Read Online Out of the Blue by Sally Mandel - Free Book Online

in my little purse. In those days, we always took the bus or the subway, but that day she sprung for a cab. I clutched her hand in the backseat.
    “Are you angry with me?” I asked.
    She shook her head, but the tears lingered. I wanted to crawl onto her lap and shrink into the girl whose feet didn’t yet touch the ground when she held me. But there was no going back and we both knew it.
    “I saw your bathing suit in the john,” Ma was saying. “So I guess you had a swim. Remember the pool party when you almost drowned Penny Edmonds?” She turned away, ostensibly to rinse the breakfast dishes, but in fact she was offering me some privacy.
    “Penny was a brat,” I answered, as I thought: (a) we could have been caught, we should have been caught, two naked lunatics in the pool. Where was everybody anyhow? (b) never a thought about condoms, and I mean, not a glimmer, not a fleeting moment after which I could at least have said to myself, Oh hell, it’s worth getting some fatal STD to do it with this man; (c) there was always that faint chance I could get pregnant. Not likely two days after I’d finished my period, but nonetheless. Nonetheless. And (d) what we did to the pool environmentally is grounds for legal prosecution. One always expects those warm spots where little kids pee, but my God.
    When I thought of the lectures I gave my homeroom teen-agers about safe sex, I was beyond ashamed of myself. They should revive the stocks and put me out on the traffic island, Eighty-sixth and Park, so everybody could throw rocks. Furthermore, I was so absurdly, sickeningly happy that I could have burst into song, but that would only punish everyone within earshot.
    I attempted a self-possessed smile. “Are there any more muffins? I’m starving.” Ma loves it when I ask for seconds.
    “I’ve always encouraged you to swim more,” she said. “It loosens up your shoulders.” She plunked another cranberry-banana muffin on my plate and watched as I broke it open and slathered butter on it. I took a bite and started to laugh.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Raindrops keep falling on my head,” I warbled, giving in to song though I use the term loosely. It’s the tune I always sang to myself when I flew down a ski slope. The perfect rhythm.
    “I think I’d better meet this guy,” she said.
    So I told her the same thing I had told Joe. “Oh no. Not yet.”
    My unconscionably good mood came to a crashing halt when I got to school. I had an e-mail to visit the headmaster as soon as classes started, and I assumed I’d be confronted with the issue of Jennifer’s lost model. Furthermore, Rudy Steinberger met me outside the entrance of my homeroom. When I put my hand on his arm, I could feel it trembling.
    “Rudy, what is it?” He was scaring me.
    “There’s something wrong with Michelle Cross.”
    “Is she ill? Where is she?”
    “Inside. She keeps on crying. Maybe she’s sick. She got so thin lately. I don’t know.” The immense brown eyes were filled with pain. I saw how it was with poor Rudy and I grieved for him. He’d wisely kept his crush a secret, realizing that Sukey Marks and the other girls would have only one comment about such a match: Puh-leeze!
    I hurried inside to find three of Michelle’s friends hovering, plying her with Kleenex. Sukey was sobbing almost as loudly as Michelle and was clearly relishing the drama. My other kids hung around trying to polish off homework assignments or flipping paper clips against the chalkboard. I went over to Michelle and gestured to her friends to leave us. Then I put my arm around the weeping girl and led her to the Retreat, which is what we called the niche between some file cabinets that was just wide enough for two chairs. The bell rang and everybody else clattered out, with Sukey pausing long enough to shoot me a look of profound tragedy.
    “What’s going on?” I asked Michelle.
    When she was upset, Michelle turned scarlet, with the exception of her nose which