Free The People in the Park by Margaree King Mitchell Page B

us. One of them caught my eye. He had dark curly hair and seemed to be looking at me whenever I looked his way. He would smile and go back to talking with his friends.
    “Ask him!” Melanie nudged me in the side, having noticed the exchange.
    “I don’t even know him,” I said.
    “Get to know him,” said Callie.
    “I can’t.”
    “Why not?” Stacie said.
    “I just can’t.” He was cute, handsome really. And he seemed to be looking my way a lot, but deep down I didn’t want to be disappointed after he found out I was Dad’s daughter.
    The journalists had done a good job of keeping my face out of the media. At least, I could be incognito here with my friends. Unless someone already knew me, I could just be myself out with friends.
    The next thing I knew Callie had walked over to their table and introduced herself.
    “Hi, I’m Callie and these are my friends, Melanie, Stacie, and Lauren,” she said, pointing out each of us as she called our names.
    “I’m Patrick, and this is Mike and Alan,” the boy with the curly hair said.
    “We just wanted to introduce ourselves,” she said. “Do you live around here?”
    “No, I’m visiting my grandmother. My friends rode out here with me.”
    I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he talked. He seemed to have some sort of accent.
    “Where are you all from?” Melanie asked.
    “We live in Olathe,” he said.
    A nice area, but not on the same level as Fairfield. I heard they had good schools. And apparently good-looking guys too.
    Alan asked if they could join us. My friends said yes. They pulled their table next to ours. They told us they were jocks. Alan played football, Mike played baseball, and Patrick was on the basketball team.
    “Different sports?”
    “We’ve known each other since first grade,” Patrick said by way of explanation.
    We talked into the evening, until the restaurant closed. At least everybody else talked, and I listened. Then they teased me about not speaking.
    I just smiled, and Patrick smiled back.
    We all exchanged telephone numbers.
    When we left I told my friends that they had better not tell Patrick I didn’t have a date for the prom.
    A fun evening.
    I hadn’t had one of those in quite a while.
     
    ****
     
    Even though I was driving Mom’s car I had to put gas in it. To make sure I had enough money for all my needs out of my weekly allotment, I’d been putting only five dollars’ worth of gas in the tank at a time. Usually I had to do it every day, with the high cost of gas, five dollars only got me from my house to the park and school and back home again. If I wanted to go somewhere else, like out with my friends, I hoped and prayed that there was enough gas in the tank.
    Every time I put gas in the car, the gas gauge barely moved from empty, certainly not to one fourth of a tank. This was the thing that made me feel poor, having to stint on gas, when the funds were low, putting in two dollars here, three dollars there, and on a good day, five dollars.
    I tried not to cry. Gone were the days of full tanks of gas. I never really thought how important gas was until I had to ration my money for it.
    I could hear Mom and Dad arguing when I walked through the door.
    “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have to stay home all the time as if I’m hiding out,” Mom said.
    “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have a lovely home to hide out in,” replied Dad.
    “I might not have it to hide in if something doesn’t change soon. This is just awful! Your face all over the news. Everything I’ve built up, my charities, my board work, everything has been torn down.”
    “Not everything. We still have our family. We still have each other.”
    Mom stormed past me without saying a word.
    Dad saw me standing in the doorway. He was contrite. I knew he hated that I’d witnessed the scene between them.
    He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll make this right,” he whispered.
    His cell phone rang. He went into his office and closed