Jean and Johnny (13 page)

“Just fling them to the winds,” answered Jean. She and her sister rarely spent money on Cokes. Money, they had learned, could quickly be dribbled away on little things that had no real value.

Having made up their minds, Jean and Sue walked into Snow's, an establishment that was part candy store and part soda fountain. “Mmm. Smell the chocolate,” remarked Jean, as she chose a small booth. When the waitress, who wore a starched
bow on top of her head, handed her a menu, she read it, because it made such delicious reading, even though she knew she had only a dime to spend. She felt luxurious just reading the prices.

When the waitress had taken Jean's and Sue's orders, two women sat down in a booth that was separated from the girls' by a shoulder-high partition. While the pair settled themselves, Jean noticed that they were both well dressed and had smart haircuts. The face of one of the women was unnaturally pink, as if she might have spent part of the afternoon under a hair dryer. She wore a neckpiece made of the skins of several small animals biting one another's tails, which she pushed back as if she did not enjoy the feel of the fur against her flushed skin. The other woman wore an expensively simple black dress, a choker of pearls, and a flowery hat.

The waitress set two Cokes on small plates covered with paper doilies and placed two paper-covered straws in front of Jean and Sue. The girls smiled at each other across the table. A dress in an elegant box on the seat beside Jean, Cokes served on paper doilies—so much luxury for one afternoon!

“The
calories
,” murmured Fur Neckpiece across
the partition, as she studied the menu.

Once more Jean and Sue exchanged glances, this time of amusement. Jean felt a little smug, because she did not have to worry about calories. She had a trim little figure. The clerk said so. Slowly she pulled the wrapper from the straw. The cute girl with the trim little figure was enjoying herself, and she wanted to make the Coke last as long as she could.

“Oh, well, I feel reckless,” said Flowery Hat. “I'm going to have a hot fudge sundae and let the calories fall where they may.”

“On me they always fall in the wrong place,” answered Fur Neckpiece, “but I think I'll have one too, and just feel guilty while I eat it.”

Jean felt sorry for the two women, who could afford hot fudge sundaes but could not wholeheartedly enjoy them. Poor things. It must be dreadful to be middle-aged, able to afford those nice fat-toning sweets, and have to worry about calories. How much nicer to be fifteen and have a trim little figure!

“Tell me,” said Flowery Hat, “how is that handsome son of yours?”

Fur Neckpiece laughed lightly. “He's still the same old charmer.”

“Madly pursued by all the girls?” asked Flowery Hat.

“Oh, my, yes,” answered Fur Neckpiece, in mock weariness. “And by one girl in particular. Poor little thing.”

“Doesn't he like her?” Flowery Hat asked.

Fur Neckpiece poured hot fudge from a pitcher over her ice cream. “I suppose he is flattered. After all, what boy wouldn't be? It is really too funny for words. She has a friend, and the two of them walk past our house, although I am sure they live nowhere near—probably they hope to run into him—and they giggle.”

Jean let her straw stand in her Coke. She knew with a terrible certainty who the girl was they were talking about. Jean Jarrett was being gossiped about over two hot fudge sundaes. If only Sue were not there to listen, too.

“And she invents excuses to telephone,” Fur Neckpiece continued. “When I was a girl I wouldn't have dreamed of telephoning a boy. I didn't have to. They telephoned me.”

“What is the girl like?” asked Flowery Hat.

“Oh, just a girl—no one you would ever notice,” answered Fur Neckpiece.

Jean had no appetite for her Coke. This could
not be Johnny's mother, because things like this did not happen, but who else could she be? Everything she said fitted like—like that shoe everybody said you should wear if it fits. This shoe was custom-made.

“She even asked him to go to a school dance,” Fur Piece went on.

Jean lifted her eyes to Sue, who was looking at the doily under her Coke while she sipped through her straw. Sue's face was grave.

“Of course the dance is girl's choice, but she asked him so far ahead he had to say yes.” Fur Piece poured more hot fudge over her ice cream and scraped out the pitcher with her spoon.

“I think your new dress is terribly becoming,” said Sue, in a clear voice, because she did not want to give the two women the impression that she and Jean were eavesdropping.

“Yes, isn't it?” Jean managed to say, and missed part of the conversation in the next booth. Once more Jean looked at Sue, whose face was filled with concern. If Sue is going to start being sympathetic, I can't bear it, Jean thought. I simply can't bear it.

“He's really a very good-natured boy,” the mother of the charmer was saying. “But he was
hoping another girl would ask him. Of course, there wasn't much he could do when this girl asked him so far in advance.”

