 
Confusion turned to Chaos

Publisher - Grace Campion Gardener

Original Copyright 2005 as BitterSweet 16

by Lynn Pezzutti Mickelsen

Copyright 2013 by Grace C. Gardener

Author - Grace Gardener

AKA - Lynn Pezzutti Mickelsen

Grace_Force Edition

Confusion

turned to

Chaos

by Grace Gardener

A true story of High School relationships,

cliques, racism and the mafia in 1968.

Dedication:

To the people of Columbine.

Also dedicated to my daughters, whose strength and intimate knowledge of good and evil will be a strong moral compass to guide us on an honorable path through the third millennium.

Note: _The words and thoughts of Madelyn West are in italics throughout the book._

Note: Original Copyright from the US

Copywrite Office 2005 as

'BitterSweet Sixteen' by Lynn Mickelsen

Other eBooks by Grace Gardener -

**the Truth** ; **the Conversation** ;

Garden of the Light
Preface

_Confusion turned to Chaos_ is about the struggles of High School in 1968, the year Madelyn West turns sixteen. _Confusion turned to Chaos_ tells stories of important historical events, as well as Madelyn's high-school and home life experience and difficulties: including bullying, prejudice, racism, the Mafia, and cliques. Madelyn encounters Bruce Springsteen and makes the acquaintance of Tony Soprano. In the end Madelyn is able to help avert a race riot at Clear Mountain High School, near Newark, NJ: proof that one average kid, with problems, can make a difference. The theme of _Confusion turned to Chaos_ is tolerance and acceptance. The story is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Like ' _Crash_ ' _Confusion turned to Chaos_ is meant to provoke discussion among high school and college students and open channels of healthy communication. Each chapter is designed to be read separately if classes wish to read only a chapter and discuss it.

The memoir covers Madelyn's Sophomore and Junior year in high school from April 4th to November 15th 1968.

This memoir is a true story. All of the conversations and events are true as are the details of all of the incidents. The dates and some of the personal and school events are approximate. Historical events have been researched for accuracy. The last conversation with Christopher is a conglomeration of conversations that took place over a period of time.

Note: This book had to be self published because, publishers told Grace, they were not willing to publish a book that tackles the subject of racism in high school - since none exists.

_Madelyn's comments are in italics throughout the book_ **.**
**Chapter 1** \- April 4, 1968

There are riots everywhere. Confusion. Chaos. The cities are burning. Bobby Kennedy's on TV telling people about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The people on the street, where he's standing, are fainting, crying, screaming - NO!

Newark is in flames. People in nearby Clear Mountain are scared, too. Parents don't want their children going far from the house.

Madelyn feels too hollow and empty to be scared. She can't figure out the energy. She hears things like, "Just let them all kill each other," or, "They'll have nothing left."

' _They can't really mean that,'_ she thinks. Madelyn's the type who can't believe anyone could say something that awful, so she makes excuses for them.

White people protecting what's theirs. Black people destroying what's theirs. It makes no sense.

She thinks, ' _Dr. King would be so disappointed if he saw this. He should reach down from heaven and put an end to this madness the way he ended violence so many times before.'_

Last summer was supposed to be the 'Summer of Terror.' Newark had riots the whole month of July. The National Guard took over the city. The police guarded the supermarkets and emergency food was brought in - like there was a war. It ended when the frustration gave way to despair. When it ended there wasn't much left, and normal wasn't normal anymore.

No good came of it. No one's attitude got changed. White people didn't understand, they didn't even try. What was destroyed wasn't theirs. Newark's North Ward, where the white people live, was patrolled by Francis Ferelli's Citizens Commission, made up of mafia and other white mobsters. The Army gave him tanks. Tanks!

They are patrolling now. There is probably something like that going on in all the cities that have riots. The white people looking out for themselves, guarding their stuff, their property.

Mayor Dailey has his own solution. He gave a "shoot to kill" order to stop the looting in Chicago.

Madelyn doesn't ask God for much, but she prays for this to stop.

The fires will stop, the looting will stop, it will all stop, it will have to stop, when there is nothing left. When the frustration and rage turns to pain, grief and ultimate exhaustion. When Newark is gone.

What then?

Madelyn flips on the radio in her room. Sly and the Family Stone—"I Wanna Take You Higher—Wanna Light My Fire," is playing on the radio.

She takes out her notebook and writes -

April 4, 1968

Why?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot today.

Why?

My heart has been ransacked

There are

No words.

The riots

The looting

The fires.

The country's oozing misery.

The air is thick with agony

I can barely breathe.

What a world?

I can hardly move.

All I can do is wonder

Why?

Madelyn takes the public bus to her mostly-white, catholic high school, Virgin Mother. The next morning as the bus doors fold open Madelyn's hit with the smell of smoke. She walks past the front seat, that _was_ burned last summer, like she has all year, only this time she can't take her eyes off it. The usual businessmen aren't on the bus this morning. No one white wants to go into Newark.
**Chapter 2** \- Geometry Class

Mrs. Schmidt's voice drones like a piece of metal being dragged by a slow truck down a gravel road.

"We will have a pop quiz on chapter 10 this morning," she says as she sways down the rows of desks handing out mimeographed quiz sheets. Her voice cracks occasionally, like a thirteen-year-old boy's, as she talks.

Mrs. Schmidt is pretty old! Every year she threatens to retire. Her hair is fine and must be gray but she puts a blonde rinse in it and she wears it in a kind of a flip. There's nothing spontaneous about her hair. It's wound up at the bottom in a wad, then all bobby pinned in place. She moves slowly and deliberately, swaying her hips and smacking her lips as she strolls from desk to desk, placing one paper after another on each kid's desk, like kindergarten.

She isn't one of those teachers who gives a pile to the front row to pass back. She thinks that's more than this class can handle. The chapter she covered yesterday was chapter 9. She is all business as usual, oblivious to the pain, the faint smell of smoke in the air, and worst of all, to the fact that a great man was killed.

This is the second year Madelyn has had to endure her as a math teacher. In all that time there has never been a quiz that followed the lesson. Evidently Mrs. Schmidt has the dates of her quizzes scheduled in her lesson plans, but not the lessons themselves. For instance, you learn chapter 2 in the math book only after everyone failed the quiz on chapter 2.

The ritual was, after the quiz she would grade the papers, then slowly push herself back from the desk, get up from her chair, walk around to the front of the desk and perch just part of her ass on the corner of the desk. She stayed balanced that way and somehow managed to cross her legs. She would swing the crossed leg back and forth toward the window, stroke the back of her neck and lean her head from side to side.

"This is the slowest class I ever had. I don't know what it is. I think you're all just half-witted. I guess I'll just have to teach that chapter all over again. This time you'd better pay attention. If this happens again, I'll have to call in Sister Bernard."

That was always the threat—to call in the Principal. Madelyn never believed her, though, because then she'd be found out. _I mean if every kid failed every test for two years, wouldn't that prove what a horrible teacher this horsy-faced bitch really is?_

After this quiz, Mrs. Schmidt slowly pushes herself back from her desk, gets up, hands back the quizzes and leaves the room. She must be bluffing.

Psych! She returns with Sister Bernard.

Mrs. Schmidt's voice quickens to almost a normal pace as she stands in the front of the room and announces to Sister Bernard, "These children can't learn. I stand here and teach and no one listens. They have no respect. I gave them a test and they all failed."

"No one passed? How many passed the test?" Sister Bernard requests. The folds on Mrs. Schmidt's face shiver. She's not prepared to answer a direct question. She stumbles a bit then props herself against the blackboard. (When she stands at the blackboard to teach, she always leans on it.) After an awkward pause Cynthia Solvino and Madelyn hesitantly raise their hands. Cynthia and Madelyn are good at math and usually do better than most on Mrs. Schmidt's quizzes. That subject is what allows them to talk to each other from time to time. They're in different cliques even though they are both in the B class.

The classes are A, B, C and D. 'A' being the brightest, etc. The friends you hang around with aren't defined by the classes, though. Cynthia's in with the greasers and Madelyn's in, what she thinks of as, the out-crowd. Everyone at Virgin Mother wears a uniform; but in spite of the uniforms, there are still cliques. Most kids, unintentionally or intentionally, lend their own unique look to the uniform. For instance, there's the in-crowd. The collegiates. The boys wear their hair a little longer than a crew cut and comb it back. Their ties are thin, but not too thin, and their shirts have button-down collars and fag tags (a little loop of material attached to either side of a double pleat on the back of the shirt) cuffed pants, with a nice ironed front crease, and loafers - very neat. They are all jocks of some sort. The girls are neatly quaffed, a flip with bangs is the preferred do, and they smile a lot. They take up the hem of their pleated skirt (and iron it). They make the cheerleading squad; and talk about everybody behind their backs. They also find some reason to hate everyone not in the incrowd. When they are out of school they may as well still be in uniform since they always wear solid, pastel-colored villager sweaters with matching plaid a-line skirts and circle pins across the collars.

Then there are the geeky kids. For some of them, their hygiene isn't always the best and they don't know how to use a comb to part their hair straight. Some portion of their shirt isn't tucked into their skirt (or pants). They keep their eyes on the floor and they don't say much. A lot of them are smart and just have too much on their minds to be bothered with how they look and act. Madelyn fits in well with them, too. Her hair has a mind of its own and her shirt is rarely tucked.

In her freshman year Madelyn lobbied and won the right to wear knee high socks instead of pantyhose. ' _Sounds nerdy I know, but stockings and a plaid, pleated skirt, white shirts, blue blazer and saddle shoes, is worse. It just looks unbalanced. And besides, pantyhose aren't nearly as comfortable._ ' (A lot of girls are still mad at Madeline for that.)

Madelyn has no particular look in school. She tries to tell her hair what to do, but it doesn't always listen. She doesn't like makeup much, so she doesn't wear much; neither do most of her friends (except Dale - she wears too much). Madelyn says, if it weren't for uniforms, none of us out-crowders would know how to dress. It's just a uniform, so why bother. They aren't particularly careful about makeup or hair. Instead of taking up the hems of their skirts and ironing them, they roll them at the waist.

The out-crowder boys usually prefer to wear crew cuts so they can go all day without a comb and still look okay. They're the short-sleeve shirt and clip-on tie types. All-in-all not a good look.

VM has more than its share of greasers or hoods. A lot of Italian Catholics come here from Newark. Some of them are children in Mafia families. The word is that the Mafia kids are only allowed to hang around with other Mafia kids, or kids of family members, or kids their parents approve of. Since Madelyn is half Italian she's allowed to say hi to them and they're allowed to say hi back.

'The greaser girls act cool and tough. They tease their hair up a couple of inches on the back of their head and they wear their bangs flat (they tape them down at night). They use lots of black eyeliner, I mean lots, and they drag it out past the edges of their eyes so it ends in a point going toward their temples. Their skirts are shorter than anyone else's but the Sisters rarely scold them. Gladys cut her hem before she sewed it so she can't let it down. Their saddle shoes are pointed at the toe with as much heel as the Nuns will allow.

The greaser boys are cool and secretive. They are tough without acting tough. They wear pointy, black shoes with heels, too, and their hair is high on top and combed back into a pompadour and a DA (duck's ass) in the back. They wear iridescent high rolls. (A high roll is a shirt with a big collar that comes up high on the neck and then out, so when it folds down over the tie, no material touches until the tips of the collar touch the shirt.) They wear extremely thin ties—like shoelaces. And really tight, black pants. Madelyn thinks they have a certain panache. Most of the greasers have heavy Newark accents.

Well, Cynthia is in with the greasers. Her uncle is the big Mafia boss, Francis Ferelli, and her father is pretty high up in the chain of command from what Madelyn heard. Dale said Cynthia's scared of both her father and her uncle. Peggy said she isn't allowed to date until she's eighteen or something, and then it will be with a chaperone and only with someone her father and uncle approve of. Cynthia has to hang with the greasers, since she's not allowed to have friends outside the family. All in all, though, Cynthia seems like a pretty likeable girl. She's a hell of a lot smarter than her idiot cousin, Gladys.

She has true out-crowder tendencies. Her hair isn't teased as high and her eyeliner isn't as thick as her friends. She's pretty and smart and there is always something a little uneasy about her. She doesn't realize how pretty she is since no boys dare to talk to her because they know who her father is. Cynthia's a loner by design. She can't complain to anyone about her situation because she isn't allowed to talk about the family, and when she tells her mother how miserable she is, she's told she is special. Her mother's assurance that that's the way she was raised is of no consolation to Cynthia. When she hints to her father that she would like to date, he calls her a slut. She's uneasy because she has nowhere to turn.

Maybe, if she were allowed to make her own friends? Who knows?

It makes Madelyn sad that Cynthia can't make friends with whomever she wants, since it's hard for Madelyn to make friends, being that she's scared all the time. Maybe that's why it's the out-crowder policy to say hi to anybody, any clique, any time, in school or out. Exclusionism is for morons, and besides, it takes too much effort.

Anyway, the next thing you know Cynthia and Madelyn are being asked to stand in front of the class. Sister Bernard paces back and forth in the front of the classroom. She is even older than Mrs. Schmidt. She acts as if she's interested in how badly the class did. She reiterates some of the things Mrs. Schmidt told them. She asks Cynthia how she passed. Cynthia says, "I studied." Which is such bull, how did she know what to study?

When the Principal asks Madelyn, she realizes this is her chance to make Mrs. Schmidt accountable. She feels like she's been missing out on learning math for these past two years. She's tired of going to class day after day, not to learn, but to be belittled. She's frustrated with her situation in this class: and frustrated by the fear, anger and violence in the black neighborhoods; and by the fear, anger and lack of concern in the white neighborhoods.

Madelyn's frustration, and concern for her fellow classmates, compels her to go on about how Mrs. Schmidt doesn't cover what's on the test until after they've taken it. Sister Bernard asks the class if that's true and some of them sheepishly nod their head in agreement, but most of them sit there dumfounded. They can't believe Madelyn is even trying to convince the Principal of what a horrid teacher Mrs. Schmidt is, especially with her standing right there. But Madelyn keeps talking like the woman isn't even in the room, or she can't hear, because, well, Sr. Bernard asked. Madelyn has never shown such blatant disregard for someone's feelings, but she figures this kind of opportunity doesn't come along often. She doesn't usually speak up either, unless it benefits everyone, then she'll push herself.

She's really tired of this teacher's abuse. She looks around at the class she's trying to defend.

Mrs. Schmidt turns scarlet - right through her pancake makeup. She asks the class if they think she taught the lesson, and some of the kids agree with her that she had. Bummer! Madelyn can barely breathe. She's really put herself out there and nobody's backing her up. She looks around the room, she wants to say, "Why did they all fail then?" but can't. Then she sees Cynthia who had taken her seat while Madelyn was on the rampage. Cynthia looks up and says, "Mrs. Schmidt doesn't always teach the lesson first. I always study at least three chapters ahead, and that's how I knew what to study."

' _Right on, Cynthia!'_

Sister Bernard, who isn't even listening anyway, warns she will be stopping in from time to time.

After class Madelyn asks the kids who agreed with Mrs. Schmidt why they did that, and they just say they did it because they have to face her every day and they don't want her to give them a hard time.

They're right, too; she could be one miserable cur.
**Chapter 3** \- April 7th

Is it True?

Dale called Madelyn to say that her father saw some whites, who he was pretty sure were from the Citizen's Coalition, fire-bombing some of the black stores in Newark's North Ward. (Dale's father owns a flower shop there.) Madelyn heard that, too. She had been hoping it was just a story.

Madelyn takes her cat, Bow, upstairs, and she starts playing "Blowin' In the Wind," but finds she doesn't have the strength. She puts down her guitar, holds her cat and cries.

"Lyn. Get down here and make dinner," her mother screeches.

Madelyn shakes, takes a deep breath and pushes herself off the bed. She makes steak, potatoes, peas and salad. She wipes the tears from the plates as she places them around the table.

"What's your problem," her older sister, Trisha, snaps as they all sit down to dinner.

"This is disgusting. Why are these plates wet?" Madelyn's mother, Celeste reprimands.

Madelyn tells them.

"You're a liar," her mother says with contempt. Celeste looks around at Madelyn's brother, Bruce, her sister, Trisha and her father, Santé for confirmation and announces to them, "See what I mean, she's always lying," then glares at Madelyn. "Now eat your peas."
**Chapter 4** \- April 14th

' _President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act today. Is that what it took? Dr. King's death? These riots? I don't know._

Will the new law do anything? Will it actually make a difference? It's people's attitudes that have to change. Right now the air is so thick with hate and fear, I'm afraid that no amount of legislation can change that.

Now that the riots are over and the smoke has cleared, stories are coming out of Newark. The stories say the fires might have been the work of white militants and bands of white cops; and that citizen patrols were shooting up black stores.

God help us.'
**Chapter 5** \- Anthony's Father

There was an article in the newspaper yesterday about how this garbageman from Newark saved a baby who was thrown out. Madelyn asked a few kids in school if it was Anthony's father and they said it was.

The big joke at school was how Anthony's father saved a baby's life when he kills people for a living. Anthony's one of the mafia kids, so that's what they were talking about, how the mafia kills people and all. But finding a baby in a garbage can, that's a pretty good thing - mafia or not.

When Madelyn went outside the school in the afternoon to wait for her sister to give her a ride she saw some guy get out of a car across the street. Then she saw Anthony wave from the school steps toward the man.

"Are you Anthony's father?" Madelyn asks.

"Who wants ta know?"

' _I'm standing right here. Me, I want to know_ ,' she thinks.

"Yeah, he's my dad," Anthony grins. "This is Madelyn, Dad."

"Good to make you acquaintance," Anthony's father says. He nudges Anthony, "Huh, huh she's sommin', huh? She Italian?"

Anthony nods.

She doesn't know how to take that. "I just wanted to congratulate you on saving that baby's life," she smiles and nods to him.

"I'm no garbage man," he snaps back.

"In the paper? I mean, like, are you the one who found that baby?"

"I guesso. Yeah, but, I'm no garbage man," he snarls. "I'm in the waste management business, huh." He nudges Anthony and they share a low, perceptive snicker.

"Okay. You're not a garbage man. I just wanted to con..."

"All the guys was out sick. Even the backup crew." Mr. Soprano explains.

' _What the heck is he talking about?_ ' Madelyn couldn't follow his thinking.

"This is only the second time I been on the route, an' I been in this business all my life. All I done was call the cops. That's it! I didn't do notin' special. If it'd been a regular day, one of dem other jerk-offs would a found him. Ya know what I mean? It wouldn't a been me," he scowls. He looks pissed.

' _Man, I've never heard a grown-up say jerk-off.'_

"I could a just left him there. It turns into this whole big..." he waves his hands around in circles from the elbow. "Reporters show up and asshole photographers. I tole 'em - you take my picture, I'll break your face. Huh. I should a just left him: and if I'd known I would a got my name in the paper, I would a left him, too."

' _Jeeze, he can't mean that - I hope he's joking_.' "Well I just wanted to congratulate you."

His mood lightens. "But I figure he's a baby right? He didn't do nothin' to nobody. He never hurt nobody, right?"

Anthony's eyes shine. ' _He must really admire this asshole_.' Madelyn wishes she could feel like that about her father.

"He didn't deserve to be in the garbage. Not like some slobs I know. Huh?" he nudges Anthony, "Right? Huh." They both chuckle. "You know, some guys belong to be in the garbage?"

' _How am I supposed to respond to that? Who is this guy?_ ' The Anthony Madelyn thinks she knows is a real thoughtful, kind kid—a real sweetheart. She's in it now. What was she thinking trying to thank a guy like that? "I guess?" Madelyn shrugs.

"Well some a the guys I know do. Some guys. The real slobs, you know?"

_I've never heard anybody called a real slob._ Madelyn tries to smile back at them. All she can think of is if they were really, really sloppy, like if they had garbage on them or something. "If they're real slobs, I guess they belong in the garbage."

Anthony looks surprised, and then smiles at Madelyn.

"Ha, hey, see, see she knows, she knows, see," Mr. Soprano says, elbowing Anthony. "But he's a baby see, so I figure he don't deserve to be there. So I called the cops. Any of the guys on the route woulda done that, then their names would be in the papers, not me."

' _Is it me? I get it already. Is this guy dense—or what?'_ "Well, sure, yeah, of course they would."

"I figure he's a baby right? The worst thing he could a done is cry, maybe," he chuckles again; he looks at Anthony who is beaming back at him. That idea struck him funny, "Maybe that's what he done, maybe he cried too much, so somebody trew 'im out?" He and Anthony bend toward each other and share a stomach punch and guffaw. ' _How could Anthony laugh at that? He's acting like his Father_.'

"Did he cry?" Madelyn asks, interrupting their amusement.

"Huh? What?"

"The baby? Did he cry a lot?"

"Ah, oh, no, na. Na, he was half dead, if I hadn't come along when I did."

"Well it must feel good then," Madelyn says, still trying to get him to accept her congratulations.

"What?"

' _What a tool!'_ Madelyn sighs. "It must feel good to save a life like that?"

Mr. Soprano looks at Anthony. "Save a life, huh. She's sommin', huh Anthony?" He looks Madelyn up and down. He shrugs and almost grins, like maybe he gets it.

She blurts out, "Well, I just wanted to congratulate you on saving that baby's life." ' _I give up.'_

"Okay, kid. Let's go Antny."

Anthony and his father bump shoulders while they saunter back to the car. As they get in, Madelyn hears, "She's really sommin'?"

"Yeah. Yeah Dad, she's somethin'," Anthony agrees.

' _Holy Mackerel, that was exhausting.'_ Madelyn smiles and waves to the car as it drives past her in the street. ' _Man,_ w _hat a moron!'_

The car's wake tussles her hair.

"Madelyn. Lyn. Mad! Hey Madelyn!" a boy calls from the school entrance.

"Huh? What?"

"Lyn! Comeer!"

Madelyn turns to see who's calling her. Christopher's standing in the shadow of the doorway to the school. Madelyn looks over to him, "Christopher! What's happenin'?"

"Don't you know better? What were you doin'? Come eer."

"What do you mean, what was I doing?" Madelyn says as she walks across the street toward Christopher.

"Don't you know better than ta stand in the street? Anybody could see ya." Christopher takes out a pack of L&Ms. "Don't you know who that is?" He thumps the top of the cigarette pack on his forearm.

"Anthony's father," Madelyn replies, "he's the one who saved that..."

"Yeah. Don't you know who he is?" Chris aims the top of the pack toward Madelyn. "Want one? You don't just go up and talk to him like that." He leans against the door and lights a cigarette.

"What? Why?"

"You gotta ask permission to talk to him. I'm serious, you could get yourself killed just walking up to him and talking, the way you did." He shakes out the match.

"Come on, Chris. I just wanted to congratulate him on..."

"I'm tellin' you. Don't you know who he is?"

"He owns the garbage trucks or something." Madelyn leans forward, shakes her body and lowers her voice, "He's not a garbage man."

"Na. No, he owns a waste management company, ha." Chris takes a drag.

' _What's with the short guttural snicker that comes after waste management? You can't just say waste management and let it lie there?'_

"That's where the bodies go. Whenever they want to get rid of some body, that's who they call." Christopher blinks the smoke from his eyes.

"No shit? Come on, you're messin' with me?" ' _Although that would explain the little snicker. I don't believe him for a minute.'_

Christopher appears serious and concerned. He looks over his shoulder down the street. "No shit, 'n sometimes he kills 'em himself. You stay away from him."

Madelyn really can't imagine when she would ever have occasion to talk to him again. I mean, even if he were to save another baby, which, I'm telling you she got the distinct impression he'd probably never do again, even if he found another baby; she sure as hell wouldn't try to congratulate him. That was too tough.

"How do you know?" Madelyn leans against the other door.

"Antny tole me. It's his father's business. He's gonna inherit it." Chris taps the ash off his cigarette, "He's aready in it. I probly might go in it wid 'em."

"He's already in it?" Madelyn gasped.

"Yeah. Well sometimes he goes wid his old man on a run." Christopher takes a drag, "Let's just say the garbage heaps in the meadowlands are filled wid bodies. That's who he is," Chris says, squinting the smoke and afternoon sun out of his eyes. "That's who Anthony's gonna be."

"He can't. Anthony can't. He's such a sensitive kid! He can't do that." Madelyn doesn't ever want to believe anything bad about anybody.

"Ha. Don't let Antny hear you call him sensitive: he wants ta be tough."

"But he's not," Madelyn urged, "tell him. Tell him he's too nice to take over his father's business."

Christopher looks intrigued, then laughs, "I ain't gonna tell Antny nothin'. I shouldn't be tellin' you all this shit anyway."

A flashing neon sign and sirens went off in Madelyn's mind, "You've got to, Christopher. Anthony has to tell his father he won't take over the business." Madelyn supposes it'll kill him if he doesn't.

"Too late for that." Chris props his left foot against his right knee and puts the cigarette out against the sole of his shoe. "You don't know how it is. Tony can't say no to his Father. He can't say notin' to his father." He put the butt in his black-leather jacket pocket. "If you put the butt out on your shoe an put it in your pocket they don't know you been smokin' here. You could get expelled for dat." Christopher adds, "You don't know how it is." Christopher starts down the steps tired of the conversation. "You just stay away from his father. You hear me?"

He turns his head back toward Madelyn, "You keep quiet about what I tole you, those guys can get you gone permanently," he says and then springs off across the street.

' _Damn. Poor Anthony. He has to stand up to his father. He has to! And that Christopher, he won't try to talk Anthony out of it, if he wants to go into business with him! He better be lying.'_

Would Madelyn kill somebody if she thought her mother would love her for it? Naah. What is that control our parents have over us that they can manipulate us like this? We want their love and approval. Madelyn knows in her mind she'll probably never get it; but her heart convinces her to keep trying. Like a quest. No, like an obsession.

' _Anthony can get approval by becoming somebody he's not. I hope he doesn't come to hate himself so much, he lets somebody else kill him! I mean all he would have to do is screw up. In that business I'll bet it's easy to get yourself killed. And what if he messes up by mistake? That would get him killed, too! Man! Either way he's a dead man. He just can't do it is all I know. He has to say no to his Father! I could become someone else and my mother still wouldn't love me, and yet, I can't say no to her. It's all too crazy. Christopher is wrong. He's just talking shit. He's wrong about Anthony.'_

That's what Madelyn thinks, but, in fact, Chris isn't lying and she doesn't know how it is. It's not just like a family thing between Anthony and his father. Like every time Anthony questions or stands up to his father, he gets beaten down. It's not that. It is a "family thing," an understood commitment to the crime family of Francis Ferelli. Francis Ferelli's the most powerful mafia boss in NJ. So Tony truly can't refuse his father.

Anthony has been trying all his life to be like his father, trying to get that horrible SOB to like him. The problem is, he's nothing like his father. Mr. Soprano says so little and expects Anthony to understand so much. So Anthony gets stuff wrong a lot: then he gets the crap beat out of him.

