Wendy’s mother lent Wendy some earrings.
Wendy lent them to Judy.
Judy lent them to Tina - who lost them.
Now Wendy wants them back
because Wendy’s mother wants them back
and…

Wendy took a deep breath to steady her, and slammed the door behind her. Then, because she felt she hadn’t made her feelings felt sufficiently, she slammed it again. Harder.

A muffled cry of protest reverberated from the kitchen.

“Yes, mother,” she mocked, making a rude sign in the direction of the closed door. “Just as you say, mother!”

Wendy sighed, her chest heaving with the riot of feelings that surged through her, her hands shaking with the indignity of it all, then sat herself carefully on the edge of her bed. Right on the very edge. That was important. When she was just a kid, she would have flung herself face-down and would have sobbed with the usual mixture of anger and humiliation after a row with her mother like that. But now, now that she was thirteen – and fully adult – she was much more dignified about things. Nor did she call what she’d just had a row. It was better being dignified with the more adult term: altercation.

So, in a poised and very adult way, she perched herself on the very edge of her bed and carefully considered her position.

The present row – altercation – was simply because she had lost a pair of earrings belonging to her mother. She shook her long blond hair away from her eyes. A truly piffling event. She sniffed. No, that wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t exactly lost them. Judy had. Judy had lost them after Wendy had lent them to her. And she had borrowed them from her mother. Borrowing wasn’t an indictable offence, was it?

“You stole them!” her mother had shrieked at her. “You took them without asking. That’s tantamount to stealing!”

No, it wasn’t, Wendy reasoned. If she hadn’t intended returning them, that would have been stealing. She had intended returning them. That was borrowing.

“And don’t bandy words with me, my girl,” her mother had flung at her. “It won’t cut any ice with me.”

And that, of course, was the typical parent cop-out. Starting an argument, then changing the rules when someone started getting the better of her.

Wendy sighed. She flicked the neckline of her blouse to straighten it. Even her father had taken sides – as he always did, when the argument became really heated – during the evening meal. And, naturally enough, he had supported his wife. Grown-ups sticking together, as they always did.

And now, she just had to get those wretched earrings back. But how could she do that? She wasn’t allowed out. Trust her parents to demand that she did something, then make it impossible for her to do it.

Wendy thumped her pillow a couple of times, slamming her frustration into it. There was only one way of finding those earrings. And that was to go to the village hall and look for them. That, according to Judy was where they had been lost. And, as Judy had lost them, she had better go too.

The criminal should always be made to pay for his crime. That was one of her father’s favorite sayings. Then she would live by what he’d taught her.

Before she realized it, the plan had formulated itself in Wendy’s mind. It was remarkably simple, like all really good plans. It had come to her complete. Now was the time for action!

She frowned as she listened for the telltale sounds from the rest of the house, her head cocked on one side. Her parents were talking quietly in the kitchen. That meant they were discussing her. And they were bumping things about something horrible. That meant they were still good and piqued. But, by the sound of things, they were preparing to go to bed. That meant the coast was clear.

Wendy slid lithely off her bed and opened her bedroom window a little wider at the bottom. She slipped one jeans-clad leg over the sill. She dropped to her tummy on the narrow ledge and felt with one foot for the bit of wood that conveniently stuck out. She located it, stepped on it, swung herself over, slipped because she had moved too precipitately, and fell with a bone-crunching thump to the flower bed below.

Strange, she mused, brushing herself down and tucking her blouse into her jeans again, that exit had been so easy when she was a kid, but now, now that she was an adult, it had become more difficult.

Still considering the injustice of adulthood, she crossed the back yard, doubled up in her best Rambo manner, and clambered through the fence into Judy’s bit of dirt.

As she’d anticipated, the whole place was in darkness. Mr Dent had an early start with his milk round, so everyone had to suffer by going to bed early – Judy included, poor wretch.

Wendy picked up a handful of stones and tossed them at her friend’s bedroom window.

A surprised face appeared almost immediately. “What do you want?” Judy asked in an elaborate stage whisper.

Wendy climbed up on to the slightly leaning tankstand. “Let me in,” she commanded. She wasn’t about to make explanations as tricky and potentially hazardous as this through a closed window. She had far more sense than that.

The window swung open, nearly knocking Wendy off her feet. Wendy climbed in.

“What do you want?” Judy asked again, clutching her shorty pajamas about her as though she feared a physical attack. “It’s the middle of the night.” Her thin features were contorted with anxiety. Her stringy red hair was standing on end. She looked like something the cat had refused to eat.

‘Those earrings I lent you,” Wendy hissed. ‘That’s what I want. What else?” She had more important things on her mind than to point out to her friend that it was, to normal people, still late evening.

“I don’t know,” Judy hissed back. “I’m never sure what you might want. Particularly when you’re in one of your moods.”

“I’m not in one of my moods,” Wendy snapped back. “I just don’t have moods. Not like some people.” And she gave her friend a meaningful glance.

Judy shrugged, then grabbed the waistband of her shorty pajamas. “I told you,” she murmured defensively, looking down at her bare knees as though fearful that someone might steal them. “I lost them. The earrings, that is.”

