Bonnie and Susie, best friends

They made quite a pair, Bonnie Driscoll and Susie Snook; the red-headed tomboy, freckled and fiery, always scrambling over fences and picking fights with grown men just to see what they'd do, and the quiet girl in glasses, with her long dark pigtails hanging down her back and her nose always jammed in a book, who wanted to write horror stories when she grew up. Both had just turned nineteen, a wild age for anyone.

Bonnie wanted to race right in, but Susie hung back in the muddy field outside the carnival, letting the cheerleaders enter first. She'd spotted Anne-Marie Patchett, the honey-blonde homecoming queen, and she didn't want to catch her eye. But Mr. Trapp had spotted them from across the field and he was coming right up to them, waving tickets in their faces.

"Ah, but who could neglect two such lovely ladies! I insist you take this at a third, no, a quarter of the price!"

Anne scowled at her - Trapp hadn't offered her the same deal - but mercifully vanished into the thick of the carnival crowds before it could go any further. Trapp pressed the tickets into their hands and was gone before they could even give him money. Susie looked at Bonnie, who shrugged.

"I guess he likes us," he said. "Where do you want to go first?"