Fifteen

by Beverly Cleary

  They stood facing one another, Jane ashamed to have hurt George’s feelings and George embarrassed to have his feelings hurt, uncertain of what to say next, until the sound of the first bell clanging through the hall rescued them.

  “See you around,” muttered George, and disappeared into the stream of students moving toward their classrooms.

  Well, I don’t care, thought Jane defiantly. I do have a date—sort of. And anyway, she had always suspected George’s mother made him take her out, because she was an old friend of the family; his mother probably told him she was a sweet, sensible girl. But Jane did care. Because she had hurt the feelings of someone she liked, she felt uneasy and uncomfortable all the rest of the day. On the way home from school she walked past the shoe store without stopping to search the windows for the dancing shoes she dreamed about—the delicate shoes with heels, soles, and mere wisps of leather to hold them to her feet. Darn Stan anyway.

  By Tuesday morning Jane was cheerful again. This was the day Stan would mention the dance. He had just forgotten—men were so absentminded about such things—and had been carrying the tickets in his wallet all the time.

  As usual he crossed the hall to her locker and said, “Hi, Jane.”

  “Hi,” she said, and waited.

  “Old Hargrave is really piling it on in math,” he said. “I thought I was going to be up all night on his assignment.”

  Plainly Stan was not thinking about the dance, and yet Jane did not see how he could forget it when the whole school was plastered with banners and posters and cardboard autumn leaves.

  Later in the morning a girl in Jane’s algebra class remarked wistfully, “I suppose you’re going to the dance with Stan.”

  Jane smiled and said nothing. A smile could mean anything.

  “Of course you’re going to the dance with Stan,” said another girl, in the cafeteria during lunch period.

  “Could be,” said Jane. “I hope they’re serving lemon pie today.”

  “You’re sure lucky,” answered the girl. “I wish a new boy would turn up for me.”

  Jane realized the situation was getting complicated. She could not honestly say she was going to the dance with Stan, and neither could she say she was not going with him. Her pride would not let her admit to anyone that she had not been asked. It would be all over school in half an hour. Everyone would talk and wonder. The boys would think she wasn’t any fun on a date and the girls would start inviting Stan to parties and asking him to help them with their math. And what would she be doing? Drinking Cokes with the girls on Saturday nights.

  It was while she was playing volleyball during her gym class that Jane made up her mind that she could not stand this uncertainty any longer. A few minutes before, while she was changing into her shirt and shorts in the locker room, two girls had asked her what she was going to wear Friday night. Waiting her turn to serve, Jane decided that when Stan walked down the hall with her between sixth and seventh periods she would bring up the dance once more and find out for certain whether she had a date or not. She was sure she did—well, pretty sure—but she wanted to hear Stan say so himself. Satisfied that she had at least made a decision, Jane gave the volleyball a vicious whack that sent it out of bounds.

  That afternoon when Stan met Jane outside her French class she said gaily, “Bonjour.”

  Stan grinned at her, “Onjourbay,” he answered. “French pig Latin. How’s that for class?”

  Jane laughed, but her thoughts were fixed on bringing up the subject of the dance. Her mouth was dry, and all the gay, casual remarks she had composed during her French class had slipped away from her. If this continued much longer she was sure to flunk everything. Only a few minutes ago she had not bothered to look up colère in the vocabulary and had translated “Il était emporté par sa colère” as “He was dragged away by his collar” when it should have been “He was carried away by his anger.” The laughter of the class still rang in her ears.

  Silently the two made their way through the stream of students toward Jane’s English classroom. I’ve got to say something, Jane thought wildly. Something light, something casual, something that would let her know for sure and yet not reveal to Stan how important this was to her.

  When they reached the door of Room 214, Jane turned to Stan. This was the moment. Somehow, words came out of her mouth, and they were not at all the words she had meant to speak. “George asked me to go to the dance Friday, but I said I already had a date,” she blurted out.

  An expression—could it be relief?—crossed Stan’s face. “Hey, that’s swell!” Stan was enthusiastic about something; just what, Jane was not sure. She stared at him, shocked by his reaction.

  “If you have a date we can trade dances,” Stan went on.

