The Pink Dress

by Anne Alexander

  “Parents are to help, darling,” Mom had added. Both agreed her suspicions were well founded but not enough to relate to authorities. Dad had worried about the brass knuckles.

  “If Mo has them,” he said, “someone could really get hurt.”

  “I wonder why Dave became angry with Judy in the first place,” Mom had wondered.

  Now Sue puzzled over it, because if Dave hadn’t gotten angry with Judy, none of this whole business would have involved her.

  Afternoon classes seemed as dull as the morning’s. Oh, to get home where she was liked. The final bell had never sounded so good. Sue gathered up her books and stopped by the music room for her violin. The load was heavy, but she could manage. As she reached the sidewalk, Judy and Laura fell in step beside her.

  “What’s the rush?” asked Judy. “We’re having a special meeting of the Jay Dees. Didn’t you hear?”

  “You must come.” Laura took a firm grip on Sue’s arm.

  “I’ve quit Jay Dees.” Sue tried to shake off Laura’s hold. “I’m going home.”

  “Later.” Judy gripped Sue’s other arm.

  Now, instead of the usual route to either Judy’s or Laura’s, Sue saw the girls were steering her toward the hilly section in back of the school. “Where are we going?” she questioned. “What are we going to do up here?”

  “You’ll find out—soon.” Judy’s laugh was an ugly thing.

  Sue glanced quickly over her shoulder. Other groups were trudging up the hill behind her.

  “All the Jay Dees will be there,” Judy promised. “This is going to be real fun.”

  A wild, nameless fear clawed at Sue. Her hands were clammy wet. Her legs were leaden weights as she plodded up the hill.

  As they reached the crest and started down the other side, Sue saw that groups of youngsters had already congregated in the meadow-like clearing.

  “I won’t run away,” she told Judy. “Let go.”

  Judy nodded to Laura and they both let go. “It wouldn’t do you any good to try,” Judy said.

  Now that they had almost reached the clearing, Sue saw that The Crowd—the boys, that is—were waiting. Almost impatiently, it seemed. Waiting and hating was what the expression on Mo’s face said. Other boys had congregated, too. But the only girls were the Jay Dees. Sue gave a start of surprise when she saw Ricky and Chester—and Dave. They looked as though they were being "guarded"—as she was?

  Mo grinned broadly at Judy. “All set?” he asked.

  “All set.”

  Mo raised his hand and a silence fell on the group. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll hold trial. But remember, guys, mum’s the word—or else.”

  Maxine stood near Sue’s elbow. “Isn’t this exciting?” she whispered.

  Sue couldn’t answer. Her mouth felt parched. Her gaze riveted on Dave as he was pushed forward to stand before Mo. He shook off the hands of the boys. If he was afraid, his face didn’t show it.

  “This guy,” said Mo with a wave of his arm toward Dave and then the crowd, “is yellow. Or maybe he’d rather be called chicken.”

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. He shrugged disdainfully.

  “Yellow.”

  “Chicken.”

  Sue felt her fury replace her fear as the others made a chant of the names.

  “First witness,” demanded Mo.

  Sue stared in disbelief as Chester was led forward. His face was white with fear. His hands, Sue saw, were tied behind him. He stared at his feet.

  “Tell us, Chester,” Mo drawled, “don’t you have proof Dave is chicken?”

  Chester swallowed hard but no sound came. Finally he shook his head.

  “Come on now, boy, be honest. Don’t you remember your Sunday suit?” Mo jerked Chester’s hands upward, and Chester winced. “Going to talk now?”

  Chester shot a pleading look at Dave, but Dave’s gaze was averted, as if he were oblivious of the crowd around him. Chester swallowed again. “You fellows,” he began in a voice so low Sue had to strain forward to hear him, “started roughing me up one night. In a vacant garage, and you darned near ruined my suit, and. . .” His voice trailed off.

  “And Dave, here, what did he do?”

  Chester remained silent.

  “He was chicken, wasn’t he?” Mo jerked harder on Chester’s arms, and the boy gave an involuntary gasp of pain. Ricky started forward as if to help, but the boys beside him held him back.

