So I got used to seeing Mom around the library three afternoons a week and that kind of kept her a little more busy. She’s been writing short stories too, in her spare time, and been sending them off to magazines. It must be awful to be old and to think you’ve got to do something worthwhile. I wish I had more time to do the things I want to do, worthwhile or not. You wouldn’t catch me looking for more things to do.
Me and Laura have been going bicycle riding after school around the subdivision. Sometimes Sally and Jennifer come along too. Laura has a crush on Billy McLaren and she found out where he lives, so we keep going up and down his street if there’s just the two of us. She’s hoping he’ll come out sometime and notice her. Once he did come out of his house as we were going by, but he just ignored us, the snot!
There’s going to be a dance at the school next Friday night. Half the kids in the school are going, even some of the grade sixes. Nancy Goren and Michelline Lachute have been asked to go. Like, I mean, some guys have asked them. On dates, you know. The rest of the kids are going themselves. I mean, without dates. Me and Laura aren ’t going. Who wants to go to a school dance anyway and see the same old kids you see every day bouncing around. They’re a bunch of halfwits anyway, half of them.
Some of them are so stuck-up. They won’t talk to you at all. They flirt with the boys, and yesterday in the library I saw Bruce McLeod pull Rosemary Brown’s brassiere strap. I’ve seen Rosemary Brown get her behind smacked too, by Ted Pinter, and she just laughed. Laura doesn’t believe me, but I saw it. Rosemary Brown’s got a bad reputation, but I won’t add to it. I didn’t tell anyone but Laura and she doesn’t believe me anyway.
When I got home from school this afternoon, Mom was just getting back from the GlenAyr Public Library, through the park. She volunteers there one afternoon a week. She told me that one of her friends is worried about her daughter.
“Isn’t Debra Pointer in your class, Dear?” she asked me.
“Not in my class, Mom. She’s in grade seven. I see her sometimes in the area though. Why?”
“Her mother tells me that she’s really depressed. Debra, that is. She says she has no friends. Her only friend moved away last month and she hasn’t made another. And she’s unhappy because she says all the girls in her class have been asked to go to a school dance, but she hadn’t been. I told her that you never go to the dances. That you don’t want to. She doesn’t know what to do with her daughter. Could you talk to her at school?”
“Oh, Mom! I can’t. We don’t have the same classes or anything. She’ll adjust.”
But I felt kind of bad about Debra, she’s a nice girl, quiet and pleasant what I’ve seen of her, so I told Mom I was going out bicycle riding. I was glad to go anyway because Larry was blasting away on that damn horn, driving me crazy.
I rode over to Debra’s place ‘way over the other side of the subdivision, where the newer houses are, and I invited her out bicycling. Then I told her to come over after dinner for a while and her mother said she could. When I got back home I told Mom what I had done and she was so happy. That’s kind of funny. She hugged me and said I was so sensitive. Boy, that’s not that she calls me when we have an argument.
When Debra came over I introduced her to Mom who said she looks just like her mother. Then I introduced Deb to Grumpkin and Munchkin, my two adorable Guinea Pigs. We took one apiece outside and fooled around on the grass in the backyard with them for a while. They kept trying to get through the cedar hedges to next door. Stupid things! There’s a sneaky cat on one side and a yappy dog on the other. You’d think they’d stay home where they’d be safe. Well, we had balls of fun with the pigs, then we went upstairs to my bedroom.
We had to shut the door because Larry was piping away on his recorders behind his shut door. He’s so inconsiderate sometimes. He could have gone downstairs to the recreation room. But it’s impossible to tell him something like that. He just says, so nicely, drop dead.
I let Deb pick some bead colours she liked, then I showed her how to make a ring. While she was doing it, I talked with her about the dances.
“You mean”, she said, “you don’t ever go to the dances?”
“No”, I said. “What for? Do you like to dance?”
”No”, she said slowly. “I don’t even know how to. But everyone goes. I’m almost the only one in my class that doesn’t.”
“Do you like all the kids that go? Is that why you want to go?”
“No, I don’t really like them all that much. I thought that that was what everyone wanted to do. Don’t you?”
“No, why should I? If they’re a bunch of drips in class, they’re the same at a dance. If they ignore you at school, what makes you think it’ll be any different at a dance? Only it’ll be worse then, because you’re there to dance and have fun and how can you if everyone ignores you? You’ve got to be one of the crowd to really have fun and I’m not. Are you?”
“I’m not one of any crowd. My only best friend moved away and I don’t seem to fit in anywhere.”
“Well, look Deb, don’t worry about the dances. They’re not important. The kids just think they are. If there were a bunch of kids you liked and wanted to be with you could have fun there, but most of them just go to show off and they want to be admired for the clothes they wear and the way they behave. It’s not important.”
I don’t know if I convinced her by the time she went home, but she was smiling more than when she had come over. Really, I can’t figure it out myself, whether I’d like to go to the dances, but when I think of the kids who go to them, I don’t think I do.
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