Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
One Saturday morning early in September Shelley Latham sat at the breakfast table with her mother and father. Her mother was reading the women's page of the morning paper while her father read the editorial section. There were dahlias in the center of the table and linen mats under each plate; the electric coffeepot gleamed in a ray of morning sunlight. It was a peaceful scene, apparently no different from any other Saturday morning breakfast at the Lathams', but this morning there was a difference, invisible but real. This morning Shelley was plotting.
Outside Shelley heard the rasp of a dry leaf scudding along the driveway. The sound meant the season was changing, and she intended to make her life change with it. That was what made the start of a new high-school year exciting-the possibility that this time things could be different. New school clothes, a change of locker partners, a new boy across the aisle in English class, even the autumn air, crisp and shining-all these could make a big difference in a girl's life.
And Shelley had made up her mind that this year, her junior year, there was going to be a difference. For one thing, she was no longer going to go steady with Jack. How she would break off she did not know, but it would be soon, this very day perhaps.
But before she could do anything about Jack, Shelley had another problem to settle and the time to do it was now. She looked at her mother, who was innocently eating a soft-boiled egg, and made up her mind to be firm from the very start.
"Shelley, here's an advertisement for a school dress that would be pretty on you," remarked the unsuspecting Mrs. Latham."A blue wool-and-rabbit hair with a full skirt."
Shelley was not going to lose sight of her goal. Anyway, she did not want a dress like that for school. She preferred sweaters and skirts such as all the other girls wore. "Mother, I am going downtown this afternoon to buy my slicker," Shelley stated. It was always best to be definite about a controversial subject and to introduce it when her father was present. "School starts Tuesday and I might need it," she explained logically, although her reason for wanting the slicker was not logical at all. She did not know why she wanted a slicker. She only knew that owning one was important and somehow might help make her year different.
"Oh, Shelley, you don't really want one of those awful slickers," remarked Mrs. Latham as she used her napkin to wipe up some pollen that had fallen from the dahlias to the gleaming surface of the mahogany table.
Shelley could not help smiling, because this was exactly what she had expected her mother to say. I'll put it on my list, she thought. If she ever had a sixteen-year-old daughter who wanted a slicker, she would not refer to it as "one of those awful slickers."
Shelley's list, now imaginary, had begun when she was twelve, going-on-thirteen. At that time she had printed on the outside of an envelope: "To be read by me if I ever have a twelve-year-old daughter." On a sheet of paper she had written:
"1. I will let her read in bed all she wants without telling her she will ruin her eyes.
"2. I will not tell my friends embarrassing things that happen to her and laugh.
"3. I will not hang crummy old paper chains on the Christmas tree just because she made them when she was a little girl."
A year later Shelley, touched that her mother had treasured the faded paper chains because she had once worked so hard to make them with colored paper and library paste, crossed the third item off the list. A few months ago when she had been going steady with Jack for some time, she had written in its place: "3. I will not show her baby pictures to boys who come to see her." And soon after that Shelley decided the list was childish and tore it up. But the habit persisted, the list becoming imaginary and the items half-forgotten as soon as Shelley noted them.
The conversation about the purchase of the slickerwas postponed by a letter that dropped through the slotin the front door and slid across the polished floor. Shelley picked up the letter and glanced at the return address,613 N. Mirage Avenue, San Sebastian, California -- an ad-dress that never failed to delight her. She always wondered if there was a South Mirage, too, and if both partsof the avenue might not someday disappear because theywere named for something that was not real at all, butonly an illusion of the eye. "It's from your collegeroommate," she said, as she handed the letter to hermother.
Mrs. Latham tore open the envelope and began to read. "Honestly, if that isn't just like Mavis," she remarked after a moment, as she paused to fill her cup from the electric coffeepot.
"What's like Mavis?" asked Shelley, who had always been interested in her mother's former roommate. Mavis, Shelley remembered her mother's telling her, had brought a mounted deer head -- the head of a sixpoint buck -- to school to decorate their small room in the dormitory of the teachers' college.
"Listen to this," said Mrs. Latham, and began to read." 'Why don't you send Shelley down here for the winter? We have an excellent high school in San Sebastian and classes do not start until the day after Admission Day. We have plenty of room and it might be fun for her to spend a winter in California. I know we would enjoy having her and I am sure that another girl in the house would be a good experience for Katie, who has reached a difficult age,' " Mrs. Latham put down the letter. "That's just like Mavis -- always suggesting something impractical on the spur of the moment. As if we could pack Shelley up and send her over a thousand miles away on a few days' notice!"
The Luckiest Girl. Copyright © by Beverly Cleary. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
