Pamela Dean

Pamela Dean by Tam Lin (pdf) Read Free Book Online

Book: Pamela Dean by Tam Lin (pdf) Read Free Book Online
Authors: Tam Lin (pdf)
flowers."
    "Excuse me," said Molly; "I have to beat you both there." She took off running at a speed amazing in somebody who was suffering from cramps. Janet ran after her for perhaps a block, which was enough to prove that Molly's legs were faster than her hands.
    Janet then went sideways around the Methodist Church, and took the shortcut.
    She arrived in front of Jacobsen's plate-glass front before the rest of them, with a stitch in her side and a sensation that the weather was a great deal hotter and damper than she had thought. What had she been doing with herself this last year? This run had been nothing to her as recently as her sophomore year in high school, when she had raced Danny Chin from River Street to the high school, and beaten him by a yard.
    Peg and Christina were coming along the sidewalk now, peering into the window of the music store; making oh-how-cute faces at the little bookstore, which meant the cat George Eliot and her latest litter were wallowing all over the window display; and then, seeing Janet, they looked puzzled and walked faster.
    Molly came pounding up behind them, passed them while narrowly missing a light pole, and skidded to a stop next to Janet. Her face was perfectly white, and with the freckles looked more like a chocolate-chip cookie than anything else. Her breathing was much easier than Janet's. Her gray University of Pennsylvania T-shirt was dark with sweat under the arms and between her breasts, and her hair had gone fuzzy with damp.
    "Show me how you did that," she said without gasping.
    "Later," wheezed Janet.
    "Look at Peg and Tina," chortled Molly. She wrapped her arms around her middle.
    "Shut up," she told it firmly.
    "What's the matter?" said Peg.
    "She was afraid Tina'd buy curtains with flowers on them," said Janet.
    "Only because you threatened to help," said Molly. "It's just cramps."
    "Have you taken anything for them?"
    "Nothing works."
    Peg dug in the pocket of her denim skirt and produced a tiny enamel box with an iris on it. "Want a Happy Pill?"
    Molly's big blue eyes narrowed instantly, and a look of the most glowering suspicion spread over her cheerful face. Janet was alarmed; Peg, however, was not only unperturbed, but appeared to understand. "It's perfectly legal," she said. "It's codeine and aspirin. The Health Service gives them to people when they have flu or strep throat, and we all hoard them for when we really need them. If you don't need to use your brain for anything this afternoon, you should take one."
    Molly accepted the pill and they pushed open the doors and went into Jacobsen's. It smelled of cloth, beef jerky, and rubber, and looked as the labyrinth of the Minotaur might have if it had been built by the owner of a nineteenth-century general store. Half an hour later they emerged with heavy material of striped cotton in red, blue, and green that was going to clash dreadfully with Christina's quilt.
    The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and a twisty damp wind was rattling discarded paper cups in the gutters, since it was not strong enough to pick up the sodden leaves. The light was a diffuse version of the greeny-yellow that precedes a tornado, but the sky was more confused than threatening.
    When they reached their dormitory and opened the door of their room, they found a folded paper lying on the carpet, addressed to Janet. In a stiff backhand full of peculiar s 's, it said, "We forgot your Phys Ed. Write in whatever you wa nt, but think about either
    Swimming, which you need to graduate, or Outdoor Fitness, which is good in this weather.
    Archery and Fencing are rumored to be bad choices this year; the usual teacher is on sabbatical. Melinda Wolfe."
    Janet sat on her bed looking at this epistle for some time. Then she unearthed her schedule sheet from under a box of typing paper Christina had bought yesterday, and wrote in, "Fencing, Swifte, 2a," under the list of her other classes.
    "Hey, Molly," she said. "Wolfe says Archery and Fencing

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