Logan Likes Mary Anne!

  In the shoe department we found white slip-ons with pink and blue edging that matched the pink and blue in the skirt. I’d never have looked twice at those shoes, either, but with the rest of the outfit they were perfect.

  I charged everything, and talked Stacey out of the underwear department and Kristy out of the sportswear department. I’m not much on shopping, and I’d spent enough of Dad’s money already.

  I might have felt calm and cool while we were shopping on Thursday. I was even feeling okay while I did my homework that night. But the next day during school my stomach began to feel queasy, and by that afternoon I was a nervous wreck.

  “I must be crazy,” I told my friends as school let out. “I’m going to a dance and I don’t know how to dance. And what if Logan and I can’t think of anything to say to each other? What if I stomp on his feet while I’m trying to dance? What if I spill something on him?”

  “You know what?” said Kristy. “I say we cancel today’s club meeting and go over to Mary Anne’s instead. We can pay Janine a couple of dollars to answer the phone for us. Then we can help you get ready for the dance, Mary Anne. I’ll walk home with you guys, call Charlie, and tell him where I am so he can pick me up later.”

  That was just what we did. We gathered in my bedroom. Dawn inspected my outfit and ended up ironing the skirt and shirt for me.

  Kristy looked at the soles of my new shoes. “Aughh!” she cried. “Mary Anne, scuff up the bottoms of those or you’ll slip at the dance and fall flat on your face.”

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. “Something else to worry about.”

  Stacey showed me a few easy dance steps.

  Claudia gave me some tips on Logan. Things like, “Let him hold doors open for you and get you punch. If he brings you a corsage, wear it no matter what color it is.”

  “What if it’s dead?” asked Kristy, giggling.

  Claudia scowled at her.

  At 5:30, everyone left. My friends were all going to the dance, too. Kristy and Dawn were going stag, Stacey was going with Howie Johnson, and Claudia was going with Austin Bentley, whom she’d gone out with a few times before. I was glad they would all be there.

  My dad volunteered to pick up everyone in the club and take us to the dance. Logan and I had arranged to meet at the entrance to the gym at 7:30. Dad dropped the five of us off at school at precisely 7:25. I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Bye,” I said. “Thanks for driving us.”

  “Have fun, honey.”

  My friends and I got out of the car with a chorus of “thank you’s.”

  “Remember,” I called to Dad as I shut the door, “Mr. McGill will drive us home. The dance is over at nine-thirty.”

  As I watched the taillights of the car disappear in the parking lot, part of me wished I were with my father, heading to our safe home where I could be alone and not have to worry about people and dancing and spilling punch and slipping in my new shoes. But the rest of me was excited.

  I joined my friends and we walked to the gym in a noisy bunch. We were all smoothing our hair and picking lint from our clothes and fussing with our jewelry. I thought we made a pretty good-looking group. Claudia was wearing short, tight-fitting black pants and a big white shirt that said BE-BOP all over it in between pictures of rock and roll dancers. She had fixed a floppy blue bow in her hair. Stacey was wearing a white T-shirt under a hot pink jumpsuit. Dawn and Kristy looked more casual. Dawn was wearing a green and white oversized sweater and stretchy green pants. Kristy was wearing a white turtleneck shirt under a pink sweater with jeans. We just couldn’t seem to get her out of blue jeans.

  That evening while I was getting dressed, I’d imagined how Logan and I would meet at the door. I’d spot him from across the hallway and walk over to him ever so casually.

  “Hi, Logan,” I’d say softly.

  “Hi, Mary Anne,” he’d reply, and he’d hold out a sweet-smelling pink carnation.

  As soon as we entered the hall, my dream was shattered. It was a mob scene, wall-to-wall laughing, screaming kids. I stood on my tiptoes and looked all around. After a few seconds I spotted Logan. He was across the hall. Twenty thousand people were between us.

  “Logan!” I called. I jumped up and down and waved my hands, but since I’m short, it didn’t do any good.

  “I see Logan,” I told my friends. “I better try to get to him.”

