LITMIR.BIZ

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okay. You gettin’ it?”

      “It sure would make a nifty birthday present for my grandfather,” she said as she placed it back with the others. “Let’s come back for it tomorrow after school. Okay?”

      “Why tomorrow?”

      “Because it’s three-and-a-half bucks, you goof, and I don’t have enough on me. That’s why.”

      “Well then, I’ll come back with you,” I said. “You can count on it.”

      We hung around outside for a bit and watched a lady drape tinsel on the Christmas tree in the window. Under the tree, in the glow of tiny coloured lights, I saw a white leather diary. The pages were edged in gold. A strap from the back cover wrapped over the front of the pages and slipped into a gold lock on the front cover. Tied to the strap, with fine red ribbon, was a tiny golden key.

      “Oh-h-h, Deena,” I said. “Just feast your eyes on that.”

      “What? Where?”

      “The diary. Right down there . . . beside the manicure set . . . see? Isn’t it absolutely stunning?”

      “Oh, please!” she said. “It’s only a diary, you hangnail. What’s the big deal?”

      “It’s perfectly gorgeous!” I said. “Did you ever have a diary?”

      “Of course, you doofus! I just got my new one for ’55. You?”

      I didn’t answer.

      “Yeah, sure. You probably never even had one,” she sneered, then almost screamed, “How can you live without a diary? Everybody has a diary!”

      “Well . . . my other one’s filling up real fast,” I said. “When we come back tomorrow, this diary will be mine.”

      I always wanted a real diary, but had to make do with an old notebook I had left over from Grade Four. Besides, Mom always says, “If you ask me, those fancy-shmancy diaries are nothing but a waste of money and a bunch of foolishness.”

      Deena and I went through our usual string of goodbyes, au revoirs and see-ya-laters. “Snow at last!” she said. “Remember—the mountain on Sunday.” As she reached the corner, she called, “And don’t forget . . . the hot chocolate’s on you.”

      I squashed my forehead against the window of Waverly Gifts to take another peek at the diary, then raced home. Great wet snowflakes melted on my cheeks and clung to my hair and eyebrows. The streetlights had come on. I didn’t see it happen. I never do. The glow of streetlights just seems to creep up on you when you’re not looking. I hurried along, stopping now and then to kick at some of the slush-cruds hanging from the car fenders at the curb. It was awfully late, and I knew Mom would be downright mad if I didn’t come up with a pretty good excuse.

      Our house isn’t really a house. It’s called a flat. The Kingsleys live in the bottom flat. They’re lucky, because in the summer they can plant a garden, and in the winter they don’t have to bust their backs shovelling stairs—because they don’t have any. Ha!

      The middle flat, where the Gravelle family lives, has at least a dozen outside stairs and, of course, no garden. If you ask me, the Gravelles don’t have it so easy, because they have to put up with noise from their upstairs neighbours (for example, moi!), and if they make noise themselves, they get complaints from the Kingsleys under them. Mom says that Mrs. Kingsley has dug hundreds of little dents in her ceiling by bashing it with the handle of her broom. She does that every time Jeanine Gravelle practices the piano over her head. The truth is . . . I always hear Jeanine playing her boogie-woogie music. The beat comes right up through the floor of my room—and I love it.

      We live in the top flat. That means we get to share the outside staircase with the Gravelles, but once we open the door at the top of the stairs, we end up with a long inside staircase to climb as well. Believe me, it’s awful when you have to drag home a stack of books or other heavy junk of one kind or another.

      Mom says she dreams of living in a bottom flat so she won’t have to go lugging groceries up two flights all the time. But Dad complains that a higher rent would break him altogether. “Even fifty a month for this dump is highway robbery,” he says.

      Nobody had bothered doing any shovelling yet, so I scraped my boots back and forth through the snow on each step to clear my own pathway up to the outside door.

      Mom swung the inside door open. “Where on earth were you?” she said in her most frantic voice. She was holding a knife.

      I slipped by her, dropped my schoolbag onto the little hall table and shimmied out of my jacket. “I was delayed,” I said, following her into the kitchen.

      “What do you mean ‘delayed’?”

      I watched her cut the ends off the last few string beans and dump them into the enamel pot on the stove. “I was delayed by Mr. Peale,” I said.

      “Whatever for?”

      “He was commenting on my writing.”

      “Oh! You must tell us all about it at suppertime. But right now, you’d better get started on your homework.”

      I closed my door and flung my books onto the bed. Homework, nothing! First things first!

      I made a list of all the most likely places to find money, did a careful search, and filled in the amounts.

      Square wooden bank 13 ¢

      Schoolbag 9 ¢

      Junk drawer 3 ¢

      Desk drawer 4 ¢

      Night table 0 ¢

      Window ledge 5 ¢

      Under the bed 0 ¢

      Bottom of the laundry bag 12 ¢

      Pockets of everything I own 12 ¢

      A grand total of fifty-eight cents!

      Math Problem:

      Vivian needs a white leather diary with gold all around the edges. The cost of the diary is $3.79. After doing a thorough search of her entire room, she found a measly 58¢.

      1. How much more money does Vivian need to buy the diary?

      2. What’s the best way for Vivian to get the money she needs?

      My life is no picnic. Deena, the most popular kid in the whole school, had a bicycle all her life, and white furniture, and a backyard with grass. Then there’s Shelly. Cool Shelly with her perfectly ironed blouses that stay tucked in and pure white bobby socks that always stay up. I’m the one stuck with ugly hand-me-downs—second-hand clothes from people I don’t even know. I’m the one with torn-at-the-toes socks that creep their way down into my scuffed-up Oxfords. Every time I ever need anything, Mom says, “I hope you understand, dear, but you’ll just have to wait for a good payday.” Then payday comes along, and so does the phone bill or a brake job for the old Studebaker. Dad’s car is older than I am, and it has rust all around the edges. He just laughs and calls it his lace-trimmed chariot. On days when Dad gives me a lift in the morning, I ask him to drop me off a block away from school. “The walk is good for my lungs,” I tell him, and he believes me. He doesn’t know that I’d rather die than have any of the other kids see me getting out of his rusted-out jalopy.

      The sound of Dad’s car spluttering to a stop at the curb and the smell of corn and string beans told me it was suppertime. I dropped the fifty-eight cents into my pencil box and spread a few open books out on my desk so that any snoopers would think I was really up to my eyeballs in homework.

      Dad stabbed his fork into a jumble of string beans. “So, Vivi. How was your day?”

      “I’ve run into a problem,” I said. “Sort of a math problem.”

      “Remind me after supper. I’ll help you work it out before driving you over to Grandpa’s.”

      Mom

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