AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Something occurred to me. “Maybe we should leave,” I said. I hadn’t thought of it before, but suddenly I realized—why not? Bunny’s just a waitress, and she could be a waitress anywhere. I’ve only got two more years of high school and there are thousands of other schools. My best friend, Mary Sue Zimmerman, I haven’t even seen in a month.
Bunny was acting as if she hadn’t heard me, so I said it again. “Why don’t we move?”
“We can’t leave here. This is where our house is.”
“So what? We just rent. We could move someplace and start all over.” I was getting excited. My strength was coming back. “People don’t like us here anyway. Think of all the trouble that Tom got into.”
“Trouble would probably follow us around.”
“We could get a new house. You could get a job at a real restaurant. I could get a job after school. We’d have money.”
Bunny jumped up and started pacing again. “We can’t leave here,” she snapped. “We live here. Besides, I’m starting to get it together with Eddie, and he could never leave his job at the KTD.”
Eddie Boggs. Just like his brother Cecil. And just like Wayne Wadlinger and Johnny Tremone and Vic Mattox and Lester Vincent and who knows who else I can’t remember. One thing about Bunny, she’s got the worst taste in men of anyone I ever saw.
“Now, don’t you say anything bad about Eddie,” she said. “He’s a lot different from his brother.”
“But, Bunny, there are better men in Chicago. Or New York. We could go to New York and you could get a job in one of the restaurants where people eat before going to the theater, and then all the stars come in afterward. You could wait on Marlon Brando.”
“Really?” Bunny paused and thought for a moment. “Gee. You know, he grew up around here. In Libertyville. His sister came into the News Depot once to buy a magazine.”
“I know. That’s why I mentioned him. See, he got away from here.”
“Gee. And we could move into an apartment. I’ve always wanted to live in an apartment. I mean, an apartment. It sounds so sophisticated.” Bunny came over and put her arm around me. “Gee,” she said, thinking about New York and rubbing my back.
I pulled away. We were coming to something important. “How about it? Let’s not even think about it. Let’s just move. No more Katydid Country Club, no more Katydid High School, no more Mrs. Benedict.”
Bunny frowned. “She was out in front, raving at Chief Springer when I came in just now.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She called me a slut and you a slut.” Bunny looked away in disgust.
“Both of us?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing. I spat on the floor.”
“You spat?”
“I know,” she said, looking bewildered and shaking her head. “I don’t know where it came from.”
“Eddie spits.”
“I had to do something,” Bunny said.
“But spitting?”
“I know, I even surprised myself.” She stared out through the water-spotted window, out across West Street to the square. Workmen there were cutting down an elm tree that had died. Elm trees are dying all over Katydid on account of Dutch elm disease. “What a way to grow old,” Bunny said.
“For who?”
“For me.” She turned around. “And you. For both of us.”
Chief Springer returned with a knock. Sergeant Tony was crowding behind him, and there was a woman with them—a large, formidable woman with hair the color of carrots and a broad, pink face. The three of them pressed into the tiny youth bureau, driving Bunny and me behind the desk. There wasn’t room; we were all struggling not to touch each other.
