Barbie, p.1
Barbie, page 1
© FRANCES PRIDDY MCMLX
All rights reserved—no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review in magazine or newspaper.
Library of Congress
Catalog Card No. 60-5180
PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
This book
is dedicated to Niki Moschenross, who came to my rescue and lent me her typewriter when mine broke down while writing this story.
It is also dedicated to my mother, who for three years listened to my enthusiastic descriptions of the first two chapters, only occasionally saying mildly, “I think you’ve told me that before, Frannie.”
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Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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Also by Frances Priddy
About the Author
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1
Barbie jumped as a tightly wadded scrap of paper lighted on her study-hall desk and bounced once. Cocking a wary eye at the teacher, who was strongly against note-passing, thus increasing the temptation to do so, Barbie smoothed out the paper. It bore the message, in Jan’s handwriting, “How about buying a few groceries on the way home?”
Barbie swiveled in her seat to look back at brown-haired Jan and plump, fair Mary Alice, who had originally received the note and passed it on. They were grinning, and Barbie grinned back and nodded before returning to her history textbook.
Although, with final exams next week, she needed to work at reviewing the semester’s American history, Barbie found it difficult to concentrate upon studying during the rest of the hour as she chuckled over Jan’s note. Groceries weren’t the supermarket’s great attraction for the high school girls that spring. Keith Vaughn, recently employed to carry orders out to cars, was the magnet. He was an athlete and spectacularly handsome, so that it was no wonder half the girls at Lakeshore High had crushes on him. Barbie, Mary Alice, and Jan would have denied having crushes, but they frankly invented excuses to enter the supermarket and enjoy the view.
The last bell soon rang, and the girls hurried to their lockers to sort out their books, get their sweaters, comb their hair, and freshen their lipstick to go shopping. Barbie was smaller than Jan, more slender than Mary Alice. She had well-brushed dark hair drawn back into a curly pony tail, and star-sapphire eyes in a heart-shaped face. In spite of an unexpectedly hot day, her white blouse remained crisp and her pencil-slim skirt unrumpled.
They took their time leaving school, for there was no sense in reaching the supermarket before Keith arrived on the job. Barbie paused to inquire after the health of Nibs, one of her cocker’s pups which a schoolmate had bought two weeks before. Then she and Mary Alice patiently stood by while Jan discussed tennis with Tom Carven and made a date to meet him at the tennis court early Saturday morning.
“You know, I think he just might ask me to go steady,” Jan remarked optimistically as the trio left the school building.
“I thought there must be some reason for you to say you’d meet him at such an hour,” Mary Alice teased. “Do you remember, Barbie, how we could never rout her out before noon? Now look!”
“A man’ll do it every time,” Barbie agreed, sadly shaking her head, so that her pony tail bounced. “And speaking of men—are we going to the market for anything in particular, or just going?”
“We ought to have a reason,” Jan said after serious thought. “You need something, don’t you, Mary Alice?”
“No, I don’t,” Mary Alice said frankly. “Going into the supermarket so often is ruining what figure I ever had! I might buy a magazine and some notebook paper, though.”
“I could get some dog food and potato chips,” Barbie decided. “But you know, I don’t think this is doing us a bit of good. As far as I can tell, Keith never even sees us.”
“Well, he certainly won’t see us if we avoid him,” Mary Alice pointed out, giggling. “So what? Relax and enjoy the view.”
“Which is enjoyable,” Barbie conceded. “I keep feeling as if we’re fools, though. If he sees us at all, he just thinks we’re more boy-crazy girls—and he’s conceited enough as is, without us adding to his ego.”
“But beautiful, girl, beautiful,” Jan intoned, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Now let’s see. I can get a loaf of bread, I guess—Mom’s always running out of bread—and maybe cake mix.”
“Hey, the pony!” Mary Alice squealed, pointing to a small black-and-white pony dozing in a little enclosure in the supermarket parking lot.
“Since when,” Barbie questioned, interested, “have you been so fond of ponies? So it’s a pony. So what?”
