Free Everything and More by Jacqueline Briskin Page B

the apartment. There the two younger girls stationed themselves in the bathroom, experimenting with makeup, combing their hair into high pompadours over NolaBee’s wadded rats, emerging to consume boxes of graham crackers and gallons of milk that the Wace household could ill afford.
    NolaBee, though, chuckled indulgently, delighted that Roy at last had a friend.
    There were certain strange aspects to the friendship. Althea never spoke about her parents and had never once invited Roy to her home. If either Marylin or NolaBee said a word, Roy loyally shouted them down: “So what? We live closer to school. And who cares about families?”
    Althea had gone to private school, so the Waces guessed she must come from one of those classy houses north of Santa Monica Boulevard—or possibly even a north-of-Sunset mansion. Rich she certainly was. There was no question about that. Every afternoon at five, a heavyset elderly colored woman, obviously a servant, would honk the horn of a Chevy coupe with an A gas-ration sticker on the windshield. Althea would run down. After a few minutes the phone would ring, and Roy would pick it up and chatter away for another forty-five or fifty minutes. “I declare, I don’t know what all those two find to talk about,” NolaBee would say to Marylin, laughing.
    Althea’s clothes were peculiar. Finely tucked blouses made of creamy crepe de chine rather than the usual white cotton; sweaters handknit in an out-of-date way with patterns; very long and narrow Oxford shoes. “No snap,” was NolaBee’s opinion. “I reckon withoutRoy that Althea Cunningham’s an unhappy little thing.” Another remark that Roy vehemently denied.
    A nearby table crowded with freshman boys erupted into laughter, and a short boy stood, nodding his sandy crewcut toward Roy before departing with a self-conscious strut.
    Althea said, “Noticed by Mr. Big Time himself!”
    “Oh, hug me!” cried Roy.
    “Not until we meet thereafter.”
    “You can say that again.”
    They talked about boys in a language of catch phrases all their own.
    A brunette had come over to the table. “Hi, Roy,” she said, her smile displaying elaborate braces. Squeezing her looseleaf to her breasts, she inquired, “How did you do on the English quiz?”
    Roy grinned cheerfully. “Flunked, most likely. You?”
    Althea stared down toward the gym buildings. Her joyous expression was replaced by remote hauteur. She sat next to Roy in the English class, and it was humiliating not to be greeted or questioned—but then it seemed to Althea that her classmates always either ignored her or tormented her. She wanted to viciously batter the intruder while at the same time she wished fervently that
she
had been asked about her quiz results.
    “Roy, what about that Tri-Y meeting?” the girl was asking.
    Idiot, jerk, Althea thought, her fingers clenching. Nobody.
    Suddenly she was overwhelmed by the desire to be home at Belvedere, alone in her airy room that overlooked the Italian gardens. People drained her spirit and made her miserable. Had it always been like this? Or had she begun to feel an outcast only after
it
had happened? . . . Althea squeezed her eyes shut, banning the dreaded memory.
    The girl left.
    “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Althea drawled.
    “Oh, Betty’s a good kid,” Roy said.
    “The correct answer is all three— if you consider the salad caught in her braces,” Althea said. “I for one wouldn’t be caught dead with those Tri-Y drips!”
    Marylin glanced up from the papers on her lap. Like NolaBee, she was glad that Roy had a friend, yet she had reservations: Althea seemed to have some sort of complex that made her belittle the other kids.
    After a moment Roy said, “If you don’t want to go to the meeting, neither do I.”
    At that moment a crowd of sophomore boys began an elaborate horseplay on the other side of the patio: the two friends watched, then leaned toward one another giggling and