Enthusiasm Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - We meet the Enthusiast ~ True Love beckons ~ a Mysterious Stranger ...

  Chapter 2 - I seek Counsel ~ a Domestic scene ~ Dancing Lessons.

  Chapter 3 - Ball Gowns ~ Footwear ~ Barns ~ A Masked Man.

  Chapter 4 - Tenth Grade ~ Extracurriculars ~ A Sonnet.

  Chapter 5 - A ride through the Dark ~ A menacing adder ~ A gallant rescue ~ A ...

  Chapter 6 - More adders ~ Ginger ale ~ untimely Flushing ~ we dance the Sir ...

  Chapter 7 - An unglass slipper ~ A Farewell to Forefield ~ I eat the Pancakes ...

  Chapter 8 - I Renounce my Dream ~ I maintain my Dignity ~ I carry boxes ~ I E-mail.

  Chapter 9 - Rumors of rivals ~ I withdraw ~ I join up ~ a Surprising ...

  Chapter 10 - Et tu, Samantha? ~ An Encounter with a Pirate ~ We prepare ...

  Chapter 11 - Parts ~ scripts ~ rhymes ~ songs ~ an igsome Moth ~ an Artistic ...

  Chapter 12 - I keep up my grades ~ My father grouses ~ A Turkey again ~ Rehearsals.

  Chapter 13 - My mother gives up ~ Thanksgiving ~ yet another Turkey ~ an ...

  Chapter 14 - Musings about the Inscrutable Gender ~ A Date ~ Ashleigh to the ...

  Chapter 15 - Holiday cheer ~ The baby’s birthday ~ Sweet Sixteen and Never ...

  Chapter 16 - Paperwhites ~ Hothouse flowers ~ The Great White Way ~ Parr’s ...

  Chapter 17 - A Limited Junior License ~ A disastrous Mocharetto ~ Mint Sauce ~ ...

  Chapter 18 - My first appearance in Print ~ Ashleigh interferes ~ A Midnight ...

  Chapter 19 - A song ~ an Unspeakable Scandal ~ my Mother takes a new Job ~ the ...

  Chapter 20 - My Fifth Kiss ~ Mom to the rescue again ~ Midwinter Insomnia ~ ...

  Chapter 21 - A Nonstatic Screen Wipe ~ Ashleigh’s new Craze.

  Chapter 22 - The B-word ~ Seth vanquished ~ a Ring ~ my Sixth Kiss ~ an Acrostic.

  Chapter 23 - Bliss ~ Farewell.

  Acknowledgements

  Enthusiasm

  In which Ashleigh discovers Jane Austen,

  and her wardrobe, to the embarrassment of Julie.

  “Listen, Ash,” I said. “You’re not planning to go to school wearing that, are you? No guy will even look at you.” Me neither if they see me with you, I added inwardly. “Couldn’t you please, please, please wear jeans?”

  As always, my plea fell on deaf ears.

  “I see not the necessity of discussing with you, Miss Lefkowitz, the propriety of a young lady wearing Trousers. As you know, modesty forbids us to reveal the shape of the Lower Limbs.”

  “If you do get a boyfriend, he’s going to want to see a lot more than just the shape of your Lower Limbs,” I argued.

  Fortunately, I reflected, the school year wouldn’t start for another week—enough time, I hoped, to make her see reason.

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

  Copyright © Polly Shulman, 2006 All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Shulman, Polly. Enthusiasm / Polly Shulman. p. cm.

  Summary: Julie and Ashleigh, high school sophomores and Jane Austen fans, seem to fall for the same Mr. Darcy-like boy and struggle to hide their true feelings from one another while rehearsing for a school musical.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11882-5

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Anna Christina and Andrew

  Chapter 1

  We meet the Enthusiast ~ True Love beckons ~ a Mysterious Stranger ~ Ashleigh’s Plan.

