Jean and Johnny (4 page)

The plaid shirt emerged from the blur and above it a face, a good-looking face that Jean had seen before and that she now felt too timid to look at for more than an instant. Blushing, she quickly looked away.

Elaine, still clutching Jean's arm, giggled nervously, and the two girls hurried to the stairs, where they ran down the steps to the first floor.

Jean put on her glasses and found it a relief to be once more in a world with clear-cut edges. “Do you think he saw me?” she asked anxiously.

“I don't know, I think so,” said Elaine, with her nervous giggle. Then she sighed. “He's
so
good-looking in that plaid shirt.”

“I don't care,” said Jean. “I'm going to pretend I
never saw him before in my life. If he did see me and remember me, he didn't bother to speak. I am just going to forget the whole thing.”

Jean did not forget, however, and she found that with careful timing she could make her path cross that of the boy several times a day. Each time she snatched off her glasses just before they met, looked straight ahead, and wished she could control the blush that rushed to her cheeks. She wished…she wished a lot of things. She wished that she was the kind of girl people noticed; that she had lots of pretty clothes; that she was three inches taller, two years older, and did not wear glasses.

Elaine did not forget either, and the two girls became tireless collectors of information about the boy. Every afternoon, as they rode home from school on the bus or, if it was not raining, walked so Jean could save her carfare, they compared notes and added to what they had jokingly begun to call his dossier, as if they were characters in a spy movie.

Working together to compile the boy's dossier gave Jean and Elaine the cozy feeling of sharing a delightful secret. Jean had not felt as close as this to Elaine since they were in the fourth grade and
had formed the exclusive TEAJ Club. The letters stood for “The Elaine and Jean Club,” and it was so exclusive that they were the only members. They had printed the initials on badges, which they had worn to school. They enjoyed the attention the badges had attracted from the rest of the fourth grade, but when the attention diminished because their classmates began to suspect that the club had no other members, the club was abandoned.

Jean filed away in her mind every scrap of information that she and Elaine gathered. She learned that the boy had five different plaid woolen shirts—the kind that had to be dry-cleaned. He usually bought the Dagwood Special instead of the regular cafeteria lunch, except on the days when he went across the street with a crowd of boys and ate a hamburger at the Shack.

Elaine, who was bolder than Jean, usually had more information to add to the dossier. He took chemistry—she had seen him coming out of the lab. His name was Johnny Chessler—he had left his notebook on a table in the library, and she had peeked inside. (“Elaine, what if he had
seen
you?”) He knew lots of girls—wouldn't you just know—and he spent a lot of time talking to them in the
halls. He lived at 11 Madrone Lane, high enough in the hills so that his house had a view. His telephone number was Toyon 1-4343—she had looked it up in the telephone book. He had a close friend named Homer Darvey, who was much too short for Elaine (wasn't that just her luck?) and was sort of funny looking, with glasses and crinkly hair, which he wore cut short. She had seen Johnny coming out of a sporting-goods shop with a pair of skis over his shoulder (probably he had rented them for the weekend), and he had driven off in a light blue Chrysler with a white top and license number ENK729. She was sure of the number because she had written it down.

Strangely, once the girls knew Johnny's name, they rarely mentioned it. Johnny was simply “he.” This was due partly to caution (they did not want any of the girls at school to know about their interest in Johnny) and partly to their childish pleasure in sharing a secret. Even at home Jean referred to Johnny, when she felt she had to talk about him, as “that boy who danced with me that time.”

The girls discovered that by riding the bus to the end of the line and climbing four blocks up the hill, they could walk back past Johnny's house,
and this they did. Trying to act as if they were not even looking at the house, they observed it carefully. It was a modern house with a flat roof, and a carport instead of a garage. Because it was built on a steep lot, there was no front lawn but, in its place, a bank covered with low-growing shrubs. Although there was nothing the least bit funny about the house (it was, in fact, a house that both girls admired), Jean and Elaine always burst into a fit of giggles when they were safely past it. One Saturday they even made the walking of Dandy, a most surprised dog, an excuse for going past Johnny's house in hopes of catching a glimpse of Johnny. Jean hoped that if Johnny happened to see them he would realize that Dandy had once been a show dog, even though half his tail was missing now.