  “For crying out loud!” Dave’s voice was clear and strong. “Leave him alone, will you? I’ll tell you what happened—as if you don’t know. I faked my turn at roughing him and I showed him where to sneak out for home. So what?”

  “So I didn’t get my licks.” Mo flushed angrily. “You played boy scout before I had my turn.”

  “So what?” Dave’s voice showed his scorn. “I don’t pick on kids who don’t have a chance.”

  “Chicken, chicken, chicken.” Mo’s eyes blazed. “You’re not calling the plays.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Well, kid, the master’s voice.” Mo turned on Chester, his voice sugar-sweet. “And may you be the first to lick his boots.” He jerked viciously on Chester’s arms, and this time Chester fell to his knees.

  “Quit it.” Dave shoved Mo aside and helped Chester to his feet. With deft fingers he untied the knot that held his hands. “If there’s any bootlicking,” he said to Mo, “you’re the one to do it.”

  Mo started menacingly toward Dave. “You’re too chicken to fight,” he said, “or you’d stick ‘em up right now.”

  Sue felt her heart pound as the two boys circled each other.

  “This is what Mo was working for,” Maxine whispered. “He’s going to give Dave a real working over.”

  “With his knuckles it’ll be easy,” Judy whispered back.

  Sue’s stomach turned over as the impact of Judy’s words hit her. Knuckles! Brass knuckles! “Stop it, stop it,” she heard herself scream. “Dave, don’t fight.” In a flash she dumped her books and violin on the ground and started to run. Judy made a grab for her arm, but she shook it free.

  “Lookit, lookit, Dave’s girl’s chicken too,” Mo shouted. “She can’t stand a fight.”

  Let them think what they wanted. She had to be in time. She had to, had to. Her legs were heavy, leaden pipes as she pounded to the crest. A pain in her side made her hold it, press against the scar with her hand. She couldn’t stop now. Don’t run. Silly, silly doctor. She had to run.

  She raced down the hill toward the school. This was a nightmare of reality. This was living the dream where you couldn’t run because your legs wouldn’t go. She tripped over a slight raise in the sidewalk and stumbled to her knees. For a bad moment her knee felt paralyzed. Then she was pushing herself to her feet.

  Step, step, run, run! Her throat was dry. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She could scarcely breathe. The school building which had stayed so far away now loomed before her. She pounded up the ramp, down the corridor. She banged with one hand against Mr. Mack’s door as she opened it with the other.

  “Stop them, stop them,” she pleaded. “Mr. Mack, you’ve got to stop them. Mo has knuckles. He’s going to hurt Dave. Over the hill.”

  Even as she cried out, Sue felt the room turn round and round. Mr. Mack’s face spun weirdly before her. Her legs had turned to jelly. There was a strange singing in her ears, but through it all she heard another sound, the thin scream of a siren. Police . . . ambulance . . . Dave. She’d been too late. The floor pitched toward her, and Sue felt herself fall into a soft, cottony darkness.

  20.

  One Rotten Apple

  She floundered through waves of low voices, and then a pungent, acrid odor brought her sharply to reality. She sat up wildly—she was on some sort of couch—and saw the familiar faces of Mr. Mack and the school nurse.

  Reality! Dave! Mo! The brass knuckles!

  “You didn’t stop them.” Sue heard her voice raise hysterically. “You didn’t stop them.”

  “
It’s all right, Sue, everything is all right.” Mr. Mack’s voice was placating and Sue hated it.

  “I told you,” she said. “I told you to stop them. And you didn’t. You said if I needed help—and you didn’t.”

  “It’s all right,” Mr. Mack repeated. “The fight never happened. The police were waiting.”

  “The—police—were—there?”

  “This is the break they wanted.”

  Sue looked at Mr. Mack blankly. His words weren’t making sense. If the police had been there, why hadn’t she seen them? If the police had been there, why had she come running to Mr. Mack, making a fool of herself?

  “We’ve called your mother,” the nurse said. “She’ll be right over.” She handed Mr. Mack a small, capped bottle. “Here, in case she feels faint again.”

  Spirits of ammonia Sue decided as the nurse left the room. None of that.

  “I’m glad you came, Sue.” Mr. Mack smiled down on her as he arranged some cushions on the couch. “You had to take the step.”

