“Did you hear the latest?” Jane asked me when we were through watching Cheeky, and we went up to her bedroom.
“What’s that?” I asked her. Jane doesn’t usually gossip much, and we kind of have different friends, anyway.
“Well”, she said, and her voice dropped very low, and she kind of sidled up closer to me: “June Parker - she’s a kid in my class - she said she saw Mr. Farraday and Miss Blount coming out of the teachers’ lounge and they were holding hands!”
“Hey, that’s interesting, all right! Is that all?"
“Well, I don’t know. One of the other kids says she saw them snuggling together one day, and he kissed her. I don’t know how she saw them, or anything, but she said she did. I trust June Parker though, she’s my friend and she doesn’t lie.”
“Well, I don’t see anything wrong with that, anyway. They’re both nice and good-looking and neither one is married. That’s very romantic, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is. But I can tell you a lot of the girls are going to be awfully disappointed, if it’s true. Haven’t you ever seen how some of the older girls act around him? They’ve all got crushes on him.”
“Yeah, sure I have. So what? He is awfully cute.”
“Wellll, when June told us, a group of us kids who hang out together you know, one of my friends’ name is Miriam Waddington, I don’t think you know her, well, she got all upset and ran out of the library and went into the washroom. June went after her, I didn’t want to, she’s June’s best friend, and she said she was crying like anything.
That’s what I mean. Some of the girls have a stupid crush on him. He’s a real heartbreaker. He encourages the girls to moon around after him too, like he’s always kidding around with them, you know?”
“Oh well, that’s too bad. She’ll get over it, though. She’s just a kid and he’s old.”
“He’s not all that old, you know. Anyway, haven’t you got any sympathy? She’s in LOVE with him! That’s what she says, anyway.”
“She’s too young to be in love, she’s just mad he’s interested in someone his own age. She’s just a kid, after all.”
“I don’t know. She’s over fourteen. That’s not so young. My parents met when they were around sixteen or something and then they went around with each other all the time.”
“Look, she was probably crying more from the cigarette smoke in that washroom than from being upset. Anyway, my mom says girls our age like to be emotional, she calls it being melodramatic.”
“Maybe, but she’s really old for her age, and everything. What if she was so upset she did something stupid?”
“Like what? Put a tack on his chair?”
“Ha-ha, fun-ny! No, I mean like commit suicide, or something.”
“Jane, you can’t be serious! Who would be that stupid?”
“Sure, I know it sounds stupid. But I think it’s beautifully romantic. And you never can tell what people will do when they’re in love, and the other person doesn’t love them. It’s very dramatic. I read a book once about unrequited love.”
There’s just no accounting for some tastes. Anyway, I hope Mr. Farraday and Miss Blount do hit it off. Maybe then she’ll start to be in a better mood and stop picking on me and Jennifer.
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