Read Joy School for Free Online Page B

of sparkle. I had to rein myself in not to touch it. I have tried ironing my hair but it has never been so straight as that.
    Taylor looked like a model, really pretty, with a face like someone drew it and stood back and said, “Now
there!”
Her clothes were all just perfect, a heather-colored A-line skirt, a Peter-Pan collar shirt and a heather cardigan. Circle pin. And Weejuns, burgundy. The boys were all having heart attacks and the girls got bristly and moved their butts around in their chairs and tried to act like they didn’t notice her when meanwhile they were practically breaking their necks turning around in little ways to have a look. Taylor knew the answers to every question Mrs. Brady asked, but about halfway through class she got bored and stopped raising her hand. I saw her elbow move from doodling and once I saw part of what she was doing, which was writing words in big fat letters, the kind that are sort of like clouds and lean into each other. I know how to do that, too. She came from a private school, the Bartlett School for Girls. It’s on a hill, really fancy, with a big sign in front and lacy gates, buildings with ivy growing up them. We drive past it a lot and I always wonder what it would be like to go there. I don’t know why anyone would leave a place like that to come here, where half the water fountains don’t work. But the cigarettes might be why. She might be the reckless type, which interests me quite a bit.
    “Katie?” Mr. Hadd says. “Want to let the rest of us in on the daydream?”
    I look up, try to think fast. And then the bell rings. I don’t get up right away, out of respect for the fact that Mr. Hadd was about to yell at me. But he clucks histongue and shakes his head, then looks away. I can go. He will stare out the window and think, what oh what can I, Harry Hadd, do with these lamebrains?
    Out in the hall, Eduardo taps me on the shoulder. “Saved by the bell,” he says. “Get it?”
    “Yes,” I say. And we smile. It is friendly. I see that Eduardo has a bit of gold on one of his teeth. Now we know a little about each other. This is my best day so far.

T wo days away from when Diane is to come, the weather turns serious cold. Everything gets frozen, including the pond a few blocks away. It’s a small thing, hidden behind a Mobil gas station. I like it because it’s so private. In the summer, I could wade to the middle and the water would still be below my knees. I will be able to ice-skate there now, and one thing I like is to ice-skate, although I am plain terrible at it. You would think after awhile a person could at least just skate straight ahead. I think I have bad ankles, though, because they lean in toward each other. I can’t stand straight on ice skates. I wobble and fall a lot. Still, this does not keep me from the main pleasure of it, which is that when I skate, in my head I see ballerinas. I have seen them on television often, and once my mother took me to see them for real. I was young, only six, but I remember every single detail about that day, including that sitting in front of me was a woman wearing one of those stoles where the foxes bite each other’s tails, and black round beads are where their eyes used to be. I still do not understand this idea. It seems likewhoever made it up was saying, Ho, let’s see just how much I can get away with. The sight of that stole made me feel sick in the knees but I just looked around it to watch the ballerinas. I stayed so still watching them I had a crick in my neck later. They were so, so beautiful and of another world. That’s how it seemed to me. Their faces were full of a glowing peace and their movements were so smooth and silky, like I had no idea a real person could be. Their legs were very long, and their necks. It seemed like their fingers trailed behind their fingers. They had their hair up in plain but beautiful buns like Grace Kelly. One of them wore a little diamond crown, and when the light