Debutante Hill (18 page)

Maybe he's gone on to his home room and is going to pick up his books before the first class, she thought.

She turned and continued down the hall to her own home room, arriving just as the final bell rang. Hastily, she slipped into her seat.

When the bell rang at the end of the period, Lynn left the room quickly and, after pausing briefly at her own locker, headed for Dirk's. This time, she was sure she saw him and that he saw her, but he was at the far end of the hall, and by the time she reached the place, he had lost himself in the crowd. Walking back the full length of the hall again, she was late entering English class.

Mrs. Mayor, the English teacher, gave her an odd look. “This is your first time late, Lynn, or I would have you go down to the attendance office for a tardy slip,” she commented.

“I'm sorry,” Lynn said, feeling her face grow red beneath the curious eyes which turned upon her.

“All right,” Mrs. Mayor said kindly. “But let's not let it happen again.”

Lynn usually enjoyed Mrs. Mayor's English class, but
today she could not concentrate on anything that was being said.

He's avoiding me, she thought, deliberately avoiding me. Of all the silly ways to act! Maybe he's mad at me, but that doesn't mean he has to go out of his way to be horrid. I'm going to feel like a perfect fool, looking all over the school for him when he doesn't want to be found. And it's not as though I want to talk to him—I just want to hand him the necklace.

When the bell rang at the end of the class, she got quickly to her feet and started toward the door, but this time she was delayed by Holly Taylor, who caught her arm as she went by.

“Hi, Lynn, where are you going in such a hurry? Stop and say hello!”

Lynn paused, unable to avoid answering the friendly greeting. Holly was one of the little knot of girls standing by the doorway. Nancy was with her, and so was Brenda Peterson.

“Hello,” Lynn said politely. “What's new with the debutantes?”

“We missed you last night at the fashion show,” Nancy told her. “Ernie said he tried to get you to go and couldn't talk you into it. I wish you had come; it was lots of fun.”

“And we made a fortune,” Brenda added. “Over five hundred dollars! I'm taking it over to the hospital this afternoon. I meant to drop it off on the way to school, but I got delayed and didn't have time to make it.”

“Five hundred dollars is a lot of money to tote around high school all day,” Lynn remarked. It gave her a feeling
of satisfaction to place Brenda in the wrong. “Something might happen to it.”

“Oh, I'm not that silly,” Brenda said. “Mother let me drive the car to school this morning, and I locked my wallet inside. In fact,” she gave a helpless little smile that irritated Lynn immeasurably, “I guess I locked my own money up at the same time. I'm going to have to make a trip out to the parking lot, if I want lunch today.”

Nancy said, “You're headed for Spanish, aren't you, Lynn? I'll walk you over.”

As they went down the hall, Lynn caught a glimpse of Dirk again, standing near his locker, but she could not break away from her friend and go rushing after him. She had still not had a chance to hand him the necklace when the next bell rang.

This is getting ridiculous, Lynn thought, as she seated herself in Spanish class and waited for the day's assignment to be given. Then she caught sight of Anne. She was sitting quietly in her usual seat in the comer, hemmed in by her friends, Clara and Rachel.

Anne, Lynn thought. Why didn't I think of her before? She'll be able to find Dirk for me; surely she knows his schedule, and he won't be avoiding
her
.

She hesitated and then, for the first time in her life, opened her notebook and tore out a clean piece of paper and wrote a few quick lines. She folded the paper quickly and, when no one was looking, tossed it neatly across the row of desks between hers and Anne's.

The note fell with a little plop on to Anne's Spanish book.

Anne glanced up in surprise. Her eyes skipped over
the room until they met Lynn's. She raised her eyebrows questioningly. Lynn nodded. Quickly, under cover of her notebook, Anne opened the note, scanned it hurriedly and glanced up again. Again her eyes met Lynn's, and this time she shook her head.

Lynn stared at her in bewilderment. The note had read, “I must see Dirk as soon as possible. Where can I find him?” What was there in that to shake your head about?

