Fifteen

by Beverly Cleary

  Jane realized there was another reason for wanting to sit with Sandra Friday afternoons—she might keep some other babysitter from meeting the boy.

  “Well, I guess I’ll phone Julie,” Jane remarked casually.

  “Don’t talk all night,” said Mr. Purdy.

  Jane kicked off her loafers and dialed Julie’s number. “Hi, it’s me,” she said when Julie answered. Jane could picture her friend at the other end of the line with her loafers kicked off, too, and her freckled face smiling expectantly. “Look, Julie, if Mrs. Norton wants somebody to sit with Sandra again next Friday, I’ve got dibs.”

  “Jane!” shrieked Julie into the telephone. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I don’t think so,” answered Jane. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “What happened?” Julie asked. “Has Sandra reformed or something?”

  “Lots of things happened.” Jane pulled her knees up under her chin and prepared to make certain no one else would sit with Sandra. “She shut up a lot of flies in snapdragons and let Cuthbert out when he had just been washed and she dumped an ashtray on the carpet and she threatened to pour ink all over the living-room floor and—”

  “That’s enough,” cried Julie. “You can have her any time Mrs. Norton wants a sitter, but I still think you’re crazy. Or did Mrs. Norton pay double or something?”

  “No, she paid the usual,” answered Jane. “And for once she had the right change.”

  There was a moment of silence at Julie’s end of the line. “Then there must be a boy in it someplace,” announced Julie. “There can’t be any other reason.”

  “At Sandra’s? How could there be?” Jane made her voice sound innocent.

  “There must be,” insisted Julie. “There can’t be any other reason why, of your own free will, you would offer to sit with Sandra.”

  “Have you ever seen a boy there?” asked Jane.

  “Jane!” Mr. Purdy’s voice was warning her that she had talked long enough.

  That was the trouble with this house. A girl couldn’t even carry on a telephone conversation with any privacy. “Well, I have to say good-bye now,” Jane said hastily. “Pop is beginning to bellow.”

  “Yes, I know how it is.” Julie’s voice was sympathetic. Then she added insistently, “It must be a boy; but if he’s worth an afternoon of Sandra, I wish you luck.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.” Jane was glad to hang up. She was willing to share her secret with her best friend, but she did not want to discuss the new boy in front of her mother and father, who would be sure to ask a lot of questions about him that she could not answer. And, on second thought, she did not really want to discuss him with Julie. Not yet. Not until she had a date with him. Jane sat staring at the telephone, deep in her thoughts of the strange boy, until she heard her mother speak to her father.

  “I’m so glad Jane is interested in babysitting.” Mrs. Purdy spoke softly, apparently unaware that her daughter was listening.

  If Mom only knew, thought Jane, with a twinge of guilt.

  “So many girls her age are boy crazy,” Mrs. Purdy continued. “Like Marcy Stokes. I don’t know what has come over that girl in the past year. She used to be such a good student and now all she thinks about is boys and clothes.”

  Well, I know what has come over Marcy, Jane thought. She no longer wears bands on her teeth and she has a figure and a definite personality. She’s tall and slim, casual and just a touch bored, with sun-streaked hair and exactly the right clothes. The kind of girl all the boys go for. The cashmere sweater type. But this, Jane knew, was something she could never explain to her mother, who would say, “But Jane, you have a cashmere sweater.”

  Mrs. Purdy went on in a voice so low that Jane had to strain to catch her words. “I’m glad our daughter is a sweet, sensible girl.”

  Mom, how could you, thought Jane. Sweet and sensible—how perfectly awful. Nobody wanted to be sweet and sensible, at least not a girl in high school. Jane hoped her mother would not spread it around Woodmont that she thought her daughter was sweet and sensible.

  The telephone at Jane’s elbow rang so unexpectedly that she jumped before she was able to pick up the receiver. “Hello,” she said almost absentmindedly, because her thoughts had drifted back to the strange boy who had smiled at her across the Nortons’ kitchen.

  “Uh…is this Jane Purdy?” asked a voice—a boy’s voice.

