“You were trying to get me in trouble!”

I insisted that I had not been flirting, and Dad pretended to believe me, so we could drop it as a point of discussion.

Except between Donna and I. The treats we had bought didn’t last that long and when they were gone, she said something that set me off.

“Daddy made those guys you got to follow us skedaddle, huh?” she commented.

“You rat,” I accused her. “You were trying to get me in trouble.”

She seemed unconcerned. “I think you were the one trying to get into trouble.”

“Ahhh!” I disputed her point, waving my hands in frustration.

“Kids,” Mom said from the front seat, “The movie is starting, try to keep it down back there.”

“I wanna sit up front, so I can see better,” Linda complained.

“Crawl up here then,” Mom said, patting her lap, and Linda squeezed through the gap over the center console into the front area.

“Really,” said Donna. “You seem to have a real talent for flirting.” She glanced at my chest. “Maybe two of them.”

“I’m gonna call you a bad word,” I warned her.

“You better not,” Mom warned from the front seat. “But Donna, that subject is off-limits for teasing.”

“Oh, this is the one with Barbara Streisand,” Dad commented.

“Barbra Streisand,” Mom corrected him.

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Barbarella Streisand?” Dad suggested.

“NO!” Mom insisted.

“Is the lady with the nose supposed to be the funny one?” Linda asked.

In the back seat, Donna and I had retreated to the corners, me on the right and her on the left, but you could only see the screen well from the middle. so we ended up just glaring at each other in the dark.

“She’s not really funny,” Linda commented. “She just sings in her nose. Is she going to do that the whole movie?”

“Probably,” Dad observed.

“Maybe you’d rather watch it from the playground?” Mom suggested.

“Yes, please,” Linda agreed.

“Me, too?” Dad suggested.

“No, you stay here,” Mom said, sounding annoyed. “Joni, take Linda to the playground, would you?”

“Oh, okay, Mom.” It would get me away from Donna before our little feud escalated or something, at least.

Mom let Linda exit from the front and I got out of the rear door on the passenger side, to take charge of my stickiest sibling. As usual, she had spilled sno-cone juice all down her front and managed to get popcorn stuck in her hair.

“Let’s make a stop to clean you up a bit,” I told her.

“Kay,” she said willingly. Despite her talent at turning herself into a junkfood sampler, Linda actually preferred to be clean.

The restrooms and the playground at the Moto-View Starlite Drive-In were both down at the front under the big screen, so we were automatically headed in the right direction. Except…

Linda had three of my fingers in her grip and tugged me sideways when we reached the restroom building. “Not that side, Joni,” she said. “That’s for the boys.”

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“You don’t have to take me there anymore,” she explained. “Cause you got boobies now.”

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me,” I said. No lie, I hadn’t even been thinking about that, witness that Linda had to apply a course correction removal.

I heard a little girl snigger and looked down. Linda was grinning at me. “You didn’t forget,” she assured me. “It’d be like that lady forgetting her nose when it’s right in front of her face.”

I had to laugh at that, too. “Just don’t tell everyone, Linda,” I reminded her.

“I won’t tell nobody,” she assured me. “What’s it I’m not s’posed to tell?”

I frowned at her but her sly look told me she was teasing me. “Don’t be sassy,” I told her.

She took my hand and we went into the no man’s land of the Ladies’ restroom.

I guess I had expected it to be cleaner, and maybe it was a bit; no urinals with nasty wire splash guards. With the movie already on, there were only two other people inside: a woman and her three-year-old-looking son.

The kid stared at me creepily the whole time he had me in sight, and I kept an eye on the pass-under that he wasn’t trying to get into the stall with me. I did my business sitting down, washed up at the sink and tidied Linda up a bit before exiting.

“See? That wasn’t so bad,” she assured me. “Can I go on the merry-go-round?”

I looked at the tiny carousel with its four prancing ponies and nodded. It seemed odd for the ride to be turning without its own music, but someone not Ms. Streisand was belting out something about not being pretty up on the big screen, and four speakers brought the music to the people in the playground.

We wandered that direction. The whole area wasn’t bigger than a large backyard and we reached the merry-go-round just as the guy running it pulled the lever to bring it to a stop. “Climb aboard,” he encouraged us.

We picked two of the horses, and a boy about my age with a younger boy took the other two. The ride operator started it up, and around we went, Linda’s giggles setting a mood.

About the third time around, I realized that the ride operator and the boy my age were both looking at me. Not staring exactly, but definitely watching me. I’d go out of sight behind the column in the middle, then when I came around again, there they were.

And with a shock, I realized I knew the older boy. Kevin Something-or-other, he’d been in my history class at high school. We’d gone across town to try to avoid meeting people we knew, and here was a third kid from my school.

And he kept looking at me!

Next chapter available on Patreon!