The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp Read Online Free Page B

meeting. But at the top he turned to fire a parting shot.
    “And, Blossom,” he said, “take my advice and stop wearing that old grade school spelling medal. Nobody gives a hoot in high school.” Then he vanished.
    There I stood, without a friend in the world and eight months to go in the school year. Though I can generally manage to keep my sunny side up, my spirits were low on that October afternoon.
    But it is always darkest before the dawn. I was to find a friend sooner than I knew, and in quite an unexpected place.

4
    W HETHER IT ’ S DUE TO MY S ECOND S IGHT OR NOT , I’ve always been drawn to people—even the living—who are lonely or troubled in their thoughts. It seems to be my fate. Possibly Miss Fuller pining for love of Mr. Lacy at her desk in the locker room is an example. A better example than her cropped up in the following week.
    For reasons of his own, Mr. Lacy formed the habit of sending me off on various errands during history class. As this gave me freedom and a relief from history, it suited us both.
    One afternoon I was killing time after I’d delivered the attendance slip to the main office. As is my habit, I dropped into the girls’ rest room down in the cellar of the school.
    Mama and me don’t have running water piped in at home, so the sight of all that white tile and rushing water at your beck and call is a comfort. Moreover, the conveniences are all in little cubbyholes with doors on them. I believe people deserve their privacy, especially me.
    The girls’ rest room is strictly modern with rolls of paper where you’d expect to find pages from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. I was sitting at my ease in one of the cubbyholes that afternoon when something came over me that seemed supernatural. Though I didn’t Vibrate, my flesh crawled as I sensed I wasn’t alone.
    With the thought came a low sob from the next cubbyhole. Glancing down, I saw under the half wall between us a foot planted there in a broken boot. Another sob followed the first. When I heard paper tearing from the roll, I figured my neighbor was of the living. Still, you never know.
    Settling my skirts, I stole out to investigate, but my squeaking door gave me away. The next door over was yanked open from within, and there I stood, staring straight inside at a girl still sitting.
    She had a pinched face and a slack jaw. Slumped there with her skirttails hitched up, she was blowing her nose with a square of the paper they provide. Her nappy old flannel jacket and a feed sack skirt made me a regular fashion plate by contrast. From her general condition I took her to be one of the kids in from the country. Her hair was arranged roughly into pigtails, and there was more than mud on her boots.
    It’s not my way to stand around chatting to people in these circumstances. But the girl gazed up at me with eyes as sad as Miss Fuller’s, set in a face far sadder.
    “You didn’t see me,” she said in a country drawl. “Bear that in mind.”
    “If I wasn’t to see you, why did you open your door?”
    “I get lonesome,” she whined, sniffing a red nose. “I reckon I’d have opened up even if you’d been one of them teachers. It’s a sight how lonesome you can get in a big, busy place like Bluff City.”
    It was neither big nor busy there in her cubbyhole, but I let that pass.
    “You a freshman?” I asked, just making small talk.
    “I reckon,” she replied.
    “Then where’s your beanie?” I pointed to my own, bristling with a hatpin on my head.
    “Is that what them things mean?” she said. “I wondered.”
    Country children are slow to catch on to our ways, but this example was slower than most. I began to have suspicions.
    “Say, listen, if you’re a freshman, how come you aren’t in Miss Blankenship’s homeroom?”
    “Who?” The girl drew back. “What?”
    I had her cornered, and she saw that, so I changed my tack. “My name’s Blossom Culp. What’s yours?”
    She didn’t like giving out her name. But