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

by now I sensed he was growing bored with my girlish enthusiasm. In his Model T we rattled out toward the mountains, traded year-books, and began to write. He wrote two pages, beginning: “My dear Beverly: Here I sit under a sweeping oak tree some nine months after I first saw you…” and going on to tell me I had helped make his year complete; advising me to have more confidence in myself—“You really have everything it takes, plus a very fine understanding of people”; and cautioning me about trying to read between the lines—“Unfortunately—or fortunately—no one has found the key….” He ended: “I believe you will understand and appreciate what I have tried to say. You have been a wonderful pal, loyal friend and a perfectly swell girl friend. May we meet again my dear and often. With love, Paul.”
    Key? Key to what? His heart, presumably. Oh dear. Paul, like many others, had misinterpreted my feelings for him and seen as serious love what was really my joy in my new life and in the beauty of the world around me, and my pleasure in sharing common interests with a young man. Best of all, Paul was fun. The misreading of my girlish crush by others had embarrassed me, and now Paul’s reference to “the key” embarrassed me even more. I wonder what I wrote in his Argus . Something cautious, I am sure.
    A few days before I was to leave, Verna turned to me in the kitchen and said, “Beverly, I don’twant you ever to tell your mother you didn’t make good grades because I made you work too hard.” I was stunned, too stunned to speak. Why did she think I would say a thing like that? I had fulfilled the duties outlined before I came and more and would willingly have done anything she asked of me. But she never asked, just wrote a hint to Mother. Finally I managed to say, “But I did make good grades.” Didn’t she remember that I was a member of the honor society?
    That was the end of the matter, but for many years I thought about the incident, which left me with an insecurity. Was I failing to please when I thought I was doing the right thing?
    Verna’s feelings toward me did not appear to change. She was interested, kind, and helpful as always. I went with her in the gray Rickenbacker to Los Angeles, where she attended a library association’s monthly book breakfast. So I wouldn’t get lost, Fred had me memorize the streets I must stay on: Main, Spring, Broadway, Hill, Olive, Grand, Hope, Flower, and Figueroa. Once we went to the Orange Belt Emporium in Pomona to choose yarn for a suit she had asked me to knit for her during the summer. She had always wanted a hand-knit suit even though Fred held forth on the foolishness of knitting. It was a waste of time, he said. Machine-knit clothescost less. Verna and I knew machine-knit clothes could not compare with hand-knit in beauty and texture. Besides, she offered to pay me twenty dollars.
    The last day, the day I packed my trunk, Atlee unexpectedly asked me to go downtown for a milk shake. I was both pleased and surprised and have often wondered if the invitation was his own idea. That evening, after my typewriter was screwed into its crate once more, Paul came to bring me a box of candy and to say good-bye and wish me luck in whatever was to happen next in my life. He had a summer job as night watchman at the Little Theater in Padua Hills and in September would go to the University of Southern California on a journalism scholarship. We agreed to write, but in my heart I doubted if I would ever see him again.
    The next morning, as I was about to say good-bye to the family on the driveway, Fred looked at my awkward typewriter crate and issued an order: “Atlee, get the brace and bit and some rope from the garage. Let’s make Beverly’s typewriter easier to handle.” Atlee obeyed, and the two quickly unscrewed the lid, bored holes in the crate, knotted rope