And with each shred of information that Jean stored away she found it more and more difficult to forget the boy. Johnny Chessler. Johnny. Jean squeezed her memory hard and brought back the remembered scent of soap and clean wool and, with it, the memory of his toe treading on hers. It was not what a girl could call a beautiful memory, but it was a memory that Jean clung to. It was the only memory concerning a boy that she had to cling to.

From the school paper the girls learned that Johnny took part in the Saturday-morning broadcast, called
Hi-times
, that Northgate High presented over the local radio station. After that Jean, whose share of the Saturday housework was dusting and vacuuming the living room, always turned on the radio and listened, dust cloth in hand, for Johnny's voice. When she heard him speak, introducing a record or interviewing a basketball player, she compared his voice with her memory of the voice that had said, “May I have this dance?” She hung on every word.

Then, early in February, there came a few days of sudden spring weather. The sky was blue, with fluffy white clouds sailing above hills green from winter rains. During lunch period students sunned themselves on the high-school steps or strolled about, enjoying the warmth. It was the kind of day that made a girl wish she could throw away all her winter sweaters and skirts and go out and buy a whole new wardrobe of gay cotton dresses.

Jean, who had eaten her lunch, brought from home, with Elaine, who had bought her lunch, was eager to go outdoors and enjoy the false spring day. The two girls walked aimlessly around
the school grounds, enjoying the sunshine and pausing to look at the flowering quince blooming under the windows on the side of the building that got the afternoon sun. The pink blossoms on the bare branches meant that a more lasting spring was not far away. Jean wanted to say to the other trees and shrubs, which were leafless, “Hurry up and bloom!”

It was out at the playing field that the two girls saw Johnny Chessler, with a group of boys who were clowning in the sunshine. They were taking turns seeing how far they could walk on their hands. Confident that Johnny was too busy to notice them, the girls stopped to watch. This time Johnny was wearing his blue plaid shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, and he looked, as always, extremely attractive. Gracefully he bent over, dropped his weight onto his hands, and flipped his feet into the air, spilling change out of his pocket upon the grass. He walked easily ten or twelve feet before he stood up, grinned, and accepted his change from his friend Homer, who had picked it up for him.

The breeze ruffled Jean's bangs. Johnny was
so
attractive. “I wonder how old he is,” she remarked wistfully, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater.

“I know how to find out,” said Elaine.

“How?” asked Jean.

“Ask him,” answered Elaine.

This idea was so farfetched that Jean did not bother to comment.

“And I'm going to,” announced Elaine impulsively.

Jean was aghast. “Elaine! You wouldn't!”

“Yes, I would,” said Elaine, the light of daring in her eyes.

“Elaine!” protested Jean, seeing that her friend meant what she said. “No!”

Her protest was not heeded. Elaine, her head held high, marched across the playing field and through the crowd of boys, who were now playing leapfrog. Jean watched in fascination and consternation until Elaine approached Johnny. Then, because she could not bear to watch any longer, she turned her back and began to walk toward the main building, hoping that if Johnny glanced in her direction he would not think she and Elaine were together. She wanted no part of this latest inspiration of Elaine's. Sometimes you'd think it was Elaine with whom Johnny had danced.

Jean climbed the steps and entered the building, its nearly empty corridors seeming like dark tun
nels after the bright spring sunlight. She walked to her locker and had just finished twirling the combination on the lock when she heard Elaine's hurried footsteps.

“Jean!” Elaine gasped, her face crimson from hurrying and from excitement. “I did it!” She leaned back against the row of lockers and clasped her notebook to her chest. “Just wait till I tell you!”

“Elaine, you didn't tell him I wanted to know, did you?” demanded Jean.