Like today, Anthony thinks his father likes Madelyn so he figures he has his father's okay to date her. It seemed that way to him, anyway. The way Anthony understands it, is, he has to date girls his father approves of. Anthony knows most of the guys at school think Madelyn's pretty, so it would be nice to date her, and his father already approves, so he has the green light. He decides to go for it. He'll try to ask her out.
**Chapter 6** \- Up With People

Madelyn belongs to Up with People, which is, I know, say it - really nerdy. None of the out-crowders belong, and only two other girls from her high school belong. They get together and sing with a lot of (mostly) college kids. Madelyn might get to sing in a duo and play guitar in front of fifteen hundred people. How intimidating.

Madelyn loves playing guitar and when she was asked to sing, she said yes without thinking of how it would be to play in front of people.

She joined the group because Pat, someone she knows from grammar school, is a member and dating the director (which she doesn't want her parents to know.) So she asked Madelyn to join with her. But it's fun so she keeps going.

The song Madelyn is supposed to play has some really jammin' guitar, the kind where you smash the shit out of the strings. Pat and Madelyn rehearse and rehearse. Pat sings and Madelyn plays and sings. Madelyn thinks it's a challenge to play that fast but she's getting it down. They're happening!
**Chapter 7** \- Glee Club

Madelyn is a second soprano in Virgin Mother's Glee Club, too. She was in Glee Club last year, but as first soprano. She can't for the life of her figure out how she ever got into Glee Club in the first place. She thinks she was god-awful when she tried out. She knows she can't carry a tune to save her life, but she loves to sing. It's like a curse. When she was a kid (and probably even now) every time there was a wish on a wishbone, or on birthday candles, or whatever, she always wished she could sing. (Well maybe not always. Sometimes she wished for a horse, and when she was really little, she wished for magical powers.) All the kids around Madelyn in Glee Club tell her she throws them off. They say, "Stop fooling around, Madelyn."

Unfortunately, she's not fooling around. She can tell when she can't hit the note (most times) and it bothers her - but not enough to stop her from singing. She waits for the first sopranos to finish with their practice. Mr. Bader always takes extra time with them. Madelyn begins killing time by writing the names of the boys she's gone out with on the gray square of her gray and blue-plaid, pleated uniform skirt. The list gets longer than she thought.

Madelyn made up her own rule for dating. She'll date anyone. She will date a dweeb, a geek, a guy with really bad acne, a quiet guy - pretty much any guy. Her other rule is she will kiss goodnight, assuming the guy's not a total perve or disgusting. So she thinks she doesn't get asked out any more than any girl, her standards aren't as high - maybe.

Third - she won't have sex until the fourth date. She's never made it to a fourth date, except with Anderson, but those aren't really dates, and he never wants a kiss goodnight, so there's no chance of going further.

She's writing in fountain pen. Madelyn loves fountain pens. They write in such nice, flowing, light-blue ink. They make her otherwise atrocious handwriting look almost pleasant, and they feel good in your hand. That's important, Madelyn thinks - how a pen feels. (She buys her pens at a Five and Ten that's catty-corner to the bus stop. What a great store. They have everything. I mean it.)

Madelyn looks at the list. Her handwriting is soo bad the list looks like five different people wrote it. She looks up at Dale, "I hope this washes out!" Some of the girls on the wooden bleachers around Madelyn are bored too, so they ask, "Whadja doin'?"

Madelyn doesn't think about how obnoxious she sounds and tells them. Amy starts getting uptight about it. A couple of them hassle her for reducing the boys in her life to doodles on a skirt, so she stops. She was just bored, anyway. ' _Man, I hope this pen comes out! My mother will kill me if it doesn't. How stupid? I'm so stupid.'_

Now the list bothers Madelyn too, so she crosses her wrists and casually drapes her hand on her leg to cover it up. Her fingernails want biting. She lifts her hand to her mouth then slaps it back into place when she remembers she's in public. Mr. Bader's class always goes into overtime during exam week. It's his way of emphasizing that Glee Club is just as important as the rest of our studies. But you don't get graded a grade that counts in Glee Club, and Madelyn has two exams tomorrow. One in Geometry and one in Religion. ' _I should be home studying. Mr. Bader should let us study while we wait for the first sopranos. I should ask him why we have to stay. Why am I the only one who will ask the obvious questions? It's not like I'm the only one who wants to know, I'm just the only one stupid enough to ask. It just seems so unfair.'_

Madelyn has asked Mr. Bader twice now, but he said, "This is more important than studying," then, "Study what the first sopranos are singing."

' _I give up.'_

He's nervous about the concert. Mr. Bader just comes in for a little while each week after school to teach. What does he do with the rest of his day? He has a pretty heavy accent. He sounds German. He's probably German. He's not a young guy. He gets downright misty at the concerts. He gives these great speeches to the parents about how they should be so proud. Madelyn's parents are never there to hear the speech.

During First Communion, Confirmation, Eighth Grade Graduation and countless other school gatherings, Madelyn sits and holds her breath while parents in the audience applaud and smile and wave at their children like they like them. Then she sits and listens while Principals and others go on and on about, "How proud you parents must be." It's prickly to endure, especially if she lets herself think about it.

This concert will be the same, it would be a lot better if they would leave out the accolades and she could just sing.

Deep down Mr. Bader is a nice guy, but right now he is getting on Madelyn's nerves. Glee Club will have to leave soon anyway; the basketball team will be coming in for practice. VM has no football team, so there's a lot of pressure on the basketball team. They have a radical team this year. There are these five skinny, white guys who make up the first string. The tallest is six one! They're like magic on the court together. Nobody else plays until those five make a substantial lead, then the second string goes in until the score about evens up, then the five guys go back in to guarantee a win. These guys are all Seniors. Virgin Mother managed to get into the championships, mostly because there were no other division D high schools. They played all the division 'C' schools and some division 'B'. The other schools don't see those short guys and this tiny high school as a threat, and they let their guard down—then they get trounced. If those five guys stay in the whole game, the score ends up like a hundred and twenty to thirty-three. Seriously.

The team is trickling in now, one by one. They don't talk as they stand along the out-of-bounds area where the bleachers roll out to, across from us. Two boys pass the ball between them. It makes a whoosh sound as it cuts through the air and then a resonant slap as it's caught. The boys grunt faintly as they throw. (Especially Mike, that boy's a grunter; you should hear him by the end of a game.)

The balls make an echo inside themselves; and a high, rubbery-bell reverberation as they thud against the wood floor. The tiny gym sounds cavernous. Mr. Bader cannot take it anymore and lets us go.

' _Right on.'_

(Jeeze, I hope this pen comes out of my skirt.)
**Chapter 8** \- Flirting (with disaster)

A few years ago a kid whose last name was West (no relation) got paralyzed playing football, so Virgin Mother cut out football and then almost all the boys transferred out. After that only a handful of boys even applied to get in. (Like there are that many boys interested in playing football, anyway.) Maybe they just don't want to be associated with a school that doesn't offer football. Go figure. Consequently, VM only has eighty-eight boys. So what's that—like four girls to every boy? Pathetic, isn't it? Most of the boys are the Catholic kids from the neighborhood. If you live in Upper Clear Mountain or surrounding towns you pay to go to the school, but if you live in Clear Mountain you're in the Virgin Mother Parish, and if you're in the Virgin Mother Parish, you can go to the high school practically for free. So the boys are almost all either local Catholic boys or Mafia kids from Newark.

' _Because VM has such a good basketball team, I hear more boys are applying to go next year. But for now, it is pretty slim pickin's.'_

It doesn't matter if they're geeks or greasers or collegiates: if Madelyn likes them for their brains or their sense of humor, she'll flirt. I'll tell you, though she will not admit it, she has her share of boys flirting with her, too. Lots of boys think she is pretty. She doesn't. She thinks they say that to all the girls.

Madelyn thinks, ' _High School boys don't even listen to what girls have to say, so they wouldn't know if you're smart. They might realize you get better grades than they do, but they just figure that must be because you study more than they do, or you got lucky, or something.'_

Madelyn usually heads out after school and walks downtown with Jane, Dale, Peggy, and Dana. Once they get up to Park Street they hike their skirts up and roll them at the waist. Miniskirts are in, and the dress code at the school says skirts can't be more than two inches above the knee, so there's a whole lot of rolling going on.

They go down the Avenue to Grunnings most days, and then just hang out, drink cokes and talk. Dana and Jane smoke cigarettes.

Madelyn's sister, Trisha, has a car now, and she's supposed to give Madelyn a ride home today, so she has to be at the school parking lot by four.

Madelyn gets up from the booth, goes to the ladies room to wash her hands, and then heads back to school.

She gets to the parking lot across from the school okay. The car is there but Trisha is not.

Anthony Soprano comes out of nowhere to wait with her. He's cute with his sandy, wavy hair, not slicked back like the rest of the greasers. And no iridescent suits for him - he wears tweed sports coats and slacks. Unusual for a mafia kid.

Madelyn doesn't really know him that well, he is a mafia kid - in with the greasers, and besides, he is a year older. They joke about having to wait; talk about the weather and what a nice spring day it is. Anthony asks what her father does, so she tells him, "He's in advertising." Her knees are getting weak. She can't think. Her brain gets all fuzzy when she's nervous, she talks on autopilot.

She tells Anthony about some of her father's commercials, "Like the Bayer commercial when the kid asks; 'Does it hurt and have a temperature?' Most people know that one." He is interested so she says, "Yeah, and the kid just said that. He was really concerned, so he said - 'does it hurt and have a temperature' - and he got scolded for it. That got the little kid upset and none of the takes they did after that were any good, so they used that one; and now everybody knows that commercial. Isn't that funny?" She's rambling! 'Shut-up, Madelyn!' Anthony's grinning and he's really listening. She asks, "So, how about you? What does your father do?" Anthony's not allowed to talk about his father's business, which is waste management, so he thinks of something else his father does, "Sometimes he works in construction. My uncle's in construction," Anthony boasts.

"Oh, construction?" Madelyn doesn't know exactly what that is. She thinks she's an idiot. Her voice must be giving her away. Anthony looks a little anxious and she doesn't want him to think what his father does is boring. She doesn't want him to think the hesitation he heard in her voice is indifference. "What does that mean?"

"He builds things for the government," Anthony says, shifting his weight. "It's not like making commercials or anything as cool as that."

Madelyn wasn't putting down what his father did; she just didn't know what construction was. "Oh, that's a great job." ' _Building things for the government seems kind of neat,'_ she thinks, and anyway, what else do you say to something like that. Madelyn is queasy. She's shaking. No boy has ever been this interested in what she had to say. "What sorts of things?"

"Anything they want built. Like right now they're fixin' a bridge over the Parkway."

"Oh yeah?" The wind picks up and clouds begin to gather. Madelyn watches some old street-garbage, brown leaves, paper scraps, a Dixie cup, and a Chunky wrapper toss and swirl trapped in the gutter by the curb. Anthony isn't saying anything, and he stopped grinning so timidly. She fills the gap, "When that's finished will he have another job?" Madelyn notices her shoe is untied. "To do, I mean." She bends down to tie it. (She doesn't want to look like a slob.) She takes the opportunity to put her foot up on the curb and bend only as far down as she needs to reach her shoe, trying her damnedest to look as good as possible in knee-highs and saddle shoes. She brushes the hair away from her face and over her shoulder to look up at him, "I mean once the bridge is fixed?" She blinks then looks back down at her shoe.

"Well they'll do whatever job comes up for bid next."

"Oh, that's great." Madelyn straightens back up and flips her hair behind her shoulders. The nervous, fuzzy-headed chatting continues because she keeps trying to sound excited about something she knows nothing about. Like, for all she knows, whatever comes up for bid next could be selling balloons at a carnival.

"Yeah, it is," Anthony says grinning again and chuckling. "See the sealed bids aren't really sealed." He says this to keep the conversation going since she's so interested, and hasn't been put off by anything he has said so far. Plus that, he's bragging a little.

Madelyn can tell Tony's pleased about this, so she says, "Well that's good," to be polite. Anthony looks surprised at Madelyn's lack of disapproval. She sees his surprise and thinks maybe she said something wrong, so she asks, "That's good, isn't it?" Now there's just silence because Anthony has always been told he would have to find a girl who's accepting of what his family does. The lack of response has Madelyn convinced she must be wrong. She'll have to admit her ignorance. "What does that mean?"

Anthony thinks she's asking about the business, so without thinking he says, "Yeah. Yeah, my Uncle takes care of these guys in the building department. He buys them dinner and gets them anything they want, like tickets to any games they want to go to; and stuff like that."

"That's nice," Madelyn says. ' _Is he cute or what? See, Christopher was wrong._ '

"Yeah, it's real nice. They get treated real well. He gets them anything they want, I mean anything." He smiles and looks down at a pebble he's been pushing around with his foot. He is wearing black penny loafers (with pennies in them, even). He is not a tremendously good-looking guy, but he is looking very cute to Madelyn right now. She blushes.

"Yeah, that's nice." Anthony continues, "Yeah, so the guys in the building department, because my Uncle is so nice to them, hold onto the bids as they come in, and they let my father know what the bids are, so whenever my father needs another job, he can underbid 'em."

"And he gets the job?" Madelyn guesses.

"Yeah, he gets the job."

"Well, that's good," Madelyn says only because Anthony seems to think it's good.

"Isn't it?" Anthony says smiling again.

Then it clicks, "So that way he always has work?"

"Yeah, he stays as busy as he wants." Anthony brushes one of those helicopter seeds off his shoulder.

"Well that's good then," 'Whew, _I was right_.' "He stays busy." Madelyn's still a bit hazy about the bid stuff, but she thinks she gets the gist of it. Anthony looks pleased, so it must be a good thing. Madelyn is acting way, way more interested than she really is. She keeps her chin down slightly so when she looks at him, her eyes are as wide as possible.

Anthony's ride is here. He smiles goodbye as he gets in. Madelyn smiles, waves, and bends slightly at the waist as the car pulls away.

' _Whew! What a rush. Stop smiling now.'_ She is sure she looked like a fool, all that grinning and eyelash batting. Man, he sure was cute, though, and he definitely seemed interested. She shakes her arms and dusts off.

Madelyn sees her sister in the parking lot and goes over to the car. Trisha asks, "Are you seeing Anthony?"

Madelyn answers, "We were just talking."

When they get home, Trisha goes upstairs. Madelyn has to go into the living room, where her mother is lying on the sofa watching her stories. (She lies on the couch and watches soaps from twelve thirty until five every day.)

"Come over here. You look a mess. Let me smell your fingers," Celeste says, shifting her position slightly, so her head is raised a bit.

Madelyn walks to her mother and holds out her hand.

"You smell like smoke."

"I wasn't smoking."

Celeste takes a swat at Madelyn's legs. Madelyn dodges her hand and Celeste hits just her skirt. "Get out of here and let me watch my program. I'll be up at five."

Madelyn takes her cat, Bow, upstairs with her to study. She tells Bow about her day. She tells Bow about Anthony and, "He seemed to like me and he seemed nice." Bow purrs and circles around herself in approval until she plunks down in a striped, gray and black ball between Madelyn's knees and stomach on the bed. She watches as Madelyn reads a history book. Bow helps Madelyn by patting the pages down after she turns them.

Every day at five o'clock Madelyn goes downstairs to the kitchen to make dinner. First she makes her mother her five-o'clock cocktail. Two ice cubes in a Manhattan glass, fill it halfway with rye, put in a half a teaspoon of sugar and just a splash of water.

Celeste swings her feet off the couch and they thud against the floor so that her legs end up on an angle and she props a few pillows under her armpit to sit a little more upright.

Madelyn, still high on her talk with Anthony, decides to make a special dinner tonight. She tells her mother, "I think I'll make chicken, with a white wine, cream sauce, and potatoes for dinner."

"I'll be in to help you when I finish this," Celeste calls. She won't. She never does.

Madelyn goes to her room to study for a bit and listens to The Dave Clark Five's 'Glad All Over.' She puts down her history book and gets up and dances. She can't listen to 'Glad All Over,' without stomping and twirling.

Then she puts on Mary Hopkins's 'Those Were the Days,' so she has something to sing to. (That one's not too rangy.) She finishes reading one chapter and goes downstairs to make dinner.

Her father, Santé, comes home, asks Madelyn what's for dinner, makes two drinks, and goes to sit in the living room with Celeste to chat until dinner is ready. When everything is on the table, her sister, brother and parents come in to eat. After dinner Madelyn cleans up, and takes Bow upstairs to finish her homework.

As she goes upstairs, her mother makes her standard comment about how she must be stupid to spend so much time doing homework.

Madelyn's a slow reader. It's almost impossible for her to memorize what she reads. If she hears something, she can memorize it, no problem. Sing a song, or read a poem, and she has it memorized, first thing. But reading, that's another story; so she takes a long time to get her homework right.

She puts on Simon and Garfunkel's 'Bookends' album and sits with the History book opened to the same page for the longest time. She couldn't tell you, under pain of death, anything about what it was she just read. She hates history.
**Chapter 9** \- We're in Trouble

The next day, while Madelyn waits for Trisha at the parking lot, Anthony comes over to her.

"Hi!" she says smiling, really happy to see him. "How are you?" Her heels bounce up and down.

"Remember what I tole you yesterday?"

"What?"

"About the bids."

"What?"

Anthony bends closer, "I wasn't supposed to tell you that stuff."

He holds his jacket at the waist, pulling it tightly at the sides, and shifting his weight nervously. "You're not supposed to know that. You have to forget it."

"Okay," she agrees, not knowing exactly what he was talking about since she was too busy flirting to pay attention. "Forget what? Are you all right? What's wrong?"

"I wasn't supposed to tell you that stuff yesterday. You don't know how it is," his eyes dart down the street, he leans forward and lowers his voice, "You gotta forget it."

"The stuff about the bids?"

"Yeah," he said a little relieved that he didn't have to repeat it or re-explain anything.

"Okay. I'll forget it. Are you okay?" She liked talking to Anthony yesterday. He seemed sweet and happy, but now he's anxious, he won't look at Madelyn and he won't stand still. His fists are in his pockets and touch through tweed as he holds his sports coat tight. He looks under his elbow. There's a green Tempest parked down the street, Madelyn hadn't noticed it before, two men in sports coats and ties get out and walk over to them.

"Oh boy," Anthony mutters, and wraps his coat across his stomach and hunches over.

"Antny, how's it hangin'?" the short one asks.

"She won't say anything," Anthony quickly says.

"You like Antny?" the fat one asks Madelyn.

"Sure, he seems like a real nice boy," Madelyn answers. She looks at Anthony and manages a concerned grin, but he's looking at the ground and practically hopping from one foot to another now. ' _He must have been beaten pretty badly last night,_ ' she thinks.

"Yeah, a nice boy. A real nice boy," the fat one states as he puts his knuckles up to rub Anthony's head. Anthony puts his head down even further and then jerks it away to avoid being touched. He's almost bent in half and holding his jacket so tightly Madelyn can see the stitching at the seams.

"Who'd ya tell about what Antny tole ya yestaday?"

"Nobody."

"Come on! Who'd ya tell?" The short one asks gruffly, like he doesn't believe her.

"I didn't tell anybody anything." Madelyn didn't either. She can tell this is important, and Anthony's in trouble over it, but she wants to treat it like it's a joke. When she gets nervous she jokes or laughs, she can't do that now. She better not treat this like it's a joke for Anthony's sake.

"Come on. Yu did so. Yu tole somebody sommin'. Who'd ya tell?"

' _What? Am I not being clear here_?' "No. I didn't say anything to anybody," she says staring as soberly as she can into the short one's eyes. ' _This guy's just a little menace, isn't he?'_

"She didn't say notin' to nobody." The short one says to the fat one. Then he turns to Madelyn and yells, "Sure you did. You said sommin' to somebody!"

Madelyn holds her ground and stares at him, then shakes her head no. ' _Am I on Candid Camera?'_

"Then why was ya askin' Antny all dem questions. Huh? If you wasn't gonna tell nobody?"

"I didn't even understand what he was talking about." She figures she'll go for the dumb broad angle. Most guys fall for that. She's too nervous to remember much of the conversation anyway.

They look at each other grinning; "She didn't even understand what he was sayin'."

Then the big one changes his expression again and snarls, "Come on, out wid it, who'd ya tell?"

' _Damn!'_ Madelyn thought, ' _This is getting pretty serious, not to mention annoying. Why the hell don't they believe me?_ ' "I didn't say anything to anybody. I didn't even understand most of what Anthony said, so I wouldn't know what to tell anybody anyway." That seems to go over well, so she adds, "And besides, who would I tell?"

They look at each other and grin again and repeat what Madelyn said again, "Who would she tell?" They look like they're fine with it, then, like a sudden thunder clap, the big one gets right up in her face and blasts, "Anybody! You could tell anybody."

"Well, I didn't and I wouldn't."

Anthony's scared, and it's abundantly clear, they want Madelyn to be scared, too.

"That's right. You wouldn't. Yu wouldn't if ya want to be safe." Madelyn just stares back. "Yu want to be safe, don't ya?" The smaller one adds.

Madelyn says, "Yeah," and she's thinking, ' _Of course I want to be safe. What a stupid question. What does he mean; do I want to be safe? Is he threatening me? I think he might be threatening me. I think they're trying to scare me. If they think that'll scare me, they obviously haven't met my mother. This whole thing doesn't make any sense at all_.'

Madelyn remembers some of what Christopher told her a while ago and she figures she should act serious and scared.

"Yeah, yeah, she wouldn't say anything," Anthony chimes in.

The big one wraps his arm around Anthony and holds him close as he asks, "You like my boy Antny here?"

Madelyn smiles at Anthony. ' _Man, is this awkward.'_

"He's a nice boy?" the small one asks.

"Yeah, I like him." She smiles at Anthony again, futily trying to lighten up a very tense situation, but she can't catch his eye.

"Well maybe Antny likes ya, but I don't, 'cause you got my boy, Antny here, in big fuckin' trouble wid all your questions," the big one snarls. "It ain't healthy ta be so nosey."

Madelyn glances at Anthony; he's curled up under that big arm, looking at the ground, still clutching his jacket tight to his sides. ' _Those ribs must be really sore.'_

"You wouldn't wanna see anything happen to him, right?"

' _Now this is definitely a threat. This is so surreal. Reality check.'_ Madelyn looks down the street to make sure the church is still there. It is. She looks up past Mutt and Jeff to see if the school is still there. It is. ' _Okay,_ ' she thinks, ' _here I am standing across the street from a Catholic High School and a half a block away from a Catholic Church and next door to a convent; and I'm getting threatened.'_

She should be scared, she knows, but she's scared to let herself get scared. Madelyn's not sure if she should say anything else to them to convince them that she won't say anything. ' _It's all so irrelevant anyway. I mean if the people in the government offices know this is going on, and they obviously do in order for this whole sealed bid thing to work, and they're alright with it, who else would I tell? I think that's right.'_ She checks her logic. She imagines it's probably better not to mention this fact to them. She hates to point out the obvious. ' _This is probably a case of, the less said the better.'_

Anthony looks at Madelyn anxiously from his head-locked pose for an answer.

"No I wouldn't." She can feel her heart and hear her breath.

"Damn right."

"Fuck yeah ya wouldn't." The big one takes his left hand off his right wrist and Anthony pops free. His jacket loosens up a bit. His fear begins melting into shame. He is ashamed that he was dumb enough to tell Madelyn all that, and ashamed that she has to deal with these two numbskulls, and ashamed that he even knows these guys.

He had always been told he should find a girl who was all right with the family business. What wasn't clear, what no one had bothered to explain, what Anthony hadn't taken the time to comprehend was the progression used to find such a girl. He found out last night after the guys in that green Tempest saw him talking to Madelyn as they picked him up. They asked him what he was talking about: then they told Anthony's father. His father beat him so badly—he cracked two of Anthony's ribs. What Anthony should have been told, if he went outside 'the family', he should only date someone he knew he really liked. Then, after they got serious, and got the approval of his family, and only then, he could tell her just enough to let her know his family business wasn't totally legit. How could his father expect a sixteen-year-old boy, one who'd been whacked in the head as often as Anthony, figure all that out on his own? Explain to the boy - you don't go giving away the family secrets just to get into a girl's pants.

Anthony turns to get into the car. He feels like he really blew it. He liked talking to Madelyn. She made him feel good. He thinks she's one of the prettiest girls at school. He knew she wouldn't talk; and he knew he couldn't see her again.

Trisha shows up.

The goons smile broadly and say loud enough for Trisha to hear, "Really nice ta meet ya. See ya round. Yu can count on dat."

The little one gets in the back with Anthony, while the big one slides behind the wheel. They wave out of the windows as they pull away.

Trisha asks Madelyn if she is seeing Anthony.

"We were just talking."

Madelyn gets home; lets her mother sniff her fingers, listens to how her mother wishes she'd never been born, takes the cat and goes upstairs to do homework. Madelyn tells Bow that the nice boy she told her about yesterday was in trouble on account of her. Bow knows Madelyn really well - she's been a constant companion for seven years and she's concerned. Bow sits on Madelyn's lap and watches to let her know everything will be all right.

Madelyn can't study. She tries playing 'Mr. Tambourine Man' but can't even play guitar, she feels helpless and exhausted, and worried about Anthony. It doesn't occur to her to be worried about herself.

She puts Donavan, 'The Season of the Witch,' on the turn table. Bow closes her eyes and opens them again a few times trying to calm Madelyn. She's good at that.

Madelyn opens her diary. She reads her poem:

Fear Itself -

Fear is calm

Cool

Arrogant

It knows boundless power

It can make you run

Hide

Scream

It can make strong men weak

and weak men strong

The power of fear can

Grip a man

Divide a town

And crush a nation

At five o'clock Madelyn goes downstairs, makes her mother a cocktail and cooks steak and potatoes for dinner. During dinner Trisha brings up that Madelyn must be seeing Anthony. Madelyn denies it. So Trisha tells them how Madelyn has been talking to him in the parking lot the last couple of days and now she's met some of his family. How his family was all smiles and said it was nice to meet her. Celeste looks around at Trisha, Santé and Bruce and scoffs, "Nice to meet her?" then turns to Madelyn and scolds, "You've met this boy's family and we haven't heard anything about him."

Madelyn feels cornered. Then she thinks maybe it's not such a bad idea to let them know what's happening so she begins telling them a little about the trouble she is in over the sealed bid thing: looking to explain enough to garner a little protection, short of that; she figures if anything did happen, they would have some idea why.

She doesn't get much of the story out, when her mother calls her a stupid idiot and her father starts declaring, "We should call someone."

Madelyn frantically begs them not to. She tells them she's afraid Anthony will get hurt. Then, she points out her argument about how it would be useless to tell anybody since the people involved must know, and they are in the government. Her parents both have a few drinks in them now, and it would take some effort and commitment on their part to get involved, and they would have to feign concern, so they relented.