  “But I don’t,” Jane cried out in spite of herself. “I thought—”

  The bell clanging through the hall stopped Jane from saying any more, but she could not help giving Stan one stricken look. His expression changed from enthusiasm to bewilderment, embarrassment, and, worst of all—how could she bear it?—pity. Silently Jane fled into Room 214, and Miss Locke, her English teacher, closed the door behind her.

  The efforts of Miss Locke to teach clear thinking in English composition were wasted on Jane during the next hour. Squinting modifiers, dangling participles—who cared? All she could think about was herself and Stan. Now it was all so painfully clear. Now, when it was too late to undo what she had done. Stan had asked another girl (What girl? Who could she be?) to go to the dance, when she had assumed he would ask her. And she had let him know she expected him to ask her, and now he felt sorry for her. Never in her life had Jane felt so hurt, so humiliated.

  Of course, Stan had a right to ask anyone he pleased to the dance. But she had thought…she had wanted…she had been so sure. He was everything she liked in a boy. Oh, how could Miss Locke stand there and go on about squinting modifiers? How could she care? The irony of it all, having to sit through Miss Locke’s lesson in clear thinking after she had been so dumb! Stan was so nice to be with and she had been so sure…. But she had no right to be sure. She knew that now. If only she had known it before she spoke to Stan. Stan, who now felt sorry for her, poor little Jane Purdy, the girl who got her hopes up, just because he had had a few dates with her and had bought her a back-scratcher. A back-scratcher! How silly it seemed now. How could she have taken it so seriously? A back-scratcher!

  But even though Stan had asked some other girl to go to the dance, even though he felt sorry for her, Jane could not dislike Stan. It wasn’t his fault she was so stupid. She could never, never face him again, but she still liked him. She would avoid him in the hall, keep her books in Julie’s locker, forget him if she could. A few dates, and one wonderful week at school, and now she was no longer Jane Purdy, Stan’s girl, a girl who belonged. She was plain Jane Purdy, a nice girl but nobody special. It was all over.

  Now if she were the kind of girl Marcy was, nothing like this would ever happen. If she were like Marcy, Stan would want to take her to the dance and would have asked her for a date way ahead to be sure no other boy would ask her first. And then the thought came to Jane that Stan might be taking Marcy to the dance. She remembered the way they had talked together in the Chinese restaurant. But no, he couldn’t be taking Marcy. She would have heard about it before now—unless everyone was trying to keep it from her so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

  Jane stared blankly at the blackboard while Miss Locke wrote with squeaking chalk, “Some members of the class I know are not paying attention.” Miss Locke always liked to relate her examples to the experience of her students. Several girls laughed politely.

  “Jane,” said Miss Locke, pointing to the sentence with the chalk, “can you tell us what is wrong with this sentence?”

  Jane forced her eyes to focus on the blackboard. The words were meaningless. “I’m sorry, Miss Locke,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.” This brought a loud laugh from several boys in the back of
the room and a titter from the rest of the class.

  “Elizabeth, will you tell Jane what is wrong with the sentence?” asked Miss Locke.

  “‘I know’ squints,” answered Liz promptly. “The sentence should read, ‘I know some members of the class are not paying attention’ or ‘Some members of the class are not paying attention, I know.’”

  Jane tried to look as if she were absorbing this bit of knowledge, but all the time she was thinking desperately, Will I be so dumb about boys when I am sixteen? Will I still be so dumb?

  Chapter 7

  When the bell finally brought to a close the period that she should have devoted to clear thinking in English composition, Jane knew that she could not face Stan. She dawdled over her books at her desk and then, with her back turned toward the door, paused by the blackboard to ask Miss Locke some hastily composed questions about the next day’s assignment. On Tuesday Stan had to leave school in a hurry to start his Doggie Diner route. When five minutes had clicked by on the electric clock, she was sure that Stan was gone and that she was safe.

  Abruptly Jane thanked Miss Locke and fled down the hall to Julie’s locker. “Julie, something awful has happened. I’ll tell you on the way home. May I keep my books in your locker?” The whispered words came out in a rush.

