It was the Wednesday of the annual Burns Park Ice Cream Social and a bunch of my school friends and I had been playing a pickup baseball game in the park since we’d gotten home from school. Between me, my friends Mike, Andy, Stuart, Frankie, Grant and Todd, plus two sixth graders Mason and Julian, we had barely enough to play. Not enough for two full teams, which almost never happened, but enough to play most of the positions in the field plus a few more to bat. So you’d play in the field until it was your turn to bat and then somebody else would take your position. Once you were done, either because you hit the ball and got out, or got on base and eventually scored or got out, you’d go back out in the field and sub for whoever was next to come in and bat. It was a little more complicated for me because I was a lefty, so I really couldn’t play shortstop or third base very well, and I’d instead switch with someone right-handed playing first or second base, or one of the two outfield positions.

No catcher, because we usually didn’t have the catching equipment, and most of us didn’t know how to play catcher anyway. So no balls and strikes and just easy hitable pitches. You generally swung at everything or caught a really bad pitch in your bare hand, because they weren’t thrown super hard, and threw it back to the pitcher. I tell you, there was something about catching a pitch with your bare hand that was pretty cool, and made you feel like an older kid. Mike and Grant did a lot of the pitching between the two of them, and were far enough apart in the lineup that they were never both on base and at bat at the same time. But others tried some pitching too, but not me.

The ice cream social started at 6:30, and a ways before that I had heard mom ring the bell over on the front stoop of our house for David and I to come home for dinner, that is if we were somewhere where we could hear the bell. And if not, no big deal, we’d just eat whenever we got home.

So though I HAD heard her bell, there was no way I was going to stop playing, because I knew if I stopped, or anyone else stopped, we didn’t have enough players to even TRY to play it the way we were. If I had gone home, all my friends would have been mad and then would probably tease me about it, and I always was SUPER careful never to do anything that might get me teased. And getting to play pick up baseball with a lot of my school friends was really important to me, especially now that there was still school, junior high that is, and we never could all get together when we were there. It was like how I used to feel last year playing our pickup soccer games every school day before class.

At school, I barely ever talked to any of my old school friends from Burns Park. Yeah we were all in the seventh grade, and yeah I had most of them in one or two of my classes, but there was barely any chance to just talk in all the classes. Teachers wanted you to work on your schoolwork, and if you were gonna talk to somebody, like a friend that you might be sitting next to, you were supposed to talk about what you were learning, when you wanted to ALSO talk about other stuff. And most of the classes had assigned seating, so you probably weren’t sitting next to your friends anyway. I guess you could talk to friends in the hallway between classes, but if you had a friend in one class you just finished, they probably weren’t in the next class you were going to, so you’d head off in different directions, and you only had a few minutes anyway.

Lunch and Homeroom were different, you could actually talk to kids, and at lunch at least there didn’t seem to be a teacher around like there was in Homeroom. But there were FOUR different lunch periods, and most of my friends weren’t in my lunch. And in Homeroom, the only kids I knew from Burns Park were Myrna, Martin and Kate. Kate never talked to anybody and Martin was the fat kid that I didn’t want people to see me talking with, besides he probably hated me for making those “Myrna loves Martin” pencils last year. And MYRNA, though I guess she didn’t HATE me anymore, was still a big problem to talk with because she always gave me a hard time about stuff, like dancing with Rose or valentines or whatever, plus Lance and the other cool kids in my Homeroom hated her.

I mean it wasn’t always totally bad that way. Sometimes Abby and I got to talk in Math class or at the Math Club when we both went and Beth didn’t go too. And because Stuart and I both played saxophone in Band, we got to talk a little bit until Mr Balfort got mad at us. And sometimes Mike or Gill and I were on the same team in Phys Ed and could talk and do that sport together almost like we were in the park in a pickup game together. Or maybe in science Cal or Andy and I would get to do a science experiment together in that class. And sometimes Alice would sit at the same two-person table with me in Art class and we could at least talk about stuff we were working on for class, because I pretty much never talked to Alice in the park, mostly because she was a girl.