Madelyn is so wiped out she asks Trisha for help clearing the table. Trisha looks at Madelyn like she must be on drugs, walks to the phone and begins dialing. Madelyn cleans up, and then takes Bow upstairs to study.

Bow leans on Madelyn's leg and purrs while she plays guitar.

Madelyn' thigh can feel the guitar's wooden body vibrate to 'Homeward Bound' as it blends with Bow's rhythmic purring. She has to gather herself so she can get in the mood to study. She sits on the edge of her bed and for a while lets her arm hang over her guitar. She feels safe behind this guitar, like it's her armor. She stares at the collection of ceramic horses on her shelves: and wonders if Anthony's all right. She pulls up on the strings, and puts cords together like some schizophrenic, psychedelic, flamenco music. She thinks about what those guys said and the way Anthony acted and is sure they must have hurt him. Madelyn realizes those guys in that green Tempest must have asked him what they were talking about yesterday and when they found out, they must have punched him or kicked him or both. She feels horrible and her guitar is crying such a horrendous ruckus that her father yells up for her to close her door. Good! (Madelyn is never allowed to close her bedroom door.) She can't concentrate. She feels awful when she realizes she is going to get zeros for her homework tomorrow, but still can't quit her musical sanctuary, and her wall of horses is mesmerizing.
**Chapter 10** \- Up With People

The backstage of the auditorium smells like a rabbit cage and musty grapes. Madelyn peeks out from behind the weighty, gray curtain to watch the people fill in the empty wooden seats. She thinks perhaps this time her parents will come to see this **Up With People** show since she has a duet and is playing guitar. They won't.

"Madelyn," someone whispers loudly, "hey Mad get away from there." Pat is tapping away at Madelyn's elbow. No response. Madelyn's arm is numb and her hearing is cloudy. Pat jerks Madelyn and she just about topples over.

"Huh? What'd you do that for?"

"Didn't you hear me?" Pat asks. Madelyn thinks Pat's face looks strange. "Let's go over the song one last time," Pat urges.

"I can't," Madelyn can barely breathe.

"Line up. Curtain in 1 minute."

The first few songs whirl past on a watercolor train. It's incredible how you really can't see the audience. How the music has its own force that tows the orchestra and singers along. Someone hands Madelyn her guitar. Not yet, she thinks, not yet.

He motions with his chin and looks to center stage and gives her a little shove.

Madelyn is petrified. It's like her arm is covered in a lead cast; it's so heavy and painful, she struggles to strum. Madelyn thinks it has to be the slowest guitar strumming in guitar strumming history. The song staggers slightly then strolls on to the end. People clap. The next song begins trampling through.

After the concert Pat asks, "What happened? That's not how we rehearsed it?" Loads of audience and cast members stay to congratulate Madelyn and Pat. Madelyn refuses to believe any of them when they tell her it was great. When Pat tells Madelyn she is sorry her parents never showed. Madelyn thinks, _'Thank god for that - this time. In the chorus you can't really tell the extent to which I suck. But it's pretty frickin' obvious when it's a duet. I would never - never have heard the end of it!!!_ ' She thinks of what her parents would say if they did show up, 'They'd say, _"Oh boy, were you horrible. What nerve you have singing in front of people. Those poor people - they had to sit and listen to your horrible playing and singing. We were embarrassed to know you. You never do anything good." I know I'd have to hear that re-iterated for the next six months. Ugh._ '
**Chapter 11** \- Horses

Madelyn has been riding horses since she was five and she even qualified for the junior equestrian team, but her mother didn't want to have to spend money on a P coat, or spend any "quality" time driving her to and from the stables, so she couldn't join.

But she does love how big and gentle horses are, how hard they try for you and just want a pat on the neck in return. She loves the way they look (not real wild about the way they smell). She has been collecting ceramic horses for years now. Every time she gets birthday money or saves up money, she buys one. A couple of years ago she painted her room yellow and built shelves to put the horses on. She keeps them dusted, and rearranges them every once and a while. They take up the whole wall.
**Chapter 12** \- May 18th -

How Is It?

After school Madelyn sees Anthony in the recessed area of the side doors of the school building. 'T _hat's where he must have appeared out of that first day.'_ She starts to go up to him since he was the one who came up to her the last two times; but he backs away. He is watching the street, he doesn't look up; "Get away from me. You don't know how it is! Get away from me. I can't be seen with you."

Madelyn stops in the middle of the street and looks around for the green Tempest: confused since she thought they had worked things out with those two thugs.

"I thought we got all that straightened out with those guys."

Anthony looks up at Madelyn. "Get away from me. You don't know how it is." His back is against the doors to the school. "I can't talk to you! I'll get in trouble if I'm seen talking to you."

He's right; she doesn't know how it is. She thinks she does, but she doesn't. So she leaves. Madelyn takes the bus home. There is a coat of fresh gray paint and two of the seats are new. There is a new black, grooved rubber mat down the middle isle. Newark is struggling to get on its feet. A lot of the businesses are not rebuilding and have decided to move—some to New York and some to other states.

Madelyn comes in the door and closes it behind her. Her mother is off the couch. This can only be bad news.

' _I can breathe wrong, and that upsets her. I never know what I will do next to upset her. I can do the same thing every day, then one day, for no reason, that same thing upsets her and she starts on me. I have to be soo careful around her. I don't want to do anything that will ignite her. In fact, I make dinner, set the table and clean up every night in a vain attempt to appease her. I always have to be careful about what I say, and real, real, careful about what I do. If I get anything one iota wrong she jumps all over me. When I set the table and make the dinner, for instance, if one fork has a speck of food left on it from the dishwasher, she jumps all over me. She despises me so much that she just waits for any kind of mess up so she can start on me. I feel so much pressure to be perfect—but I'm not perfect. If it goes a few days where she can't find anything wrong, she just makes something up.'_

Before Madelyn can put her things down, Celeste launches herself at Madelyn swinging. "I should never have had you!" she cackles. She slaps Madelyn's arm and pulls at her hair. "You're nothing but trouble. I wish you were never born."

"What's wrong?" Madelyn has her arms up blocking Celeste's blows. "What happened?"

"You bad thing! You're so bad! I hate you!" Celeste screeches. "You just love upsetting me!"

Madelyn thinks, ' _Yeah Ma, that's right, I love getting my ass kicked_.'

"You are such a pig." Celeste swings at Madelyn's head. Madelyn ducks. "I hate the way you keep your room." She slaps Madelyn's side. Madelyn bends to swerve her body away. "I don't want you saying mean things about me." Celeste grabs Madelyn's hair and yanks it, and Madelyn flies across the hall. "Stop writing letters about me! Stop trying to get away from me!" Celeste keeps swinging pretty hard. Madelyn keeps dodging and ducking. Madelyn wants to duck her words, too. She doesn't want her mother's words to land on her. Celeste screams, "I told Mary Ellen (that's her Aunt) to save me all the letters you write to Bonny Jean (that's her cousin)." She tugs Madelyn's hair with her left hand. "You horrible child! I wish you were never born!"

Celeste slaps Madelyn's face with her right hand and connects pretty well this time. "I want you to get upstairs and clean that pigsty of a room!"

Madelyn runs upstairs. Bow, who has been watching nervously, tears upstairs with her.

What a disaster! Celeste had trashed Madelyn's room. All Madelyn can think is the letters she was talking about must have been her diary. She's careful not to say too much about her mother in it, even though she keeps it locked and hidden, for fear of retaliation.

Something freaked Celeste out, because other times when she throws Madelyn's stuff on the floor, it's usually not EVERYTHING. Madelyn's albums are out of their covers and on the floor, her guitar is out of its case and on its back on the floor, along with her books, her horse collection, everything!

Celeste hears Madelyn gasp from the bottom of the stairs, and yells, "You're not going out until that room is spotless!"

Madelyn sits on her floor. She feels all sick and empty. She knows she has to get started or she will be in for it, but she is limp. She keeps trying to figure out what brought it on this time. Madelyn cannot ever figure her mother out. Celeste likes to say things are Madelyn's fault. She likes to say Madelyn makes her do these things.

Sometimes Celeste tries to get Madelyn to say she hates her. Probably once a month Celeste says, "Come on. With all the times I've told you I hate you? Of course you hate me!" But she doesn't. It would be so much easier if she did. Celeste tears away pieces of Madelyn's soul when she treats her like this. _'She guts me. I try not to let her get to me. I tell myself I'm tougher than that. I wish her words had no power. I try to turn off my feelings because I know if I allow myself to feel bad, I will have given her what she wants. I want to piece my soul back together.'_

Bow is pacing all around Madelyn. She tiptoes back and forth across the guitar and the catgut strings answer her with jumpy guttural tones. Madelyn needs to pick it up and play it, but then her mom would know she's not cleaning, so she can't.

She starts with the records. She has to get them up first. She gets the Rolling Stones album and puts it on real low. The Stones don't sound quite right if you play them low, but that is better than no music at all. One by one she dusts records and put them in their sleeves. Only the 'Rascals' album is broken, the rest are only mildly scratched and some aren't scratched at all. 'Sympathy for the Devil' starts playing, and Madelyn thinks; ' _I have no sympathy for her_.'

Next she works on her porcelain horse collection. She picks each one up, fixes their little legs with Elmer's glue, dusts them and puts them all carefully back on the shelves she built for them. Three of them have broken bodies and she is able to glue two of them, but one has to be thrown out. She puts on Simon and Garfunkel's 'I am a Rock' and plays it over and over.

At five o'clock her mother comes up since Madelyn didn't come down to fix her drink or cook dinner. She sees Madelyn sitting on the bedroom floor in the middle of the pile. "What have you been doing up here?" Celeste yells raising her hand, "You've made it worse!"

"No I haven't. I've been cleaning this whole time. I had to put the records away and I had to glue the horses back together. One of them was smashed and I had to throw it away," Madelyn pleads.

Celeste is livid because she knows she'll have to make dinner. "You're too old to be playing with those horses anyway," she says as she walks away.
**Chapter 13** \- May 20th -

Faggot!

Somebody started a rumor that Madelyn's a homosexual. She's pretty sure it was those cheerleader, in-crowd girls. Probably because she doesn't want much to do with them. They act like they're so perfect - but they're not. They put everybody down all the time and they're not real bright, so she decided not to have much to do with them anymore. She started hearing it and just ignoring it because she thought it was so stupid. Then, the other day, there were a group of kids talking in the hall and they called Madelyn over.

One of them said, "A lot of the kids are saying you're queer, Madelyn."

"Yeah. I heard about that," she said. She's being called faggot, lesbo, queer and some other stuff she won't repeat. Kids are giggling and pointing as she walks by them.

"Oh yeah, I heard that too," one of the boys said.

"I think I know who started that," she said, and turned and walked away. "Peace," she called over her shoulder as she flipped them the peace sign.

(A couple of years ago Madelyn saw a documentary about the end of WWII. People where holding their fingers in a V. Mad thought it must mean peace but it meant victory. She hated the Vietnam War and wanted it to end. She started using the V fingers and telling people it means 'peace.' It caught on pretty quickly: now everybody in the town's doing it. She wanted to make a symbol for peace so she drew a circle to represent the world and she wanted to connect the four corners of the world. She worked on that symbol for three days before she was happy with it. Then she started drawing the symbol on everything she owned and sometimes on a brick or a stone and she wrote the word peace under it. Now everybody in the town has peace symbols on their cars and bikes - all over. Then she decided wanted to end the Cold War, too. So she wrote the word COEXIST and used the Islamic crescent moon and star as the C in coexist and used various religious and other world-wide symbols to form the rest of the letters. Madelyn thinks if all organized religions could get along there would be world peace. She couldn't figure out how to pass the word on that one, so it never caught on.)

She flipped the peace sign to the kids harassing her, because she thought all people can get along if they just want too. She thought, ' _Should I have to answer to them? And what do I have to answer for, anyway? I'm still the same person. I hope they figure that out soon._ ' She could hear them talking, but she kept walking. It would be easy to just deny it since it wasn't true. ' _Even if it were true, it's none of their beeswax._ '

A couple of days later, Trisha tells Madelyn there's a rumor going around that she's a fag. Madelyn tells her, "I know."

"Well, what a you gonna do about it?" Trisha asks. "I don't wanna have to be defending my little sister all the time."

"Then don't!" _'Like she ever, once, ever defended me for anything?'_

"Well you have to say something about it!" Trisha reprimands.

"If you want to say something, you go right ahead. I don't have to say anything if I don't want to. And I shouldn't have to, anyway!" Madelyn admonishes Trisha.

"Well you are queer, then! You little jerk off!" she yells after Madelyn as Bow and she head up the stairs.

' _What can I tell you, my sister's an asshole.'_

So then, a day or two later, a couple of kids come up to Madelyn, kids who are usually kind of friendly with her, "You know, you never denied being a lesbian," one of them says with a look of genuine concern over her reputation.

Madelyn looks at her a while. She appreciates the concern. She thinks of all the things she should say, then thinks of the kids who might be homosexuals and can't stand up for themselves, and then says, "I know." ' _Idiots!'_

A veritable din arose as she walked away.

' _Now they'll really be talking about me.'_

To tell you the truth, Madelyn doesn't know why she is not saying anything. It's all so messed-up that basically she doesn't think she should have to say anything. Madelyn thinks -' _What if I were a lesbian? Why do they think I date boys? A cover? These kids have no right to treat anybody badly. They have to learn to be less judgmental and more accepting. I haven't changed.'_ What do you think, should she say anything?

'Naah.'
**Chapter 14** \- May 25th - _'_

Who Would Take My Hat?

' _Who would take my hat?_ '

Bummer. Madelyn's been standing in front of her locker for a good ten minutes now. She keeps shuffling around the piles of paper, some books, some gloves she just found, an old report card, some candy wrappers, and a bunch of other stuff but she still can't find her hat. She keeps it on the top shelf of her locker. It's a grayish-green, suede, over-sized, newsboy cap with no snap. She's decided she is going to have to take some drastic measures - she's going to have to clean out her locker! It's amazing the amount of junk you accumulate in just seven months.

Who would take her hat? Madelyn is known for that hat. If anybody else from the school were to wear it, somebody would tell. So, if anybody took it, they didn't take it to wear it.

This is such a drag, I can't tell you. Madelyn's friends are getting edgy. They don't want to hang around the school anymore, they want to split to the Avenue. So Dale goes to get a Nun. Madelyn looks around at the few kids who are still hanging out in the halls and catches sight of some greasers looking at her. She thinks they're probably just looking because they can see she is getting uptight. Then she looks down the hall and sees the salt and pepper twins. They're not really twins, they're not even related, they're just two short boys who look exactly alike except for the color of their hair. One has straight black hair and one has straight blonde hair. But they wouldn't take it. They never really talk to anybody except for each other, and Madelyn's always nice to them.

Over in the corner are a couple of the senior boys, but they don't pay any attention.

' _Who would take my hat?'_

Maybe she forgot to wear it today. It's been kind of warm. She doesn't want to get herself too paranoid. She has gotten so used to that hat. When she wears it she's incognito to everybody except her friends. Madelyn found out that nobody really looks at you when you're wearing a hat. It works a little like an invisibility cloak, it keeps out the unwanteds. Like she gets onto the bus in the morning and those businessmen don't even see her. But her friends know her hat and they can tell it's Madelyn from about a block away and they yell and wave way before she can see who it is.

Who would take her hat? Madelyn feels nauseous and dizzy.

Sister Bernhard comes up to Madelyn's locker with Dale.

"I can't find my hat," Madelyn tells her.

"We've never had anything like this happen," Sister says. She thinks it's just a hat, so she's not overly concerned.

"I'm going to clean out my locker. But it's not in here, I'm sure of it." ' _Damn. This is such a drag.'_

"I guess we'll have to think of getting padlocks for the lockers if anything like this happens again," utters Sister Bernard as she walks away.

' _Jeeze Louise, she was a big help.'_

Madelyn pulls everything out of her locker. ' _No hat. Darn_.' She puts back some of the stuff and throws the rest away. Sr. Bernard was right: Madelyn has been going to this school for almost two years now and nothing like this has ever happened.

' _Crud, I hope I left it home. I don't think so.'_

Who would take her hat? Madelyn decides not to go to the Avenue and goes straight home instead to look for her hat. She gets in the door and puts her books down. The Newark News and the Wall Street Journal are on the radiator cover in the front hall. Every day Madelyn reads the headlines of the Newark News and the side column of the Wall Street Journal that has the News capsules in it. She looks in the hall closet, but no hat. She looks around the hall and in the living room - no hat. She even checks under the bench in the hall. No hat. She goes up to her room. Bow follows her.

Bow watches as Madelyn begins searching her room, and then meanders in the closet. Madelyn checks her closet. Bow darts under her bed. Madelyn gets down on the floor to check under the bed. Next she follows Bow out onto her sleeping porch - but no hat. ' _It's gone for sure. Who would take my hat?'_ She doesn't know. Who would do a lot of things?
**Chapter 15** \- May 28th

\- Amy

For the last couple of days Madelyn had to go to school without her hat. She feels so exposed. I'm getting used to it, but I'm still hoping it will turn up. This time of year no stores have any hats left, and besides, I've never seen another hat like mine.

After school cute, little Amy Shallenger comes over to Madelyn's locker to talk to her. She has never done that before. She's a quiet one. Madelyn says hi to Amy in the halls and stuff, but they rarely talk, not more than a couple of words. Madelyn thinks Amy's smart: she looks smart, and she's in the 'A' class. Amy wants to know if Madelyn found her hat. Even though Madelyn doesn't know Amy very well she is not surprised that she knows about her hat. It's a small school and everybody knows everybody else's business.

"I think it's gone," Madelyn says, smiling at her. ' _How nice of her to care. I'm always glad when kids take the time to cross over clique lines to talk to me._ ' "I think someone must have taken it."

"I'm sorry," Amy says, "I'm really, really sorry about that."

' _I don't know why she's taking it so hard; it wasn't her hat.'_ "Well, what can you do?" Madelyn says, going through her books trying to figure out which ones she needs to bring home for homework.

"Well I am sorry," Amy moans, looking at a crack in the linoleum floor.

Now she's past the point of being empathetic, so even though Madelyn doesn't think she did, she stops what she's doing and asks, "Why? Did you take my hat?"

Amy keeps looking down: her face turns pale, then pink. Madelyn starts to think maybe Amy come to confess and she might get her hat back after all.

"So. Um. It's not really my fault. I only..."

' _I guess I really am getting my hat back! Far out! Maybe she took it, and now she realizes she can't wear it anywhere without somebody recognizing it. She doesn't seem the type. She seems like a real nice girl to me, real quiet and reserved. A little mousy maybe, she hangs out with the nerds but she's not real nerdy.'_ Madelyn stands there eagerly waiting for Amy to finish her sentence. Madelyn's not angry with Amy as much as she is intrigued that she would do such a thing, and happy at the prospect of getting her hat back.

"I thought it was wrong of you to write those boys names on your skirt."

"Oh, that. Yeah, your right, that was pretty stupid. It's gone."

Madelyn smiles and holds out her skirt to show Amy the spot where the writing had been. "It washed right out." ' _What on gods-green earth does that have to do with my hat?'_

"I'm the one," Amy keeps looking at the floor and is quite pale now.

"The one what?"

"It's really your fault," Amy murmurs.

"What's my fault?" ' _What the heck is she talking about?'_

Amy looks around to make sure the halls have cleared out, "That your hat got taken."

"What?" ' _I must be missing something here.'_

"Because you didn't say anything." Amy sputtered.

' _What the heck is Amy talking about?'_ "What are you talking about?"

"You should've said something about not being queer."

Madelyn thought, ' _Oh, that again. Is that what she came over to say?'_ "I didn't say anything because I didn't think I should have to." ' _This has to be one of the screwiest conversation I've ever had.'_

"Well, you should have. You should have said it wasn't true." Amy sounds a little annoyed with Madelyn, "You should have denied it."

' _Now I figure some kids in the school, who don't really know me, suppose I'm queer. But here she is telling me I should have denied the rumors. Something's up. Oh I get it!'_ "Do you think that's why my hat was stolen?"

"I didn't mean for that to happen," Amy states sincerely.

' _Ah ha,'_ "Are you the one who said I was a lesbian?"

"All I said was I thought you must be queer."

"Why?" ' _Oh my god, this is really coming at me from left field. Amy's such a quiet, unassuming, little thing. I would never have thought she disliked me, or felt one way or the other about me. I would have bet money it had been those nasty, in-crowd girls.'_

"I didn't like what you did, writing those boys names on your skirt the way you did," Amy says earnestly.

"That was just stupid, you know me, I'm such an idiot," Madelyn says, genuinely puzzled as to why such a stupid thing would cause Amy any concern at all.

"I've never gone out with a boy," she sighs and looks down again, "No boy has ever even called me."

"Oh?"

"So when you started writing down those boys names on your skirt, I said you must be queer. I was upset with you, that's all;" Amy said, "I never meant for it to go that far. You should've denied it. Why didn't you just deny it?"

"I don't know why. I probably should have, but I thought it was all so stupid. I didn't think I had to."

"Well, so, your hat getting taken is kind of your fault."

Madelyn can see what Amy's saying; once again Madelyn let things go too far because of her righteous indignation. Madelyn had hurt Amy's feelings when she wrote those boys names on her skirt. Then, because Amy was hurt, she said Madelyn was queer. The fact that things got so out of hand was really just a byproduct of the profuse stupidity that ensued. Maybe Amy's right. Maybe that's why somebody took her hat! Madelyn hadn't put the two together before this.

"It blows that somebody would take my hat just because they think I'm queer."

"Please don't tell anyone about this?" Amy requests.

"Okay." Madelyn says. And she won't.

' _Stupid me, it didn't even occur to me other girls didn't get asked out. What's that about? Why not? Boys! Ug!'_
**Chapter 16** \- May 31st - Looks

Maybe Amy's right. Maybe somebody took the hat because they thought Madelyn is a homosexual. She wouldn't put it past them, since some of the kids have been treating Madelyn like she has garbage in her hair or something, like she is disgusting. Some of the kids have been saying some pretty mean, nasty stuff to her. So maybe Amy's right.

The thing about Amy not getting asked out has Madelyn bummed. All Madelyn knows is there's too much emphasis put on looks altogether. The way guys react to her you can tell they think she's not bad looking. Madelyn doesn't think so; because her mother calls her ugly - it's been beaten into her brain.

The worst thing about Madelyn's looks is her posture. Her shoulders slope forward and down, and Madelyn looks down a lot. Her long, sandy hair is always in front of her shoulders; none of it stays on her back because of her appalling posture. When Madelyn catches a glimpse of herself in a store window or mirror Madelyn thinks she look like a question mark. When she is in public her father always makes it a point to call attention to it, which is mortifying. Her parents are constantly on her case about it, like she is standing that way just to piss them off. When they ride her about it; it gets worse because she would like to just disappear. Madelyn tries to, she does, try to stand up straight, and Madelyn can do it if she puts her mind to it, but she really has to concentrate. And it hurts!

Then, when Madelyn gets sidetracked or the pain gets too intense, her shoulders roll forward.

You probably couldn't tell from looking at her, since Madelyn makes it a point to talk to anybody and say hi to everybody, but she's shy. Madelyn can talk one-on-one okay, but she can't yell to someone across the room, for instance. Madelyn doesn't like to call attention to herself. When Madelyn sings with Up with People, she does all right while she is in the chorus, but when she had to sing in that duo and play her guitar, she was petrified. I mean seriously petrified, like made of wood.

Another thing is, that Madelyn doesn't put out, so she doesn't get asked out by guys who are looking for that usually. (And there are a lot of guys looking for that.) Also, she is a planner. She loves to plan. Madelyn usually has her weekends planned out by Wednesday. Once, this guy asked her out for Friday night on Friday afternoon. Madelyn told him she was busy (which she was). So, then he asked, "How about Saturday night?" She told him she was busy (which she was). So then he said, "How about Sunday afternoon?" She had this thing to do with her family, so she told him she had this thing to do with her family. So he said, "Bitch!" She told him, no-no, she really was busy, and to smooth things over and to prove that she really would have gone out with him she added, "Maybe next weekend?" He said he wouldn't want to go out with any girl who was that popular anyway. What do you say to that? ' _So much for him. I wouldn't want to date anybody who thinks I'm a bitch anyway_.' She didn't really know him, so it was no great loss. She felt kind of badly that he thought that about her; but was glad to have found out about his temper before they went out.

He had to have been asking her out based on her looks alone, anyway. A lot of guys jump to the conclusion that if a girl is pretty - she must be a bitch. 'W _hat beats the heck out of me is, why do they bother asking out girls who are pretty if they assume they're bitchy? Why would you want to date a bitch, even if she's pretty? What about a little thing called personality? Janis Ian has this really great song called, '_ _At Seventeen_ _'. It's about how this girl can't get a date in high school because she isn't pretty. It is a great song. You should listen to it sometime. It's a really appalling thought though, that someone smart enough and talented enough to write a great song like that, can't get a date on a Saturday night. Looks are so arbitrary. How can a guy ask a girl out, or not ask a girl out, just based on her looks? Girls are more able to look past looks, I think, most girls anyway.'_

Madelyn will go out on a first date with just about anybody, unless he's a drooler or has green teeth or picks his nose incessantly or never takes his hands out of his crotch when he's at his desk. She's attracted to brains, kindness and a good sense of humor. ' _People can be cute without being good looking, you know what I mean? An intrinsic cuteness. A person can be attractive for reasons other than looks. We should get over looks. We should get over how we dress, too. Do clothes really make the man? How much can you really tell about a person, just from looking at him (or her)? How can we decide to like or dislike someone, or be friends with someone, or resolve to ridicule someone else, because we don't agree with his fashion sense? That's like telling someone his idea is wrong. It's an idea, and it's his, so how can it be wrong? I can have a difference of opinion, but that doesn't make me right. Right?'_

So this guy, who doesn't even know Madelyn, asks her out. And because she's busy—just because she's busy - he decides she's a bitch. He goes directly from ignorance to bitch in less than sixty seconds. Can you believe it? Then later, after a couple of days, and he has had a chance to simmer down, he asks her out again: so Madelyn turns him down again saying she wouldn't go out with him since he called her a bitch. ' _There's confirmation for him_.'

' _So I know from whence I speak: for guys to not ask a girl like Amy out, well it's their loss. They don't have their priorities screwed on straight. That's a fact_.'
**Chapter 17** \- June 3rd -

\- Enough?

Today when Madelyn gets home she checks the paper on the radiator.

