Monday, December 2nd, 1929
3:16 p.m.

"I'm telling."

Elaine turned away from the open window to spot her little sister standing still at the doorway to her bedroom. Looking down at her feet, Elaine realized why she hadn't heard her approach. Carol didn't wear shoes and carried her book strap in one hand and clung the doorframe with the other. With an expressionless look on her face, Elaine stared directly at her and shrugged her shoulders, then took another long puff of her cigarette. "Go ahead. I can't possibly get into any more trouble."

The bedroom was too cold, especially with the window so wide open in the middle of an afternoon rain shower. Elaine finished her cigarette, putting the end of it out in a mug that sat precariously at the edge of the window seat cushion. Carol walked up to her, looking into the mug to see there were multiple cigarettes ends and ashes inside. Clearly, that hadn't been her only one. Before sitting down next to her sister, Carol placed her books on the seat then picked up the mug and brought it over to a nearby desk to keep her sister from smoking another one around her. The last thing Carol wanted was for either of her parents to think she had taken up smoking and then blame her seventeen-year-old sister for setting yet another poor example. Not that her mother was home to scold her anyways.

"Why aren't you at school?" Carol asked as she sat down. "Did you run away again?"

There was another thing her parents could complain about and say she even more of a poor influence on her nine-year-old sister: Truancy.

Slumping her shoulders, Elaine shook her head. "No, I'm… I'm not going back for the rest of the school year."

"Oh." Taking a moment for Elaine to elaborate further on her comment, Carol waited; however, no explanation came. "Did you get expelled again?"

"Not exactly," she began, "more like dismissed. Well, not dismissed. I can go back next year. After the baby's born."

Carol's ears perked and her eyes shifted lower to her sister's lap. Scrutinizing the waist of Elaine's skirt, there was a bit of a bulge visible at the waistline. "I thought you were just getting fat."

"You ass," Elaine said and nudged her shoulder.

Carol grinned at her sister, happily swinging her legs back and forth, rambling on as Elaine remained quiet, "Oh boy! A baby! You must be so happy, Elaine! Do you want a boy or a girl? I want it to be a girl because then I'll have someone to play with. It's okay if it's a boy though as long as he's not like those silly boys who chase me around the playground or those rowdy ones who live down the street. You must be really, really pleased. Mommy and daddy must be really, really excited about - "

"They're not. No one is. You're not supposed to be excited for me, Carol. It's not a good thing."

"Oh." Carol shifted in her seat and crossed her arms, calming herself down upon hearing the sullen tone of Elaine's voice. How could someone not be happy about a brand new baby, she wondered. "How come?"

"You're too young to understand," she dismissively answered and returned her gaze towards the window.

Carol tried to look outside as well, wondering what her sister could possibly be starting at. It was impossible to plainly see outside with beads of rain attaching themselves to the window. There was clearly nothing out there. "Don't you have homework?" Taking the hint, Carol gathered she wasn't much in the mood to talk and picked up her books, getting ready to leave the room. She shuffled toward bedroom door, not wanting to bother Elaine any more than she had already, until she heard her sister call back. "Sorry I'm not a better influence for you." Shrugging back in reply, Carol shut the door behind her and continued to her room.

Undoing the buckle of her book strap, she stacked everything in the desk, only opening up her composition book to look at the list she had made for herself of homework to complete. Arithmetic. Penmanship. History. French. She looked back and forth at the books for school and the books on her bookshelf, having difficulty trying to choose what to do. She glanced over at the Big Ben alarm clock sitting on the nightstand, debating if she had enough time to keep reading The Wizard of Oz.

Deciding against it, she picked up her arithmetic book to start the twenty problems the class had been assigned at the end of the day. Carol always looked forward to the math problems they did in class; she loved solving the large multiplication problems and translating fractions into decimals and vice versa. Her favorite though, her absolute favorite would be when her teacher gave them speed tests and she'd have to solve upwards of fifty problems in only a minute or so. Every time they did one of those little quizzes, Carol was almost always not only the one who would finish the questions first, but answer the most (if not all) correctly. Of course, her teacher would consistently praise her as being better at arithmetic than the boys in class, and she had no problem reminding Carol or her parents of this. She didn't quite understand: was she not supposed to be better at it than the boys in her class?

On the other hand, her penmanship could use some serious work because it was extremely messy when compared to the other girls. No one mentioned how the boys' handwriting was; it was more important how her handwriting was compared with the other girls. Carol was having difficulty with cursive and no matter how much she tried to write cleanly and neatly with her little blue fountain pen, everything always came out a mess. Ink smudges on the side of her right hand, dots of black ink on her fingertips where she held her index finger too close to the underside of the pen from where the ink flowed. It was even worse when she had to use an inkwell and a nib pen. No matter how much Ivory soap she used, the ink spots never seemed to fully come off; however, she found her skin then became painfully dry and cracked from the frequent washing.

After a few minutes still wondering where to start, Carol began copying the multiplication problems into her composition book and in no time, had finished them all. As she put her math book into a separate pile, there was a knock on her door, followed by Elaine opening without entering. "Carol, your little friend Abby is here… and she brought that bug box with her again." Carol turned around with a smirk, watching how Elaine clung to the doorframe. "She's downstairs. Don't you dare let those caterpillars or spiders or whatever is in that box loose everywhere. Got it?"