But also, even when I DID talk to my Burns Park school friends at Tappan, it wasn’t like hanging out in the park together, or going over to their house or some other friend’s house. We were all worried about stuff all the time at Tappan, about schoolwork, about trying to be cool kids, or trying not to be uncool kids. It was just one big confusing place that nobody was comfortable with.

So back in the park on the baseball diamond playing pickup, I figured if mom asked me later if I’d heard the bell, I’d tell her I was at someone’s house, maybe Teddy’s or Craigs’s and I didn’t hear it. Yeah, I would lie to her a lot when it wasn’t such a big deal and it helped me do what I wanted.

So I missed what if any dinner mom had made and kept playing our pickup game. About 5:30 they were setting up the tables where they were giving out ice cream across the park by what everyone called the “Little Hill”, which unlike the “Big Hill” over by the tennis courts, wasn’t really a hill at all but just a raised area about four feet above the area around it. It was funny because the “Big Hill” was like maybe just fifteen feet tall, so IT really LOOKED like a very little hill.

This Saturday would be Little League team practices, and those of us who were seventh graders were, like last summer, on two different thirteen-year-old league teams. Stuart, Frankie and Mike were on the “Huron Valley Bank” team again this year, and Andy, Grant, Todd and I were on the team that last year was “Michigan Tube Benders” but had a new sponsor, “Bimbos”, which was that crazy restaurant downtown where you could get pizza and they had one of those old fashioned bands and a guy that led everyone in singing old songs like dad used to sing to us when we were little.

Of course Stuart and Frankie had teased us over and over again until we were sick of it about our new team name, that we were a “bunch of bimbos”, but they had finally stopped, because it got pretty stupid after a while, like it maybe was funny the first or second time, but not after that.

So playing Little League instead of pickup was good in one way, because it felt more like playing real baseball, like the Detroit Tigers played. Especially this year, the thirteen-year-old league, because you could start running to steal a base BEFORE the pitcher actually threw the ball, just like you could in the major leagues. But it was bad in another way because the grownup coaches were in charge of you, like grownup teachers were in charge of you in school, and they made all the decisions what positions you played, and when you played or when you sat on the bench. And it was also bad because, like real baseball, you were supposed to play to win, not just play to have a good time and not worry about winning. So it was like what some grownups called a “tradeoff”, in order to have the games be more like REAL baseball, you had to have grownups in charge and worry all the time about playing really good and not messing up and helping your team to win and not lose, because winning was good and losing was bad. If you played pickup games, winning or losing didn’t matter, it wasn’t even something you were thinking about, usually there weren’t even two different teams, you were just having fun and practicing your baseball skills.

So about 6:30 we finally decided to end our pickup game, and most of us walked over to the ice cream social. When we got there, we saw Arthur waving at us to come over and talk to him, so we did. He wasn’t much for playing baseball, or any other sports really.

He told us that his sister Ginny had told him, that her boyfriend Mitch had told her, that his band “The Goon Squid”, that had played at our Sock Hop last November, was going to play again at our spring seventh grade only dance coming up a week from Friday.

“Cool”, we all said. Now that we were older kids none of us said “neat” anymore.

I noticed Abby was there at the Social and I saw her briefly look at all us guys gathered around Arthur. Her eyes met mine for a second and she smiled and made a silly face like she was thinking “oh no… what are all the boys up to”, but then looked away.

“Goon Squid”, said Stuart, nodding his head slowly like he approved, “They were good. That’s VERY cool!”

“Yeah”, said Arthur, “It’s super cool, I agree. But, by the way, they’re ‘THE Goon Squid’, like ‘THE Beatles’ or ‘THE Kinks’, not ‘Goon Squid’, like ‘Them’ or ‘Pink Floyd’.” Stuart rolled his eyes and looked at Frankie, who shook his head.