Reverend Ralph Abernathy will lead the Poor People's March on Washington. She guesses, the cities have simmered down enough to start talking about demonstrations again. ' _That's good - but Abernathy?'_

' _Dr. King was putting that demonstration together so it would have been peaceful, with Abernathy—I don't know.'_

Trisha comes in and slams the door. She's really POed because some of her goody-two-shoes friends won't talk to her since she has a homo sister. ' _I mean really, how messed up is that?_ ' So Madelyn gets mad at her, too. She tells her that her friends must be creeps if they won't talk to her! But Trisha doesn't care.

' _Trisha wants to keep those creepy friends. What a jerk. She's so uptight. It baffles me how someone so young can be so uptight. I feel badly for her but how could you want to stay friends with people who are so small-minded._

' _Should I give in? She's really screaming at me. She's upset, that's why she is yelling. I have to say I feel a little bad for her. She doesn't have to defend me, but she should defend herself. She should just tell those kids to shut-up and mind their own business.'_

Madelyn starts upstairs and yells over her shoulder, "Trisha, you should say to them, 'So what if my sister's a homo? What's it to you?' Better yet, you shouldn't worry about them, why do you want friends so small minded, anyway? You should tell them to go jerk off since that's what they are—a bunch of jerk-offs!"

' _And what if it were true? Like there's anything she could do about it? Like it's going to rub off on Trisha? What do they think, are they going to get contaminated? What if I had cerebral palsy or something? Would that be okay? Could she help that? Could she change that? It's that rude, insensitive, superior in-crowd mentality. Anyone not like them, anyone who doesn't think like them, dress like them, act like them, they don't want anything to do with. Fuck 'em. That's what she should say, she should say, "Fuck you, assholes," but she won't because she's one of them. If it was somebody else's sister, she would be right there, she would be the first in line waiting to tell that somebody how she can't be seen talking to them anymore. She doesn't think. She doesn't care about anybody's feelings but her own. Dr. King was just murdered, Newark looks like a bomb hit it, and what's Trisha worried about?—Her social status!'_

Madelyn can still hear Trisha downstairs yelling.

Now Madelyn's the one who is POed. Her room is clean and her hat is nowhere. Madelyn has to give up. She can be pretty stubborn; she hates giving up. Madelyn hasn't been too worried about that hat or those rumors lately. She's still sick about Martin Luther King.

After dinner, Madelyn's sister, Rita, calls from Syracuse to tell Madelyn there's a rumor that she's queer. Rita said she called because she just thought Madelyn would like to know.

' _It feels good to have someone to laugh about it with.'_
**Chapter 18** \- June 5, 1968

\- Oh my God! Bobby Kennedy was shot!

' _Somebody didn't want to run against him for President or something_ ,' Madelyn thinks. Bobby just won the California primary, which gave him enough votes to get the Democratic nomination. I mean he just got it. He didn't even have time for it to sink in or to enjoy it. Shocking, huh?

Madelyn can't believe it. She keeps wanting to find out they made a mistake even though she sees it over and over on the TV. It is too horrendous to accept. Even the guy, who they said did it, Sirhan -Sirhan, says he can't believe it. He says he can't remember doing it. He says it is something he would never do. He cannot remember being there. But he was. They say they have him on a surveillance tape. Too much like that movie, The Manchurian Candidate, you know, with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury (the mother in Mary Poppins) where they brainwash her son to be an assassin. ' _Scary shit!'_

' _Check it out, witnesses saw a woman in a polka-dot dress and a man running from the house. I hope they investigate. It is infuriating! Just like his brother, John, five years ago. How creepy is that, that someone can go into a pantry and pull a trigger and not remember it—or even have a motive. Stuff happens in this country that people want to know about, but we never will. All I know is, somebody didn't want to run against him. They must have thought he was going to win, the presidency—I mean._

' _Personally, I think it has to do with Vietnam. John Kennedy got us in there, but he wasn't going to escalate, then he was shot. Then Johnson took over, and for a while there, boy did he really escalate it, to the tune of five hundred thousand troops; which, by the way, has not helped at all. It's not making one bit of difference. All we're doing is dragging it out and killing a lot of our boys._

' _A couple of months ago, when it came time to escalate Vietnam some more, (Westmoreland wants two hundred thousand more troops and LBJ won't do it) then whoops, LBJ drops out of the primaries, even though he just won New Hampshire like a week before. Hopefully he'll have the last laugh because like a week later he stopped the bombing in North Vietnam and now he has started peace talks in Paris: so, hopefully, by the time the next President is in office, we won't be in Vietnam anymore. It will probably be Nixon against Humphrey now._

'Nixon is a real hawk. He wants to win in Vietnam. He says that like it's possible. He is crazy. Man, I hope he doesn't win. So I think that the investigators shouldn't be looking so much for who did it, but why? I'd like to know why. But I digress. I don't know much about Bobby Kennedy. He and his brother, John, seemed to be champions of the people. They were both big into Civil Rights. They were into a government of the people, by the people and for the people, I think. Maybe I liked them because they were charming and good-looking. (Have you seen Nixon? Arf.) It's just such a sin. Such a waste of a good man. Bobby was a dove. Part of his platform was to get us out of Vietnam.'

War is good for the economy, Madelyn keeps hearing. ' _Good the economy? Whose economy is what I want to know? It's okay to kill ten thousand boys for the sake of the economy? There are more and more people speaking up against the war. There are more and more protests._ ' Madelyn has a lot of faith in these Paris Peace Talks. ' _I want us to get the hell out of there! What are we doing in a civil war half a world away? I keep hearing about the Domino Theory. I don't get it. When anybody tries selling that Domino Theory I ask_ , "What do they think, the little countries in Southeast Asia will become communist and then fall over and make such a splash in the Pacific, that it will cause a tidal wave across the ocean and come crashing over here and knock us over with communism?" _To which most people just look at me like I'm an idiot. The fact that anybody swallows this Domino Theory is exasperating! Plenty of people do, though, so I'm vexed a lot.'_

' _Who gains by killing somebody like Bobby Kennedy? Maybe he wouldn't have won the Presidency. I keep thinking he should have at least had a chance. If I were old enough to vote, I would have voted for him, just to get us out of this godforsaken war. These things keep happening.'_

It makes Madelyn so depressed.

' _Like, just a couple of months ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Dr. King has done this country so much good. He was bringing out the best in us. Why was he killed? For the same reason Jesus was killed, I think. He was a strong and powerful voice of good and righteousness. He was such a great leader. And what speeches! My God! His speeches gave me goose bumps. Sometimes they make me cry. I was thinking that when I got old enough to drive, I would go to one of those rallies to hear him speak. Now he's gone and I'll never get to see him. It's unfair! It's heartbreaking. That's why there were riots after his death. People were kicking and screaming at the injustice of it. All I'm sure of is, when great leaders are killed, we lose. And we lose as a country because we let it happen. We can't keep letting it happen!'_

' _I feel like kicking and screaming. We should all be kicking and screaming.'_
**Chapter 19** \- June 9th

Guest Speaker -The Exorcist

' _A diocesan priest from the archdiocese of Newark came in to talk to the sophomores. From what I hear, he is, like, more exalted than a regular parish priest but not as high up as a bishop. Turns out he's the guy you call in if you want to get the Devil out of your house. Crazy shit, huh?'_

The nuns are in a tizzy over his coming to speak and all. The sophomores get ushered into the science room.

Here is this dark-haired priest standing in the teacher's spot, going on and on about the Devil.

Madelyn, who is sitting toward the back of the classroom, starts snickering. It just sounds silly to her. The priest asks Madelyn to leave. The nun outside the door intercepts Madelyn in the hallway. Sister acts overly concerned, asks Madelyn if she is upset and begins walking her toward the office.

She says that his talk had upset Trisha when she was a sophomore.

When they get to the office Sister asks if Madelyn wants to go home. ' _Go home? What is this about?'_ Suddenly Madelyn remembers that Trisha really freaked, ' _I mean like screaming, thrashing and hitting the walls - freaked out - about a talk about the Devil. She had to be taken home and she was sick for days afterward. Celeste called and complained to the school that he should not be allowed to give such a talk that would upset the children so. This must be the talk. That must be the priest!_ ' Trisha had made him sound so sinister, and the talk so scary, Madelyn had no idea this was the same man giving the same talk! Why was Trisha so afraid of him? Madelyn can't understand her family most times.

Sister asks over and over if Madelyn is all right, which of course she is; she was just being a pain in the ass. Once Sister is satisfied that Madelyn is fine she escorts her back into the class and sits her back at the table, then goes to the front of the classroom, whispers something to the priest and then walks back and sits in the back of the classroom.

Then Father walks down the aisle and stops next to Madelyn. He leans over and whispers, "Sister wants you to listen to this because you have to guard against your sister, the one who was so upset by my talk last year."

' _First of all, it was two years ago, and second of all, what the hell is he talking about?'_ "Huh?" Madelyn grunts.

He squats down in the isle and puts his face inches from hers. His warm, foul breath hugs her face. His eyes are so black, Madelyn can't see any irises,—just pupils. "Your sister has the Devil in her. That's why she became so upset at my warning. Sister Anne wants you hear what I have to say because you have to guard yourself." He moves even closer, "The Devil is in your house." He stands back up and announces, "You all have to guard yourselves and your homes against the Devil." He turns around and walks back to the front of the room. When he reaches the front of the room he spins back toward the class, "By not believing," he shoots a look at Madelyn, "by thinking this is some kind of joke, you are inviting the Devil into your home!"

' _Come on? Is this guy for real? My sister Trisha has the devil in her? I have to guard against her? What's this guy been smoking? He must have it backwards. Trisha defends my mother when she complains about me. Trisha always takes the time to correct me, criticize me and tell me I'm bad. She's the good one. This priest has it all wrong! Trisha's the good one: just ask my mother.'_
**Chapter 20** \- June 16th -

It's Hot!

' _I am wearing this ugly, wool uniform and I'm sweating, because it's so damn hot._

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the end of school. It's too hot to wear these uniforms. It's too hot to wear these knee-highs. By the time you walk the six blocks to the Avenue, your hair is all wet with sweat. We don't have to wear our blazers anymore. Right on. And we can wear short-sleeved shirts, but it's still too damn hot. Too hot for school, anyway.

' _Mrs. Schmidt keeps yakking about how she's going to retire, and about how she won't miss our ugly, ignorant faces at all. Madelyn can't wait. Today, since school's almost out, Madelyn raises her hand and asks if she is sure. She told us the same thing at the end of last year; and I foolishly got my hopes up. She says she can absolutely guarantee it. Now she's pissed off. It's too damn hot.'_

There's a nun, Sister Mary Katherine, who teaches Junior Algebra at Virgin Mother who's supposed to be a good teacher. Both of Madelyn's sisters had her and they liked her a lot. She's excited at the prospect of actually learning something next year.

It's so hot Madelyn should use her sleeping porch. Madelyn has this really nice sleeping porch off her bedroom, but she never uses it because she's too afraid. She doesn't know what she's afraid of, really, but Madelyn spends a lot of energy being scared. It's a nebulous fear. Like something terrible will come out of the darkness. Like there is something lurking in each dark corner. And certainly that something can seep in through the tiny screen openings. Something sinister, painful and deadly. It's a stupid fear, she thinks. It keeps her in a dungeon of her own mind.

She can't remember, but I know it comes from all the awful things her mother did to her as a baby. It's the stuff we can't remember that we're most afraid of.
**Chapter 21** \- Summer

' _It's not the heat it's the humidity. I feel like I'm swimming in soup. Ah, summer! It may be hot and muggy, but there's no school and nothing much to do, so it ain't all bad. No one will hire a fifteen-year-old, so I've got a lot of free time on my hands. Now there's a crazy concept.'_

Madelyn Writes–

Time on your hands. How about 'in time' you can be in time—aren't you always in time? You're always somewhere in time, right? Now, it's eleven o'clock on July 5th. And how about 'time on your side,' like your left side or right side, that would be about the same as time on your hands. I know I've got time on my side because I'm fifteen: when I'm seventy will time have me on its side?

What about 'on time'? If time is the earth spinning, we are always on time. It's eleven o five. I'm on time. What if you could put time in your hands? Wouldn't that be far out?

' _There was a 'Twilight Zone' where this guy finds a stopwatch and when he uses it, time stops, so he has all the time in the world. He uses his time to read. Of course, in the end, when everything is stopped, the stopwatch breaks and then he steps on his glasses.'_

She writes some more—

But what if you had time on your hands and when you needed more time; you could use some of that time? Time is relative. Look at daylight savings time. Am I saving daylight during the summer? How would I save daylight?

' _Oh-my-gosh, I have to stop. Anyway, I have nothing but time this summer.'_

On Tuesdays, Susan Brandon and Madelyn are candy stripers at the hospital where Madelyn was born. Sometimes they have them bring a magazine cart around to the rooms. Now she mostly works in the hospitality shop. There's this one Doctor who orders a coffee with five ice cubes in it. They are those cute little ice cubes. He digs that she remembers. Sometimes people leave too much money, they say it's a tip. The large, disgusting, nasty cashier never gives the change back to her. She says it goes back to the hospital, but Madelyn is certain she keeps it.

On Thursdays she plays tennis with Nancy Wilson on the public court at the park. ' _It's great. The court is free. All you have to do is reserve it. Nancy is a great tennis player. She's fun to play with even though she wins most of the time.'_ Madelyn is a pretty decent player, herself. The Wests used to have a Summerhouse in Monmouth Beach. Santé West paid for the three girls to take tennis lessons at the beach club. Both of Madelyn's sisters lost interest after about the second lesson, and since the lessons were already paid for, Madelyn ended up taking three times as many lessons. So Madelyn got pretty good.

Sometimes Madelyn hangs out with Jane and Dale and some other girls at one of their houses. (Her mother doesn't like her to have people over.)

And sometimes Jane and Madelyn walk down to Brookdale Park and watch the guys play touch football. They have been hanging out with Joel, Jane's boyfriend, and his friends a lot. They call themselves The Group. ' _You have to say it low, like du grupe._ ' None of these guys go to VM. They go to other all boys' catholic schools in North Jersey.

Madelyn dated a few guys from The Group, most recently Anderson. _'Went out with, ha! If you can call it that_.' Mostly they have get-togethers in Jay's basement, meet up at the Park, or meet at dances and hold hands. Madelyn really, really liked Anderson; he can be exceptionally funny, especially when he's got an audience. He's smart and he likes music, too. Get him alone, though, and he clams up. He goes positively mute. And he never wants to do anything more than hold hands; that's as far as he'll go. She doesn't want to have sex or anything, but a little necking would be nice.

Madelyn went to a make-out party with him and he spent the whole time swinging on a pole, creating clever commentary about everybody, and throwing peanuts.

They broke up. If you can break up, even though you never actually dated—she's not sure? Now he goes out with Dale. Madelyn hopes she has better luck with him.

Lately, Jimmy's got her attention. Madelyn thinks he's funny. He's tiny, though, probably three inches shorter than Madelyn. He says he's five six. ' _Five six my ass. He's probably like five three or five four. Guys tend to do that. They exaggerate with reference to their size. (About everything!) It is so universal, though, you have to wonder if they have a different measuring system.'_ "Oh, I'm five six." ' _Like he's not going to be found out. Hell, I'm five seven, and he's imprecise.'_

A lot of days Madelyn takes the bus to Susan Brandon's pool on Grove Street. It's a private pool, but she walks in like she's a member. It's a great place to hang out. There are trees and grass around the pool and a pavilion. Some nights they show movies outside. It's great to sit in a lounge chair outside on a warm summer night and watch a movie. Better than a drive-in, and she loves drive-ins.

Some of the time Madelyn just lays out in the sun and listens to music. Madelyn has a radio that gets FM! FM has mostly public and local radio stations. There are two FM rock stations from New York City, WNEW and WABC. The AM WABC plays top ten, but the FM WABC plays albums like Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Stones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell, groups like that, that you can't hear on AM. Basically the difference is, for instance, the two soundtrack albums that are big now are 'The Sound of Music' from the movie with Julie Andrews; and 'Hair' from the new musical that just opened on Broadway. AM will play songs from the "The Sound of Music' soundtrack and FM will play stuff from 'Hair'. Whenever Madelyn can, she listens to FM; but in the car she can only get AM, so then she listens to that. They do play The Beatles, The Byrds, Leonard Cohen and Otis Redding, all of whom she likes, so AM isn't so bad—in moderation, because they also play people like Petula Clark, Pat Boone, Engelbert Humperdink, and Dionne Warwick ad nauseam; and, a girl's got to have her limits.

The biggest problem with AM is the repetition. For instance, 'Incense and Peppermints', was great the first time you heard it. Even the second through the tenth time, but by the fiftieth time, it starts to get to you. Madelyn would have bought Strawberry Alarm Clock's album if the radio hadn't played that single until she was sick of it.

Madelyn has all the Simon and Garfunkel albums, 'Wednesday Morning 3AM,' 'Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme,' and 'Bookends,' that Madelyn plays incessantly. _'Neither AM or FM plays enough Simon and Garfunkel, if you ask me.'_ Most people only buy singles, but Madelyn always buys albums. That started because she likes the Simon and Garfunkel's song, 'Silent Night,' so she bought the album. Then she realized that, first of all, a single costs a dollar, and an album (on sale) costs three. Second of all, the best song by a group might not even be on the single. And third, if she hears a single she likes, she'll probably enjoy the rest of the album. Plus that the albums are starting to come out in stereo and the singles, not so much.

Most of Madelyn's albums are in stereo now, so she has asked for a stereo for her birthday.

' _There's a lot of really great music out now. The Rolling Stones shaped Rock and Roll when they came out with 'Satisfaction'—that's what I think. I remember hearing that song and getting so excited. It was like nothing I'd heard before.'_

Madelyn likes Jimmie Hendrix, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holdin' Company, the Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, the Beatles and of course Simon and Garfunkel. Madelyn likes Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, the Temptations, the Supremes, Sam and Dave, Blind Faith, the Rascals, Donavan, Aretha Franklin, Cream, Little Stevie Wonder, Procol Harem and Led Zeppelin.

(I've got to tell you, Madelyn saw Jimmy Hendrix once at a little beach club in Sea Bright. She didn't know it was him at the time; he was backing up the Islay Brothers. She just remembers this skinny, black kid running around the stage behind them playing the heck out of his guitar. He was playing his guitar behind his back, then with his teeth, then on his knees, then on his back. He was out of sight. He never stopped moving. He began to look like a hallucination, an illusion. The Islay Brothers were standing in the traditional Motown line, in their white suits, singing harmony; and the whole time, right behind their backs, there was this whole other one-man show going on. It looked totally incongruous. Madelyn just sat in a chair along the side wall of the place and watched him. She's pretty sure she didn't blink or breathe the whole time. She was there with her sisters and she was probably the youngest one in the audience. The crowd was dancing and talking. Nobody else seemed to even notice him. Madelyn began to wonder if she was just imagining him. Why wasn't anybody else interested? Then a wave of reality washed in on the dark hair and shirts of some stray boys standing across the room, over by the doors. They were digging Jimmy, too. Solid. It was like the crowd and the Islay Brothers were in a fog of black and white slow motion; and Jimmy and the dark-shirted, outsider boys and she were in focus and in color. It was like a dream. Madelyn had the best time just watching him play. ' _It's pretty amazing, the stuff you can get let in on if you just pay attention, you know, if you open the scope of your awareness. It's sad the stuff you can miss out on if you don't._ ')

She even likes the Association and the Four Seasons even though Madelyn and Gary get mocked about that. ' _Man, I know I'm leaving out a lot of people, but right now these are the groups that come to mind.'_ Madelyn is a musical schizophrenic. Madelyn also likes classical music, blue grass and blues - but mostly folk and rock.

' _I think groups like Manfred Mann, Bobby Vinton, Judy Collins, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Doors and the Cowsils are too commercial_.' Madelyn thinks they just write songs to have hits. Hey, if you don't agree with her, that's cool too.) ' _They don't have any real significance. No guts. No soul.'_

Once in a while Madelyn doesn't have a date, then she usually goes and hangs out in Bonds' parking lot. Bonds is an ice-cream shop about two miles from her house. There's always somebody to hang out with. The cops cruise through the lot occasionally, telling everybody to disburse. Everybody walks out, and as soon as they leave, everybody walks back in. Don't want to scare away the decent paying folk, but there's nothing else to do. Most of the time she buys an ice cream. They have this thing they call an Awful-Awful because it's awful big and awful good. It's a big thick shake, is what it is. Madelyn can't finish one. If you finish three they will give you the fourth for free. Her favorite Bonds outfit is pink flowered hip-hugger slacks with a wide white belt and a pink, long-sleeved blouse that comes to just under her chest. People call her Jeanie or Barbara when she wears it; but she doesn't care, she just likes the way it looks.

On Saturday nights, some of the churches have dances. There's a church in Verona that has dances on most Saturday nights. Her church has dances a lot in the wintertime, all of the local Catholic Schools do. Essex Catholic has what they call mixers. (Try saying Essex Mixer three times fast.) Madelyn loves dances, especially when the band is good. There are a few local bands, with kids in or just out of high school, that are really good. The Echelons and Mario and the Immortals are outstanding. They play mostly Motown. The Temptations and Four Tops tunes are the best to dance to. Sometimes Madelyn goes with Joey Brannon, he's a good kisser and he's a really good dancer ( _and he knows it._ )
**Chapter 22** \- August 1st -

The Shore

This Saturday Madelyn decides to go with a group of kids from her third Grammar School, Saint Cassians, on a bus from church to the shore. ( _A little lame, I admit—to go to the shore with a church group—but what the hell, it's summer, and it's one way of getting there._ ) Susan Holloman, wants to go and she hadn't seen Susan in a while, since now she goes to Public High School, so they went with this group to Sea Side. Sea Side has a boardwalk and a pretty good-sized, relatively clean beach. The water at the northern part of the Jersey shore is pretty disgusting, mostly due to the garbage scows coming to the Sandy Hook Bay from New York. They just dump the garbage into the ocean; close enough that you can see them from Shore. Madelyn's father says the ocean is so big it cleans itself. ' _What horseshit!'_ He seems to really believe it, though. They have even had a few arguments about it. He has a very, 'well, what you gonna do?' attitude toward it. It gets Madelyn positively exasperated. Maybe he doesn't mind swimming with the coffee grinds, orange rinds and hypodermic needles floating by, but she does. He says it has all been sanitized by the ocean. ' _Can you believe this shit?!'_

Sea Side is enough further south that it makes a difference.

Madelyn and Susan traverse the beach looking for boys, lay out in the sun, and swim most of the day. Madelyn doesn't really enjoy the ocean much anymore. When Madelyn was thirteen, she almost drowned. It was a big deal at the time. Everybody in the area knew some kid almost drowned. That was Madelyn. Man, when she got home did her mother ever clobber her. She just wouldn't stop. For years after that Madelyn got yelled at and hit for not drowning.

Today is nice, though - at the beach with no parents to worry about.

They swim, sun themselves or meander around on the boardwalk. Madelyn buys a caramel apple for lunch, she loves caramel apples and that's all the money she has. They meet up with the other kids from the trip sporadically.

That evening Madelyn and Susan roam the boardwalk more resolutely searching for the action (meaning stuff to do - they're not hookers or anything. Jeeze, get your mind out of the gutter.) Madelyn can't go on any rides because she only brought the change that was in her pockets. They wander down to the south end and as they're about to turn around and head back up they hear yelling from one of the rides. Some boy's shirt is caught in the gears of what looks like a tiny, kids' Ferris wheel, except that the cars are enclosed in wire mesh. The stuckshirt kid and his friends are all yelling about being trapped. They're so funny a small crowd forms. Madelyn and Susan quickly become part of the crowd. The boy whose shirt is caught makes the most of the situation. He realizes he has an audience and he keeps yelling things to make everybody laugh. Susan wants to keep walking, but Madelyn is intrigued and, she decides right then she wants to stay to meet this guy. Madelyn figures this guy really has something special. She would never be able to yell out funny stuff like that. And, besides that, without being able to even see him, he is getting people to stop what they're doing, and stay and listen to him. Madelyn figures anybody who could do that is somebody she wants to meet. That decision is so unlike her. She's never actually tried to meet a guy before; and besides that, she hates doing things alone. Something inside is telling her to stay; so despite all her fears and insecurities and Susan, she stays. Susan announces that no way is she going to hang around just to see this kid, who she doesn't even know. She thinks it's a stupid idea so she split to find some of the other kids from the trip. Madelyn leans against the sign for the Tunnel of Love alone for like forever.

' _Man! What if he gets off and doesn't like me and then I can't find Susan again?'_ Plus that, Madelyn isn't at all sure what she is going to say or do to meet him. She rolls different scenarios around in her head, trying to cover all the bases. The big plan she comes up with is to look at him once he gets off. That's it! That's the best she can come up with under this kind of pressure. Madelyn starts getting so nervous standing there trying to look nonchalant.

She chews on her nails but she takes quick bites and slaps her hand down to her side in between each one so no one will notice she is doing it. She grabs a big wad of hair out of her mouth as soon as she realizes she's sucking on it. ' _Oh Darn, what if he saw me sucking on my hair! How disgusting._ ' She wants to disappear. Madelyn can't even see him through the mesh of the cage. Then the thought occurs to her, she hasn't the slightest idea what he looks like. She reminds herself that looks don't matter. She keeps checking out the people around her and she keeps watching their reaction to the caged boy. That's enough to reassure Madelyn to tough it out. That, plus the fact that she's already invested all this time: but, let's face it, Madelyn doesn't have any other pressing engagements.

It's getting pretty dark. Madelyn swats a mosquito. ' _Damn, another mosquito bite_.' She's the flavor mosquitoes like. If there were ten people in a room and ten mosquitoes she'd have ten mosquito bites. And she's allergic to them. They swell up to the size of golf balls. It's getting cold. ' _I have to stop biting my nails. I just bit one of my nails so far down it's bleeding. Aw Come on, when is this guy getting off?'_ She's not a patient person. At this point, even the guy with the stuck-shirt thinks he's never getting off.

Great! Finally! Someone who runs the rides turns the ride off and climbs up the outside (which isn't far, believe me) and tears the rest of the shirt sleeve off and climbs back down and starts the ride back up to let everybody off.

' _What the heck? If that was all it took, why did it take so long?'_

Now the kid's getting off, she'll finally get to meet him. Madelyn holds her breath; she's so uncomfortable she's getting nauseous. She's no good at being forward. Some not-so-overly-attractive boys climb out of the cage. ' _Jeeze!'_ Madelyn sees the one with the torn shirt. ' _Not too bad. Phew!'_

The boys begin falling all over each other laughing. Madelyn just stands there looking at the boy with the torn shirt. Her big plan isn't working, damn! So Madelyn decides to wait until they get their land legs and go over there and say hi. This is her revised big plan. One of the boys notices her looking at the torn-shirt kid and nudges him and points her out. Her first inclination is always to look away, but she forces herself to keep right on looking at him. Madelyn reminds herself to breathe.