"I got it, Elaine," Carol groaned as she put away some of the items on her desk, "and there are no spiders in there." Elaine didn't leave, she remained in the doorway watching her little sister pull out her riding pants to change into.

"You know how much mom hates you wearing those around."

Carol rolled her eyes. "Mom's staying at Grandma's right now. Are you going to call her back from Baltimore?" she retorted as she pulled her jumper over her head. She reached for her tan Jodhpurs she had placed over the foot of the bed and quickly put them on in the cold room.

"I'd ask if you need me to look over your homework, but… "

"But?"

"You're smarter than me." She waited a moment before saying anything else. "Sorry about earlier."

"It's alright," Carol replied as she laced up her sneakers, then got a grey and red sweater from the armoire and unfolded it, rolling it up so she could put it on over her wrinkled white collared shirt. "Besides, you are a good influence on me." She pulled the sweater over her head then smoothed her bobbed hair as she walked over to the door where Elaine stood. "Whatever you do, I choose to do the exact opposite."

It was just before sunset when Elaine came downstairs to check on the two girls, making sure that Carol (and Abby) did live up to the promise of not releasing whatever happened to be in that bug box into the parlor. The rain had given up before Abby showed up, but it didn't change the fact that Abby was still there and probably needed to be home before it got dark. Abby and Carol sat next to each other on the couch by the fireplace, giggling about something and listening to the radio.

"Isn't it time for Abby to be heading home?" Elaine exasperatedly asked as she turned down the radio dial to silence the room. The two turned around and looked over the back of the couch toward Elaine who was tapping her foot against the tiled part of the floor.

"Look!" Carol remarked as she pointed to the fuzzy brown and black caterpillar crawling around the tops of her fingers. "This is Isabella, but Abby calls her Izzy. Isn't that right?" Carol laughed as Izzy tickled her skin as she walked toward her pinky finger. Elaine shirked away at the sight of the caterpillar, raising her hands and making a face of disgust.

"Yup," Abby agreed. "Here, pass her back to me, would ya? I don't think Elaine likes her all that much." With a whimper, Carol passed the little caterpillar back to Abby who held out a twig for Izzy to wrap around before safely going back into the box and packed up the rest of her things. "I gotta split anyhow."

"Can you come over again tomorrow after school?" Carol eagerly asked. Carol loved when Abby came over because she would always bring along things like grown-up books, her bug box, or even her push scooter which she would let Carol ride.

"Sure, I'll ask my mom," Abby offered as she pulled her on her yellow rain slicker. "Or maybe if it's nice, we can go play in the treehouse?"

Carol scrunched her nose and shook her head. "Nah, it's going to probably be too cold for that. Bring Izzy!"

As soon as Abby was out the door and tying her bug box securely to the rear carrier of her bicycle, Elaine quickly turned to her sister and said, "Come on, let's make something for supper. I'm hungry."

Carol paused and looked around, suddenly realizing it had been Elaine who came upstairs to tell her that Abby was there rather than the housekeeper. There also wasn't a snack ready for her to eat when she came home from school either.

"Wait, where's Martha?"

"Dad had to let her go."

"Oh." Elaine opened the door to the icebox, ignoring her sister as she pulled out what remained of the Thanksgiving turkey. "Why?"

"Dad can't take any chances at the moment. He might be able to hire her back next year. I don't know. Since I'll be home for the time being, I'll be looking after you in the mornings, making your lunches, and when you get home from school."

"I can take care of myself," Carol confidently noted.

"You don't know how to work the washing machine, you're allowed nowhere near an iron, and you would eat sandwiches for every meal if given the chance." Carol looked at what remained of the turkey and wrinkled her nose. "You tired of turkey?" Elaine asked with smile.

"Yeah."

"Tough. We're having turkey." Carol furrowed her brow and looked up at her sister. "Get a pan so I can warm it up, okay?"

"Please go get a pan… " Carol corrected in a barely audible voice, not moving until she heard her sister ask properly.

"Please go get a pan," sighed Elaine as she searched by the stove for a match, not looking over at her sister as she spoke.

Carol crouched down to open a cabinet by the icebox and looked around for something large enough to heat a couple slices of turkey and a couple helpings of roasted squash. The roasting pan was heavy, but Carol was able to lift it to place by Elaine who was preoccupied with cutting thin slabs and placing them neatly into the pan.

"Should we make some for Dad?" Elaine asked as she carved a couple slices.

Carol nodded then pointed to one of the drumsticks. "Could I please have that?"

"Sure."

As they finished putting everything to heat into the pan, Carol opened the oven door so Elaine could put everything inside. Once in, she looked at the clock and asked Carol to help her remember the time so nothing would burn. Waiting for the food to heat, Carol walked over and stood in front of her sister who leaned against the kitchen counter, her eyes focused on the backsplash of the kitchen counter where a crumb of dressing had landed while she had been slicing the turkey. Distracted by the red of the bow in Carol's hair, Elaine turned her gaze away from the crumb then circled her arms around Carol's shoulders, pulling her back against her and holding onto her tightly. Carol tilted her head upward to look at her sister with a smile, assuring her everything would be alright.