‘You’re exceptionally good at languages, Lesley. German, French, two years of Spanish. Do you still speak Hungarian at home?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said.
‘There are some promising career opportunities for linguists. Have you thought about doing something like that? You’re very good. And it’s an open field, jobwise.’
I nodded.
Miss Harrich sighed. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, although I could tell she thought I was. Or at least that I wasn’t being very cooperative.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I am trying to help you, Lesley. I know you think I’m just hassling you, but I’m not. I’m worried that you’re going to just keep putting this off and putting it off until it’s too late. And you’re such a bright girl. You have so much potential. I just don’t want to see you waste it.’
I stared at my hands. My stomach hurt and I wanted to leave.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. She watched me, and because I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face, I studied her clothes. She was an older woman, perhaps near sixty, but she dressed very fashionably. Soft wool skirts and silk-look blouses, in muted, earthy colours. If she’d been someone else, I would have liked to ask her where she bought them. They didn’t look like what you found in our town.
I shrugged wearily as the silence grew too heavy for me. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t even know what was wrong, why it was so hard to look at the applications and do something about them, why I hated coming in here so much that it made me feel sick to my stomach.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how’s it going for you? Generally speaking. Classes all right? Are you having any trouble?’
I shook my head.
‘Are things OK at home?’
I nodded.
She regarded me for a long moment before finally opening her desk drawer to take out a pad of hall passes. ‘If you ever need anyone to talk to,’ she said, ‘you know I’m here.’
‘I have history now,’ I said when I saw her hesitate over that blank on the form. ‘Room 204. Mr Peterson.’
‘You heard me, didn’t you? That’s why I’m here, Lesley. To help out when things get rough. I do care. You know that, don’t you?’
I stood and held out my hand for the pass. When she laid her pen down, I snatched the form from the pad and left.
Claire, one of my group of friends from school, was having a party the next Friday night. Her mother was helping her clear the furniture from the family room, and there was going to be a live band. It was a local band, made up of three boys from our high school and someone named Frog Newton from Goodland, who played the drums. Frog was a friend of Brianna’s cousin, and Brianna said she thought he was one of the weirder monkeys not in the zoo. She always referred to him as Fig Newton, which in my mind was an improvement on Frog.
Claire’s party was the big social event of the term among my crowd, which by and large didn’t seem to generate many big social events. None of us girls who were friends that year was exactly femme fatale material. Claire still had a generous amount of what her mother affectionately called ‘puppy fat’. Brianna wore glasses and braces and had hair like Little Orphan Annie’s. And of course there was me. Naturally, Claire intended that we all bring dates. But she did tell us that her brother and a bunch of his friends were coming, which was a diplomatic way of saying that there would be at least some boys on the premises.
After lunch on Wednesday I went down to my locker to change books for my next class. I stood alone, sifting through the debris in the bottom of the locker, searching for my German vocabulary notebook.
‘Where were you in history class today?’
I looked up.
His name was Paul Krueger. I didn’t know him well because the only class I had with him was history and he sat across the room. All I knew for sure about him was that he was reckoned to be a whizz kid in physics. Otherwise, he was an ordinary sort of boy with brown, wavy hair and a lumpish build, like a wrestler’s.
‘I was down at the counsellor’s office. Miss Harrich is always hassling me about college applications.’
Shifting his books from one arm to the other, he leaned back against the locker next to mine. ‘Too bad you got her. I got Mr Perryman. He’s not so bad.’
‘Yeah. It’s because my last name begins with O.’
‘Yeah. Mine begins with K.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
Silence. We both looked away.
‘Luckiest kids are those with last names starting with S, because they get Mr Kent. He’s really nice. I know. My friend Bob’s got him.’
‘Yeah, they’re lucky.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed.
‘Yeah.’
Silence.
‘So. Where are you going to college?’ he asked me. ‘Have you been accepted anyplace yet?’
I shrugged.
‘I’m going to Ohio State. They’ve got a good statistics department there. That’s what I’m going to major in. Statistics.’ He shifted his books again. ‘My old man says there’s lots of jobs available in statistics. And you know how it is. You pretty much do what the old man says.’
With a smile, I nodded. I had located my vocabulary notebook, so I shut the locker door. By the hall clock I could see I had only two minutes left to get to German and I didn’t want to be late because Mr Tennant gave us marks when we were tardy.
Paul was studying the fingernails on his left hand. ‘I wanted to ask you something – in history class,’ he said, still regarding his hand. ‘But you weren’t there.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘No.’
Still the intense interest in his fingernails.
‘See, I’m a friend of Kurt’s – you know, Claire’s brother. And about this thing on Friday night.’ He looked over. ‘You going to it?’
‘You mean Claire’s party?’ I asked.
He nodded.
I shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
‘You want to go with me?’
My jaw went slack.
‘I mean, assuming you’re not going with anyone else or anything. Are you?’
‘Yes. I mean, no, I’m not. I mean, yes, I’ll go with you. If you want.’ I grinned. ‘Yeah. OK. I will.’
‘Great, then.’ He hoisted up his books. ‘I gotta go to English. Listen, I’ll talk to you more after school, OK?’
I nodded.
With a smile he turned and took off down the hallway.
I stood next to my locker, a stupid grin plastered all over my face, and watched him disappear. Astonishment had me spellbound.
So this was it.
Still grinning like a Cheshire cat, I tossed my pencil way up into the air and tried to catch it. The teacher monitoring the hall gave me an odd look. I hooted at her, then grabbed my books and ran for German.
When I arrived home from school, I went into the kitchen to fix myself a snack.