Was two weeks too far ahead? Surely not, but Jean was not certain, because she had never asked a boy to go to a dance before. Jean longed to look more closely at the boy's mother, but she did not dare turn her head. And then the wild thought crossed her mind that perhaps the woman had recognized her as the girl who walked past Johnny's house and giggled. Perhaps she was saying all this for her particular benefit.

Jean longed to say to Sue, Come on, let's leave, but her tongue felt too stiff to speak, her feet too heavy to walk. When she picked up her Coke, her hands shook so that the ice rattled in the glass, and she had to set it down again. And there was Sue, beginning to look sympathetic. Jean longed to melt and disappear with her ice. Her world had been reduced to ravelings.

“Poor Roger,” remarked Flowery Hat. “He will always be pursued by girls.”

Roger
. The boy they were talking about was not named Johnny! His name was Roger. Jean's relief was so enormous it left her feeling weak. Those two women were not talking about her at all. They
were talking about some other girl. Some other girl entirely. Jean lifted her Coke with hands that still trembled, and took a small sip through her straw. She looked across the table at Sue and saw relief written on her face, too. Jean managed a feeble smile.

“Yes, I suppose girls always will chase him,” agreed Fur Piece.

There was no reason why Jean should continue to listen to this conversation, but she was so fascinated she could not help herself.

“It seems to me that Roger is old enough to take care of himself,” said Flowery Hat, and added, with amusement in her voice, “Are you sure you aren't afraid he likes her?”

“Oh, really!” Fur Piece was impatient.

This exchange boosted Jean's spirits enough to allow her to look at Sue, who had finished her Coke with an expressionless face that showed she was concealing what she felt. “Shall we go?” asked Jean.

The girls left the booth and paid their check at the cash register by the candy counter. The gaiety and anticipation that Jean had felt when she entered Snow's was gone, and the fragrance of chocolate now seemed too warm and too sweet.
She felt the incident looming between herself and Sue.

“Talk about ups and downs,” said Jean, as they walked toward the bus stop. “I have really had it today.” When Sue was silent, she burst out, “Why don't you say it? It might as well have been me they were talking about.”

“But it wasn't you.” Sue's voice was gentle.

“I know.” But as they boarded the bus a voice within Jean repeated, It might as well have been you. There was little comfort in knowing she was not the only girl who had chased a boy.

Jean found a seat, clasped her arms around her dress box, and rested her chin on it. She wondered if Johnny really wanted to go to the dance with her after all. What had he said? “Sure, Jean, I'll go with you.” As if he was bestowing a favor upon her. And perhaps he was. He knew lots of girls, and she didn't know many boys. It just happened that Johnny was the first boy who had ever paid any attention to her.

And as Jean looked back over the past weeks she realized that the attention Johnny had paid her had not been worth the uneasy vigils in the halls at school, or the ordeal of asking him to go to the dance. Why, trying to find the right moment to ask
him to go to the dance had actually spoiled some of her fun in her small part in the variety show. No, Johnny's condescending, “Sure, Jean, I'll go with you,” was not worth the strain between herself and Sue, Elaine's hurt feelings, her father's concern.

“Jean, don't feel that way,” begged Sue, when they got off the bus. “You are lucky, you know.”

“I am?” said Jean. “I thought you didn't like Johnny.”

“I don't much,” admitted Sue.

“Then why do you say I'm lucky?” asked Jean.

Sue smiled. “When I was fifteen I liked a boy. It seems funny now. He was a tackle on the football team—all chest and not many brains—the kind who stood on the front steps at school and bragged. I thought he was wonderful and cut out his picture every time it was in the paper and tagged him around all semester. He knew I liked him, but nothing ever happened. So you see, you are luckier than I was.”

“Why, Sue!” Jean had never suspected her sister of this sort of behavior.

“You were in junior high then,” said Sue. “I finally caught on that I really was pretty miserable and that at least half the boys at school didn't even seem to
be interested in girls. There didn't seem to be anything anyone could do about it, and I decided next time I would wait for a boy to come along who liked me. Everybody meets somebody sometime, even if it doesn't happen when you are a sophomore. And then one day Kenneth waited for me in the library and everything turned out the way I had dreamed it would. But just the same it would have been nice to have had one date with that tackle.”

Jean laughed. “I used to see those clippings from the sport section. I thought it was school spirit, and it really was love.”

“
Crush
is a better word,” said Sue. “Or maybe it was rocks in my head or a bee in my bonnet. Anyway, it wasn't love.”

