Getting Near to Baby by Audrey Couloumbis

Author:Audrey Couloumbis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

13

The Way Things Sometimes Work Out

The drone of storytelling went on, only now and again interrupted by a scream of discovery and the throes of a tick-burning. After a while there were seven of us on the steps, including Dee Dee. When another girl stood up to follow that last one, Miss Pettibone marched over to us, her face flushed an angry pink.

“I don’t know why you girls insist on getting sunstroke when it is my turn to be the teacher. I’m calling your mothers right now to let them know how you’ve misbehaved.”

No one said anything to this. There didn’t seem to be much to say.

“Unless, of course, you are wise enough to mend your ways and join the others for a game of kickball.” With these words, she pointed to the empty baseball field across the street. The boys had gone off somewhere to eat their lunches and hadn’t come back. She signaled to the other girls, who swarmed out from under that tree and ran for the baseball field. Miss Pettibone followed them at a more leisurely pace.

“My mom is going to be mad,” Dee Dee said.

“Mine too,” Linda said.

“Aunt Patty is going to be fit to be tied,” I said. “Tick bites can make you awful sick.”

“I mean my mom will be mad at me,” Dee Dee said.

“My mom always sides with the teacher,” somebody else said.

“We ought to do like she said,” Linda decided. “Go on and play like nothing happened. She won’t make us sit there again.”

“Yeah. We might not even have had to finish eating lunch under there if Miss Priss here hadn’t acted like no one could tell her what to do,” Dee Dee said, looking at me. “This whole thing is all your fault.”

Linda and the other girls agreed with this.

I guess Little Sister and I could’ve gone along and played kickball, but I wasn’t too crazy about those girls and I didn’t like Miss Pettibone at all. I was counting on her making good on her threat and calling to report what bad girls we were. Aunt Patty didn’t live more than ten minutes away by car.

All the same, I watched with a sick feeling in my stomach while the others marched off with that look of the saved. It’s a look made up of the relief a person feels when something hasn’t been as bad as they feared and of the warm feeling it gives them to be accepted back into the fold.

“You can go play if you want,” I said to Little Sister. But she looked at me like the words didn’t make any sense. We sat there for a while, and when the game got going, I gave Little Sister’s hand a pull. But we hadn’t gotten ten feet past the churchyard before Miss Pettibone hurried up alongside us.

“You girls can’t go anywhere without my permission.”

“Then I guess you ought to give us your permission, seeing you didn’t call our aunt Patty like you said.” My voice shook a little.

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