“Isn’t five years long enough for the ban on stilts? It’s the Bicentennial! Only the most important 4th of July parade in the history of…history! Wiping out the VFW auxiliary cake table could’ve happened to anybody. It was really Mrs. Abernathy’s cat’s fault. Anybody knows you can’t walk a cat on a leash. Especially not at a parade. Especially not a Siamese cat!”
My voice cracking at the end of my last-minute plea to the Queen’s Lake Community Association was unplanned, but effective. After a brief consultation, the parade subcommittee lifted the stilts ban. Which meant Sam, the boy next door and my best friend since toddlerhood, could once more ascend to triumphant heights in tomorrow’s parade as Uncle Sam. A part he claimed was his by name and athletic ability.
Sam slapped my shoulder as we left Town Hall. “Atta girl, Georgie! I owe you a cupcake.”
A cupcake! Sam still saw me as the pal who shared his kindergarten Hostess cupcakes. My name didn’t help the cause. Mom, a rabid Nancy Drew fan, named me after George Fayne, Nancy’s tomboyish chum. A super-tall chick like me with a boy’s name? I was doomed. Doomed.
“You coming to practice?” Sam jerked a thumb at his VW bug.
“I’ve gotta get home. Mom’s helping me finish my costume.”
“What costume?”
“I told you, I’m Betsy Ross on the Bronson’s Supermarket float this year.”
“Not escorting the Girl Scouts to make sure Franny Palmer doesn’t faint? Congrats! Hey, before you go, gimme a push-start?”
“Sure.” I put my hands on the usual spot—the Beetle’s faded flower power decals—and shoved till Sam popped the clutch.
He chugged off, waving a hand out the window. “Thanks, kiddo! See ya later!” floated back to me on the muggy Virginia breeze.
Kiddo. Sam would never take me seriously. As a girl, I mean. I’d been dying for him to for YEARS now. Ever since I saw him laugh off his crash landing in Mrs. Hammond’s famous coconut cake. Just like that, his smart-alecky brown eyes and the gap in his teeth he whistled through added up to my perfect guy.
We’re seniors at Lafayette High now, for Pete’s sake! What’s it gonna take for him to realize I’m a member of the opposite sex?
Well, everything would change at the parade. There I’d be, Betsy Ross. Old Glory on my lap, my figure (which isn’t half-bad) squished into devastating womanliness by a snugly laced bodice. I’d look feminine. Practically fragile.
Mom handed me the phone the second I came into the kitchen. Five minutes later, she was patting my arm while I slumped on the sofa. “You can’t blame Mr. Bronson, honey. After all, Cecily’s his niece. You can still wear the gown in the parade…”
“Babysitting Fainting Franny? Ugh.”
Mom smiled and passed me a threaded needle. “Where’s your spirit of ’76? Remember, tomorrow’s the Glorious Fourth!”
I flounced out of the house the next morning ready to knock Sam off his stilts in a curve-hugging Jacobean gown with a saucy little mob cap on my colonial curls. The smell of popcorn, cotton candy, and hotdogs hovered over the firehouse parking lot, the parade rallying spot. I was fluffing my fichu, waiting for the Girl Scouts, when Sam jogged up.
“George, we got an emergency!” He parked his stilts against the fire engine, ignoring my fetchingly girlish self. “One of the Spirit of ’76 guys sprained his wrist last night at tetherball. Every other fife player went to the Williamsburg parade. You’re the only one left in the county! You’re his height, and I got his stuff right here…”
“Sam, noooo…”
“Come on, Georgie girl. Where’s your Bicentennial spirit? Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their parade.”
Those pleading brown eyes had me caving in like Cornwallis. When I emerged from the fire department restroom in knickers, a baggy colonial shirt, and a wrinkled weskit, I wanted to scream. Cecily “Betsy Ross” Bronson primped and simpered ten feet away on the supermarket float. Doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
“You look great!” Sam pulled a bottle of Heinz ketchup and some dingy cloth strips from his knapsack. “Sit.” He pointed to a violently patriotic bench. “I’ll help.”
“Thanks oodles.” I sank down, feeling dead, white, and blue.
Sam wrapped the cloth around and around my head, ruining the ringlets that cost me a night’s sleep. I shut my eyes and tried not to groan. Not once did my Sam-wakes-up-and-notices-I’m-a-girl fantasies involve bandages. Or ketchup.
Whistling “Yankee Doodle” through that cute gap in his teeth, he knelt next to me, globbing Heinz on the bandage. A thick blob dribbled onto my cheek. “Whoops,” he said, laughing, and licked it off.
Then he stopped licking. And laughing. I stopped breathing. His lips slid from my cheek to my mouth. Sam—SAM!—kissed me. Tomato-y, yes, but definitely not brotherly.
He sat back, looking like he just took a header. “Man! Sorry, George! I don’t know what got into me. Are you mad?”
“Are you kidding?” My return kiss knocked his Uncle Sam hat off.
“That’s the spirit,” he whooped, and kissed me till I saw stars and stripes. We jumped apart when a fireman with a wicked sense of humor hit the siren. A gaggle of Girl Scouts giggled around us, Franny looking a little pale.
Sam strapped on his stilts, levered himself up, and grinned down at me. “How ‘bout the fireworks tonight? A real date.”
Now THAT’S a glorious Fourth.
The End
