Free Leo the Lioness by Constance C. Greene

the dance, due to the fact that not even one measly boy had asked her, things got tense.
    After a gay chat of about half an hour, during which Nina managed to avoid telling Char that she had not been invited, Nina hung up. Then she started to brood.
    I mean, I’ve seen her brood before, but this was something. Talk about air pollution.
    â€œGawd,” she kept snarling out of the corner of her mouth, “will you look at me!” She blamed everything on her nose. She looked in the mirror about a thousand times, first at the right profile, then at the left, then full face. She had heard that actors and actresses have a good side and a bad and they prefer to be photographed, naturally, from the good. Nina had decided that her right side was better. She has developed a sort of lopsided walk from always trying to remember to approach the mirror from her right side.
    My mother said, “Nina, would you please iron those few pillowcases and napkins I left in the basket?”
    Nina put her hand to her head. “After I take a couple of aspirins,” she said.
    â€œHave you a headache?”
    I think of my mother as a fairly perceptive woman but sometimes she draws a blank. Evidently she didn’t see the gray cloud forming around Nina’s head.
    â€œMaybe you haven’t noticed, but my nose is peeling,” Nina said. “Maybe you don’t know that my whole summer is ruined. I can’t face my friends. I am a mess.”
    John came in to get some old frankfurters for Count. We usually have a supply of kind of stiff franks that have been pushed to the back of the refrigerator by mistake. Sometimes I think that John pushes them there. Count doesn’t seem to mind that they are past their prime.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with your nose?” he asked Nina. That did it.
    She went into a catatonic state. Keening like a banshee, if banshees keen, she raced out of the room.
    â€œI’m not up to it today,” my mother said.
    â€œIt’s not only her nose, Mom,” I said. “It’s a dance at the canteen that Charlotte Forbes had two invitations to and Nina hasn’t had one. That’s all.”
    â€œThat’s enough.” There are times when my mother feels like giving up. She says “I give up” quite frequently. I think this was one of the times.
    â€œThings pile up at fifteen,” she said.
    â€œMore than they do at fourteen?” I said. I hope not. They pile up plenty at my age. I don’t think I can stand it if they keep on piling the older you get.
    â€œWell, in a different way,” she said. “It happens at all ages but somehow, at fifteen, you’re not quite grown up but you’re not a little girl any more, either. And you have moments of wanting to be both. It’s a hard age.”
    â€œI don’t look forward to it,” I said. Which wasn’t strictly true, only partly. Maybe things wouldn’t pile up for me as much as they seemed to for Nina. We are not similar in personality, as I have mentioned.
    Jen came to the back door. “Where’s Nina?” she said. “I have something to discuss with her.”
    â€œShe’s upstairs,” I said. “Her nose has started to peel and also she had a conversation with Charlotte Forbes.”
    â€œOh,” said Jen. “What did Charlotte have on her mind?”
    â€œOh, nothing was on her mind,” I said. “She just couldn’t decide whether to go to the canteen dance with Laurel or Hardy.”
    â€œWho’s Laurel and who’s Hardy?” Jen asked. She is a little dense sometimes.
    I explained about Charlotte’s two invitations against Nina’s none, and about her peeling nose. Jen is fairly easygoing but even she got a little pale.
    â€œOh, my Gawd,” she said.
    Nina came into the kitchen. She had a big glob of some white stuff on her nose. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have said, “Who hit you