“But here’s the thing that’s the ULTIMATE of cool-osity”, Arthur continued, all the rest of us getting quiet and looking at him, “My sister said that Mitch said that they’re going to do two sets at the dance. The FIRST will be like local, Detroit and Ann Arbor stuff. But the SECOND is going to be all psychedelic stuff, and they have these new Sunn amps so it’ll be really LOUD, like the bass notes will wobble the air, and the band wants everyone to dress like hippies.”

“Who’s Mitch?” asked Andy, who hadn’t gone to the Sock Hop last fall when Goon Squid, or THE Goon Squid, played. Arthur looked at him and shook his head slowly.

“Andy, Andy, Andy”, Arthur said, “Mitch is my sister’s boyfriend. He’s the drummer for The Goon Squid.”

“YOU know”, Stuart said to Andy, “The guy that’s always feeling his sister up.” Arthur looked up at the sky and rolled his eyes and slowly shook his head. I couldn’t even IMAGINE doing anything like that to a girl, squeezing her breast or putting my hand between her legs.

“Wait”, said Frankie, holding both his hands up in the air, “You mean they want us to wear our regular clothes for the first set and then change into hippie clothes for the second?”

“Frankie, Frankie, Frankie”, Arthur said grinning and looking at Frankie. Arthur seemed really different. He never used to talk like that, though he always thought he was an expert on music.

“Of course not!” he said, “What? Everyone’s got to bring a change of clothes to the dance and run off to the boys’ bathroom to change? C’MON!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah”, said Frankie, waving his hand in front of his face like he was shooing away a bug, “But I dig it. I’m in!” I’d heard older kids using that “dig” word these days, especially on those music shows on TV like “Where the Action Is” and “American Bandstand”.

Frankie looked around at the rest of us. “How ‘bout you guys?” he asked. There were lots of nods and “yeahs” from the rest of us.

Grant seemed really excited and said, “Absolutely!” The rest of us looked at him. He and Todd talked to each other all the time, like they were best friends, but he usually didn’t say very much to the rest of us. I wondered if that was cuz he was black and we were all white. There was so much going on in the world that I couldn’t figure out!

“I can borrow my sister’s marching band jacket”, Grant said, “Get a headband, some shades, my dad has one of those ruffled shirts. I don’t have all that hair like Hendrix, but I think I’d look pretty cool.” We weren’t used to Grant saying stuff like that, so it seemed like none of us knew what to say, and he started looking kind of embarrassed, like he shouldn’t have said that stuff. But Mike, who had just been listening to everything so far, finally said something.

“Hey Grant”, he said, “I think that’s great… PERFECT even! I think this whole thing sounds like a great plan. It’s OUR dance, right?” Everyone else nodded. Everyone always listened to what Mike said, and figured he was almost always right about stuff. Maybe once in a while, Frankie would argue with Mike about something, because I guess he saw himself as an in-charge guy like Mike.

I nodded too of course, because Mike was right. It was ours and we should be in charge of it as much as we could, given the grownups were the ones that decided to do it. I liked it when we all talked together and figured out what to do, at least all us boys. But it was too bad we couldn’t be talking with the girls too.

But then I immediately started thinking about what I could wear. Certainly not MOM’S sunglasses. Maybe I could get some at the Food and Drug or the Blue Front. But maybe one of her head scarves, rolled up and tied around my head like a headband. I did have that paisley shirt I got at Jacobson’s. But I didn’t have much hair either. None of us did. Not long hair or wild hair like hippies.

***

When the Ice Cream Social ended I walked back across the park to our house. Mom wasn’t home but the car was still there. David was there with his best friend Eddie, they had just come home too. I liked Eddie. He was much cooler than David’s friends that lived on our street, at least for a third grader. He said that his mom and our mom were both at the Social helping out at one of the tables and were still there helping them clean up at the end.