Just then Susan comes back. ' _What incredible timing she has! Man!'_

She calls Madelyn. "You're still here? Why are you still here?"

Madelyn glances away from him to look at Susan. "They just got down. He's over there." Madelyn moves her face in his direction but he has already gone. They must have left by the south gate.

' _Oh, this blows!'_ Madelyn spent all this time, waiting to meet this guy and he chose leaving with his friends.

' _Bummer! I feel like I've been kicked.'_

Crushed, Madelyn takes off again with Susan. They ramble around some more. Susan plays some of those obnoxious games.

' _That's one job I never want to do, those barkers who try to get chumps to come over and play some rigged game. They're thieves, that's what they are. And the games that you can win, those "there's a winner every time" games, I mean, you win such crap. And those barker guys constantly hit on you. But it passes the time.'_

When they make their way down to the south end, that shirt-tearing ride is stopped again. This time Madelyn knew the kids. They were some boys from The Group and some of their friends, who hadn't come down on bus. ' _Small world.'_ They're looking through one of the cages. Charley, the one who drove them all down, lost his keys. They fell out of his pocket during the ride. He could hear them clink against the metal while the ride was going, he said. But when they searched the cage they couldn't find the keys.

' _How that stupid little ride could get seventeen-year-old boys to get into a little cage together and get their shirts caught, and their keys lost, is a mystery to me. It looks like a kiddy Ferris Wheel, for chrissake!'_ Madelyn helps them look around on the boards of the boardwalk until it's time for her bus to leave. No luck. So Madelyn asks the Priest chaperoning the bus trip if those boys can come back with her since they didn't have their keys. That's the only thing Madelyn can think of, and since those boys didn't have any better ideas, that's what they decide to do. They all stood around with the Priest at the open door of the bus. Madelyn keeps saying things like, "You're supposed to have charity and compassion aren't you?" until he relents. He wants to charge them full price, but she reminds him that they are only taking half the trip so they should pay half price.

The priest's probably POed he said yes to her since he had to keep telling them to pipe down the whole ride home.

Madelyn gets home at around eleven-thirty. Her parents are both waiting for her. Her mother is really furious so Bow waits for Madelyn by the stairs. Bow can tell when Madelyn's in for it and she's smart enough to hang around out of the line of fire.

"Where were you? You didn't tell me where you were going!" her mother yells.

"Yes. I did. I was at the shore with the church. You gave me money to pay for the bus ride."

"I didn't give you money!"

"Yes, and you signed that permission slip. I went with the Church to the shore. I reminded you before I left this morning."

"You did not, you rotten liar." She raises her hand to slap Madelyn.

"Now, Celeste," Santé says.

"Yes, yes you did. You gave me a check and signed a permission slip. You can call the church to check."

' _I hate it when she forgets stuff and then gets pissed at me!'_

"I am not calling the church now, it's late, you horrible..."

"Now, now, Celeste," her father says, "she says you knew she was going with the church to the shore."

"She's a liar. You see: this is exactly what I mean, she always lies!" Celeste screeches, "You're disgusting. I hate you. Go to your room! Get out of my sight."

Her father comforts her mother, "I know, you have so much to put up with. She'll be old enough to move out soon."

Madelyn secures Bow in her arms and goes to her room. All in all, it was a pretty good day.
**Chapter 23** \- August 13, 1968 -

Happy Birthday

' _Sweet sixteen and never been kissed - well, not exactly.'_

Madelyn's big treat is to have both sets of Grandparents over for dinner and then watch slides of their trip to Europe. That's what Madelyn's mother has planned for her birthday. Madelyn picked out a stereo record player as her birthday present _. 'It folds up into a suitcase, so you can take it with you, and—get this—the speakers come off so you can set them further apart to get more separation of sound. Pretty cool, huh? Also, it's fifty watts so the speakers aren't straining when you turn it up so it should last a while. Getting stereo is cool because most albums are in stereo now.'_ Madelyn likes the way stereo sounds—much better than mono or even hi-fi. Madelyn's mother gave Madelyn the money for it and she walked up to the Park Street Plaza to buy it. Celeste was a little pissed to find out that Madelyn didn't pick out the cheapest one. But Madelyn maintains this one is sturdier and she'll be able to bring it to college with her. Madelyn told her mother this one sounds much better; and it does.

That night both sets of grandparents came over. That's something that almost never happens. They're so different. For instance, during the Depression Sante's mother worked sewing in a garment factory. Sometimes she would come home with band-aids on her fingers; because she sewed so fast she would sew her fingers right into the needles. _'My Italian Grandmother used to bury money in the backyard because she didn't trust the banks. She's a pisser. It took her years before she decided banks were safe again. She said by the time she dug the money up, it had started to rot and it smelled so bad it was embarrassing._

' _Once the depression was over, as they both worked, she would take a tiny bit of the buried money, put perfume on it, and add that into the deposit. She was certain that the teller knew because the money still smelled so bad. She was embarrassed every time._

' _She was laughing and crying when she told me.'_

Madelyn's father's father doesn't speak English well at all. He married Madelyn's grandmother when he was twenty-nine and she was an old maid of nineteen. Seriously, her family was worried about her because she hadn't found a husband at the ripe old age of nineteen and they thought if she hadn't found someone by then it was probably too late. Theirs was an arranged marriage because the town in the Italian Alps where grandma lived was so tiny there weren't any more eligible bachelors who weren't related to her. Grandpa was close to thirty and not married yet, and Madelyn gets the impression that wasn't too cool either, but way more acceptable than grandma's embarrassing situation. They got married.

"Love came later," Grandma would explain in her heavy Italian accent, "Respect is what I had for him. You have to have respect to have a marriage and he was a good man."

"And cute, too," Madelyn would answer. Then Grandma would laugh like a nervous teenager. It's true: in fact both Madelyn's grandfathers must have been boss bods in their day. Real george as Madelyn's mother would say.

' _Grandpa came over from Italy when he was in his thirties. He had eleven brothers who emigrated to Argentina; he was the only one who came to America. When he speaks he has such a strong Italian accent that it's hard to understand him. During the depression he walked to Newark everyday to look for work. He walked from Nutley, which is probably five miles away. He walked because he wanted to save the nickel it cost to take the bus.'_

Santé came to this country with his mother when he was seven. When Madelyn's father and his parents are together they speak Italian most of the time. And most of the time Madelyn can understand them. But for some reason I don't understand, Madelyn's parents don't want their kids learning Italian.

Madelyn's mother's parents, on the other hand, always had money - even through the Depression. They always had a maid, too. Celeste said she even stayed with them through the Depression because if they let her go she would have nowhere else to live. So she stayed and worked for no money, just room and board. Because she had a black maid, Celeste grew up listening to some of the best music that came out of the thirties and forties. ' _Except for Swing, the white music of the time was not nearly as good, in my humble opinion.'_

The worst thing that did happen to Madelyn's mother during the Depression was that one year the only thing she got for Christmas was a lace-embroidered handkerchief. Celeste complained about that every year at Christmas. ' _Way to hold a grudge, Celeste_.'

Celeste's mother is a pretty far out lady, too. She was a Red-Cross worker. She was a suffragette. She was the first woman to sell Commercial Real Estate in Atlantic City, NJ—or the country for all she knew. She was the first woman to swim the Steel Peer (in Atlantic City.) She didn't get married until she was close to thirty or after thirty, nobody knows for sure since she still lies about her age. She boasts that people considered her a spinster or an old maid. She says first you're considered on old maid, then when you turn thirty, you were considered a spinster, but she says she was having too much fun to get married. _'Right on, Nana.'_ She's always had lots and lots of money—all her life. She calls everybody Dahling.

Celeste's father was a lawyer and he stayed working pretty consistently throughout the Depression (bankruptcies and all). A lot of times Bunky worked for no money or for whatever someone could afford to pay. He never did believe in banks, he'd been keeping his money in a safe all along so they never lost anything except some paying clients.

Bunky had also been the Boxing Commissioner of Jersey City. Madelyn loves to look at the pictures of the boxing matches because all the men in the audience have on suits and hats. ' _A sea of dark suits, white shirts and ties, and black bowler hats. It blows your mind.'_

So now they are all going to sit down for a roast beef dinner for her sixteenth birthday and act like they all get along. Madelyn can't remember the last time both sets of grandparents were over together. Really.

Celeste is freaking out. Celeste will make Madelyn pay for this hassle, even though Madelyn didn't ask for this party and Celeste is only having it to show the world what a good mother she is—so she'll have something to tell her friends.

Celeste will be cooking Madelyn's dinner tonight, for the first time since she was nine. She's afraid of what her mother will say, she's paranoid about how it will turn out. So Madelyn will hang out with her grandparents in the living room and try to keep cool. She'll do that until it's time to go to bed or until they leave. She doesn't want to get clobbered for her birthday.

' _Why is sixteen one of the big birthdays Nothing special happens when you turn sixteen. You can't get your permit in New Jersey until you're seventeen and you can't drink in New York City until you're eighteen and you can't vote in America until you're twenty-one. So what's the big deal?'_

Madelyn doesn't feel sweet and she has been kissed.
**Chapter 24** \- Tennis

Madelyn is going down to the park and to play tennis with her friend Nancy today. It's great. All you have to do is reserve the court and pay fifty cents for an hour. The two girls reserve the court almost every week at pretty much the same time.

Today, two grown-ups show up in tennis whites and they decide, because Nancy and Madelyn are kids, that they can just take over the court. Madelyn walks up the hill to complain to the old alcoholic guy who sits in the booth and takes reservations. He says since they're just hacking around, they should give up the court to people who really want to play. Madelyn asks him if he ever watched them play. He didn't. He sits in a little booth in the park overlooking the tennis courts and he doesn't watch the players? He didn't remember they paid, either. He didn't remember them at all.

So the old alcoholic guy who sits in the booth sided with the asshole-tennis-white guys and Nancy and Madelyn get kicked off.

They've played there every week for over a year, same time, same place and they're the unwanteds? They had the reservation, but because they're kids they get kicked off?

' _This blows!'_

Nancy and Madelyn sit on the hill for a short while and get a few laughs. ' _Those guys couldn't hit the side of a barn with an elephant.'_ Then they go over to Nancy's house where they chill for a while, have some sodas and bake some brownies.

When Madelyn gets home Madelyn's mother gets up off the couch.

' _Oh, Shit!'_
**Chapter 25** \- Madelyn's Horse Collection

Madelyn's mother begins pounding her saying how she wishes Madelyn had drowned. She usually emphasizes that point by telling her how she never wanted her and lately how, if abortions were legal, she would have had one. She says Madelyn never appreciates anything she does! Celeste says she lets Madelyn live even though Madelyn ruined her life! ' _Dear Lord, she's not stopping._ ' Madelyn thinks she knows what Celeste wants to hear, but she doesn't want to give her the satisfaction. Celeste's poison is on Madelyn.

Celeste yells at Madelyn with such contempt, such hatred, "I hate you!" Celeste lashes out, "Why didn't you drown?" she says over and over. Her venom gets in Madelyn's pores.

' _It cracks my soul. The claw of her words reach into my throat.'_ Madelyn thinks she can say it to be done with her. Madelyn thinks she can say it so Celeste thinks she means it but she will know she doesn't. Just to placate her. Just to get this raging Medusa off of her.

' _I'm pretty used to it: I can shut myself down. Most days she's just nasty and mean; but when this loathing really wells up in her, there's no stopping her!'_ Celeste can really make Madelyn feel like she'd be better off if she had drowned. ' _I wish I could turn my emotions off. Sometimes I wish I didn't exist, just to be free of this. She won't stop!'_

"I'm sorry I didn't drown." Celeste's venomous claw dragged those words out of Madelyn and some of her poison fills the cavity made by those words. Some of her evil was left and it makes Madelyn tired and empty. ' _She has shredded my soul before, but this is more, she got a piece of it. Her wickedness tore out a piece of my soul when it tore those words from my throat. Chards of her evil struggle to fill the cracks those words left in my soul.'_

The evil words worked. Celeste stopped.

Madelyn makes her way past Celeste, and runs upstairs. Bow runs up after her like a streak of gray and black fur.

Madelyn's shelves are empty. Madelyn tears back down stairs, and asks Celeste what happened to her horse collection. Celeste says she had to bring them down to Aunt Mary Ellen's. Celeste says she had to because Madelyn sent him away, the only man she ever loved. Celeste hisses, "You're too old to be playing with toy horses anyway."

Celeste detests driving and it's about an hour to Madelyn's Aunt Mary Ellen's house. She packed up those porcelain horses, and made it there and back, before Madelyn got home from school. That's more driving than Madelyn can ever remember her mother doing. After driving just one way, it takes Celeste an hour to get the feeling back in her hands; because she grips the wheel so tightly she loses the circulation in her fingers.

Madelyn has that knot in her throat that she gets instead of crying, and yells that she had no right to give her horses away. Madelyn bought them. They were hers.

Celeste starts screaming, "Get out of my sight! I hate looking at you! I don't want to have to be in the same room as you."

So Madelyn takes her cat upstairs. Madelyn sits on the edge of the bed, holds Bow, strokes, and rocks her. Bow sits, purrs, and arches her back to meet Madelyn's fingers. Then Bow angles her head so Madelyn's hand wouldn't forget her ears. Madelyn stares at the empty shelves she built to hold her horses, at her open door and the darkening hall.

She knows she knows she'll pay for this, but with that poison in her, Madelyn can't make Celeste her cocktail or dinner. All Madelyn can do is stare at the emptiness.

Madelyn calls Jane to tell her about the horses. Jane says, "Just buy more."

When she tells Dale, Dale says, "Don't let you mother get to you."

She tells her boyfriend, Jimmy, who mocks, "Don't be stupid, of course your mother loves you. Look at everything you have. Poor little rich girl."

Bruce comes up to get Madelyn for dinner. He asks why she's crying.

"Come on," he chides. "You should be used to that stuff by now. Mom does junk like that to you all the time."
**Chapter 26** \- August 28th -

Chicago Convention

The news on Madelyn's birthday said the general public would be excluded from the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Madelyn didn't think anything of it at the time even though there was a big brouhaha about it. She doesn't know anything about conventions.

A couple of days ago five thousand federal troops were flown to Chicago. There are anti-war demonstrations going on. The cops are having a field day with the demonstrators. The demonstrators are throwing anything they can find at the cops, and the cops are clubbing and arresting people left and right. Today police clubbed twenty-one reporters and photographers. That wasn't real smart of them because, of course, it got reported and photographed to death. It's being called a police riot. Other than anti-war demonstrations the message of what's going on there is being lost - it looks horrible.
**Chapter 27** -

Riding in Cars with Nuns

Some of the churches still have dances on Saturday nights, even during the summer. During the winter there's a dance at a church somewhere in the area every weekend.

' _I love dances.'_

There's a get-acquainted—welcome-back, dance tonight at Virgin Mother. The Group is going. Madelyn booked the band the Echelons— ' _I love them.'_ Madelyn knows the lead singer from the pool she goes to. They charge more and are a lot busier than most of the other bands in the area, so when VM can get them they charge more to get in. Some kids get pissed because they don't like paying the extra quarter; but they're so good that it's worth it. The Sisters are happy too, because there's always a better turnout.

' _The only bands I book for the dances are Mario and the Immortals; and the Echelons, not only because they're my favorites; but because I know some of the band members. Mario and the Immortals is a better group but they're hard to get since they are either booked or in the middle of breaking up. Mario always says, "Alright, but this is our last gig." I mean, every time. Once I put on the flyers—Mario and the Immortals in their final public appearance. Mario was pissed, because, of course it really wasn't going to be their last appearance. Plus that not all the guys in the band knew he was planning on leaving. Some kids have told me they don't go when the Immortals play because they're black and they don't want me to book them anymore. Idiots. So don't go then, it's not like it's hard to sell a thousand tickets when they play. It's their loss._

' _So now I'm going shopping with two nuns. (Some fun, huh?) We have to get supplies and tickets. We buy little admit one tickets at the Five and Ten just to keep count of how many people come. We're only allowed to have a thousand kids in the gym because of fire laws, so we buy a thousand tickets, and when they're all gone, nobody else is allowed in. (Once Anderson got to a dance late and somebody had to let him in through a window.)'_

' _I get in the back seat. We bless ourselves and ask God to watch over us.'_ Sister Joseph pats little dashboard Saint Christopher on his head and asks, "Are you buckled up back there?"

"What's the matter, don't you think the prayer'll work?"

"Just buckle up," Sister Joseph yelps. _We all laugh._

' _The car peels out. My head and shoulders smash against the seat.'_

"Whoa!"

' _Sister Joseph and Sister Batista roar with laughter. I grip the armrests. The smell of burning rubber fills the car.'_

"Don't worry Madelyn, Sister Joseph's an excellent driver."

"Do the cops think so, too?"

' _Sister Joseph is coming up to the end of the street and she's not stopping or slowing down. Whoa! She twists the wheel suddenly and the car tilts up on its side and shrieks around the corner on two wheels.'_

"Shit!" _'Damn, that just slipped out.'_

The Sisters hoot. "Ahh, well that's never happened before!"

Madelyn jokes, "It's a good thing we said that prayer."

Sister Batista turns around in her seat, "The car's never done anything like that before," she laughs.

' _She says it like it was the car's fault. They're having one hell of a good time. I hate to admit it—but I have to be a killjoy for the nuns. What a total nerd!_ "Maybe she should slow down a bit." _The tires scream for mercy as we careen around another corner. I try to hang onto the armrests but my fingers jolt free.'_

"I bet your mother thinks you're all nice and safe—out with the Sisters," Sister Joseph calls over her shoulder. _'We all laugh. We make it to the Five and Ten in one piece. Nuns are some no-nonsense shoppers— they get in and out pretty quick.'_

"Do we say another prayer?"

"No, that one's good for the whole trip."

' _We peel out of our parking spot. I'm getting used to it.'_

"Slow down now, Sister," Sister Batista warns, "you're scaring Madelyn."

"She's not scared," Sister Joseph turns slightly to look at Madelyn, "You're not scared are you Madelyn?" She laughs, looks back at the road, raises her chest, moves her hands to ten and two, "I'm a great driver," she boasts.

"Too bad you're not the only car on the road."

They laugh.

As she parks in front of the school Sister Joseph proclaims, "And you were worried."
**Chapter 28** \- August 31st -

Let's Dance

Saturday night's dance is happenin'. Not as many people show up as usual, but then, it's still summer. Madelyn and her friends keep starting line dances. Everybody's into it. The band's out of sight.

Madelyn sees Christopher and Anthony in the back of the gym standing with the other greaser boys. Christopher catches Madelyn's eye and starts walking over toward her so she walks over toward him. They catch up a little, compare summers, and ask about mutual friends. Then Christopher asks where Kristy is.

"She's out smoking that evil weed," Madelyn chuckles.

"No she's not. Where is she?"

Madelyn raises an eyebrow.

"She can't. What's wrong with her? Doesn't she know that stuff's not for us?"

' _Not for us? What does that mean?'_ "Why? Because we're too nerdy?"

Christopher, of course, doesn't think of himself as nerdy at all.

"Speak for yourself." He reaches for the soft-pack rolled in the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"You can't smoke in here."

"Oh, yeah." Chris' hand drops to his side. "No, I mean the whites. White kids. That dope's for the niggers."

"The black kids," Madelyn corrects him.

"When they decided to sell it, they decided it would be only for the Negroes. Tell Kristy dat. Tell 'er nobody'll have no respect fa her if she smokes dope."

"Ferelli decided to sell marijuana just to black kids? What? How's he think he's gonna manage that?" Madelyn never knows what to believe when Chris tells her that kind of stuff. He sure was right on about Anthony. She should have believed him then.

"Oh he can manage it okay. They figure it's okay to sell that dope to the niggers in Newark—to keep 'em lazy an stupid. Specially after last summer, an now wid King's death, an all. Let 'em get arrested an kill each other. Ferelli's outnumbered—he knows that. He wants ta stay in control."
**Chapter 29** \- September 5th -

First Day of Junior Year (expelled?)

The first day of school. Madelyn's junior year. Hot stuff. Upperclassman and all that! Madelyn can taunt the freshman. They start with an assembly in the gym. Everyone clusters with their chosen groups, the geeks with the geeks, the in-crowd with the in-crowd, and so on. Since there's always people you don't hang out with outside of school, but you talk to in school, everybody's excited to see each other, but sad it has to be under such unfortunate circumstances. Sort of the way you feel at a funeral. Then they all split up to face, with some trepidation, their respective classes.

Madelyn's classes are going pretty well. It's good to see everybody. The day isn't too hot. Madelyn's third class is Math. (Madelyn used to like math. The Nuns who taught her math for fifth and seventh grade had the same teaching method, even though they were from two different grammar schools. They would yank your bangs and smash your head against the desk or blackboard [depending on where you were at the time], if they thought you should know the answer but didn't. If you were a boy, they would swing their arm around and give you a swift punch to the temple, and God help you if you ducked. Both of these nuns were known to have broken wooden pointers across boys' backs. And both these nuns, who loved math, called Madelyn another Einstein: not that she escaped either one of their classes unscathed. (I'm pretty sure the one they call Tank broke Madelyn's nose.) Anyway, Madelyn used to enjoy math, and with a new teacher this year, Madelyn thinks she will again. Sister Mary Katherine is not only one of the only nuns Madelyn has ever heard of with an actual girl's name, but according to her sisters, she's supposed to be a pretty good (and likeable) math teacher. Madelyn has never had one of those; so she's looking forward to that.

Madelyn walks into the math class and a chill goes through her. There she sat, at the edge of the desk, snickering to herself because she knew they didn't expect to see her. "Are you here to teach us?" Madelyn blurts out.

"For today?" Mrs. Schmidt replies.

With an answer like that Madelyn thinks maybe she is just here filling in until they got her replacement.

"Are you our math teacher this year?" Madelyn's horrified. A cruel joke? Weak with confusion, Madelyn's completely blindsided; Madelyn stumbles to her desk and sits there wilting for a while. Dazed, Madelyn begins to mutter. Eventually her muttering forms words.

"I'm supposed to have Sister Mary Katherine this year."

"No, sorry," is the pompously asinine reply.

"You told us you were retiring."

Mrs. Schmidt just stares back.

"You aren't supposed to be here. We're supposed to have Sister Mary Katherine." Madelyn said, trembling.

Mrs. Schmidt tells her to be quiet, or something. All Madelyn can do is shake her head, no. She watches herself get up. Madelyn starts to walk out of the room to talk to the Principal about this. ' _This is wrong. Something's just wrong!_ Madelyn just can't endure this horrible woman another year. _It's not fair.'_

Madelyn, still shaking her head, gets halfway across the room when Mrs. Schmidt squeals at her to take her seat.

"I have to leave; I have to go see the Principle," she mutters.

"I didn't tell you to go to the Principle, I told you to take a seat."

Mrs. Schmidt says this like Madelyn started going to the Principal because she told her to.

"I have to go to see the Principle, this is wrong," Madelyn hears herself say as she keeps walking.

Mrs. Schmidt descends her perch to snatch Madelyn by the arm.

"I told you to take your seat."

"I can't. I can't stay here."

Mrs. Schmidt just stares at Madelyn, and Madelyn stares at Mrs. Schmidt. Madelyn glances at the rest of the class. Some of them are wide-mouthed and dumbfounded; and some are concerned that she lost her mind. Madelyn is staggered that no one else is complaining.

Some of the front-rowers begin whispering, "Sit down. Sit down." But Madelyn can't sit down, she's unable to stay.

"Go then. But be sure you go to the Principle;" Mrs. Schmidt releases Madelyn's arm, "and be sure to tell her what happened here."

"Of course I will, ah, that's why I'm going," Madelyn says, puzzled.

' _What an odd thing for her to say.'_

When Madelyn gets to the Principal's office all the Principal wants to do is send her back to class.

"If you have a problem with your schedule, Dear, we'll go over it next week," she keeps saying.

"I can't have Mrs. Schmidt again," Madelyn keeps saying.

The Principal begins trying to physically usher Madelyn out of her office waiting room. She holds Madelyn's elbow and yanks her toward the door. Sr. Bernard is a very short, very fat woman. Her head doesn't even come up to Madelyn's shoulder. Her little hand on Madelyn's arm is not enough to make her budge.

"I can't go back to that class. I can't have Mrs. Schmidt again."

"That's your schedule and I told you they will address that next week," she said, obviously irritated. She thinks Madelyn is so stupid she doesn't know what a schedule is. Sr. Bernard doesn't want any problems the first day of school. But Madelyn keeps standing there.

She goes back into her office and closes the door. It's an office with glass all around and in half the door. All Madelyn does is stand there. So, finally, Sr. Bernard comes back out of the office and begins pushing Madelyn toward the door again.

"They will discuss your schedule next week!"

Madelyn stands fast; "Can I get Sister Mary Katherine as my Math teacher?"

"They can discuss that next week." Sr. Bernard leans her weight against Madelyn. Madelyn leans back.

"Okay. But I still can't go back to class."

"If you won't go back to class, I'll have to call your mother," she threatens, still angry, still pushing.

Madelyn has rubber soles and is kind of leaning back toward the Principal so she couldn't make her go out into the hall. "I can't go back to class. I can't have Mrs. Schmidt as a teacher again." Madelyn won't budge. She got this far, and can't see the sense of giving up at this point. ' _If I go back now, I won't have the nerve to do this again.'_

Madelyn is generally a pretty compliant person, and she sure as Hell doesn't like being yelled at.

"I'll take you back to class myself," Sr. Bernard warns, in her best Principal voice.

Sr. Bernard is being deliberately obtuse so Madelyn says, "No. If I can't have Sister Mary Katherine, I don't want to go to this school anymore." That just sort of came out, but after it did, Madelyn realizes it's true. Madelyn realizes that's why she is there. She realizes that she has nothing to lose.

"I'm calling your mother." She gives up pushing. She's such a tiny, heavy, old thing, Madelyn thinks she isn't giving in so much as she's just worn-out. She moves away and steps back to look at Madelyn. She's perplexed.

"You could do something. Please. You could put me in the A or the C class."

"I can't do that." Reverend Mother's pretty POed. She takes a moment to compose herself and catch her breath. She is a Mother Superior and isn't used to kids (or anyone) not doing what she says. Madelyn feels bad about doing this to her.

She sits Madelyn down and you could just tell she has to keep herself from yelling. She tells Madelyn how Mrs. Schmidt has decided not to retire after all, and so the B class has to have her again. Madelyn tells her it isn't fair for the B class to be the only class subjected to Mrs. Schmidt. Sr. Bernard tells Madelyn that that's how it has to be. So Madelyn asks her again to put her in the 'A' or 'C' class. Sr. Bernard says she can't. Madelyn says if she can't be in the A class, she could at least put her in the 'C' class.

"I'll get your record. What is your name?"