  There is little more likely to exasperate a person of sense than finding herself tied by affection and habit to an Enthusiast. I speak from bitter experience. My best friend and next-door neighbor, Ashleigh Marie Rossi, is an Enthusiast.

  All last summer, Ashleigh was mad for the Wet Blankets. On the day they released their new album, she insisted that I accompany her to Outer Music, where they had advertised free tickets for a Blankets concert in the city. We started at ten o’clock in the morning, the break of dawn, Ashleigh time. “Ash,” I objected, “they said they won’t give out tickets till midnight. What are we going to do for fourteen hours?”

  “You don’t want to be stuck at the end of the line, do you? Don’t worry, I packed lunch. Here, take one of these,” she said, hauling a large woolen blanket out of her closet and dumping it in my arms.

  “What’s this for? It’s about a million degrees out there. We’ll be sitting in the sun.”

  “That’s why we’re bringing these!” She flourished two five-liter bottles of mineral water. “Wet Blankets, get it? We’ll be appropriately dressed, and they’ll keep us cool through the process of evaporation.” She opened one of the bottles and reached out to splash me with the water.

  “Ash, you freak, get away! Stop it! I’m not sitting around in the middle of town with my clothes soaked!”

  With difficulty, I persuaded her to recap the water bottle, but nothing would convince her to leave the blankets behind. At Outer Music, we spread them on the sidewalk and sat down to wait. People looked at us strangely as they went in and out of the store, and I hid my face in my book, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. At six o’clock, just as I reached the exciting proposal scene, Ashleigh’s dad arrived with sandwiches. At nine, other Wet Blankets fans began lining up behind us.

  Ashleigh’s blankets came in handy after all, when the skies opened in a cloudburst around eleven. Overjoyed to find that Fate had cooperated with her planned pun, she invited her co-fans to seek shelter with us under the blankets.

  This sort of behavior was nothing new for Ashleigh. All through elementary school, her crazes kept me in a constant flame of embarrassment. After she read the Little House books, it was all I could do to stop her from wearing her flowered flannel nightgown to the mall. During her Harriet-the-Spy period, which coincided with my parents’ breakup when we were eleven, I had to confiscate two of her notebooks to keep them from falling into the hands of the divorce lawyers. When King Arthur ruled supreme in her heart, she thee’d and thou’d everyone from teachers to bus drivers.

  But although our classmates considered Ashleigh weird back then, they respected her for her courage and inventiveness. Nothing ever embarrassed Ashleigh. Teas
ing her was pointless, since nobody could make her cry. Some of her reputation for oddness rubbed off on me, but so did some of her oddball prestige. Hanging out with Ashleigh in elementary school stopped just short of social suicide.

  High school, though, was another matter. By then her ability to ignore giggles and stares had become less an asset than a liability. Oh, we still had plenty of friends—girls like Emily Mehan and the Gerard twins—but if Ash pulled any more stunts like that time freshman year when she borrowed Michelle Jeffries’s handbag for a juggling trick and spilled the contents, including a selection of feminine hygiene products, I feared for our social standing among the girls. And as for guys—well, that was too painful to bear thinking about.

  One hot afternoon about a month after the Wet Blankets incident, I sat by my window peeling my sunburn and considering the coming school year. Although Ashleigh did tend to get carried away, the Wet Blankets was a perfectly respectable interest for a Byzantium High sophomore. If only it would last through the vital first few weeks of school! Could I possibly be so lucky?

  Evidently not. A rap on my windowpane interrupted me in the middle of removing a satisfyingly large patch of skin. Looking up, I saw the Enthusiast herself perched outside my window. (For reasons of convenience and privacy, Ashleigh and I exchange visits by way of the oak tree whose branches graze both our bedroom windows, rather than by the doors.) She was wearing a long black garment that caught on the twigs; I recognized it as a robe from last year’s Freshman Chorus.

  “Miss Lefkowitz! Miss Lefkowitz! My dear Miss Lefkowitz,” she called.