“At the dance,” Wendy stated in a sort of question. Even though they had been best friends for some three years now, she still had to pump information out of her sometimes. And she was annoyed at being accused of being in a mood. She was never in a mood. She was one of the most placid people she knew.

Judy frowned and clutched harder at the waistband of her pajamas. She nodded stiffly.

“How?” Wendy demanded sharply, forgetting to whisper in the heat of the moment. And for good measure added, “And exactly where?”

“I don’t know,” Judy admitted, toying with the edge of her bedside rug with the toes of her right foot. “I...I wasn’t wearing them.”

Wendy just about exploded. She seized her friend’s arms and shook her roughly. ‘Then who the blazes was?” she wanted to know.

“Tina,” Judy admitted in a tiny, wobbly voice. Wobbly because Wendy was still shaking her, and tiny because she was scared her pajamas were going to slip down over her ankles again. The elastic in the waistband was feeble – like she was when Wendy started bullying her.

“You lent them to Tina?” Wendy gasped, suddenly letting go of her friend’s arms.

Judy grabbed the upper section of her pajamas in the nick of time.

“After I...” Wendy roared.

Judy let go of the waistband of her pajamas with one hand and put one finger to her lips. “Hush!” she cautioned. “You’ll wake my father...”

“I don’t care if I wake the whole sainted village,” Wendy snarled grimly. “I want those earrings back...before my father skins me alive.”

Judy gulped at that. She swallowed hard. She’d no experience of being skinned alive. Her father merely beat her to a pulp – or looked as thought he might do so sometimes. “I haven’t...got...them,” Judy gasped, glancing round her bedroom as though looking for something to offer her friend in place of those wretched earrings.

‘So you've said a couple of million times already,” Wendy observed dryly. She pushed her friend away from her. “You’re starting to get boring. Boringly repetitive, in fact.” She presented her friend with a suitably baleful glare. “Get some clothes on,” she commanded sharply.

“Why?” Judy asked tearfully. Her plan for tonight, being an obedient young citizen, was sleeping, not getting dressed.

“Because, if you don’t,” Wendy pointed out reasonably enough, “and you go out like that, you’ll forget to hold your silly dags up and you’ll end up walking about the village stark plonking naked.”

“But I’m not going to walk about the village,” Judy protested. “Naked, or otherwise. I’m supposed to be in bed.”

“And those earrings are supposed to be in my mother’s jewelbox,” Wendy shot back.

“But...” Judy whimpered fearfully. Her father packed a mighty wallop when angry, and she saw no reason for making him angry over a pair of stupid earrings “...where are we going?”

“We’re going to call on Tina, and then we are all going to look for my mother’s earrings,” Wendy explained in a dangerously calm voice. “Get dressed, you silly little girl!” she snapped again, picking up an assorted handful of crumpled clothes and tossing them in her friend’s face.

Wendy watched scornfully as Judy’s nervous fingers struggled with the complexities of jeans and sweater. Bitterness welled up within her. Only a few hours ago, they’d been excitedly getting dressed prior to going to the village dance. Wendy had already borrowed those earrings from her mother’s jewelbox, had changed her mind and decided not to wear them, and had lent them to Judy.

Then the blow had fallen. Suddenly. Precipitately. Without warning.

Wendy’s parents had discovered that Wendy had completely forgotten to do the shopping on the way home from school, which meant that her father would have to go to work without breakfast the following morning. And, as a punishment, she wasn’t allowed to go the dance after all.

So, Judy had gone alone – with the earrings – and Wendy had to face an evening of shouting and all sorts of bitter recriminations.

“Come on,” Wendy ordered, now that her friend was finally dressed – after a fashion.

They clambered out of the window.

Still protesting, Judy allowed herself to be dragged in the direction of Tina’s house. “I hate you, Wendy Blake,” she muttered under her breath.

“Not as much as I’m going to hate myself for what I’m going to do to you if we can’t find those wretched earrings,” Wendy returned acidly.

Judy fell silent, and kept close to Wendy’s side, anchored in place by the fingers that were firmly clamped like iron buckles round her arm. There was no possible escape when Wendy was in this sort of mood.

Tina’s house loomed before them in the starlit gloom, vast and imposing. It was the largest house in the village. The consensus was that only a doctor could possibly be that rich.

“What now?” Judy asked. She always asked the questions, just as Wendy invariably supplied answers to them. Usually, ones she didn’t want to hear.

A light glimmered indistinctly in an upstairs window.

“You knock.” Wendy decided.

“But that’s not Tina’s bedroom window,” Judy protested. She was beginning to shake rather badly now. She couldn’t imagine what her father would do to her, when he found out about this escapade.

“I want you to knock on the front door, not on an upstairs window, you fool,” Wendy hissed angrily, “As if you could reach it, in any case, you miserable little squirt,” she added nastily. It had long been a matter of bitterness between the two friends that Wendy was a hairsbreadth taller than Judy. Wendy gave her friend a hefty shove in the direction of the front door.

Judy regarded the dark blue-painted wood only inches from her nose with considerable apprehension. “Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow morning?” she suggested desperately.

Wendy shook her head.

Judy knocked. Very quietly.