That made sense. Mom always liked to do stuff like that, always helping people and talking to them and making new friends. I guess that was okay, except grownups who I didn’t know at all would sometimes come to me and say stuff like, “Are you Jane Zale’s son? I had the BEST time talking to your mom!” Then they’d tell me their name and that I should tell her they said hello. That was pretty embarrassing. And weird too, like they were expecting me to be all talking and chatty like SHE was. And I guess part of me DID want to be like that, but it was just too much work and felt too dangerous.

I was in the kitchen heating up water to cook a Banquet bag of Salisbury Steak when I heard a knock on the screen door. I heard David going to the door and then Abby’s voice.

“Is your brother here?” she asked, then, “Are any of his friends here?” Then pretty soon Abby was right there in the doorway to the kitchen. She saw the pot of water I’d put on the stove boiling with the Banquet cooking bag in it.

“Which one is that?” she asked.

“Salisbury Steak”, I said.

She nodded slowly and said, “Cool”, then, “My favorite’s the Creamed Chipped Beef, on toast of course.”

I’d never had “Chipped Beef” but it sounded pretty bad, like that “Sauerbraten” stuff mom used to make when she used to cook dinner a lot before she and dad got divorced.

I guess I made some kind of yucky face because Abby then said, “No, it’s really good, believe me.” I nodded, figuring okay, as long as I didn’t have to eat it.

“Anyway”, she said, then pausing to think for a second, “I heard you guys out at the Ice Cream Social talking about that Goon Squid band playing at our spring dance next week.”

“Arthur said they’re THE Goon Squid”, I said, “Like THE Beatles or THE Kinks.”

“Right”, she said, “I heard Arthur say all that, not like ‘Them’ or ‘Pink Floyd’, whoever they are. But what about that whole dress like hippies thing, you guys really going to do that?”

“I guess so”, I said, “It’ll be pretty cool, right?” She nodded.

“But are you sure?” she asked, looking worried.

“Yeah, I think so”, I said, “Everybody liked it and Mike said it was a great idea since it was OUR dance.” She listened and nodded again.

“He’s right”, she said, “It IS our dance. I’m going to tell Myrna and Beth about it. Alice too, she’ll LOVE it. Maybe she’ll let me wear some of her hippie clothes.” Then she thought some more and said, “Mom will probably have a cow though.” She scrunched up her face and looked at the ceiling, thinking.

“I need to get some of those round John Lennon glasses”, she said, “Like he wore in that weird ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ movie on American Bandstand, but the sunglasses kind he wears now.”

She banged her hands on the kitchen table like she was playing bongo drums, thinking, then finally said, “This is going to be great. I’m going to call Myrna as soon as I get home and then go talk to Alice too.”

Then she looked at me, “I promise I won’t tell Myrna that we talked. She’s always asking me about you. I’ll just tell her I heard Arthur and all the guys deciding to do this at the Ice Cream Social.”

“She’s always asking about me?” I asked, really worried now.

“OH yeah”, she said, “She’s obsessed with you and Rose.” That did NOT sound good.

Then she looked at me and asked, “You ARE going to dance with her again, aren’t you?” I nodded.

“I guess so”, I said.

“Well”, she said, “Myrna and Rose think you are, just so you know, but don’t tell them I said that!” I shook my head, not sure what to think at this point.

***

It was Saturday and I had ridden my bike to the Food and Drug, looking to buy some of those John Lennon glasses that Abby had talked about, but they didn’t have any. From there I went to the Blue Front, where I was now. It was a cloudy day and kind of cool so I’d worn my Michigan sweatshirt. I’d gone to that back part beyond the aisles that I usually went to with all the comic books, paperback books and magazines. They had some sunglasses, but none like those ones John Lennon wore.

So I walked back over to the aisle with the paperback books and the magazines, including those Playboys, where I could at least glance at the woman on the cover. It was that same May issue I’d seen the last time I was there, with the red letters, yellow background and that woman with the long kind of red hair holding up this little chalkboard with that Playboy symbol written on it in chalk. Even though that old guy that worked there could get busy with a customer, I still didn’t dare try to open it up and take a quick look at the naked pictures in the middle. What if the guy saw me? Would he call the police? Would he kick me out and never let me come back? And then what if I tried to go there with dad, would he tell dad that I couldn’t come in, and why I couldn’t? I REALLY wanted to see those pictures, but it wasn’t worth it!

