The first car that Skeeter was allowed to drive on her own, without an adult accompanist, was her stepfather’s big old Thunderbird that Skeeter claimed wasn’t a Ford but a Fudd and so dubbed Elmer. It went “huh-huh-huh-huh-huh” while shifting gears and backfired a lot when driven in chains, as Skeeter kept discovering one Leap Day afternoon.
        She herself had a tendency to stomp on the gas at the sight of red lights, taking them as a signal to go girl go! There being many red lights visible this Leap Day, Elmer went skid crunch skid and “huh-huh-huh-k’pow” all the way down South 48th Street to Penzance Boulevard, which was one of several (but the best of all possible) entries to

        Beyond them, the snowfall acted differently—Camelotly, in fact. Penzance Boulevard was shoveled not just clear but immaculate, without anything so prosaic as “salt” or “sand” to account for such clarity. As though a troop of tiny elves had done it overnight.
        Whoa thought Skeeter. Here were suburban niceties. Only the most presentable snow had been spared, left on display like decorative cloudbanks, with Penzance Boulevard a horizontal four-lane beanstalk climbing between them.
        (Elmer, not used to jacking around Cloud-Cuckooland, threatened Fuddishly to snap a chain.)
        What else did CORNWALL put you in mind of? Not game hens, anyway. Or the surrender-at-Yorktown question on last semester’s history final. But—pixiedust, maybe. And pirates with hooks. Fee fi fo fum, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of—St. Ives Street: turn left.
        Last house in the cul-de-sac.
        Land’s End.
        Not a gigantic house, but you’d have plenty of room inside to swing a cat. A sack of cats. Make that seven sacks, forty-nine cats, together with however many kits—never mind, forget it. Pull into the spotless driveway. Park Elmer. Get out. Go on up to the not-gigantic door and ring the bell. Mustn’t dilly, mustn’t dally, don’t be silly, just go ahead and do it…

        “Oh. Um.  Hello…”
        “Hi! Skeeter? Hi, Skeeter—I’m Sally Whistletoe!”
        (As if there could be any doubt.)
        “C’mon in!—lemme take your coat—are you frozen?—have some hot chocolate—careful, we make it hot—marshmallows too—here, have more—and whipped cream—shpritz! Don’t worry, you won’t gain an ounce in this house—I’ll have you yelling it off—HA! just kidding—c’mon down here—bring your cup—watch your step—have a seat, and tell me—rats! there goes the phone again! Just a sec, I’ll kiss ‘em off—(hi! what? did he? really? great! you tell Vicki yet? why not? well, call her now and call me back tonight if I don’t call you first, okay? yeah! right! good! you got it! BYE-bye—)”
        Jeez thought Skeeter. This was how to Do the Hustle.
        Once upon a time Skeeter’d thought she too knew how to Hustle not to say Bustle; but now she felt reduced to stumblebummery.
        They sat (Skeeter sat, Sally bustled) in a rumpus room with far less room than rumpus. Those sacks of cats and kits would be safe down here, behind and beneath the wealth of posters and banners and party impedimenta and stereo system with shoulder-high speakers and shelves of albums and shelves of eight-tracks and a pingpong table and pet rock menagerie and megaphone collection and all sorts of pompons and all sorts of weightlifting equipment and, along the far wall, a fullscale Olympic-size balance beam. 
        “You’re sure into a lot of things,” said Skeeter; and it was so. Sally Whistletoe was immersed in all ventures great and small that the Middle West could offer wholesome energetic teenage girls in those Derelict Days, the mid-Seventies.
        She was no taller than Skeeter but looked a titan in her thunderbolted leotard. Sally had apple cheeks and deep-dish dimples, cinnamon-roll hair in a freshbaked Dorothy Hamill wedge, and a superimpressive bosom: the sort that appears to be pulling its owner along like a couple of dachshunds on abbreviated leashes.
        “You gotta have a project!” she demonstrated with jutting jaw etc. “Gotta get with it—no time to waste!” You had to get a move on, get the lead out, get it all together and get your butt in gear, if you didn’t want to get nowhere fast. Sally certainly didn’t, and at Cornwall High this semester alone she was the Pep Club President, Spanish Club Vice President, Concert Choir Secretary, Tri-Hi-Y Treasurer, Student Council Sergeant-at-Arms, and Chairperson of the Courtesy Committee; none of which was a sinecure when Sally Whistletoe embodied it. In her spare time she tutored the youth of Demortuis in cheerleading, iron-pumping, self-defense, civic-mindedness, and especially gymnastics. Everyone agreed that Sally could have outgoldmedal’d the likes of Korbut and Comaneci if she hadn’t had so wide a range of interests, or perhaps been blessed with a tad less chest.
        But who else in Cornwall could be spearheading plans for the local Bicentennial celebration? Or leading efforts to help victims of the Guatemalan earthquake? Or emergency-supervising the Winter Sports Dance Morning-After Clean-Up, when the girl supposed to be in charge didn’t show (having broken up with her boyfriend at the dance itself)?

