Read Online The Palace of Strange Girls by Sallie Day - Free Book Online

see his legs are bent
     and one knee is twisted out to reveal his shiny winkle-picker shoes. It’s enough to make Helen feel dizzy. She’s looked in
     her
Collins School Atlas
more than once to see where Bobby lives. She knows it’s a long way to America, but when she puts her thumb on Lancashire
     and her forefinger on New York it isn’t far at all. In her dreams it’s barely the distance of a breath and she’s there in
     Hollywood, slow-dancing with Bobby. Even now, in broad daylight, she’s irresistibly drawn to his photograph—the expression
     on his face when he looks directly into her eyes is enough to make her feel light-headed. Eventually she tears her eyes away
     from the poster and moves on to the columns of small print. Bobby, it says, was brought up in a rough neighborhood where there
     were drunken fights and stabbings. Helen’s mouth falls open as she reads that Bobby grew up surrounded by cheats, thieves,
     drunks, armed Mafia gangs and prostitution (whatever that is) on every corner. The family was very poor, but Bobby says, “You
     could walk in our house and not see any furniture or anything, but love would hit you square in the mouth.”
    Helen is deeply moved. It is terrible to think that her idol was brought up in a slum. Helen sometimes comes home from school
     with a bit of ink on her cuff and her mother always shouts, “Take that blouse off this minute. Anybody would think you’d been
     brought up in a slum.”
    Helen’s Grandma Catlow lives on Bird Street and her mother says the house is no better than a slum. This is why Helen only
     ever sees her grandma once a year at Christmas when Mum brings her up on the bus from Bird Street to visit. Still, it’s nice
     that Bobby has such a close, loving family. The only thing that hits Helen square in the mouth when she walks in after school
     is the smell of polish and the sound of her mother scrubbing.
    Bobby doesn’t think school is up to much. He says, “You don’t know people or life through books. You learn by living and doing.
     You gotta go out in the world.”
    Helen couldn’t agree more. Bobby says that when he told his mother he wasn’t going back to school she was disappointed, but
     she didn’t try to stop him. He told her, “Mom, it’s time I got out to see what makes it tick.” Helen wishes she could leave
     school and get a job like Connie, but she doubts that her mother will let her. She looks again at the picture of Bobby. She
     caught sight of him yesterday on the television at the hotel. He was singing his hit song “Splish Splash” followed by his
     new record, “Dream Lover.” Bobby Darin has been Helen’s dream lover ever since the moment she saw his photo on the front of
Boyfriend
magazine. He’s half Italian and you can tell. He’s got dark wavy hair and a brilliant smile. He’s a great dancer too. Not
     like the boys at school.
    The memory of her last school soirée is still fresh in Helen’s mind. Not that it was any different from usual—the girls sitting
     on bleachers at one side of the gym and all the boys standing around at the other side. There was the usual mad rush when
     the music started, the thunder of pumps across the wooden floor as the boys raced across to grab the best girls. Helen had
     hoped that David Cooper, with his shock of strawberry-blond hair and black winkle-picker boots, might ask her to dance, but
     Hanson had got to her first. It happens every year—Hanson runs for East Lancs Schoolboys. Helen was refusing to dance even
     as Hanson was dragging her into the center of the gym. As a result Helen spent the first part of the evening limping around
     the floor in the clutches of Hanson and the latter part watching in despair as her best friend Susan monopolized David Cooper.
     It would have been so different if Bobby had been there.
    “I hear the bastards are looking for a new manager at your place.”
    Jack is familiar with Harry’s habit of referring to the mill owners as