A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel Read Free Book Online

day of the fair approached, I became sick with worry. What if there was cheating? (I didn’t stop to consider that if any cheating had been done it would have been orchestrated by my father, so I had nothing to fear.) What if some other family had emptied a bank account into their daughter’s can? It was a tough decision, but by noon I knew I had to do it. I broke open the yellow, plastic pig with the words
Farmer’s State Bank of Mooreland
on the side and counted my loot. I’d been saving a long time. I had $1.61. I dropped the pennies into a burlap bank bag my dad had stolen and marched down to the fairgrounds.
    Most of the cans were nearly full. The girl whose picture stood next to my sister’s was fairly brimming. I took the lid off Melinda’s can and poured in the whole of my liquid assets.
     
    ON SATURDAY EVENING the gymnasium was teeming with excitement. All the girls sat on the stage in their lovely dresses, wearing corsages or carrying bouquets. The stage was decorated with lime-green Kleenex flowers, and a big square of poster board stuck to the front of the stage declared the title of the pageantry in words spelled out in glue and glitter. As her name was called, each contestant walked to the front of the stage, where Darryl Radford, the perennial emcee, asked her one question. For obvious reasons the questions were kept brief and manageable, like “What is your name?” and “Who is your sponsor this evening?”
    Then my sister was called, and she walked up to Darryl in her white dress and black satin belt. She had made the dress herself. Her long, black, wavy hair shone in the stage lights, and her gray eyes were as round and lively as those of a cartoon princess. She and Darryl had known each other all their lives, and were fond of each other.
    “Good evening, miss. Could you tell the audience your name?”
    And all she said was “Melinda Kay Jarvis,” but somehow her clear mind and her bright wit came through in her voice, and there was a very subtle little wavy shift in the audience, as if they had felt it. I sat in the front row, seven years old and beaming.
Nobody
deserved to win more than my sister. Nobody was as perfect and charming and irresistible. Nobody was as generous and true blue and good with stray animals. Nobody was as funny and sarcastic and miserable at home, scared of her father, desperate to get away, misused, overburdened, on the edge of tears all the time.
    I crossed my fingers, prayed, tapped my foot, stuck my finger in my ear. I loved my sister so much I had even worn a dress for the occasion, which was making me perverse. The skirt was lined with some itchy netting, the collar was too tight, it was a pukey yellow color and smelled like mildew and wet coon hound. I had dragged the dress out of the back of the closet where it had formerly served as a bed for my cat Smokey and her five kittens. I was simultaneously regretting my insane loyalty and wishing I had also combed my hair and worn shoes when my sister was named first- runner-up.
    Mary Murray began playing “There She Is” on the tuneless school piano and Darryl sang into the popping portable microphone as Carolyn, the girl whose picture stood next to my sister’s in the judging booth, rose from her chair and walked unsteadily to the front of the stage, crying and clutching her heart. My sister stood next to her, graciously offering her congratulations.
    The audience clapped heartily for Carolyn, whose blond hair and blue eyes were real crowd pleasers. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. My sister was denied her title. An unworthy girl had won. The farmers liked Carolyn better than Melinda, and I had lost
a dollar and sixty-one cents,
the most money I’d ever had at one time in my life.
    I don’t remember much of what happened afterward until later in the evening, when someone came and found me near the merry-go-round, where I had just finished ripping the lining out of my dress and was desperately trying to