Author
Introduction by Nancy Pearl
Of all the hundreds of books that I read when I was in the fifth and sixth grades—and reading is pretty much all that I ever did back then (not so different from now, truth be told)—the book that has stayed with me in the most vivid detail is Mary Bard’s Best Friends. I suspect that the reason for this is that at the time I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to live in the world inhabited by the characters of Bard’s story.
On the surface, the circumstances of Suzie Green’s life seemed entirely different from my own. I lived in a two-family home in a lower-middle-class neighborhood on Detroit’s near northwest side (my family lived upstairs while my aunt and uncle and their two sons lived downstairs), while Suzie’s house was in a leafy section of Seattle among other large one-family homes. I lived with my father, mother, and younger sister; as I remember it, none of us were particularly happy. Suzie lived with her young and attractive widowed mother, who teaches at Suzie’s school, along with her healthy and young-at-heart grandparents, who adore their granddaughter and are very involved in her life. Grandmother baked wonderful pies and tasty cookies and made delicious fried chicken for special dinners. Best of all, when Suzie turned seven, Grandfather built an amazing tree house for her; on every succeeding birthday he added new wonders to Suzie’s lookout.
How I envied Suzie that tree house! There was nothing at that time that I desired more. There was an apricot tree in my backyard, a space that was bordered on one side by an alley, where we weren’t allowed to play, and on another, by a lot where five or six huge trucks were seemingly permanently parked. I regularly climbed that apricot tree and would curl up in the branches and read until I could no longer ignore how painfully uncomfortable sitting there was.
But for all the differences in our outer circumstances, inwardly we seemed not so dissimilar. I shared Suzie’s frustration at school, her growing interest in boys, and her conflicted feelings over being a tomboy. And, most of all, we both wanted, with all our hearts, a true best friend.
What kept me reading and rereading Best Friends was my unspoken wish to leave my unexciting, bleak, and unsatisfactory (or so it seemed to my ten-year-old self) behind, and reappear in Suzie’s world—to be Suzie and live her life.
Even if I knew that it wasn’t really possible to do that, to become Suzie, at least for the time that I was reading the book I could achieve what I wanted. My childhood response to Bard’s novel describes what I’ve long believed about books for young people: a child needs to be able simultaneously to see him or herself and lose her or himself in the pages of a book.
Perhaps it makes sense to think of books for children and teens on a continuum that stretches from books that allow readers to find themselves, to those that make it easy for readers to lose themselves in. In recent years, non-genre literature for children and teens has moved steadily toward hyper-realism, depicting children and teens in all sorts of difficult situations. That’s not a bad thing at all; there are real children in the real world living in all kinds of terrible, painful-to-contemplate situations. There are children who live with abusive parents, or who are forced to move from one inadequate foster home to another. There are children whose father or mother is away serving in a war somewhere across the world, and then comes home a changed person. Or dies in some foreign country. There are, of course, many children who are living in poverty, or who are immigrants, legal or illegal, their families looking for a better life across the border. There are children who are confused about their sexuality. There are children with a parent who’s incarcerated.
All young readers deserve to find, need to find, books that reflect their particular situations. That’s the “find themselves” part of the continuum. At the other edge of the continuum are those books that many young readers can most easily and deeply lose themselves in. When we think of those sorts of books, of the phenomena of “losing oneself” in a book, we’re usually referring to fantasy novels and the invented worlds of elves, wizards, swords, dragons, and sorcery: the whole good vs. evil dynamic. There are many, many young readers who will tell you that they felt they, too, were rescued by the Ents when they, along with Merry and Pippin, were lost in Mirkwood, or that they’d spent time in Narnia, or could describe down to the minutest detail the world of Hogwarts and what it was like to live there.
But the books that do both, books in which readers can identify with the characters and at the same time find themselves drawn into a life significantly different from their own, tend to be the most memorable reading experiences. I believe children need to read books that offer different ways people can behave, describe different choices people can make, and demonstrate what ordinary happiness might look like. Family stories like Best Friends or Carol Ryrie Brink’s Family Grandstand and Family Sabbatical give young readers an escape from as well as a pathway to “real” life. When, at age ten, I read Best Friends, I think that I, unconsciously, laid out a plan for myself about the kind of life I wanted to live and the type of parent I wanted to be. On the surface, Mary Bard’s Best Friends might not seem to be particularly profound, but reading it certainly gave me a direction in my life that I hadn’t had before. One simple example is a game that Suzie and her friends play at her birthday party. It’s a game I never played as a child, and I’ve never seen it described in any other book. But when I discovered it in the pages of Best Friends, I never forgot it. My children have happy memories of playing it at their birthday parties (we called it “Spiderweb”). And just a few years ago, we played it at one of my granddaughter’s parties as well.