        Just last year she’d been a Buzzette. That had begun it; but what else to do? where else to go? given the state of Demortuis in the state of Nilnisi in the midst of the Derelict Days? Your choice: doodle or squat.
        The Buzzettes had chosen both.  Not as if they’d ever been an honest-to-God skag-gang, either. Just a gaggle, in whose company Skeeter had cultivated the blank stare and sullen indifference of a classic urban girl—only to remain a thoroughgoing cutiepie. 
        What/where else had the Buzzettes done/gone? They’d cruised around town when cars were available. Chugged Buds when Buds could be had. Smoked a lot. Hung out. And out. Till Skeeter began to feel like Mowgli among the Bandar-log, whose tails might be curved in the shape of a cupid’s bow but hung down behind them even so. And never did what they set out to do. 
        So Skeeter’d bailed out and out of Buzzettehood, without much in the way of a parachute or safety net; and after an aimless summer had begun her junior year at looser ends than ever. Droopier drawers, too: no great pickings among her school’s upperclassmen, whom Skeeter had already gone through grade after grade with. Their kisses, to her blaséfied lips, still tasted premature. (Double yuggh.)
        Life, in short, lacked spice; and Skeeter, also short, lacked luster, till Mrs. Browning put her English class through the time-honored method of acting out assignments as little skits.  Which hadn’t jumpstarted Skeeter’s academic interest; but she was a natural ham and took to the skits as if they were pineapple slices. 
        Before she knew it, Mrs. Browning had shanghaied her into school theatrics and Mr. Minie the music teacher had cast her in that year’s operetta, The Big Noise, as Bitsy the third-lead-and-comedy-relief. 
        Skeeter was exactly the right type for this part, according to Mr. Minie; the librettists might’ve had her in mind when they wrought the play. For was not Bitsy bitesized, jocose and twinkle-eyed, with toothsome grin and roguish giggle and verve as big as all outdoors? All of which Skeeter was, had, or could readily approximate. 
        The Big Noise troupe included her longtime overarch rival Pamela Pillsbury, equally bitesized and a veteran theatricker to boot (though she never booted, not even after dress rehearsals). Disdaining the role of Bitsy, Pam aspired to stardom as Darlin’ Da-a-arlene but had to settle for Mamselle, the second-lead-and-(implied)-town-pump. Da-a-arlene’s part went instead to LaFayette Smith, a dead ringer for Donna Summer, who was no sooner cast than Mr. Minie announced his intention to “bring out the essential Fiftiesishness” of a 1944 musical for reasons he went on about at tiresome length. 
        “How Fiftiesy are we going to look with LaFayette as Da-a-arlene?” Pamela snippy-dripped, not quite under her breath.
        Which made Skeeter (a) admire LaFayette all the more, (b) remark that some people looked fif-teasy ALL the damn time, and (c) surname Pam’s character “Hepzibah” after Pogo’s svelte French skunk. 
        Alas! As it happened, not even LaFayette’s elegant voice could salvage Essential Fiftiesishness from Bonum High School’s Big Noise. Half the cast came across as imitation Fonzies, their lines littered with aays and yo!s. Pamela Pillsbury totalbitched her way through every run-through. And Skeeter, though a treat to see onstage, could not be heard beyond the orchestra pit. 
        Bitsy might not be the titular Big Noise but she was supposed to have a loud mouth, as exemplified in the madcap ditty “I’ve Got a Clue” and the production number “Bombshell Conga.” Skeeter brought Bitsy grin, giggle, verve, happily on-key warble, and that stuPENdous mouth she could still almost fit her fist inside. Plus the same regrettable tendency to stomp on the gas and go too fast, swallowing her words or letting them drown in the ensemble. 
