As the summer went by I became more and more friendly with Nat, but still I had no influence on what she did with Andy. It’s funny how much easier it is to see the problems other people set themselves up for than to do something about your own. It was clear to me that the course of action Nat was taking, giving herself “heart, body, and soul” to Andy, could only lead to disaster, but I still hoped for the best for her.
I have to admit that by the last day of camp, it looked as if things might just work out for Nat and Andy. They were always together, always touching, kissing, and looking at each other with that wonderful glow of love.
“Oh, Linda! What am I going to do now that the summer is over?” Nat asked as she and I said our last good-byes. “I’m going to miss Andy so much!”
“I know how hard it is,” I said sympathetically. “But you’ll have special weekends and vacations with him to look forward to. You’ll get through it— the way I got through the summer without Lenny.”
“But now you’ve got the whole rest of the year to be with him. Boy, do I envy you!”
Nat would have been a lot less envious if she had been aware of the problems that lay ahead for Lenny and me. But, of course, at that time, I wasn’t aware of them, either.
* * *
I felt a surge of pure joy as I rode the bus over the George Washington Bridge and got my first glimpse of Washington Heights. While not a wealthy or glamorous part of New York City, there were many advantages to living in our neighborhood. There were stores, schools, and parks, all within walking distance, and it was a fast ride on the subway to downtown Manhattan. But best of all, there were lots of teenagers around, so there was always something going on.
There were two favorite gathering places for the kids in my neighborhood, and my apartment building was strategically located for both. One was the park wall that overlooked the baseball field, about two blocks from my house; the other was the ice cream parlor we called the candy store, which was right on my corner. It was at the park wall that I had arranged to meet Lenny as soon as I finished unpacking my summer clothing and answering all my parents’ questions about everything that had happened since they saw me last.
I felt an unexpected twinge of apprehension as I walked to the wall. It had been a long time since I had been together with everyone. Last year some of my friends had done a lot of changing, not all of which I was happy about. Several of the boys I was closest to had gone away to college, and new kids, some with ideas and habits I didn’t care for, had started hanging around. My two best friends, Roz Buttons and Fran Zaro, had broken up with their boyfriends, Sheldon Emory and Danny Kopler, and this put stress on our friendship since I was still so serious about Lenny. It had taken me the whole school year to get used to these changes. I guess I was worried that, over the summer, more might have occurred that I wasn’t prepared for.
I was relieved to see that, on the surface at least, things seemed much as they were the last time I had been in the city. In honor of my return Roz and Fran had come out to the wall, something they did rarely now. The college boys had not yet gone back to school, so they were there. Lenny, in an especially good mood, was entertaining the crowd with funny stories about some of the strange customers he delivered groceries to. Everyone was laughing and having a good time.
“Boy, am I glad to be back,” I said to Roz and Fran as we caught our breath between laughing at Lenny’s jokes. “I was afraid things might have changed while I was away. But here we are, all together again. It’s almost like old times.”
“That’s because it’s summer and everyone has time to hang out,” said practical Roz. “Once school starts, people will be off in their own directions once more.”
“Does that mean you’re going to be focusing on boys from school again?” I asked. Roz went to a special school called Fine Arts. Last year, when she had broken up with Sheldon, she had started dating boys from school who were into art like she was.
“Of course.” Roz gave a haughty shake to her mane of long, honey-colored hair. “We have so much more in common artistically and culturally. When I look at Sheldon now, I hardly know what I ever saw in him.”
I looked over to where dark-haired, muscular Sheldon Emory was sitting up on the park wall, his arm around his current girlfriend, Jessie Scally. He was laughing so hard at Lenny’s latest remark, I thought he’d fall off the wall for sure. Sheldon was Lenny’s best friend, and the person who had helped get the two of us together in the first place. Lenny and I now went out together with Sheldon and Jessie a lot, but I never could feel as close to Jessie as I did to Roz. I really wished she were going with Sheldon again.
“He’s handsome as can be; he’s got a great personality and a warm heart,” I told her. “That’s what you saw in him.”
“Maybe so, but I’m beyond all that now,” she said. “I don’t know how you stick with Lenny all the time.”