  Take the step? That she had. Maybe Mr. Mack was glad. She was heartsick. By turning "informer" she’d made sure no one would ever like her—or even speak to her, most likely—again.

  “You’ve a badly skinned knee, young lady,” Mr. Mack continued. “Perhaps I should dress it.”

  Sue shook her head. “Let Mom do it,” she said.

  Sue watched as Mr. Mack busied himself around the office. Dave—Mo—the rest of the kids—. “My violin and books are up there,” she said suddenly.

  “Everything will be taken care of. Don’t worry.”

  Don’t worry? That was easy to say. Mr. Mack wouldn’t know what it was like to be friendless.

  A sharp rap on the door—and Mom was in the office.

  “Mom.” Sue felt tears spring to her eyes. “Mom, Mo had the knuckles.”

  “He did? My goodness.” Mom seemed to brush Sue’s words aside as if they weren’t important. “See if you can hurry, dear. The car’s right outside, and I left the motor running.” She held out her hand to help Sue to her feet.

  “Need any help, Mrs. Stevens?”

  Mom smiled. “No thanks, Mr. Mack. We can manage. And thank you so much for phoning.”

  Once they were in the car, Mom drove smoothly away from the school. How could she be so cool, calm, and collected? Sue felt anger in place of her tears. Or was that what Mom was striving for, to keep Sue from crying?

  “Do you think they’ll get in trouble, Mom?”

  “I think you’re all going to get in trouble,” Mom answered smoothly, “before you get out of it.”

  All? Mom hadn’t asked who "they" were, even. So she knew!

  Mom wouldn’t even talk about it when they arrived home. “More like a four-year-old than fourteen,” she remarked as she applied antiseptic and bandage to Sue’s knee.

  Even when Dad came home for dinner, Mom kept the conversation light and fanciful. But after the dishes were done and they were all settled in the living room, the doorbell rang and Mom answered it as if she knew who’d be there.

  Sue gasped as she saw a police officer walk into the room. Jay and Kit were wide-eyed when he asked Sue and her parents to be present in the judge’s chambers at ten the next morning.

  “This is your picture?” he asked Sue, showing her the photo Maxine’s dad had taken initiation night. “You are a Jay Dee?”

  Sue could only nod.

  “Is Sue going to jail?” asked Jay after the officer left.

  Dad shook his head. “No, she’ll just have a few questions to answer.”

  “But I didn’t do anything bad,” Sue protested.

  “It takes only one rotten apple, Sue, to spoil the barrel. That’s what my grandmother always said.”

  For her appearance before the judge, Sue dressed with meticulous care. She marveled at her parents. They were so calm, seemingly unconcerned. She was shaky all over. Sue had scanned the morning paper thoroughly to see what mention was made of the "fight,” but the story was small, crowded into capsule size by more important events. More important? How could anything be more important than this unpredictable day ahead. Yesterday she had hated school. Now the security of a classroom seemed good.

  The judge’s chambers were quite crowded when Sue and her parents arrived. Apparently the Stevens trio were among the last. Dave sat with his dad. He nodded briefly as they entered. What must Alison be feeling as she stayed confined in the hospital while all this furor went on?

  There was hushed silence when the judge walked in. He looked kindly and gentle enough, but what must he be thinking? Sue reached for her father’s hand. Funny how terribly necessary parents were right now. Maybe all the kids were feeling like this. Judy, Mo, Laura, Maxine—Sue checked them off a mental list. The Jay Dees and the boys in The Crowd were all here—with their parents.

  With quiet probing, the judge talked to one and then another. It was as if he were putting together a jigsaw puzzle, with bits of information connecting with other bits. The picture of destruction emerged sharp and unlovely. The minor pilfering of the local stores, the petty defacing of property—they seemed to be the background scenery to the serious offenses. On these two—the damage to the Driscoll home and the school—Judy and Mo starred. In fact, they seemed to be the only performers. It wasn’t that they "shouldered" the guilt bravely, but that they bragged about their "achievements.” They looked hostile, defiant, and proud of themselves. They related with scorn how the others had "chickened" on the Driscoll home. Mo seemed quite pleased with his clever "plant" of Dave’s key ring in the school washroom. Dave—well, Dave had been as uninvolved as she was in all the activities, and Sue’d believed him a ringleader. The judge exploded only once, and that was when Mo’s mother had interrupted his story to say placatingly to the judge. “Boys will be boys, you know.” His thunderous reply had made Sue shake in her well-polished shoes.

