The Pink Dress Read online

  THE PINK DRESS

  ANNE ALEXANDER

  Dedicated to my daughter,

  Sharon

  with love.

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. Peppermint Prom

  2. The New Crowd

  3. Family Council

  4. After School

  5. Popcorn Brawl

  6. The Summons

  7. The Closed Door

  8. Steady Does It

  9. The Decision

  10. Initiation

  11. Nightmare

  12. Dinner Date

  13. First Kiss

  14. Alibi

  15. Back Home

  16. The Warning

  17. Meeting Called to Order

  18. Accused

  19. Kangaroo Court

  20. One Rotten Apple

  21. The Pink Dress

  About the Author

  The Pink Dress

  Foreword

  I was in the eighth grade in 1956 and my mother, Anne Alexander, was writing a book. My friends and I loved it. It was about US. The challenges Sue Stevens struggled with in the story were issues we faced in real life.

  A few of my girlfriends walked home from school with me every day, anxious to find out what would happen next in The Pink Dress. My mother promised she would have a new chapter ready, and she never let us down. We girls sat in a circle and passed typed pages around. We read fervently, smiled sometimes, wiped tears from our cheeks, and rooted for our heroine. We were the first of many readers to meet and care about Sue and Dave, Judy and Mo, and the other characters in the book.

  If this is your first time reading The Pink Dress, welcome! The original middle-school readers and I are grandmothers now, and some of us are still friends. We are pleased that our daughters and granddaughters love The Pink Dress as much as we did. I bet you’ll love it too.

  —Sharon Alexander Williams

  1.

  Peppermint Prom

  It started with the pink dress. The dress hung from the wall bracket in her room, with all its starched, pretty newness waiting and ready for her to slip it on. Sue couldn’t keep from looking at it and touching it as she got ready for the dance.

  It seemed almost unbelievable that she, Susan Stevens, was going to a school dance at last. As Mom sewed the dress during the week, Sue had wondered just what would happen this time to make her miss the party. She’d lost out on the Halloween dance because of a leg injury. She’d been kept from the Christmas dance by the flu. But tonight . . . she twirled with the joy of it all, and her many petticoats swished out in a scalloped circle.

  Peppermint Prom sounded like such a fun name for a dance. It sounded so sort of swish. And—she eyed her dress again—her dress was just the delectable shade of a pink peppermint wafer. Prickles of excitement made Sue feel like dancing around the room in leaps and twirls as she used to when she took ballet. Instead, she settled herself before her dressing table, took out the bobby pins, and started to brush her hair. As she counted the strokes, she heard feet on the stairs, and Jay and Kit burst into her room.

  “Mommie says that Daddy says it’s almost time,” four-year-old Kit announced.

  “Okay.” Sue looked at her little sister. Kit had such a long way to go before she would be a ninth grader and a teen-ager and getting ready for a dance. Poor little kid.

  Jay plunked himself on the bed with the complete unconcern of a six-year-old boy. He jabbed at the hunk of modeling clay he held in his hand while Sue dabbed perfume behind her ears and along the part in her hair. She dabbed some on Kit, too, and offered the bottle to Jay to smell. He sniffed. “Girls do silly stuff,” he commented.

  Boys were the silly ones, Sue wanted to amend. But this was no time to get into an argument with Jay. She slipped her dress off the hanger and popped it over her head, wiggling her way into it. What would Jay be like when he got older, she wondered. Maybe he’d be like Dave—Dave Young, who transferred to Taft last September. The way Dave had slipped into leadership of The Crowd, one would think he’d known the others for years. Jay better not get into the difficulties Dave did, though. Dave was in the opposite wing of classrooms from her, so Sue didn’t know him to speak to, and about the only time she ever saw him was when he was going in or out of the principal’s office. That, anyone would admit, was quite often.

  “Move, Kit,” Sue demanded. Boys might be silly, but little girls were pests. They always managed to be exactly where one wanted to step.

