My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary Read Free Book Online Page A

have been right, but I did not mean to take advantage. I did the work Verna outlined in her invitation, and after her hint to Mother, did more, but as I look back, I can see that I should have been more helpful.
    Aunt Elizabeth also criticized my clothes. Some of my dresses were too tight. Every day after school I had eaten an avocado from the tree beneath my bedroom window, unaware that I was consuming between five and six hundred calories. For the first time in my life I gained weight. AuntElizabeth was right. Some of my clothes were too tight, but I had no money for new clothes.
    My biggest clothing problem was my bias-cut Jean Harlow satin formal, which I had waited months to wear to a formal school dance. It now cupped below my bottom and clung in a way that was sure to make Mrs. Fleming banish me from the dance floor. I couldn’t bear not to wear it, so I bought an inexpensive two-way stretch girdle to make me thinner. Unfortunately, as Paul and I danced, the girdle began to stretch up and to roll down until it made a thick tire around my waist. Don’t let anyone notice, I silently prayed as I stood up straight so I could breathe more easily between trips to the rest room to tug it down.
    When Paul took me home and I stepped out onto the running board of his Model T, he unexpectedly put his arms around me, so that I slithered to the ground. He must have felt, and been amused by, the roll around my waist, but he was too kind to let on. I was glad to say good night, run upstairs, and peel off the two-way stretch girdle and take a deep breath once more. I was annoyed because it had stretched up more than out, and I never wore the thing again. Neither did I wear my slinky satin formal.
    The last semester of my freshman year wascoming to an end, and I was elected to Alpha Gamma Sigma, the honor society. Late one afternoon, when Verna and I were working in the kitchen, I worked up courage to ask the question that had worried me for some time: “Do you want me to come back next year?” Even though I had been invited only for the winter, I hoped I would be welcome for another year.
    Verna paused in whatever she was doing and answered, “Fred and I have been discussing it, and we don’t see how we would have room for you because both grandmothers will live with us next year.”
    â€œOh.” My disappointment was deep. I thought a moment before I said, “I wonder what I can do next.”
    Verna was sympathetic. “Can’t your grandfather help you?”
    Although Grandpa Atlee sent me five dollars every month, I was sure Mother would not let me ask him for more substantial help. Asking without her permission did not occur to me. Many years later, when the time came for me to go through Mother’s possessions, I found a bundle of Grandpa’s canceled checks. He had paid for the entire college education of his other grandchild, a grandson who became a distinguished electrical engineer.
    After my conversation with Verna, I wrote in a scrawl diagonally across the last page of my diary, “What am I going to do now?” With that I ceased keeping a diary and pushed worry about the future to the back of my mind. I wanted to cling to every moment, and one of the most important was the distribution of the Argus , the yearbook. Embossed on the cover was an inaccurate picture of Chaffey’s tower, the wrong variety of palm tree, a shield with a strange heraldic animal, possibly a griffin (why?), and the words:
    Loyalty
    Achievement and
    The Spirit of
    Honor
    Before and after classes, and sometimes in class, students wrote sentimental messages in one another’s books: “Don’t forget drama class. Loads of luck.” “Be good and everything.” “Here’s wishing a very nice girl a very nice future. It’s been swell having you in a lot of my classes.”
    Exchanging messages with Paul was an event much too important to be hurried at school even though