  An electric feeling flashed through Jane clear to her fingertips. The boy! It was his voice! She was sitting there thinking and wishing, and suddenly there he was, on the other end of the line. He was calling her! Jane swallowed. (Careful, Jane, don’t be too eager.) “Yes, it is.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice calm. To think that she and this boy she wanted so much to know were connected with each other by telephone wires strung on poles along the streets and over the trees of Woodmont! It was a miracle, a real miracle.

  “Well, uh…I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but I delivered some horsemeat to the Nortons’ when you were sitting with Sandra. My name is Stan Crandall.”

  Stan Crandall. Stan Crandall! “Yes?” Ah, good girl, Jane. Calm, polite, just the faintest touch of surprise in her voice. “Yes, I remember.”

  “I called Mrs. Norton and asked her for the name of her sitter,” the boy explained.

  Oh. Oh, dear. Hang on to yourself, Jane. Maybe his mother is looking for a sitter for his little sister. And what if his mother is looking for a sitter? I’d get to see him, wouldn’t I?

  “I know this is probably sort of sudden.” The boy hesitated. “But I was wondering if you would care to go to the movies with me tomorrow night.”

  He didn’t want a sitter. He wanted her! Jane’s thoughts spun. She had better ask her mother. No, that would lead to a lot of tiresome arguments about just who was this Stan Crandall. She couldn’t keep him dangling on the telephone while she tried to explain to her mother and father. Besides, she was practically sixteen, wasn’t she? She couldn’t be tied to her mother’s apron strings forever, could she? She had a right to accept a date with a perfectly nice boy, didn’t she?

  “I would love to go,” said Jane.

  “Swell.” There was relief in the boy’s—in Stan’s—voice. He had been afraid she might turn him down! “Would seven o’clock be all right?” he asked.

  “Seven would be fine,” answered Jane.

  “Swell,” he repeated. “I’ll see you then.”

  “All right,” agreed Jane, and hesitated. She felt she should say something more, but she could not think what. There did not seem to be anything more to add to the conversation. “Good-bye,” she said. “Thank you for calling.”

  “Good-bye,” he said, “and thanks a lot.”

  Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He has seen her once, and even though she had been rumpled and grass stained and having a terrible time with Sandra, he liked her well enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and calling to ask her to go to the movies. Jane smiled at the telephone and gave a sigh of pure happiness. Stan Crandall!

  “Jane, what were you saying about seven o’clock?” Mrs. Purdy called from the living room.

  Jane stopped smiling. Here it comes, she thought. She might as well get it over. Her mother and father would have to let her go. They had to. She couldn’t bear it if they wouldn’t. Jane walked into the living room determined to be firm with her mother and father and said, as calmly as she could, “I’m going to the movies tomorrow night at seven o’clock.”

  “With some of the girls?” asked Mrs. Purdy.

  “No. I’m going with a boy named Stanley Crandall.” Jane tried unsuccessfully to keep a note of defiance out of her voice.

  Mr. Purdy put down the seed catalog he was studying. “And who is Stanley Crandall?” he demanded.

  “Yes, Jane,” said Mrs. Purdy. “Just who is this Stanley Crandall?”

  Oh
, Mom, do you have to refer to him as “this Stanley Crandall”? Jane thought. It sounded so awful, as if she had picked him up on a street corner someplace. “He’s a perfectly nice boy,” she said.

  “Where did you meet him?” inquired Mrs. Purdy.

  “At the Nortons’,” replied Jane.

  “Is he a friend of theirs?” persisted Mrs. Purdy.

  “Not exactly. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Then how did you happen to meet him at the Nortons’?”

  Oh, Mom, do you have to act like the FBI or something, just because I’m going to the movies tomorrow night with a perfectly nice boy, Jane thought. “He came in a delivery truck,” she said.

  “From Jake’s Market?”

  Jane stared at the corner of the living-room ceiling. “No. Not from Jake’s Market,” she said patiently.

