That same night, I flipped out.
“Is it my turn to drive the carpool tomorrow? Julie told me where everybody lives, but she didn’t say when it would be my turn to pick up. Think, did she drive last Friday? Or did someone pick her up?”
“So much has happened since then,” Elizabeth said. “Seems like a lifetime ago.”
We spent twenty minutes pacing around the den, racking our brains to remember.
Finally, I said, “Let’s go for cigarettes. We’ll never figure this out without them.”
“You can’t run around with tobacco breath. And I promised Julie I’d quit. It’s coming back to me. She drove the carpool on Friday. She had to drop me off at work first, and I was worried about getting the car gassed up for the trip the next day.”
I exhaled relief, wishing it was smoke.
It was Darcy Doyle driving the Dreamsicle who honked in the driveway that Monday, my first day of school as Julie. Wearing a “Julie dress” of the dowdy variety the other in-crowd girls wore, I went out onto the front porch with Julie’s school books in my arms and the fake splint on my finger.
Maylene was the first to greet me. “Your hair’s a mess.”
Knowing I couldn’t answer her without rancor in my voice, I merely smiled.
Laura Meade leaned forward, and I squeezed into the backseat, scared to death and excited out of my skull at the same time.
“It looks like you cut it yourself,” Maylene said.
“I did do a little whacking.”
Laura turned to look at me. “Get thee to a beauty parlor.”
So far, no one seemed to sniff me out. I was on my way to becoming one of the in-crowd. Julie hated Maylene, but she hadn’t done anything to me. I needed her. I intended to use all the energy I could no longer put into sucking on cigarettes to suck up to her. I wanted dear old Maylene in the palm of my hand. This was my chance to be popular, and I was going to make the absolute most of it.
“I’m so glad you’ve swapped your saddle oxfords for loafers,” Maylene said, leaning over and pointing at my shoes.
Another two seconds of skipped heart beats. I’d automatically stepped into my own brown shoes this morning instead of putting on Julie’s. Too many slip-ups would be fatal.
“Thanks, Maylene. I always value your opinions.”
She blinked, surprise on her face.
“But you don’t have pennies in their slots,” Lynn said. “Maybe I’ve got a couple.” She dug around in her purse. “Nope, but I do have a dime. Put it in one of them for now. You can’t run around without money in your loafers. You’ll look like your lookalike.” She shook her head. “I keep forgetting you two are half-sisters. Hope I didn’t hurt your feelings. It’s just that you don’t want to make fashion mistakes like she does.”
I swallowed. “No, no I don’t. But I imagine she thinks the way we dress is a bigger fashion mistake. At least she wears loafers.”
I reached down, ostensibly to put the dime in one of my loafer’s coin slots, but mostly to hide my anxious face. It was hard to talk about me, Carmen, while I was pretending to be Julie.
Laura sat up straight and preened. “Wonder why, with your finger still gimped, Mr. Nesbitt doesn’t just let you sit in study hall during first and second period band class?”
“I guess he thinks I can at least learn the music, even if I can’t play my instrument.”
“You’re a philanderer, you know that?” Maylene said. “I bet you could play that clarinet if you wanted to.”
“The word is ‘malingerer,’ Maylene,” Lynn said in her laidback way from the other side of me. “Miss Bolenbaugh is going to have your head on a spike if she hears you butcher the king’s English like that.”
Maylene blushed to her hairline. This was an opportunity to butter her up. Sitting next to her made it easy to nudge her in the ribs and give her a look that said I wouldn’t have known the difference in the two words either. Her nod back to me said she was pleased. Score one. To hell with how Julie felt about her. In the long run, what I planned to do to cement my friendship with Maylene would benefit Julie too, when she came home.
“Julie, you’re not yourself today,” Lynn commented, a thoughtful look on her face.
My heart did its flutter act, like when Papaw caught me pilfering a cigarette.
“How so?”
She gazed out the window. “Oh, I don’t know. You just seem different, somehow. Forget it. I’m not awake yet.”
The school administration had been informed that I, Carmen, was leaving to go abroad with my folks for the rest of the year.
In the band hall, while they squeaked out the opening of some classical ditty, I, as Julie, surreptitiously studied the worn class schedule Julie had carried in her purse. We both took chemistry, so no problem there. No problem with Bolenbaugh’s English class, unless I used the wrong past participle or something. In American History I could hold my own. As I scanned to the bottom of the paper, alarm bells went off in my head. How had we overlooked her French class? As Carmen, I had been enrolled in the Spanish class. To me, French might as well be Hungarian.
At the break, I rushed up to Mr. Nesbitt.
“I need to be excused,” I told him, casting my eyes downward, as though trying to convey that I was referring to the condition girls didn’t mention to male teachers.
