Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [15]
It’s actually my tiara. Troo calls me a chump, but I don’t regret what I did for one second. I knew I was gonna win. The counselors wanted to give me a prize for not getting murdered and molested last summer, but when Barb Kircher was about to announce me as Queen of the Playground at the biggest party we have in the neighborhood at the end of the summer, I looked down at Wendy in a pink party dress, smiling up from the crowd with shiny lips and her Cracker Jack ring on her wedding finger, and I grabbed the microphone and announced, “The Queen this year is . . . Wendy Latour!” The reason I did that is because someday I will grow up and get married to a pale pharmacist, but Wendy . . . one of the worst things about Mongoloids is that they don’t live very long, which I try never to think about.
“Hey,” I tell Artie Latour, who is her brother and one of the other twelve Latour kids, “Wendy’s goin’ too high and she’s got her blouse off again.”
He looks over fast, but he’s in the middle of a tetherball game with Willie O’Hara so he doesn’t want to stop and take his sister home to their mother so that she can get dressed.
Artie asks outta the side of his mouth, “Could ya do it for me, Sally?”
I say, “Yeah . . . okay,” because I’m just waiting to get back in the game, but even if I wasn’t, I would help Artie out. I like him. I also feel sorry for him. He is not the best-looking kid. His Adam’s apple goes out of whack when he gets jittery, which is a lot because he is really high-strung. He walks with his knees bent and pigeon toes and he’s got a harelip and is hard of hearing, too, because his oldest and meanest brother, Reese, who is in the Army now, smacked Artie so hard that his ear swelled up to the size of a fist. That’s why he’s a half-deaf mess.
Thinking I might not have to go all the way over to the swings because I’m already so sweaty, I stay where I am and shout at Wendy, “Artie says you gotta stop swingin’.”
“Flyin’,” she hollers back. She is pretending to be the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz. This movie made a HUGE impression on her. Ever since she saw it on TV, it has become her favorite. She likes Dorothy and Glenda and the Scarecrow okay, but it’s the witch she really loves. “Come. Wish laugh.” (I can do a pretty good Wicked Witch imitation. I taught myself how because I knew Wendy’d get a kick out of it.)
By the time I get over there, she is ripping even higher, bouncing in the swing with her head stretched back as far as it’ll go. She is a very good pumper for a girl with such stubby legs.
I yell at Wendy, “Slow down. You’re gonna go over the top bar like you did last month. Remember what a bad boo-boo ya got on your knees, my pretty?” I rub my hands together and throw my head back the way the green witch does. “Aha . . . hahahaha.”
Troo leaves the line and comes panting up to my side. “You’re up next.”
“Thally O’Malley . . . me high!”
“Artie,” I call to him when I can’t get Wendy to listen to me. “Artiiieee!” He lost his tetherball game to Willie, and now he’s just standing off to the side of the group looking like someone let the air outta him. “Get over here.”
He trudges over, leans against one of the swing poles, but doesn’t tell his sister, “If you don’t stop, you won’t get any tapioca tonight,” the way he always does to get her to listen. Instead, he tells me and Troo in a barely there voice, “Did you guys hear about Charlie Fitch?”
The O’Malley sisters say louder than we would for a kid who hears real good, “What about him?”
Charlie Fitch is an orphan and you’d know he was right off. Those kids all got that same look, like if you knocked on them they’d sound hollow. Charlie’s also an altar boy so I see him at Mass. He’s older than us, the same age as Artie—fourteen. The two of them are best friends. The other thing I know about Charlie besides him having brown hair and one of those dents in his chin is that he wants to be an actor when he grows up. He was Joseph in last year