Super Duper Pee Wee! (2 page)

“What’s ‘correspondent’?” whispered Tim to Tracy.

“I think it’s like a secret agent,” she answered. “Or a spy.”

“Hey, I’d like to write to a spy!” said Roger.

“I don’t want to be a spy!” cried Sonny. “Mrs. Peters, do I have to spy?”

“A correspondent isn’t a spy,” scoffed Ashley. “It’s someone you write to.”

Mrs. Peters turned and wrote a sample letter on a green slate. She held it up.

“Up here,” she said, pointing to the right-hand corner of the letter, “you write your own address. And under it, you write the date.”

Mrs. Peters went on, “On the left side, you put the name and address of the person you are writing to.”

“I don’t do all that stuff when I write to my grandma,” said Patty Baker, who was Kenny’s twin. “I just say ‘Dear Grandma’ right away.”

“That’s fine,” said their leader. “But we want to learn the right way. We do not know our pen pals like we know our grandmas.”

“That is a business-letter form,” said Ashley.

“Now,” Mrs. Peters said, “we start our letter right here at the left margin. We write ‘Dear Grandma’ or ‘Dear Ronald,’ and then we indent and begin what we want to say.”

“What’s ‘indent’?” shouted Sonny.

“It’s when you make something new, like indenting the telephone,” said Tim.

The Pee Wees burst into laughter.

“That’s ‘invent,’ dummy,” said Roger.

Mrs. Peters held up her hand for silence. “You go in three spaces to start your news, just like you do when you write a story in school.”

She pointed to the letter.

It was indented.

It said,

“Who is Jane?” shouted Tim.

“She’s a made-up person,” said Ashley in disgust. “This is a sample letter.”

“It’s boring,” said Lisa. “I wouldn’t write such a boring letter as that.”

Mrs. Peters laughed.

“You’re right,” she said. “It is up to you all to write much more interesting letters! Letters that tell what you are doing and what you think about and how you feel about things.”

Molly began to get excited. She liked to write stories. And she liked new friends. This would be both of those things.

Mrs. Peters talked about nice handwriting.

She talked about no holes in the paper from erasing.

She talked about clear addresses on envelopes that the mail carriers could read with or without their glasses.

And then she held up a basket.

“In this basket are names and addresses of our pen pals. Each one of you will draw a name. He or she will be your new pen pal and friend.”

The Pee Wees drew names one at a time.

“Hey, mine’s a girl!” said Roger. “I don’t want to write to a girl!”

“We are all people, Roger,” said their leader. “These Scouts are all people and have many of the same interests and hobbies as you do. You will find things you have in common when you write to them.”

“I’m sorry for that poor girl who has Roger for a pen pal,” said Rachel.

Molly hoped she had drawn a girl’s name. Mrs. Peters said boys and girls were both people, but sometimes Roger and Sonny acted like the girls weren’t quite there. Like perhaps the boys had a little more growing up to do first.

Molly put her new pen pal’s name in her pocket. She would wait till she was in her
room at home to see who it was. She liked to do things like this alone in the privacy of her room, not in front of everyone.

The Pee Wees told good deeds they’d done and sang their song and said their pledge. Then the meeting was over, and
Molly ran ahead of the others on the way home. She had the name of her pen pal in her pocket. What if that pen pal was a boy? Or rather, what if he was a boy like Roger?

“W
hat’s new at Scouts?” called Molly’s dad as she rushed through the house to her room.

“We’re getting another badge,” she called from the stairs.

In her room Molly sat on the edge of her bed, even though her mother said it would ruin the mattress. She opened the little folded piece of paper she’d drawn out of the
basket. Her pen pal’s name and address were typed. Some of the letters were written over as if mistakes had been made. But the name looked clear. It said, “Lyle Kester, 62 South Main Street.” Her pen pal was a boy.

“Rat’s knees!” said Molly. She stood up and stamped her foot on the floor so hard her dad called up to her, “Don’t knock the house down, Molly!”

“My pen pal is a boy,” she called down to her dad from the top of the stairs.

She walked down the steps and told her dad about the badge. “I don’t want to write to a boy,” she said sadly.

“What’s the matter with a boy?” asked her dad. “I’m a boy, and you like me!”

Molly laughed. “You’re not a boy,” she said. “You’re a man.”

Her dad looked at the slip of paper in Molly’s hand.

“Well, I was a boy once,” he said. “And Lyle will be a man like me someday.”

Molly frowned. “He might not be like you,” she said. “He might be like Roger.”

“Horrors!” said Mr. Duff, pretending to be shocked.

But he did have to admit it was true. He could be like Roger. No one knew yet what kind of a boy Lyle was. “It’s a fifty-fifty chance you have,” he said. “Roger or me.”

Molly’s mother came home and heard the story.

“I’m sure Lyle will be a very nice boy,” she said.

Molly wanted to believe her, but after all, she didn’t know any more about Lyle than Molly did.

