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"I don't have to buy something new," I said.
"Your mother wants you to so she can help you pick it out," Daddy said, smiling at her.
"But..."
"He's right," Mommy said, stepping forward to take my hand and smile. "There's a point in every mother's life when she starts to relive her own youth through her children, especially a daughter.'
I smiled. It wasn't something she and I had done very often.
"Okay," I said. Then I ran up the stairs, my heavy footsteps waking Grandad, who called out to ask what was going on in his house? It sounded like the roof was caving in. Couldn't we walk softer?
Not tonight. I thought. Not tonight, Grandad. I was so excited. I didn't think I would fall asleep. I got into my nightgown and under the covers, anxious for the night to pass and the morning to bring me to school.
I reached over and turned off the light on my night-stand, throwing the room into darkness.
Outside, the moon had just gone over the west side of the house. Like a giant yellow spotlight, it lit up the barn and my step-uncle Simon's window. He was sitting there, looking toward mine.
And I realized I had left it wide open while I had been studying my naked body. Had he been there that whole time? I was too old now to leave my window open like this. I thought, and went over to draw the shade.
After all, I told myself. Chandler Maxwell had called me for a date. I would buy something new and beautiful and I would fix my hair and study how beautiful women in magazines did their makeup. Men would start to notice me. It would be as if I had just been discovered standing there or walking or sitting at a table.
Who is that? they would surely wonder. Every smile, every look of appreciation would be like hands clapping.
Emerging from childhood, a woman is surely reborn. It's almost as if a light goes on inside us and the glow from it brightens the stage and opens the curtain. When that happens, one way or another, all of us live off the applause.
5 A New Song Begins
I used to think that I was exceptionally shy. If a boy stopped to speak to me or showed me any attention. I could feel the heat rise to my face immediately, and just knowing my skin was starting to glow like the inside of a toaster made me even shier. I had to shift my eyes away and always spoke quickly, giving whoever it was the impression I wanted to get away from him as fast as I could. It wasn't my intention, but I could understand why someone would think that.
When I arrived at school the following day, I looked forward to seeing Chandler. His locker was halfway down the hall from mine, and pretty soon I saw him arrive. He glanced my way, but to my surprise, he returned his attention to his locker, took out what he needed, closed it, and walked on as if he and I had never met. For a moment I was so stunned I had to question my own sanitv. Did we speak on the phone and did he invite me to dinner and a show? Or was that a dream?
I hurried to homeroom, now even more curious and more eager to speak with him. He sat two rows left of me. When I entered. I looked at him, but he had his face in one of his textbooks as usual, not bothering to look up when the teacher spoke or when the announcements came over the public-address system. Our teacher asked everyone to take his or her seat. Roll was taken and then the bell for our first class rang. I deliberately moved slowly so Chandler and I would be side by side as we were leaving the room.
I said as soon as he was beside me.
"Hi," he replied; he gazed about nervously for a moment and then sped up and walked away, swinging the briefcase he carried, which looked like a lawyer's attache case and was the object of many jokes.
I just stood there, amazed, as other students moved by, some knocking into me because my feet were planted in cement.
"You all right?" Karen Jacobs asked mt.
"What? Oh. Yes." I said and started to walk to class. She tagged along.
Karen was a mousy-looking girl with big though dull brown eyes. whose life was apparently so boring she fed off everyone else's sadness as well as happiness. Almost ninety percent of what she said to anyone daily was in the form of a question.
Sometimes I thought she resembled a squirrel, hoarding information, tidbits, anecdotes about other people, like acorns: and sometimes. I thought she was more like a parasite, existing solely off the lift of her hosts, which in this case was anyone who cared to share his or her revelations.
"I saw you say something to Chandler Maxwell. What did you say?"
"I said hi."
"Why?"
"-Why not?" I fired back at her. She looked confused and lagged a step or two behind me.
During my first-period class, however, I sensed her nearly constant study of my every glance and Zesture. Maybe she had some sort of built-in radar for these sort of things. Whatever she had, she homed in on my interest in Chandler and made us the subject of her study for the day. I knew she was eager for gossip she could use to ingratiate herself with some of the other students, especially the girls in our class who made no effort to hide their dislike of her.
As it turned out, this was exactly what Chandler was trying to avoid. Between periods one and two, as we were moving through the corridor, he swooped up beside me and said, "Here."
