Debutante Hill

by Lois Duncan

  Dr. Chambers came in just as the rest of them were finishing breakfast.

  “What’s the idea,” he demanded irritably, “letting me oversleep on a weekday morning? You know I’m supposed to be at the hospital by eight o’clock.”

  “I know,” his wife sighed. “It’s just that you were out so long last night on that emergency call, I thought you might pick up just a little extra sleep.”

  Dodie glanced up. “What kind of emergency, Dad?”

  “Automobile wreck,” Dr. Chambers told her. “Some crazy kids, out drinking—snow on the road—it all adds up to a nasty experience. Nobody was killed, but one of the girls got cut up a little and had to be taken to the hospital. Burly, I think her name was. She’s just about your age, Lynn.”

  “Burly?” Lynn nodded. “Greta Burly. Yes, I know her.” She hesitated, half afraid to ask. “The boy—the one who was driving—”

  “Never saw him before,” her father said. “An older fellow. Should have known better. These crazy kids.”

  He stirred sugar into a cup of coffee, gulped it down and started for the door.

  “No time for eating now. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Nathan Chambers, you send out for something when you get to the office!” his wife called after him, rising in her chair. “For a doctor, you take the worst care of yourself—” She shook her head helplessly at the sound of the closing door cutting off her protest. “Your father works too hard, girls. I don’t know what in the world to do about him.”

  Lynn nodded, hardly listening. Her father’s words swam in her head—“crazy kids, out drinking, driving—cut up a little, hospital—” She thought, thank goodness it wasn’t Dirk! But it could have been. Dirk’s just as crazy as the rest of them, and it could have been. And the girl—it might not have been Greta! If it had happened the other night, it might have been me!

  The rest of her breakfast was tasteless in her mouth. It was not until her mother asked, “Do you have a date with Paul tonight?” that she was able to get her mind focused on pleasanter things.

  “Yes,” she said. “That is, we don’t exactly have any plans, but I’m sure we will go out some place. He’s going to phone me.” She hesitated, an idea taking form in her mind. “I know! Why don’t I have a party? Just a spur of the moment kind of get-together for all the kids; a sort of welcome home party for Paul and Ernie. It could be a plaid shirts-and-bluejeans affair, and we could play records and gab and I could ask the girls to come a little early and help make cocoa—”

  “Sorry to nip your plan in the bud,” Dodie inserted dryly, “but isn’t there a debutante party tonight? Seems to me I heard some of the kids talking about it. The first big Christmas party, I think it is, a formal dance with orchestra and all.”

  “Oh, that’s right” Lynn said. “I forgot; it’s going to be at the Country Club.” She frowned. “Then that cancels out any plans for a welcome home party, unless we had it tomorrow night instead.”

  “There’s bound to be something tomorrow night,” Dodie said. “The way I understood it there’s going to be something planned for every single night during the vacation, except Christmas Eve.”

  Lynn sighed. “Well, that’s that then. I guess Ernie will be going to all of them too, with Nancy. That kind of leaves Paul and me out in the cold.”

  “Don’t feel too badly about it dear,” her mother said gently. “I’m sure you and Paul will find lots of nice things to do.”

  “Oh, of course,” Lynn said quickly. “It really doesn’t matter. Just having Paul home is what counts, even if we don’t do anything the whole vacation but sit right here in this living room, watching television. But we will probably be doing something more exciting than that tonight, on Paul’s first night home!”

  She got up from the table. “Excuse me, please. I want to make sure that I’ve got a dress pressed.”

  All morning, Lynn kept one ear open for the sound of the telephone. She pressed her dress and straightened her room and put her hair in pincurls and manicured her nails—all things she disliked doing, but things that really should be done, and at least they filled the morning.

  She was not too surprised when the telephone call did not come by noon, for Ernie was still asleep and she assumed Paul was, too. By early afternoon, however, when Ernie had emerged from his bedroom, dressed, eaten and taken off for Nancy’s house, she began to grow more impatient.