As I glanced for a third time at the cover, a girl’s voice I recognized asked, “Checking out that redhead on the cover?” I felt my whole body freeze but I managed to turn my eyes toward her enough to see it was Alice. Even though she lived on Wells just a block down from our house I hadn’t really gotten to know her at all until we were in Art class together last fall.

Freaked out, I said, “NO… I wasn’t looking at that.”

She smiled, closed her eyes, and nodded. “No big deal”, she said, “I like to look at the science fiction section. My dad said I should read this one.” She was holding up this book called “dandelion wine” by Ray Bradbury. I’d seen other books that he’d written like that “Illustrated Man” one with that weird picture of a guy with tattoos all over his body, or that “Fahrenheit 451” one that Mike had read and told me about, like what if our country became “fascist” like the Nazis during World War Two had been.

She turned it to look at the front cover and then turned it again to read the back cover, and said quietly as she read it, “My dad said it was cool.”

I wondered what it would be like to have a dad who used the word “cool”. My friends said her mom and dad were “beatniks” and listened to that strange jazz music all the time and clicked their fingers instead of clapping, but I don’t remember ever seeing them.

“Hey”, she asked, “Did you hear that that band Goon Squid that played at our Sock Hop last fall are going to play again at our spring dance?” I guess Abby had already talked to her. “I came here to see if they have any of those granny glasses that John Lennon wears.”

“Wow”, I said, “Me too. But I couldn’t find any.”

“Yeah I looked too”, she said, “They definitely don’t. But my dad said that there’s this new kind of secret hippie store called ‘Middle Earth’ that might have them. He said it’s in a building on Liberty just east of Fourth Street. I was going to ride over there. Wanna come?”

“Sure”, I said, then, “I guess so”, because I wasn’t really SURE about much of anything these days.

***

So Alice and I decided we’d do better riding our bikes down the sidewalk on Packard than up the sidewalk on State Street, because that one would probably have a lot more people walking on it, student types. We couldn’t really ride in either street because there were parked cars along them so we’d have to ride out where the cars were driving, and it was pretty busy, not like Sunday morning when there were less cars.

And because you didn’t want to ride over the curbs, and we didn’t want to have to get off our bikes to walk them across each street we came to along Packard, at each street we were about to cross we had to turn right up to the first driveway, go down that and across the street and then up a driveway on the other side before turning left on that sidewalk and back to the sidewalk along Packard.

On the sidewalks we couldn’t ride next to each other, which would have been more fun because then we could talk while we rode, so instead I followed behind her. She was wearing a long dress like she usually did, you know, hippie clothes, though I guess it was actually what they called a “skirt” because it didn’t have a top part. But it was light green and all kinds of squiggly lines and plant-like things all over it in white, and I wondered if Alice had done the white stuff herself. Then her shirt, I guess with girls and women they called it a “blouse”, was dark purple and kind of puffy in the shoulders. Her long black hair was all blowing in the wind. People looked at her as we rode by them, either people driving by us in their cars or walking on the sidewalk or in their front yards.

We got to Fourth and then up the sidewalk, across Williams up to and across Liberty and then right to a store called “Zwerdling’s Fur Shop” where they had all those mannequins in the windows wearing fur coats or those scarf things made out of fur. Just beyond it was a door with a window in the top part that said “215 E. Liberty” on it. You could see a stairway going up through the window. We got off our bikes, and locked them to a streetlight pole.

I looked around to make sure there were no kids we knew watching us. Not that there would be, way over here in downtown Ann Arbor, but guess it was more what mom would call “force of habit”, because I WAS with a girl.