  As the judge proclaimed the punishments, Sue saw the bravado and sureness seep from Mo and Judy, leaving them as shaken and subdued as the rest of them. All the girls and boys present were to report to the city hall for the next two Saturdays to do any menial tasks assigned them. There would be, the judge assured them, plenty of windows to wash, walls to scrub, and lawns to rake. As for Judy and Mo-they had a choice. Either they and their parents would make full restitution for the property damage and they themselves would be put on probation for three months, or—Sue shuddered at the alternative-Judy would be sent to Los Guilicos, Mo to Log Cabin. The probation, the judge explained, meant reporting to him every Saturday—and he would assign them suitable work.

  “This is a fine community,” the judge concluded. “We have, for the most part, upright, honest citizens, young and old. We want no rotten apples.”

  21.

  The Pink Dress

  Sue walked down the courthouse steps between her mother and dad, chastened and subdued. How humiliated they must be to have to come to court like this.

  “A fine judge and fair punishment,” Mom said as Dad opened the car door for her.

  “Those poor parents.” Dad answered. “We can still be proud of our daughter.” He glanced at the clock on the city hall tower. “Lunch, and then Sue can go to school.”

  School? This afternoon? How could she face them?

  As Dad pulled into the driveway, Mrs. Cannon ran to meet them, a cake box in hand. “I’ve brought you a surprise, Sue,” she said. “You’re such a brave, good girl.”

  Sue’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. Good and brave? Was this more of Mrs. Cannon’s sarcasm? But no, she seemed to mean it.

  “I think you were wonderful to run for help,” she said. “I always say you are a girl parents can be proud of.”

  Sue thanked Mrs. Cannon duly for the cake and followed her parents into the house. It was sort of symbolic, this cake. Which layer was she now?

  She was cutting a second piece for Dad when the phone rang. “It’s for you/' Dad announced. “Dave, I think.”

  Sue talked briefly, th
en put the receiver back gently in its cradle. As she turned from the phone, she couldn’t stop her face from smiling. “Dave’s dad will pick me up,” she said. “Dave has to go to school this afternoon, too.” She looked shyly at Mom. “He—he wants me to wear my pink dress.”

  “It’s all ready to iron, just take a few minutes,” Mom promised.

  The dress swished prettily as Sue walked beside Dave to the car.

  “Quite a morning,” Mr. Young commented. “You two were lucky.”

  Sue nodded. It was and they were!

  “Thanks, Sue—for yesterday.” As Dave spoke, his face turned a bright red. He held out his bracelet. “Wear this?”

  Sue put out her arm and Dave fastened it around her wrist once more. “I’m sorry I doubted you—ever,” she said simply. “I won’t again.”

  When Mr. Young dropped them off at school, they were almost immediately surrounded by their fellow students. “Was it bad?” they demanded. “Tell us.”

  “It wasn’t good,” Dave said. “We don’t want to talk about it.” With his hand on Sue’s shoulder, Dave wove deftly through the throng.

  “Hey.”

  Sue saw Ricky and Chester run toward them. “Wait up.

  Dave paused. “Nice guy, that Ricky. Chester’s okay, too, I guess.” He laughed. “You know, if it hadn’t been for Chester, I might never have really known you. I got mad at Judy that night because she called me ‘chicken’ about him.”

  As Dave turned to greet the two boys, Sue saw Cathy and Ellen across the yard. They waved at her and she waved back. Why, they were coming over! Now they were smiling as though—as though nothing had ever happened.

  “You were great, going for help,” Cathy said. Ellen’s round face beamed her approval too. Why—why they were liking her again.

  “I don’t know,” Dave was saying. “I don’t know if Sue’s parents will let her go to the show with me.”

  “Sure they will.” Sue smiled at them all. “But why not come over tonight and just listen to records—the six of us?”

  “Sounds good,” Ricky smiled. “If it’s okay with your folks-and Cathy.”