Leo the Lioness

by Constance C. Greene

  Dave stepped forth on schedule and he didn’t forget the ring or anything. He and Carla didn’t kiss after the ceremony. They came down the aisle and I will say this for Dave, he looked capable of taking care of her, if that’s worth anything. He also looked very happy. Carla smiled at everybody. I don’t think she saw any of us. John, for once, was struck dumb. He put his thumb in his mouth and looked like an idiot. Nina made eyes at the handsome usher, who was escorting Nancy Tyler down the aisle. Who did Nina think she was, competing against Nancy?

  We all sort of milled around outside and then the bridal party got into cars and went off to the reception. Maybe I could sneak away and they’d never miss me. But then Mrs. McAllister, who was waiting for her husband, came up to me and hugged me. Mrs. McAllister also has white hair. They had Carla when they were pretty old.

  “Tibb, darling, how nice to see you. And John and Nina.” She smiled. “How good of you to come.”

  Carla used to take us over to her house some days and her mother would give us cookies and stuff she’d baked. If Mrs. McAllister wasn’t whipping up dresses and skirts for Carla, she was baking. That was the kind of woman she was.

  She acted as if this was just an ordinary wedding. She was doing what my mother would call “carrying it off beautifully.”

  “Carla looked lovely,” my mother told her. “Perfectly lovely.”

  “Thank you. She did, didn’t she?”

  “Aren’t you lucky? Such a glorious day!”

  “What a lovely ceremony.”

  I guess people probably always say the same things at weddings.

  Then Mrs. McAllister got into a car and everyone drove off to the reception.

  We had to go through the receiving line, my mother said. We were supposed to say hello to everybody whether we knew them or not. I thought that was pretty dumb but it was one of the rules. Weddings are loaded with rules.

  I shook hands with the bridesmaids and Nancy and then Dave.

  “Congratulations,” I said. I finally said it to the right person.

  I thought he might be going to kiss me and I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I stuck my hand out with a stiff arm and shook hands.

  He looked different without his pith helmet.

  “I’m glad you came, Tibb,” he said.

  “I hope you’ll be very happy,” I told Carla. I had my dark glasses on so she couldn’t see what I was thinking.

  “I already am,” she said, smiling. “I really am. Hello, John.”

  She bent down and John shook hands with her.

  “How do you do?” he said.

  “That’s Carla, you spaz,” I whispered. I explained to Carla that I didn’t think John knew her in those clothes.

  He looked at her again. Then he took his hand away and planted a big kiss on her cheek.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I think I saw tears in her eyes but there was such a bunch of people bearing down on us from the rear I couldn’t be sure.

  Like Jen had said, there were pots of champagne. I rather like it. I had one glass. Nina had at least two. There was a big wedding cake. We each got a piece of it to take home and put under our pillows. You are supposed to dream of the man you will marry if you sleep on the cake.

  What a lot of baloney.

  Finally Carla changed into her going-away costume and got ready to throw the bouquet. Nancy Tyler and the bridesmaids were standing directly below her, and there was a plethora of young men around who presumably would get ideas about weddings of their own.

  Carla tossed her bouquet and there was a lot of jumping. I must’ve jumped higher than anyone else, because I caught it. As I said, I have grown almost three inches in the past year and I also am a forward on the basketball team. However, it was unpremeditated, I assure you.

  Nina gave me a hard time going home.

  “Of all the idiotic things I ever saw,” she said. “You were practically the youngest girl there and you made a fool of yourself leaping up in the air.”

  “Knock it off,” I told her. “If you weren’t so dignified, you would have caught it yourself.”

  That is true. Nina is a much better basketball player than I am.

  I put the cake under my pillow and I didn’t dream at all.

  That figures.

  23.

  Nina’s nose has started to peel. I don’t know why; she has never peeled before. The timing is bad because, on top of her nose peeling, she found out that there is going to be a dance at the canteen to which boys are supposed to ask dates. She found it out because bigmouth Charlotte Forbes called, in a turmoil. Two boys had asked her and she didn’t know which to accept. What would Nina advise? Seeing as how this was the first Nina knew about the dance, due to the fact that not even one measly boy had asked her, things got tense.

  After a gay chat of about half an hour, during which Nina managed to avoid telling Char that she had not been invited, Nina hung up. Then she started to brood.

  I mean, I’ve seen her brood before, but this was something. Talk about air pollution.

  “Gawd,” she kept snarling out of the corner of her mouth, “will you look at me!” She blamed everything on her nose. She looked in the mirror about a thousand times, first at the right profile, then at the left, then full face. She had heard that actors and actresses have a good side and a bad and they prefer to be photographed, naturally, from the good. Nina had decided that her right side was better. She has developed a sort of lopsided walk from always trying to remember to approach the mirror from her right side.

  My mother said, “Nina, would you please iron those few pillowcases and napkins I left in the basket?”

  Nina put her hand to her head. “After I take a couple of aspirins,” she said.

