The Sky’s the Limit: My Journey with Maryellen

Maryellen and I work long and hard on her presentation, using the World Book Encyclopedia since there’s no internet in 1955. Her sketching skills come in handy for the visual part. She practices her report on me until it’s perfect, and by the time we climb into bed, Beverly and Carolyn are already asleep in their bunks.

The next morning, Maryellen and I are so excited about school that we can hardly eat breakfast. Well, I eat six pieces of bacon anyway. It’s so delicious!

Carolyn offers me her bike for school since she has a ride to the after-school sock hop instead. I thank her, but when we head outside, Maryellen walks right past the bikes in the carport. When I ask if we’re riding, she hesitates, then sighs, slings her book bag over her shoulder, and wheels Carolyn’s bike out to me, climbing onto a sleek, black bike before I can ask what’s wrong.

Riding a bike to school gives me a great feeling of independence, and it beats the noisy, smelly bus I usually ride home, even without a helmet. At the schoolyard, kids run around playing outdoor games: jump rope, hopscotch, tag.

Then a loud boy in a propeller beanie calls out to Maryellen, asking if she knows she’s riding a boy’s bike since it has a bar down the middle. Maryellen blushes and tells him to cut it out. This is Wayne, the “terrible boy” Beverly mentioned, and his teasing clearly embarrasses her, explaining her hesitation about the bikes. She stands firm, saying she’ll get a girl’s bike once she’s saved enough, but Wayne tells her girls can’t ride boys’ bikes.

It’s not like me to speak up, but I can’t stand anyone picking on Maryellen, so I tell Wayne that girls ride boys’ bikes where I come from. A girl in a poodle skirt tells us to ignore Wayne the Pain, another agrees, and a girl with long, dark braids tells him to go away. Maryellen introduces me to her friends, Karen Stohlman, Karen King, and Angela, and though I feel shy at first, they seem friendly right away. Angela says she was new last year, too, so she knows how confusing it is.

Karen Stohlman asks if Ellie asked a million questions when I first arrived. I grin and nod. Karen King laughs that Ellie is always curious. Maryellen agrees, adding that right now she’s curious about outer space, since that’s where she’d like to send Wayne for teasing her about the bike her friend Davy gave her when he outgrew it. She’ll ride it until she saves enough for a girl’s bike to wrap around Wayne instead.

We all laugh together, and I feel right at home, any shyness melted away. I don’t have much experience making friends since Emma and I have always been such an exclusive team, but maybe I’ll try once I’m back in my own time.

Inside, Maryellen introduces me to her homeroom teacher, Mr. Garcia, who says I can visit class today and register after Thanksgiving break. The class stands for the Pledge of Allegiance, then sings “The Star-Spangled Banner” while Mr. Garcia plays piano. When he asks who wants to go first, Maryellen looks at me nervously, and I smile and nod, so she raises her hand and asks if she may go first.

Everyone giggles in surprise as I turn off the lights and pull down the shades. Maryellen stands in the middle, holding a flashlight under a piece of construction paper with small star-shaped holes cut into it, projecting the Little Dipper onto the ceiling.

The class sighs with delight as Maryellen begins, explaining that she’s most grateful in Daytona Beach for the big, beautiful night sky over the ocean. This constellation, she says, is the Little Dipper, and the star at the end of its handle is the North Star, which marks true north and once helped travelers find their way. She switches papers to reveal the Big Dipper, then Pegasus. When she finishes, Mr. Garcia turns on the lights and everyone claps.

Mr. Garcia says Maryellen did an excellent job, and maybe someday we’ll travel into outer space, even to the moon. Wayne scoffs that that’s impossible. I’m usually quiet in class, but I can’t resist telling him scientists will land men on the moon within fifteen years. I make a mental note to tell Maryellen she might want to be at Cape Canaveral, not far from Daytona Beach, on July 16, 1969, to see Apollo 11 launch.

Wayne scoffs that maybe men will walk on the moon, but no girl ever will. I tell him he’s wrong, thinking of astronaut Sally Ride, who went to space in 1983. As we sit down, I whisper that Maryellen has beaten her fear of public speaking. She says it was easy, since everyone was looking up, not at her.

Later, walking home with the two Karens and Angela, Karen King compliments Maryellen’s presentation and says she fell asleep during Wayne’s, about car races. Whatever he went vroom, she went snore.

I tell Angela I liked her report on Mary McLeod Bethune, whom I wrote about last February for Black History Month. It’s cool that she lived in Daytona Beach and that the college for girls she started is still here. Angela says Bethune died this past May. She didn’t meet her but interviewed people who did.

Maryellen tells Karen Stohlman she liked her report on Jackie Robinson, knowing he and the Dodgers won the World Series this year but not that he trained in Daytona Beach every spring. She grins at me, maybe Daytona Beach isn’t so dull after all, and her hometown is worth exploring, too.

I wonder if I’ve overlooked interesting people in my own hometown, starting with Gran, whom I’ve assumed isn’t very interesting since she’s quiet and her dusty artifacts look ancient and weird. But Mom says Gran used to be a respected archaeology professor who found those artifacts herself on digs across the country. She and Daria’s mother are now organizing them for a museum donation. Maybe I jumped to a conclusion about her, the way Maryellen hates being assumed fragile because of her polio.

The two Karens and Angela split off toward home, so we say goodbye and continue to the Larkins’ house. But with every step, I wonder if I should go home now and get to know Gran.