OCR Text |
Show "G-o-l-k-i-d," said Pilar as slowly and clearly as she could. Kim started laughing. "Pilar, that's two words, and I'm not sure it's proper English. I wouldn't take that one home to your father." "What does it mean?" "I call a friend 'kid'. It means I like the person. And I know your father didn't send you all the way here to learn that." Then, more seriously, Kim asked, "Why did you try out for the basketball team?" There was a long pause and Pilar stared down at her brown leather shoes. Finally, she said, she said pensively, "I want to belong. You understand?" Kim let out a pained half laugh. "Yeah, I understand," she said. She looked at Pilar's dark foreign face and thought about what Mrs. Parker had said-that our bodies were masks covering souls that revealed what we really were. For a long moment Kim looked at Pilar as if she were staring into the soul of this girl who had once seemed so dark and different. Yet what she saw wasn't different at all, but strangely like herself. Her worries and insecurities, her fears of not belonging, her wanting somone to notice her. "Hey, look at me!" she could hear Pilar calling out. Finally, Kim said, "Will you leave Putnam's at the end of the year?" 118 |