Free Personal Touch by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

snorted. He knows perfectly well that our breakfasts are so frantic we’re lucky if we can get the plastic milk carton in and out of the fridge without spilling it, let alone pour cream into a sweet little pitcher. “It can sit on the sill and look pretty,” I told him.
    “That’s all pottery is good for, anyway,” said Tim, which did nothing to help him develop a friendship with the pottery lady.
    We were gathering up our packages and getting ready to go inspect the strange little orange gas-saver car when who should come up but Margaret and Ginnie.
    I hate comparing myself to people. It’s fatal. It makes me feel scrawny and stupid and pale. Especially Margaret. Margaret aimed her perfect smile right at Tim’s heart and I did not see how he could fail to be affected. Both Margaret and Tim wore braces for years and now they have these beautiful, straight white perfect teeth. My teeth were just a little bit crooked, not enough, my mother said, for braces. My mother says my smile has character. I would rather it lacked some of that character and that my teeth could be exactly evenly spaced.
    “Hi, Margaret,” said Tim, “how are you?”
    He sounded as if he really did care how she was. Immediately I stopped feeling the least bit pretty, interesting, or sexy and just felt thin and boring.
    Margaret is a very relaxed person. She can do things that would take me six months to build up to and even then I might chicken out. She put a long, tanned arm around Tim’s shoulder and pulled his head down to hers so she could give him a kiss. There was no noticeable lack of cooperation on Tim’s part. “Hi, Tim,” she drawled. “Long time, no see. When are you coming out on the beach with the rest of us? You don’t want us to have a boring summer, do you?”
    I had been thinking about my arm around Tim’s shoulder like that for days and dreaming about kissing him for weeks. And Margaret had gone and done it.
    “I’ve been working,” explained Tim. “Keeps me out of trouble.”
    “ You ?” said Ginnie cynically.
    We all laughed. One of the things that impressed me about Tim was that he hardly ever batted an eye about his checkered past. Me, I’d have been mumbling and scuffing my feet and flushing. Tim just looked back at the neighborhood terror he’d been and thought it was funny.
    “You going to be at the square dancing tonight?” said Margaret.
    Now square dancing is not romantic. For one thing you don’t get to stay with your partner very much, and for another it’s such hard work and you have to pay so much attention that what you do in your spare time is pant, not kiss. Nevertheless, I wanted to be at the square dance with Tim. I didn’t even want Margaret to be on the same block, let alone in the same square.
    That’s awful, I told myself, Margaret is your friend. Of course you want her around.
    “I don’t know how to square dance,” said Tim.
    “Any fool can square dance,” Ginnie said.
    “Thank you,” Tim told her. “I’m reassured.”
    “No, really,” said Ginnie. “They tell you what to do and everybody else is doing it too, so somebody is sure to give you a shove in the right direction. You have the general idea halfway through each dance.”
    We talked a little longer. Tim paid as much attention to Margaret and Ginnie as he could without being rude.
    For the first time, I began to wonder what was back in Albany. After all, Tim lived in our town only ten weeks a year. And it was impossible that anyone as super as Tim did not have a girl. There must be one back in Albany so terrific herself that he never even noticed Margaret, beautiful as she was. And he certainly didn’t notice me. Except as that neighbor girl he’d always tormented in the past and might as well be courteous to in the present.
    Probably writes to her every night, I thought glumly. She’s probably this curvaceous gorgeous thing with dark curling romantic hair she pulls back with ribbons. She probably models swimsuits