Sr. Bernard takes off to get Madelyn's records.

' _Man! She doesn't even know who I am! If I'd gone back to class, she wouldn't know who she was arguing with.'_ How could Mother Superior tell Madelyn she couldn't change things for her if she doesn't know anything about her?

Sr. Bernard comes back with Madelyn's record, and sits in the chair across from her in the little office waiting room, and lays Madelyn's records out on her knees. She looks at it briefly, then looks at Madelyn and speaks slowly and clearly so that Madelyn can understand. She thinks if she speaks slowly enough Madelyn will understand at last and return to class. Sister tells Madelyn she isn't smart enough to be in the 'A' class and Madelyn would feel lost, and that Madelyn's too smart to be in the 'C' class and she would be bored. Now that the Principal has made herself clear, she tells Madelyn to go back to class.

It makes Madelyn angry that things are set in stone like that. Of course, if she wants to, she can put her in the 'C' or 'A' class or change the teaching schedule!

Madelyn explains to Sr. Bernard if she leaves the office she will leave the school. Madelyn figures she will take the bus over to Clear Mountain High and sign up there.

"Wait right there. I'm calling your mother."

This time she does.

Madelyn's mother shows up and there's no discussion about what happened. Sister Bernard just tells Celeste, Madelyn won't go back to class. Sister Bernard and Madelyn both think Celeste will make Madelyn go back to class.

Psyche! Celeste questions why Madelyn won't return to class. Madelyn tells her Mrs. Schmidt is going to be Madelyn's Math teacher again and she can't take another year with her. In another startling turn of events, Madelyn's mother remembers some of the copious times Madelyn vehemently complained about Mr. Schmidt. The Principal explains how Madelyn will have to have Mrs. Schmidt and how there's no way, since she's in the 'B' class, that Madelyn's schedule can change. Madelyn tells Celeste she also won't be able to take art, since the 'B' class' schedule doesn't allow for that either. (Madelyn's whole family is good in art; Madelyn's parents are both artists, so not being able to take art is a problem.) They go over the scenarios about how Madelyn's too smart and too dumb to change classes.

Madelyn's mother remains amazingly calm. "Well," she finally says, "do we need any papers or anything to put her in public school?"

Psyche. Right on Celeste! Madelyn's mouth drops. The Principal gasps. Neither one of them expected that. The Principal pleads for Celeste to reconsider. All she was trying to accomplish by calling Celeste in was to get Madelyn to go back to class. Fooled her. Fooled Madelyn, too.

Madelyn's mother took her transcripts and Madelyn got her things and they left. Once in the car Celeste really exploded. Much to Madelyn's surprise, she wasn't mad at her, but at the school for not accommodating them. Both of Madelyn's sisters went there for four years and they were in the wrong zip code to get a break on the tuition, so the school had a lot of the West's money! And the fact that the Principal said there was nothing she could do, after their family paid ten years worth of full tuition, really had Madelyn's mother ticked off.

Celeste drops Madelyn off in front of Clear Mountain High School so Madelyn can go in and sign up for classes.
**Chapter 30** \- September 5th—

Clear Mountain High School

' _This school is massive!'_ The Catholic school Madelyn was in is so tiny: three hundred kids, about. I'll bet this school has about two thousand. Madelyn signs up for an art class and she gets to have a study hall period. She has never had study hall before. Madelyn got so many phone calls that night. Nobody could believe that when she left class she never came back. They all heard Madelyn got expelled. Madelyn heard the unflappable Mrs. Schmidt had to leave for the day. ( _She came back the next day and told the class she was retiring at the end of the year. Fat chance of that.)_
**Chapter 31** \- September 6th —

Public School

Anyway, because of Madelyn's big mouth, her stubbornness and her righteous indignation, she's starting a new high school where she doesn't know anyone. Madelyn feels like such a geek. She doesn't have anywhere near the same feeling she had starting her first day back to VM. This school is HUGE. There are three floors in one building and two floors in the annex across the street. The annex used to be a middle school, but Clear Mountain has grown so much that the high school needed more space. Madelyn doesn't know any of the room names (they actually have names for some of the rooms here) or numbers. Madelyn's homeroom is in the music room; which is cool since there are records there, and instruments. The problem is that since it is a noisy room, it is faaar away from any of the rest of the classrooms.

The first couple of days Madelyn spent bumping into people, since she was holding her schedule, her little map (which was no help at all), and her books. What a dork. Just before she was ready to give up or burst into tears, she would stop someone and ask where her next class was. She was never even close. The kids and teachers aren't especially happy about taking time to stop and give directions. Madelyn's first day was their third, so they all thought Madelyn was pretty stupid for not having the floor plan memorized yet. The teachers don't seem especially friendly or helpful and they always have a look like they think you're up to no good.

' _I'm getting the hang of it all now. When you're new you have to figure out which way is up, first of all. I'm a pretty observant person. I'll get it - I will.'_

Not only is Madelyn busy finding her way around, but she's busy seeing what the other kids are doing. Like who hangs out with who? Who is liked and who isn't. It's hard to tell since the in-crowd is not nearly as well defined as it was at Madelyn's other high school. And anyway, if you're not in with the in-crowd, that's just fine here since there are plenty of other kids. From what Madelyn can see so far there don't appear to be any terrific chasms.

Madelyn thinks, _'Everyone's pretty tolerant. Much more so than at VM. Catholic School girls can be downright catty.'_

The biggest way to tell people apart is by the way they dress. It's interesting that even though there are no uniforms, kids in cliques dress alike. _'Go figure.'_ Here's a school where you can wear anything you want, anything, and you end up wearing the same lousy thing day after day. The girls have to wear skirts every day. Aside from that, you can really go for a look here, and depending on that look, you can hang out with other kids with a comparable look. You know what I mean? Once Madelyn figures her way around this school, she'll have to decide what she wants to look like. Madelyn doesn't want to hang with the collegiates. They are mostly jocks and cheerleaders. Madelyn figures they're the in-crowd since those are the people who mostly make up the in-crowd in VM. She could be wrong, but that familiar air of smug superiority surrounds them.

Those girls wear the preppy look, you know, villager, cable-knit, pull-over sweaters, with white shirts underneath with rounded collars that poke out around the top of the sweaters and they have engraved circle pins that hold the edges of the collars together. The skirts they wear are a-line plaid with a predominant pastel color that matches the sweater, stockings, and brown, leather penny loafers or pumps. They set their hair, and feather it out to hold its shape in a flip. Most times they wear a necklace, like a locket or pearls or a gold chain or sometimes a drop pearl. This is an outfit Madelyn could see wearing once in a while, and Madelyn thinks she will, but she won't make it a daily event. It is much too high maintenance for her. It's too much like a uniform, she thinks, but any outfit you wear every day is a uniform.

There are a handful hippies here. They're not a popular clique. She hears them called dirty hippies, or freaks, because supposedly they don't wash and they smell. She can't smell them. A lot of them wear army jackets and pants. The white hippy boys wear their hair long, over their collar, the black hippy boys and girls wear colorful dashiki shirts and afro hair. The white hippy girls wear their hair past their shoulders and VERY straight. They iron it. Sometimes they wear headbands. The white hippy girls wear cotton print dresses and skirts, mostly madras. (The collegiates wear madras too, but they wear it fitted and only in plaid.) A lot of them are like the geeks at Virgin Mother and they refer to themselves as freaks, but some of them intimidate her. Some of them do drugs. Madelyn isn't into that. Kristy Barker's handsome cousin is into drugs, and his brain is mud now, so she stays away from that stuff.

Madelyn likes the long, straight hair and madras skirts, though. Sometimes Madelyn irons her hair. What you do is put your head up against the ironing board, and with the iron on low; just pull your hair across the board. She has very bumpy hair, with a mind of its own. (Rita thinks it looks like Janis Joplin's—Madelyn doesn't.) Ironing is a lot of trouble and it gives you split ends like mad.

Madelyn won't wear the army fatigues either. It doesn't make sense to Madelyn to dress in army gear when you're anti-war. Most of the black girls and white girls wear pretty much just a dress, or a skirt and blouse with stockings and pumps or loafers. Again, not a far cry from a uniform. That's what Madelyn's been wearing these first couple of days. Only a handful of white kids are still the greasers or hoods, not nearly as many as at VM. It's an old look. Kinda fifties. The boys wear iridescent high rolls. These shirts have ridiculously big collars that come up the sides of their necks and back down, like dog ears. The shirts are a shiny, silky material, sometimes in bright colors. These guys wear tight black slacks and black pointy shoes, or little shoe-boots; and DA's. Girls wear teased short hair and greased down bangs, tight skirts and big blouses and pointy, shiny shoes with heals. Madelyn likes the big shirt, tight skirt look so every few weeks she succumbs to this way of dress, too.

Madelyn likes tight, short skirts and big blouses, with matching tights and matching shoes. Nobody else does that, not even in a magazine, or anything, but she thinks it looks far out. One day a collegiate—the next a hood. Madelyn is all over the map - clothes wise. This is the first time Madelyn doesn't have to wear a uniform to school since third grade. Madelyn doesn't have any friends here, she is pretty much on her own, so she can experiment with fashion and Madelyn doesn't want the same look every day. Madelyn doesn't have a clique to fit in with and she doesn't feel the same way every day. Some days Madelyn feels like dressing up, so she ends up looking like a collegiate or a hood. Some days she feels blah, so she ends up looking like a hippie or a geek. Some days she feels good about herself, then she wears something no one else does. ' _I'm digging it.'_

I'm not too worried about not having many friends here. Celeste keeps telling me, "We won't have to hire a hall for your funeral." Susan Holloman from St. Cassians (Remember Susan? Madelyn went on the shore trip with Susan) has been at CMHS since freshman year, and she really dislikes it. Madelyn and Susan aren't really friends, anymore, but Susan is lonely, and Madelyn is new, so now they hang out together once in a while. After school Madelyn still hangs out with her friends from VM; and she has the group. The boys in the group go to different Catholic boys' high schools together.

The girl who sits behind Madelyn in homeroom seems nice. Her name is Audrey. She wears hippie-type clothes and has long, straight, dirty-blonde hair. She has no particular style either. Madelyn starts to pal around with Audrey in school a little bit: she's turned out to be pretty smart and interesting. They have homeroom, gym and study hall together. Things are coming along. ' _I'm a lot happier here than at Virgin Mother already_.'
**Chapter 32** \- September 25th

\- Alone by Design

The weather is getting cooler and Madelyn still can't figure out where she will fit in, so she decides to kind of invent a personal style. Madelyn likes the styles of the forties. She likes the really old styles of say, Romeo and Juliet. The puffy sleeves, the long bodice and tight from under the bust to the waist. Madelyn can't buy the clothes she wants to wear so she designs them and she's teaching herself to sew.

She made a cape of muslin and lined it with a dark brown shiny lining. Madelyn made it much longer than the pattern. Madelyn's mother bought a piece of felt in Italy and a dog chewed a hole in it. Madelyn folded it up, put a pin in the front and a feather in the hole, and sometimes she wears that to school. Now I'm sure no one knows what to make of her. She bought tights to match her skirts and shoes and Madelyn settled into that as her look pretty much all the time now that it's cooler. Madelyn likes big sweaters and shirts.

Madelyn's shoulders and back are big. She has a sweater that someone had given Santé and he didn't seem to mind relinquishing it to her. So, a very short skirt, a very big shirt, a calf length cape and a big hat with a feather in it side-ways, and she is off to school.

She still has to take the public bus. She still has to walk up to Park Street. Madelyn's mother goes to the terminal every three months or so to get Madelyn passes. Now that she's in public school they don't have to pay for her to take the bus to school. The commuter, businessmen have a bit of a hard time dealing with Madelyn on their bus. They are in their ties and suits, and she isn't. They will adjust.

I don't want to get too long winded about the fashion stuff. I don't want to bore anybody, but when you're in high school, what you look like and where you fit in are one and the same. That's all. The way Madelyn has been dressing, she just doesn't fit in anywhere. Besides that, it is junior year. Everybody already has friends.

[A new band, "Cream," just came out with a new album. What can I tell you? It's out of sight. It is only Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. Their sound is radical. I'm going to buy it today.]
**Chapter 33** \- September 27th —

Betty Shabazz

The juniors had an assembly in the auditorium. They showed a documentary film about Malcolm X. He was killed when Madelyn was twelve, so she doesn't remember a lot about him, only that he was getting tired of non-violent demonstrations, and didn't always agree with Martin Luther King about the best way to attain equality, so it was pretty interesting. In the film the white supremacist group Black Legion burned his home to the ground when he was four, then killed his father when he was six and the police didn't do anything about it. We found out that when he was thirteen his favorite teacher told him that, "Becoming a lawyer was no realistic goal for a nigger." So he dropped out and turned to crime. In prison he converted to the Nation of Islam and followed Elijah Muhammad, whom he considered a prophet. The followers of Elijah Muhammad had the last name X. Malcolm changed his name from Little to X to signify his lost tribal name. (Little was a slave name.)

In the documentary, Malcolm was shown saying something like he wouldn't mind if a plane full of white people were to crash. The white kids in the auditorium started booing and yelling. Some of them walked out. Some of them were yelling they shouldn't have to listen to this crap. Where was somebody from the school to tell them to shut-up? A lot of them kept yelling during the part of the film that said he left the Nation of Islam when he found out Elijah Muhammad was having affairs and illegitimate children with like six different women.

In 1964 Malcolm founded the Muslim Masque, Inc. and changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Later that year he took a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that really changed him. He said that there he met blonde-haired, blue-eyed men who he could call brother. He returned from Mecca with a message for all races. He started preaching integration and brotherhood.

The white kids shouted all through this. Why didn't anybody stop them? A few teachers were along the sides, but they didn't even try to stop these jerks from acting up. Not a peep, not a whistle, not a, "Come on boys, other people want to hear this." Nothing.

Malcolm proposed the philosophy that all people could get along. Black people, white people, brown people, yellow people and red people. He had begun preaching peace and unity for the races at the end of his life. That's what ultimately got him killed. The Nation of Islam burned his house, then, in February 1965; three men shot him to death. So many white kids yelled right up to the end. They didn't want to hear any of it.

After the film, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's widow, was in the library answering questions for anyone who had a free period.

Audrey and Madelyn were excited about that, but had gym after the assembly. After gym though, they changed like a couple of mad women, and tore upstairs to the library, excited to see her.

They're running as they reach the library and push open the swinging doors hoping Mrs. Shabazz will still be there. They're red-faced, giddy, sweaty and out of breath from running there directly from gym. They stride into the library and their exhilaration turns instantly to shock and dismay. Their anticipation turns to shame.

The white boys in the library have Mrs. Shabazz surrounded! They raise their fists at her. They raise their voices at her. They treat her like a criminal. How horrible! How embarrassing! Malcolm's widow's trying to explain how Malcolm had a change of heart; how he thought all people could get along; but she can't get through to them. Apparently, all people can't get along. All people are not as open-minded and open to change as Malcolm had been. Those boys won't let up. They won't listen.

Audrey and Madelyn stop in their tracks and stand in the back and watch in disgust and disbelief. Here Mrs. Shabazz keeps trying to advocate love and acceptance, and receiving only hate and rejection in return. Madelyn doesn't know how Mrs. Shabazz can stand it.

Audrey turns to Madelyn, "What's this? What's going on?" This degrading sight isn't what they expected.

A very large, black man steps in from the side of the room and says, "Mrs. Shabazz must leave now," and takes her from out of the middle of that ugly horde of ignorant louts.

"Good." ' _No one deserves to be treated like that. This is an obviously good woman. Why is that behavior allowed? Why isn't the school moderating? Why are these preppies allowed to get away with this vulgar behavior? This blows!''_
**Chapter 34** \- Madelyn's Classes

This year Madelyn takes third year French, Art, English, Gym, History, and Math. Of course, with Madelyn's luck, her new Math teacher sucks. The woman's such an idiot; practically everything she says is wrong. Linda and Madelyn sit in the back of the class, shout out corrections, write, and draw on the black board that is right next to their desks. The teacher can't say much to them since they are right and she's a moron, but after a while, even Madelyn's sick of being such a pain in the ass. Madelyn got tired of correcting her sometime during September. Now she just sits quietly in the back and draws.

So here Madelyn went to the trouble of changing schools to get away from a lousy math teacher and she ends up with somebody almost as bad, only without the demagogal personality disorder.
**Chapter 35** \- A Friend!

"I dig your tights."

Madelyn doesn't react. She's not used to talking, or having anyone talk to her, on the trek across the street to the Annex between classes, so she isn't paying attention. Then Madelyn hears it again, "I like your tights." Madelyn's brain grinds into gear, since she happens to be wearing tights; it occurs to her, it's possible the voice might be talking to her. Madelyn keeps walking and turns to see who's talking.

There's no one there she recognizes, so she asks the girl behind her if she's talking to her. She grins at Madelyn and says, "I dig your tights."

Madelyn notices the girl is wearing tights, too, so Madelyn cleverly responds, "I dig your tights."

They chuckle. She quickens her pace a bit to walk alongside Madelyn. How considerate. "I dig your look. I see you every day in English and I decided to buy these brown tights to match this skirt," the girl says.

Madelyn glances over at her again, and sure enough she has on a brown mini-skirt, brown tights and brown loafers. What a nice compliment.

' _Wow, she noticed my fashion statement.'_ She seems sweet, very bubbly. She's shorter than Madelyn and way thinner, Twiggy thin, her hair is about Madelyn's color, maybe a little darker, and pulled back into a loose ponytail. Madelyn's grateful for the company on the walk. Madelyn realizes she's wearing her navy blue mini-skirt, navy blue tights and navy blue shoes. ( _My hoody shoes._ )

"They're way cheaper," Madelyn says.

"What? These were like four bucks; I can get panty hose for like fifty cents," the brown-tighted girl says, puzzled.

"Well yeah, but they don't run. Tights last forever," Madelyn states, "those fifty cent panty hose last about a day," Madelyn laughs, "If that." They both laugh, "And you can get um to match your skirt."

"Yeah, that's what I like;" the girl nods her approval. "You're in my English class; my name's Michelle."

"Hey Mike," someone shouts from across the road.

"Hi," she smiles brightly, jumps slightly and waives.

"Hi, Mikey," someone else greets her as they pass along the sidewalk.

' _Obviously, this girl knows a lot of people.'_

Then she says, "Most people call me Mikey."

"I figured," Madelyn replies, "or Mike?"

They talk a little about walking across the street to the class, and what a drag it is. Once, they get to class they split up since you have to sit in your assigned seat in this small, amphitheater-type room.

Mikey sits two levels up and just behind Madelyn's shoulder, just out of her line of vision, that's why Mikey knows who Madelyn is, and Madelyn hadn't seen Mikey. Madelyn got this crappy seat on the floor in an added desk on the side of the room because Madelyn was two days late for the first class.

Now Madelyn meets Mikey by the wall of the outdoor amphitheater and they walk to English class in the annex together.

When they're not in school, they usually hang out at the Bonds' parking lot on nights they don't have dates and sometimes on nights they do. ' _Mikey's a lot of fun. She knows lots of people and she's so friggin' upbeat and happy all the time—it's contagious.'_

Bonds' parking lot is a happening place on warm fall weekends. This one knows that one from here or from there; so if you know just one kid, you hang with him and his friends for the night. Then the next weekend maybe you know one of the kids you met from last week's circle and you meet who he's with. The nights Mikey's there, man, she knows all kinds of kids. On nights they don't have dates, Madelyn gets to meet all Mikey's friends. She has some very cool friends. They hang around with this one kid, Spencer Haynes, a lot. Spence is cute, tall, and funny. He's the only black person Madelyn knows with freckles. Every once in a while, Madelyn will see someone she knows from CMH—like this guy she dated over the summer. It turns out this guy's the Captain of the football team. Man, he's always dripping with chicks. (No accountin' for taste.) Some nights you know just about everybody in the lot and then it's like a big party.
**Chapter 36** \- October 1st

\- Colored or Black?

The only class Mikey and Madelyn have together is English. Their English teacher is white, late thirties, and very fidgety. Annoyingly fidgety. She has a brunette pageboy and beady little eyes. Man, she just can't sit still. Madelyn thinks maybe black people make her nervous, and there are a lot of black kids in this class. Probably two-thirds. Madelyn's town is considered pretty ritzy. A lot of rich people live here. There are two towns in one. They both go to the same high school, different schools from Kindergarten through Eighth, though. Clear Mountain has more really big mansions, I'd say, but Upper Clear Mountain, for some reason, is considered wealthier.

Madelyn happens to live on the street that is the dividing line. Madelyn lives on the Upper Clear Mountain side of the street. The houses on the other side of Madelyn's block are actually nicer than her side. But when Madelyn says she lives in Upper Clear Mountain to an out of towner, they will invariably say, "Oooh, Upper Clear Mountain." It is that side of the street that puts them in a different Parish than Virgin Mother and that's why they paid more to go to that high school. Clear Mountain has the area with the huge mansions; but, also has an area of older homes turned into apartments. This area is near Bloomfield Avenue and the train station. By most other town standards, this still would be considered a particularly nice area. Other towns, even towns in New Jersey, make this area of Clear Mountain look pretty damn good. By Clear Mountain standards, though, this is the poor section of town. There's a pretty considerable black population in that neighborhood. Consequently, Clear Mountain High is about one-third black.

Black is a relatively new word: not that it's a new word, but all growing up, people with dark skin, were referred to as colored or Negro, but mostly colored. Now, Madelyn thinks, mostly thanks to Mohamed Ali and Malcolm X, they are 'black.' It always takes some getting used to. Cassias Clay is now Mohammed Ali. All that's okay. Didn't Shakespeare say, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." So, Madelyn figures, whatever it takes to make a person feel good about himself is okay by her. The way Madelyn sees it, black people are certainly more than entitled, we've been making them feel as though the Declaration of Independence wasn't written for them for long enough.

"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is such a great concept. All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. ' _Black people just want to claim those rights, is what I think. White people don't understand because they don't think about it.'_ Madelyn thinks about all kinds of stuff all the time. ' _My brain flutters around like a hummingbird. It's hard to hold onto a thought sometimes.'_ So Madelyn thinks maybe she can see things from a lot of different points of view. Like this summer, the Olympic Games were going to be boycotted by black athletes. Harry Edwards formed a group called Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). The boycott never happened because the athletes had trained too hard for too long to miss the games. I can understand that. But two of the athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos staged a phenomenal protest. Smith won the gold medal and Carlos the bronze in the 200-meter race. As they stood on the podium, while the national anthem played, they lowered their heads and raised their fists. It was righteous. Madelyn was so excited as she watched, she jumped up, pointed to the TV—the silver medalist, Peter Norman of Australia (who is white), was wearing an OPHR badge.

What Madelyn hadn't noticed, and found out later, is that they wore black socks (and no shoes) to represent black poverty in racist America. What an outstanding statement! Madelyn was so let down when they were thrown off the team and asked to leave the village for that. Doesn't that suck?! So much for freedom of speech.

All that junk bothers Madelyn. She thinks the Black Panthers are right to be protesting, because she heard most of the front lines in combat in Vietnam, are black; so, most of the casualties are black. There are more blacks in the military because you can get out of the army just by being in college, and since a lot of black families can't afford college, they end up getting drafted. And out of them, for some reason that probably isn't fair, more black boys go to the front lines than white boys do. That's what she heard. _'And if I get pissed off about it, I think I'd be really pissed if I were a black teenage boy. So, I think Black Power is very apropos for these times.''_

It bothers Madelyn that black people should even need 'Black Power.' Madelyn was pretty little, when they were on vacation in Virginia, Madelyn's father asked an older black man for directions to some street. That poor man didn't know what to think. He kept repeating, "I don't want no trouble. What you doin', mister? I don't want no trouble," and he never looked up. Santé was pretty POed that he wouldn't give directions. But that old colored man was just scared.

It bothers Madelyn to hear a white person say Colored or Negro just because they don't want to give black people enough respect to change. ' _How dumb is that?_ ' All this junk bothers her. It bothers Madelyn that someone who teaches in a school that is one-third black could be so nervous around black people.
**Chapter 37** \- October 10th

\- Blue Jean Bell-Bottoms

' _Mikey found this army-navy surplus store, near Bloomfield Avenue in Bloomfield, that sells blue jean bell-bottoms! Mikey says she read that kids in California are wearing them. We traveled there and each bought ourselves a pair. She couldn't get ones that fit so she bought ones that are too big so she can get as much length out of them as she can. Mine aren't the same because the only ones that fit have this kind of horseshoe stitching on the rear-end. I got them home and threw them in the wash with some bleach, and soaked them to try to make them look faded. The bleach made a big flower design on them, which isn't what I wanted, but what the hell, it looks cool. (Mikey is a little upset with me about the bleach. Her mother won't let her bleach hers and now we don't match.) I took in the legs and added material to the bottoms. I had a brown patterned material, so I used that. I made them too long and I kind of step on them as I walk. (Oh well.) Man, this is great! I wish I could wear them to school.'_

[There are more and more rock and roll bands. Everyone said it wouldn't last. Two or three years tops. Like Swing. But these guys keep on trukin'. Elvis Presley is still on the charts, sure. Madelyn still digs The Stones and The Beatles and Dylan. But there are tons of new groups. It's far out. I've heard of these two new girl songwriters who are righteous—Joni Mitchell and Laura Nero. Both Credence Clearwater Revival and Sly and the Family Stone have a couple of songs in the top ten.]
**Chapter 38** \- French Class

Sean O'Sullivan is another new kid at CMH. (Could you get a more Irish name?) He's in Madelyn's third year French class. The thing about third year French is, you only have to take two years of a language, so only kids serious about the language are taking it. To tell you the truth, Madelyn was kind of taking it because she thought it would be easy. ' _Big, big mistake! These kids learned a lot more than I did in Catholic School the first two years. They're speaking French in class. I've never even heard it spoken. That's probably why I thought it was easy. They never did any of this stuff. At this point I'm just hoping to pass for the year.'_

Sean is fine! He lives in Upper Clear Mountain so sometimes he walks Madelyn part of the way home. He comes into French class every day and sits in the front row all the way over by the windows. After attendance he leans forward and pulls his P-coat over his head, then puts his head down, so it looks like it's just the coat draped over the desk. What a panic. He says he sleeps. Our teacher never notices.

Our French teacher is young—this is her first year teaching. She's cute, she's funny and she's really excited about French. She said she expects us to all be speaking French throughout the class. ' _Man, did we let her down. She had this image of a bright, cheery class of eager learners all babbling away about anything and everything, in French. Obviously, we didn't have the same image. It would be enjoyable if she could make that work, but our French language skills don't measure up to the task. Mine certainty do not.'_

The class had to pick a French individual to write about and give an oral presentation. Madelyn chose Toulouse Lautrec. Madelyn's so nervous. She hates talking in front of people—she gets nauseous.

