Afternoon at Mandy's

   It's especially good to be on the bus heading home from school today.
   School was a drag today, except for Mr. Royal's. Somehow he makes eleventh grade English interesting. It must be that you can ask him a question and he doesn't automatically tell you that he knows the answer. He even says some questions don't have answers.
   That was the good part. The bad part was that Pop Garner caught me reading 'When Worlds Collide' beneath my desk in analytic geometry. Up to then I thought I might be getting a 96, my test average. Now, who knows what the old punch-drunk will give me?
   It's been three years that I've been riding this bus to and from school. With 45 minutes each way, I have time to sleep and to think, to notice and to imagine.
   Betsy's taken to sitting in the back of the bus all the time. So I look for interesting people getting on the bus. Perhaps a scientist or a politician. All I see are laborers in their faded overalls, businessmen in their well-worn suits, and

 

housewives out shopping.
   Bart tells me that he's getting married. Now I know that he'll never leave the confines of Patapsco. A person must be free of entanglements to make the most of his chances.
   Finally the bus rumbled past the long stretch run of the Patapsco Race Track. I got off the bus, across from Lincolns. I spent all my money at lunch, so I had no money for that place.
   I walked across the supermarket lot. I saw a petite brunette in matching pink skirt and blouse across the A&P parking lot.
   "Mandy!" I called.
   She turned and waited when she saw it was me. In her arms, she carried a small parcel, probably milk and bread from the supermarket.
   I ran up to her. "How're you, Mandy?"
   She smiled and I felt a pleasant contrast to the stoical bus ride.
   Learned that word, 'stoical', from our weekly editorial page homework. Mr. Royal gathers our spelling and vocabulary words from the Sunpaper. A competitor to my