  “Okay,” replied Kristy. “See you later.”

  “Good luck!” added Dawn excitedly.

  I elbowed and squeezed and shoved my way through the kids. When I finally reached Logan, I felt as if I’d just fought a battle. I was hot and sweaty, and the dance hadn’t even started.

  “Hi — oof — hi, Logan,” I said as someone slammed into me from behind.

  “Hi,” replied Logan. Then, “Here,” he said ruefully, handing me a smushed orange flower. “Sorry about that. I dropped it and someone stepped on it.”

  The flower (whatever it was) looked absolutely horrible against my pink sweater, but I pinned it on anyway.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Logan smiled. “Mah play-sure,” he drawled. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

  He led me inside. The only really good thing I can say about the gymnasium was that it was less crowded than the hallway. I couldn’t appreciate the decorations or the refreshments table or the band. I was too busy worrying.

  There I was — actually at the dance. In a few minutes, the entire school would see that I had no business being there.

  Luckily, Logan wasn’t too keen on the idea of dancing until a lot of other people were dancing, so we stood by the food for a long time. We drank three cups of punch each, and ate handfuls of cookies. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to Logan. He kept asking me questions, and I kept answering them … and then the conversation would lag. I sneaked a peek at my watch. Eight-fifteen.

  Finally Logan took my hand. “Want to dance?” he asked.

  I nodded. What could I say? No? After all, we were there to dance.

  By that time, the gym was so crowded that there was barely room to move around. I tried to remember the steps Stacey had shown me. Then I tried to imitate Logan.

  Imitating Logan turned out to be fun. He smiled when he realized what I was doing, and began fooling around, dancing sort of the way I imagined King Kong would. I kept up with him. Logan started to laugh. He waved his hands in the air. I waved mine. He stomped his feet and spun in a circle. I stomped my feet and spun in a circle. Logan was laughing hysterically, and I was feeling pretty good myself. He put his arm across my shoulder and kicked his legs Rockette-style. I kicked my legs.

  One shoe flew off.

  It sailed through the air, narrowly missing Mr. Kingbridge, our vice principal. It hit a wall and fell to the floor. Mr. Kingbridge picked it up. Leaving a speechless Logan behind, I had to limp through the crowd and claim my shoe.

  Please, please, I prayed, let me wake up and find out that this is all a nightmare.

  But it wasn’t. A whole bunch of kids had seen my flying shoe and they were laughing. By the time I’d put it on and was wending my way back to Logan, he was standing with Stacey and Dawn, and the three of them were laughing, too. I had never, never, never been so embarrassed in my whole life. How could I have been feeling so happy just a few moments earlier? I should have known something like this would happen. I am not the kind of person who’s cut out for boys or dances or parties. I’m just not. I knew this evening was going to be horrible.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s so funny,” I said stiffly to my friends and marched over to the bleachers which lined one wall of the gym.

  “Mary Anne!” Logan called.

  But I could hear Dawn say, “Let her go. I think she wants to be alone.”

  She was right. Except that I wanted to be aloner than by myself in a gym with twenty thousand people. I wanted to be by myself in my room … in bed … under the covers.

  From my perch on the top row of bleachers, I watched Logan dance with Dawn. When
the song was over, he climbed the bleachers and sat down next to me. “Mary Anne,” he said, “everyone’s already forgotten about your shoe. Don’t you want to dance?”

  I shook my head. Logan brought us some more punch and we drank it while we watched the kids below. After three more songs, Logan said, “Now?”

  I shook my head again. “But why don’t you go dance?” I didn’t really mean it, but I felt I had to say it since Logan looked incredibly bored.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  So Logan trotted down the bleachers. He danced with Stacey, then Claudia, then Kristy. Then he began with Dawn again. He even broke in on Austin Bentley the next time he wanted to dance with Claudia. In between dances he kept coming back to me, but I couldn’t bear to leave the safety of the bleachers. I looked at my watch a million, billion times, waiting for nine-thirty to arrive.

