Grandma Dowdel 03: A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

Author:Richard Peck [Peck, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humorous, Juvenile Fiction, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781101664421
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

Phyllis wasn’t complaining these days as much as you’d think. I never saw her at school, of course, and she never came looking for me. But everybody on the high school side was getting worked up about homecoming.

Phyllis seemed to be out at a committee meeting most nights. She naturally wouldn’t be riding on the Iota Nu Beta float because she’d made an enemy out of Waynetta Blalock. But this didn’t appear to faze her. Mother thought Phyllis was beginning to settle in.

But then on Wednesday she dug in her heels and wouldn’t go to school. Ruth Ann came down to breakfast, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to say Phyllis was in bed for the day.

“Oh dear,” Mother said. “Do you think she’s running a temperature?”

“Nope.” Ruth Ann tweaked the ribbons on her braids.

“Is she looking pale and washed out?”

“She always looks pale and washed out without her lipstick on.” Ruth Ann made big eyes. She actually only had two expressions: worried and wide-eyed.

Mother was at the drainboard, pouring the cream off the top of the milk. She turned. “Ruth Ann, honey, Phyllis doesn’t wear lipstick. She’s only f—”

“Not at home,” Ruth Ann said. “She waits till she gets to school.”

This was true. But I wouldn’t have told it because I’m not a snitch. Also, if I’d ratted on her, she’d have nuked me into next November.

At the drainboard Mother took some deep, calming breaths. “Does Phyllis say why she isn’t going to school today?”

Ruth Ann beamed. She was a first grader with the answer. “Elvis. They’re shipping him out to Germany today. The army is. Phyllis says she can’t be expected to concentrate on anything else.” Ruth Ann scanned Mother to see how she took this. “Phyllis says she’s in mourning for her life.”

Mother made a tight little ball of the dish rag and gazed away out the window.

Phyllis had been writing Elvis Presley right along since he’d been drafted into the army last winter. I didn’t see any difference between writing him at Fort Hood, Texas, and writing him in Germany. He never answered anyway. I couldn’t follow Phyllis’s thinking, and it might have been because I was a boy.

Anyway, after sulking in bed till after school, Phyllis was up that night in time for a committee meeting about the Future Farmers of America hayride. Though I thought the Future Farmers hayride had already happened.

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