CHAPTER TWENTY

On a Fine, late September morning, Barrie Grover was dozing through her boring history class when her friend Michelle passed her a note. It was a newspaper clipping, actually, a gossip column about celebrities, and it said that TV star Mad Daddy and his wife Elaine were acting silly and going splitsville. It was the first the girls had heard that he even had a wife. Michelle had circled the item in red pencil and written in the margin: “Maybe you’re next?????”

Barrie Grover nearly went into shock. It was all she could do to contain herself until the class was over. Then she pushed her way through the kids into the hall and grabbed Michelle.

“My God! He’s getting divorced!”

“I wonder what she’s like,” Michelle said.

“I wonder if he’s got somebody else,” Barrie said.

“You’d better hurry up and meet him now,” Michelle said.

“What about you?”

“I don’t want to marry him, for heaven’s sake. He’s old enough to be my father.”

“You never used to mind that.”

“Oh, I was just a kid then.”

“Imagine being Mrs. Mad Daddy,” Barrie mused, transported.

“Will you invite us over to your house?”

“Sure I will. You and that kid you’re going to be married to.” They both giggled at the fantasy of Barrie married to Mad Daddy and playing hostess to the former Mad Daddy Fan Club of Kew Gardens. The bell rang for their next class and Barrie decided to cut it. She put her books into her locker and sneaked out of the building. It was a clear, beautiful day, the air crystal clear, the sun shining, but not too hot. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to fade at the edges. She walked a block to the Pancake House, where the kids usually hung out, and went in. It was almost empty, being the middle of a class, and too early for lunch. She sat in a booth at the back, put a quarter into the miniature jukebox beside the table, and selected two happy songs. The waitress was setting tables and ignored her, as usual. She didn’t mind because she was too excited to eat anything anyway, and she wanted to think about this new extraordinary development.

Mad Daddy had a wife, and he was getting a divorce! It made him seem more like a real person now. She was just dying to know what his wife looked like, how old she was, was she funny too. Or maybe she was a good laugher. Barrie drifted into a fantasy of actually meeting him, of telling him who she was, and of him saying of course he knew, because he had read and appreciated all her notes and letters. Then he would really look at her, as if noticing her for the first time, and he would ask her if she would like to go for a cup of coffee. They would sit there and talk and talk. They would gaze into each other’s eyes. They would realize that they really understood each other like no one had understood either of them before. He would fall in love with her because she was loyal, sensitive and true. They would get married. They would never be separated again. She would sit there at each and every one of his shows, right in the front row. Everyone would know that he was dedicating the show to her.

She had to stop living in fantasies and figure how to make them come true. The first thing would be to get a ticket to be in the audience at his show, and get a seat in the first row, and try to make him notice her. No, that wouldn’t work. The kids always mobbed him, and they had all those nasty guards that kept you away from him. The only way to meet him would be to find him after a show, when the guards weren’t around and get to speak to him. She knew that if she could only speak to him and tell him who she was that they could be friends.

During her next class she would write him a letter. She started composing it in her head. She would tell him more of her secret thoughts, how she had been maturing and changing, what she had discovered about life, and he would think she was astonishingly bright and perceptive for a kid who had just turned fifteen. Maybe she would send him her picture. Then when he saw her he would recognize her without her having to tell him.

She looked at the clock above the counter and realized she was too late for the next class, too. Where did the time go? The Pancake House started filling up with kids, the ones who had spending money and couldn’t stand to eat the school lunches.

“Is anybody sitting here?”

They were all strangers, and they wanted her booth. She nodded shyly and slipped out of the booth, letting the noisy couples crowd in. All those older kids going steady, holding hands over their hamburgers, saying dumb things, proud of themselves because they had someone to be in love with and that gave them status. She hated them. She was above it all. She was going to meet Mad Daddy, a man who was old enough to get married, not just fool around being engaged to be engaged, and she would never have to be a lonely, ignored outcast again.