  When it did, Logan climbed the bleachers once again. “You’ll come down now, won’t you?” he asked with a little smile.

  I smiled back, relieved that he wasn’t mad. “Sure,” I said.

  As we approached the door to the gym I added, “Thank you for the flower.”

  “Thanks for coming with me. I’m glad you did.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest. Dancing with you was really fun. No girl has ever fooled around with me like that. Most of them like to prove how well they can dance.”

  Really? I thought. Well, maybe I could try it again at the next dance…. If there was a next dance with Logan.

  Friday

  Neither Dawn nor I ever want to hear the word “memory” again. Karen, Andrew, and David Michael played that game all evening while Dawn was over to spend the night, and they drove us crazy with their arguing! I was glad Karen wasn’t scaring everyone with her stories about Morbidda Destiny and the ghost of Ben Brewer, but — whenever she’s telling her tales, there’s no fighting. On the other hand, Mom says she’d rather see Karen and David Michael fight than ignore each other. She says ignoring each other would be a much worse stepfamily problem — at least when they fight they’re interacting. But there must be something in between ignoring and fighting…. oh yeah — scaring each other.

  Kristy’s notebook entry was complete in terms of baby-sitting concerns, but not in terms of everything that happened that night. A lot of talking (especially about my birthday) went on, but I didn’t find out about it until much later.

  Let me start at the beginning, though. It was Friday night again. Logan hadn’t seemed too upset about the dance. In fact, he’d called me the next morning to ask if I wanted to go over to school to watch the junior varsity football game. On Monday and Tuesday he’d sat with our club at lunchtime. On Wednesday, he and I had sat by ourselves (but we joined the club again the next day). On Thursday he had invited me to go to the movies on Friday.

  Needless to say, I was ecstatic! We still had a little trouble talking sometimes, but Logan always seemed so interested in me, and in everything I did or said. It’s hard to be shy around someone who thinks you’re wonderful.

  On Friday night, Kristy was stuck at home baby-sitting for Karen, Andrew, and David Michael, so her mother and Watson said she could invite a friend over. Usually she would have invited me, but since I was busy with Logan, she asked Dawn to come over.

  Talk about ecstatic. Dawn still hasn’t gotten over the days when Kristy was jealous of Dawn’s friendship with me, and would barely speak to her. And Kristy had never invited just Dawn to sleep over. So Dawn gladly accepted. Her mother drove her to the Brewer mansion not long after Kristy’s mom and Watson had left.

  When Dawn rang the doorbell, she heard shrieks coming from inside, only they sounded like terrified shrieks, not joyful ones.

  Nervously, Dawn turned around and looked at her mother who was waiting in the car until Dawn was safely inside. What should she do? She didn’t want to call her mother to the door and then find out there was nothing wrong. That would be embarrassing.

  Dawn rang the bell again. More shrieking. She screwed up her courage. With a shaking hand, she turned the knob and slowly peered around the door and into the front hall.

  “Aughh! Aughh! Au — Dawn?”

  “Karen?”

  “Oh, I thought you were Morbidda Destiny, creeping into our house to put a sp —”

  “Karen, that is enough.” It was Kristy’s impatient voice. “I don’t want to hear another word about poor old Mrs. Porter — or the ghost of Ben Brewer — tonight. And I mean it.” Kristy appeared in the hall, followed by Louie the collie, and Dawn waved to her mother who waved back, then started down the drive.

  “Okay, okay.” Karen flounced off.

  “Sorry about that,” said Kristy. She reached out to help Dawn with her things. “I was in the kitchen. I could hear Karen screaming and I knew what she was doing, but I was too far away to stop her.”

  Dawn grinned. “That’s okay.” She held her hand out to Louie, who gave it a halfhearted lick.

  “I don’t think Louie’s in top condition tonight,” said Kristy. “He’s getting old. Well, come on. We’ll put your things upstairs. Then we’ll have to keep an eye on the kids. After all, I’m baby-sitting.”

  “No problem. You know I like the kids.”