“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” said Elaine, taking a big breath. Apparently she had a lot to tell. Either that, or she was enjoying making a big anecdote out of a small experience. “Well, I walked across the playing field and through this bunch of boys clowning around, and I walked up to him—he was standing by the backstop—and I stood right in front of him. He was talking to some fellows and he didn't notice me. Well, there I was, and I had to do something with all the other fellows looking at me, so I reached out and poked his arm with my finger as if I was ringing a doorbell or something—his sleeve was rolled up and his arm was brown and sort of hairy,
you
know—and all the fellows stopped talking and looked at me. Honestly, I just
about
died
! But there I was, and I had to do something, didn't I?”

“You said that before,” Jean reminded her.

“And so I just came right out with it. ‘How old are you?' I asked. And wait till I tell you what he said!”

Jean waited.

“He grinned sort of a lazy grin and said—these were his exact words—‘I'm seventeen, but tell
her
I'm nineteen.' And I said, ‘Thank you,' and got away as fast as I could.” Elaine, her story at an end, was out of breath.

“Oh—” was all that Jean could say. What did Johnny mean? That he had missed none of it—the strolls through the upstairs hall to catch a glimpse of him, the giggling, whispered conferences when they had seen him? Probably he had seen Elaine write down his license number and thought that Jean had asked her to spy on him. “Oh, Elaine,” said Jean miserably. “Why did you have to go and do it? He probably thought I asked you to.”

“But don't you see?” said Elaine. “He has noticed you!”

“I guess he couldn't help it, the way we watched him and giggled as if we had never seen a boy before,” said Jean in a flat voice. “Well, now we
know we aren't invisible. We must have thought we were. Let's just forget the whole thing.” It wasn't as though she had ever really known Johnny, or anything like that. To him, she was just a girl he had danced with once (but why?
why?
) and now he must think she was a very silly person. And he would be right. She
was
silly.

“I don't see why you feel that way,” said Elaine. “I thought you would be pleased that he had noticed you. I would be.”

“I am never going to look at him again,” resolved Jean. “Well, my next class is in the annex. I guess I might as well go out before the halls are mobbed.”

“If that's the way you feel,” said Elaine humbly, “I am terribly sorry. I just thought…”

Jean walked toward the bright square of light made by the open door at the end of the corridor. Students were beginning to straggle in from outdoors. Automatically Jean nodded and spoke to acquaintances, but her mouth and eyes refused to smile. How could she ever have behaved as she had? Why, everyone in school must know she had a crush on Johnny! And everyone must know how hopeless it was, because Johnny was a senior, attractive and popular in his collection of expensive
woolen shirts. And who was she? Just a fifteen-year-old girl, small for her age, and noticed by practically no one at all.

As Jean walked through the doorway and emerged from the dark hall into the sunlight, she almost had to close her eyes because of the sudden brightness. At the foot of the steps, as she was turning toward the annex, she bumped into a boy. “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped to the right. Unfortunately, the boy stepped to his left at the same moment. Then they both stepped to Jean's left and Jean was suddenly aware that she was facing a blue plaid shirt. This boy was Johnny.

“Say, what is this, a minuet?” asked Johnny, and then smiled when he recognized Jean. It was a genuine smile, warm and friendly. “Oh—hi,” he said. “How's the cute girl?”

“Hi,” answered Jean, and fled toward her classroom in the annex. She wondered where she had found the breath to speak that one syllable, because now she could scarcely breathe. Johnny had smiled and had actually spoken to her! He had called her a cute girl. Maybe Elaine was right after all. Maybe she ought to be pleased that Johnny had noticed her.

As she slipped into her seat, Jean's emotions
were in a snarl. Johnny had remembered her, or anyway noticed her at school, and now he had smiled and spoken and called her a cute girl. Nobody had ever called her a cute girl before. Cute? What did it really mean? It was a word she had often used carelessly, like all the other girls, but she had never thought of it as a boy's word. Kittens were cute. Puppies were cute. Hats were cute.

Jean slid out of her seat and walked to the dictionary on the stand by the blackboard. She turned toward the end of the
C
's and ran her finger down the columns until she came to the word
cute
. She studied the definition intently: “cute (kut), adj., cuter, cutest. 1.
U.S. Colloq
. Pleasingly pretty or dainty.” Pleasingly pretty or dainty. Then the word really was a compliment!