by being the town’s very first debs. All their friends and families will have parties for them during the year, and at Christmas there will be a whole week of big dances, just for them and their escorts. And in the spring, there will be a great ball, with everyone chipping in toward a big name orchestra. Everyone will be presented—” She ran out of breath. “It will be just fabulous,” she ended.
“Dances all Christmas vacation!” Nancy echoed happily. “Why, then Ernie will be home for them. How super!” She turned eagerly to Lynn. “Paul will be home, too!”
“Yes,” Lynn said, her own excitement beginning to rise. “It does sound marvelous. But how do you know which girls were selected? Who is doing the selecting?”
“Mrs. Peterson, I suppose,” Joan Wilson answered. “Since she’s the one behind it all. But she—well, it sounds awful to say it this way, but there are really just a certain group of girls she can select. What she wants is to start a debutante tradition, a sort of ‘entrance-into-society’ thing, the way they have in Boston and Atlanta and places like that. So she’s got to choose girls from the Hill.”
Lynn nodded, accepting the fact without question.
“I suppose so. Twenty. Well, that takes in all of us, I guess and a few others besides.”
“Of course, Brenda Peterson will be one,” Nancy said.
They were all silent a moment. Then Holly said, “Well, of course. Mrs. Peterson wouldn’t be doing it at all, if it weren’t for Brenda.”
Somewhere a bell rang. The sound filled the air, and instantly the steps became alive with people. The girls scrambled to their feet, momentarily deserting the subject of the debuts.
“Let’s try to get seats beside each other in home room this year,” Nancy said, catching Lynn’s arm.
The crowd swept them forward, through the open doors into the huge central hallway. The smell of the high school rose up around them—books and chalk and desks and people and, somehow, the faint odor of chewing gum. It was a familiar smell, and to Lynn it brought back three years of memories.
When I walked down this hall the last time, she thought nostalgically, Paul was walking beside me, carrying my books, and we were both laughing because school was out and we had the whole long summer in front of us. And now summer is already over, and Paul is at college, and I’m back again without him.
Suddenly, from close behind her, there came a whistle, clear and intimate, and a low voice said, “Well, Miss Chambers! A good-looking gal, but snooty as ever!”
Lynn whirled to find herself looking into the mocking eyes of a dark-haired boy with a thin face and a sarcastic curl to the comer of his mouth.
With an angry toss of her head, she turned away again without bothering to speak.
The boy laughed, a hard little laugh, and swung off down the hall.
“Who on earth—” Nancy began, trying to see who had spoken.
“Oh, it’s just that horrid Dirk Masters,” Lynn told her disdainfully. “If he isn’t the crudest, coarsest thing I’ve ever seen! Imagine one of the boys from the Hill saying something like that!”
“You were right not to answer him,” Nancy said. “I hear he got in some trouble with the police this summer, he and some of the tough bunch of older fellows he goes around with. It’s too bad, because Anne is a nice girl.”
“Who, his sister?” Lynn looked surprised. “How do you come to know Anne Masters?”
“She had a locker near mine last year,” Nancy explained. “I didn’t really know her, but we did say ‘hello’ to each other every day, and she seemed like a sweet little thing, not at all like Dirk. She was in my algebra class, too, and made good grades. It’s funny, because I hear Dirk’s always flunking everything.”
“I guess so,” Lynn said, “if he’s still in high school. He must be eighteen at least.”
Another bell rang.
“Come on,” Lynn urged, giving her friend’s arm an impatient little tug, “let’s not be late to home room our very first day.”
Nancy fell into step beside her.
“You know,” she confided, “I’m glad to be back. I thought I would be just miserable, coming back to high school without Ernie. We’ve been going together so long, I didn’t see how I’d ever feel right coming back without him. But I do. I mean, I miss him, but still I feel as though the year is going to be fun.”
“Yes,” Lynn agreed, “and being debutantes will be the saving thing! Isn’t it wonderful they thought it up this year? Just think, if they had waited until one year later, we would have missed it, because we’ll be away at college then.”
And somehow, even without Paul to share it with her, senior year rose up before Lynn, interesting and different and exciting.
2
When Lynn got home from school that afternoon, Dodie was already there, curled up on the porch steps, eating an apple.
Lynn looked at her with surprise.
“What are you doing, just sitting there? Don’t tell me Dorothy Eloise Chambers has taken to daydreaming!”
Dodie made a quick face at the sound of her hated name.
“Of course not, silly; I’ll leave that to the love-struck members of the family. I’m waiting for Janie. She’s been to Nassau during the summer, and her parents bought her a whole collection of records there. She’s bringing them over this afternoon.” She raised her eyes and gave her sister a penetrating look. “I know what you’re going to ask now. ‘Is there any mail?’”
Lynn fought down her irritation. Even on days when everything was going perfectly, Dodie had the power to drive her practically insane.
“Well, is there any?”
“Yes,” Dodie answered, leaning back on the step and taking another bite of apple. “You got two epistles—one from darling Paul and one that looks like your deb invitation. At least, it’s in a shiny white envelope with the Peterson address on the back.”
Lynn paused on her way into the house.
“How did you know about the debutante business? It’s just being started.”
“Maybe so,” said Dodie, finishing her apple with one huge bite and tossing the core over the porch railing, “but it’s all over school already. They say almost everybody on the Hill is going to ‘come out.’ Some of the boys are even calling it Debutante Hill and saying you should hang lanterns up and down and have the Presentation Ball right in the middle of the Hill Road.”
She stood up quickly, with a sudden, catlike motion. Dodie was not built like the other two Chambers children. Whereas Ernie and Lynn were both tall and slender, with a graceful quality about them, Dodie was small and supple and animated. On first glance, she did not seem as pretty as Lynn, for there was a sharpness to her that her sister did not have, but when she was with people she liked