As the girls entered their house, Jean thought Sue sounded as if she was sure now that she knew what love was. Jean went into the bedroom and was distracted from her thoughts by the sight of a flat box wrapped in Christmas paper and tied with a red ribbon, lying on her bed. That box, so inappropriate to a warm spring day, saddened Jean. It told her that no matter how she had treated Elaine, Elaine's heart was big enough to want her to have the snapshot of Johnny.

Jean dropped her dress box on the bed, sat
down, and read the card on Elaine's package. “Merry Christmas to Jean from Elaine.” That was all. No joking remark, no funny note. Carefully Jean untied the ribbon and rolled it up to save for a small package next Christmas. The candy-cane paper, she decided, was not large enough to save, so she tore it off the box. Inside, as she had expected, lay a snapshot on a cushion of crumpled tissue paper. Jean picked it up and studied it. Johnny did look so natural and so handsome as he smiled into the camera. Johnny…he was so attractive…if
only
…Jean broke off that train of thought to study herself in the snapshot. She looked strained as she faced Johnny and at the same time tried to look at the camera—strained and unhappy, and that was how she had felt, too. And that was how she must have appeared to Elaine and Homer and all of Johnny's friends on the steps of the school that day.

“What's that?” asked Sue curiously, as she entered the bedroom.

“Just a joke,” answered Jean, rising from the bed and dropping the snapshot into her top drawer. “Just a silly joke.” Jean knew then that she no longer wanted to take Johnny to the dance.

Jean, who had found it difficult to invite a boy to go to a dance, found the problem of uninviting him even more difficult. She turned the matter over in her mind all through supper. She was only vaguely conscious of what her father was saying.

“There is this new family on my route,” Mr. Jarrett was saying, “with a little boy—he must be about four years old—and this morning he stopped me and said, ‘Mr. Mailman, have you seen my dog? He didn't come home last night.'”

Jean was thinking she could hardly go up to Johnny in the hall and say, Excuse me, Johnny, but I don't want to go to the dance with you. A girl couldn't come right out and say a thing like that.
She should have an excuse like—like breaking a leg, or being called out of town, or catching the measles.

“And when I reached the bottom of the hill near the end of my route,” Mr. Jarrett went on, “another little fellow ran out to meet me. He said, ‘Mr. Mailman, see my dog.' He was leading the first little boy's dog by a piece of clothesline tied to its collar.”

“What did you do?” asked Sue.

“I had a little talk with the boy's mother. She said she would take the dog back to the first boy in her car, but since her own boy was so happy about the dog, she would get him another.”

“A dog that likes mailmen, of course,” said Mrs. Jarrett.

Jean smiled absently, more because she was aware her father had finished an anecdote than because she had really listened.

“What's on your mind, Jean?” asked Mr. Jarrett.

“Is something on my mind?” Jean asked, embarrassed that her father had noticed her lack of interest.

“Something is bothering you,” answered her father.

Maybe this was one of the times a family could
help. “Well…I have decided I don't want to take Johnny to the dance after all,” said Jean reluctantly, “and I don't know what to do about it.”

“But why, dear?” asked Mrs. Jarrett.

“I just don't, is all,” answered Jean, searching for an answer to give her mother. “I don't think it would be any fun.”

“Of course it would,” said Mrs. Jarrett. “Jean, you have to get over being so shy sometime. Sue is having such a good time with Kenneth. I think you should have some fun too.”

“Mother, it isn't because I am shy,” insisted Jean. “I—I just don't want to go, is all. Anyway, it is different with Ken and Sue.”

“But, dear, you have asked him and he has accepted,” said Mrs. Jarrett. “You can't break a date just because you have changed your mind. How would you feel if a boy treated you that way?”

“He did, sort of,” said Jean. “That night he was supposed to come over.”

“You don't really know the circumstances of that evening,” Mrs. Jarrett pointed out. “There is no reason to believe he wasn't telling the truth.”

“I suppose not,” said Jean hopelessly. A girl could not tell her mother that she had chased a
boy, and that she was hurt by his condescending acceptance of her invitation. Funny little girl. Sure, I'll go with you. How could she explain that?

“You wear your pretty dress and your new shoes and take him to the dance and have a good time,” said Mrs. Jarrett.

“Your mother is right—not that I ever thought much of this fellow Johnny,” said Jean's father. “But it wouldn't be right to break the date. Take him this time and let that be the end of it. You don't have to go out with him again.”

