Confessions from the Principal's Chair (16 page)

"Good old Ivory," I said. I had given up trying to talk Katie into dumping the Six-Pack. I was always hoping, though, that she would.

"You know what?" said Katie. "On Monday, I am going to go over to the new girl before class and talk to her. If Ivory doesn't like it, so what?"

"Let me know how that turns out," I said.

Katie and I talked the next Saturday for a long time, but she never mentioned the new girl. I didn't ask because it was obvious that she had lost her nerve. Someday, though, she would break away from Ivory, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't be very much longer.

Life has settled down in Prairie Dog Town. I spend lots of time at the City Café. Would you believe the phone bill was five hundred dollars? From now on I'll get my psychic advice from fortune cookies. Mostly, I am Angie's assistant. She was pretty hard on me in the beginning. "Working here ain't going to be no latte," she told me on the first day, but gradually she started to like me. I've even gotten used to her gum chewing, and sometimes Rendi will let me go to Ponca City with Angie to see a movie.

In the spring, there was a big unveiling of the statue Rendi had made for the town square. Lots of people came from art galleries, and there were newspaper people and even a television camera. My insides swelled with pride when they took the cover off the prairie dog. Oh, I guess most people would say that a prairie dog isn't nearly as big a deal as a pioneer woman, but I really felt that it was. For just a second, I closed my eyes, remembering the day we first drove into town. I opened my eyes to glance around me. The whole place looked so different to me now. It looked like home. Kash was standing beside me. I leaned over to him and whispered, "I love prairie dogs."