The Luckiest Girl

by Beverly Cleary

  The Luckiest Girl

  Beverly Cleary

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  One Saturday morning early in September Shelley Latham sat at…

  Chapter 2

  As the plane began to lose altitude to land at…

  Chapter 3

  The morning heat made Shelley languid, and feeling as if…

  Chapter 4

  Drowsy in the new climate, Shelley felt as if she…

  Chapter 5

  The next week, at school, Hartley was still friendly toward…

  Chapter 6

  That evening, as soon as the dishes were washed, Shelley…

  Chapter 7

  After Shelley’s first date with Philip, each day seemed more…

  Chapter 8

  When Christmas vacation arrived Shelley was surprised to learn that…

  Chapter 9

  Friday evening Shelley tried to forget Philip while she dutifully…

  Chapter 10

  In her homesickness Shelley saw San Sebastian through different eyes.

  Chapter 11

  It was the mail that brought about a change in…

  Chapter 12

  At school Shelley set out to recapture Hartley’s interest, not…

  Chapter 13

  Dear Mother and Daddy, Shelley mentally wrote as she opened…

  Chapter 14

  Spring, warm and gaudy, came to San Sebastian. One day…

  Chapter 15

  Suddenly the days were going much too fast for Shelley.

  Chapter 16

  The moment Shelley awoke she knew there was something different…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Beverly Cleary

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  One Saturday morning early in September Shelley Latham sat at the breakfast table with her mother and father. Her mother was reading the women’s page of the morning paper while her father read the editorial section. There were dahlias in the center of the table and linen mats under each plate; the electric coffeepot gleamed in a ray of morning sunlight. It was a peaceful scene, apparently no different from any other Saturday morning breakfast at the Lathams’, but this morning there was a difference, invisible but real. This morning Shelley was plotting.

  Outside Shelley heard the rasp of a dry leaf scudding along the driveway. The sound meant the season was changing, and she intended to make her life change with it. That was what made the start of a new high school year exciting—the possibility that this time things could be different. New school clothes, a change of locker partners, a new boy across the aisle in English class, even the autumn air, crisp and shining—all these could make a big difference in a girl’s life.

  And Shelley had made up her mind that this year, her junior year, there was going to be a difference. For one thing, she was no longer going to go steady with Jack. How she would break off she did not know, but it would be soon, this very day perhaps.

  But before she could do anything about Jack, Shelley had another problem to settle and the time to do it was now. She looked at her mother, who was innocently eating a soft-boiled egg, and made up her mind to be firm from the very start.

  “Shelley, here’s an advertisement for a school dress that would be pretty on you,” remarked the unsuspecting Mrs. Latham. “A blue wool-and-rabbit hair with a full skirt.”

  Shelley was not going to lose sight of her goal. Anyway, she did not want a dress like that for school. She preferred sweaters and skirts such as all the other girls wore. “Mother, I am going downtown this afternoon to buy my slicker,” Shelley stated. It was always best to be definite about a controversial subject and to introduce it when her father was present. “School starts Tuesday and I might need it,” she explained logically, although her reason for wanting the slicker was not logical at all. She did not know why she wanted a slicker. She only knew that owning one was important and somehow might help make her year different.

  “Oh, Shelley, you don’t really want one of those awful slickers,” remarked Mrs. Latham as she used her napkin to wipe up some pollen that had fallen from the dahlias to the gleaming surface of the mahogany table.

  Shelley could not help smiling, because this was exactly what she had expected her mother to say. I’ll put it on my list, she thought. If she ever had a sixteen-year-old daughter who wanted a slicker, she would not refer to it as “one of those awful slickers.”

  Shelley’s list, now imaginary, had begun when she was twelve, going on thirteen. At that time she had printed on the outside of an envelope: “To be read by me if I ever have a twelve-year-old daughter.” On a sheet of paper she had written:

  I will let her read in bed all she wants without telling her she will ruin her eyes.

  I will not tell my friends embarrassing things that happen to her and laugh.

  I will not hang crummy old paper chains on the Christmas tree just because she made them when she was a little girl.

  A year later Shelley, touched that her mother had treasured the faded paper chains because she had once worked so hard to make them with colored paper and library paste, crossed the third item off the list. A few months ago when she had been going steady with Jack for some time, she had written in its place: “3. I will not show her baby pictures to boys who come to see her.” And soon after that Shelley decided the list was childish and tore it up. But the habit persisted, the list becoming imaginary and the items half forgotten as soon as Shelley noted them.

  The conversation about the purchase of the slicker was postponed by a letter that dropped through the slot in the front door and slid across the polished floor. Shelley picked up the letter and glanced at the return address, 613 N. Mirage Avenue, San Sebastian, California—an address that never failed to delight her. She always wondered if there was a South Mirage, too, and if both parts of the avenue might not someday disappear because they were named for something that was not real at all but only an illusion of the eye. “It’s from your college roommate,” she said as she handed the letter to her mother.

  Mrs. Latham tore open the envelope and began to read. “Honestly, if that isn’t just like Mavis,” she remarked after a moment as she paused to fill her cup from the electric coffeepot.

