cried when I felt his lips pressing down on mine
"Leave me alone! You don't love me like I want to be
loved, for what I am. You love me because my face is
like hers! Sometimes I hate my face!"
&n
bsp; He looked terribly wounded as he backed
toward the door. "I was only trying to comfort you,"
he said in a broken voice. "Don't turn it into something
ugly."
My fear that Carrie's leg would come out of the
cast shorter than the other proved groundless. In no
time at all after her leg was cut free from the plaster
she was walking around as good as ever.
As fall neared, Chris, Paul and I conferred and
decided that a public school where Carrie could come
home every afternoon would be best for her after all.
All she'd have to do was board a bus three blocks from
home; the same bus would bring her home at three in
the afternoon. In Paul's big homey kitchen she'd stay
with Henny while I attended ballet class.
Soon September was upon us again, then
November had gone by, and still Carrie hadn't made a
single friend. She wanted most desperately to belong,
but always she was an outsider. She wanted someone
as dear as a sister but she found only suspicion,
hostility and ridicule. It seemed Carrie would walk the
long halls of that elementary school forever before she
found a friend.
"Cathy," Carrie would tell me, "nobody likes
me." "They will. Sooner or later they will know how