Beat the Turtle Drum Read Free Page B

Sheila. Sheila, this is Joss and Kate. Pull up a chair and make yourselves homely.” Mrs. Essig poured the coffee into mugs. “Milk?” she asked.
    We said yes, please, and she put the carton on the table and shoved the sugar bowl toward us.
    â€œThat’ll put hair on your chest,” Mrs. Essig said. “When I make a pot of coffee, I don’t fool around.”
    Sheila couldn’t take her eyes off us. Especially Joss. We’d been taught that staring was rude. I discovered if the stared-at stares at the starer long and hard, the starer gives up. Not Sheila. She made me nervous.
    Mrs. Essig asked me questions about where we lived, if we were the only two kids in our family. “You date yet?” she asked me.
    â€œI go to parties,” I said.
    â€œI started dating when I was twelve,” she said proudly. “I could’ve passed for sixteen. I had a figure even then.” She started to refill my cup.
    â€œThat was delicious,” I said truthfully. “Could I have just a half?”
    â€œI know who you remind me of,” Joss said suddenly, looking at Sheila. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I know who it is.”
    Sheila blinked. Those eyelashes were heavy. She could hardly get them back up off her cheeks.
    â€œWho?” she said.
    â€œElizabeth Taylor,” Joss said. We’d seen Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? last week on TV. “I bet people ask you for your autograph all the time.”
    It was like feeding a guard dog a piece of rare meat. The hostility drained out of Sheila in a rush. She smiled. Mrs. Essig laughed and laughed. Sheila frowned.
    â€œYou got yourself a friend for life, kid,” Mrs. Essig said. “Another cup?”
    â€œNo, thanks, we’ve got to go,” I said. Sheila ran her hands over her hairdo and smiled again. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Joss. She didn’t say anything to me.
    We got on our bikes and rode away.
    â€œWere you serious?” I asked Joss. “Did you really think she looked like Elizabeth Taylor? I thought she was a mess.”
    We stopped for a red light.
    â€œI read somewhere that if you tell a person they’re beautiful—well, they get beautiful,” Joss said. “I wanted to see if it worked. She was better-looking when we left than when we got there.”
    The light changed. Pedaling up Comstock Hill took some work. When we reached the top, I thought about what Joss had said.
    The next time I saw Sam, I’d tell him he reminded me of Paul Newman. If I knew Sam, he wouldn’t buy it. If he even knew who Paul Newman was.

When I told Mrs. Essig I went to parties, I was exaggerating. In the past year I’ve been to one party. With boys, that is. Despite the fact that young people are supposed to grow up much faster than in my parents’ day, know about sex and related subjects, and experiment with drugs and alcohol, I have led a very sheltered life. Along with almost all my friends. We’re in the seventh grade, and only two kids I know have smoked pot. Nobody I know has an alcoholic mother or father. Five kids in my class have divorced parents, but once the initial shock was over, they handled it all right.
    As for sexual experience, I can only speak for myself. I have had none. No boy has ever put the moves on me. And if one did, I’d belt him from here to the moon.
    â€œKate, you do know about how babies are born, don’t you?” my mother said to me when I was about eight. She’d been slipping me hints for years. Now she was checking to see if everything had fallen into place in my mind. Actually the whole thing wasn’t entirely clear. But I wasn’t going to put both of us through that ordeal, so I said, “Sure, Mom,” and she was so relieved she looked as if the dentist had just told her she didn’t have any cavities.
    Sometimes I feel fortunate that the vicissitudes of life have passed me