Alone at 90 Foot Read Free

into a somersault. I was spun around by it, to face the fat-lipped sales clerk.
    â€œLet’s have it,” she demanded.
    Another clerk came up next to her. They glared at me accusingly. They stood as if they were ready to pounce on me if I bolted — or, if necessary, defend themselves if I attacked. I felt as loathsome as a twelve-inch slug.
    I couldn’t possibly deny I had taken it. Not when I was holding the flaming evidence in my hot little hand. I opened my purse and gave them the sweater. Through the tears racing from my eyes, I could see Joanne, standing in the doorway of a shoe store, watching the confession of a thief with the rest of the crowd. At that moment, I hated her more than I had ever hated anyone.
    â€œIs this what it takes to be popular!” I wanted toshriek. “Is this what it takes to be noticed? That you reduce yourself to a slimy cheat? You fool, Joanne. You stupid fool. I’d rather be one pale grain in a twenty-mile stretch of sand than the one that catches the sun, if this is how you do it.”
    The clerk took the sweater. She asked me my name. In front of all those people, I stammered it out. I told her my entire three-piece name. It didn’t even occur to me to make one up! I then slobbered on about how I’d never done anything like this before and would never do it again. Like, no duh. It was pretty obvious what an incompetent thief I was. She told me to make sure I didn’t and then left me, quivering like a jellyfish, to slither home and consider what a poor excuse for a human being I was.
    For a month I raced Dad for the telephone. I was terrified that the store clerk would change her mind and look me up, determined that my father should know what a delinquent child he had raised.
    Dad laughed, thinking I had a boyfriend. To tease me, he would sometimes beat me in the race. He didn’t know how freaked I was when he said hello.
    Joanne never apologized, but instead she became annoyingly nice, oozing over things like my hair, which was the same, long and brown, as it had always been. Or a couple of times she boughtme stuff in the cafeteria that I didn’t even want. Like this gross raisin pudding that I wouldn’t feed to a dog. Finally, I told her to quit groveling, that I forgave her, but what she had done was a really jerky thing to do.
    She agreed that it was.
    A few weeks later I noticed that she and Danielle didn’t hang out much anymore.
    â€œWe didn’t really have a lot in common,” Joanne told me. “Besides, she has so many friends, she doesn’t need me.”
    I’ve watched Danielle since then. Know what I discovered? It isn’t that she has a lot of friends — she just goes through a lot of friends. She uses people like Kleenex, then tosses them aside when she is finished with them.
    I have the goose bumps. I look up to see a thick swatch of gray cloud hovering above the canyon — and me. There’s not much point in lying here now. Besides, it’s almost noon. I suppose I should go home, make some lousy sandwich or something and head back to school. We start social dance in gym after lunch. Both the boys’ and girls’ classes have to take it together. The thing is, they make it so we get thirty percent of this term’s mark just for showing up. Like anyone would go if they didn’tuse bribery. I know I wouldn’t. If it weren’t for my dad. I figure he’s been through enough the last few years without me screwing up big time on my report card.
    The whole thing about school is that, like I said before, I like to be alone. But I hate being lonely. And I mostly seem to be lonely around people. I’m always lonely at school. I’m lonely on a bus, or in the doctor’s office, or even eating dinner at Nana Jean’s with the whole family around me. Sometimes, I sit in class, with that talking head at the front, and I imagine my desk sinking slowly through the floor.