  Julie looked at her in surprise. “Why, sure. You can use my locker anytime. You know the combination.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What happened?”

  “I can’t tell you here,” said Jane. “Julie, do me a favor. Go to my locker and get out all my books.”

  “All right. If you want me to.” Julie looked mystified, but she did as Jane asked. Jane selected the books she needed for her homework, stored the rest in Julie’s locker, and hurried out of the building with her friend.

  “Quick, tell me,” begged Julie. “I can’t stand the suspense any longer.”

  Miserably Jane poured out the story.

  Julie was silent while she considered the implications of Jane’s problem. “How ghastly!” she said at last. “How perfectly ghastly!”

  “Yes,” agreed Jane unhappily. “I don’t know what to do. At least I didn’t come right out and tell anybody he was taking me to the dance.”

  “I wonder who he is taking,” mused Julie.

  “I don’t know,” said Jane. “The way things get around school you’d think I’d have heard by now. And what I can’t understand is why he’s taking someone else. We’d been getting along so well and having such fun together. And he took me to the city and—and everything….” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the way Stan had looked at her when he ordered the hamburger for her in Chinatown.

  “Maybe he has to take the boss’s daughter, or something,” suggested Julie.

  “No, that isn’t it,” said Jane gloomily. “His cousin owns the Doggie Diner and if he has a daughter she’s probably about two years old.”

  “Maybe he’s taking his sister.” This was farfetched, but Julie was trying to be comforting.

  “No, one is too old and the other is too young. Anyway, Stan isn’t the type to take his sister to a dance.”

  The two girls walked in silence, Jane lost in humiliation and Julie quiet out of sympathy for her friend. When they reached Julie’s house, Julie said, “Come on in for a Coke. Maybe we can think of something.”

  “No, thanks. Not today,” answered Jane, and hesitated. “Julie, do you think…Stan could be taking Marcy?”

  Julie looked serious. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s a possibility. She talked to him a lot that night in Chinatown.”

  “Do you suppose you could sort of ask around and find out who she’s going with?” This was a favor Jane did not like to ask, even from Julie, but she felt she had to find out. “But don’t let anybody know I want to know,” she cautioned.

  “Sure, Jane, I’ll try to find out and let you know. And say, I just had an idea. Buzz might know somebody who needs a date,” said Julie. “Maybe he could arrange something for you.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be the same,” said Jane. She could not let it get around school that Buzz was trying to dig up a date for poor little Jane Purdy, the girl Stan Crandall used to go with. Maybe she wasn’t one of the crowd, but she still wasn’t the kind of girl who had to have dates dug up for her. Besides, if she couldn’t go to the dance with Stan, she didn’t want to go with anyone.

  “No, I suppose it wouldn’t be the same,” agreed Julie.

  Feeling more lonely than ever, Jane hurried home to the privacy of her own room. She threw her books on the bed, untied the ribbon that held her back-scratcher to the edge of her mirror, and flung the piece of carved wood into her wastebasket. She stared at it lying among the lipstick-smeared Kleenex and, after a moment of hesitation, took it out again and hid it at the back of a drawer under a pile of sweaters. Then she sat down on her bed and yanked the needles out of the Argyle sock she had been knitting. It was not very good knitting, anyway. The sock was grubby from being raveled and reknit so many times to correct mistakes and, no matter how often Jane read the directions, the yellow strips that ran across the green diamonds refused to go straight. Jane found a gloomy satisfaction in jerking out the stitches. There, she thought, when the last stitch was unraveled. There goes Stan out of my life. It was all over and done with, and all there was for her to do was to forget him.

  But the next day Jane found it was not easy to forget someone she had to work so hard to avoid. She had to get to her classes early and by devious instead of direct routes to keep from running into Stan. At noon she did not go to the cafeteria but sat instead on the steps of the gym and nibbled at a sandwich and an apple from home. She found, too, that she not only had to avoid Stan, but everyone else as well. She could not face the questions the other girls might ask her about the dance or their speculations when they heard she had not been asked by Stan. It was a lonely week. And as the week wore on the silence of the Purdy telephone told her that Stan was avoiding her too. In a miserable sort of way she was glad. She never wanted to see him or talk to him again. Never. Especially if he was taking Marcy to the dance.