She motioned to Anne to write a return note, but again Anne shook her head and made a slight gesture toward the clock. Lynn followed her gaze and saw that there were only ten minutes left before the class would be over. There was hardly sense in exchanging notes again now; the risk was not worth it.

The ten minutes seemed to drag on endlessly. When the bell finally rang, however, it was Anne who slipped quickly from her seat and crossed to Lynn's desk.

“Do you really have to see Dirk?” she asked in a low voice when she reached it. “Isn't it anything I can say to him for you?”

“You mean he's
that
angry!” Lynn exclaimed in horror. “Oh, Anne!”

“I've never seen him so upset about anything,” Anne said quietly. “I was sitting in the living room the day he phoned you, so I couldn't help but hear part of it. I don't know exactly what it was you told him, or why, but when he hung up that telephone, he looked as though someone had kicked him. What was it all about?”

“I told him I wasn't going to date him,” Lynn said, hating to see the hurt in Anne's eyes. “It's not that I don't like him, Anne, and last time he was awfully sweet to me. It's
just that he was getting too serious. And I could never care about him the way he seemed to be getting to care about me. It seemed better to break off completely than to drag it on and have him care more.”

Anne digested this, then nodded slowly in agreement “Yes, you're right if that's the way it was. But do you have to go talk to him now? He's so hurt and angry, it couldn't do anything but make it worse.”

Lynn considered briefly handing the necklace to Anne and asking her to give it to Dirk, but her conscience would not let her do that. After all, she thought, he gave it to me himself, and Anne knows nothing about it. Probably he doesn't want her to know anything about it either—especially now.

She shook her head. “I
do
have to see him. There's no getting around that. It will just take a minute, but I do have to see him myself.”

“All right,” Anne said. “If you have to.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “You probably just have time to catch him, if you hurry. Brad Morgan called as we were leaving for school this morning. He said there's something wrong with his car and he wants Dirk to look at it. He said he'd stop and pick him up at lunch hour. I kind of got the impression Dirk was going to cut classes the rest of the day and not come back to school at all.”

Lynn said, “Then he'd be in the parking lot?”

“I suppose so,” Anne said, “unless they've left already.” Which was how Lynn came to be running across the parking lot at just the moment to hear Brenda Peterson, her voice shaking with fury, cry, “It's gone! The whole five hundred dollars—it's gone! Those terrible boys have taken it!”

“What do you mean, we've taken it?” Lynn heard Dirk's voice before she actually saw him. “What five hundred dollars? What the dickens are you talking about, anyway?”

“You know perfectly well what I'm talking about,” Brenda returned angrily. “The more than five hundred dollars that was in my wallet, right here in the front seat of my mother's car. Now the door's open and the wallet's gone!”

Hurrying around the side of the Peterson car, Lynn came face to face with the three of them—Brenda, her usually pale face flushed with anger, Dirk and Brad Morgan. Dirk, standing with his hands in his pockets, was the picture of outrage. Brad merely looked amused.

“Well, hi, there!” he said lightly as Lynn came into view. “This little friend of yours seems to be blowing her top about something. Can you make out what it's all about?”

Lynn's first impulse was to be amused also, for Brenda and Dirk looked so furious, standing there glaring at each other. But as soon as the meaning of the scene began to penetrate, the amusement changed to horror.

“You mean the hospital money, Brenda? The hospital money's gone?”

“Yes, it's gone!” Brenda turned the storm of her wrath toward Lynn. “And I know where it's gone, too—right into
their pockets. They were standing here by the car when I came up. It couldn't have been anyone else.”

“But how,” Lynn asked in bewilderment, “could the door have been opened? I thought you said you locked it.”

“I did,” Brenda answered bitterly. “I must not have caught the latch at the wing window. It's been forced, and when I got here, the car door was standing wide open.”

“Well, we didn't have a thing to do with it!” Dirk said angrily. “I got here just about two seconds before you did. You're not going to blame this thing on me!”