Such is the power of reading.
Chapter One
The Pink House
One blowy March afternoon Suzie Green slammed o
ut the back door, stamped down the steps, and ran through the orchard muttering, “How would Grandmother like it if there wasn’t anybody her age in the whole darned neighborhood. I don’t care what she says—I just hate Millicent! I’m never going to speak to her again as long as I live!”
Suzie’s cheeks were bright pink, her eyes were swimming with tears, and her words were like short, angry explosions. “Honestly! With all the schools in Seattle, Millicent would have to choose ours to ruin! It’s bad enough to be the only person in our room who hasn’t any best friend. Oh, what’s the use? I could just scream!”
She vaulted the hedge at the foot of the orchard and ran blindly toward the big madroña tree which held her Lookout. Meanwhile Jet, Grandfather’s black Labrador hunting dog, galloped along beside her whining and trying to thrust his nose into her hand. She jerked away from him. “Oh, stop it, Jet. Nobody understands! Not one single soul!” She grabbed the ladder and began to climb, stamping her feet on each rung. “There’s one sure thing—Millicent and her old Select Seven will never—ever—put—one—toe—on—my—Lookout!” Jet, groaning and protesting, followed her up the ladder.
When she reached the platform, she sat down cross-legged and curled herself against Jet’s warm velvety side. She brushed the tears away with the back of her hand, reached in the pocket of her jeans, took out an apple and crunched a big juicy bite. “Count my blessings! Stop feeling sorry for myself! I’d just like to know how Grandmother would feel if she had to sit behind Millicent and hear her whisper, ‘Suzie’s teacher’s pe-et. Suzie’s teacher’s pe-et.’ Honestly! It makes me so darned mad!”
Suzie chewed her apple and continued to mutter about how much she hated everything and everybody. In spite of herself she began to watch the great fir trees in the garden below her lean toward one another and sigh in the warm spring wind. “Even the trees—always whispering,” she grumbled. Wisps of cloud raced across the bright blue sky and long gray wind rifts streaked the surface of the lake. It was Suzie’s favorite kind of day—blustery one moment and shining and still the next. She watched the patterns in the clouds for a while, and finally heaved a long shuddery sigh. “Oh well, I’m still thankful for the Lookout.”
Suzie’s Lookout was certainly something to be thankful for. It was her own secret hideaway where she spent every afternoon after school and where she kept her favorite things. Grandfather had built the original platform for her as a surprise for her seventh birthday. On each birthday after that, he had added more equipment, until now it was almost as neat and convenient as the wheelhouse of a ship. There were the canvas hood, which she could pull over the top when it rained, and the navy hammock. When she was lazily swinging back and forth she could look clear across Lake Washington to the snow-tipped Cascade Mountains and pretend she was a sea gull or an airplane stewardess.
There were waterproofed fish boxes around the edge of the platform which made cupboards and bookcases where she kept her letters, stories, poems, paints, and drawing tablets, her agate collection and her shell collection as well as her joke books, comics, and movie magazines. The cupboards could all be locked with one key. Her mother had given her a silver chain so she could wear the key around her neck and never lose it.
But the thing Suzie liked best of all about her Lookout was that she could look down on the Pink House and see every corner of its large hedged garden. In fact, the Pink House was the blessing that Suzie always counted next, after the Lookout. Ever since she could remember, it had stood under the tall whispery trees, with shutters closed and doors locked, like an exciting Christmas present, ready and almost begging to be opened.
Before she had the Lookout she had spent every afternoon trying to catch the goldfish in the pool. She would run up and down the paths, and peek through the closed shutters, trying to find out what the inside of the Pink House looked like. Lately she had spent all her time pretending that movie stars lived in there and she was their very best friend. There were a father and a mother and a little girl, who was exactly Suzie’s age, now eleven going on twelve. Sometimes she pretended they were so busy making movies that they couldn’t come back to the Pink House, but they always invited her down to Hollywood to visit them. Sometimes she pretended that they gave enormous parties, and she spent hours and hours drawing beautiful formals with slippers to match for all the movie stars to wear.
Gusts of wind played with Suzie’s hair and blew cool little breaths against her flushed cheeks. “I’m even getting sick and tired of pretending about the people in the Pink House. I wish somebody real would . . .”
Jet moved restlessly and growled.
“What’s the matter with you?” Suzie absent-mindedly rubbed Jet’s ear. He growled again, and she stood up and looked down at the Pink House. A man was folding back the outside shutters, and from inside the house, someone was pulling up the blinds and opening the windows. “Heavens to Betsy! They must be spring cleaning. No—oh my gosh!” Suzie couldn’t believe her eyes. A big yellow moving van was backing slowly down the driveway toward a convertible and two smaller trucks. Suzie hastily climbed out onto the long limb of the madroña tree. “Somebody must be moving in!”