“Louder, you woeful brat,” Wendy hissed..

Judy did so. And hurt her knuckles.

The two girls stood and listened. Someone was coming down the stairs. Heavy, ponderous footsteps. They were most certainly not Tina’s.

Judy looked behind her, wondering if she could make a dash for it but, typically, Wendy was blocking the way.

The door opened and light streamed out. “Yes?” Tina’s father rumbled in his very-full-of-confidence voice.

Judy started to babble incoherently.

“Earrings?” the doctor questioned, a puzzled frown on his face. “What’s all this about lost earrings? I don’t normally wear them.” And his chuckle at his own joke turned Judy’s legs to wobbly sticks.

Wendy stepped forward and took charge. She explained, adult to adult. Judy was too all-of-a-jelly to talk sense at the moment. She always had to do everything herself, if she wanted anything doing properly.

“I see,” Tina’s father said thoughtfully, when she was finished, eyeing the two girls with about as much enthusiasm as a gardener regards a slug that has just discovered eating his prize roses. He called upstairs in his best peremptory voice.

Tina appeared immediately, clasping a silk dressing gown about her slender body.

Her father questioned her succinctly about the earrings. “And please make your reply brief and to the point,” he added. ‘Then, perhaps, we might be permitted to return to our beds. And the glance he gave Wendy suggested that he considered even her remarkably succinct exposition regarding the loss of the earrings was far too verbose for comfort.

Tina uttered no word. She opened her hand, and the overhead light glinted on the pair of earrings.

Wendy stepped forward and took them. For some unknown reason, she was beginning to feel a little silly.

“Is there anything else?” Tina’s father boomed. “Like a broken arm that needs fixing, perhaps?”

Wendy shuddered. She hadn’t got a broken arm at the moment, but had the sudden vivid impression that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to provide her with one. She shook her head vigorously.

“You see,” Tina’s father explained wearily, ‘Tina wasn’t permitted to go to the dance. It was discovered that she had failed to complete her school assignment. So, she stayed in and finished it. The earrings would have been returned to you in school tomorrow morning. Seeing that you have them now, I wish you both a very good night!”

The door closed with impressive finality.

The two girls turned and started to walk away in the suddenly uncharitable darkness.

They hadn’t gone very far when something occurred to Wendy. She seized her friend’s arm and jerked her to an abrupt stop. “You didn’t tell me that Tina didn’t go the dance either,” she remarked accusingly.

Judy didn’t know what to say. “You’re hurting me,” she grumbled. That, at least, was true.

“Not as much as I am going to in a moment,” Wendy snarled, aiming a kick at her friend’s leg.

Judy screamed, but nimbly jumped out of the way. Wendy was so utterly predictable that evasive action came automatically.

Wendy aimed another kick at her.

The car that came round the corner just then shone its light on them. It stopped beside them. The village policeman got out.

‘That’s all we need!” Wendy said grimly to herself.

“Now what’s this?” the constable asked in a none-too-friendly voice. There were a few people he wouldn’t mind aiming a hefty kick at himself, but that wasn’t how things were done these days. Everyone had rights, even the baddies. “Fighting in the street, are we? That’s disorderly conduct, you know.”

Wendy didn’t even try to explain. She knew it would be pointless. Constable Nick Martin had a way of disputing even the most plausible evidence.

“Hop in, girls,” Nick invited with icy politeness. “I’ll run you both home. We can’t have you terrorizing the neighborhood, can we?” And he chuckled as if it was the biggest joke he’d heard for a long while.

Wendy managed to get her elbow nice and painfully into Judy’s ribs as they set off. The evening had started out badly, and it was going to end up being even worse. Neither of their parents were going to take all that kindly to their daughters being escorted home in the middle of the night by the village plod.

Wendy shook her head and took her elbow out of Judy’s ribs in reply to the policeman’s smiling question. No, they didn’t need the siren on. It wasn’t necessary. They would come quietly. Yes, she would be nice to her friend. Yes, she would explain it all to him. And without undue prevarication.

But Wendy’s mind wasn’t really on the ever-so-slightly embroidered version she related to the policeman. The real disaster was going to befall her when her father finally got his hands on her. Her mother would be appeased, of course. She would have her stupid earrings back. But, knowing her, she would still harp on the fact that they’d been taken without permission.

And her father would surely mention – If that was the right word – that she’d been gallivanting about the village when she was supposed to be confined to her room.

It ought to be a case of “all’s well that end’s well” Wendy realized, but grown-ups seldom saw it that way. And she would find out tomorrow, when she got that wimp, Judy, to herself, why Judy didn’t know that Tina hadn’t gone to the dance either. She didn’t like mysteries. And she fully intended getting to the bottom of this one.

She smiled ruefully to herself. The thought of making Judy squirm pleased her immensely. That was something she was really looking forward to. But first, she’d have to deal with her parents, and she wasn’t looking forward to that much.

She crossed her legs and managed to give Judy a sly kick on the shins in so doing. She nervously chewed her lower lip.

She didn’t know what the world was coming to. She would never have credited that there could be so much fuss over a silly pair of quite worthless earrings!

- Ann Elladora