Tallahassee Higgins by Mary Downing Hahn Page B

Liz, was dressed much the same.
    "Don't they look funny? Like hippies or something."
Jane laughed. "I bet they thought they were so cool."
    I didn't reply. I was staring at Liz, wishing I looked like her. She didn't have rabbit teeth like mine, and she didn't have dirty-red hair. Even when she was twelve, Liz was beautiful.
    Jane tugged at the page, trying to turn it. "Wait till you see the next ones," she said. "You'll die laughing."
    Jane was right. When Liz and Mrs. DeFlores appeared again, they were teenagers. Right in front of our eyes we could see them changing. Liz stayed tall and skinny, but Mrs. DeFlores started getting a little plumper. Although she wore bell-bottoms, her hair wasn't nearly as long as Liz's, and she didn't wrap bandanas around it.
    "Your mom was a real flower child, wasn't she?" Jane asked. "My father told me he used to tease her about being a hippie; he called her Hyattsdale's own Joan Baez because she used to play the guitar and sing folk songs."
    "Who's this guy?" I pointed at a tall teenager with long, red hair. In most of the pictures, he had his arm around Mrs. DeFlores, but he often seemed to be smiling at Liz. "It's not your dad."
    "No." Jane stared at the boy's face. "He must have been Mom's boyfriend." She sounded puzzled. "I always thought Daddy was her first boyfriend." She bent her head over the picture. "It's Liz he's looking at, isn't it? And she's looking at him, too."
    I nodded and turned to the last page. There was only one photograph on it—a class picture, I guess—the kind you see in yearbooks. It was of the same red-haired guy, the one with the big teeth I'd seen in all the other snapshots. Across the bottom of it he'd written, "To Linda, with all my love, Johnny."
    "Does he remind you of anybody?" I whispered.
    Jane sucked in her breath. "He looks like you, Tallahassee!"
    We stared at each other, then at Johnny. My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it would fly out of my mouth. If what I was thinking was true, it was no wonder that Mrs. DeFlores didn't like Liz or me.
    "Can you find out anything about him? Like his last name or something?" I asked Jane.
    In answer, she reached under her bed again and pulled out a Northeastern High School yearbook. Flipping to the seniors, she studied each face till we found him. "John Randolph Russell," Jane read, "'Reds,' Gymkhana Club. Ambition: See the world."
    Then we sat and stared at each other. "Liz never told you your father's name, did she?" Jane asked.
    I stared at Johnny's dirty-red hair, at the freckles visible even in the photograph, at the big front teeth. "The only thing I really know about my father is that I look just like him."
    We turned back to the album and studied all the pictures of Johnny. "What do you think happened to him?" Jane stared at me.
    "I don't know, but I'm sure going to ask Liz." I gazed at Johnny's smiling face. He looked nice, I thought, and funny. In the old color prints, he was always clowning around and making silly faces, standing on his hands sometimes or hanging upside down by his knees.
    "Can I have this?" My hand hovered over the signed portrait.
    Jane shook her head. "Mom would notice if you took that. Take one of the snapshots instead."
    It was a hard choice, but I finally decided on a picture of Johnny sitting on a wall. He was wearing rainbow-striped suspenders, a T-shirt, and faded jeans. His feet were bare and his long hair was blowing in the breeze, and he was smiling as if the summer sun would never stop shining on him.
    Just as I slipped the picture in my pocket, Mrs. DeFlores opened the door. I don't know what she was going to say, but when she saw the album and the yearbook, she snatched them away from Jane, her face reddening.
    "What are you doing with these?" she asked.
    "I was just showing Tallahassee some pictures of her mother," Jane said. "I didn't think you'd mind."
    "Well, I do mind." Mrs. DeFlores glared at us, the books pressed to her bosom. She started to leave the room,