Between Friends Read Free

to breakfast and I sit with all his attorney friends. Dad includes me in the conversation and that makes me feel important. We talk about me going to law school one day, and I think I will. I like listening to my dad and I’m proud that he’s a judge. People respect him and like him. I bet there isn’t anything he doesn’t know about the law.
    Lesley phoned in the afternoon and I told her about Mr. Hanson kissing me at midnight. (I know him from breakfast on Saturdays with my dad.) It wasn’t a real kiss, but it was close. He kissed my cheek and told me I was going to grow up to be a beauty. I hope he’s right. I don’t feel beautiful with a mouthful of metal braces.
    The New Year’s party was really cool except Mom kept insisting everyone go downstairs to take a peek at the bomb shelter. She thinks Dad was prudent by having it built. She insists he was the one who wanted it, but I know Mom put the idea in his head. She mentioned it first and then found the plans and talked to the contractor. The concrete was poured while we were in Hawaii this summer.
    I had a good time at the party, and I’m glad Mom and Dad finally realized that I’m old enough to participate. I’m not a child, although Mom treats me like one. Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin and she’s younger than I am!
    Lesley told me about her New Year’s Eve. We talked for half an hour, but she’s on a party line and we kept getting interrupted. She spent New Year’s Eve baby-sitting for the Randalls. She said it was the easiest $3.00 she ever earned.
    Lesley hasn’t been kissed for real, either. I don’t understand why because she’s super pretty and smart, too. She’s pretty enough to be a high school cheerleader if she wanted. I told her she should try out next year but she can’t because her mother needs her to help at home. She has five brothers and sisters now. I wish Lesley was my sister. Her mother hasn’t been feeling very well since Bruce was born and her father doesn’t always have a job. But Lesley never complains. In all the years we’ve been best friends, I’ve only stayed the night at her house once and then we camped outside. I don’t mind, though. I think Mom and Dad prefer that she comes here, and they don’t need to tell me why, either. (Mr. Adamski drinks too much. Sometimes when I call Lesley, I can hear him yelling in the background.)
    Larry Martin phoned after dinner and asked if I’d be at the boys’ basketball game next Saturday. I told him I would.
    Mom and Dad have already told me they want me to attend Holy Name Academy next year. I don’t think I’m going to like attending an all-girls school, but it’ll be all right as long as Lesley is there, too.
    No one else phoned and I lay on my bed and listened to music for the rest of the afternoon. I like Roy Orbison and the Supremes the best. Mostly I thought about next year and high school and wondered if I’d ever be kissed for real and by whom. Lesley says I probably will be soon. Maybe Larry will kiss me. I wonder if it’s possible for Lesley and me to be kissed on the very same night. That way we won’t have to worry about who was first.
    I don’t care what Mom says, I’m not going into that bomb shelter without Lesley. We’ve been friends our entire lives and I refuse to let her die because her family can’t afford to build a bomb shelter.
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    a Pine Ridge Herald a
May 29, 1962
Top Ten Students From
St. Mary Junior High Named
    The Sisters of Providence have named the top ten students from the eighth-grade graduating class. They are listed in order of ranking: Jillian Lawton, Lesley Adamski, Jerry Englehardt, Marilyn Andrews, Bonnie Gamache, Bernard Simmons, Yvette Dwight, David Thoma, Steve Bounds and Diane Kerry. Each student received a twenty-five dollar scholarship toward tuition at either Holy Name Academy or Marquette High School.
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July 10, 1962
    220 Railroad Avenue Pine Ridge, Washington
    Dear Judge and Mrs. Lawton,
    Thank you so much for