  I hauled the window open wide. “What’s all the ‘Miss’ stuff?” I said. “You’re not starting on an etiquette craze, are you?”

  Ashleigh shot me her second-favorite expression, Reproach Tinged with Disgust. (Her favorite is the Mad Gleam.) “Etiquette?” she cried. “I hope I always conduct myself as befits a young lady. But my dear Miss Lefkowitz, why did you wait so long before introducing me to the joys of Miss Austen’s work? Elizabeth Bennet! Jane Bennet! The incomparable Mr. Darcy!” She waved my copy of Pride and Prejudice at me, dislodging baby acorns and a leaf or two.

  My heart sank. How many weeks of antiquated grammar were we in for now? And it was my own fault too. While Ashleigh bounced around the room, knocking things over with her skirts and raving about Austen’s heroines and the gentlemen they loved, I considered my situation. Always before, Ashleigh had started a craze, and I had followed. Now, for the first time, I had taken the lead, introducing her to an interest of my own. But how long would it be before her passion overshadowed mine? Would she take over my favorite books, leaving nothing for me? I was convinced that I felt as strongly about Jane Austen’s books as Ashleigh had ever felt about any of her crazes, but my love was deep and silent—and therefore easily overshadowed. I would never, for example, speak Jane Austen’s language. That would be undignified and unworthy of the writer I adored.

  Rescuing my clock radio, which had tumbled off my night-stand and was hanging by its cord, I told myself sternly not to be so ungenerous. Ashleigh never hesitated to share her interests with me. If only! No, she always insisted on dragging me in, however boring or unpleasant I might find them. (Military strategy? Ballet? Ig, no thanks!—Although I did rather enjoy candy making and reptiles.) The only time Ash let me wiggle out of a craze was when she knew I couldn’t afford it—and when that happened, she gave it up herself, generous girl that she was. She squelched a growing passion for horses, for example, because my mother couldn’t pay for riding lessons after my parents’ divorce. And Ashleigh’s generosity didn’t stop there. Whenever her crazes got me in trouble—like the time I ruined my father’s barbecue tools digging military trenches in the lawn—she devoted her savings and countless Saturdays to repairing the damage.

  As I contemplated my pettiness, Ashleigh startled me with an emphatic bounce. (She’s always bouncing with excitement, and when she bounces, she bounces—particularly in the past year or so. For my part, I barely jiggle, no matter how vigorously I move.)

  “And I believe I know where to find them!” she cried.

  “Where to find what?” I asked.

  Ashleigh gave me her you’re-not-listening look, a variant on the ever popular Disgusted Reproach.

  “Not what—who. Our heroes. What good is a heroine without a hero? From what I remember of freshman year, we will be hard-pressed to find even a single gallant at Byzantium High. I despair of finding a pair of them there! But fortunately, I have discovered the answer.”

  Clearly Ashleigh had finished the research portion of her fad and moved on to the active stage. Now that she had decided to enact a 200-year-old love story with us as the heroines, I was afraid the results would be mortifying.

  Without much hope, I tried to head her off. “I thought you despised boy-crazy girls like Michelle Jeffries and those people. You always said crushes were for noodleheads.”

  Ashleigh drew herself up to her full height, which I couldn’t have done in her position—standing on my bed—since my head would have hit the sloping roof; her figure may be more mature than mine, but she’s six inches shorter.

  “I speak not of crushes, Miss Lefkowitz,” she replied, “but of True Love.”

  True Love! What girl hasn’t dreamed of that? Even the shyest among us longs for a soul mate—someone who will understand our hopes and fears, laugh at our jokes, offer us his coat when the afternoon turns cold, charm our parents, and admire us, flaws and all (such as a sharp chin, perhaps, and a marked lack of jiggle).