  “Jane Purdy!” said Mrs. Purdy sharply. “Will you please get that look of exaggerated patience off your face? Your father and I are not morons. We only want to know for your own good who this boy is.”

  Her own good. Everything around here was always for her own good. Well, they would have to know the truth some time. “He was delivering horsemeat for the dog from the Doggie Diner.”

  Mr. Purdy gave a snort of laughter. “Aha! Horsemeat!” he exclaimed. “The plot thickens!”

  Jane tried to wither her father with a glance but succeeded only in giving him a look of despair. How could he be so callous when she was in the middle of a crisis?

  “Really, Jane,” said Mrs. Purdy weakly. “Horse-meat!”

  “And what’s the matter with horsemeat?” cried Jane. “Delivering horsemeat is a perfectly honest way for a boy to earn some money. It’s no worse than babysitting. You always said honest labor was nothing to be ashamed of.” Jane stared defiantly at her mother and father. “You just don’t want me to have any fun!” Jane knew when she said this that it was not true. Her mother and father were both eager for her to have a good time, but somehow this was the sort of thing she had found herself saying to them lately. She was sorry, but honestly, the way a girl’s mother and father could take a beautiful feeling of happiness and practically trample it in the dust!

  “We’re not forbidding the banns just because the boy delivers horsemeat,” said Mr. Purdy mildly, as he lit his pipe and flicked out the match.

  “Oh, Pop,” said Jane impatiently. “I don’t want to marry him. I merely want to go to the movies with him.”

  “Horsemeat!” Mrs. Purdy began to laugh. “He delivers horsemeat!”

  Jane turned on her mother and said almost tearfully, “It’s U.S. government-inspected horsemeat!”

  “I’m sorry, Jane.” Mrs. Purdy managed to stop laughing. “There is no reason for you to get so worked up. It isn’t the quality of the horsemeat that we are questioning. We only want to know something about the boy. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

  “Well, he’s new in Woodmont,” said Jane, somewhat mollified, although still ruffled because her mother had laughed at a perfectly honest way for a boy to earn some money. “And he’s an awfully nice boy.”

  “But Jane, how do you know he’s a nice boy?” Mrs. Purdy asked. “You never saw him before. You don’t know his family or anything about him except that he delivers horsemeat. That isn’t much of a recommendation.”

  How could she explain to her mother that because a boy had a dip in his hair and a friendly grin and wore a clean white T-shirt she knew he was a nice boy? “He just is,” was all Jane could say miserably. “I can tell. And anyway, I’m going out with him, not his family.”

  Mrs. Purdy did not look convinced, so Jane went on. “He’s not the type to ride around in a hot rod and throw beer cans out along the highway. Mom, I know he’s a nice boy. He looks clean and intelligent and—well, nice. And he looks like he’s fun to be with, too. Not like the boys I’ve known all my life. Not like George, who just thinks about his old rock collection and chemistry experiments.”

  “Now, Jane,” said Mrs. Purdy, “don’t underestimate George. He’s a nice boy with real interests. He may not seem very exciting to you now, but he’s the kind of boy with a purpose, the kind of boy who will be a doctor or a scientist when he grows up.”

  “But Mom, I don’t want to go out with a boy I have known practically since I was in my playpen, and I don’t care what George is like when he grows up. I want to go to the movies on Saturday night with a boy who is fun now.”

  “Why, Jane,” Mrs. Purdy protested. “You’ve always had a good time at the little dancing parties you have gone to.”

  “Little dancing parties! Mom, those are for children.”

  “And you have gone to the movies and school affairs with George,” Mrs. Purdy pointed out. “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do like George,” Jane insisted. “I just don’t like to go out with him. He’s too short and that lock of hair always sticks up. At the spring dance at school all he talked about was his rock collection, and he’s a horrible dancer. He sort of lopes around and I had to scrooch down so I wouldn’t tower over him. And his mother and father came to pick us up because he isn’t old enough to have a driver’s license, and they came early because they wanted to watch the dance, and it was just too embarrassing, and then when they were leaving the gym his mother said to his father in a loud voice, ‘Wasn’t it a lovely party for the children?’ Everybody looked at George and me and I felt about six years old and it was simply ghastly. That’s why I don’t like to go out with George.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Purdy. “I see.”

