Free The Girl Is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines

Pop to let him know I was at the right place and wasn’t about to be mugged or murdered. He waved back and strolled away.
    “Was that your father?”
    “Yes.”
    He stared after him. I wondered if we had violated some code of behavior. Should Pop have come onto the porch? Met Paul’s parents? But then if we were going to be strict about it, shouldn’t Paul have met me at my house? “What’s with the limp?” asked Paul.
    So that was what drew his attention. Boy, howdy—and to think I was the one who was worried about being thought rude. “He lost his leg at Pearl Harbor.”
    I expected an “I’m sorry” or “Gee, that’s rough,” but Paul wasn’t the kind of person to descend into sentimentality. Or manners. “That must’ve been something, being right there at the start of the war.”
    I was feeling disagreeable. Pop being hurt was hardly something to brag about. “The war had already been going on for years before then.”
    “You know what I mean.” He pointed his thumb toward the window. “We lost my brother four months in.”
    Now it was my turn to be trite. “I’m sorry.”
    He shrugged. “On the bright side, I can’t go.” He pointed at his chest. “Asthma.” He turned his head and hollered into the house at a volume that made me question how bad his lungs really were, “Pearl! Let’s make tracks!”
    We walked side by side, Paul in the middle, to the fire hall that the Jive Hive operated out of. Pearl was silent, her attention focused more on her feet than on the air in front of her. Paul rattled on about the Princeton-Navy game that afternoon, wrongly assuming that I cared about football. I tried to feign interest, but my mind was already counting down the minutes until I could fake a headache and go home.
    We arrived at the fire hall and went down to the basement, where the Jive Hive was in full swing. Frank Sinatra, fronting the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, sang from the phonograph as we entered the large, low-ceilinged room. To the right was a table loaded with refreshments: cookies, cupcakes, punch, and Royal Crown Cola. To the left, card tables were set up with checker and chess sets and decks of cards. In the center of the room was an impromptu dance floor, where two couples clutched each other and swayed to Frank’s request to “be careful, that’s my heart.”
    I recognized some of the faces from P.S. 110, though it was hardly a fair sampling of the crowd I encountered every day. Everyone here was white and clean-cut. Either Suze and Tom Barney and the rest of their crew hadn’t arrived yet or they weren’t welcome.
    Before we were allowed to enter, we had to sign in. A stern girl in cat’s-eye specs scrutinized my information after offering Paul a much warmer welcome. She ignored Pearl entirely. In fact, she made such a point of not looking at her that I was embarrassed at her rudeness.
    And then something interesting happened: Pearl spoke.
    “Iris is new. This is her first time here.”
    The stern girl offered me a tight smile and passed me a sheet of paper. “Welcome, Iris. These are the rules. Make sure you follow them.”
    I scanned the sheet. No pickups was the first rule. No gambling the second. Dates must be registered in advance. The rest were a litany of dos and don’ts related to behavior. Most everything on the list seemed designed to keep the room clean and adults at bay.
    Paul was greeted by a blonde who wore her hair in tight pin curls. Without looking my way, he took her by the hand and joined her on the dance floor. I was prepared to disappear into a corner to wait out my time when Pearl spoke again.
    “That’s Denise Halloway. Paul’s girlfriend.”
    “Oh.”
    “You didn’t think you were his date, did you?”
    “No,” I said, too quickly.
    “That’s good. You could do so much better than my brother.” She paused and examined her thumbnail. “So why did you come out with us? Are you hoping to use him again?”
    “What?”
    “Like for the