  By the middle of the afternoon, she was really irritated. “After all,” she said to her mother, “he must realize I’ll want to know what the plans are. I want to know what time he’s coming and what to wear and whether or not to eat dinner first. We didn’t decide a thing last night.”

  “Don’t be so impatient, dear,” her mother said. “Paul isn’t a thoughtless boy; you know that. He’ll call just as soon as he has a chance. Maybe his mother had something she wanted him to do with her this afternoon, and he just couldn’t get away to phone you.”

  “Anybody can find a way to get to a telephone,” Lynn said, “if they really want to.”

  By the time the phone finally rang, at a quarter past five, she was thoroughly angry.

  “Lynn?” Paul’s voice was surprisingly deep over the telephone. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call sooner.”

  “I thought you’d forgotten me entirely,” Lynn said, her irritation showing in her voice. “I don’t even know what the plans are for tonight. When are you coming by?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Paul said awkwardly. “I won’t be coming. Not tonight. I’m sorry, Lynn, because I certainly want to, but I’ve been sucked into going to this formal dance and there’s no way I can get out of it.”

  “A formal dance!” Lynn exclaimed. “But Paul, how can you? The formal dance is the one at the Country Club, and that’s only for the debutantes and their dates.”

  “I know,” Paul said. “I’m taking Brenda Peterson.”

  “Brenda Peterson!” Lynn could hardly force out the words.

  “Now, hold on a minute,” Paul said, “let me explain. I was all set to call you this afternoon—I thought maybe we’d take in a movie or something tonight—when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Peterson, all upset. It seems she started this debutante thing in the first place, and they’ve had a lot of lesser parties which have worked out pretty well, but tonight’s the night of the first real formal dance and Brenda doesn’t have a date. Here Mrs. Peterson started it all, and now the formal comes and Brenda’s stuck without an escort. She said the kid was all broken up and thought she’d be the laughing stock of the school if she didn’t turn up at the party. Oh, you know how it is. So, she asked me if I’d take her.”

  “And you said “yes’?”

  “Of course, I said ‘yes,’ ” Paul answered. “What else could I say?”

  “You could say ‘no,’” Lynn told him, disappointment rising up sharply within her. “You could say, ‘I’m sorry, but I already have a date. I go steady with Lynn Chambers, you know.’Why did Mrs. Peterson call you in the first place?”

  “Oh, her husband was a friend of Dad’s,” Paul said. “They used to play golf together on Sundays. I guess she feels kind of a family attachment from that. Honestly, Lynn, I feel rotten about this, but I don’t know how else I could have handled it. I could have said ‘no’ I guess, but I felt so sorry for the poor Peterson kid, stuck all by herself at home—”

  “What about the poor Chambers kid, stuck all by herself at home?” Lynn said sharply. “I guess she doesn’t matter?”

  “Oh, come off it,” Paul was beginning to sound irritated himself. “That’s a different situation entirely. You’re not a debutante. You don’t have to turn out for these things. Nobody’s going to laugh at you for missing one, but for a kid like Brenda—well, she’s so darned unattractive to start with—if she couldn’t even get somebody to take her to her own party—”

  “She’s not that unattractive,” Lynn said. “She’s changed a lot this year.” She could have bitten her tongue for sayin
g so. “There’s no reason she can’t get her own dates, the same as everybody else. If she doesn’t have enough on the ball to get an escort of her own, then she doesn’t deserve anything better than sitting home. Imagine, making her mother phone around getting her dates!”

  “Oh, come off it,” Paul said again, and now he sounded really angry. “You and all the rest of your buddies have always been so darned lofty about Brenda. Maybe she has seemed like a colorless little thing, but with a mother like hers, bossing her around every minute, how could she be anything else? Maybe if you’d ever given her a chance, you’d have found she was a pretty nice kid.”

  “Oh, stop being so high and mighty!” Lynn snapped. “If you’d rather not go out with me, just say so.”

  “You know that’s not it,” Paul said. “We’ll go out tomorrow night. For gosh sakes, Lynn, what difference does one night make?”