  “What’s like Mavis?” asked Shelley, who had always been interested in her mother’s former roommate. Mavis, Shelley remembered her mother’s telling her, had brought a mounted deer head—the head of a six-point buck—to school to decorate their small room in the dormitory of the teachers’ college.

  “Listen to this,” said Mrs. Latham, and began to read. “‘Why don’t you send Shelley down here for the winter? We have an excellent high school in San Sebastian and classes do not start until the day after Admission Day. We have plenty of room and it might be fun for her to spend a winter in California. I know we would enjoy having her and I am sure that another girl in the house would be a good experience for Katie, who has reached a difficult age.’” Mrs. Latham put down the letter. “That’s just like Mavis—always suggesting something impractical on the spur of the moment. As if we could pack Shelley up and send her over a thousand miles away on a few days’ notice!”

  Of course she could never pack up and go to school over a thousand miles away. Shelley felt there was no point in even discussing it. She would finish high school and go to the university just like everyone else. Anyway, she did not want to be a good experience for a girl who had reached a difficult age, even though she was curious to know what a difficult age for a girl like Katie would be. Six years before, Tom and Mavis Michie with their children, Luke and Katie, had visited the Lathams for three days during the Rose Festival. Shelley had b
een expected to entertain Katie, but after half a day she had looked forward to the younger girl’s departure. Katie had also been at a difficult stage six years ago.

  “What’s Admission Day?” Shelley asked idly.

  “I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Latham, returning the letter to the envelope, because she was equally sure there was no reason to discuss Shelley’s going to California. “I suppose it is some California holiday.”

  “Admission Day is the ninth of September, the day California was admitted to the Union,” explained Shelley’s father, looking up from the editorials. Mr. Latham had a way of knowing the answers to unexpected questions.

  What a nice thing to celebrate, thought Shelley, wondering why Oregon did not have a similar holiday. Perhaps it was because California’s history of Spanish settlers, earthquakes, and the gold rush had always seemed so much more colorful than Oregon’s traditional history of hardy pioneers toiling with their hands to the plow.

  “What else does Mavis say?” asked Shelley’s father.

  “Tom expects to have more students in his math class this year and hopes to coach a winning basketball team,” answered Mrs. Latham. “They had a record crop from their orange grove last winter. Luke has managed to get hold of an old wreck of a motorcycle that he hopes to get into working order—Mavis says she would be worried except that it is so dilapidated that she is sure it never will run—and Katie is doing very well with her piano lessons if only she would practice.”

  “A motorcycle! It doesn’t seem possible that Luke is that old,” observed Mr. Latham. “Let’s see, how old was he that time they visited us?”

  “Katie was seven, Luke was nine, and I was ten, so that makes Katie thirteen and Luke fifteen,” answered Shelley. “I’ll never forget how I was supposed to entertain Katie and how awful she was. She tried to chin herself on the towel racks in the bathroom and pulled them right out of the wall.”

  “And Shelley,” said Mrs. Latham, laughing, “do you remember how your father was fit to be tied when she used his favorite pipe to blow soap bubbles?”

  Shelley giggled. “And he didn’t say a thing, but the way he looked….” Shelley and her mother went off into a gale of laughter.

  “Luke was easy enough to entertain. I remember he spent all his time tinkering with an old alarm clock, but Katie certainly was a handful.” Mrs. Latham laid the letter beside the place mat in front of her and took a sip of coffee.

  Because the conversation about the Michies seemed to be over, Shelley felt this was the moment to mention the slicker once more. “Mother, I’ll have to go downtown this afternoon to buy my slicker,” she stated a second time, trying not to sound anxious. “The stores will be closed Monday because of Labor Day and school starts Tuesday.”

  “Shelley, I saw the prettiest raincoat the other day,” said Mrs. Latham. “It was pink with a black velveteen collar and had a little hat with a velveteen button on top—”

  “Pink!” exclaimed Shelley with distaste. “But Mother, I don’t want a pink raincoat with a velveteen collar. You know I want a plain ordinary everyday yellow slicker and a plain ordinary everyday hat to match.”

  “And to look just like that boy on the label of a can of sardines,” Mrs. Latham told her daughter. “Shelley dear, yellow is not becoming to you, and the girls who wear those slickers always look so sloppy.”

  “But Mother, if I wore a pink raincoat with a velveteen collar to school everyone would think I was too dressed up or something,” said Shelley stubbornly. “I want a slicker.”

  “Oh, Shelley,” said Mrs. Latham impatiently. “Do you want to be one of a bunch of sheep?”

  “Yes,” answered Shelley flatly.

  Mr. Latham looked up from his paper, glanced at Shelley and then at his wife, frowned, and resumed his reading.

  “Those slickers get so dirty and there is no way to clean them. And they get torn and shabby in no time at all,” Mrs. Latham pointed out. “They really aren’t practical.”

  “But a slicker isn’t—well, mellow until it gets dirty,” Shelley tried to explain.

  Mrs. Latham laughed. “Shelley, I don’t know where you girls get such ideas.”

