Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L.Konigsburg

Author:E.L.Konigsburg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks

After I had told Cynthia “yes” and after I had received this permission from Jennifer, I was glad that I was going to the party. I enjoyed getting mad at Cynthia. I also thought that it would be fun to tell Jennifer all about how ordinary girls act at a party; normal girls who had a temperature of 98.6 degrees.

From the first moment I awakened on the Saturday of the party, things did not go well. Not at all. In the first place it was a butterscotch day; I was never in a good mood on butterscotch days. There was a candy factory in our town. On different days they made different flavors. In our part of town, we breathed flavored air. Orange was pleasant; cherry and lime were hardly noticeable; mint was delicious (I could pretend that I was smoking a menthol cigarette). But butterscotch was a hard flavor to breathe.

In the second place, my mother looked at my hair and decided that I couldn’t go to the party without a trim. Especially my bangs. She said something about my head looking like a pot of spaghetti that had boiled over. She ran to get the scissors. I ran to get my bathing cap.

“Get that thing off your head,” she said. “All I want to do is trim your bangs.”

“I want them to grow out. Please,” I answered.

“How can you possibly look neat for the party?” she asked.

“I’ll shampoo it and pin it back,” I answered. “After all, it is my hair.”

“I never doubt that it’s yours,” my mother said, “but I sometimes doubt that it’s hair. Okay, go wash it.”

I worked hard on the shampoo job, and I used about fifty thousand bobby pins to hold it back. If someone had held a magnet anywhere near my head, I feel certain that it would have lifted me five feet off the floor.

My party dress was also a problem; it was two years old. I always grew, but every year I grew less than most people. If I had grown a great deal, my mother would have bought me a new dress, but everything always almost fitted, and so we managed to get another year’s wear out of it. That was what had happened with the Pilgrim costume, too. I was very uncomfortable. With my hair pinned back tight and my dress so tight, I felt as if I wouldn’t be able to move unless someone pulled my arms and legs with strings the way you pull a marionette. I was in no party mood.

My mother wrapped the gift she had gotten for Cynthia. Two days before, she had asked me what I thought Cynthia would like; I had answered, “A pet boa constrictor.” My mother didn’t think that was very funny. She bought her a pair of stretch gloves, since we didn’t know her size.

I went up to Cynthia’s apartment and rang the bell. When she opened the door and greeted me, all I could see was pink. She was wearing a pink dress.

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