“So read the sign, stupid,” Mary Alice retorted. In case her friends had suddenly forgotten how, she read aloud:
A Real Live Shetland Pony, FREE! He May Be Yours—Here’s All You Do to Win. Suggest a Name for Him. If the Judges Select Your Name, He Is YOURS, Complete with Western-style Saddle and Bridle Studded with Ornaments. Entry Blanks Inside Store.
Barbie and Jan exchanged glances. “It’s finally happened,” Jan said, putting a protective arm about Mary Alice. “The strain of being about to see Keith is too much for her. She’s cracked up.”
“I’m afraid so,” Barbie dolefully agreed. “She was such a nice kid too. But they say a person has to be smart to go crazy—”
“There’s an exception to every rule,” Jan objected. “Poor Mairzy. I guess she’s the exception to that rule.”
“Oh, quit it, you two!” Mary Alice giggled. “Listen, while I fill out an entry blank, you two can look at Keith. Then while Jan fills one out, Barbie and I look at him. While she fills one out, Jan, you and I do. Now do you understand?”
“I take it back,” Barbie laughed. “She’s smart and sane, Jan!”
“What’ll we use for names?” Jan queried as they entered the electric-eye-operated glass doors of the market. “That is, we really are going to enter, aren’t we? Or are we just going to pretend to fill out the entry blanks?”
“I think we should enter,” Barbie gave as her opinion. “It’ll look more convincing if we really are filling out the blanks.”
“Besides, just think, if we win the pony,” Mary Alice reminded, “we’ll be the most popular baby sitters in town!”
“All right, but what’ll we use for names?” Jan repeated as they halted at the stand-up desk where the entry blanks and pencils were.
“Oh, just look at Keith and write down whatever comes into your head,” Barbie told her. “Personally, I’m going to enter ‘Glamour Boy.’”
“Mmm, good,” Mary Alice approved. “O.K., who’s first?”
“Barbie,” Jan said promptly. “She’s already thought of a name. Take your time, kid. Write real pretty.”
Barbie laughed but did linger as long over the entry form as she decently could, for her friends’ sake, pretending to deliberate over the name. But at last everything was filled in, and she was forced to sign “Barbara Ann Maguire” at the bottom, in her very best backhand, with a flourish underneath.
“O.K., next,” she said. “Think of a name, Jan?”
“‘Dreamboat,’” Jan responded. “Because, isn’t he?”
He was, Barbie conceded, studying him as she pretended to gaze into space, as though bored. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a wavy crest of wheat-colored hair and the profile of a Greek god. He knew it, of course. He’d have to be blind, deaf, and half-witted not to realize the impact he had on girls, and no one had ever questioned his vision, hearing, or intelligence.
“I think I’ll enter ‘Golden Boy,’” Mary Alice sighed, also studying him.
“Nut,” Jan muttered, glancing up from the entry form. “The pony’s black and white!”
“Oh, the pony!” Mary Alice exclaimed, and giggled at the reminder. “Who’s naming the pony?”
“Well, we’re supposed to be,” Barbie scolded, though her eyes were twinkling. “Pity. ‘Golden Boy’ is perfect for Keith.”
“If I entered it, you suppose I’d win him?” Mary Alice asked hopefully, managing to maintain an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “I’d much rather have him than a pony.”
“Somehow, I doubt it,” Jan said dryly. “Now think of something that doesn’t sound completely witless, Mairzy!”
Eventually Mary Alice thought of a suitable name, finished filling out the entry form, and the girls collected the purchases that were their excuses for being in the supermarket. Keith was taking an order out to a car when they reached the check-out counter, and Barbie felt private relief. He had carried groceries for them a few days before and had given them a look that had quite plainly revealed he knew why they were there, a mixture of overwhelming confidence, preening himself on the girls’ admiration, and contempt for them. Embarrassed, Barbie had vowed not to return except on a legitimate errand—yet, here she was. At least she and Jan and Mary Alice didn’t do silly things to make him look at them, or try to strike up conversations with him, as some girls did.
