The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

1. WANDA

    TODAY, Monday, Wanda Petronski was not in tier seat. But nobody, not even Peggy and Madeline, the girls who started all the fun, noticed her absence. Usually Wanda sat m the next to the last seat in the last row in Room 13. She sat in the corner of the room where the rough boys who did not make good marks on their report cards sat; the corner of the room where there was most scuffling of feet, most roars of laughter when anything funny was said, and most mud and dirt on the floor.
    Wanda did not sit there because she was rough and noisy. On the contrary she was very quiet and rarely said anything at all. And nobody had ever heard her laugh out loud. Sometimes she twisted her mouth into a crooked sort of smile, but that was all.
    Nobody knew exactly why Wanda sat in that seat unless it was because she came all the way from Boggins Heights, and her feet were usually caked with dry mud that she picked up coming down the country roads. Maybe the teacher liked to keep all the children who were apt to come in with dirty shoes in one corner of the room. But no one really thought much about Wanda Petronski once she was in the classroom. The time they thought about her was outside of school hours, at noontime when they were coming back to school, or in the morning early before school began, when groups of two or three or even more would be talking and laughing on their way to the school yard. Then sometimes they waited for Wanda—to have fun with her.
    The next day, Tuesday, Wanda was not m school either. And nobody noticed her absence again, except the teacher and probably big Bill Byron, who sat in the seat behind Wanda’s and who could now put his long legs around her empty desk, one on each side, and sit there like a frog, to the great entertainment or all in his corner of the room. But on Wednesday, Peggy and Maddie, who sat in the front row along with other children who got good marks and didn’t track in a whole lot of mud, did notice that Wanda wasn’t there. Peggy was the most popular girl in school. She was pretty; she had many pretty clothes and her auburn hair was curly. Maddie was her closest friend. The reason Peggy and Maddie noticed Wanda’s absence was because Wanda had made them late to school. They had waited and waited for Wanda—to have some fun with her—and she just hadn’t come. They kept thinking she’d come any minute. They saw Jack Beggles running to school, his necktie askew and his cap at a precarious tilt. They knew it must be late, for he always managed to slide into his chair exactly when the bell rang as though he were making a touchdown. Still they waited one minute more and one minute more, hoping she’d come. But finally they had to race off without seeing her.
    The two girls reached their classroom after the doors had been closed. The children were reciting in unison the Gettysburg Address, for that was the way Miss Mason always began the session. Peggy and Maddie slipped into their seats just as the class was saying the last lines “that these dead shall not have died m vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

2. THE DRESSES GAME

    AFTER Peggy and Maddie stopped feeling like intruders in a class that had already begun; they looked across the room and noticed that Wanda was not in her seat. Furthermore her desk was dusty and looked as though she hadn’t been there yesterday either. Come to think of it, they hadn’t seen her yesterday. They had waited for her a little while but had forgotten about her when they reached school.
    They often waited for Wanda Petronski—to have fun with her.
    Wanda lived way up on Boggins Heights, and Bog-gins Heights was no place to live. It was a good place to go and pick wild flowers in the summer, but you always held your breath till you got safely past old man Sven-son’s yellow house. People in the town said