The Man in the Woods Read Free

ahead of time.
    Mr. Brzostoski had eaten three bananas during the course of the class. Helen was so hungry she could barely look at them. She could have eaten a banana skin. The bell rang, and slitting the drawing out of the blue book, Helen passed in her composition with everyone else.
    “Wait a minute!” said Mr. Brzostoski. He caught hold of her arm as she passed his desk. “That too!” he said and tweaked the drawing out of her hands. He looked at it for just a second and then said, “Come see me after school, please.”
    Helen stood in the doorway. The history class pushed by her on its way out. The homeroom class was piling in. “Out of the way!” yelled someone, and she followed a pink Shetland sweater miserably back to Miss Podell’s room.
    Why did I have to do that! she yelled at herself inside her head. It was a bad start to her favorite subject. It was a bad finish to a terrible day, but, then, terrible days always snowballed themselves into disasters at the end, and today had been of the worst kind. She hoped against hope that Mr. Brzostoski would not look at the drawing too closely. She prayed that if he happened to be a right-wing Republican who hated Democrats such as her father, he wouldn’t hold the drawing against her for the rest of the year.
    The frosted pink sweater bobbed down the stairway. Helen rushed to follow it back to her homeroom and her lost, sealed locker.
    Why didn’t I at least draw a fashion model or a Swiss chalet on a mountainside? she asked herself. Helen had never in her life drawn either of these things, but they were popular subjects among the girls in art class.
    The girl in the Shetland sweater was seated next to Helen in homeroom. A few minutes before the bell rang she tapped Helen’s left arm politely. She wanted the attention of the girl sitting on Helen’s right. Glad to help , thought Helen, patting the second girl on the sleeve. She watched them. Oh, what I’d give , she calculated, to have gleaming blond, feathered hair like that. Such blue eyes too. The girl in the pink sweater was the type who blushed easily when boys said things and always joked that she was on a diet when it wasn’t true because boys stared at that kind of graceful, well-groomed, well-filled-out sort of girl. Instinctively Helen tried to flatten out the curly hair that grew obstinately out instead of down from her head. She cursed Aunt Stella silently for giving her bangs. Aunt Stella didn’t understand curly hair. She had thought bangs would be the solution to Helen’s problem, but when they were cut, they just curled themselves into a frizzy sausage on her forehead. If Helen could never hope to look like the girl in the pink Shetland sweater, well, at least just maybe she could be friends with her.
    Across Helen’s desk the two girls shared a whispered confidence, both of them leaning in toward Helen. Helen listened, wide-eyed, as if the conversation were the most important she’d heard in her life.
    “Let’s go down to the Whaler office after school and pick up our booster tags,” said the blonde.
    “Great!” answered the other girl, who was dark and equally pretty and grown-up-looking. Helen felt included. After all, they were both planting their elbows on her desk. She was about to ask what booster tags were and if she could come along with them when Miss Podell’s ruler smacked a book on the front desk like a gunshot.
    “This class will not be dismissed until I get sixty seconds of silence!” Miss Podell announced, looking daggers at Helen.
    The girls on either side of her melted back into their seats giggling. They looked at each other, not at Helen.
    She squeezed her eyes shut until the bell. She thought of Jenny Calhoun again. Houston was two thousand miles away. You’ll make new friends! said Aunt Stella in Helen’s mind. Start with a friendly smile, and in no time you’ll forget all your worries! Aunt Stella made new friends every time she went to the beauty parlor.