Their voices carried across the parking lot, and a crowd was beginning to gather. A group of girls who had started toward their car paused instead to listen to the argument. Several younger boys, who had been playing football in the schoolyard, broke into a run at the sound of possible trouble. They came panting up, eagerly throwing themselves into the conversation.

“What happened? What's the matter? Who did what anyway?”

“These two boys,” Brenda repeated for the benefit of her new audience, “they broke into my car and took my wallet.”

“That's a pretty strong thing to assert,” a masculine voice said firmly. “Do you have any proof to back up your accusation, young lady?”

Lynn turned in relief to see Mr. Ryan, the football coach and boys' physical education teacher. His quiet voice cut through the turmoil, stilling the excitement as though by magic.

Brenda said, “Look in their pockets. That should be proof. You don't find many high-school boys carrying five
hundred dollars around in their pockets.”

“No,” Mr. Ryan agreed, “that's true enough. All right boys, just to clear this thing up, let's see what you have in your pockets.”

Brad hesitated a moment, then shrugged and pulled his pockets inside out. A jumble of articles tumbled onto the ground—a pocketknife, a package of cigarettes, some assorted coins, car keys, a packet of matches, a soiled pocket handkerchief. Mr. Ryan gave the objects a quick glance and then motioned the young man to pick them up.

“Can't find five hundred there, by any stretch of the imagination. O.K., Masters, you're next. Pockets out!” Mr. Ryan said.

“I will not turn my pockets out!” Dirk's face was dark with fury. “This is the rottenest thing I've ever heard of! I didn't have a thing to do with her darned car—it was standing here with the door hanging open when I came up, and she came screaming around the comer two seconds later. Nobody's going to go rooting through my things—not unless they go to the police station and get a search warrant!”

“Don't make us do that, Son.” There was an edge to Mr. Ryan's voice now. “If you're innocent, there's no sense in making a scene about this thing. Turn out your pockets.”

Dirk's head was thrown back, his dark eyes were blazing. “Let's see you make me!”

Moved in spite of herself by the boy's defiance, Lynn had an urge to walk over and stand beside him. No wonder he's angry, she thought. I know how I'd feel if somebody told
me
to turn everything out of my pocketbook to prove I wasn't a thief. I'd be so mad I'd probably throw it at them.

But at that instant, Brad Morgan spoke, his voice low and scornful.

“Oh, come on, Dirk, give them their way. There's no sense making a big thing out of it.”

Dirk hesitated and then, with a look of disgust, emptied his pockets onto the ground.

In the silence that followed, Brenda said, “What about his gym bag? Open that, too. Maybe he has it in his gym bag.”

Dirk's gym bag was on the ground at his feet. Now he gave it a savage kick in Brenda's direction.

“Sure,” he said bitterly, “better examine everything. Better play safe and open it yourselves, too—I might have a gun in there and shoot all your heads off.”

Mr. Ryan said, “O.K., Son, calm down. This will just take a minute.”

He lifted the gym bag and pulled out a pair of gym shoes, some tennis shorts—and a pale pink, lady's wallet.

“That's it!” Brenda exclaimed. “That's the wallet! Is the money still in it?”

Mr. Ryan was regarding the wallet with surprise. Slowly, he opened it and looked inside.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “there's money here. A lot of money.” He ruffled through it quickly. “There's more than five hundred dollars here. Five hundred and a little extra.”

“We made over five hundred and I had a few dollars of my own there, too.” Brenda explained, reaching for the money. “Could I have it please?”

“Yes,” Mr. Ryan said “I suppose so.” He handed the wallet to Brenda and then turned his attention to Dirk. “Well, young man, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Dirk was staring at the wallet in bewilderment. “Nothing,” he said. “That is, I don't know anything about it. I didn't put it in my gym bag. I never saw it before in my life.” He looked very young, and suddenly scared. “Honest, I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“Now look, Masters,” Mr. Ryan said patiently, “you can't expect anybody to believe that.”