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Cheryl nodded and said, “Yeah, all right.”

She quickly turned to go then.

“Have a good night, Cheryl.”

“You too!” she yelled back.

CHAPTER 24

1958

Diana sat on the bench, wearing another skirt that she hated. She only had four of them, not even one for each day of the school week, but they couldn’t afford much. They’d been here for over a year, and her dad had promised that things would be different here. He’d saved enough money to buy his own shop instead of working for someone else, and when he’d gotten a great deal on the one he now owned, he’d snatched it up and moved Diana away from their last town. Of course, they’d only been here for a year, so it wasn’t really home. Nowhere had felt like home since her mom had died. Five years she’d been without her now. Five years that her dad had been wandering aimless through life. He tried his best. She knew that. He’d always wanted a son and thought they’d have another child after he’d found out that Diana was a girl, but when that hadn’t happened, he’d let her be. When her mom passed away, though, he had no clue how to raise a teenage girl, so he’d bought her a few skirts from the local thrift store and, at the same time, started teaching her auto repair. She didn’t like repairing cars, specifically, but she did like fixing things. Once, right after they’d moved here, she’d told him that she wanted to be a doctor, and he’d laughed at her. He’d caught himself and stopped, but then, the lecture had started.

“Diana, you’ll be lucky if you can make it through secretary school the way you keep records at the new shop. You don’t type fast enough and struggle to file right, and you want to operate on a person?”

“I didn’t say that I wanted to operate,” she’d challenged. “Just be a doctor.”

“Honey, we can barely afford to put food on the tableuntil the shop starts making money. How are you affording going to college and medical school? You’re not an athlete getting money for that. Your grades are fine, I guess, but no one’s giving us any handouts.”

“Right, Dad,” she’d said.

“You could go into nursing, maybe. They always need nurses. And you know that’s better for someone like you. All those male doctors need lady nurses. It’s cheaper, I think, and you might be able to get some help for that. I don’t know.”

“May I be excused? I’ve finished my supper.”

“Sure,” he’d said. “I’m going back to the shop, anyway, so take care of the dishes and then, do your homework.”

“Okay,” she’d agreed.

He wasn’t a mean man. He was just a man raised by one, and he wanted to have a son to carry on his name. Since her mother’s death, though, he hadn’t even dated anyone who might be able to give him that dream. She’d known all along how in love her parents had been, so she tried to be a little kinder to her father because he was still grieving, too.

“Hi.”

Diana looked up and saw Cheryl standing there in front of the bench, wearing a skirt that she hadn’t bought from the thrift shop.

“Hi,” Diana greeted with a smile.

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Not long,” she lied.

Diana had been sitting there for about thirty minutes. She hadn’t wanted to miss Cheryl maybe waiting for her, but she also wouldn’t be missed at home, with her dad leaving before she even woke up, so she’d woken up early and had walked to school as quickly as she could to sit and wait.

When Cheryl sat down next to her, she said, “So, how was your ice cream?”

“Great. It turns out, I like blackberry ice cream.”

“Me too,” Cheryl told her with a little giggle. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Okay.”

“Why do you always sit in the back of the classroom whenever you can?”

“Oh,” she let out, having not expected that question. “I suppose because there’s not much of a point in me sitting anywhere else. It’s easier just to blend into the background until I leave or graduate this time, I guess.”

“This time?”

“My dad and I have moved a lot since my mom died. He didn’t want to stay in our old house, so we moved to a new town, and after a few months there, we moved again. He went wherever he was able to find the best job and make the most money so that he could buy his own shop, which he did when we got here. I’ve been to six high schools just like this one. This is number seven, I suppose.”