CHAPTER 1 Oh look There’s my dress Aggie squealed loud enough to be heard all the way to Astoria let alone acrost our small school cafeteria She snickered with some other girls and everyone looked at me as I made my miserable way to the farthest table I was nine and in the fourth grade when I finally figured out the true meaning of enough is enough So it’s not as though I wasn’t ready for it This girl Aggie Steen centerpiece of the sixth grade girls table had been saying oh look there’s my dress all day first on the walk to school then in the girls can then echoing in the halls and now in the cafeteria I set down my tray went over to Aggie and stood in front of her 1
RANDALL PLATT I loved that dress she cooed to her pals when I was in third grade I stood my ground and stared at her cool as I could be and then I started to unbutton the dress First the pasty pearly type buttons at the lacy neck and going right down to the frayed belt at the waist and then unzipping the sticky zipper Well things were getting pretty quiet at the Queen Bee table In fact by the time I stepped out of the dress all eyes were on me including Mrs Adams’s the principal But criminently I had to do it Here You can have the dress back It smells like a hog trough I wadded up the dress and tossed it on Aggie’s hot lunch the belt whapping her in the face Her milk spilled and she screamed and jumped up and called me something pretty awful And there stands me in my cheesy cotton slip scarred knobby knees hairy legs skinny arms and all I returned to my table took my lunch and walked toward Mrs Adams Even her face was blank her eyes and mouth both wide open It was quiet as death in the cafeteria How many days I asked Mrs Adams getting it over with before she got her senses back Three she mumbled I’ll send over your homework assignments But that day I learned two lessons and they didn’t have anything to do with homework assignments Number one 2
INCOMMUNICADO the only thing worst than being the poorest kid in town is being the poorest kid in the poorest town Number two never wear anything to school your mother buys at a church rummage sale In a town like ours someone’s bound to recognize it That was in the fall of 1938 more than three years ago and I can still hear the laughter after I left that cafeteria and walked down the hall to my classroom where I grabbed my coat also second-hand and rode my bike home I can still feel the sting of the rain on my steaming face I think the whole town of Sea Park Oregon population 542 is still laughing about it Today I’m a twelve-year-old seventh grader stuck smack-dab between being that skinny dress-less girl and a half-grown lady-in-waitin That’s what my oh-so Southern mother calls it That’s me a lady-in-waitin and I don’t even know what I’m waitin for Mom does though She also calls this change-over thing pooooo berty Yes that’s what she called it when I got the facts of life lecture pooooo-berty Sounds more like what you’d name a dang lap dog Anyway pooooo-berty and me are on a first-name basis The curse pimples greasy hair these bumpy chesty things and all So far twelve is a raw deal I fight it sometimes this whole pooooo-berty thing Sometimes I can’t wait to grow up and sometimes I just want to stay a kid And that back and forth tug-of-war is kind of the reason I am where I am now sitting in Sheriff 3
RANDALL PLATT Hillary Dutton’s office with my older brother Rex staring down at the complaint form (cid:116)(cid:1)(cid:116)(cid:1)(cid:116) I don’t care if you did it or not I don’t care if Martians landed and painted those lion statues eyeballs I don’t care if Franklin Roosevelt and his dog Fala did it You are now officially the one responsible the sheriff says to Rex pointing her cigarette lighter shaped like a tiny pistol at him You can tell she’s said that line more than once This is what it means now whenever anything goes wrong in Sea Park no matter who does what my brother Rex Alan Stokes will be blamed for it Here’s why Sheriff Hillary Dutton picks a high school boy to officially take the blame for any prank or joke or vandalism the kids in town do She calls the position Town Hood She says since she’s the only cop around she just doesn’t have time to deal with us kids and the stuff we do to kill the boredom or impress each other and the tourists Just about every boy has to take a turn at being Town Hood Being Town Hood is sort of like being drafted only you don’t get a uniform a gun and a ticket out of town Town Hood is half Public Enemy Number One and half town janitor The Town Hood will make sure all the other kids toe the line so he doesn’t take the rap for anything I might be the only one but I think it’s a Badge of Honor and I sure want to wear it Being the first-ever girl Town 4
