against the storefront, each of us eating one vanilla and one cherry half. As customers came and went, they looked down at us, and, if they knew one of us, they usually would say hello. The first time this happened, Paula said, “Hi, this is Billy” while pointing to me with her left hand. So, when someone who knew me entered the store and said hello, I said, “Hi, this is Paula” while pointing to her with my right hand. When school started in September, I walked the four blocks to school alongside my sister, Molly, who was in fifth grade. Along the way some of her friends would join us, and she would either ignore me or talk about me as if I weren’t there. One time she read my homework assignment aloud to her friend because I had misspelled much as mush. The two laughed uproariously as she read, “I like school very mush. My best friend is Paula Winston. I like her very mush.” When I grabbed at my homework paper, it ripped, so, when I turned it in to Sister Grace, I told her my sister had ruined it with hopes that she not only would forgive me but also get Molly in trouble. Sister Grace said, “Sisters can be quite the trouble, Billy. Can’t they?” “Yes, Sister.” “But sisters can be good to have at times. Remember that, will you?” I wanted to say, “No, they are never good!” But I didn’t. I just looked over at Paula, who was listening attentively with, I knew, a sympathetic ear. When we walked home together as we usually did, I told Paula the whole sad story. When I had finished, she stopped walking, leaned over, and kissed me on my cheek. I almost dropped my books and kissed her back right there on Locust Street and probably would have, but she kept walking and started talking about the story Sister Grace had read that day in story time about the boy who always tried to take the biggest piece of pie or cake. His mother solved the
problem by filling the biggest piece with horrible tasting medicine. “Wasn’t that clever?” Paula said, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. “Yes, it was,” I agreed. When we got to the corner of my street, I thought maybe I would kiss her goodbye as I had seen people do in TV shows or movies. I looked at her for some sign that I should do more than say goodbye but, seeing none, just said, “See you tomorrow, Paula.” She smiled as she usually smiled and said what she usually said, “I hope so, Billy,” and kept walking to Marlboro Street. As I watched her go, I lingered on the corner with an unexpected sorrow in my heart as if I had bid her goodbye forever. A few months after that first kiss, Gregory Murphy handed out birthday party invitations to the entire class. Although he was not one of the popular kids, his party would be the first boy-girl party, so the class was abuzz with its novelty. When my mother read the invitation, she said, “What nonsense! On a Sunday and a school night!” “Can I go? Everybody will be going. It won’t be that late,” I said in my most reasonable voice. “If everybody was going to jump in the river, would you jump in after them?” As I was contemplating how I could possibly answer her question, I saw a smile breaking on her face, “Yes, you can go,” she said, but then added “if you’re good.” In those days, we lived in a three-bedroom house: the middle room for my sister, the back room for my brother alone after he convinced my parents to kick me out of my bunk bed and have a second door installed so that he could study for college, and the front room for my parents and me, where they had their big bed and I had a small bed that fit nicely into an alcove. When I was getting dressed for the party in that front room, my eyes fixed on a little black velvet box on my
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