  “I don’t care, Mother,” said Shelley, resenting her mother’s amusement. “It’s what all the girls wear and it’s what I want. And besides, it’s my own money.”

  “Oh, well, there is really no hurry,” said Mrs. Latham lightly as she rose to clear the table. “We’ve had such a wet summer we’re bound to have some nice weather this fall.”

  The trouble with Mother, thought Shelley as she carried her plate into the kitchen and dropped a scrap of toast into the Disposall, is that she doesn’t understand. And the importance of a slicker was so hard to explain. A dirty yellow slicker, mended with adhesive tape and covered with names in ink—the right names, of course—was the smartest thing a girl could wear to school. It showed a girl was…well, Shelley was not quite sure what wearing a shabby yellow slicker showed. It was one of those things that was difficult to put into words, but it was important. Couldn’t her mother see that?

  “Is Jack coming over this evening?” Mrs. Latham asked, pointedly changing the subject while she and Shelley washed and wiped the breakfast dishes.

  “I suppose so,” said Shelley, deciding to let the question of the slicker drop for the time being. “He always does. At least, I am expecting him to phone after a while.” And ask if anything exciting had happened, even though she had seen him only the night before. Jack always asked if anything exciting had happened just as he always said Gesundheit if she sneezed. Always. If she sneezed twice, he said Gesundheit twice. Not that Shelley sneezed any more than anyone else. It was just that she had seen so much of Jack that she felt she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “He’s such a nice boy,” said Mrs. Latham comfortably. “I never worry when you are out with Jack.”

  “I know.” There was wistfulness in Shelley’s voice, not because she wanted to worry her mother, but because she was so tired of Jack.

  Jack was not the first boy Shelley had known. First there had been Peter, who had taken her to the Girls’ League Show at school and to a movie. There had been nothing wrong with Peter, really, but both he and Shelley were so uncertain and had such difficulty finding anything to talk about that they could not feel comfortable in each other’s company.

  Next came Roger, from Shelley’s Latin class, who took her to her first school dance. Shelley liked Roger even if he did have large ears and wore glasses. He solved the problem of dancing by repeating a set pattern of steps he had learned in his dancing class. Since the pattern did not vary, Shelley quickly learned to do a reverse version of his steps instead of trying to follow—something that she could not do very well. Then Roger suggested that they speak as much as possible in Latin. Shelley thought this was fun as well as a solution to the problem of something to talk about. She used her ingenuity and limited Latin to make such remarks as “The floor of the gymnasium is divided into three parts.” When another couple bumped into them, she produced two complete sentences: “The boy and girl are not our friends. They are bad.” She and Roger both thought this extremely funny.

  When Mrs. Latham asked Shelley about the dance, Shelley described her evening. Mrs. Latham smiled and said, “I’m glad you had a good time, dear.” Then she said thoughtfully, “Isn’t it too bad you don’t have some really nice-looking boy to take you to school affairs?”

  Not long after that Shelley came home from school one warm afternoon when the front door was open and heard her mother talking to a friend on the telephone. “Yes, Shelley seemed to have a good time at the dance,” Mrs. Latham was saying. “It was her first dance, you know, but I could hardly keep my face straight when she was telling me about it. She and Roger spoke Latin—can you imagine, at a dance?…I don’t know exactly what they found to say, but Shelley did mention that she said, ‘The floor of the gymnasium is divided into three parts,’ the way Caesar said all Gaul is divided into th
ree parts, and she seemed quite proud of it.” Mrs. Latham shared a laugh with her friend before she continued, “Poor child. He is so homely. I do wish—”

  Shelley’s rickety confidence collapsed. Her evening with Roger now seemed ridiculous, laid waste, as the old Romans would have said, by her mother’s account to a friend. But Mother did not mean me to hear, Shelley tried to tell herself, and she would have been dreadfully upset if she knew I had overheard the conversation. But Shelley could not, no matter how hard she tried, escape the fact that she had overheard and that her feelings had been hurt. After that she saw Roger through her mother’s eyes, as a homely, rather ridiculous boy.

  Jack was next. Shelley had liked Jack the first time he asked her for a date and her mother liked him too. Shelley liked him the second and the third time she went out with him, but by the fourth date, when everyone assumed they were going steady, Shelley found she did not like Jack nearly so much as she thought she had. And then it was too late. Now she wished some other girl would have to listen to him say, “Penny for your thoughts,” every time there was a lull in the conversation.

  “So many girls don’t have anybody,” Mrs. Latham was saying as she rinsed the electric coffeepot, “but you have a good-looking boy with nice manners who comes from a good family.”

  For the first time that morning Shelley faltered in her determination. Her mother was right. So many girls stayed home on Saturday night and pretended to have fun playing records or looking at television. So many girls tried to make one date sound like half a dozen when they talked to one another at school. Lots of girls would be eager to go out with Jack. Even Rosemary, her best friend. Everybody said that Shelley was so lucky to have such a nice boy to take her places, that she and Jack made a cute couple (cute couple—she detested the phrase!)…and where would she find another boy to take his place? All the boys a girl would like to know were either going steady or they were the exasperating kind who were more interested in sports or studies than dates.