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"I can take the hinges off the door, too," Jean claimed.

"All right. Stop talking about it. I'm not serious," I said. Jean looked disappointed.

"Good morning, mademoiselle," our butler, Aubrey, said as he came in from the kitchen with a glass of fresh orange juice for me. Aubrey had been with us for years and years. He was the proper Englishman at all times. He was bald with small patches of gray hair just over his ears. His thick-rimmed glasses were always falling down the bridge of his bony nose, and he would squint at us with his hazel eyes.

"Morning, Aubrey.just have some coffee and a croissant with jam this morning. My stomach is full of butterflies."

"Ugh," Jean said. "They were caterpillars first,"

"She just means she's nervous," Pierre explained.

"Because you got to make a speech?" Jean asked.

"Yes, that mostly," I said.

"What's it about?" Pierre asked.

"It's about how we should be grateful for what we have, for what our parents and teachers have done for us, and how that gratitude must be turned into hard work so we don't waste opportunities and talents," I explained.

"Boring," Jean said.

"No, it's not," Pierre corrected him.

"I don't like sitting and listening to speeches. I bet someone throws a spitball at you," Jean

threatened.

"It better not be you, Jean Andreas. There's plenty that has to be done around here all day. Don't get underfoot and don't aggravate Mommy and Daddy," I warned.

"We can stay up until everyone leaves tonight," Pierre declared.

"And Mommy let us invite some of our friends," Jean added. "We should light firecrackers to celebrate."

"Don't you dare," I said. "Pierre?"

"He doesn't have any."

"Charlie Littlefield does!"

"Jean!"

"I won't let him," Pierre promised. He gave Jean a look of chastisement, and Jean shrugged. His shoulders had rounded and thickened this past year. He was tough and sinewy and had gotten into a half dozen fights at school, but I learned that three of those fights were fought to protect Pierre from other boys who teased him about his poetry. All their friends knew that when someone picked a fight with Pierre, he was picking a fight with Jean, and if someone made fun of Jean, he was making fun of Pierre as well.

Mommy and Daddy had to go to school to meet with the principal because of Jean's fights, but I saw how proud Daddy was that Jean and Pierre protected each other. Mommy bawled him out for not bawling them out enough.

"It's a tough, hard world out there," Daddy said. "They've got to be tough and hard too."

"Alligators are tough and hard, but people make shoes and pocketbooks out of them," Mommy retorted. No matter what the argument or discussion, Mommy had a way of reaching back into her Cajun past to draw up an analogy to make her point.

After breakfast I returned to my room to finetune my valedictory address, and Catherine called.

"Have you decided about tonight?" she asked.

"It's going to be so hard leaving my party. My parents are doing so much for me," I moaned.

"After a while they won't even know you're gone," Catherine promised. "You know how adults are when make parties for their children; they're really making them for themselves and their friends."

"That's not true about my parents," I said.