Jean and Johnny (5 page)

Jean, who had been called Midge or Half Pint so often that she had come to think of herself as insignificant, now felt herself blossoming. A boy had called her a cute girl, which meant pleasingly pretty or dainty,
and she had been wearing her glasses
. She began to feel that she really was pleasingly pretty or dainty—in the United States in a colloquial or conversational sense, of course.

Suddenly Jean laughed out loud. Colloquially in
the United States was the very best way for a girl who lived in California to be pleasingly pretty or dainty.

“The dictionary is funny?” remarked the boy in the nearest seat.

“My favorite joke book.” Jean smiled blithely.

“Dames,” muttered the boy, and although he tapped his forehead he returned Jean's smile.

Jean felt as if the boy were noticing her for the first time. Prettily and daintily she slid into her seat.

After the near collision on the steps, Johnny began to speak to Jean whenever he saw her at school. Every word he spoke increased her happiness—someone was noticing her at last. “Hi. How's the cute girl?” he would drawl, while she colored in the light of his smile. Sometimes he would say simply, “Hello, Jean.” This made her even happier, because the words told her that Johnny had taken the trouble to learn her name. She imagined him stopping someone in the hall and asking, “Say, who is that girl over there? The cute one.”

One cloudy afternoon late in February, Jean, quite by accident, made an important discovery. The last class of her day was Clothing I. Her project for this
class was a dress with set-in sleeves, a problem that had given her considerable trouble. No matter how many times she basted those sleeves into the armholes, they persisted in puckering at the shoulders. That afternoon Jean had grimly ripped out her basting threads twice, and by pinning the sleeves every quarter of an inch (so that was the secret!), she finally had them basted smoothly into place.

Jean took her work to Mrs. Rankin, the sewing teacher, to have it approved, but she was put off while her teacher interrupted the class to make an announcement. The Costume Club, whose adviser was Mrs. Rankin, needed members, and anyone who studied Clothing was eligible. Jean, who always thought of clubs as activities for other people but not for herself, paid little attention to this announcement. Sue was taking extra courses in typing and shorthand and did not have time for clubs, and so Jean, used to following in her sister's footsteps, had not thought about joining any clubs either. By waiting with her sewing in hand until Mrs. Rankin was through speaking, Jean finally had her work approved, but by that time the class was nearly over and all the sewing machines were occupied.

Jean made up her mind that she was not going to leave until she had those sleeves stitched into her dress. She was tired of sleeves, she was tired of the dress, and she wanted the whole project out of the way. She whiled away the time tidying her sewing box. This had been an exasperating afternoon.

“Are you going to join the Costume Club?” whispered Mitsuko Yamoto, who sat across the table from Jean.

“No, I don't think so,” said Jean, without thinking at all.

“I am,” said Mitsuko. “Everybody says it is lots of fun to be behind the scenes at the senior play and the variety show and things. The school rents most of the costumes and all the club has to do is press them, fit them, and see that the right people get into them.”

“Come on, Jean, why don't you join?” asked another girl who shared the table.

Someone vacated a sewing machine—fortunately one of the good ones—and Jean, intent on her sleeves, hurried to get it before someone else did and did not bother to answer the girl's question. She stitched slowly and carefully. While she stitched in the right sleeve, the bell rang, but she went on working. She was about to stitch the left
sleeve when Elaine came into the sewing room.

“Oh, there you are,” said Elaine. “I've been looking all over for you. Aren't you going home?”

“Not until I finish this sleeve,” answered Jean. “I have had to rip it out so many times I don't dare try to hurry with it.”

“I guess I'll run along,” said Elaine. “Mother wanted me to come straight home today so we could do some shopping.”

Jean successfully stitched the sleeve, put away her sewing things, gathered up her books, and hurried out of the room, very nearly bumping into Johnny and his friend Homer Darvey, who were walking down the hall. “Oh—hello,” she said, startled at seeing Johnny.

“Hi,” answered Johnny with a grin.

“Hi,” echoed Homer.

Because the two boys were obviously leaving the building by the same door she always used, Jean found herself walking with them. In a panic she tried to think of something to say.

“Do you take sewing?” Johnny asked.

“Yes,” answered Jean, longing for witty words to spring to her lips.

“I didn't think girls knew how to sew anymore,” remarked Johnny.