Reluctantly Jean admitted that her mother and father were probably right. Later, in the kitchen, when she and Sue were washing and wiping the supper dishes, Jean whispered, “I couldn't tell them Johnny probably wouldn't even care.”

“It will be all right,” answered Sue reassuringly. “Four hours isn't forever, and after that you can drop him. Anyway, those women weren't talking about you.”

“They might as well have been,” said Jean unhappily, as she polished a glass. “You know that.”

“You take things too hard,” said Sue. “Maybe it wasn't that way at all. You heard only the woman's version of the story.”

“Maybe.” When you were fifteen, it seemed difficult to take things any other way.

When the dishes were dried and put away, Jean picked up a letter she had received from her Japanese pen pal that afternoon and walked over to the Mundys' house to try to make amends for the way she had treated Elaine. “Hi, Elaine,” she said when her friend opened the door. “I thought I would run over and thank you for the Christmas present. You certainly got the pictures developed in a hurry. Wasn't it simply awful of me?”

“Come on in.” Elaine seemed glad to see Jean. “It was good of Johnny, though.”

Jean saw that Elaine was alone. “Elaine—I'm terribly sorry about the way I treated you the day we took the snapshots. I should have asked you to go around to the playing field too.”

“Oh, that's all right,” said Elaine. Apologies were as embarrassing to receive as to give.

“Besides,” said Jean quickly, to bring an end to the awkward moment, “I brought over a letter I received this afternoon from my Japanese pen pal. I thought you might like to read it. She wants to know if Northgate is near Hollywood. I guess she doesn't realize how big California is.”

Elaine took the letter and began to read. “Well,
what do you know!” She laughed and looked up from the letter. “She says she is ‘particularly interesting in knowing how coeds make date with boys.' Only she spells it
d-e-t-e
. What are you going to tell her?”

The humorous side of this question had not struck Jean until this moment. “You know, that might be a little difficult to explain,” she said, and began to laugh.

Elaine giggled. “You can never explain it in one letter. You will have to write an encyclopedia.”

Laughing with Elaine helped to erase Jean's worries. “It would take a whole volume to tell how I made a date with Johnny. And now that I have bought a new dress, at Northgate Apparel, too, by the way, and some pumps with heels, I have changed my mind about wanting to take him.”

“You're crazy,” said Elaine flatly. “Absolutely mad.” Then she added, in a voice that expressed her eagerness for information, “What made you change your mind?”

“I just did,” answered Jean vaguely. “I got to thinking that Johnny didn't really care whether he went with me or not.”

“But that is not the point,” protested Elaine. “The point is that even if you know he doesn't
really want to go with you, or even if you don't want to go with him, you should go so that you will be seen. Lots of girls would like to go with Johnny, and everybody knows it. And if you are seen at a school dance with him, everybody will think you rate. And maybe somebody else will ask you the next time.”

Perhaps Elaine was right. A girl never would have any fun if she did not make the most of whatever opportunities came her way. But Johnny as an opportunity had not really come Jean's way. She had run after him. Jean wished she were not so uncertain about everything.

“Besides, you have a new dress,” Elaine pointed out practically. “And a pair of pumps with heels.”

“Yes, there is the dress,” agreed Jean. Her lovely plain dress with the shoes tinted to match the sash. Where would she ever wear them if she did not wear them to the dance?

“I think you are lucky,” said Elaine. “I don't have anyone to ask at all. Oh, sure, I know some boys, but if I asked one of them to go to a dance with me he would probably run away screaming.”

“Oh, Elaine, don't be silly,” said Jean.

“Maybe not screaming exactly,” admitted Elaine, “but he would probably be thinking like mad to
make up an excuse. I couldn't stand to see him suffer.”

“Oh, Elaine,” protested Jean, not wanting her friend, who had so many good qualities, to have such a low estimate of herself.

“It's true. I don't know a single boy who would like to go to a dance with me.” Whenever Elaine was gloomy she was thoroughly gloomy. “Oh, well, you know me. I always like to see the young people have a good time.” Elaine attempted to be jaunty about the whole thing. “You go to the dance and tell me about it.”

Laughing at Elaine raised Jean's spirits sufficiently to enable her to decide, I will go. She would go and wear her dress and have what fun she could and after that she would never go out of her way for Johnny again.

“Anyway, things will be better next semester,” said Elaine, “because I have decided to learn to play the flute.”

“The flute!” Jean could not help laughing. Elaine did have some of the wildest ideas. “How will that help?”

