Set a Purpose

Find out why Squeaky and Gretchen are not friends.

I’m about to take a stroll down Broadway so I can practice my breathing exercises. I’ve got Raymond walking on the inside close to the buildings, cause he’s subject to fits of fantasy and starts thinking he’s a circus performer and that the curb is a tightrope. This is OK by me so long as he doesn’t run me over or interrupt my breathing exercises. I’m serious about my running, and I don’t care who knows it.

So I’m strolling down Broadway breathing out and breathing in on counts of seven, which is my lucky number. I see Gretchen and her sidekicks Mary Louise and Rosie steady coming up Broadway.

“You signing up for the May Day races?” smiles Mary Louise, only it’s not a smile at all.

“I don’t think you’re going to win this time,” says Rosie.

“I always win cause I’m the best,” I say straight at Gretchen who is, as far as I’m concerned, the only one talking in this ventriloquist-dummy routine. Gretchen smiles, but it’s not a smile. Then they all look at Raymond and they’re about to see what trouble they can get into through him.

“What grade you in now, Raymond?”

“You got anything to say to my brother, you say it to me, Mary Louise Williams.”

“What are you, his mother?” sasses Rosie.

“That’s right. And the next word out of anybody and I’ll be their mother, too.” Then Gretchen puts her hand on her hip and is about to say something with her freckle-face self but doesn’t. So me and Raymond smile at each other. I continue with my breathing exercises, strolling down Broadway with not a care in the world cause I am Miss Quicksilver herself.

I take my time getting to the park on May Day because the track meet is the last thing on the program. The biggest thing on the program is the May Pole dancing. I can do without this, thank you, even if my mother thinks it’s a shame I don’t take part and act like a girl for a change. You’d think she’d be glad her daughter ain’t out there prancing