E-Book Overview
It seems too good to be true. The most popular boy in school has asked Jane out -- and she's never even dated before. Stan is tall and good-looking, friendly and hard-working -- everything Jane ever dreamed of. But is she ready for this?Suppose her parents won't let her go? What if she's nervous and makes a fool of herself? Maybe he'll think she's too young. If only she knew all the clever things to say. If only she were prettier. If only she were ready for this...With her usual warmth, perceptiveness, and humor, Beverly Cleary creates the joys and worries of a young girl's first crush.
E-Book Content
CR iii iii Contents Chapter 1 Today I’m going to meet a boy, Jane Purdy told… 1 Chapter 2 “Pop, have you ever thought about getting a dog?” Jane… 26 Chapter 3 It was not until the next morning that Jane began… 48 Chapter 4 All day Sunday Jane drifted around the house in a… 76 Chapter 5 By quarter to six on Saturday Jane, who had been… 98 Chapter 6 “Love me on Monday, but don’t love me one day. 122 Chapter 7 When the bell finally brought to a close the period… 139 Chapter 8 Saturday morning, soon after breakfast, Julie phoned. 155 Chapter 9 Although babysitting with Patsy Scruggs was hard work, Jane was… 175 Chapter 10 For the next three days Jane wondered what she should… 196 Chapter 11 The next two weeks passed quickly for Jane. It did… About the Author Other Books by Beverly Cleary Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 219 Chapter 1 Today I’m going to meet a boy, Jane Purdy told herself, as she walked up Blossom Street toward her babysitting job. Today I’m going to meet a boy. If she thought it often enough as if she really believed it, maybe she actually would meet a boy even though she was headed for Sandra Norton’s house and the worst babysitting job in Woodmont. If I don’t step on any cracks in the sidewalk all the way there, Jane thought, I’ll be sure to meet a boy. But avoiding cracks was silly, of course, and the sort of thing she had done when she was in the third grade. She was being just as silly as some of the other fifteen-year-old girls she knew, who 1 counted red convertibles and believed they would go steady with the first boy they saw after the hundredth red convertible. Counting convertibles and not stepping on cracks were no way to meet a boy. Maybe, when she finished her job with Sandra, she could walk down to Nibley’s Confectionery and Soda Fountain and sit at the counter and order a chocolate Coke float; and if she sipped it very, very slowly, a new boy might happen to come in and sit down beside her. He would be at least sixteen—old enough to have a driver’s license— and he would have crinkles around his eyes that showed he had a sense of humor and he would be tall, the kind of boy all the other girls would like to date. Their eyes would meet in the mirror behind the milk shake machines, and he would smile and she would smile back and he would turn to her and look down (down—that was important) and grin and say . . . “Hello there!” A girl’s voice interrupted Jane’s daydream, and she looked up to see Marcy Stokes waving at her from a green convertible driven by Greg Donahoe, president of the junior class of Woodmont High School. “Hi, Marcy,” Jane called back. People who said 2 “Hello there” to her always made her feel so unimportant. Greg waved, and as the couple drove on down the hill, Marcy brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and smiled back at Jane with the kind of smile a girl riding in a convertible with a popular boy on a summer day gives a girl who is walking alone. And that smile made Jane feel that everything about herself was all wrong. Her yellow cotton dress wa