  Although I had never discussed it with anyone, not even Ashleigh, I shared that dream. My ideal hero borrowed his appearance from a guy I thought of as the Mysterious Stranger. I had seen him just five times. The first was by the swimming hole on a windy Saturday in late spring. A woman’s hat blew off her head and flew straight for the water, when the stranger snatched a fallen branch from the ground and, with a daring leap, caught it. I had seen him twice since then in the state park, on foot and on horseback. Once I glimpsed him through the window of the Java Jail drinking what looked like a Magna Mocharetto with a bevy of guys. And once we crossed paths as he left the public library, trailing a cloud of air-conditioned calm. I was on my way in; he held the door for me.

  The man I might someday come to admire would, I hoped, share this stranger’s poise, his grace, and his deep vertical dimple.

  With such secret thoughts, I shouldn’t be surprised to hear my friend talk of Heroes. Yet if Ashleigh cherished a similar dream, I feared for her peace of mind. For is True Love likely to come to a high school sophomore who dresses in a chorus robe and ballet slippers?

  “Okay, but listen, Ash,” I said. “You’re not planning to go to school wearing that, are you? No guy will even look at you.” Me neither if they see me with you, I added inwardly. “Couldn’t you please, please, please wear jeans?”

  As always, my plea fell on deaf ears. “I see not the necessity of discussing with you, Miss Lefkowitz, the propriety of a young lady wearing Trousers. As you know, modesty forbids us to reveal the shape of the Lower Limbs.”

  If you do get a boyfriend, he’s going to want to see a lot more than just the shape of your Lower Limbs, I argued silently. Fortunately, I reflected, the school year wouldn’t start for another week—enough time, I hoped, to make her see reason.

  “And don’t you think you could call me Julie?” I continued. “We’ve known each other long enough, surely.”

  “My dearest Julia, you are right, indeed you are right. After all, in Pride and Prejudice Miss Elizabeth Bennet addresses her bosom friend, Miss Lucas, by the name of Charlotte, and they are no more affectionately attached than the two of us. But please, my dear friend, allow me to continue. As I said, I believe I have the solution to our puzzle of where to find our heroes.”

  “Our puzzle? It’s not my puzzle,” I put in.

  Ashleigh shook me by the arm, letting her language slip a bit in her impatience. “Will you listen already? In Pride an
d Prejudice , where do the younger Bennet girls turn for lively masculine company? Why, to the regiment of soldiers quartered near their home. Were we to follow their lead, where better to seek suitors than among our neighboring young men in uniform?”

  Could she be referring to the West Point cadets? The U.S. Military Academy at West Point sits high on a cliff overlooking the Hudson, hidden from Byzantium by the curve of the river. There brave and disciplined students train to lead our country’s great army. Last year the center of the Byzantium Bullfrogs turned down Harvard to become a West Point cadet.

  “Oh, Ashleigh, you’ve got to be kidding! You want us to go chasing after West Pointers? They’re way too old! They’ve got crew cuts! You’ll get us court-martialed!”

  My friend held up her hand. “Hear me out, Julia,” she said. “Hear me out. As you so rightly observe, the officers in training are not perfectly suited to ladies of our tender years. I propose instead another population of gentlemen in uniform—gentlemen younger than the cadets—I speak, in short, of the students at the Forefield Academy.”

  This suggestion was better, but only slightly. Forefield, an exclusive boys’ prep school, rises above the town of Byzantium both geographically and socially. Its main building, once the mansion of the Forefield family, can be seen from most of the town, including my attic window. As a little girl I thought it was an enchanted castle, the home of a witch or a princess. I now considered it the home of gawky boys with crests embroidered on their blazer pockets—that is, of snobs, dorks, adders, or (most likely) snobbish, dorky adders.

  “Forefield, huh? What’s your plan? Are we going to dress up as boys and sneak in? Watch out—they’ll see our lower limbs.”

  Flashing me a look of reproach and triumph, Ashleigh reached into her robe pocket and produced a piece of paper, which she silently handed to me. It appeared to be a page Xeroxed from a newspaper.