“Oh, yes,” answered Jean. “Practically everybody sews. Girls, I mean.” It was silly to feel so confused, just because she was walking down the hall with a boy—two boys—but Jean could not help it.

“I was just telling Homer about my trip to the mountains last weekend,” remarked Johnny, as they left the building and walked down the steps.

“Do you ski?” asked Jean, knowing very well that he did.

“Every chance I get,” answered Johnny. “I drove up early Saturday morning with some fellows. One of them has a cabin.”

“Then you must have run into that storm I read about in the papers,” said Jean, pleased that she could add to the conversation.

“I'll say we did,” said Johnny. “It looked pretty threatening when we got there—the wind was blowing and the clouds were getting lower all the time—so we decided to get in some skiing before we took time to unload our food or our sleeping bags. Well, I was up on the mountain when the storm broke. The wind must have been blowing sixty miles an hour when I came down that mountain, and the snow was so thick it seemed to be coming from all directions at once. I didn't know whether I was going to make it back to the cabin
without hitting a tree or a boulder, or not. And I wasn't sure where the other fellows were.”

“Weren't you scared?” asked Jean.

“Some, but I knew that if I kept going downhill I would come to the cabin,” said Johnny, his gestures suggesting skiing.

Jean could see him, slim and handsome in his ski clothes, skiing through the blizzard. “What happened? Did you make it all right?”

“It took some doing, but I finally got down that mountain,” said Johnny. “I could hardly see the cabin. Well, the way the snow was drifting I thought we might get snowed in before the weekend was over. Then I remembered the sleeping bags and all the food in the car, and I thought I better get it unloaded before the car got buried. So I left my skis on the porch and sort of felt my way over to the car. I had just opened the door to take out a box of groceries from the floor of the backseat when I happened to look up and there was the biggest bear I have ever seen. He was so close I could have shaken hands with him.”

“Johnny!” exclaimed Jean. “What did you do?”

“I can tell you I didn't waste any time getting into that car and slamming the door,” Johnny went on.

“Well, that bear went prowling around the car—I guess he must have smelled the bacon. Bears like bacon, you know. Well, there I was shut in the car with the bear snuffling around. Sometimes the car would shake and I knew he was trying to break in. I was really caught in a trap. I couldn't chase the bear away, and I didn't dare get out.” Johnny paused dramatically.

Jean waited in suspense for Johnny to go on with the story. He smiled down at his eager audience, enjoying the suspense he had created.

Then Homer spoke. “Except that bears hibernate in the winter,” he said seriously.

Jean and Johnny stared at Homer and then shouted with laughter. His statement of fact was such an anticlimax.

“Homer, I have never had the rug pulled out from under me quite so fast,” said Johnny, slapping Homer on the back. “Oh, well. It was a good story while it lasted.”

Earnest, earthbound Homer, with no imagination at all, thought Jean. How like him to spoil a good story. “But maybe this bear had insomnia,” suggested Jean. “Maybe he couldn't sleep, so he got up to fix himself a snack.”

“Thanks, Jean. You're my pal,” said Johnny,
smiling down at her as they stood on the sidewalk. “Well, so long.”

“So long,” said Homer.

“Good-bye,” said Jean, and stood a moment watching Johnny as he walked toward the parking lot with Homer. Johnny was everything she had hoped he would be—interesting, full of fun, the kind of boy who would make up for a girl's shyness. Jean chose to walk home along a street lined with cherry trees flowering like pink clouds in the sharp breeze. That was one of the nice things about Northgate. In the flat part of town the streets were lined with different kinds of flowering trees. Jean could walk to school on a plum street and walk home on a cherry street. Jean reached out and caught a pink petal as it drifted to the ground. Johnny had walked down the hall with her!

After that Jean took to lingering in the sewing room after school, so that she could leave at the time Johnny might be coming down the hall. At first Jean made up excuses for not being able to leave when Elaine came for her, but finally, when she saw that Elaine's feelings were hurt, she whispered, so none of the other girls would hear, “Look, Elaine, if I leave just a little later, some
times I run into Johnny and he walks down the hall with me.”

“So that's it! I was afraid maybe you were mad at me about something.” Comprehension sparkled on Elaine's face. “Don't worry about me. I'll keep out of your way.” Naturally in a situation like this a boy took precedence over a girl. “Good luck and happy hunting!”