“Me neither,” agreed Fran. “I’m much better off since I broke up with Danny and started playing the field. Danny and I were good together for a long time, but it never would have worked once he went away to college. I’m not the type to be tied down.”
“Apparently not,” I said with a laugh, because Fran had become quite the flirt. With her black, frizzy hair and scattering of freckles, Fran wouldn’t be considered pretty until she took off her thick glasses and revealed her nearsighted violet eyes fringed with long, thick lashes. Still, she had managed to attract quite a few boys in the year since she had broken up with Danny Kopler.
Even as we talked now, Danny swung his increasingly overweight body off the wall and ambled over to where we girls were standing. “Hey, Fran, want to take a walk to get a soda or something?” he asked.
Danny was a genius of sorts—he was starting his second year at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even though he was only seventeen. Still, when it came to Fran he was dumb, dumb, dumb. He couldn’t seem to take no for an answer.
“No, thanks, Danny.” Fran stifled a yawn. “I’m watching my diet, and if you ask me, I think you ought to watch yours, too.”
“I didn’t ask you.” Danny threw her a dirty look, then came over and put his arm around me. Danny used to live in my apartment building before his parents moved away to Queens. We grew up together and were almost like brother and sister, except when Danny decided to act as if he had romantic interests in me. “How about you, Linda?”
“I’d like that, Danny. But it is my first day back, and I don’t want to leave Lenny. Why don’t you wait a few minutes? Lenny’s bound to get hungry soon, and then we can all go together.”
It happened as I had predicted. Lenny was always hungry although he never put on weight no matter what he ate. “I’m starving—anyone for the candy store?” he proposed a few minutes later.
Once Lenny had brought it up, it seemed that everyone wanted to get something to eat. Our crowd abandoned the wall and started walking in one large, happy group down my block toward the candy store.
As we approached my building, I saw my mother looking out of our third-floor window, a disapproving look on her face. I didn’t let that bother me. I was too glad to be back, to be walking holding on to Lenny’s hand, to be with my friends and the crowd once again.
I could even block out the thought that school was starting soon, and with it were bound to come new stresses and changes.
* * *
“How does it feel to finally be going to the neighborhood school?” Fran asked me as we rode home together on the bus that first day of school.
“Not as good as I thought it would,” I admitted. “When it comes to school, it seems I’ll never belong. First I went to a different school from everyone else in the neighborhood. Now that I’ve transferred to Washington, I’m in a different grade. I don’t know hardly anyone in my classes.”
“That’s what you get for being too smart for your own good,” Fran said, laughing.
I laughed back, but the fact was that what she said hurt. Until this year I had gone to the Bronx High School of Technology, a special school you had to pass a tough test to get into. I had wound up advanced in so many subjects that I was able to skip my junior year, providing I transferred to Washington, our regular neighborhood high. I had always thought it would be wonderful to go to school with Lenny and my friends. But the way it worked out, now that I was at Washington, Lenny was out of school—kicked out—and my friends who went there were all juniors while I was a senior. Once again I found myself out of step with everyone else.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Linda, the brain,” a high-pitched voice interrupted my thoughts. “What are you doing on the bus with us lowly people of normal intelligence?”
Renee Berkley, owner of the voice, plopped herself down in the seat directly behind me. I turned around to look at her. Heavily made up as usual, busty Renee was dressed for the first day of school in a tight blouse that was semitransparent. Renee used to hang out with our crowd until she decided we were too tame for her. None of her current crowd did well in school, Renee included.
“Linda’s going to Washington now,” Fran answered for me. “She skipped a year. She’s a senior.”
I could have kicked Fran for saying that. Renee had a big mouth and would probably tell the whole world I had skipped. It made me really uncomfortable when people looked at me as freaky or stuck-up because I was so good in school.
“That figures.” Renee took a mirror out of her purse and checked her reflection. “I bet you’ll be in all honors classes, too.”
“No,” I told her. “To take honors classes at Washington, you have to start the program when you first begin high school. So I’ll be in regular classes with everyone else.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not in mine.” Renee added another layer of mascara to her already heavily coated lashes. “Lots of teachers at Washington curve grades. Someone like you could single-handedly ruin the curve.”
