Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume Read Free Book Online Page B

Sally cried, “did you hear what he said?”
    “Dougie … be a good boy,” Ma Fanny said. “Don’t tease Sally.”
    “Oh, it was just a joke,” Douglas said. “Can’t she even take a joke?”
    “Some joke!” Sally ran across the room and shook her hair at Douglas. “Have a cootie …” she said. “Have two or three or four …”
    Douglas ran to the bathroom and locked himself in.
    Ma Fanny called, “Cooties … schmooties … stop it right now …”
    Dear Doey-bird
,
    I miss you very much. Miami Beach is not as great as the ads say. I have a lot to tell you. The nurse wouldn’t let me into school because she says I have nits. Do you know what they are? Douglas says they’re cooties but I don’t believe him. I have this special ointment on my hair now. It’s blue and pretty disgusting. I hope it doesn’t make my hair fall out. I’m trying to think of this as an adventure, like you said, but so far, it doesn’t seem like one becauseeverything is going wrong. Don’t feel too bad that I hate it here and want to come home. After all, it’s not your fault
.
    Your loving daughter
,
    Sally F
.

Two days later Sally went back to school. This time the nurse didn’t find anything wrong with her hair and she was admitted to Miss Swetnick’s fifth grade class.
    The desks were lined up in rows and attached to the floor. Each one had an ink well in the corner. At home they’d had light-colored wooden desks that moved around and chairs that came in different sizes. And sometimes they’d push their desks together to make tables or else sit two-by-two. Sally knew now that she’d been right about Central Beach Elementary School in the first place. It
was
about five hundred years old.
    But Miss Swetnick wasn’t. She was young and pretty with red framed eyeglasses shaped like hearts. She had long black hair tied back with a ribbon and a lot of the girls in the class wore theirs the same way. A few had long braids like Margaret O’Brien, the movie star, but nobody else had a coronet. Another thing Sally noticed right off was theirshoes. They all wore sandals—white or gold—and no socks. Sally looked down at her red loafers and thick white socks, which were so popular in New Jersey, and felt foolish.
    “Could I please be excused?” Sally asked Miss Swetnick.
    Miss Swetnick smiled. Her front tooth was chipped at an angle. Sally liked the way it looked and wondered if her father could fix her front tooth the same way. “Already?” Miss Swetnick said. “You just got here.”
    “I know … but it’s important …” Sally shifted her weight from one foot to the other so Miss Swetnick would think it was a real emergency.
    “Well … I suppose it’s all right. But from now on you’ll have to go with the rest of the class.”
    “I’ll remember that,” Sally said.
    “The Girls’ Room is down the corridor and on your right. Would you like someone from the class to show you the way?”
    “No … I can find it myself.”
    “Hurry back now …”
    “I will.”
    Sally unpinned her coronet on the way to the Girls’ Room and put the bobby pins in her dress pocket. Her hair hung below her shoulders in braids. She felt better already. She found the Girls’ Room but couldn’t believe that there were no doors, not on the outside and not on the inside either.The toilets were separated into stalls but not one of them had a door for privacy. Sally made up her mind never to use the bathroom at school, no matter what. She took off her shoes and socks, then stepped back into her loafers, barefoot. She rolled her socks into a ball and tried to stuff them into her pocket but they wouldn’t go. She had to get rid of them somehow, and fast, so she tossed them into the trash basket, hoping that her mother would never find out. It was a terrible sin to throw away clothing when everyone knew the poor children in Europe were going half-naked. God could punish a person for throwing perfectly good socks away.