Page:Jay Little - Maybe—Tomorrow.pdf/18

 him to have lunch with me tomorrow. And I'll ask Joy too. It'll be easier. I don't know what I'd talk about with just Bob."

He thought this over a moment. It was a simple thing, an everyday occurrence. He was certainly capable of speaking to Joy. He reviewed his advantages. First, he had played with Joy as a child. They had been good friends. That was good. Blake had always been nice to him, had always spoken when they chanced to meet. They certainly had no cause to be ashamed of him. After all he was intelligent, wore good clothes; he wasn't ugly and didn't have pimples like so many boys his age.

He crossed the carpet and went to the bathroom; looked at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror. He was hardly conscious of running a moist finger over each eyebrow, so engrossed was he that he had forgotten he had done the same before. He opened his eyes wide and viewed the contour of his face. He closed his eyes and thought of himself as a girl. A beautiful girl. The thought was not a strange one. It was the playing over, over, and over again of events in which he was the star figure. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be a beautiful girl, and his mind conjured up a picture of a large gathering, intimidated and cowering in the presence of this lovely female who insisted on this and that, who chose to be rid of them all except a bronze, handsome god. In these fantasies he had charm and wit, beauty and importance. He lived them. Without his knowledge, they penetrated his actions sufficiently to increase still further the distance between himself and his classmates. He did not understand them and they did not understand him. He was conscious of this now in a way that he.had never been before. A faucet inside him had suddenly been opened, breaking through his melancholy dreamlike existence.

Rebelliously, he leaned toward the mirror and ran a soft powder puff across his face. What did it matter if Blake was going with Joy, he tried to convince himself. After all, he had to take some girl. Joy was very pretty. She was sweet too. He was glad it was she and not someone he didn't like.

"Bob Blake will never take you to a dance," a ghostlike voice whispered, "why should he … you're not a girl … believing you are … why don't you get a date … can't you?"

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