Madelyn stood in front of the class and read from her paper, her leg shook so hard her heel hammered the linoleum the whole time. So mortifying! Madelyn's talk went surprisingly okay, probably since it's such a small class. After Madelyn gave her talk, there was a question and answer period, and after it was apparent that the questions were over with, Madelyn called on Sean, just to be a pain in the ass. He lifted his head up from under his coat, a dribble of drool on his cheek. His head wobbled as he sleepily said, "Yes?" The whole class roared.
**Chapter 39** \- October 17th

\- Gym Class

Madelyn never had to do sports the way she did at Clear Mountain high. During gym class in Catholic school, they mostly just stood around outside in an old parking lot wearing dopey uniforms. Sometimes the greasers would stand in the shade and smoke cigarettes. You never had to worry about breaking a sweat or a nail. I mean, the closest you ever came to a sport was dodge ball.

At CMH they play all kinds of actual sports like this time of year they do gymnastics. Madelyn never even heard of gymnastics outside of the Olympics. All the rest of the girls are not only familiar with the equipment, but a lot of them are radical. They can fling themselves around on those uneven parallel bars like gravity's superfluous and their hipbones are made of rubber. Madelyn looks at them, and she sees the way they fly from one bar to the other, and after the awe wears off she gets filled with apprehension—followed by panic.

' _My gosh, it looks painful!'_ But you have to do it if you want to pass gym. This semester the girls have to be able to use every piece of gymnastics equipment and they get graded on each piece separately.

This one day, when they were on line to vault the horse, Madelyn decides to confide in the girl in front of her that she has never even seen any of this equipment before. The girl in front of Madelyn is really good and Madelyn knows she's going to look like some kind of buffoon vaulting just after her. A few of the girls on the line around her begin trying to coach her a little and talk her through it.

Sheila is one of the girls helping Madelyn, which is particularly encouraging since she is the best athlete in the class. She looks it too: she's thin and very muscular. Sheila is the head of the militant, black-girl clique. She's the type who won't say hi to you if you're white and she sees you in the hall. Madelyn heard she fights. Madelyn heard she carries a knife. Madelyn doesn't know her or anything about her so she wants to give Sheila the benefit of the doubt.

The other thing Madelyn doesn't know is all while Sheila was growing up her mother worked for a white family who always called her 'little brown baby' to her face and 'that nigger baby' when they thought she couldn't hear, because they didn't want to bother learning her name. Madelyn doesn't know Sheila's family has never owned a car, and after they took the bus to the white family's house they had to walk around back and wait to be let in through the kitchen. Even though they'd arrive on time every day, sometimes they waited like ten minutes to get in, even in the rain or the cold. Madelyn doesn't know that Sheila's family eats leftovers and wears hand-me-downs and they sell the nicer hand-me-downs to pay for incidentals like heat. Madelyn doesn't know that the white family, who wears Sheila's mother out with so much work, feels like they're doing her a favor whenever they pay her that meager salary, or give her those leftover meals or old clothes: and Sheila had to say, "Thank you so much, Mam, you're too kind," even though she felt like they were putting her down. Which they were.

Madelyn doesn't trust the things she hears about people, but she has to admit, Sheila's a bit intimidating. That doesn't stop her though, crazy person that she is, Madelyn's been continuing the agenda she had going at VM, so she always says hi to her, regardless. Madelyn tries her best to act as though Sheila's tough demeanor doesn't faze her.

Madelyn eventually wore her down with her obligatory indifference.

Lately she's been lifting her chin slightly to Madelyn in recognition; even though that small gesture elicits snarls from the girls Sheila's with.

Madelyn thinks the fact that she's taking the time to coach her a little is pretty far out.

The gym teacher's a short, sturdy, middle-aged, masculine, white woman, with short, grayish-brown hair. She's the type to call you sissy and baby. She refers to her class as girls in a derogatory way, even though it's an all girl gym class. She's constantly on Madelyn's case because she can't do anything. ' _(Well I can, I can do lots of stuff, just not this stuff and not very well, because I never learned it.) I'm not very muscular but I'm tall and strong, I can run fast, and stuff like that. Until now I considered myself pretty athletic.'_

The other thing that's different about Clear Mountain High is, they have to take a shower after gym, and it's part of the grade. Madelyn has a study period after gym, so in the beginning of the year, Madelyn lagged behind, and then showered and changed.

Madelyn found that showering with a bunch of other girls is like diving off the high dive. It's scary at first, but then, after you do it once, you can do it again. Madelyn convinces herself, if she isn't looking at anybody else, they aren't looking at her. It took about six weeks to get to that point. Anyway, getting dressed without showering after gym class is pretty disgusting. If you're all sweaty, then take off your smelly, sweaty gym clothes and put back on your school clothes, it's pretty gross.

The high school has a dress code, girls have to wear dresses. Try putting on pantyhose over sweaty legs. They don't want to go up. You have to coax them every inch of the way. Plus that, deodorant only works right if you put it on over clean skin. It doesn't cover up the smell of sweat so it's just better to shower after gym because, in this gym class, for the first time in Madelyn's school career, she gets really sweaty.

' _Nevertheless, it's not that I'm a wimp, I have never done and I just don't know how to do all of the things Mrs. Dick expects us to do.'_

Another day Mrs. Dick was standing with her fists on her hips, ragging on Madelyn for not being able to use the parallel bars. Madelyn was flabbergasted when Sheila told Mrs. Dick, in her best tough-girl voice, that Madelyn hadn't gone to their school before and never had to do gymnastics before. Mrs. Dick maintained her stance. Her fists stuck to her hips, she wasn't about to be out-toughed, but you could see her go a little pale and her shoulders round slightly, then she straightened up and insisted any other public school would teach the same sports. Madelyn told Mrs. Dick she went to Virgin Mother. Her expression changed from disdain to a questioning smirk. She looked at Madelyn a while longer, her expression changed a few more times, then she walked away. Madelyn tried to thank Sheila later but she shook her off.
**Chapter 40** \- Junior Assembly

Mikey and Madelyn sit together in the auditorium. They just know they're there to see a film for the juniors. Turns out it's some outdated film on slavery. Instead of showing the horrors of slavery, it's just telling about how and why it occurred. It really looks as though it's trying to justify slavery. It's stupid and it just makes me angry. At one point in the film this old, white woman discusses her childhood days on the plantation. She talks about owning slaves, and how benevolent her family was toward them. "We thought of them as advanced pets," she reminisces.

I can feel Mikey shiver and take in a swift breath. She leans over to me and gasps, "How could that woman say that!" She looks at me bewildered. Her eyes are wide and glistening, like she's searching my white face for some answer, some assurance that that old lady is wrong. Mikey's voice trembles, "They didn't think of us as pets?!" She starts to cry.

' _I have no words. What can I say?'_

Madelyn rubs Mikey's back. Mikey, usually so bouncy and energetic, is suddenly frail and small. The power of those seven words cut her right to her core, like part of her spirit was cut out of her body. Her shoulders shook as she gulped her tears. Madelyn tries to soothe her by saying lame things like, "She was just a stupid, old lady. She had no right being in that film." Madelyn can't let on, but in her head she knows that stupid, old lady was being truthful: how else could she have been cold enough to say the things she said?

What is the school doing, showing a film like this? What insensitive creeps! During the Malcolm X film the irate white kids disrupted the film. None of the black kids in the auditorium are saying anything now. Now the unsympathetic documentary continues to the end without incident.

The rest of the film Madelyn spent saying stupid stuff like, "That old lady looked like she smelled. She did, didn't she; she looked like a smelly, old lady." But neither of them laugh.

Madelyn feels so inadequate. Mikey is so wounded: Madelyn knows she can only just imagine but she can never truly understand.

The film is over. Mikey, still shaking, repeats, "Advanced pets?"

' _I sit with Mikey as the auditorium empties out. Words are so powerful. White people are so rarely in a situation like that. Only recently, with the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, are white people hearing negative things about us, but even still, nothing as hideous as that. Those words devastated Mikey and there was nothing I could do or say. Outside the auditorium we separate, and I start off to class. One of the teachers must have seen us and thought there was a problem. He asks me what the problem was. I tell him that the film upset her. He wants to know why. What a Mo!'_

Madelyn tells the teacher it's pretty insensitive for the school to show a film like that, especially in these times. He says they always show that film to the juniors this time of year. Madelyn tells him that, given the circumstances, she thinks it isn't appropriate. She thinks it's hurtful and insensitive especially the comment about the advanced pets. He says it's just a documentary and it's supposed to teach about what things were like in the time of slavery. Madelyn says she doesn't think it works in this day in age, it didn't apologize or anything. She says if Mikey was hurt by it, there were probably other kids hurt too. Madelyn says we all know about slavery, and she doesn't see the point to show it in a film like that. He says maybe the school should think about not showing it anymore.

' _Maybe they should? Gee, do ya think? Jerk! Maybe they should?!'_ Madelyn replies, "Yeah, maybe you should." He says he'll talk to the administration about it. Madelyn leaves; she's late for class. ' _They show that film this time every year! What kind of lame excuse is that! Nobody in the school's administration thought to maybe discontinue this antiquated film? Nobody thought, especially with the tensions that are running so high, that at least this year, maybe they shouldn't show that film? Unbelievable! Watching the film, I was thinking about the insensitivity of the people in the film, but now I can't believe the insensitivity of the school. By not thinking, they've really hurt my friend. Idiots!'_
**Chapter 41** \- October 25th

\- Who Wears the Pants?

' _We got an early snow, and clumsy me, I fell on both knees walking across the street to the annex between classes. I sit down at my desk in English class. One of the boys from the upper back row points out my knees to our fidgety teacher. The teacher doesn't respond right away because the boy is black, she scolds him and told him to be quiet, but he insists that she look at my knees. I look down, too, to see my legs covered in blood. The teacher sends me to the nurse.'_ The nurse looks at Madelyn's knees and sucks air in between her teeth and her shoulders shudder. The Nurse has Madelyn put her leg up into the sink so she can wash her knee. ' _She doesn't like how I am washing it so she helps me scrub.'_

"You should be wearing stockings," the nurse tells Madelyn.

"I got a late start," Madelyn replies, "but a fat lot a good stockings would a done me."

"It would have been something."

"Yeah, the only thing that would've gotten me is ripped stockings."

They both laugh.

Madelyn hoists her other leg up into the sink. She can feel the blood stream down the wet, clean leg.

They start cleaning the other knee. "Doesn't that hurt?"

' _Hell yes it hurts! You're shoving this coarse, wet gauze covered in stinky antiseptic soap into an open hole where skin used to be!'_ "Yeah."

A wicked little grin sweeps across her face, "When I do this to the football players they holler and cry like babies."

"Oh, yeah?" Madelyn says. "I was thinking I should start wearing pants."

The nurse goes, "You should."

I thought it was illegal. There's a girl in another state who's been fighting to wear pants to school since last year. That's some fight, huh?

Her case has made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Madelyn hopes she wins.

Armed with her bloody knees and her desire to wear her new blue jean bell-bottoms, Mikey and Madelyn decide to wear pants to school the next day—but not the blue-jeans–just yet.

We got a lot of comments from the kids and a lot of negative votes from the in-crowd girls but not one teacher or school administrator said anything to either of us. Maybe that nurse said something to them about my bloody knees. So we decided to do it again. We're having a great time!

The following week a few other girls show up in pants.

The second week more and more girls are wearing pants. We're giving each other the black power fist as we pass each other in the halls and on the trek across the street.

The pants thing is catching on so well Mikey and Madelyn decide to try out their new blue jeans.

Mikey has sewn lots of stuff on hers since she couldn't bleach them. Each time Madelyn sees Mikey outside of school her jeans have some more adornment. She has a real nice embroidered ribbon stitched down the side seams and some patches and flowers along the pockets and the bottom. ' _Mine look like hell next to hers, but together we think we look far out.'_ We both get so many questions about where we found the blue jean bell-bottoms. I'm meeting a lot of new people! Radical! Still we haven't heard a peep out of the school. Meanwhile the Supreme Court's supposed to bring down a decision on the constitutionality of dress codes in public schools sometime soon.
**Chapter 42** \- Racial Tension

' _This is crazy! This is just insanity. It's a road headed toward chaos!'_

The school halls are filled with groups of kids all talking about this girl who got raped. A girl Madelyn barely knows says this white girl got raped by a black boy. Then she heard the girl was new so nobody knew her. The next thing Madelyn heard about it was the boy used a compass - the kind with the point that you use to draw a circle.

Madelyn is horrified. ' _Outrageous!'_

There are groups of black kids all talking to each other and looking at the white kids: and there are groups of white kids all talking to each other and looking at the black kids. "We should do something," some of the white kids are saying.

The bell rings and they all file into their homerooms. Between every class you can see groups of nervous kids talking. Nobody seems to know who the boy was or who the girl is but everybody's upset. This goes on all day between classes and in the lunchroom there are little scuffles, some pushing and yelling. Teachers try to move the kids along, but most aren't listening. Tempers remain pretty high especially among the preppy, in-crowd white boys. The preppie girls say things to their boyfriends like, "You should do something. What if it were me? What are you going to do about it?" And they act all scared and clingy.

Pretty near the end of the school day somebody tells Madelyn the girl nobody knows is Susan Holloman. Madelyn can't believe it! ' _I hope she's all right.'_ When Madelyn gets home she calls Susan to see how she is. Much to Madelyn's surprise, she sounds fine; in fact she invites Madelyn over. Madelyn asks Susan if she's sure she's up to it. She says she is, and it would be nice to see somebody she knows and get away from this craziness for a while. Madelyn agrees to come over after school tomorrow.
**Chapter 43** \- Solitude

' _Oh shit! Celeste's up off the couch!'_

"You ungrateful, horrible thing you. See what you make me do?"

"What?" Celeste swings, Madelyn ducks, "What did you have to do?"

"Everything! I do everything for you!" she claws at Madelyn and tears her patchwork vest.

' _Oh man!'_ "What? What are you talking about?" ' _What is it this time?'_

"The things I do for you. The things you make me do!" Celeste wails.

Madelyn tries to dodge past her.

Celeste kicks Madelyn in the back of the knee and Madelyn falls against the stairs, "You horrible ungrateful thing," Celeste hisses.

"What? What are you talking about? Why am I ungrateful?" Madelyn pleads, getting to her feet.

"I let you transfer out of Virgin Mother! And I didn't have to do anything, when you had pneumonia when you were six months old, then you would've died and everyone would've been so sorry for me! You'd've died of pneumonia! Babies die all the time!"

"You could've sent me to the hospital, if it was so hard on you!" Madelyn yells back at her. Celeste stops and looks at Madelyn like she's stupid.

"I didn't want you to live," Celeste says coolly.

' _Jesus, what set her off this time?'_

She punches Madelyn's arm, "Now look what I had to do."

"What? Mom, tell me what you did?"

"I had to give your cat away. I could see that cat was a comfort to you, and you don't deserve any comfort. Since you took away my only chance of happiness, you don't deserve any happiness."

When Madelyn was young she could turn off the pain. She thought of herself as one of those Spartans, but this kind of pain is much tougher to handle.

'I feel so numb and sick to my stomach. I feel hollow. I feel helpless.'

Celeste continues to slap Madelyn's arms and face, punch her body, and pull Madelyn's hair, but now Madelyn doesn't duck, she doesn't back off; she doesn't even notice it much. Madelyn can't understand the words her mother is screaming at her. She makes no sense, her words have no meaning.

' _She's tired of hitting me. I've exhausted her.'_

In 'The Hobbit' the evil characters have terrible disfigured bodies and faces. But, in real life, evil can look like someone who is supposed to love you.

Madelyn goes upstairs, this time without Bow. She puts 'Simon and Garfunkel' on the turntable and puts the needle onto the track, "I am a Rock". ' _I'm careful not to play it too loud because tomorrow my record player will be gone.'_ Madelyn plays it over and over. She gets her guitar and softly works out the cords. ( _A lot of fast cord changes in that song._ ) Madelyn plays folk songs with a lot of finger picking when she's upset. When Madelyn feels good she likes to pound the shit out of the strings. She doesn't know what she would do if her mother took away her guitar or music. The music makes Madelyn feel better.

The hollowness of the guitar fills with resonance and Madelyn's emptiness fills with music. ' _My guitar has such a nice sound. It's made of a dark wood that smells good. It has black catgut strings that sound so sweet and low. I can feel the music through my forearm, in my ribs, on my leg, and I can smell the wood of the guitar and it fortifies me. I have to put the guitar down now, because if she ever knew what a comfort it is to me, it would be gone and I couldn't take it. I can't let Celeste catch me playing it.'_

Madelyn lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling and lets the power of music heal her.

' _Music is magic. It's an entity. It is a being. Music has a soul. It's a friend. The sanctuary of an empty church, or being alone in the woods is like peace through music. A sad song, when I feel sad, defines my feeling and I feel better. A happy song, when I'm sad, makes me feel better. I lie here and there's only the music. I become part of the music. It surrounds me, permeates me and lifts me up, and for a while the barrenness is vanquished.'_

' _I better get my butt downstairs and clean and make dinner to save my music!'_
**Chapter 44** \- November 5th

\- Everybody's Uptight

The next day, school's no better. Maybe even a little worse. Paranoia spread like a virus. Madelyn sees more white kids getting heated saying they should do something, Madelyn sees more black kids looking nervous trying to think of what they should do if the white kids do something. Lots of kids are missing. Mikey's nowhere to be found. Maybe she's sick, maybe she's scared, maybe she's here but doesn't want to be seen with Madelyn because maybe she feels she has to stick with the black kids.

When kids would say, "We should do something."

Even though she suspects they aren't talking about doing something to the kid who did that to Susan, Madelyn would say, "What you mean? What should we do? They don't even know who the kid was. Do they?"

Some of the kids are talking about doing something to all the black kids or maybe just a couple of the black boys. And now it is not just the incrowders, it's like, a lot of kids. Madelyn keeps saying 'that's insane', or 'there's nothing we should do', or 'that's just wrong'. But mostly she finds herself asking, "What are you talking about? What do you think we should do?" Trying to get them to put a face on the "something." ' _This whole thing's shaping up into a full-fledged race riot. The swirls of emotion are heating into tornadoes. The school halls are like pots on a stove. Yesterday, you could see the steam coming out of the pots, today you can see the bubbles forming.'_ Madelyn's afraid that tomorrow the pot will be on full boil. It's outrageous how every black kid is now a target for what one kid was supposed to have done. Who knew if he was even from the school? ' _You hear about mob mentality and you wonder how that can happen, you figure that people who get swept up must be morons.'_ Madelyn hasn't been going to school with these kids for long, but she sees some of the white troublemakers and she knows from being in class with them, they're not stupid. ' _It's scary.'_

A lot of them are class officers, some are in the debate club, and some are in the honor club. They're ignorant obviously, but not stupid, so Madelyn's getting scared.

After school Madelyn goes over to Susan's house. Susan's surprisingly cool and collected. Maybe she doesn't know about the craziness at school. Madelyn decides to ask Susan about the rumor because Madelyn figures Susan would want someone to confide in. Susan shuts her up and changes the subject. Madelyn doesn't press her; maybe she's just too upset to talk about it. Susan lies on her bed and Madelyn sits on the floor; they read fashion magazines and talk about their Grammar School. Susan starts telling Madelyn how much she hates public school, and how her parents won't pay for her to go to Catholic school, when her mother knocks on the door.

Susan yells, "I'm busy," but her mother opens the door anyway. Two policemen are waiting in the hall, and her mother says they want to talk to her. Susan hops up off of her bed, she turns all red and starts screaming and flailing her arms around.

' _Oh my god, I know that look! That's the look my mother gets when she's so filled with hate and rage.'_

"I already talked to them! Get them out of here! I don't wanna talk to them anymore!" She screams, pushing at her mother. She begins thrashing around, throwing her body against the bed, then against the wall and howling like she's possessed. Madelyn can't make out what the policeman want—maybe to take her for an exam. They seem concerned about Susan, but they aren't budging. She wonders how things could have gotten this far even though Susan hasn't been examined. Madelyn figures a compass would have done some verifiable damage. Why wouldn't Susan go with them to be examined and prove she was assaulted?

Madelyn assumes the cops probably want to ask Susan something, so she stands in the hall behind the policemen and she waits for things to simmer down. Susan keeps on freaking out. Madelyn hopes the cops ask her what she thinks because now Madelyn suspects Susan might be lying. ' _I mean two minutes ago, no, two seconds ago, she was perfectly fine. Happy, in fact. I don't think if I had been raped, I would be able to lie on my bed and giggle over fashion magazines.'_

Susan's mother finally says, "Maybe you should leave." So Madelyn leaves.

Madelyn's head's really spinning. The whole school is in such turmoil. The school halls are seething with hate. Madelyn keeps thinking—Susan's lying. ' _I know she's lying. That was an act. That had to be an act.'_ Madelyn hopes the cops could see that. Madelyn hopes Susan's mother could see that. Madelyn hopes the cops could tell by the look on her face that she thought Susan was acting. Her performance was that of a selfish, conniving liar—just like Madelyn's mother. ' _Susan has all the girls at school feeling sorry for her.'_ Hell, Madelyn felt really sorry for her until those cops showed up. ' _Why is she saying this? Just because she doesn't like public school? Maybe she just likes the pity? I don't know. I really never knew Susan all that well, and now I'm sure I don't know her at all. Her behavior makes no sense to me, no sense of all.'_

Madelyn can't sleep because she doesn't know what to do.

She writes–

Why can't you cry?

Why can't you feel hurt?

or Guilt?

or anything?

Why don't your eyes become dewy?

Are you numb?

Are you callous?

What the hell is the matter with you?

The next day school is horrible. Kids are being held back by other kids so they won't fight. Each time Madelyn sees a group of white kids together, even though she doesn't know them, Madelyn goes up and joins in on the conversation to say she doesn't think anything happened and she tries to calm them down. She says thing like, "Maybe the girl's lying," to which other girls look at Madelyn like she is a traitor to her sex and ask, "Why on earth would she do a thing like that?"

' _Good question.'_

The white kids are supposed to have a meeting in the annex auditorium; and the black kids will have a meeting in the main auditorium. This sounds very bad. Whatever they want to say they should just announce or something.

At the all white assembly Madelyn is surprised the see the class presidents and some other kids running the meeting. No faculty, no school administrators, nobody with any authority is moderating—or even visible. Insanity, pure and simple! Why did the school sanction this and then leave these kids alone?

These guys, supposedly bright guys, (and some girls) are pacing the stage and saying things like, "We can't let them get away with this," and, "We're having this meeting to plan what we should do."

Kids are shouting. Kids are getting all riled up and howling, "What should we do?"

Madelyn repeats, "We shouldn't do anything," she thinks she's being really loud but she's not loud enough for anybody, other than the kids right around her, to hear.

Calls of - "Don't let them get away with this!" pervade the auditorium. Madelyn becomes overwhelmed and feels powerless.

She's just one person, she can't shout and she doesn't know these kids. Madelyn looks all around the auditorium. She can't figure out how this is happening. What do they want? _'Why isn't anybody trying to stop this?'_ She looks all around all the way to the back wall. ' _This is really out of hand. Way, way out of control.'_ Madelyn thinks maybe Susan is in the very back. She searches every face. ' _The whole auditorium is freaking out. It's crazy!'_ Madelyn doesn't see Susan anywhere.

Madelyn isn't positive Susan was lying because she never got the chance to ask her but, she realizes in this frenzy, that it didn't matter. ' _Even if Susan were telling the truth—there's nothing these kids should do about it.'_ So Madelyn starts saying to the people next to her, "I didn't believe her," over and over. Some kids shush her, some tell her to speak up. Madelyn kneels up in her seat to look around the auditorium trying to see Susan, hoping she will stop this.

Out of desperation, Madelyn finally calls, "Is she here? Is Susan even here? Is Susan here?" until an answer comes from the stage.

"Is who here?"

Madelyn calls to answer them, "Susan," loudly enough to call Susan. This is killing her. Madelyn never shouts. She can't talk in public. Nobody, not even the school, is doing anything. If Susan's lying, somebody has to call her on it; and if she's not, somebody has to stop this.

"Who's Susan?" someone from the stage answers.

' _Who's Susan?_ _Great, these kids are primed and ready to start a riot, and they don't even know over what!'_

"She's the girl," Madelyn yells, "the girl. The...the one this whole thing's about." Madelyn turns in her seat and stands slightly so Susan will be able to see her if she's in the auditorium, and Madelyn calls out, "Susan! Susan!"

Madelyn doesn't see her, and Susan doesn't answer. Madelyn turns back to the stage and says, "Because I think nothing happened," not loud enough over the shouts of the crowd to be heard on the stage.

"That's right, she's not here to defend herself, so we have to defend her. That's why we're here, to figure out what to do," a girl on stage hollers, like a battle cry.

Cheers of, "Yeah," and, "What are we gonna do about it," follow.

Madelyn's frantic, so, whether it's true or not, Madelyn has to say, really loudly, as loudly as she can this time, "What do you mean what are we gonna do about it? There's nothing we can do because nothing happened!"

"Something happened alright! Don't you know what happened?" the loud girl on stage screams, like Madelyn must have been under a rock the past couple of days.

"Yeah, I know what was _supposed_ to have happened, but I'm telling you, I don't think it did!" That isn't what they want to hear.

"How do you know!" the group in the front fire back.

"Because she's a friend of mine." Madelyn answers, just loud enough to be heard this time since she's ashamed to admit it.

"You're calling your friend a liar?!" There are jeers and boos. Shouts of "Some friend!" and "Traitor!"

"I don't think she told the truth. I don't believe her."

The shouts of, "What should we do," continue.

Finally, in frantic frustration, "There's _nothing_ you should do," Madelyn shouts over them. "If nothing happened there's nothing you can do! Right?"

Kids keep screaming and shouting.

' _This is so wrong. No one has any right to do anything, regardless. It doesn't matter whether Susan's telling the truth or not.'_

"Nothing happened! Nothing! No one did anything to anybody! There's nothing we should do! There's nothing we can do, if nothing happened." Madelyn got quiet after that but the crowd didn't, only this time they're talking among themselves. The shouting simmers down. There's more discussion. The meeting finally ends with nobody deciding anything. Madelyn's still not sure what they thought they were going to decide, but she's very glad that whatever it was, it wasn't going to happen.
**Chapter 45** \- Francis Ferelli

' _Phew, that was a close one! Man, I hope that'll do it. Maybe now school will get back to normal.'_

Madelyn went to the Avenue, met Jane and Monica and had a soda. When Madelyn gets home she does some homework, gets Celeste her drink, makes dinner, cleans up and then goes back upstairs to finish her homework.

