Free All She Ever Wanted by Lynn Austin Page B

between us. All the kids who sat in neighboring desks scooted them away from mine until I looked like the sole survivor on a deserted island. I thought of Miss Trimble’s Sunday school lesson on lepers and wondered if I would have to shout, “Unclean!” for the rest of my life. Even May Elizabeth kept me at arm’s length.
    “What’s it like to have cooties?” she asked, her eyes wide with fascination. “Can you feel them crawling around on your head?”
    I walked away from her.
    As I headed home from school at the end of that terrible week, May’s mother pulled her Cadillac to a stop alongside me and rolled down the window. “Kathleen, hop in a minute. I have something for you.” She gestured to the place beside her on the front seat. May Elizabeth sat safely huddled in the back.
    I climbed in, careful not to let my head touch the car in case I still had a nit or two hiding in the stubble waiting to hop out and contaminate someone.
    “Kathleen, honey, I heard that some of the other kids have been teasing you about having lice, and I wanted to tell you not to listen to them. You don’t need to feel ashamed about something that wasn’t your fault.”
    I stared at my lap, nodding, unsure what to say.
    “Here, this is for you. …” Mrs. Hayworth said. She handed me a Macy’s bag. Inside were two brand-new packages of barrettes and a little gift box with three bottles of pink liquid: one was shampoo, one was cologne, and one was hand lotion. They all smelled like strawberries. I gazed up at her, too moved to speak.
    “You have beautiful hair,” Mrs. Hayworth told me, and she reached out to touch it, her bejeweled fingers gently caressing my head. A tear slipped down my cheek.
    I knew how the lepers felt when Jesus touched them and made them whole again.

Chapter
8
    O nce school got out for the summer, I didn’t see May Elizabeth again until the fall. Her family went on vacations to exciting places every year and also spent time at their cottage on the Finger Lakes. And, of course, May and Ron spent a week or two at summer camp. I had to stay home and try to keep my brothers from killing themselves, each other, or the neighbor kids.
    That was the summer Poke and JT convinced Charlie Grout’s little brother, Larry, that he was Superman and got him to fly off the roof of his house. Luckily, Larry survived with only a broken leg. And my brothers’feud with Mrs. Garvey began that year, too. Poke and JT, who were always hungry, stole produce out her garden and fruit off her trees as fast as it ripened. The resulting enmity rivaled the legendary battle between Peter Rabbit and Farmer McGregor—although I don’t think Mrs. Garvey would have actually baked them into a pie. When Mrs. Garvey called them “stinking little thieves” and chased after them with a hoe, they decided to get even by sticking the nozzle of her garden hose down her dryer vent and turning it on.
    When they weren’t tormenting Mrs. Garvey or trying to kill Larry Grout, my brothers were busy setting things on fire. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them for one minute. They could burn down someone’s shed in the time it took me to run inside and use the bathroom. They also took great delight in hiding aerosol cans in the neighbors’burning barrels and waiting for the explosions. Most kids loved summer vacation and hated returning to school, but I was just the opposite. I couldn’t wait for school to start again.
    I was thrilled to discover that May and I were in the same fifth-grade class that fall, with Mr. Standish as our teacher. Once again, May chose me as her best friend, but this time it was because she was flunking mathematics and needed my help.
    I loved numbers. They were so neat and precise and easy to control, while the rest of my life was always in chaos: I never knew when we would eat or when I’d have to go to bed hungry; when my father would be home so we’d all be happy or when I’d wake up to find Uncle Leonard snoring on