nausea to pass and then I took a breath and continued. "There was this girl, Kelly Sullivan, whose
father works for the church in some administrative
capacity. I think he manages properties or something.
Her mother is in a wheelchair. She has multiple
sclerosis. They live in a nice, ranch-style house only
about ten minutes by car from us.
"Kelly has beautiful green eyes and apricot red
hair. She's a lot smaller than me, slimmer, I should
say, but most girls who were my age in the eighth
grade were. She hated her freckles. There were
patches of them on each check and even on the
bottom of her chin, but she had a pretty face. She
thought her freckles made her look like a freak and of
course, I had my problem. Her parents were like my
mother in that they didn't want Kelly to wear any
makeup, not even lipstick. I actually thought she and I
had a lot in common and for a while, I had hopes that
she would be a real best friend. We often talked in the
cafeteria and we shared three classes. She had other
friends, but she didn't seem to me to be that popular.
She was shy in school and when she met my mother,
she was so sweet and polite, my mother looked at her
with such approval and pleasure, I was actually
jealous.
"I mean, Kelly had almost no figure yet, which my mother thought was good and normal, and Kelly was full of please's and thank you's, just the recipe for the kind of little girl my mother wanted. I had been talking about her enough for my mother to finally consent to my bringing her home with me one afternoon. I was afraid to, afraid that once Kelly met my mother and had my mother grill her with questions, she would never want to talk to me again, but I liked Kelly and wanted her for a friend and knew if I didn't have Mother's approval, I couldn't. I was
very nervous about it.
"However, as I said, to my surprise Mother
liked her even more than I had hoped she would. She
seemed pleased that Kelly's mother was an invalid and
she was especially pleased that her father was