Since the next bus wouldn’t be along for ten minutes, the girls paused to examine the pony as they left the market. He was a tiny creature, barely larger than a collie dog, flashily marked with black and white, with a mane and tail so long and full that they seemed to weigh him down.
“Does he have eyes?” Mary Alice wondered.
“They’re in there somewhere,” Jan
The thought of Jan, with her long legs, riding the midget horse conjured up such a ridiculous picture that all three girls laughed till they had to hang on to the low fence enclosing the pony.
“I’ll let him sleep on the foot of my bed nights,” Barbie said gravely when they had recaptured solemnity, and that sent them off again.
“You two crazy nuts,” Mary Alice finally said tolerantly, wiping her streaming blue eyes. “Am I the only sensible one of the bunch? I intend to take him and my Brownie camera and earn money going around taking pictures of kids riding him!”
“Hey, here comes our bus!” Jan exclaimed. “Get a move on! ’By, baby.”
They hurried across the parking area to the bus stop, still giggling at their silly plans for the pony. All three girls lived out in the Cherry Hills subdivision—in fact, their friendship had begun after frequently finding themselves the only passengers on the bus at the beginning or end of a run. Mary Alice was first to get off, then Jan, and Barbie last of all, with three blocks to walk before reaching her family’s white Cape Cod house.
Grapevine Road, on which Barbie lived, was only technically a street. “Grapevine” was a fitting name for it, the way it wound and twisted. Houses were still widely scattered, with pastures and fields of oats and wheat in between. The lack of near neighbors kept many people from buying or building, but Barbie and her parents enjoyed looking out of their windows and seeing fields and the woods along the stream instead of other houses.
Mimsy, Barbie’s red-and-white cocker spaniel, was watching for her and came trotting to meet her as Barbie reached home. Barbie bent to pat her, then gave her a book to carry and followed, smiling, as Mimsy bustled on ahead, full of importance at having been given a job to do.
“Maybe Daddy’ll take you hunting again this fall,” Barbie said to her. Mimsy had shown quite a flair for finding and retrieving game the previous autumn. “And what’ll you do if I win the pony?”
“Win what pony?” Mrs. Maguire inquired, straightening up from behind a bush where she had been weeding the flower bed.
“Oh, at the supermarket,” Barbie told her, reclaiming the book from Mimsy now that they were at the house. “Jan and Mary Alice and I were fooling around and entered the contest there. You know, whoever thinks up the best name for the pony gets it.”
“Barbie, I wish you wouldn’t hang around that boy,” Mrs. Maguire reproved. “You don’t want to get a reputation of being the sort of girl who chases boys.”
“I know, and I really don’t even particularly like him,” Barbie agreed. “It would be a big feather in my cap to get a date with him, the way all the girls are after him, but he seems awfully cocky. It’s just—well, just the thing to do right now! A fad, kind of, to go ‘sight-seeing.’”
“All the same, please don’t,” her mother requested. “Are you going to change your clothes before supper? We’re eating early; this is Daddy’s bowling night, remember.”
“O.K.,” Barbie nodded, and went on indoors, Mimsy tagging at her heels. Mother was right, she knew. Chasing after Keith wasn’t good for anyone concerned. Girls shouldn’t pursue boys openly, for it made the boys unbearably conceited, and it could be humiliating for the girls if they happened to intercept one of Keith’s scornful glances.
“Definitely,” she said to Mimsy, who sat watching and gently panting, as she changed from blouse and skirt to shirt and shorts, “I am through haunting the supermarket. I guess I’m just not the ghost type—or the door-mat type, maybe I should say. Keith can look at some other girl that way, but not me, no matter how handsome and popular he is!” Mimsy wagged her stubby tail as though approving that decision, and Barbie grinned at her. “You say you’ll go along with that, huh? Well, right now come along downstairs and I’ll give you your supper.”
2
Barbie stuck to that resolution for the rest of the week, aided by the need to study for final examinations and by a job of babysitting for a neighbor’s children from four o’clock till six each afternoon. If Jan and Mary Alice were still finding excuses to go grocery shopping, they neglected to mention it in conversation.
