CHAPTER 2

I GOT off the cross-town bus the next morning quite early, and walked along the river toward school. Val would probably be around somewhere, and I could ask her if she’d like to have a sundae after school. I’d wait a week or so before asking her to lunch.

It was bitterly cold, and the tugboats wailed from the river. The sky, the street, the buildings and the water were all the same color, indistinguishable in the musty morning light. The streets were practically empty, and the golden windows from above in the apartment houses made me feel lonely. I turned down the street toward school. There were two or three girls standing in the doorway of the school, talking and stamping their feet to keep warm, but I didn’t know them. I went past them and turned into my niche. It looked utterly bleak. I leaned on the railing and stared into the moving water, where some scraps of paper and two orange peels floated by. Nothing very interesting seemed to happen, so I left the niche and wandered past the girls and into the school lobby. It was huge, with a marble floor, and the two elevators had bright green doors. The building had ten floors and was very modern. The cafeteria was downstairs in the basement, the top three floors were devoted to gyms, and in between were the classrooms. You couldn’t talk in the elevators or run in the halls, and you had to march to assembly every morning in pairs. Also, you had to wear a skirt in the street, because the gym tunics were so short. At the time I accepted the rules without question, not seeing anything particularly wrong with them. It wasn’t till I got to know Val that I began to consider them a horrible imposition.

A few more girls came into the lobby, but no Val. I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and went into the library. There was only one other person there, a large girl with greasy blond hair, who kept licking her lips and copying reams of notes from a big purple book, turning the pages frantically. I sat down in front of the big dictionary and read the definitions for parataxis, parathyroid and paratroop; then, justifiably bored, I got up and left. The blond girl never looked up from her book.

Back down in the lobby, I saw that it was eight-thirty. Prison ball was well under way, and I heard screams and thumps from the pier. I had no desire to play, but thought I’d take a look. I went across the lobby and opened the far door.

The pier was full of Eights, shouting, running back and forth, making a thunderous roar like a herd of cattle. They wore coats and mittens and blew steam into the air. The ball was hurled back and forth with malicious intent, and everyone in between made fantastic dodges, leaping into the air in huge splitses, throwing themselves on the ground, or writhing off to the side like corkscrews. It seemed the thing to do was to dodge even if the ball came nowhere near you, so everyone was dodging at once, and the effect was like a ward of epileptics. Whenever someone got hit, she would howl loudly and retire to the prison in shame. I stood there for a moment, blinking; then a voice from the other side shouted:

“Here’s Gilbert!”

This made no noticeable impression on anyone, and I looked over to see who had said it. It was Val, flapping about in her fur-trimmed coat, the pockets bulging as usual. I started to say something, but someone yanked me into the game, saying:

“Don’t just stand there, you’ll get hit!” I had never really learned to play and didn’t know the rules very well, but I was swept off in a tide of moving Eights. They ran first one way, then the other, and I followed them, more from fear of being trampled to death than of being hit by the ball. Soon, inevitably, the ball was bounding at my feet; and someone screamed:

“Throw it, stupid!”

I picked it up and hurled it, and it bounced ineffectually into the hands of the other team.

“Dope,” muttered my tormentor, and we began aimlessly running back and forth again.

“What was I supposed to do?” I asked, during what I thought was a lull. I looked around, and no one was there. The rest of my team was far off at the back line, and to my horror I found myself three feet away from the opposing team. I looked around frantically, and there in front of me was Val, clutching the ball. Her hair was standing up all over her head and she was grinning.

“Now I’ve got you!” she shouted. Not knowing what else to do, I threw myself on the ground; but she took the ball in both hands, raised it high above her head, and heaved it at me with all her strength. It hit me in the stomach. A horrible pain went through me, and I could do nothing but lie there, moaning. It was as though I’d been hit by a cannon ball.

There was a pause, and in a moment everyone had clustered around. They stood there, looking at me.

“She must be hurt,” someone said.

“She keeps clutching her stomach.”

“Take her in to the doctor, there might be something wrong with her.”

I was hauled off by two large girls, who half carried me across the lobby and deposited me on the sofa in the doctor’s office. The screams and thumps resumed from the pier, and I lay there, forgotten. The doctor came in.

“Does any one spot hurt?” he asked.

“They all hurt,” I said.

“She’s all right,” the doctor said. “Just has the wind knocked out of her.” The two girls departed gratefully, anxious to get back to the game. “Just stay there and rest,” he added. “When you feel better, you can go to your classes.” He went out and closed the door, and I could hear him washing his hands in the next room as though he had just performed a bloody operation.