Alice opened the door and we walked up the stairs, hearing the echoing squeaky noise of our sneakers on the shiny steps. At the top of the stairs was a hallway with doors that had windows in the upper part that you couldn’t really see through except for light. Most of the doors had names of doctors on them, so I guess they were doctors’ offices. But at the end of the hall was a door with a sign that said “Middle Earth”, but written in strange curvy letters like they sometimes used in Doctor Strange comic books. The light coming through the glass part of the door was purple.

Alice looked at me and said, “This is pretty freaky, isn’t it?” None of my regular school friends used those hippie words like “freaky”, but Alice wasn’t like my regular friends. Then she asked, “Shall we go in?”

I wasn’t sure but still I nodded. I didn’t want her to make all the decisions and think I was some kind of wimp, so I even opened the door. There were weird smells I’d never smelled before, even stinging the inside of my nose a little, burnt but also kind of tangy. There were three what looked like college students talking to each other in one corner of the kind of dark room. Two were guys and one was an older girl. She had on a long skirt kind of like Alice’s and a black t-shirt with a white peace symbol on it which was just glowing on her chest, and glanced at us coming in but went back to talking to the two guys. They were all looking through what looked like magazines, newspapers and even comic books on a rack, but not ones I’d ever seen before.

“We’ve got the Argus, the Barb from Berkeley, and the Fifth Estate from Detroit”, she said to them as they nodded and said “cool”, “And I just got in the East Village Other from New York City.”

And there was music playing from a record player on a little table in the corner of the room. It sounded kind of like that organ that that kid in Goon Squid, or THE Goon Squid, played at the Sock Hop last fall, playing this same musical “phrase”, that’s what Mr Balfort the Band teacher would call it, over and over. Then there were drums and an electric guitar. Finally the low voice of the singer, sounding like he was hypnotized or something…

Well, the clock says it’s time to close now
I guess I’d better go now
I’d really like to stay here all night
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights share their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise
Still one place to go

There were shelves all over the room with stuff on them, kind of like that back room of the Blue Front, only weirder stuff I didn’t even recognize. Metal tubes, small cardboard boxes with pictures of weird people on them, one saying “Zig Zag”. There were strange looking clothes like Alice wore and that jewelry stuff that mom sometimes put on when she dressed up and went to a party or a meeting. And everywhere just lots of small open boxes with various things in them.

Where there weren’t shelves or racks on the walls there were posters and the pictures on them were all glowing like the sign on her t-shirt. One poster had this weird looking cartoon type guy with a giant nose and one foot sticking way out in front of his body in all blue clothes that said “Keep on truckin”. Another one was the head of this guy with a red face and black hair sticking out in every direction with lots of red and yellow lines curving out from behind his head. The strange shaped letters at the bottom said “Jimi Hendrix”, who I remembered Arthur telling me about being the best guitar player ever.

The woman now turned her head to look at us, mostly at Alice.

“I DIG your threads, young lady”, she said, looking down at Alice’s long green skirt. The white lines and patterns on it were glowing like the peace symbol on the woman’s shirt. Alice looked down at her skirt and saw it too.

The woman turned back to the two guys and said, “Oh, and I also stock Zap Comics, R. Crumbs work.”

“Oh wow”, said one of the guys, “I LOVE R. Crumb!” And the three continued to talk to each other.

“Why is it all glowing?” Alice asked her.

“It’s a blacklight”, said the woman, pointing at a long glowing purple tube along the wall, before going back to talking with the two guys.

Alice looked at me with her eyes open really big and said, “It’s pretty freaky, isn’t it.” I nodded really fast like it really was. I guess “freaky” was like “cool” only weirder.

Alice walked over to a shelf that had shiny metal and wood tubes, and this weird thing that looked like the metal part at the bottom of one of mom’s lamps except there was no top part but this long wound up hose coming out of the bottom that had this thing on the end that looked like the mouth piece of a toy musical instrument you blew into. There were also boxes full of little tiny boxes that said “Zig Zag” at the top with the face of this guy with a mustache and a beard, other words I didn’t know, and then said “Cigarette Papers” at the bottom. There was also a sign on the shelf that said “For Tobacco Only”. I walked over next to her and looked at all the stuff too.