“Come on, Renee, don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “There have to be other kids in regular classes who get good grades.”
“Well, let me know when you find them.” Renee laughed as she replaced her makeup in her purse. Then she turned her back to me and began flirting with the boy behind her.
* * *
It didn’t take me long to find out what Renee had told me about Washington was pretty much the truth. Like Fran, the best students were in the honors program, which I, entering as a senior, was not allowed to be part of. The kids in the regular classes ranged from doing average to far below average work.
It was in Mr. Levin’s English 6 class that I had my rudest awakening. Since English was the one subject I wasn’t advanced in, I had to make up a year by taking English 5 and English 6 together one term, English 7 and English 8 together the next. English 5 was no problem—most of the kids in the class were regular juniors. But English 6 was an “off term” class, and that was a whole different story.
“Off term” meant that the class was given in a semester other than when it was normally scheduled, so that kids who had failed the class had a chance to take it again. I was the only one taking the class to advance—everyone else was trying to make up for a class they had failed. Mr. Levin seemed to regard us all as a bunch of losers.
“Do you know Mr. Levin started off by saying he fully expected half our class to fail English again?” I told Lenny when I saw him on Friday after the first week of school had ended. We were sitting in the back booth of the candy store, sharing an ice cream soda. “What kind of thing is that for a teacher to say? It’s as if he’s programming kids to fail.”
“He failed me when I had him,” Lenny said. “That was an ‘off-term’ class, too.”
“Well, he’s not going to fail me,” I said firmly. “I intend to get the same kind of grades at Washington as I did at Tech—good ones!”
Lenny laughed. “I know you will. If only I could have averaged your grades in with mine—we both would have had no trouble passing!”
“I know, I know,” I said grimly. All this talk about Lenny and school was not making me feel good. It was always upsetting to me to think of how he had messed up his chances of getting into a decent college. And we still hadn’t talked about the other subject causing tension between us—his job situation. Lenny had promised he would look for a real job after the summer when he started night school and intended to get serious. But here he was, still working at the grocery. I had been trying not to nag him about it, but it was bothering me that he showed no inclination to find anything better.
“Let’s forget about school—what about work?” I got right to the point.
“Work? Well, it might be a good idea if you found something besides babysitting,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding me.
“Lenny! You know it’s almost impossible to find a decent part-time job in the neighborhood, and I make all the money I need by babysitting. I’m not talking about me; I’m talking about you! Didn’t you promise you’d look for a better job once you started night school?”
“Sure I did. And I’ll do it, too.”
“Yeah? When?”
“Are you trying to pin me down to an exact schedule?” he asked testily. “Because that doesn’t work with me.”
I heard the warning in his voice and decided I’d better back off. “No, I’m not trying to pin you down. I only wanted to know your feelings in the matter.”
“My feelings are that I’ll probably get around to looking for work in the next week or two. In the meantime, I’ve come up with a better way to make money than working.”
“What’s that?” I asked, not liking the way this sounded already.
“The racetrack.” He smiled as if proud of this pronouncement.
“The racetrack? Whatever are you talking about, Lenny?”
“Well, while you were away this summer, Sheldon and I went to the track a few times. It was lots of fun, and most of the time we won. Can’t beat the track for turning a little money into a lot.”
“But that’s—that’s gambling!” I protested.
“Not if you know what you’re doing. I’ve been reading books about horses, studying the newspapers and each day’s track results. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on by now. I can’t wait to get to the track tomorrow night and try out the system I’ve developed.”
“Tomorrow night? But that’s the night Jessie and I were going to take you and Sheldon out for your birthdays.”
“Right! And there’s no place Sheldon and I want to go out to more than the track. Look, how does this sound? We’ll go out to dinner together with Sheldon and Jessie, the way we planned. Then, afterward, we’ll all go to the track. You’ll love it!”
Truthfully, this didn’t sound good to me at all. I didn’t like gambling, and the racetrack always seemed like a dirty, sleazy place. But Lenny really wanted to go, and it was his birthday. So, even though it was against my better judgment, I agreed to go to the track.