Suzie’s heart pounded with excitement as she watched a tall dark man come around the house and stand in the patio below her, directing two workmen. “I think we’d better start with the pool and then repair the tennis court. It’ll probably need resurfacing. We’ll be using the pool for swimming this year, and I want to be sure there are no rough places on the bottom.”
Suzie held Jet’s collar so he wouldn’t bark and whispered, “Gosh! He’s going to turn it into a regular Hollywood swimming pool!”
The pool had always been Suzie’s favorite place to play. It was large and irregular, almost like a tiny lake. It was shaped like a figure eight and had natural rock edges, and was lined with blue tiles. At the small end where it was deep, there was a little stone Japanese bridge overhung by a big weeping willow. She had waded in the shallow end, but she hadn’t explored the deep end under the bridge because there were tubs of wavy green water plants that floated out and curled around her legs and made her shudder.
Jet began to growl again. Suzie said, “Hush! I want to hear what they’re saying.” She wound her legs around the branch and listened breathlessly to all sorts of exciting plans for pruning the trees, cutting back the shrubs, planting the flower beds, and making the garden happy and bright.
Suzie hugged herself and wriggled ecstatically. Suddenly “The Afternoon of a Faun” poured from a record player inside the house. The music seemed to run along her arms and all down her back the way it did at the Children’s Symphony.
The tall dark man walked quickly across the patio and opened the front door. “Clothilde? Co Co? May I speak to you, please?” The music stopped, and a girl just about Suzie’s size came out the front door. “Oui, Papa. You wish to speak with me?”
Suzie kicked her feet and a book fell off the cupboard, bounced through the thick branches, and landed on the ground.
The little girl turned and looked toward the place where Suzie was lying. “What is that? Papa, do the Americans then live in the trees?”
The man smiled down at her. “Of course not, Co Co. What makes you think they do?”
Co Co pointed toward the Lookout. “There, Papa—I don’t see double. The book there—it fell from the tree.”
Her father laughed and put his arm around her. “Co Co, you are imagining again.”
Co Co frowned. “No, Papa. There is something in the tree. Tomorrow, after lunch, I will climb up and see what is there.”
Then Suzie almost said, “Heavens to Betsy,” right out loud, for they began to speak in a foreign language. They spoke so rapidly that it sounded sputtery, like little Chinese firecrackers.
Suzie watched every move they made as they walked back and forth in the patio below her, and listened as hard as she could, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying. Suddenly Co Co stopped right below her. She put her hands on he
r hips and faced her father. “Oui, Papa, you say ‘un moment, un moment’ but you do not go. Mademoiselle tells me she wishes to go back to the hotel immediately. She is in a bad humor. Could you come quick please, or she will scold me.”
Co Co’s father laughed and leaned over and kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Oui, chèrie. Yes, I’ll come quickly. I, too, fear Mademoiselle’s scolding.”
Co Co chuckled, a delightful, friendly sound, and Suzie almost laughed with her. She looked and sounded like the most interesting little girl Suzie had ever seen. Her black hair hung straight to her shoulders, and her bangs were cut to a point in the middle of her forehead. She wore her dark-blue beret perched flat on the top of her head, her coat was straight with a little white collar, and she wore white gloves, white socks, and black patent leather slippers with low heels. When she spoke English her words were slow and careful, like a grown person reading aloud.
Co Co’s father spoke in English as he told all the things he was planning to do in the garden. Co Co nodded her head and said, “Oui, oui—yes, that will be good,” and reminded him again and again that Mademoiselle would scold if they did not hurry. Finally they linked arms and went in the house, and the door of the Pink House closed behind them.
“Boy, this is really neat!” As Suzie listened to the hum of vacuum cleaners, the swish of windows being thrown open, and the shouts of the moving men as they carried in huge crates, she was trying to think what their strange language reminded her of. Suddenly she remembered the French songs on the radio. “That’s it. Her father called her ‘chèrie’—they must be French. Oh boy! This is lots better than anything I ever pretended.”
Jet growled again, and Suzie watched Co Co and her father and a tall thin lady, dressed all in black, come out the front door and walk around the back of the house. The tall thin lady was also speaking French, but she was shaking her head and sounded as if she might be giving Co Co and her father the promised scolding. Suzie giggled sympathetically as she watched Co Co nodding obediently and saying, “Oui, Mademoiselle,” over and over again. Then they all got in the convertible and drove off down the driveway.