Without looking at me she said quietly, “This is for smoking marijuana, I think. I think my mom and dad have smoked it because I’ve seen those things in his desk drawer.” She pointed at the tiny boxes of cigarette papers. I knew that marijuana was one of those drugs that hippies used. Mike had told me about it and that that Association song, “Along Comes Mary”, was really about smoking it though the band pretended it wasn’t so they wouldn’t get in trouble.

We were both surprised by the voice of the young woman, now just behind us.

“Can I help you two find something?” she asked. Grownups that worked in stores said that to me a lot. I had learned what to say back.

“We’re just looking around”, I said, but not willing to look her in the eyes.

“How old are you two?” she asked.

“Thirteen”, said Alice, starting to look at all the interesting stuff on the shelves. I suddenly worried that I had to either lie or say I was just twelve and Alice would find out I was a year younger than her and everybody else in my grade. When the young woman looked at me next for my answer I just nodded, like sure, thirteen too.

“We are actually looking for something”, Alice said, looking at her, “We’re looking for those little round sunglasses that John Lennon wears.”

“Ah… tea shades”, she said, “I got a whole basket full of them. Just follow me over here.” I could tell she didn’t want us looking at the marijuana stuff because we weren’t old enough.

She took us over to a shelf with all kinds of different sunglasses in wicker baskets. One had the glasses we both wanted.

“Take your time picking out the ones you want”, she said, and she went back to talking to the two guys. I think we both were feeling like we really shouldn’t be there after she asked us how old we were, so we DIDN’T take much time and each quickly picked a pair out. Mine had purple glass and hers had yellow.

They were a dollar fifty each, and we both paid her and went out the door into the hall and closed it behind us. We looked at each other.

“That place was really strange”, I said.

“Kind of”, she said, like she didn’t think it was as strange as I did.

***

It was Homeroom on the Monday before the Friday dance. The first thing I was thinking is I should tell Lance, Danny and Ben about The Goon Squid’s plan to do a psychedelic set and that they wanted people to dress like hippies. But then I decided not to because I wanted to be cooler than they were, at least at the dance. I’d go in my paisley shirt and “tea shades” and have them realize that, at least for the moment, I was the cooler kid than they were. The more I thought about it the more I liked that idea, even though you could say it wasn’t very nice not to let them know, since Lance would have probably told ME if he had found out about The Goon Squid’s plan. But even thinking about THAT, and all that Golden Rule stuff, it still felt better not to tell them.

I figured Myrna would probably come up to me at my desk to talk to me about Rose and the dance, and Danny, Ben and Lance would be at their desks right behind me, listening. That might be bad, and maybe they’d even find out about The Goon Squid’s plans, or tease me for having Myrna be in charge of me because they thought she was a bitch. So I figured at this point after almost the whole school year not daring to go over to talk to Myrna and Rose in that part of the room, that I might as well do it, no matter what the boys said or asked me about after. Maybe if they asked me what we’d talked about I’d just tell them it wasn’t important or something like that.

So as soon as the school principal had finished his announcement over the PA, including reminding us about the upcoming grade-level dances, including the seventh-grade one this Friday, I got up from my seat and walked over to the corner of the room by the door where Myrna and Rose and the other cool girls sat. I didn’t even look back at Lance, Danny and Ben. I didn’t want them to think they had anything to do with this. Both Myrna and Rose noticed me coming towards them.

“So what brings you to this part of the world, stranger?” Myrna asked. Now all the other girls that sat around Myrna were looking at me too, because I’d never come up there to talk to any of them, not for the whole year. Myrna had always gone back to talk to me sitting next to the boys. My shyness got hold of me and I just kind of stood there for a second. I could see Myrna looking toward Lance, Danny and Ben like she was wondering if they had some plan and THEY sent me to deliver some message. I knew I had to make myself say something or they’d all think I was stupid, and I COULDN’T let that happen!

