She hollered about the prom cards one more time before she went into the dining-room. Soon they began to pile in from the hall. Every person took a prom card and they lined up in bunches against the walls of the room. This was the real start now.
It came all of a sudden in a very queer way—this quietness.
The boys stood together on one side of the room and the girls were across from them. For some reason every person quit making ohe boys held their cards and looked at the girls and the room was very still. None of the boys started asking for proms like they were supposed to do. The awful quietness got worse and she had not been to enough parties to know what she should do. Then the boys started pung each other and talking. The girls giggled—but even if they didnt look at the boys you could tell they only had their minds oher they were going to be popular or not. The awful quietness was gone now, but there was something jittery about theroom.
After a while a boy went up to a girl named Delores Brown.
As soon as he had signed her up the other boys all began to rush Delores at once. When her whole card was full they started on anirl, named Mary. After that everything suddenly stopped again. One or two extra girls got a couple of proms—and because she was giving the party three boys came up to her. That was all.
The people just hung around in the dining-room and the hall.
The boys mostly flocked around the punch bowland tried to show off with each other. The girls buogether and did a lot of laughing to pretend like they were having a good time. The boys thought about the girls and the girls thought about the boys. But all that came of it was a queer feeling in the room.
It was then she began to notice Harry Minowitz. He lived in the house door and she had known him all her life.
Although he was two years older she had grown faster than him, and in the summer-time they used to wrestle and fight out on the plot of grass by the street. Harry was a Jew boy, but he
did not look so much like one. His hair was light brown and straight. Tonight he was dressed very , and when he came in the door he had hung a groanama hat with a feather in itorack.
It wasnt his clothes that made her notice him. There was something ged about his face because he was without the horn-rimmed specs he usually wore. A red, droppy sty had e out on one of his eyes and he had to cock his head sideways like a bird in order to see. His long, thin hands kept toug around his sty as though it hurt him. When he asked for punch he stuck the paper cup right into her Dads face. She could tell he needed his glasses very bad. He was nervous a bumping into people. He didnt ask any girl to prom except her—and that was because it was her party.
All the punch had been drunk. Her Dad was afraid she would be embarrassed, so he and her Mama had gone back to the kit to make lemonade. Some of the people were on the front pord the sidewalk. She was glad to get out in the cool night air. After the hot, bright house she could smell the new autumn in the darkness.
Then she saw something she hadnt expected. Along the edge of the sidewalk and in the dark street there was a bunch of nighborhood kids. Pete and Sucker Wells and Baby and Spareribs—the whole gang that started at below Bubbers age a on up to over twelve. There were even kids she didnt know at all who had somehow smelled a party and e to hang around. And there wer