  On Friday evening, while Jane was picking at her dinner, the telephone rang.

  “Arf arf!” barked Mr. Purdy.

  “Pop!” pleaded Jane in real anguish as she left the table. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother frown ever so slightly and shake her head at her father. Mr. Purdy looked surprised and then indicated by his expression that he understood something was wrong.

  So Mom has guessed, thought Jane, as she picked up the receiver. Now her family and her school and probably all of Woodmont knew that something was wrong between her and Stan. As she had expected, the call was from Julie.

  “Did you find out?” Jane asked in a dull voice.

  “Yes, finally,” answered Julie. “I had a hard time, because I didn’t like to come right out and ask anybody. You know. So I sort of had to go around with my ear to the ground. And then I happened to be walking past the drugstore and I heard a girl say something about Marcy and I slowed down—”

  “Julie, just tell me. Is Stan taking Marcy?” Jane begged.

  “No,” said Julie. “Marcy is going with that cute boy in the school bus crowd, the one that broke up with that girl who wears the tight skirts—”

  “I know the one,” said Jane. So it wasn’t Marcy. That was something.

  “That was only half of what I called about,” Julie continued. “Mrs. Lashbrook called for a sitter for Nadine this evening. It’s awfully short notice, but I wondered if you would want the job.”

  Since I’m not doing anything else—Jane finished the sentence silently. Julie might as well have said it right out loud. “I guess so,” she said halfheartedly. Nadine, an eleven-year-old bookworm, was no trouble to sit with. “What time?”

  “Mr. Lashbrook will pick you up at seven,” Julie told her.

  “Okay,” said Jane. She hesitated before adding, “Have a good time tonight, Julie. And Julie, call
me in the morning and tell me about…everything.”

  “Sure,” agreed Julie, and the sympathy in her voice was genuine. “I’ll call you the first thing and…let you know.”

  Numb with misery, Jane assembled a stack of textbooks to take to the Lashbrooks’ for the evening. Their house was quiet, Nadine would be buried in a book, and this would be a good chance to do a lot of studying and try to make up for the poor grades she had earned so far in the semester. She would put Stan and dates out of her mind and devote her time to her studies. No more C’s or even B’s for her. From now on she would get straight A’s. She would be known throughout Woodmont High as Jane Purdy, the brain. Her name would be engraved on the silver scholarship cup in the trophy case at school. She would write intellectual essays for Manuscript like Liz Galpin, instead of childish articles entitled “Springtime in Yosemite National Park” or “My Experiences as a Babysitter.” She might even submit a series of haikus if she could get them to come out in seventeen syllables. Or sonnets might be better. Fourteen lines of poetry would give her more scope than seventeen syllables. If a new boy came to Woodmont High he would wonder who this attractive Jane Purdy was who made such wonderful grades. And everyone would say, “That is Jane, our top student, straight A plusses, who has such a brilliant career ahead of her that she can’t waste her time on boys.” When she finished high school she would have a selection of scholarships to choose from. She would go to one of those Eastern women’s colleges….

  Jane recalled her English II teacher, who once said sarcastically, when Jane had failed to look up albeit in the dictionary during the study of As You Like It, “Jane Purdy, have you no intellectual curiosity?” Well, she may not have had any intellectual curiosity in English II, but she did now.

  By the time Jane arrived at the Lashbrooks’ she was filled with a comfortable feeling of martyrdom. The Lashbrooks were among her favorite babysitting customers. They always came home before midnight, they always had the right change to pay her, and they lived in a gracious old redwood house set in a grove of redwood trees in the hills. The wood-paneled living room, fragrant with eucalyptus wood burning in the stone fireplace, was inviting, and Jane looked around the room with pleasure. She liked the worn Oriental rugs, the comfortable chairs slipcovered in faded linen, the mellow furniture waxed until it glowed and flickered in reflected light from the fire. Tonight there was a brass bowl of apples on the coffee table, and the open curtains framed a view through the redwood trees of Woodmont below and the bay and the city in the distance.