  “Well, it may not make a difference to you,” Lynn answered shortly, “but it does to me. If you take Brenda out tonight, Paul Kingsley, you’re not going to have another date with me.”

  Paul was silent a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet.

  “All right,” he said. “All right, if that’s the way you want it.”

  There was a faint click of the receiver.

  Lynn said, “Paul—” And then she stopped, realizing in an instant of complete amazement that he had hung up on her.

  When the phone rang a few minutes later, she was sure it was Paul, phoning back to apologize. She let the phone ring several times, so as not to seem too eager, and then she picked it up.

  “Hello,” she said coolly, determined that she was not going to make it easy for him.

  “Hello, Lynn?” It was a familiar voice but an unexpected one, and one she had never heard on the telephone before.

  It’s not Paul, Lynn thought, choking down her disappointment.

  She tried to put warmth back into her voice. “Hi, Dirk!”

  “Hi! Look—I—er—” He took a deep breath and went on awkwardly. “What I called about—well, I wondered if you were going to be busy tomorrow night?”

  Lynn thought about Paul. “We’ll go out tomorrow night,” he had said. She felt anger rising again within her.

  What makes him so sure I’ll be here, she thought. Does he think he can date anybody he wants and find me sitting home, waiting for him to come back whenever he wants to? Or does he think I’m so unattractive that nobody else will ask me?

  She said, “I don’t want to go to Charlie’s, Dirk. Or to do any car racing, or double with people like Brad, or—”

  “No,” Dirk said, “just you and me. We’ll go to a show or something—anything you want to do. I—I just want to see you.”

  Lynn hesitated. She knew her mother disapproved of Dirk. If it had been any other time, she would have taken her mother’s opinion into more serious consideration, and said no, especially as she did not particularly want to go out with Dirk herself.

  But as it was, Paul’s voice still rang in her ears, and her fresh hurt and anger combined to make her tighten her hold on the phone and put a real graciousness into her voice when she said, “Thank you, Dirk, I’d love to go out tomorrow night. What time?”

  “About eight?”

  “That will be fine. About eight, then.”

  She placed the phone back on its cradle with a feeling of satisfaction, tinged with desperation.

  9

  Lynn was sorry afterward. The moment she hung up and turned away from the phone, she thought, what did I do that for? I don’t want to go out with Dirk, not when Paul is home. Paul is the only person I want to see.

  Her regret increased when Dodie met her in the hall and asked, “Who was on the phone?”

  “That’s for me to know,” Lynn retorted automatically, “and you to find out.” But she caught herself, realizing that it was silly to alienate Dodie for no reason at all. “It was Dirk,” she added. “He asked me for a date tomorrow night.”

  “Are you going? Even with Paul home?”

  Lynn nodded. “Paul is going out with Brenda Peterson. And if he’s dating somebody else, so can I.”

  Dodie said, “Mother will be livid when she finds out.”

  “No, she won’t.” Lynn contradicted her sister. “Mother’s never livid; you know that. But I guess she won’t be awfully happy.” She hesitated. “Say, do you have a date tomorrow?”

  “With Ronnie Turner. We’re going to the movies.”

  “Why, that’s swell!” Lynn exclaimed. “Why don’t we double? Dirk and Ronnie live right near each other, so they must know each other pretty well, and Mother couldn’t really object to anything if we were going out together.”

  “Sorry,” Dodie responded breezily, “but Ronnie would never double with Dirk. He doesn’t approve of him.”

  “You might at least ask him,” Lynn said. “Honestly, Dodie, sisters are supposed to help each other out once in a while.”

  “Don’t sound so noble with me!” Dodie retaliated. “Since when have you felt so strongly about this sisters-stick-together business? There have been plenty of times when we could have doubled, if you’d just said the word, times when Paul had a car and my date didn’t, or when there was an extra fellow you might have gotten me a date with. But oh no, I was ‘baby sister’ then. Now, all of a sudden, it would be to your advantage to double with me and you think it would be a fine thing! Well, no thanks.”