        Mr. Minie tried to help, but like a parent giving driving lessons he gnashed his teeth and tore his hair and ultimately announced, “I don’t need you to quack like a duck!” Which delighted Pamela Pillsbury no end, and caused Skeeter to feel outright embarrassment for perhaps the first time in all her sixteen years, not excluding that otherwise-dull party last summer when her spaghetti straps had come unstrung.
        So she didn’t sound right. So what. Tough noogies.
        But never before had Skeeter Kitefly been unable to dish up the consommé when push came to shove came to kick down the stairs. It was simply a matter of getting a grip on the saucepan-handle. All she needed was a crash course on how to get it. 
        Ethel Merman wasn’t available. Mr. Minie was a waste of breath. LaFayette Smith lent some friendly advice but tagged each pointer with an umm-y’know?—and Skeeter didn’t. But after the quack-crack Mamselle Hepzibah took to calling her “Daffy,” which of course you knew meant war. 
        She’d have to go straight to the top.
        And in Demortuis that wasn’t some guru’s mountain peak or Kung Fu academy, but the Land’s End house in the Cornish cul-de-sac off the Street of St. Ives.
        Where Sally Whistletoe, burrowing through umpteen albums and eight-tracks, came up with the original Broadway cast recording of The Big Noise. And soon her shoulder-high speakers dittied forth with:
               Y’ever seen a concertina
               played like he can play one?
               Like an accorDEEon,
               wishin’ it was you?
               For a squeeze or two?
               How’re you s’posed to get the most
               squeezes when he’s weary?
               It’s a myster-eery—
               but I’ve got a clue!
               (Ooo-wee-ooo-wee-ooo!)
        “Know it! know it! love it!” Sally enthused. “Okay! On your feet now, here we go! First of all—very important—physical conditioning—gotta warm up properly! Breathe IN through the nose, deep! deeper! deeper!! Fill ‘em up and hold it—find it—feel it—blow it OUT through the mouth!”
        Skeeter blew it PERIOD end of sentence. 
        “Quit laughing!” Sally smiled. “Start over! INhale—deeper—hold it—EXhale, like this: foooo! Like there’s a bunch of birthday candles you’ve made a wish on! OverexAGgerate! Yeah! right! good! now do it all again—”
        And again, and again. 
        Skeeter the bootcamp neophyte had to amplify her lung capacity for quite some little while, extinguishing imaginary candles with a fee fi fo fum, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of— 
        “Okay, take a breather—HA! just kidding,” said Sally. “No really, relax a minute, you’re doing great! That’s the basics—do ‘em every day—your lungs’ll love you for it—boys will too, when you can hold a kiss till they’re blue in the face!” 
        “Wherever,” Skeeter gasped.
        “Now stand back and gimme room—here’s where the fun begins—I’ll show you what else you can do, when you know your projection!”
        Eyes closed, fists clenched, legs straddled, Sally sought her innermost bosomdepths and from them extracted a reverberating

        And Skeeter suddenly noticed that Sally Whistletoe’s eyes, for all their freshbaked cinnamon warmth, could be as penetrating as her voice.
        “Don’t worry about your throat. This time, when you hold it and find it and feel it, bring it all back up—let it all hang out—shoot the works and let it FLY—”
        So close your eyes, bitsy Skeeter, clench your fists and reach within, rummage about, pray for pixiedust and bid those fears goodbye: you can fly, you can fly, you—
        Can/could/did shoot the works and bring forth an

Copyright © 2002-2008
by P. S. Ehrlich; All Rights Reserved.