  Kristy and Dawn settled Andrew, Karen, and David Michael on the living room floor with the Memory set. Louie lay down nearby, his head resting mournfully on his paws. Then Kristy and Dawn retreated to a couch, where they sprawled out with a box of graham crackers — one of the few snack foods they’ll both eat, since Kristy considers graham crackers semi-junk food and Dawn considers them semi-health food.

  “I wonder what Mary Anne and Logan are doing right now,” said Kristy.

  Dawn looked at her watch. “The movie’s probably just beginning.”

  “Yeah. The theater’s all dark….”

  “Maybe they’re holding hands….”

  “Kristy!” shouted Karen. “David Michael cheated. He just peeked at one of the cards.” Karen stood indignantly over the blue cards that were arranged facedown on the floor.

  (I guess I should explain here how Memory is played. It’s very simple. The game consists of a big stack of cards. On each is a picture — and each card has one, and only one, matching card. The cards are laid out facedown. The players take turns turning two cards over. If someone gets a pair, he or she goes again. When all the cards have been matched up, the winner is the one with the most pairs. Simple, right?

  Wrong!)

  “I did not cheat!” cried David Michael. “It’s a rule. Each player gets one peeksie during a game.”

  “Show me where it says anything about a peeksie in the rules,” answered Kristy, holding her hand out.

  “Well, that’s how we play at Linny’s.”

  “Why don’t you play by the rulebook?” suggested Kristy.

  The game continued.

  “Where were we?” Kristy asked Dawn. “Oh, yeah. In the dark theater.”

  “Holding hands — maybe,” said Dawn. “I wonder if they’ll, you know, kiss.”

  “Ew!” exclaimed Kristy, looking disgusted, but then she grew quiet. “You know,” she said after several moments, “maybe they will. Mary Anne seems more serious about Logan than Claudia ever was about Trevor.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, she’s not silly about him. Remember how Claudia used to giggle about Trevor all the time? It was as if she liked the idea of going out with him better than she liked Trevor himself.”

  “Karen! No fair! You didn’t let me finish my turn!” Now Andrew was shrieking.

  “Woof?” asked Louie from his spot on the floor.

  “Hey, hey!” cried Kristy.

  “I got a match and Karen took her turn anyway! No fair! No fair!”

  “Andrew, I just forgot, okay? Finish your turn,” said Karen.

  “But you’ve already turned over two cards,” said David Michael indignantly. “And Andrew saw them. He knows where two mo
re cards are. So nothing’s fair now. The game’s ruined.”

  “Excuse me,” said Kristy, “but did you all see which cards Karen turned over?”

  “Yes,” chorused the three kids.

  “Then everything’s fair. You all got an advantage. Think of it as a bonus or something. Andrew, finish your turn.”

  Kristy sighed. “You know,” she said, picking at a tiny piece of lint on her sweater, “I was always the brave one and Mary Anne was always the scaredy-cat. Now everything’s reversed. And suddenly she’s … I don’t know … ahead of me, and I’ve been left behind.”

  Dawn nodded. “But you’re still her friend, one of her very best friends.”

  “I know. I just have a feeling this is going to be an awful year. I moved away from you guys, and Mary Anne’s moving away from me, if you know what I mean. And I haven’t made any friends here in Watson’s neighborhood. My brothers have, but I haven’t.” Kristy stretched her hand toward Louie, but he wouldn’t come over to her for a pat. He looked exhausted.

  “It might help,” said Dawn carefully, “if you stopped thinking of it as Watson’s neighborhood and started thinking of it as your own.”

  “Karen, you give those back!” This time, the indignant voice belonged to David Michael. “Kristy, she keeps hiding my pairs under the couch. Look!” David Michael pulled up the slipcover on the loveseat he and Karen were leaning against. He revealed a row of paired Memory cards.

  “They’re not his, they’re mine!” squawked Karen.

  “Are not!”

  “Are, too!”

  Kristy stood up. “The game is over,” she whispered.

  Karen and David Michael had to stop screaming in order to hear her.

  “What?” they said.