  Jane looked quickly at her father to see if he was laughing at her, but his expression was serious.

  “I suppose it was a little awkward,” said Mrs. Purdy, “but just the same, I don’t want you running around with a boy we know nothing about.”

  “But I’m not going to run around with him. I’m going to walk five blocks in a straight line with him to the movies. That isn’t running around.”

  Then Jane’s father spoke up. “I think that by now Jane is old enough to recognize a nice boy when she sees one. And as she has pointed out, they are only going to the movies.”

  Jane looked gratefully at her father. Good for Pop! He understood.

  “But she’s had so little experience,” protested Mrs. Purdy.

  Experience! How was a girl going to get any experience when her mother was so old-fashioned she didn’t even want her daughter to go to the movies with a boy unless she personally knew his whole family tree for a couple of generations?

  “Does this boy have a car?” Mrs. Purdy asked.

  “I don’t know,” answered Jane truthfully, fervently hoping that he did own a car or at least have the use of one.

  “It’s all right if you walk to the movies,” said Mrs. Purdy, “but I don’t want you riding around in a car with some strange boy.”

  “Yes, Mom.” The battle was won, although somehow Jane had known from the beginning that she would win. She was actually going to the movies with Stan, the new boy, the boy with the friendly smile and the dip in his hair. In less than twenty-four hours she would be with him. The problem of the car she would meet when she came to it. If Stan did arrive in a car, she could easily suggest that since it was a nice evening (and it would be a nice evening, it had to be), they could walk to the movies. The theater was only five blocks from her house. And in the meantime her mother and father would see for themselves what a nice boy he was and maybe the next time…

  There has to be a next time, thought Jane, as she curled up in a chair with a book in her hand. I couldn’t bear it if there wasn’t another date. And another and another. She saw herself chattering with a cluster of girls in front of the lockers at Woodmont High. “Stan and I had the most wonderful time…” “Last night Stan and I…” “And Stan said to me…” “Oh, yes, Stan gave me this…” (Gave her what? An identification bracelet? His class ring?) “Stan dropped over last night and we…” “I thought I’d die laughing when Stan…”

 
“Jane, hadn’t you better think about going to bed?” Mrs. Purdy asked.

  Her mother’s voice scarcely touched Jane’s thoughts. Still standing by the lockers at Woodmont High, Jane answered, “I guess so,” and walked dreamily toward the bathroom to start putting her hair up in pin curls. “Stan and I always…” “Stan and I…”

  Chapter 3

  It was not until the next morning that Jane began to have qualms about her date with Stan Crandall. First of all, she decided that her hair simply would not do, so she washed it and put it up in pin curls, each one clamped with two bobby pins.

  “Why, Jane, I thought you washed your hair day before yesterday,” remarked Mrs. Purdy.

  “Did I? I don’t remember,” fibbed Jane, staring critically at herself in the mirror. Carefully she plucked six hairs out of her left eyebrow and five out of her right.

  Then she opened her closet and studied her wardrobe to see what she owned that would be suitable to wear to walk five blocks to Woodmont’s only movie and perhaps to Nibley’s afterward. One by one she examined her dresses. Her best navy blue silk printed with white daisies was too dressy. Her gray suit—well, no. That was more for wearing to the city. Her pale blue princess dress—certainly not. Not that old thing. Her yellow cotton—no. Stan had already seen it. Besides, the round collar looked so babyish. Her dirndl and peasant blouse wouldn’t do either. Once more she went over her wardrobe. She did not have a thing that was exactly right to wear on her first date with Stan Crandall. Not one single thing—and neither did she have enough money from babysitting to buy a new dress.

  Jane decided to approach her mother. “Mom, if I give you the six dollars and a half babysitting money that I have, could I charge a dress and pay you the rest later?” she asked.

  “Why, Jane, you have a closet full of clothes. More than lots of girls in Woodmont.”