The next day Madelyn gets to school and there are kids in the hallway again. Some of them point at Madelyn, and a lot of them, especially the girls, are POed at her. Someone calls her a nigger lover. Someone else calls her a traitor. Obviously, they want a fight, whether it's justified or not. Madelyn ignores most of them and reminds others it would be wrong to start something over nothing or even to start something over something, but the second thought gets Madelyn in trouble so she emphasizes—over nothing. During homeroom some of the boys ask why she said anything. They act like Madelyn called the cops on their party. Audrey's pretty cool about it; she tells them to shut up and stop acting so ignorant and says Madelyn did the right thing. Then one of the boys leans toward Madelyn and murmurs, "I'm glad you did that."

In the hallway between classes things are still pretty stirred up, but not nearly as bad as the past couple of days. Madelyn still can't find Mikey and she hasn't been able to get her on the phone. I hope she's all right. None of the teachers talk about what happened. ' _I'm hoping in another couple days this will all be a bad memory.'_

Susan and her story stirred up something vile that started something hateful and one way or another, right or wrong, some of the kids want something to happen. They're all ready for it, whatever this something is, and they aren't willing to let it go. Paranoia winds through the halls like a snake. There are still little heated meetings in the halls. ' _Some of the white, in-crowd girls are really angry. Really angry! They play me out to their boyfriends to be some kind of traitor, and their boyfriends have to calm them down. Sometimes I remind them that nothing happened and they should just forget about it. But really, they don't want to forget about it. It was like they had made this huge snowball and they were all ready to push it down the hill. And now the snowball just sits there, and a lot of kids want to keep it going. It hasn't melted, it hasn't smashed, and now they don't know what to do with it.'_

This afternoon the halls have a new rumor spreading that Francis Ferelli will bring his tanks up from Newark to the high school to keep the peace.

' _Francis Ferelli's the main mafia boss in Newark. He owns the town, and apparently, he owns tanks, too. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Aren't there laws about civilians driving tanks up Bloomfield Avenue? This is bullshit! There hasn't even been one fistfight as far as I've seen.'_

Some kids gloat "And you thought you could stop this?" while others quietly tell Madelyn, "Thanks," and "I've never seen anybody stand up to those kids," and "Thanks for trying." Kids Madelyn never saw before ask if she thinks Ferelli will really bring tanks. Others tell her those kids have been running the school for a long time and not to feel bad if she can't stop them. Madelyn feels like there are so many more quiet kids with accepting attitudes. She wishes she knew that before the assembly. It would have helped her confidence and maybe speaking up wouldn't have been so painful. She tells the quiet, worried kids she doesn't think Ferelli will bring tanks. She doesn't want to believe he still has tanks, but she really doesn't know. ' _He had them last summer, did he get to keep them? Did he buy them? Where do you buy tanks?'_

After school Madelyn goes up to VM to meet Jane and on their way to the Avenue they see Cynthia Solvino and her five-girl entourage in a vacant lot between two buildings. Madelyn notices there's a station wagon parked in sight but just around the corner. If there's anybody in that car watching these girls, Madelyn knows she'll have to talk to them, too. Madelyn knows better than to just go up to them, but this is too important.

"Cynthia." Madelyn goes, "Hi Cynthia," and nods in the direction of the other girls,. "Ladies."

Jane hangs back on the sidewalk across the street. She wants no part of this and she's frightened for Madelyn.

"Hi," says Cynthia.

"Yeah," says one of the girls.

"Whad ja want?" utters another.

"Get outa here," Gladys adds, "Nobody invited ja," and spits near Madelyn's shoes.

"I heard your uncle plans to bring tanks up to my school."

There's no response, so Madelyn adds, "Clear Mountain High. I go to Clear Mountain High now."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know that." Cynthia responds.

"Well is he?" Madelyn looks at Cynthia, "Is he bringing tanks to the school?"

Cynthia isn't answering.

"Yeah, he is," her cousin, Gladys, chimes in as she takes a step toward Madelyn. Gladys is the greasiest of the greasers. Madelyn heard she carries a knife. She wants Madelyn to be scared of her. She wants everybody to be scared of her. She's like a caricature of a tough kid. Her hair is ratty, she wears waaay too much makeup, and she's always chewing gum. Gladys has her fists clenched, her forearms pressed against her sides and she shifts her weight back and forth from hip to hip. She lifts her chin so she can look down at Madelyn, even though she's shorter.

"Why?" Madelyn asks Cynthia, "There's nothing going on."

"To put them niggers in their place," Gladys fires back and spits on the ground.

Madelyn doesn't even glance in Gladys' direction, "Cynthia, you gotta make your uncle understand, there's nothing going on."

"They heard there's fighting in the halls," Cynthia finally speaks. "They heard there's gonna be a race riot there."

"No, Cynthia, no. There's no fighting in the halls. It was a little tense there for a while but it's calmer now. Tell him nothing's going on."

"I can't," Cynthia's voice trembles, "you don't know how it is. I can't tell my uncle anything."

"You have to Cynthia. Tell him. Please, tell him not to do it!"

Gladys says, "What about that nigger who stuck that thing, that whajamacallit compass thing, in that girl?"

"That NEVER happened!" Madelyn shouts at Gladys. Then Madelyn looks back at Cynthia, "Cynthia, please tell your uncle that never happened."

Gladys shoves Madelyn's shoulder, "She can't. You don't know how it is."

"I can't. I just can't. He wouldn't listen to me anyway," Cynthia explains nervously, almost pleading with Madelyn to understand. She's shaken by the suggestion.

Madelyn did understand. Madelyn knows how hard it is to stand up to someone you're afraid of, but Madelyn really feels it is a matter of life and death. "If he brings his tanks up here, he'll be the one starting something, 'cause nothing's going on!" ' _Ooh now I've done it. These bitches didn't like that last remark.'_

Gladys tells Madelyn to get lost and she and another cousin take Cynthia, who has gotten physically weak by all this, by the elbows and they walk away.

"Please tell him nothing happened, Cynthia," Madelyn calls after her. ' _It's a lot to ask of her. I feel bad about it: it's a long shot. It's so hard to get close enough to even talk to those mafia kids, I feel like since I'm the only one I know of on acknowledgement terms with Cynthia, I have a responsibility to at least try. They'll have to tell their bodyguards what we talked about and maybe they'll tell Ferelli. It was worth a shot.'_

Madelyn's shaken, too. Those girls talk a good game. Madelyn went up to them in a vacant lot, with buildings on three sides and to top it off she persisted in telling them things they didn't want to hear. Madelyn watches them walk off trying to deduce what, if anything they'll decide to do. ' _If there were guys in the car around the corner, and if they were doing their job, maybe they'd ask what that was all about. Maybe.'_

Jane asks Madelyn what she was doing. Jane says, "It looked like you were trying to start something."

Madelyn tells her, "I was trying to stop something."
**Chapter 46** \- Phew!

' _I should have worked on my project on Saturday or Sunday. I save homework for the last minute. I hate that; it's a stupid thing to do. I'm such a terrible reader that my mind wanders while I try to study. Tonight I can't help but think that if Francis Ferelli gets his way the school will explode. Cynthia sure didn't sound like she was going to talk to her uncle. Gladys didn't give the impression it was realistic. This is a guy who can have you killed with a wave of his hand, supposedly, and everybody in the Newark area knows it.'_ Cynthia's a good kid at heart, and she smart, so I'm sure she understood why Madelyn was pleading with her, even though she kept trying to make it clear that what Madelyn asked was impossible. Cynthia's afraid of Francis, that was evident, but Madelyn hoped she could work past that.

' _I try not to bother God much, I figure he's got enough to do without worrying about my problems, but tonight I thought I should ask him to watch over the high school tomorrow and to give everyone the courage to keep the peace.'_

The next day the school halls buzz with the news that Francis Ferelli's tanks are coming. Madelyn keeps an eye on the street outside as much as possible, hoping Cynthia came through. Between classes kids in the halls scan the streets for tanks. The kids who want to rumble hope to see the tanks; the kids who want to put an end to the madness hope to see the sameness of the passing cars.

' _I joke he would be like a Francis in the box and pop up out of the top of the tank, but the atmosphere is too tense for humor, and it isn't that funny anyway.'_

No tanks arrive.

' _I heard there have been some fights up at the Avenue. I don't know if it's true or not, since I still haven't seen even one fight, but no one I know wants to go to the Avenue. I won't see Cynthia, or any of her crowd, so I can't ask her what happened. One more day of holding my breath.'_

As Madelyn comes through her front door, she sees the headline of the evening 'Newark News' that's always on the top of the radiator in the entrance hall. It reads, "No Tanks!—Says Francis Ferelli." She snatches the paper up and reads the article. Basically it says that Francis Ferelli said that since the situation at Clear Mountain High School had apparently stabilized, he would not be bringing his tanks there, for now. He said that if the situation becomes heated again, he would not hesitate.

' _Lord have mercy. Cynthia did it!'_ Madelyn thinks she must have. She didn't think she could. She thought he wouldn't listen. She was afraid of him, and yet, she must have said something to somebody. Well, maybe not. Madelyn reads some more—Francis Ferelli states that he did not want to be perceived as contributing to a tense situation.

' _Oooh, thank you Cynthia!'_ "Good."

"What's good?" Madelyn hears her father's voice coming from the living room.

"Francis Ferelli isn't bringing his tanks to my school."

"He has tanks?" her father asks.

"Apparently."

"Maybe he should. Maybe he should bring his tanks there."

"How can you say that? How can you say such a thing? That would be awful. Things are calmer there now! It would just be irresponsible. That would just get things all stirred up again."

"Alright. Alright." He took a sip of his drink. "Things are calmer there now?"

"Yeah, a lot calmer."

"Good. That's good."

"Need another drink?"

"I don't, but maybe your mother does."

Madelyn looks but she isn't around.

"You're home early."

"Yeah, well, it was such a nice day; I thought I would leave early. What's wrong with you? Why do you _think_ I'm home? Your mother said there was trouble at your school."

Celeste careens in through the swinging door from the kitchen.

"Why didn't you tell me there are riots at your school?" She screeches, "I had to hear it from Hilly Tillerman? Now she thinks I'm an idiot. Why don't you tell me these things?"

Madelyn's so sure the article in the paper will work wonders and this will all blow over really soon she says, "Because there are no riots at my school! I would tell you if there were riots at my school. Hilly Tillerman doesn't know what she's talking about." This is the first time her parents have shown any concern for her at all, probably because their lack of concern caused Celeste embarrassment.

Madelyn sits on the arm of the couch. Her parents talk a little while about taking her out of that school and putting her back in Catholic school. Then a short discussion about money. Then about the mafia. Then they ask her if she's safe there. Madelyn says she is. She says she hasn't even seen a fist fight there. She says she has friends there. She says she's happy there. Then they talk about keeping her home for a couple of days, to which her mother adds she doesn't want to spend any more time with Madelyn than she absolutely has to. Then they exchange a few more words about money. Then the subject is dropped.
**Chapter 47** \- Simmer Down Now

School is better now. Mikey's back. Her mother had kept her out because she was afraid of the violence. The school isn't making it easy for her to make up her work, either.

Madelyn is walking to lunch when she catches sight of this guy all frenzied about the tank situation. She leans against the lockers and watches this kid rant about how Uncle Frank better bring his tanks up to the school. He keeps saying junk like, "I'm gonna tell my cousin to tell Uncle Frank he better bring his tanks up here."

The kid is blonde, first of all, and secondly he's in public school, and three, he has on light tan slacks and a white shirt. White! So Madelyn figures he must be just talking shit. She wants to run up to him and just slap him for being so stupid. But that would tip her hand, because, in all likelihood he'd want to know why she did that, and she's so POed she would tell him, and then he would know she may have had something to do with stopping those tanks. The thought flew through her mind that if he did have an in with Francis Ferelli he might find out who gave the information to Cynthia to stop the tanks. So Madelyn watches him to find out just how full of BS he is. Madelyn has to bite the inside of her lip to keep a straight face while she watches him. He's throwing out names to make himself look cool, like an insider, and it's working on the boys he's talking to. They're impressed as hell. She doesn't recognize any of the names, but she knows, if he's a mafia kid, no way would he be bellowing out names like that. Plus that, he keeps hopping around. He looks and sounds like an idiot. So uncool! So not mafia.

He catches Madelyn looking at him and the show he's putting on for his friends intensifies. The a-hole gets even more animated and starts almost yelling out the names of his imaginary connections as he glances her way. He thinks she's watching because she's so impressed. What a freakin' moron! Then he points Madelyn out to his friends and she knows as soon as his act ends, he will come over to her. So when he turns his face away from her, she splits.

Madelyn decides nobody in this school knows anybody in the mafia and she decides not to say anything to anybody about Cynthia or any of it. Later the dumb blonde appears in front of Madelyn in the hall blocking her. Madelyn asks him to excuse her because she has to go to her locker. She can hear his friends say, "She's cold", and, "bitch," as they laugh because the idiot got burned.

Madelyn finds out the blonde's name—it's Jerry. Jerry finds out who she is, too. Later Jerry comes up and starts talking to Madelyn, she asks him to excuse her, again. He's a great looking guy and president of the junior class or some such thing, and did sports: the whole catastrophe: and he sure as shootin' wasn't used to girls blowing him off. The thought never occurred to him that he might be the problem. "Don't you know who I am?"

Madelyn thought, 'Y _eah, you're that flaming, arrogant asshole,'_ but just said, "Excuse me, I have to go now." If he weren't such a colossal moron, she might have tried to explain to him why bringing tanks to a high school is a bad idea, but knew he wouldn't get it, and she didn't want to waste her time. There are some people who don't know any better, and they say stupid things. They just haven't thought things through. If Madelyn thinks somebody has the capacity to make his own decisions, she'll try to get through to him. He isn't the type to listen to a girl, anyway. Not this bogus tool. Then there's always the possibility he might think she's coming on to him, yuk, so Madelyn tries again to leave. His friends snicker, "Oooh," and , "Ouch," into their hands and bob their heads and fall all over each other. He slams his hand against the lockers so his arm blocks her path.

"You think you're so much," he glairs until her back is against the lockers. "I know who you are. You're that nigger-lover chick from the assembly. Oh, you're not so much." He snaps his fingers in her face, turns his face and spits.

' _I'll tell you what, my parents are worried about the black kids giving me trouble. I'm much more worried about the white kids. A lot of them are none too happy with me right now, and they don't know the half of it. I hope I'm right: I hope this jerk isn't a mafia kid. Even if he is, I figure they must know what a total moron he is, and probably don't pay attention to him.'_

Mikey waves to Madelyn. She's headed this way. ' _Oh shit!'_ Madelyn doesn't want Jerry to start with her, too; with the mood he's in and the friends he's with, it's just not a good situation. Madelyn ducks and brushes past Jerry, gets up to Mikey, grabs her by the arm, and whispers, "Let's get outa here, this guy's a jerk," and whisks her to a hall with a lot more traffic.

Madelyn won't tell Mikey what he said; she doesn't want to upset her. It's only her first day back and all.
**Chapter 48** \- November 5th

\- Cynthia's Okay

Madelyn bumps into Christopher at the Avenue. He tells Madelyn she caused a lot of trouble.

"Moi?"

"What?"

"Me? What kind of trouble?"

"All hell..." Christopher looks at Madelyn in disbelief. "All hell..." He takes her elbow and drags her away from the curb. "We had a big meeting about you. It lasted all night."

"About me?"

"Yeah, well you made a request to Francis Ferelli."

Madelyn is horrified. "You mean about the tanks?"

"Yeah. You should know. You're the one who asked. And all hell broke loose," Christopher says as he pulls her closer to the storefront. "What's the matter wid ya? Don't you know anything?"

' _How does Christopher know this?'_ "I asked Cynthia to ask her uncle. I didn't ask. Didn't Cynthia ask her uncle?"

"I don't know notin bout Cynthia. All I heard was you asked. So we had to have a meeting about you."

"What happened?" _'I thought what would happen would be Cynthia would ask her uncle. How did they know the request came from me? Maybe there was someone in that station wagon. Maybe those guys with Anthony that day.'_

"Well them two guys said it was you makin' the request. An Francis' nephew, Jerry, wanted 'em to bring tanks to keep the peace. Talkin' bout all da riots an fights an how the niggers need to be put in their place, an all." He takes out his cigarette pack. "So normally Jerry would a got his way, but then here you come along and ask Ferelli not to send the tanks. So it turns into dis whole big ting. This big muther-fuckin' thing."

' _I didn't ask Ferelli anything. Man, it didn't occur to me I would be making the request to Francis Ferelli. And that blond boy with the white shirt wasn't talking shit—he really is Ferelli's nephew? Imagine that!'_ "So there was a meeting and everything?"

"Hell yeah. It was long, too. Like all night. An you were in some trouble. I shouldn't be tellin' you this but," he looks down at the pack, "you was in some big fuckin' trouble." He looks around, holds her elbow and backs into the storefront alcove. "You shouldn't be standin' so close to the road. It's not safe. Don't you know better than that?" He leans against the glass and takes out a cigarette.

' _I'm like five feet away from the curb. Isn't safe? How? Why would I be in trouble? What kind of trouble? Just for asking Cynthia to ask her uncle not to send tanks to a high school. I would think that would be a reasonable request.'_ "What kind of trouble? Why was I in trouble?"

"Well they hada know if anybody knew who you were. They need to know the integrity of the person making a request to Francis. You know?"

"Well Cynthia does; didn't she say she knew who I am?"

"Cynthia?" he turns his head and blows out smoke. "Cynthia wouldn't be in a meetin' like that. What would that matter if Cynthia knows who you are? The guys who were with Antny said they knew who you were. Then it came up what you know—what Antny tole you. And then, man, you were in some big fuckin' trouble. Then they talked about what they should do about you. I was there and I tole 'em that we could trust you because I didn't want you to get hurt." Christopher took a drag. "I didn't want nobody hurtin' you so I tole 'em what you knew about Antny's father. Man, that just about got you killed. Tony's father was ready to take off and do you right then. But me and Antny stopped him. We tole 'im you never said nothing to nobody. An Tony reminded him he met you an he liked you, an all. He remembered you."

"What? Jesus Christ Christopher, you should keep your mouth shut!"

"Well you was in trouble. And they wanted to decide what to do with you."

"Kill me?"

"Na. No. Not kill you. Not after Anthony's old man remembered he liked you. Just hurt you. Rough you up a little. Just break your arm or somethin'."

' _Is that all? Why would I be in trouble? These boys tell me these things—shouldn't they be the ones in trouble? Ugh.'_

"Nah. Don't you worry. Your okay. It turned out good fa you. Da meetin' went on a really long time an what they decided was, if you knew all that shit and you still didn't say nothing—you could be trusted. So Ferelli decided to think about your request." Christopher sticks his head out of the alcove and looks around.

"What about his nephew?"

"Well, he trusts his nephew, an all, but he knows his nephew's a hothead."

"A shithead, you mean."

Christopher grabs Madelyn's elbows and shakes her, "Don't you say that to Ferelli!"

' _Like I ever would.'_ "So I'm not in trouble anymore?"

"Well not for now. They saw you shopping with your nigger friend and it made 'em wonder if they made the right choice, because you're not supposed to be friends wid 'em, ya know. But yeah, you're safe. They think your okay. Like I tole ya, the meeting ended up good for ya."

' _Ho-old on thar, Babaloui! Who saw me shopping? I was in trouble for stuff I knew? This is heavy. I'm beginning to get an inkling of how it is.'_
**Chapter 49** \- No Cliques

' _Between wearing these blue jeans bell-bottoms and speaking up in that all-white assembly I'm meeting all kinds of new people. Turns out there's a whole other sub-sub group of kids who are aware of each other but are in no particular clique. I'm unearthing them all and now I'm the one who's introducing kids to each other! Far out. There are some really smart kids who go to this school. They all don't think they fit in. A lot of them are shy.'_

Still no tanks. The halls are back to almost normal.

Kids come up and introduce themselves: a lot of them thank Madelyn for speaking up in that all-white assembly. It turns out loads of kids were really scared! Turns out it's the in-crowd who wanted a rumble, and they rule the school, so a lot of others, who feel they don't matter, were quiet. Madelyn thought the whole school was against her, but there are a bunch of kids with her. ' _Pretty freaky. I'm fitting in with some interesting kids by trying not to fit in, or by not trying to fit in, or fitting in without trying, depending on how you look at it. There are dozens of us trying not to be pigeonholed.'_

Maybe because Madelyn hadn't moved to a new town when she changed schools and she wasn't trying to find friends, maybe that worked out better for her. Madelyn's finding more and more friends. She figured all the cliques would have been formed and there wouldn't be room for her anywhere, but she was wrong. There was tons of room! The incrowd is a relatively small group; let's say twenty maybe thirty kids, and that is the biggest clique, so there's plenty of room for all the out-crowders.

' _I'm not eating lunch alone. I'm not doing anything alone anymore. I think the problems at the high school are over.'_

[There is a new group. Sly and the Family Stone. Madelyn loves them. Their message is right on. ' _I'm going home to listen to them.'_ ]

At home Madelyn writes–

Each man is an individual, in that each man has individual abilities, likes, dislikes, fears, and dreams. Every man is equal to every other man. No one is better and no one is worse. We were all conceived in a womb and born of a woman. We all need air, food, water and love in order to live. So no one man is able to look down on another man—and, it is no man's place to feel inferior to another. Feelings of inferiority and superiority are therefore unnatural and should be suppressed because they are brought about by competition.
**Chapter 50** \- November 15th —

How Would You Feel if I called You Whitey?

"How would you feel if I called you whitey?" Shelia asks.

' _What, is she starting with me? Man, I thought this shit was over with.'_ Madelyn looks around and realizes she must have wandered off from the gym class while waiting to run the track. It's chilly to be having class outdoors. The day is gray, the air is damp, and the leaves are off the trees. The track's a couple of blocks away from the school. Sheila had come up alongside Madelyn: they are pretty much off by themselves in a small lightly wooded area near the track. About a thousand things fly through her mind. Madelyn looks at Shelia. She doesn't seem angry. Sheila studies Madelyn for her reaction. ' _Maybe I didn't understand the question.'_

"What?"

"How would you feel if I called you whitey?" she asks again, "or honkey?"

' _Why is she asking me this? Why is she talking to me? Maybe because she gave me those pointers back in gymnastics and I am the only white person she's talked to in a while. Is she trying to pick a fight? Is she joking? Naah, if she has a sense of humor, I sure as hell haven't seen any evidence of it, and besides, there's nothing trivial about the question.'_

' _She's watching me, intent on getting an answer.'_ "Oh?" Madelyn asks, trying to buy time to figure out the question.

Madelyn thinks of all the truthful answers, none of which fit the occasion. She knows she wouldn't really feel one way or the other, she'd probably be pissed, and she almost says that, but when she looks at Sheila's face Madelyn realizes being entirely truthful, in this case, would be insulting. She thinks that the real question is, what if someone said that with contempt. ' _Shit! Why has she singled me out? She won't even talk to whites, everybody knows that. Man, this is intense.'_

Shelia sits down on a nearby log and motions for Madelyn to join her. She rocks slightly and pulls her white cardigan up onto her shoulders. Madelyn sits, looks down at her sneakers, and says softly, "I don't know," then quickly adds, "it would hurt."

Sheila blurts, "Damn right it would hurt," in an imposing voice. She looks Madelyn in the eye; shakes a tiny bit, pulls her sweater closer and murmurs, "It hurts me every time someone calls me a nigger."

Instantly Madelyn knows what Shelia's question meant: but Madelyn can tell by Shelia's face, by her body, by the air around her; that she could never really understand. "God yes, I'll bet it does," is all Madelyn can say. She wishes she could be more empathetic, but she thinks about how much worse it must be to be called a nigger. Whitey and honkey aren't nearly as degrading, she thinks those words are more retaliatory than derogatory. They don't have the same power. It's not a fair comparison.

A flair of pain flows through Shelia. "Um"—Shelia grunts in agreement, then stops herself from saying anything else. Then Sheila asks what had happened at the white assembly.

"Nothing." _'All Hell._ '

Mrs. Dick sees the girls sitting outside (and not participating in) the class. She begins a determined, elbows bent, fists forward, whistle in her mouth, flatfooted stride over to the log; her gaze fixed on them. They both know they're supposed to head back to the class, but don't budge.

"Nothing? How could nothing have happened, you were in there for over an hour?"

Madelyn tells her it was lame. Madelyn tells her no one seemed to know why they were there. Madelyn attempts to change the focus, "What was everybody saying at your assembly?"

Mrs. Dick is up to them now and overhears what they're talking about; and, without slowing or missing a stride, she struts right past them, and doesn't slow until she is well into the trees. No way is she getting involved in this conversation, and much to her credit, she isn't going to try to stop it either.

The girls both grin.

Sheila goes, "We were all just wondering what you were saying at yours."

Madelyn goes, "Yeah, that's pretty much all everybody was saying at ours."

Mrs. Dick stops, puts her hands on her hips, moves her elbows forward and back, and breathes a few deep breaths as though she just took a break from power-walking; then painstakingly meanders back to the class, eager this time, to avoid their glances.

"What about that girl who was attacked? What did everyone say they were going to do about that?" Sheila asks.

"Well, I don't know. I don't think she was."

"What?"

Madelyn had to look down again because she's ashamed to say, "I. I know that girl."

"And?" Sheila doesn't seem annoyed, she isn't accusatory in her tone or demeanor, she's just looking for an answer. She nods for Madelyn to continue.

So Madelyn goes, "I know her from before. From a grammar school we both went to."

"And?"

' _Maybe that's why she's talking to me. Maybe she heard I knew the girl.'_

"And I don't know for sure, but I don't think anything happened."

Madelyn continues, "Why do you know something different? Do you..."

"No. I don't know what happened."

"I mean did you hear that anything happened, for sure?"

"I heard the same as you," Shelia says. "Did you tell them that?"

"That I didn't think anything happened?"

Sheila nods.

"Yeah, I told them nothing happened. I figure even if it did, we shouldn't do anything anyway. Right?"

Shelia silently stares straight ahead.

"So. The meeting ended up with them deciding not to do anything," Madelyn tells her.

"Good." Sheila nods, still staring straight ahead. Then Shelia turns to look at Madelyn again, "Do you think that's the end of it?"

"Well, Ferelli said he isn't bringing his tanks up or anything, so, yeah, I think that's the end of it." Madelyn manages a grin, "Man, I hope that's the end of it." The class is heading back to the school.

Sheila gets up. "Thanks," she says.

' _Clumsy me, I fall back on my butt into the dirt.'_ Sheila holds out her hand and helps Madelyn up.

"Thanks." Madelyn stops wobbling and Shelia still holds on. ' _Oh, crap.'_

"No. Thank you," Shelia says.

"Oh?" ' _What? She helped me up.'_ "I," Madelyn starts to say she's alright so Shelia will let go.

Sheila gives the hand she's still holding onto a shake, "I mean it."
