Read the story. In the summer of 1964, I met someone who, unlike all of my other acquaintances, always seemed to say precisely what she was thinking.
Her name was Sally, and she was a guest in the cottage next to ours on the beach. Her blunt comments sometimes bruised my feelings, but most
often they made me step back and examine something I had done, thought, or said.
One morning, I was in a particularly foul mood as I walked along the beach. Sally, who seemed to have an intuition about such things, asked
me what was causing me such obvious distress. I explained that my best friend from home and her extended family were traveling by automobile
for two weeks. Before leaving for our cottage at the beginning of the summer, I had given my friend a change purse filled with coins, and we forged
a contract of sorts. I would call her daily from the cottage while she was at home, and when she left for vacation, she would use the change to call
me from pay phones along the route. My friend had called me from a telephone booth each of the first three days of her trip; however, I had not
received a call or a message of any kind from her in the past few days. I was angry that she hadn't lived up to our agreement and was beginning to
doubt her loyalty as a friend.
How would the plot of the story change if it were set in the current year?
1. Sally would not have spoken bluntly to the narrator of the passage,
2. The narrator's family would not have gone to the shore for the summer.
3. The narrator and her friend would have additional ways to communicate.
4. Her friend would have stayed at the beach instead of taking a road trip.