Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry

yes, beads, no. By the time they reached the compromise, no one cared; school was about to end for the year, and the styles were changing anyway.
    Seth had let his hair grow for summer, and it looked pretty good, curly and thick. He had gotten tan, and his skin had cleared up some since I'd seen him last.
    Unfortunately, he still had his usual patronizing, sarcastic look on his face. Also, he has this knack of raising one eyebrow at a time. He raised the left one when he saw me coming.
    "So," he said, "the big Enid Crowley. Lemme check your arms for needle tracks, kid." He was doing a bad Humphrey Bogart imitation.
    "Bug off, Seth. I'm not mainlining yet."
    He peeled himself off the tree and we crossed Marlborough Street side by side. Even though I knew none of my school friends were around, I checked automatically, glancing at the few people who were passing. I didn't want anyone I knew to
see me with Seth Sandroff, Mr. Unpopularity.
    We crossed Commonwealth, my favorite street in Boston even though it's the street where the Sandroffs live. Commonwealth Avenue has a wide center strip of grass and trees, with benches and flowerbeds. The sun was setting, and everything was bathed in a pastel light. A woman on a bench was jiggling a carriage, rocking a baby to sleep, and reading a magazine. Two toddlers played in the grass while their mothers talked. A jogger passed us, panting rhythmically. A gray-haired man with a pointed nose walked a gray-haired dog with a pointed nose. A Chinese couple was laughing, the girl hiding her mouth behind her cupped hands. Pink-gold sunlight glinted off the windows of the apartment buildings; a soft breeze blew; and I wished that I were wearing sandals and a full-skirted dress of some light, swirling fabric and that I were with almost anyone else in the world but Seth.
    He demonstrated his remarkable ability to maintain the mood of a fragile, fairy-tale summer evening by saying abruptly, "The Nerd Sisters went to Fat Camp."
    I translated that to mean that the twins, Arlene and Marlene, had been sent to one of those camps for overweight adolescents that advertise in the
back of the
New York Times
magazine: "Lose Weight the Fun Way."
    "You're really, really supportive, Seth," I said sarcastically.
    "Well, at least they're not hanging out in the Public Garden, looking for trouble." We turned onto Newbury Street and headed for the Café Florian. Here there were many more people; a few of the stores were still open, and shoppers carried packages, hailed taxis, and greeted one another on the street. But the pace was slower, quieter, than the pace of the day. Now it was cocktail time. Dinner time. Theater time. Date time.
    And blackmail time, I thought bitterly as I sat down with Seth at a small table on the sidewalk in front of the Florian. Next to us, a tall woman who looked like a model was eating a salad and reading a paperback. At a nearby table, two thin, well-groomed men were drinking wine; one was chuckling as the other told an anecdote in a low, gleeful voice.
    The waiter brought our order of the two thick, slushy drinks, and Seth paid him with a crumpled five-dollar bill that he fished out of his pocket.
    "Now," he said, turning to me, "tell me all, Enid, or I'll tell your parents."
    "You're a creep, Seth. What I do isn't any of your business."
    But he didn't answer. He just sat there, grinning arrogantly. It was really surprising how much better he looked in the summertime.
    I told him a little about Hawk and about Tom Terrific. He interrupted me with a skeptical frown when I mentioned the little boy's name.
    "No," I explained, "of
course
that's not his real name. His real name's Joshua. But what the heck, I told him he could change his name, just in the Garden. There's nothing wrong with that. I even change my own name when I'm there," I added defiantly. "I call myself Cynthia."
    I expected him to hoot with laughter. But he just kept staring with an odd, quizzical look.
    "Well, look," I