After supper Molly fed her dog, Skippy, and went up to her room to write a letter. After the meeting she couldn’t wait to write to her pen pal. She wanted to be the first one to write and the first one to get an answer. But now she wasn’t as eager.

The phone rang. It was Mary Beth. She
said, “My pen pal’s name is Shari, with an
i
.”

Mary Beth’s pen pal was definitely a girl. Mary Beth was always lucky.

“Rachel got someone named Heather. And Ashley got a boy!”

“So did I,” said Molly.

Mary Beth didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “I wouldn’t mind having a boy to write to. I mean, it could be kind of romantic. Or else it could be like having a brother or a cousin.”

The cousin or brother sounded okay. But Molly scoffed at romantic. “I’m going to marry Kevin. Or maybe Jody.”

“You never know,” said Mary Beth. “My brother’s friend married a girl he wrote to when he was in the army.”

Molly sighed. This wasn’t solving the pen pal problem.

Then she thought of something. “Let’s trade,” she said. “I’ll trade you Lyle for Shari.”

Mary Beth was quiet again. She’s thinking of an excuse, thought Molly.

“I would, but I don’t think Mrs. Peters would like it,” said Mary Beth.

“Pooh, she wouldn’t even know,” said Molly.

“Still, I think it’s against the rules.”

“What rules?” asked Molly.

“Pee Wee rules,” said Mary Beth.

Molly had never heard of a Scout rule that said you could not exchange pen pals. Come to think about it, she had never heard of any Pee Wee rules, period.

“It would be kind of like cheating,” said Mary Beth. “I mean, that’s the point of drawing a name. The name we draw is the one we are supposed to write to.”

Mary Beth changed the subject and began to talk about a party her sister was having.

After Molly hung up, Tracy called to talk about pen pals. Hers was a girl.

“I’m glad I didn’t get a boy,” she said. “I mean, I like boys and everything, but what if he was like Roger?”

“I know,” said Molly.

She hung up and hoped no one else would call her. She sat at her desk and took out a piece of paper with a big
M
on it. The
M
had flowers winding through it and down the side of the paper. What would
Lyle’s paper have on it? she wondered. It wouldn’t have flowers crawling around a big
L
, she knew. In fact, it wouldn’t even have an
L
on it. If it had anything, it would have a spaceship or race car. And if he was like Roger, he’d probably write on an old candy wrapper or a paper towel.

Suddenly Molly caught herself. This was not fair. Jody would not write on a candy wrapper or towel. Neither would Kevin. This was what her mother called “discrimination.” Mrs. Peters had said they were all people. Molly had to be careful. She neatly wrote her address at the top of the paper, with the date. Then she wrote Lyle’s name and address on the other side, across from it. She left a little space and wrote, “Dear Lyle.”

Here she had to stop to think. Finally she indented and wrote, “I drew your name from a basket. So you are my pen pal. I
mean, if you write back you are. My name is Molly and I’m seven. How old are you? Do you have a dog? I do. Mrs. Peters is our leader. We go on trips and do good deeds and get badges. I have a mother and father and no brothers or sisters. I have lots of friends in Pee Wee Scouts. My best friend is Mary Beth. Her pen pal is a girl. Mine isn’t. My other friends are Jody and Kevin. They are boys, but they are nice anyway.”

Molly read this much over and erased the last line. It might make Lyle feel bad. Then she wrote, “Some of the boys in our troop are mean. Especially one named Roger. I hope you aren’t like him.”

She read it over and erased it. It was even worse than the other sentence!

In its place she wrote, “Love, Molly Duff.”

But did she love Lyle? She didn’t even know him! She crossed out love and wrote,
“Yours truly.” Then she folded it in half and put it in an envelope. The envelope had an
M
with flowers just like the stationery.

Molly was worn out. Letter writing took a lot of thinking and it made her fingers stiff.

She went downstairs and asked her mother for a stamp. She’d mail it tomorrow. Then all she had to do was sit and wait for a letter back. It didn’t really matter if Lyle was nice or not. Even if he wrote only one letter, she’d get her badge.

T
he next morning Molly mailed the letter to Lyle. Mary Beth mailed her pen pal letter too.

“I don’t know what to say in a letter,” whined Sonny when the girls met him in the park riding his bike. “And I can’t spell all those words.”

“Use a dictionary,” said Mary Beth.

Sonny sighed, as if a dictionary was definitely too hard.

“I can’t read dictionaries,” he said. “I can’t read those hard words.”

Sonny was lazy, thought Molly. He only wanted to do things that were really easy. It was his mother’s fault. She treated him like a baby instead of a seven-year-old.

Sonny rode off and the girls sat on a bench in the warm sun watching the robins dig for worms.

“This is an easy badge to earn,” said Mary Beth. “Writing a letter is simple. I’m going to write a bunch of letters to people I know.”

“What if our pen pals don’t write back?” said Molly.

“They will,” said Mary Beth. “They have to. Or they won’t get their badge.” She stood up and stretched. “I have to go home and baby-sit my little brother now,” she added.