“If I can play the flute I can play in the band,” said Elaine. “And the band is full of boys—a lot of them tall. And the band has a lot of fun. It even
gets to go on trips sometimes. Maybe none of the boys will notice me, but at least I'll belong to something and be doing something and not just wandering around like a lost soul dreaming about a television singer. Besides, a flute is easy to carry.”

“You know, Elaine,” said Jean, “I think you have something there. I haven't felt so left out since I joined the Costume Club.”

Elaine whistled
Yankee Doodle
into an imaginary flute. “Weren't we silly back in the days when we used to dream about Kip Laddish?” she asked, and both girls found this remark extremely funny.

On Monday, after school, Jean, who found that her change in attitude toward Johnny gave her a feeling of independence toward him, did not linger in her clothing classroom in the hope of meeting him on her way out of the building. She managed not to see him at all that day. On Tuesday afternoon he was waiting for her when she came out.

“Oh—hi,” said Jean, with more calm than she had ever felt before in speaking to Johnny.

“Hi, there,” Johnny answered, looking down at her with a disarming smile. “I've missed you.”

“Have you?” answered Jean with composure, while she thought, Have you really, Johnny, or are
you just saying it? This new detachment toward Johnny gave her ego a tremendous boost. Who was Johnny Chessler anyway? Just a boy.

“Say…Jean,” Johnny hesitated, and then, leaning lazily against a locker, smiled down at her. “I know you aren't going to believe what I am going to say.”

Jean returned his smile. “Probably not,” she said lightly. Even though her feelings toward him had changed, she still found him attractive.

“My grandmother is pretty sick,” said Johnny, “and I am not going to be able to go to the dance Saturday night. Dad says it wouldn't be right for me to go when she is so sick, and all.”

Jean felt her face turn scarlet. Why,
why
hadn't she broken the date first? Now no one would ever believe she had wanted to break it, even if she told anyone, which, of course, now she could never do. His grandmother! Jean was suddenly more angry than hurt, not because he was breaking the date, but because he was offering such a flimsy excuse.

“Anyone with your imagination should be able to think up a better excuse,” she told him.

“See?” said Johnny. “You don't believe me, do you?”

“No, Johnny,” said Jean levelly. “I don't believe
you, but it is all right. You don't have to go to the dance with me.”

Surprise flickered across Johnny's face. He had expected Jean to show disappointment, to protest, perhaps to plead. That glimpse of surprise helped to support Jean's pride. “And now I am going to tell you something
you
won't believe,” she said, pleased with her unexpected poise. “I have been wanting to break the date with you.” She noted more than a flicker of surprise on Johnny's face.

Johnny smiled his lazy smile. “How come?” he asked. “How come you have changed your mind?”

Jean looked Johnny straight in the eye. “Because I have thought it over and decided I don't want to go with you because you don't really want to go with me.”

“You have more spunk than I thought you had.” Johnny grinned, and ran the tip of his finger down Jean's nose. “And you know something?” he drawled. “You're cute when you're mad.”

Oh!
“I'm glad you think so,” answered Jean and, turning, walked away from Johnny with her head held high. Let him laugh if he wanted to. Johnny, she was sure, would not believe her, because it would be difficult for Johnny to believe any girl
did not like him. Nevertheless, she felt better for speaking the words.

Jean hurried down the hall to Elaine's locker.

“Why—hello.” Elaine sounded surprised. “I thought you would be waiting for Johnny.”

“I'm through waiting for Johnny,” answered Jean.

“You didn't break the date after all?” asked Elaine, as she snapped shut the padlock of her locker.

“No, I didn't break it,” said Jean. “Johnny did.”

Elaine turned to face Jean. “Oh, Jean! How awful.”

“It isn't awful at all,” said Jean calmly. “You know I didn't want to go with him. And now I don't have to.”

“But to have
him
break it—” Elaine was so outraged she did not finish the sentence. “I mean, a girl has her pride. He can't treat you that way.” Elaine scowled, and said urgently, “Jean, you've got to go to that dance. You've
got
to go and wear your dress, just to show Johnny! It is bound to get back to him that you went to the dance after all.”

Jean doubted this, but she felt herself infected by the intensity of Elaine's feelings. “But who could I ask?”

“There must be somebody,” said Elaine. “
Think
. Think hard.”

“I'm thinking,” said Jean, “but it doesn't help.” There was that boy in her English class who had been friendly, but he had already been asked, she knew. And a boy in math—no, she didn't know him well enough and besides, she thought he was already going steady. And of course there were no boys at all in Clothing or in the Costume Club.