hugging her notebook happily.
At the entrance to her school a group of children crowded through the door. More stood around on the sidewalk. They were all shapes and sizes and mostly girls because The Gregory School was a girls’ school. Boys were allowed to attend up through the sixth grade, but after that they had to go someplace else.
It made Harriet sad to think that after this year Sport wouldn’t be in school. She didn’t care about the others. In particular about Pinky Whitehead she didn’t care, because she thought he was the dumbest thing in the world. The only other boy in her class was a boy Harriet had christened The Boy with the Purple Socks, because he was so boring no one ever bothered to remember his name. He had come to the school last year and everyone else had been there since the first grade. Harriet remembered that first day when he had come in with those purple socks on. Whoever heard of purple socks? She figured it was lucky he wore them; otherwise no one would have even known he was there at all. He never said a word.
Sport came up to her as she leaned against a fire hydrant and opened her notebook. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Anyone else here yet?”
“Just that dumb boy with the purple socks.”
Harriet wrote quickly in her notebook:
SOMETIMES SPORT LOOKS AS THOUGH HE’S BEEN UP ALL NIGHT. HE HAS FUNNY LITTLE DRY THINGS AROUND HIS EYES. I WORRY ABOUT HIM.
“Sport, did you wash your face?”
“Huh? Uh … no, I forgot.”
“Hmmmm,” Harriet said disapprovingly, and Sport looked away. Actually Harriet hadn’t washed hers either, but you couldn’t tell it.
“Hey, there’s Janie.” Sport pointed up the street.
Janie Gibbs was Harriet’s best friend beside Sport. She had a chemistry set and planned one day to blow up the world. Both Harriet and Sport had a great respect for Janie’s experiments, but they didn’t understand a word she said about them.
Janie came slowly towards them, her eyes apparently focused on a tree across the street in the park. She looked odd walking that way, her head turned completely to the right like a soldier on parade. Both Sport and Harriet knew she did this because she was shy and didn’t want to see anyone, so they didn’t mention it.
She almost bumped into them.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
That over, they all stood there.
“Oh, dear,” said Janie, “another year. Another year older and I’m no closer to my goal.”
Sport and Harriet nodded seriously. They watched a long black limousine driven by a chauffeur. It stopped in front of the school. A small blonde girl got out.
“There’s that dreadful Beth Ellen Hansen,” said Janie with a sneer. Beth Ellen was the prettiest girl in the class, so everyone despised her, particularly Janie, who was rather plain and freckled.
Harriet took some notes:
JANIE GETS STRANGER EVERY YEAR. I THINK SHE MIGHT BLOW UP THE WORLD. BETH ELLEN ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE SHE MIGHT CRY.
Rachel Hennessey and Marion Hawthorne came walking up together. They were always together. “Good morning, Harriet, Simon, Jane,” Marion Hawthorne said very formally. She acted like a teacher, as though she were one minute from rapping on the desk for attention. Rachel did everything Marion did, so now she looked down her nose at them and nodded hello, one quick jerk of the head. The two of them went into the school then.
“Are they not too much?” Janie said and looked away in disgust.
Carrie Andrews got off the bus. Harriet wrote:
CARRIE ANDREWS IS CONSIDERABLY FATTER THIS YEAR.
Laura Peters got out of the station wagon bus. Harriet wrote:
AND LAURA PETERS IS THINNER AND UGLIER. I THINK SHE COULD USE SOME BRACES ON HER TEETH.
“Oh, boy,” said Sport. They looked and there was Pinky Whitehead. Pinky was so pale, thin, and weak that he looked like a glass of milk, a tall thin glass of milk. Sport couldn’t bear to look at him. Harriet turned away from habit, then looked back to see if he had changed. Then she wrote:
PINKY WHITEHEAD HAS NOT CHANGED. PINKY WHITEHEAD WILL NEVER CHANGE.
Harriet consulted her mental notes on Pinky. He lived on Eighty-eighth Street. He had a very beautiful mother, a father who worked on a magazine, and a baby sister three years old. Harriet wrote:
MY MOTHER IS ALWAYS SAYING PINKY WHITEHEAD’S WHOLE PROBLEM IS HIS MOTHER. I BETTER ASK HER WHAT THAT MEANS OR I’LL NEVER FIND OUT. DOES HIS MOTHER HATE HIM? IF I HAD HIM I’D HATE HIM.
“Well, it’s time to go in,” said Sport in a tired voice.
“Yeah, let’s get this over with,” said Janie and turned towards the door.
Harriet closed her notebook and they all went in. Their first period was Assembly in the big study hall.
Miss Angela Whitehead, the present dean, stood at the podium. Harriet scribbled in her notebook as soon as she took her seat:
MISS WHITEHEAD’S FEET LOOK LARGER THIS YEAR. MISS WHITEHEAD HAS BUCK TEETH, THIN HAIR, FEET LIKE SKIS, AND A VERY LONG HANGING STOMACH. OLE GOLLY SAYS DESCRIPTION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL AND CLEARS THE BRAIN LIKE A LAXATIVE. THAT SHOULD TAKE CARE OF MISS WHITEHEAD.
“Good morning, children.” Miss Whitehead bowed as gracefully as a pussy willow. The students rose in a shuffling body. “Good morning, Miss Whitehead,” they intoned, an undercurrent of grumbling rising immediately afterwards like a second theme. Miss Whitehead made a short speech about gum and candy wrappers being thrown all over the school. She didn’t see any reason for this. Then followed the readings. Every morning two or three older girls read short passages from books, usually the Bible. Harriet never listened. She got enough quotes from Ole Golly. She used this time to write in her book:
OLE GOLLY SAYS THERE IS AS MANY WAYS TO LIVE AS THERE ARE PEOPLE ON THE EARTH AND I SHOULDN’T GO ROUND WITH BLINDERS BUT SHOULD SEE EVERY WAY I CAN. THEN I’LL KNOW WHAT WAY I WANT TO LIVE AND NOT JUST LIVE LIKE MY FAMILY.
I’LL TELL YOU ONE THING, I DON’T WANT TO LIVE LIKE MISS WHITEHEAD. THE OTHER DAY I SAW HER IN THE GROCERY STORE AND SHE BOUGHT ONE SMALL CAN OF TUNA, ONE DIET COLA AND A PACKAGE OF CIGARETTES. NOT EVEN ONE TOMATO. SHE MUST HAVE A TERRIBLE LIFE. I CAN’T WAIT TO GET BACK TO MY REGULAR SPY ROUTE THIS AFTERNOON. I’VE BEEN AWAY ALL SUMMER AND THOSE HOUSES IN THE COUNTRY ARE TOO FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. TO GET MUCH DONE I WOULD HAVE TO DRIVE.
Assembly was over. The class got up and filed into the sixth-grade room. Harriet grabbed a desk right across the aisle one way from Sport and the other way from Janie.
“Hey!” Sport said because he was glad. If they hadn’t been able to grab these desks, it would have been hard passing notes.
Miss
