The Story — The Hundred Dresses Part I

Each morning, Wanda Petronski arrived late at Room Thirteen. She would slip quietly into her seat in the last row, near the windows. The other children barely noticed her — except to remark that she always came in alone, and always wore the same faded blue dress, washed but never quite clean-looking, crinkled with many washings. She sat in the corner near the rough boys, who sometimes threw paper planes and made noise, yet no one thought much of it. For Wanda was the kind of person who appeared invisible without quite disappearing. Imagery

It was Peggy who had first started the game. Peggy was the most popular girl in the class — pretty, with curly red hair. She was not mean, exactly. She simply thought it was funny to ask Wanda the same question every day: "How many dresses did you say you had?" And Wanda would always reply, standing very still and stolidly, "A hundred." "A hundred!" Peggy would cry, her eyes wide in mock surprise, nudging the other girls. "All lined up in the closet?" "Yes," said Wanda. "All lined up. And they're all different colours." Irony

Maddie, Peggy's best friend, always stood close by when this happened. She never laughed, but she never said anything either. Maddie was not well-off herself — she wore hand-me-downs and faded clothes not so different from Wanda's. Something inside her always felt uncomfortable during these encounters — as though she were swallowing something sour — but she told herself Peggy didn't mean any real harm. Metaphor It was just a joke. Just a bit of fun. No one was getting hurt.

One day at recess, Peggy and Maddie were waiting for Wanda, the way they always did now — it had become a habit, a daily ritual without their quite realising it. They stood at the corner near the school building. Wanda was always alone. She had no friends of her own. She lived far away, on Boggins Heights, where the poorer families clustered in tumble-down houses, where mud gathered at the bottom of steep lanes after rain. Imagery Wanda's father worked hard, but the family had little. She had no one to walk to school with.

One Monday in November, the teacher, Miss Mason, announced a drawing contest — all the girls were to draw dresses and the boys to draw motorboats. The best designs would be displayed. The class hummed with excitement. On the day the winners were announced, the entire class gathered around the display board. Arranged across the room — pinned carefully, neatly, breathtakingly — were a hundred drawings. And every single one of them was of a different dress. Symbolism

The drawings were exquisite. Each one showed a stunning dress — velvets and silks, ball gowns and casual dresses, dresses with embroidery and lace, each distinct in colour and design. The class stood in silence, genuinely awed. And pinned to each design was a small label: Wanda Petronski. Every single one. Wanda had entered a hundred drawings. Wanda had drawn a hundred dresses. And suddenly, with a chill that was almost physical, Maddie understood. She had not been lying. Irony

Wanda won first prize. Miss Mason read out the announcement quietly and with great care, and then she pointed to the row of glorious coloured drawings and said, "These are so original, so vivid, so full of life — Wanda Petronski has given us a hundred dresses that none of us will ever forget." There was a ripple of genuine applause. But Wanda was not there to hear it. She had not come to school that day. She had not come to school the day before. Irony