On Growing Up - Part Two (Continued.)
"C'mon, Merry." I started toward the playground, then realized when I only took a few steps that Merry wasn't following me. I turned around, and she was still standing where I had left her. She looked parchment-white and shivering, making a show of putting her gloves back on.
I frowned and walked back. What was going on? She had been strangely detatched since she came back from the hospital. "Merry - what's going on?"
"I - can't go down there." It was a soft, hesitant whisper.
.
"You what? Whyever not?"
"I got - I got - things I gotta do first."
"Like what?"
"Well - " Merry looked around, then pulled a folded piece of gold paper from her books, something I hadn't noticed before. "I gotta sign in again and turn this in to he office."
"Oh, is that all?" I have a gusty sigh, trying not to sound impatient. "Do you want me to go inside with you?"
It was an offhand remark, careless. I didn't really mean the words I said. It sounded like I was talking to Annie before she went to kindergarten,
However, Merry took me at face value. She crushed the form to her chest without looking at it, then looked at me with a strange look in her sapphire eyes. "Oh - would you?"
"Merry - what's wrong with you? This isn't like you." I was past annoyed; I was now genuinely frightened by the way she was acting.
This wasn't the Merry Christensen I knew, that I had been tight best friends with. I tried to change the subject.. "Well - c'mon. I'll go with you, if that's what you want. Then we'll go back to the room and put your things in your locker and - "
I looked back as I was talking. I stopped again. Merry still hadn't moved. NOW what?
"What are you waiting for?" I went back and took her free hand. I tugged, gently. "Let's get this done and over with. It's COLD - cold'n blue blazes - out here."
I turned her toward the school, still holding her hand. Merry didn't offer any further resistance as we went up the stairs and inside the building.'
That was the beginning.Merry, back on her feet again and moving through her days like some kind of automaton, was slow in one hundred percent recovery.
We were still the best of friends -in my estimation - but separated in many other ways.
Merry couldn't take gym any more. The gym teacher had her run a couple of sprints, and she crumpled to the mats laid out on the floor after the second one. She was still too weak to exercise or to do calisthenics. She was reduced to sitting inside the gym office, dressed in her white blouse and crayon-blue shorts like the rest of us, studying or doing her homework - or at least, she was supposed to be studying. As we double-timed it around the gym, a glance out of the corner of my eyes revealed Merry chewing a pencil, staring into space, a blank mimeograph sheet or piece of paper in front of her. The teacher caught her at this one afternoon and made her stand in the corner. The old Merry would have crumpled in tears at the humiliation. This new Merry, well...
Merry was woefully behind in work in all subjects. She had missed six to eight weeks of work and showed little or no interest in making it up.She didn't come right out and say so, oh, no, but the attitude was there. She struggled along with whatever we were doing, but I could see the frustration cross her face with alarming regularity.
And then there was the girls. Although they greeted her heartily that first morning back, they treated her now with some sort of suspicious disdain. Worse than before.
She had me horribly, desperately worried. And how long could this go on?
(To be continued.)