  “Have you a headache?”

  I think of my mother as a fairly perceptive woman but sometimes she draws a blank. Evidently she didn’t see the gray cloud forming around Nina’s head.

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but my nose is peeling,” Nina said. “Maybe you don’t know that my whole summer is ruined. I can’t face my friends. I am a mess.”

  John came in to get some old frankfurters for Count. We usually have a supply of kind of stiff franks that have been pushed to the back of the refrigerator by mistake. Sometimes I think that John pushes them there. Count doesn’t seem to mind that they are past their prime.

  “What’s the matter with your nose?” he asked Nina. That did it.

  She went into a catatonic state. Keening like a banshee, if banshees keen, she raced out of the room.

  “I’m not up to it today,” my mother said.

  “It’s not only her nose, Mom,” I said. “It’s a dance at the canteen that Charlotte Forbes had two invitations to and Nina hasn’t had one. That’s all.”

  “That’s enough.” There are times when my mother feels like giving up. She says “I give up” quite frequently. I think this was one of the times.

  “Things pile up at fifteen,” she said.

  “More than they do at fourteen?” I said. I hope not. They pile up plenty at my age. I don’t think I can stand it if they keep on piling the older you get.

  “Well, in a different way,” she said. “It happens at all ages but somehow, at fifteen, you’re not quite grown up but you’re not a little girl any more, either. And you have moments of wanting to be both. It’s a hard age.”

  “I don’t look forward to it,” I said. Which wasn’t strictly true, only partly. Maybe things wouldn’t pile up for me as much as they seemed to for Nina. We are not similar in personality, as I have mentioned.

  Jen came to the back door. “Where’s Nina?” she said. “I have something to discuss with her.”

  “She’s upstairs,” I said. “Her nose has started to peel and also she had a conversation with Charlotte Forbes.”

  “Oh,” said Jen. “What did Charlotte have on her mind?”

  “Oh, nothing was on her mind,” I said. “She just couldn’t decide whether to go to the canteen
dance with Laurel or Hardy.”

  “Who’s Laurel and who’s Hardy?” Jen asked. She is a little dense sometimes.

  I explained about Charlotte’s two invitations against Nina’s none, and about her peeling nose. Jen is fairly easygoing but even she got a little pale.

  “Oh, my Gawd,” she said.

  Nina came into the kitchen. She had a big glob of some white stuff on her nose. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have said, “Who hit you with the pie?” or something equally clever. But I held my tongue. I have always liked that expression. Have you ever tried to hold your tongue? It is very slippery.

  “Come on over to my house,” Jen said. “I’ve got a fantastic new record.”

  “I look so ghastly,” Nina moaned. “I feel so ghastly.”

  I was going to suggest that she borrow John’s hat but I didn’t. She went anyway. Probably they took the back way through the garbage pails so no one would see them.

  I didn’t go. Instead I stayed at home and did something I have never done before. I got out the laundry basket and did the ironing that Mom had left for Nina. I actually did. Every time I think of it I am impressed. I never even said I’d done it. I never even got credit. It was my beau geste. I just took the pillowcases to the linen closet and put the napkins in the drawer, and I didn’t say a word.

  Nina didn’t thank me, either. But that was all right. She was in such a state when my mother asked her she probably didn’t remember she was supposed to iron.

  24.

  I think I have changed a lot this summer. I have grown and matured and I am also a sadder and wiser person. This comes with age. My character is being strengthened by leaps and bounds, as Carla said.

  I know that people and things are not always what they seem. I know that people you think are strong are sometimes weak. I know that the first date in a long dress can turn out to be a bomb. I know that I am not as nice as I thought I was. I have always thought of myself as a fairly nice person. But when the chips were down, I turned out to be mean and small and almost didn’t go to Carla’s wedding.

  I hope I have learned not to sit in judgment on people. I hope I have learned not to think I am always right and the other guy is always wrong. I hope I have learned to take a broader view of the world. As long as my standards remain mine and I stick to them, then it shouldn’t matter what other people’s standards are.

  I hope I have learned not to contemplate my navel as much as in the past.

  I have finished reading The Deerslayer. I am in love with Natty Bumppo. He was nothing but good. He was kind, noble, soft-spoken, honest, and all good things.

  I intend to make a study of him. I would not be in the least surprised to find that Natty Bumppo was a Leo.

  My horoscope for today says: “Hope begins to make you optimistic. Your mind will expand now. New ideas bring exciting possibilities.”

  I hope this is prophetic.

  About the Author

  Constance C. Greene is the author of over twenty highly successful young adult novels, including the ALA Notable Book A Girl Called Al, Al(exandra) the Great, Getting Nowhere, and Beat the Turtle Drum, which is an ALA Notable Book, an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice, and the basis for the Emmy Award–winning after-school special Very Good Friends. Greene lives in Milford, Connecticut.

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  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1970 by Constance C. Greene

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-0096-3

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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