My eye lit on "soda crackers"; I knew they wouldn't count much and they didn't - only twenty - one calories apiece. Then I looked up "cheese."

Arithmetic stirred in my brain and I had a chilly feeling. I went into Daddy's study and used his postal scale to weigh the cheese that had not already become Maureen.

I did the arithmetic three times. Including two little bits of fudge I had eaten six hundred and seventy calories, more than half of a day's allowance given in the reducing diet! And I had only meant to stay the pangs until dinnertime.

Maureen, I said, this time you've got to be a fanatic; it's the ten - day die - trying diet for you.

I planned to keep my affairs to myself, selecting the diet from what was placed before me, but such a course is impossible in a family that combines the worst aspects of a Senate investigation with the less brutal methods of a third degree. I got away with passing up the cream - of - tomato soup by being a little bit late, but when I refused the gravy, there was nothing to do but show them the book.

Mother said a growing girl needed her food. I pointed out that I had quit growing vertically and it was time I quit horizontally. Junior opened his mouth and I stuffed a roll into it. That gave Daddy a chance to say, "Let's put it up to Doc Andrews. If he gives her the green light, she can starve herself gaunt. She's a free agent."

So Daddy and I went to Doctor Andrews' office next day. Daddy had an appointment anyhow - he has terrible colds every spring. Doctor Andrews sent Daddy across the hall to Doctor Grieb who specializes in allergies and things, then he saw me.

I've known Doctor Andrews since my first squawk, so I told him everything, even about Cliff, and showed him the book. He thumbed through it, then he weighed me and listened to my heart and took my blood pressure. "Go ahead," he told me, "but make it the thirty day diet. I don't want you fainting in the classroom."

I guess I had counted on him to save me from my will power. "How about exercise?" I said hopefully. "I'm pretty active. Won't I need to eat more to offset it?"

He roared. "Honey child," he said, "do you know how far you would have to hike to burn up one chocolate malt? Eight miles! It will help, but not much."

"How long do I keep this up?" - I asked faintly.

"Until you reach the weight you want - or until your character plays out."

I marched out with my jaw set. If a girl doesn't have a figure or character either, what has she got left?

Mother was home when we got there. Daddy picked her up and kissed her and said, "Now you've got two of us on diets!"

"Two?" said Mother.

"Look." Daddy peeled off his shirt. His arms were covered with little red pin pricks, some redder than others, arranged in neat rows. "I'm allergic," he announced proudly. "Those aren't real colds. I'm allergic to practically everything. That one" - he pointed to a red welt - "is bananas. That one is corn. That one is cow's milk protein. And there is pollen in honey. Wait." He hauled out a list: "Rhubarb, tapioca, asparagus, lima beans, coconut, mustard, cow's milk, apricot, beets, carrots, lamb, cottonseed oil, lettuce, oysters, chocolate - here, you read it; it's your problem.

"It's a good thing that I went to the campus today and signed up for an evening class in domestic dietetics. From now on this family is going to be fed scientifically," Mother said.

That should have been the worst of it, but it wasn't. Junior announced that he was training for hockey and he had to have a training - table diet - which to him meant beef, dripping with blood, whole - wheat toast, and practically nothing else. Last season he had discovered that, even with lead weights in his pockets, he didn't have what it took for a body check. Next season he planned to be something between Paul Bunyan and Gorgeous George. Hence the diet.

By now, Mother was on a diet, too, a scientific one, based on what she had learned during the two weeks she had actually attended classes. Mother pored over charts and we each had separate trays like a hospital, the time I broke my ankle playing second base for the West Side Junior Dodgers. Mother says a girl with my figure should not be a tomboy, but I said that a tomboy should not have my figure. Anyhow, I am no longer a tomboy since Cliff came into my life.

Somehow, Mother found things that weren't on Daddy's verboten list - stewed yak and pickled palm fronds and curried octopus and such. I asked if Daddy had been checked for those too? He said, "Tend to your knitting, Puddin'," and helped himself to more venison pasty. I tried not to watch.

Mother's own diet was as esoteric, but less attractive. She tried to tempt Junior and me with her seaweed soup or cracked wheat or raw rhubarb, but we stuck to our own diets. Eating is fun, but only if it's food.

Breakfast was easiest; Daddy breakfasted later than I did - he had no lectures earlier than ten o'clock that semester.

I would lie abed while our budding athlete wolfed down his Breakfast of Champions, then slide out at the last minute, slurp my glass of tomato juice (twenty-eight calories), and be halfway to school before I woke up. By then it would be too late to be tempted.

I carried my pitiful little lunch. Cliff started packing his lunch, too, and we picnicked together. He never noticed what I ate or how much.

I didn't want Cliff to notice, not yet. I planned to make him faint with the way I would look in my new formal at graduation prom.

It did not work out. Cliff took two final exams early and left for California for the summer and I spent the night of the prom in my room, nibbling celery (four calories per stalk) and thinking about life.

We got ready for our summer trip immediately thereafter. Daddy voted for New Orleans.

Mother shook her head. "Impossibly hot. Besides, I don't want you tempted by those Creole restaurants."

"Just what I had in mind," Daddy answered. "Finest gourmet restaurants in the country. You can't keep us on diets while traveling; it isn't practical. Antoine's, here I come!"

"No," said Mother.

"Yes," said Daddy.

So we went to California. I was ready to throw my weight (which was still too much) in with Daddy, when California was mentioned. I hadn't expected to see Cliff until fall. I put thoughts of bouillabaisse and Shrimp Norfolk out of mind; Cliff won, but it was nearer than I like to think.

The trip was hardly a case of merrie - merrie - be. Junior sulked because he wasn't allowed to take along his lifting weights, and Mother was loaded with charts and reference books and menus. Each time we stopped she would enter into long negotiations, involving a personal interview with the chef, while we got hungrier, and hungrier.

We were coming to Kingman, Arizona, when Mother announced that she didn't think we could find a restaurant to take care of our needs. "Why not?" demanded Daddy. "The people there must eat."

Mother shuffled her lists and suggested that we go on through to Las Vegas. Daddy said that if he had known this trip was going to be another Donner party, he would have studied up on how to cook human flesh.

While they discussed it we slid through Kingman and turned north toward Boulder Dam. Mother looked worriedly at the rugged hills and said, "Perhaps you had better turn back, Charles. It will be hours before we reach Las Vegas and there isn't a thing on the map.

Daddy gripped the wheel and looked grim. Daddy will not backtrack for less than a landslide, as Mother should have known.

I was beyond caring. I expected to leave my bones whitening by the road with a notice: She tried and she died.

We had dropped out of those hills and into the bleakest desert imaginable when Mother said, "You'll have to turn back, Charles. Look at your gasoline gauge."

Daddy set his jaw and speeded up. "Charles!" said Mother.