On Saturday afternoon, however, they dropped in at Maguires’ while Barbie was washing the lunch dishes.
“My, my, isn’t she industrious!” Jan teased. “Hey, Barbie, how about coming over and doing our dishes when you finish these?”
“Drop dead,” Barbie amiably suggested. “What’d you two bums come over here for? Just to persecute me?”
They exchanged pained glances. “Her best friends, and she talks to us this way,” Mary Alice said plaintively. “Why, Barb, have you forgotten? This is the day they announce who’s won the pony. We have to be there!”
“Yes,” Jan solemnly joked, “I want to be right there when they announce that Janet Lee Crosby is the new owner of Dreamboat. And I’ll ride him home.”
“All right, all right,” Barbie laughed. “But you know I’ve sworn off Keith Vaughn for the duration. Supermarkets and pony contests too. You can let me know if I win.”
“Barbie,” her mother called from the living room, “I do need some groceries, so if you want to shop for me—”
“I do,” Barbie promptly replied, then grinned, shaking her head over her own inconsistency in jumping at a chance to go to the supermarket despite her high resolutions. “But only to see who gets the pony, mind you! May I take the Shrimp?”
“Say yes, please, Mrs. Maguire!” Mary Alice beseeched, then in a conspiratorial undertone to Barbie and Jan, “You know how crazy fellows are about foreign cars!”
“Yes, because I want potatoes, flour, and sugar, among other things,” Mrs. Maguire consented.
“Oh, good, then Keith can carry it out to the car for you!” Mary Alice exclaimed.
“You’re thinking every minute, Mairzy,” Barbie drawled. “O.K. You want to come up and help me change to some pony-winning clothes?”
A few minutes later, after Barbie had changed to a pink sun dress and gotten the grocery list and money from her mother, the girls went out to the Maguires’ big double garage (which seemed even roomier since Mrs. Maguire’s bulky old Buick had been traded for a small Volkswagen, nicknamed the Shrimp) and got into the little coral-red car. Despite their lighthearted joking, Barbie drove very carefully. She had received her driver’s license only six weeks before, on her sixteenth birthday, and she was taking no chances that might result in losing either her license or her parents’ permission to drive.
“We’re just in time,” Jan remarked as Barbie turned the Volkswagen into the supermarket parking area. “What a mob! Do you suppose you’ll be able to find a place to park?”
“That’s the nice thing about the Shrimp,” Barbie said lightly. “It can squeeze in where an American car never could. Are you really interested in this pony contest, Jan?”
Jan shrugged, laughing. “Oh, well, after all, we did enter it. We stand as good a chance of winning as most people.”
Getting out of the car when, true to Barbie’s prediction, a parking space was found for it, they joined the crowd around the pony’s enclosure. A platform had been erected for the contest officials, with a microphone for making the announcements of the winners. The pony was all dressed up in fancy silver-trimmed saddle and bridle, but still looked at least half asleep, though the forelock hanging down over its eyes made judging its wakefulness difficult.
Barbie had never been especially interested in horses, and now she was more interested in the people than in the contest. She was trying to decide whether two little girls, dressed alike, were twins when she was jerked back to listening to the store manager as he announced: “—Barbara Ann Maguire, whose winning name is ‘Glamour Boy.’ Is Barbara Ann present?”
“Barbara Ann, that’s you,” Jan said, wide-eyed.
“Oh, no!” Barbie breathed. “I can’t have won it! Why, I don’t want a pony! What would I do with one?”
“Well, go on up and find out,” Mary Alice proposed, ever practical. “Go on, Barbie!”
Others were beginning to turn to look, so Barbie picked her way through the press of people. This can’t be happening to me, she thought. It must be some kind of joke or mistake! Why, I never have been a bit interested in horses! The feeling of unreality persisted as she reached the platform, told someone her name, and accepted a boy’s helping hand up the two steep steps onto the platform. She hardly heard as the second- and third-place winners were announced and awarded fifty- and twenty-five-dollar savings bonds. She noticed Keith watching on the side lines, eying her as though seeing her for the first time. How incredible that she, of all people, had won a pony!
