“I always bring the tennis balls, don’t I?” Selena asked unpleasantly.
Sometimes Ginnie felt like killing Selena. “Your father makes them or something,” she said. “They don’t cost you anything. I have to pay for every single little—”
“All right, all right,” Selena said, loudly and with finality enough to give herself the upper hand. Looking bored, she went through the pockets of her coat. “I only have thirty-five cents,” she said coldly. “Is that enough?”
“No. I’m sorry, but you owe me a dollar sixty-five. I’ve been keeping track of every—”
“I’ll have to go upstairs and get it from my mother. Can’t it wait till Monday? I could bring it to gym with me if it’d make you happy.”
Selena’s attitude defied clemency.
“No,” Ginnie said. “I have to go to the movies tonight. I need it.”
In hostile silence, the girls stared out of opposite windows until the cab pulled up in front of Selena’s apartment house. Then Selena, who was seated nearest the curb, let herself out. Just barely leaving the cab door open, she walked briskly and obliviously, like visiting Hollywood royalty, into the building. Ginnie, her face burning, paid the fare. She then collected her tennis things—racket, hand towel, and sun hat—and followed Selena. At fifteen, Ginnie was about five feet nine in her 9-B tennis shoes, and as she entered the lobby, her self-conscious rubber-soled awkwardness lent her a dangerous amateur quality. It made Selena prefer to watch the indicator dial over the elevator.
“That makes a dollar ninety you owe me,” Ginnie said, striding up to the elevator.
Selena turned. “It may just interest you to know,” she said, “that my mother is very ill.”