  Kit allowed her an inch more space by the mirror. Sue applied her lipstick—Pink Paradise—in careful strokes. Some girls in ninth grade already had lipstick brushes. Sue felt she was lucky to be allowed to wear any at all.

  “Need any help?” Mom called from downstairs.

  “All ready.” Sue scooped up her white cardigan from the chair and draped it over her shoulders.

  As she stood before her parents in the living room for a last-minute inspection, Mom snipped at a stray thread. “Stand tall,” she said. “Stand proud.”

  Sue managed a rueful grin. Stand tall? She was tall—just about the tallest girl in Taft Junior High. Most of the boys seemed to stand short. She straightened her shoulders and gave an experimental twirl. “Do I look okay?”

  Dad gave a wolf growl of approval. Mom said. “I think you look lovely.” Jay reserved comment, but Kit put her face up for a kiss. “I think you look like a princess,” she said.

  Sue laughed. Leave it to Kit for the extravagant praise. If only she could look like a princess. But everything about her was so ordinary—from her betwixt and between brown hair to her blue eyes. She even had a "healthy" (as Dad termed it) sprinkling of freckles.

  Now Dad shrugged into his coat and walked with her to the car. Sue waved her good-bys as they backed out the driveway. The prickles of excitement gave way to clammy chills of apprehension. What if she didn’t get asked for a single dance?

  “We’ll pick up Cathy first,” Dad said. He rounded the corner, and Sue was glad that at least she didn’t have to walk into the dance alone. Cathy and Ellen would be with her.

  When Dad stopped in front of her classmate’s house, Cathy was already running down the steps. She giggled as Dad opened the door for her.

  “Good evening, Cathy,” he said. “My, don’t we look pretty tonight.”

  “Hi, Mr. Stevens.” Cathy giggled again as she hopped into the car. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asked Sue.

  “I’m scared,” Sue admitted. “What if I don’t get asked?”

  “Oh, pooh.” Cathy dismissed the thought. “Someone will ask you.”

  Yes, someone would. There was tubby, waddly John who tried to ask every girl at every dance. He’d ask her for sure. And then there was Chester. He’d ask because they went to dancing school together. If only he weren’t so short. And of course there was Ricky. He was the best of her three possibilities. If only he enjoyed dancing instead of seeming mortally wounded every time he asked you. Ricky wanted to be a doctor someday, and he just couldn’t see what dancing had to do with doctoring. If his mother didn’t insist, Sue knew he’d never be at any social function.

  “Hi.” Ellen’s greeting jerked Sue from her thoughts. Goodness, she hadn’t even realized Dad had stopped at Ellen’s. She barely had time to give an answering. “Hi,” it seemed, before they were there at the school, at dear old Taf.

  “Leave some dancing partners for the other girls,” Dad joked. “And, Sue,” he added, “don’t forget to say hello to the chaperons.”

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  “Glad our parents didn’t think of that,” said Cathy when they were out of earshot.

  Sue wished fervently Dad hadn’t thought of it, too. Good manners, Dad always insisted, never hurt anybody. But so
metimes she couldn’t see it. Good manners often meant standing at the end of a line, or getting the piece of cake with the least icing.

  She trailed up the steps to the gymnasium behind Cathy and Ellen. Oh, if only her heart would stop pounding. She stopped at the door and gaped. This the gym? Why, it was hardly recognizable—it was like a fairyland with the peppermint candy decorations and the pink and white streamers. Up there at the ceiling were hundreds of balloons. And the music—an orchestra—real live music! Wasn’t this wonderful?

  “Come on.” Cathy tugged at her. “You’re blocking the door.”

  As the three moved through the doorway, they became a part of the cluster of girls who clung to the wall like so many moths around a light. Sue noticed that on the other side of the hall the boys stood in a sort of dis-organized huddle, a little bit like moths, too. And out there on the floor were the brave ones, the lucky ones, dancing. Well, no one could expect her to be dancing yet. She’d just got here.

  Intermission descended upon the three girls as they exchanged niceties on their dresses. Cute, petite Cathy looked darling in her yellow striped, and Ellen—well, blue always had been her best color.