  She turned and started down the hall. As Lynn stood, gazing after her sister, beneath her anger there was the sneaking knowledge that Dodie was justified in what she said. There had been many times when she had refused to double with Dodie on the grounds that she was too young.

  As she reached the head of the stairs, however, Dodie turned back.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m not just being mean about this. Ronnie really wouldn’t double with Dirk, no matter what I said. We’ve talked about him before, and Ronnie feels pretty strongly about him. He doesn’t like the way he acts or the kind of crowd he runs around with or the way he doesn’t do any work after school when his dad needs help. I wouldn’t even want to ask him about doubling.”

  “O.K.,” Lynn said. “O.K., we’ll get along just fine without you. Better, in fact. Dirk probably doesn’t like Ronnie, either.”

  “No,” Dodie agreed placidly, “he probably doesn’t.”

  The next morning, after breakfast Paul came over, and again Lynn wished she had not agreed to go out with Dirk, for when she saw him standing in the doorway, she felt her anger slipping away.

  “Hi!” he said. “Are you going to shut the door in my face?”

  “No,” Lynn answered. “Of course not. I don’t shut doors in people’s faces.”

  “Even people who hang up on you?”

  “Even them.” She smiled at him in spite of herself. “Come on in, Paul.”

  He came in, regarding her hesitantly. When he spoke, his voice sounded very young. “You’re not mad any more?”

  Lynn shook her head. “I guess not. I mean, not the way I was yesterday.”

  “Well, I’m glad of that,” Paul said in relief. “I’m sorry I hung up on you. I guess I got kind of mad myself. It just wasn’t like you to act that way. I mean, gosh, it wasn’t as though I really wanted to take Brenda. It was just one of those things you get pushed into doing and then can’t get out of again. Besides, she isn’t such a bad kid. She only needs people to like her.”

  Lynn choked down the sharp comment that sprang to the tip of her tongue. Instead she asked, “How was the party last night?”

  “It was a good one,” Paul said easily, seating himself on the sofa and relaxing against the upholstered arm. “All the gang was there. There was a really great orchestra, and they had the club decorated to beat the band. I hear the Presentation Ball next spring is going to be the party to end all parties. They’ve already hired an orchestra to come in from out of town to play for it.”

  “Are you—” Lynn hated to ask the question,
but she had to. “Are you very sorry I’m not a debutante?”

  “Sure, I’m sorry,” Paul answered frankly. “It’s a darned shame we can’t go to all these things, but you certainly couldn’t be a debutante and have your father campaigning against it at the same time.”

  “What do you mean, campaigning against it?” Lynn asked in surprise. “You mean, Daddy’s been talking to people about it?”

  “You mean, you didn’t know?” Now it was Paul’s turn to look surprised. “Why, my dad said your father gave a twenty-minute talk in Rotary Club the other day, all about how having debutantes in a place this size would divide the town into classes and wreck the whole democratic attitude. He said the whole purpose of a public high school is to help kids make friends from all kinds of backgrounds, and having chosen girls make their debuts would destroy that ideal entirely. Dad said it was quite a speech. He said he thought your father had something there. Of course, some of the other men disagreed with him, but they were mostly the ones with daughters who were debutantes.”

  “How do you feel about it?” Lynn asked. “Do you think Daddy’s right?”

  “Yes,” Paul said slowly, “I guess he is, really. It’s hard on you, though, having to miss the parties.”

  “And on you,” Lynn added. “Paul—” Now that he had not asked, she could offer it to him. “Paul, would you like to—to—be free to go to the parties? I mean, without me?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly!” Paul exclaimed impatiently. “I don’t care that much about parties. You and I will have fun during the holidays, and nuts to everybody else.”

  “You really mean it?”

  “Sure.” Paul reached over and took her hand. “Last night as I was all set to leave, Mrs. Peterson got me off in a corner and asked me if I’d take Brenda to tonight’s party, a treasure hunt of some kind. She said the same guy usually escorted the same girl to all the holiday parties, and she was counting on me to take Brenda. You know what I told her? I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got a date tomorrow night with Lynn Chambers.’” He grinned at her. “So start thinking what you want to do.”