The nine o’clock bell rang, and I could hear the tramp-tramp of feet going to assembly. I was glad to be here instead of there, and decided not to recover until eleven o’clock art class. A clock with a luminous face ticked beside me, and I stared at it until it grew blurry, then fell asleep.

 

It wasn’t until later that I really began to understand why she had done it. The rest of the day passed quickly and pleasantly, with no history and an excuse from gym. When the last bell rang at twenty of five and I realized that she had left an hour and a half before, I knew that was the reason.

I noticed about three-fifteen and she didn’t want me to, I thought, squeezing into the back seat of the school bus. She was paying me back. But don’t other people notice it? The bus was filled with girls and I sat crouched among them, trying to be invisible. One of the morning’s stretcher-bearers stopped by my seat and said:

“How’s your stomach?”

“Fine,” I said, then couldn’t think of anything else to say. She scrutinized me for a minute.

“Well, that’s good,” she said, then went and joined her large friend, who was saving her a seat. I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to shut out the noisy and nerve-wracking world. The motors began to whine, and the bus lurched off. Whatever Val did every afternoon must be pretty shocking. I tried to think what it might be, but I had a limited knowledge of shocking things, and little came to mind. Perhaps she had some horrible disease, and had to go and have treatments every day. But she looked healthy...maybe something internal, that didn’t show. Cancer or tuberculosis. I felt a wave of pity. Maybe she had been given only a few years to live. (I had heard of this in a recent movie.) People with only a few years to live must act peculiarly...and I fell to musing about how I would act if told I was to die when I was fifteen.

The bus dragged to a stop, and I saw that we had reached the drugstore. I grabbed my schoolbag and got out.

It was always a beautiful moment of freedom. The bus was gone, taking Norton with it, and I was alone. Lexington Avenue was magically dark, and the drugstore looked gay and tempting. I crossed the street and went in, sitting on my customary stool.

“Butterscotch sundae,” I said. “With nuts.”

The soda jerk methodically began scooping up ice cream. It was surprising that he hadn’t come to recognize me after all this time, but he never did. Of course, I thought, this is New York. I was glad it was, because in New York he’d never laugh at me or tell my mother I was spoiling my appetite. It must be awful to live anywhere else, I thought. You couldn’t do anything. The sundae came. I put down my quarter, and, square with the world, began eating contentedly. There were about a dozen people in the drugstore. Four women in suits sat at one of the tables drinking tea. A mother was feeding ice cream to her young son. There was a mirrored column in the center of the floor plastered with colored ads, and a glass counter in back contained a whole army of gold lipsticks. The air was warm and moist and smelled of coffee. I sat there with my eyes half closed, enjoying it, when the door swung open and Lilian Kafritz walked in.

Lilian Kafritz was the most odious girl in the eighth grade. She was short and lumpy, with black frizzy hair which she tied back with a ribbon, in a desperate effort to keep it straight. She had glasses and large yellow teeth and a mottled complexion. There was nothing about Lilian that wasn’t ugly; but yet everybody was nice to her, because she always managed to find out everybody’s secrets and tell them to everybody else, unless you could make a deal with her. She traded in gossip the way grownups play the stock market. On one hand I loathed Lilian, but on the other hand she was the only Eight who ever bothered to talk to me. I knew this was no distinction, because Lilian talked to everybody to see what she could find out; but since she’d never done me any injustice, I was willing to put up with her for the sake of having some company. She stood in the door for a moment, then saw me and came over and sat down.

“What’s the matter, can’t you make it home?” she asked, as though I were a husband stopping for a short nip before going home to his wife. She waved at the soda jerk. “Hot fudge with strawberry ice cream and marshmallow,” she said. I shuddered. Lilian even had revolting taste in sundaes. “Do you come here every day?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said evasively. “Do you?”

“Heavens, no, I’d rather go home,” said Lilian in a superior voice, indicating that some people in the world had a decent home to go to. “Today it so happens I’m meeting Mother to go shopping.”

I took another bite of sundae. Lilian was always doing something so irreproachable. I glanced at her, and saw that all her yellow teeth were showing in a horrible grin.

“How’s your stomach?” she asked. “Val Boyd really whacked you, didn’t she? You don’t seem to play prison very well.”

I began to get angry. “I don’t think you’re any one to talk,” I snapped. “Every time you play prison, you get hit out the very first ball.”