  “I—I wish we could make them ask girls to dance”

  “It’s intermission, dopey.” Sue scanned the crowd of boys, looking for a familiar face. “They’ll ask.” She could see Dave Young, and he was as good-looking as ever. But where was Ricky—or Chester?

  “They didn’t last time,” said Cathy.

  “Didn’t what?” Sue turned to her friend.

  “Ask.”

  “Oh no,” Sue moaned. “Won’t the chaperons do something?”

  Ellen and Cathy shook their heads. Conversation rose around them like the swell of the ocean’s roar. The voices made even the paper candy canes quiver, and Sue wondered why the high-pitched giggles didn’t pierce the balloons and pop them.

  Then the orchestra sounded above the babble, and it was amazing how quickly some of the girls were asked—like ducks in a shooting gallery. And then John waddled up to ask Cathy—and Chester came for Ellen. “Ricky will be over in a minute,” Cathy said comfortingly. But Chester shook his head. “Huh-uh,” he said. “Ricky couldn’t come. His brother just got in from overseas.”

  For a moment Sue thought of going home. She made herself as small as she could against the wall, and was glad to note at least a few other girls were wallflowers like herself.

  The next dance Chester asked her, and Sue, towering what seemed like feet instead of inches above him, did his methodical step-step-close in class-like precision. But that left Cathy standing against the wall alone. Because John had asked Ellen. At least, Sue told herself, I’ll get two dances. There was still John.

  Soon she was back at her post against the wall. Somehow the minutes that ticked by on the gym clock stretched out like rubber bands. Now it was the girls’ choice—girls’ tag. But even then she couldn’t make herself move. She watched the crowd shifting rapidly. The girls weren’t nearly so shy as the boys. The stag line over by the wall was rapidly being depleted. And there was Dave—the Dave—out in the middle of the floor, not getting more than two steps with each girl before another cut in.

  Dave, the kids said, was going steady with Judy this week. Dave and Judy were the good kids in the school. Not good like good-behavior good, but the ones who ran things their way.

  At the next intermission she took stock. Six dances—she’d had two. Just the one with Chester, the other with John. “Speak to the chaperons; have a lot of dances,” Dad had said. Well, when the next dance started there’d be something to do—say hello to the chaperons.

  The music started, and Sue edged along through the dancers toward the group of chaperons. She’d almost reached them when she suddenly collided with someone in the crowd.

  “Sorry,” Sue said automatically.

  “Dance?” said a boy’s voice. It was Dave. He was looking around with angry eyes.

  “Dance?” Dave said again.

  Sue looked in back of her.

  “I mean you! In the pink dress.” Dave held out his hand, and Sue, her feet feeling like lumps of clay in her ballerinas, followed him onto the floor.

  It took agonizing moments before she could follow Dave’s steps. Desperately she wished he did Chester’s staid step-step-close. But no, Dave was always putting in extras in the way of footwork.

  She looked up at him—glad that for once she was dancing with a boy she could look up at. Dave’s eyes seemed to be searching the crowd. Finally he seemed to catch someone’s glance, because he smiled with almost a sneer, then he gave her his undivided attention. “Relax,” he told her. “Relax.”

  When the piece ended, Sue sought frantically for a way to break without being awkward about it. Now she had something to remember—dancing with Dave. But she didn’t want him to feel the least bit stuck with her.

  “My friends are over there.” She pointed to the sidelines and turned to join them. Boy-and-girl manners here didn’t include the boy escorting you back, as he had to in dancing class.

  “What’s your hurry?” Dave drawled. “It’s a jig now; let’s go.”

  Jig? Oh no! She and Ellen and Cathy had tried it at home. And they thought they were pretty good at times. But they’d never, not ever, jigged with boys. Well, this would certainly teach Dave not to ask strange girls to dance. She laughed. “You don’t even know my name,” she told him. “I’m Sue—and I don’t know whether I can jig.”

  “With me, you can do anything,” said Dave. “And I know you’re Sue—in wing nine-three.”

