Virginia is smarter than most kids her age. Her brother Richard told her so, and he's almost 9. He's the Teacher when they play school. Virginia and her sister Cassie are the students. Richard and Cassie go to the real school that's just around the corner. Virginia hasn't started real school yet.

Last year Mother and Virginia met Richard and Cassie when school let out and they all walked home together. This year Virginia is big enough to meet them by herself. The school is close, and there's only one street she has to cross to get there. She's done it four times already. Today will be the 5th time, one time for each of her birthdays.

Virginia walks down her front steps and turns right at the sidewalk. She knows which way is right because she has a birthmark on her right wrist. She walks past a few houses to the mailbox and turns right again.

Virginia can see the school in the distance behind the steel fence. She has to pass four more houses before crossing the street.

Mr. Reed's car is parked in front of the second house. That's strange, thinks Virginia. The Reeds live on Virginia's street, not this one.

Virginia sees the back of Mr. Reed's head and the shoulder of his blue shirt as she approaches the car. His shoulder is twitching.

The passenger window is down. Virginia looks into the car as she passes.

Mr. Reed looks funny. She can see his hairy white belly sticking out from under the bottom of his shirt. Under his belly, he's hitting himself with his fist. Mr. Reed's face is red. He's hitting himself hard. Why is he doing that?

Virginia's grandpa hits the pulpit with his fist sometimes, when he preaches at the Southern Baptist Church on Sunday mornings. Mother says he does it to wake the people up. Dad laughs when she says it. Mr. Reed's fist is moving so fast, Virginia can't even count how many times he's hit himself. And he's not even in church.

Virginia is standing still, staring at Mr. Reed through the passenger window, when he turns his head toward her. Their eyes meet.

Virginia runs. She runs toward the school as fast as she can. She hears Mr. Reed's car door slam shut behind her. She's never run this fast before. Her feet sting on the bottom when her sandals slap the sidewalk, but she doesn't stop.

She doesn't know what she did wrong, but Mr. Reed's fist would hurt more than this if he caught her. He would hit her so hard and so fast, his shoulder would twitch like crazy.

The school bell rings just as Virginia reaches the street. Her lungs hurt now, and she's gasping for breath. She looks left and right. No cars are coming. She's almost to the schoolyard fence.

A stream of kids flows from the school's rear exit. A few of them run ahead, up the dirt path that leads across the field to the fence. Virginia hooks her fingers through the cool steel diamonds and tries to catch her breath. She hopes Mr. Reed isn't chasing her, but she's afraid to look.

The fence has an opening so wide Virginia can ride her bike through it. It's a short cut for the kids who live in the neighborhood, so they don't have to walk all the way around the school to get home.

Mother spanked Virginia once for running through the short cut and playing on school property. But Virginia makes a plan in her head to run onto school property if Mr. Reed catches up to her.

"Hey smartypants!" says Richard. Virginia had been so worried about Mr. Reed, she hadn't seen Richard and Cassie come through the fence. She feels so tired now that they're here.

"Carry my stuff, servant!" says Cassie, dumping her books and lunchbox into Virginia's arms.

Virginia feels safe. Mr. Reed won't hit her in front of witnesses. As she crosses the street behind Richard and Cassie, she sees that Mr. Reed and his car are gone.

"You guys got here just in time," she tells them.

"Why?" asks Richard. "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Reed was here," Virginia says. "He was --"

"He was what?" asks Cassandra.

"Spit it out!" says Richard.

"Cough it up!" says Cassandra. "He was what?"

But Virginia doesn't know what Mr. Reed was doing. If she knew, she could look it up in the dictionary or learn how to spell it. But she doesn't know what words to look up.

"He was sitting in his car." she finally says. "Wearing a blue shirt."

"So what?" says Richard. "It's a free country."

"Yeah," says Cassie. "You have the right to wear blue. What's the problem, goblin?"

"Nothing," mutters Virginia, shifting Cassie's books to her hip. Her feet hurt.

And she never speaks of Mr. Reed or his car or blue shirt again.

Marilyn Lindblad

--

2