“It so happens,” said Lilian, in a martyred voice, “that I have a permanently sprained knee, and I can’t move very fast. I just play to be a good sport, that’s all.” I was impressed into silence, and Lilian spilled some sugar on the counter and began drawing pictures in it with her grubby finger.

She seemed hurt, so I said, “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I wouldn’t expect you to know.” She emphasized the “you” slightly, as though to imply I didn’t know much of anything, and for her purposes, was a bore. But she was grinning her yellow grin again, and I realized she was after something. Before I could guess what, she said, “What do you think of Val Boyd?”

I started, then was on my guard. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know her very well.” Lilian scrutinized me, then apparently decided I was telling the truth.

“I was just wondering,” she said, in her insidious voice. “It so happens I heard something interesting today.” I tried to look unconcerned. The soda jerk put down her sundae, which looked repulsive, and stood there waiting expectantly. Lilian fished in her pockets, then turned to me with a meaningful grin.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I forgot, Mother has all my money. Could you possibly...”

Why, the foul little beast, I thought. She’ll stoop to anything. Anything. I’d never loathed anybody the way I loathed Lilian right then, but she had me trapped. I reached into my pocket for another quarter and slammed it down on the counter.

“As I was saying,” continued Lilian, shoving a huge bite of glutinous marshmallow in her mouth, “I just happened to be passing by Miss Rollyman’s office today” (Miss Rollyman was the head of the Middle School) “and the door just happened to be open, and Mrs. Cooney was in there. Mrs. Cooney is such a dear.” I squirmed, watching the contortions of Lilian’s mottled jaw. “My locker just happens to be right there, and as I was getting out my skirt and coat, I couldn’t help hearing what they said.” She swallowed the remains and turned to look at me, her casual manner gone. Her voice dropped to a rasping whisper.

“I heard them talking about Val Boyd,” she hissed, “and I heard them say she goes to a psychiatrist! Every day at four. She has special excuses to go, and the school knows all about it, but nobody else is supposed to know, and Boyd doesn’t tell anybody. Can you imagine that?”

I stared at her. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Is that what they said?”

“Of course I’m sure,” said Lilian sharply. “Mrs. Cooney said Boyd had come to her and asked to have it kept a secret, and Mrs. Cooney said of course I understand. Miss Rollyman said she’s right, the other Eights might think she’s queer or something. Then she said, in view of Boyd’s marvelous I.Q. she’s a prize to the school anyway, even if she is a little difficult. What do you think of that!”

“What’s an I.Q.?” I asked. It sounded ominous.

“Intelligence quota,” said Lilian positively, if not correctly. “If you’re smart, you have a high one. If you’re not so smart, it’s low. Boyd must be some kind of a genius.”

“Gosh,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Does she get terrific marks?”

Lilian shrugged. “She’s in my music class, and she only got Fair on her last report. She never says anything in class. It so happens I got Good.”

“Naturally,” I said, feeling irritated again. “You probably never shut up.”

Lilian wiped the rest of the sundae from her face with attempted dignity. “I’m very interested in musical theory, and I believe in class participation. Not being a genius, I believe in telling others my ideas.” She stepped down from the stool. “I have to go,” she said. “There’s Mother.”

I looked toward the door. A slightly larger image of Lilian was peering through the glass. Lilian waved, and her mother waved back. She turned toward me with an ingratiating smile.

“Thanks for the sundae,” she said. There was no mention of paying me back my quarter, for we both knew the transaction was finished. “See you at prison.”

“Good-by,” I said. She turned and walked out of the door, kissing her mother on the cheek. They walked toward the downtown bus stop.

I sat there for a moment, staring into the empty ice cream cup. I wasn’t quite sure what a psychiatrist was, and it worried me. I knew Boothy had once gone to one, but Boothy was about forty, and when you were forty you probably had to. But why Val? Was she crazy? The thought made me shiver, and I remembered her face just before she threw the ball at me. Maybe she wanted to murder me! Fooey, I thought, there aren’t any murderers at Norton. If she were that crazy she’d be on Welfare Island. Considering it all, I decided that the fact that Val was a mad genius made her much more interesting than if she weren’t. And the fact that she kept it all a secret fascinated me.

The drugstore was suddenly boring.

I’ll go home and ask Mom and Boothy about psychiatrists and intelligence quotas, I thought.

I picked up my schoolbag and hurried across the street to the bus stop.

 

I managed to get an excuse to leave early the next day, due to my sore stomach. It was completely recovered, but I so rarely had anything wrong with me that I took the opportunity to drag out my ailment as long as anyone would believe me. So at three o’clock I went to collect my books before leaving.