  Willing her feet to follow Dave’s in the intricate steps, Sue found herself quite adept with the toe-heel, toe-heel, twist, swing. Swish-swish went the nice full skirt of the pink dress. And she found herself relaxing—if one could call it that in a jig.

  ''Cute dress,” Dave commented on one of the whirls. “You don’t jig bad for a beginner. I’ll teach you a little.”

  Sue smothered a giggle. Dave was conceited, that was for sure. But he really could jig. The dance ended in a mad swirl of music and flying feet, and as the orchestra’s last few notes spelled intermission, she looked up at the musicians. They looked exhausted too.

  “My friends—they—they’re over there,” Sue told Dave again. She simply couldn’t let him get stuck with her.

  “We’ll get a Coke,” Dave said as though he hadn’t heard her. She felt herself being pushed through the crowd to the soft-drinks booth. The kids parted like the Red Sea to let Dave through. Yes, he was just about the biggest thrill at Taft—and he was buying her a Coke!

  As they stood there, sipping their Cokes with the crowd milling around, Sue saw Ellen and Cathy with John and Chester in tow trying to make their way to the booth. “My friends,” she said, as she took a couple of steps toward them. That, apparently, was all she had to do, for the girls came quickly toward her.

  “Ellen, Cathy, Dave,” she introduced them.

  “Wings six-two and seven-four,” Dave acknowledged.

  And then, because John and Chester were there, too, Sue introduced them. Dave barely looked at the boys. The music started up again, and he took the bottle from her hand and tossed it to John. “Come on, let’s go,” he demanded.

  Bossy character, this Dave. And rude, too. But Sue found herself matching her steps to his. And from then on she danced every dance with him. Except for girls’ tag, of course, when Dave was tagged over and over again. Sue tagged Chester and then John. When she was back once again with Dave, he turned on her angrily. “Lay off those creeps,” he demanded.

  “What creeps?”

  “Those jerks, John and Chester.”

  Sue started to protest when Dave was tagged in on again, and she found herself facing one of Dave’s pals.

  The boy didn’t take Sue’s proffered hand but merely glared at her. “Judy says lay off Dave,” he warned her. “They’re going steady.”

  Sue felt herself flush, but before she could think of a suitable answer he’d
turned away and was gone in the crowd. She tagged in on Dave determinedly.

  “Are you?” she asked.

  “Am I what?”

  “Going steady with Judy.”

  “No.” Dave’s voice was angry. “But do you want to?”

  Now it was Sue’s turn to ask, “What?”

  “Go steady—with me.” The dance had ended now, and Dave stood facing her with a defiant look on his face.

  Sue laughed. “I don’t even know you.”

  “So?”

  “So—no, of course.”

  “You will,” Dave predicted confidently. He put his hand on her shoulder and guided her off the dance floor. “You will,” he repeated.

  Bossy, rude, AND conceited, Sue tabulated to herself. But that was nothing new. She’d known he had those characteristics before he even spoke to her. Why not just have fun and enjoy the dance now for what it offered?

  The dance was almost over when Sue remembered about the chaperons. “I promised my dad,” she said when Dave protested.

  “He won’t know—just say you did.”

  “But I promised.” She broke away and went over to speak to them.

  “Having fun?” Mrs. Smith asked.

  “Dreamy,” she told her. And it was true. She was having a dreamy time—even if Dave never spoke to her again after tonight. The dance was wonderful. And the minutes were whizzing by as swiftly as they’d dragged before.

  “Mission accomplished?” Dave whirled her out on the dance floor again. Sue nodded. Mission accomplished? What was it Dad had said? Besides talking to the chaperons? Leave some dancing partners for the other girls. She was leaving them all—except for Dave. She could hardly believe it when the band swung into the good-night number.

  The last chord sounded. Dave walked her over to Ellen and Cathy. “See you around,” he said with a brief nod.

  The three girls pushed their way to the steps to await their ride home.

  “How did you rate?” Ellen asked. “Jeepers, he’s cute.”