He nodded, and I flew down the steps of the band hall, down the main steps, clear to the office on the first floor.
The clerk, wearing her typical “I hate everybody” face, paid no attention to me. For five whole minutes I stood at the counter, tapping my foot, while she continued arranging schedule cards in a big, green file box.
“’Scuse me,” I said.
She lifted aggravated eyes to me. “Hold your horses, Madam Queen. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I’m going to be late to class,” I said.
“You’re already late. What’s the emergency?”
“I . . . uh . . . I need to drop French and sign up for Spanish.”
Suspicion darkened her face. “Smack in the middle of the semester? And why, pray, would you be allowed to do such a thing?”
“I’m not doing good in French but—”
She cut me off. “You’re not doing well.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I’d be great in Spanish. I already know some. Adios, amigo. That’s Spanish. You have to let me change.”
“No can do. And that’s English.”
“But I have to!”
She got out my file and perused it.
“It says here you’ve got a B average in French.” She looked at me with questioning eyes.
“I . . .” Oh God, what excuse to give? There was no way I could go into that class and convince the teacher I was Julie Morgan when I didn’t know a word of French. “My mother wants me to take Spanish. We might go to Mexico.”
“Note?”
“Wh-what?”
“Do you have a note from a parent stating the reasons why we should move you from French class to Spanish this late in the year?”
I lowered my eyes. “I can get one.”
“Come back when you do. That’s all.”
Beaten, I turned and slunk out of the office. That one class could ruin everything. I had to call Elizabeth—Mama.
The nearest pay phone booth sat across the street in front of the Wildcat Café. No one was allowed to leave school until the first lunch period at eleven thirty. I’d have to scoot over there and pray no one saw me.
A directory hung on a wire beneath the phone. At least I remembered the name of the law firm Elizabeth worked for. I found the five-digit number only to realize I’d left my purse in Julie’s locker. No alternative but to work the dime out of the coin slot of my loafer. The receptionist put me right through.
“Mama,” I began, but she cut me off.
“Julie! What’s wrong? Are you calling long distance?”
“It’s Carmen,” I said under my breath, in case, by some magical means, my voice was being broadcast out into the world.
I could hear her relief. “What’s the problem?”
I told her, and she promised to call the school immediately.
“But it may not work,” she warned. “When Principal Younger says he wants a note, he won’t accept anything else. Oh, Lord! I can’t take much more.”
At that moment, who should come sauntering out of the Wildcat Café but Bubba John Younger. I told Elizabeth I’d call her back and leaped out of the phone booth right into his path. His eyes popped.
“Julie Morgan! What are you up to, sneaking out here to use the pay phone?”
“You sneaked out here yourself, it would appear,” I said with a smirk.
He cocked his head. “My mom says anyone in a small town like El Dorado who uses a pay phone is having an affair. Folks who aren’t up to no good just knock on somebody’s door and ask to make a call.”
Astonished, I blinked.
“I know, I know,” he said, draping one of his big-muscled arms around my shoulders. “You’re not some grown-up sneaking around using pay phones to call your squeeze.” He lost his joviality and peered into my face. “But what the hey are you doing using the pay phone?”
“Bubba John, do you like me?” I asked, turning on the coy approach, complete with batting eye lashes.
He laughed. “A lot more today than I did last week. You’ve changed, girl. Warmed up.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You must have had quite a good weekend.”
If you only knew.
“Listen, Bubba John, would you do me a favor?”
“Sure, honey. The backseat of my car or yours?”
I pulled away from him. “That’s not what I mean.”
“I was afraid of that,” he said with a yuk.
“I need a note to get transferred out of French class. Would you write it for me?”
“You mean get out of French for good? Won’t your mom write it?”
“She will, but she can’t until tonight. I need it now. Today.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Why the big rush?”
I scrambled for a believable explanation. “I’m going to flunk if I have to take the mid-semester test today. I want to take Spanish. I’d be good at that.”
He thought a minute. “If I write this note for you, will you go out with me next Saturday night?”
“It’s a date.”
I grabbed the notebook tucked under his arm and yanked out a clean sheet of paper.
“My old man reads every friggin’ one of these notes, you know. What if he sniffs out that it’s my writing?”
“I’ll risk it, but hurry up. I have to get back up to band class.”
“I guess it’ll be worth a whuppin’ since I’m getting a date with you out of it.”
He took my splinted finger and held it up for examination.
“When you gonna get that bandage off, honey?”
“Four more weeks,” I said, wiggling the finger from his grip.
“At least you won’t be able to fight me off with only one good hand,” he said, giving me the hen-scratched note. “Pick you up at seven, and wear something low cut, will ya? My big fingers are clumsy with the little bitty buttons you girls wear.”