Jean and Johnny by Beverly Cleary Read Free Book Online

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    As Jean walked through the doorway and emerged from the dark hall into the sunlight, she almost had to close her eyes because of the sudden brightness. At the foot of the steps, as she was turning toward the annex, she bumped into a boy. “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped to the right. Unfortunately, the boy stepped to his left at the same moment. Then they both stepped to Jean’s left and Jean was suddenly aware that she was facing a blue plaid shirt. This boy was Johnny.
    â€œSay, what is this, a minuet?” asked Johnny, and then smiled when he recognized Jean. It was a genuine smile, warm and friendly. “Oh—hi,” he said. “How’s the cute girl?”
    â€œHi,” answered Jean, and fled toward her classroom in the annex. She wondered where she had found the breath to speak that one syllable, because now she could scarcely breathe. Johnny had smiled and had actually spoken to her! He had called her a cute girl. Maybe Elaine was right after all. Maybe she ought to be pleased that Johnny had noticed her.
    As she slipped into her seat, Jean’s emotionswere in a snarl. Johnny had remembered her, or anyway noticed her at school, and now he had smiled and spoken and called her a cute girl. Nobody had ever called her a cute girl before. Cute? What did it really mean? It was a word she had often used carelessly, like all the other girls, but she had never thought of it as a boy’s word. Kittens were cute. Puppies were cute. Hats were cute.
    Jean slid out of her seat and walked to the dictionary on the stand by the blackboard. She turned toward the end of the C ’s and ran her finger down the columns until she came to the word cute . She studied the definition intently: “cute (kut), adj., cuter, cutest. 1. U.S. Colloq . Pleasingly pretty or dainty.” Pleasingly pretty or dainty. Then the word really was a compliment!
    Jean, who had been called Midge or Half Pint so often that she had come to think of herself as insignificant, now felt herself blossoming. A boy had called her a cute girl, which meant pleasingly pretty or dainty, and she had been wearing her glasses . She began to feel that she really was pleasingly pretty or dainty—in the United States in a colloquial or conversational sense, of course.
    Suddenly Jean laughed out loud. Colloquially inthe United States was the very best way for a girl who lived in California to be pleasingly pretty or dainty.
    â€œThe dictionary is funny?” remarked the boy in the nearest seat.
    â€œMy favorite joke book.” Jean smiled blithely.
    â€œDames,” muttered the boy, and although he tapped his forehead he returned Jean’s smile.
    Jean felt as if the boy were noticing her for the first time. Prettily and daintily she slid into her seat.

Chapter 3
    After the near collision on the steps, Johnny began to speak to Jean whenever he saw her at school. Every word he spoke increased her happiness—someone was noticing her at last. “Hi. How’s the cute girl?” he would drawl, while she colored in the light of his smile. Sometimes he would say simply, “Hello, Jean.” This made her even happier, because the words told her that Johnny had taken the trouble to learn her name. She imagined him stopping someone in the hall and asking, “Say, who is that girl over there? The cute one.”
    One cloudy afternoon late in February, Jean, quite by accident, made an important discovery. The last class of her day was Clothing I. Her project for thisclass was a dress with set-in sleeves, a problem that had given her considerable trouble. No matter how many times she basted those sleeves into the armholes, they persisted in puckering at the shoulders. That afternoon Jean had grimly ripped out her basting threads twice, and by pinning the sleeves every quarter of an inch (so that was the secret!), she finally had them basted smoothly into place.
    Jean took her work to Mrs. Rankin, the