The Luckiest Girl Read Online Free

high school and coming home for all the holidays is really not leaving home. I think nine months away from home with a family with other children would be a valuable experience.”
    Shelley’s parents were talking about her as if she were not present, the way they must talk about her when she heard their voices, low and earnest, after she had gone to bed.
    â€œBut California—” protested Mrs. Latham. “How would she get to San Sebastian?”
    â€œFly,” answered Mr. Latham.
    â€œBut she would have to change planes,” Mrs. Latham pointed out.
    â€œShe has to change buses when she goes downtown,” said Mr. Latham.
    â€œPlease, Mother, I want to go,” insisted Shelley. “It’s only for a school year and not a whole year. And I would write every week. And it isn’t as though I were going out into the world to—to seek my fortune. I’ll be living with a family, a family you know, and I would be back next June. Please, Mother! Daddy, make her let me go!”
    â€œShelley is right,” agreed Mr. Latham. “It isn’t as if she were going to live with strangers.”
    â€œYes, Mother,” Shelley persisted. “And I have myschool clothes all ready and all I would have to do is pack and have my records transferred and a few things like that. Say I can go. Please say I can go!”
    â€œI seem to be overruled,” said Mrs. Latham, admitting defeat with a rueful smile.
    â€œMother!” cried Shelley joyfully, and at the same time she was deeply touched by her mother’s smile, which showed so plainly how much it hurt her mother to let her go.
    â€œI hope this is the right decision,” said Mrs. Latham, still turning the whole discussion over in her mind. “Nine whole months. If only California were not so far away—”
    â€œOh, Mother, everything will be all right,” Shelley insisted, eager to reassure her mother. “I know it will be all right. Everything is going to be wonderful!”
    Slowly Mrs. Latham folded the tissue paper over the raincoat and replaced the lid on the box. “How much a lovely raincoat like this would have meant to me when I was sixteen,” she remarked sadly. “I was sixteen during the Depression and I wanted a raincoat more than anything in the world. I had to carry a shabby old cotton umbrella to school and I was so ashamed of it.”
    Shelley was silent. It hurt her to see her motherlook so sad. She wanted to say, But this is not the Depression and I don’t want a raincoat, but she could not say it. She could not say to her mother, I am not you. I am me.
    The ring of the telephone interrupted Shelley’s thoughts. “It’s Jack,” she remarked as she picked up the receiver.
    â€œHi, Shelley,” said the familiar voice. “Has anything exciting happened?”
    â€œYes!” answered Shelley, for once glad that Jack had asked that question. She was eager to tell her news to someone, to make sure it was really true. The rest, she knew, was going to be easy. All she had to do was say good-bye. And in California, she was sure, she would find the boy she had always wanted to meet.

Chapter 2
    As the plane began to lose altitude to land at the Vincente Municipal Airport, the landing field nearest San Sebastian, Shelley fastened her seat belt with trembling fingers. It was ridiculous for her fingers to behave that way. She was eager to begin her new life. Of course she was. It was just that everything had happened so fast and the world seen from the air was such a strange place, like a giant relief map. Cars were ants on ribbon highways and farms were old-fashioned crazy quilts. Lakes were puddles, trees on the mountains had toothpick trunks, and finally in California so much of the map was flat and brown with dust-colored hills like miniature circus tents. It did not seem real at all.
    The plane landed on the runway with a gentle bounce and as it