“I'm not using a bow and arrow.” Jean could not help laughing at Elaine's expression. “I knew you would understand,” she said seriously, thinking that one of the reasons she valued Elaine's friendship was Elaine's cheerful acceptance of whatever she wanted to do.

Once Jean found Johnny and Homer waiting for her outside the classroom door. Actually
waiting
for her! This, Jean felt, was significant, and after that if she did not see the two boys, she waited for them to come. When Jean could find no reason for lingering any longer by the door of the sewing room, when she had reread half a dozen times the schedule of classes posted outside the door, when she had started to leave and stopped, pretending to go through her notebook looking for something she might have forgotten, she walked home alone—and missed the companionship of Elaine.

“Hasn't Johnny come yet?” one of the girls in the sewing class asked Jean one afternoon.

“Johnny?” Jean pretended surprise. “Oh, I wasn't waiting for Johnny.”

Once Homer appeared alone. Jean could not avoid walking out of the building with him. “Where's Johnny?” she asked.

“Trying out for the variety show,” answered Homer.

Jean remembered hearing the announcement of the tryouts in the morning bulletins for the past week. The show was to be built around the theme “Through the Years,” and any student or group of students who had an act could try out. Jean, who had no desire for the spotlight, had passed over the announcement without giving it any thought. Now her thoughts fell quickly into logical sequence: Johnny, variety show, costumes, Costume Club, the club's new member as of the first thing tomorrow morning—Jean Jarrett! It was the most natural thing in the world.

“What kind of an act is he trying out with?” Jean asked.

“It isn't an act exactly,” explained Homer. “They need someone to be the narrator. You know, sort of
hold the acts together, and he is trying out for that part.”

What sort of costume would a narrator wear? A circus ringmaster's costume? A different costume for each act? Top hat, white tie, and tails? How handsome Johnny would look in evening clothes! “Don't you want to be in the show?” Jean asked, because she felt she had to make conversation with Homer as they left the building. Boys like Homer never took part in variety shows.

“I'm already in it,” said Homer. “I play a violin in the orchestra.”

“That's nice,” said Jean vaguely, as they reached the foot of the steps. “Well—good-bye.” She did hope Johnny would wear evening clothes.

The next day Jean found Johnny and Homer waiting by the sewing-room door. Johnny told her that he had been chosen to narrate the variety show and she told him that she had been sure he would get the part and that since she was a member of the Costume Club, she would be seeing him at rehearsals. Everything, she felt, was working out very nicely indeed.

Then there was one dreadful day when Jean, who had waited too long by the sewing-room
door, was about to give up and leave when she saw Johnny and Homer coming toward her with another girl, a girl named Peggy Jo. Johnny, who was smiling at Peggy Jo, was engrossed in telling her something that required broad gestures.

Jean felt a pang of pure despair. She now had a rival for her brief walk with Johnny, and that rival was Peggy Jo, who was tall, quiet, and beautiful, but a girl who wore her beauty carelessly as if it were of no interest to her. Her long fair hair was twisted into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a baggy brown skirt and a tan suede jacket that needed cleaning. She looked, Jean thought, like a girl who would not bother to wash her face before going to bed. But for all her carelessness there was something about Peggy Jo that made people aware of her. What that something was Jean did not know, but she did know that she herself lacked this quality. That made it even harder to see Johnny walking with Peggy Jo.

Jean was about to slip back into the sewing room, to allow Johnny to pass without seeing her, when Johnny looked directly at her. Jean was embarrassed to have him see her waiting for him when he was with another girl. She hesitated, not knowing how to handle the situation, and while
she hesitated Johnny winked at her. He looked straight into her eyes and winked. And suddenly everything was all right again. That wink told her that Peggy Jo did not really matter, that he liked Jean, and that he could not really help it, because Peggy Jo came along and walked down the hall with him.

Jean smiled at Johnny and walked out of the building alone. She wondered where Elaine was, and thought how much fun she and Elaine used to have talking over the events of their day as they walked home from school. It almost seemed as if she and Elaine were growing apart lately. Elaine seemed so busy—she had even managed to get a part in the variety show. A group of girls from her gym class planned to perform an Indian hoop dance and had asked Elaine to join them. It was scarcely a part to bring an applauding student body to its feet, but Elaine, a long-legged and enthusiastic Indian, was ostentatiously busy with rehearsals. Jean hoped that as a new member of the Costume Club she would not only see more of Johnny but also of Elaine.