Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [14]
Just like I adored being at the lagoon, I used to adore being here. Nowadays I leave the house feeling brave, but by the time I get over here my tummy is letting me know it woulda rather stayed right where it was. It’s the counselors’ shed that Bobby grabbed me out of that’s causing all the problems. That shed is like Hound of the Baskervilles quicksand to me now. Smooth on the surface, but if you aren’t paying attention to the details, if you make one false step, it will suck you under and it only makes it worse if you struggle, so what are you supposed to do?
Thank Jesus, Mary and Joseph that the playground counselors this summer are both girls who aren’t murderers and molesters. Barb Kircher is back for more. I’m glad. Barb makes me feel a little less dumb. Like me, she didn’t notice last year that Bobby was a bad egg. I think she had a crush on him for a while the same way I did. She is also an expert lanyard maker and I just love those things. The silky colors and the slippery feel of them gliding through my fingers. I’ve made over fifty of them. I give them to people on their birthdays or any time I think they could use a little pick-me-up.
The other counselor, the new one who is taking Bobby’s place, is a girl named Debbie Weatherly, who is a friend of Barb’s from their college cheerleading team. Debbie must be the captain because she keeps telling us how she is so, so, so happy to be here! She reminds Mary Lane of that guy on The Mickey Mouse Club and I would have to agree with her. Mousketeer Roy, that was his name. (He got me so jumpy that I had to stop watching on Wednesdays, which was Anything Can Happen Day.) The new counselor lurks around in the background the same way he did. She isn’t going bald, though. Debbie’s got a sleek brunette do that she keeps out of her eyes with a colored headband that she changes every day, so she is very fashionable, but just like Roy, she is on the chunky side and has somewhat of a slack jaw.
The whole Vliet Street gang is here. Troo and me, Willie O’Hara, Mary Lane, Artie Latour and his sister, Wendy Latour, who is the only one of us who is not waiting in line to play tetherball. Wendy is swinging, which is her most favorite thing to do besides wandering off and turning up in the most unexpected places. Once she got found over at the zoo feeding the elephants peanuts way too close for comfort. She showed up in our own bathroom eating a stick of butter when Mother was in the tub. Another time, they found Wendy all the way downtown. This morning, she’s swinging, practically naked from the waist up, which she always tries to do because I don’t think clothes feel good on her skin. She does have on her training bra. She needs it now because her bosoms are growing up even if she isn’t. She is the strongest kid. When we play Red Rover, she can break through our closed-up arms like we’re a paper chain and she’s a pair of scissors right outta the box. She’s also a great hugger and a lot smarter than people give her credit for. She likes me better than she likes Troo and I am just nuts for her, too.
I call over to her, “Hi, Wendy.”
She yells back the same way she always does in her voice that sounds a lot like Froggy the Gremlin on the Andy’s Gang television show, “Thally O’Malley, hi . . . hi . . . hi!”
Wendy isn’t a regular kid, she is something called a Mongoloid. With her shiny black hair that is ruler straight, she looks like one of the waitresses over at the Peking Palace where you can get good chop suey on special occasions. Mother told Troo and me that the Chinese are an inscrutable people, which means they’re hard to understand, which fits Wendy Latour to a T.
“That