“Do you know about the Goon Squid’s plan for the dance?” I asked, “You know, the second set?” Rose was kind of nodding but Myrna looked at me like I was some sort of enemy secret agent pretending to be a regular person, like James Bond showing up at a party at the main bad guy’s estate. She glanced again in Lance’s direction, but I didn’t look back that way. Finally it was Rose who said something.

“We did”, she said, “Abby told Myrna. And Abby said that Alice said that you and she went to the Middle Earth store and bought those hippie sunglasses.” I wasn’t sure what to say next so I just nodded, but then Myrna got to the “gist of it”, as mom would say.

“So are you going to ask Alice to dance on Friday?” Myrna asked, staring me right in the eyes, like she was turning on her X-ray vision. I was kind of freaked out that she’d ask me something like that with Rose right there too. I mean I’d figured I WAS going to dance with Rose again, at least if there wasn’t some OTHER guy this time that SHE wanted to dance with or might ask her first. Maybe it was GOOD that Myrna had asked that, so Rose wouldn’t worry I might be wanting to dance with someone else, or she maybe should ask someone else.

I just wanted to shake my head, and not say anything, which was what I always used to do as a little kid. I REALLY didn’t like talking with anyone about how I felt about or what I said to girls, because I always thought about that time in third grade when I told Joey that I’d pull down my pants for that girl Mary in our class and he went and told everybody in class then later the teacher told ME I shouldn’t have said that about Mary, and I felt I was like a pervert or something. But I didn’t want to stand there like a little kid in front of Myrna and Rose.

“No”, I said, still shaking my head, “We’re just friends. She lives around the corner from me.”

I realized saying “just friends” meant that who I was going to ask to dance would be MORE than someone who was “just friends”. So that meant that if I asked Rose, I wanted to be “more than just friends” with her, which might mean I wanted her to be my girlfriend. Or she’d at least think that I wanted that and then maybe expect me to hold her hand or even find somewhere we could be alone so we could kiss each other and make out even.

“So who’re you going to ask?” Myrna said, “Abby?”

“No”, I said again, still shaking my head. Myrna was trying to make me say I was going to ask Rose, with Myrna right there and the other girls sitting around Myrna all looking at me now too. And then THEY’D all think I wanted Rose to be my girlfriend, and wanted to kiss her and make out and stuff. I suddenly couldn’t talk or even move, and didn’t know what to do, but Rose saved me.

“Me?” Rose asked. I managed to somehow do a nod, though I couldn’t even make my mouth say yes. Myrna looked at Rose and just shook her head a little bit like she should have made ME say it.

“Well”, Myrna said, blowing air out of her nose, “That’s settled at least!”

I felt much better because I didn’t have to ask her in front of Myrna and all these other girls around us. Relieved, I managed to say to Rose, “Well, I guess I’ll see you there.”

Now ROSE didn’t say anything, but just nodded, which was perfect, because then I didn’t have to say any more. So I turned and walked back to my seat by the boys.

“Soooo”, said Lance, “What was THAT all about?”

I wrinkled my nose and shook my head and said, “Nah… nothing important.”

“Did you tell Rose you want to dance with her again at the dance?” he asked.

Again, telling someone I wanted to dance with a girl felt like way back then when I told Joey I wanted to pull down my pants for a girl, like I wanted to be naked for her which I guess was pretty perverted, at least Joey and the teacher thought so. But I also didn’t want to lie and shake my head or say no, because then I would feel like a stupid little kid who was afraid.

“She wants to dance with me and I said okay”, I said, then, “No big deal.” That sounded better, like it was all her and I was just being nice, and it seemed to work.

“Yeah”, Lance said, “I guess so. She’s pretty and all but she doesn’t have any tits.”

I was so happy the bell rang then and I could get out of there.