The home room was completely empty. Cold winter light shone through the tall windows on the rows of desks, and the blackboard was covered with the strange language of algebra. Mrs. Cooney’s desk at the front of the room, with its eternal three daisies stuck into a lab test tube, looked remote and important. I walked back to my own desk, with its pencil groove and dried-up inkwell. I opened it and began to fish inside for the history book I told myself I would study when I got home.

There was a step in the doorway, and I peered over the desk top. Val stood there. She didn’t look surprised to see me, but seemed to expect me to be there.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied. “How’s your stomach?”

“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “It’s a good excuse to go home today.” She came over and sat down at the desk in front of mine.

“I didn’t mean to hit you so hard,” she said.

I was a little surprised at that. Of course she had; but I only said, “Oh, that’s all right,” and reached into the desk for another book. There was a silence, and she sat picking at her nails. She had bangs, and they were falling in her face. She was completely different now. She looked lost and a little frightened. Neither of us said anything, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the faint cry of voices from the pier, five floors below.

“I was wondering,” she said suddenly, “if you’d like to come to my house for lunch Saturday.”

My mouth fell open slightly.

“Sure,” I said. We both sat and stared at each other for a moment. It was the last thing I’d expected. “Where do you live?” I asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Downtown,” Val said. She got up, with obvious relief that it was over with. “I’ll see you before then. Maybe I’ll even come and pick you up, and take you there in the subway. It’s sort of hard to find. It isn’t my house, you know. I board with some people.”

“Oh, you do?” This didn’t surprise me, for some reason. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said she lived on the moon.

“Yes, you’ll see. My parents are...away. Oh, you’ll see. I’ll explain it all—it’s all very complicated.” She giggled a little hysterically, and started toward the door. “Well, good-by,” she said hurriedly, and ran out of the room.

I dropped the desk lid, which for some reason I had been holding up all through the conversation, and stared at the empty doorway. And then I felt a huge sense of elation. I have a friend! I thought triumphantly. It was such an overwhelming and delightful thought that I laughed out loud. Even then I realized that knowing Val was going to prove a most unusual thing, but if any premonition crossed my mind, I ignored it. I sat there for a moment, smiling into the air, then suddenly gathered up my books and went into the hall. I took my skirt and coat from the locker and put them on hastily, then went out the door to the stairway. The art room was on the sixth floor, and I ran up the stairs two at a time.

There was no class going on, but two or three girls stood at easels painting with poster paints. In the middle of the room was a table which held a Chianti bottle, two apples and a book, arranged with careful casualness. Lilian sat on a stool at the other end of the room, tilting her easel into the sunlight and staring at it through slitted eyes, like Botticelli just finishing his Venus. She wore a green smock, spattered with paint both in front and back. Only Lilian could manage to back into a wet painting, I thought.

“Why, hello,” said Lilian, glancing at me, then back at the picture. The wine bottle wiggled, the apples looked like hedgehogs, and the book might have been anything. “Do you think the perspective is all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine, Lilian,” I said. “Listen...”

She looked at me and grinned.

“Why, you’re going home,” she said. “At three-fifteen, yet. Do you have a psychiatrist too?”

“Listen, Lilian,” I snapped, “that’s just what I want to talk to you about.”

Lilian put the picture back on the easel and wiped her orange and purple hands on her filthy smock.

“It so happens,” she said, in an uneasy voice, “that I have work to do.”

“It so happens,” I said, “that I don’t want you to tell anybody what you told me yesterday. It’s none of your business that you know about it at all, and I want you to shut up.”

“Oh?” Lilian’s fuzzy eyebrows rose. “And suppose I don’t feel like shutting up?”

“Then,” I said in the nastiest voice I could muster, “I will let Mrs. Cooney know that you were snooping around while she was talking to Miss Rollyman. And if there’s anything Mrs. Cooney hates, it’s snoops.”

Lilian’s face went distinctly pale. “And suppose Mrs. Cooney doesn’t believe you?” she asked, but she didn’t sound very convinced.

“I just happen to know that Mrs. Cooney is waiting for a chance to catch some people in the class nosing into things that aren’t any of their business,” I said. I didn’t know any such thing, but it convinced Lilian. She glared at me, and snatched up her paintbrush.

“As I said before,” she said cuttingly, “I have work to do.”

“Oh, of course!” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of holding you up.” I patted her on the head, and I thought she was going to take a poke at me. “Good-by, Lilian. See you at prison.”

I skipped out of the room, humming a song.