B004XTKFZ4 EBOK (16 page)

I stood there dumbly, almost without thought. I was tempted to knock again, to apologize, to explain, but realized that there was no point. She’d said all she would say.

But she’d given me a place.

—Ten—

IT WAS A major event at Soames Elementary School that year, easily eclipsing the soccer team’s championship in its division and the afternoon assembly at which a minor but recognizable TV actor appeared to tell us to “stay off the dope.” Lucy was suspended, of course; there was talk of her being expelled or even arrested. I was made to report to the principal’s office with my uncle—I pleaded with him to come rather than my aunt—and Mr. Blatt discussed the possibility of suspending me, too: an astonishing, surreal idea for a girl who, until recently, had panicked if she received an A-minus on a quiz. But then the principal admitted that, having talked to Susan and Miriam and their parents—Melissa was in the hospital—it was clear to him that those girls had started the whole thing. My only crime had been in running away from school after it happened, and Mr. Blatt was willing to forgive that—“
this
time,”
he said warningly.

I took some pleasure in the fact that Susan and Miriam were being suspended as well, though only for a day—quite unlike the solid week’s sentence Lucy had received. (Melissa’s fate would be decided when she was well enough to return.) But it made school the next day positively bizarre. Four girls had suddenly vanished, depleting our already small classes. The other kids looked at me with something like awe: I was the only one to have actually been in the middle of the firestorm, to have survived it and to have returned unscathed. The belief seemed to be that Lucy and I had taken on the three girls in something like a tag-team wrestling match; they had no idea I’d simply been knocked down and kicked.

I, meanwhile, had no idea that this would prove to be my last of all days at Soames Elementary.

My complete innocence in the situation didn’t affect my aunt, of course, who grounded me with the instruction to “never,
never
talk to that horrible Sparrow girl again.” I knew better than to argue with her when she was in high dudgeon. She railed on for a long time, marching back and forth in front of me as I sat on the bed in my room. Waving her Marlboro around wildly she said terrible things about Lucy, terrible things about Ms. Sparrow, terrible things about me, but none of it mattered. I hardly heard it. There seemed to be a dark chasm opening where my future had once stood. Would Lucy be allowed back to school? What if she were expelled? Where would she go? Could she really be
arrested
?

“I mean it, Frances. Don’t have anything to do with that horrible girl. You’ve changed since you became friends with her. Well, now I hope you see just who it is you’ve been friends with. She
broke
that pretty little Deaver girl’s
nose.
Do you understand, Frances? She broke her nose! That’s a
major thing
! That’s…that’s
assault and battery
!”
She stopped pacing, stood still for a moment. “That little girl will never look the same, Frances. That’s what your friend did. A broken nose never looks the same afterward, no matter how well they set it. That girl will be dealing with that
forever.
”

“Good,” I whispered, though much too softly for my aunt to hear.

“Well, I hope you’re happy about this, that’s all I can say,” she said at last, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door, leaving the odor of cigarette smoke behind.

I was too overwhelmed, too emotional for tears. I just sat on my bed and trembled. For a while my life had seemed to make sense: my parents had gotten rid of me, my aunt and uncle were only figureheads, but with Lucy I had a life, a real life that was more important than school or anything else. Now it was in jeopardy. All I wanted to do at that moment was see her, talk to her, tell her that things would be all right (but I didn’t know that they would be all right, I didn’t know that at all). Awful things seemed to be happening now, things beyond her control or mine. Erratic, inscrutable grown-ups would make decisions which would affect us both forever. Nothing but darkness and terror seemed to lie ahead.

I dozed for a time; I didn’t sleep. Evil visions leapt at me: my father slamming the door in my face after I had a glimpse of my mother, rubber tubing wrapped around her arm, syringe sticking out of it; my aunt, her voice hard and unforgiving, the glowing cigarette waving madly in the air; Melissa and Susan and Miriam, their pretty faces contorted and ugly now, taunting me, pushing me down. But I couldn’t see Lucy at all, couldn’t conjure her face or voice in my mind. She was lost to me in this churning ocean of darkness and terror.

I was brought out of my uneasy trance-like state by, of all things, a soft knocking on my window.

I was startled, but only for an instant. I realized immediately who it must be. I ran to the window, pulled away the curtains. She was there, her face glowing whitely, ghostlike against the dark. I pulled open the window and touched the screen with my hand; she touched it too. Our palms pushed together, only the mesh between us.

“Lucy!” I whispered.

In my joy at seeing her it took me a moment to realize that she was crying. I’d never seen her cry; it was shocking, another new impossible thing to be thrown at me in the past couple of days. How could Lucy be crying? I was the one who cried, too much.

“Can you come outside?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“Lucy, I—what time is it?” I glanced back to my desk clock: almost exactly one o’clock in the morning.

I looked at her again. Her eyes were red, her mouth twisted. Tears had run down her cheeks, making them glisten. Her hair was wild, askew.

Of course I went. I’d never undone the screen on my own window, but it turned out to be exactly the same as Lucy’s and came away easily. I was still dressed, never having really gone to bed. I climbed through the window, dropped into the backyard, turned and slid the window mostly shut again.

Lucy walked off into the backyard in the direction of the pepper tree, the darkness seeming to swallow her. She wore her black Bachman-Turner Overdrive T-shirt and blue jeans. It was a cool night, early spring. I followed her, a strange thrill thrumming in my bones. I’d never been outside this late. I’d never visited the pepper tree in the dark. But it was no time for fun: she leaned against one of the main branches, slumped there, crying quietly and looking completely defeated.

“Lucy, what is it?” I whispered. “What’s wrong? Are they—are they going to
arrest
you?”

She looked at me then, snorted with miserable laughter. “No, they’re not gonna arrest me, Fran.” She sniffed, cleared her throat, trying to bring her tears under control.

“You should have been at school today,” I said. “It was so weird. You, Melissa, Susan, Miriam—everybody was gone. And everybody else was looking at
me.
”

“Oh, yeah?” she said, uninterested.

“Yeah,” I said, aware that her mind was on something else but unable to figure out what else to say to her. “Melissa’s in the hospital. Well, I think they let her out today. Susan and Miriam were suspended for a day. They’ll be back tomorrow, I guess.”

“Did you get in trouble?” she asked, her voice distant.

“I had to go to Mr. Blatt’s office with my uncle. He didn’t suspend me, though.”

“That’s good.”

“Lucy—” I reached out, then stopped, my hand dangling in mid-air. “Lucy, what is it?”

She looked at me, her silver-gray eyes glistening in the dark. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure I can. You don’t have to ask me that, Lucy.”

She looked away, picked at the bark of the pepper tree’s trunk. “My mom and me are moving.”

I felt a terrible free-fall sensation in the pit of my stomach.

“
Moving?
” I gasped.

“Yeah.”

We stood there. A breeze pushed a few pepper leaves in my face, tickling my cheek.

“Lucy, why? Is it this…this thing with Melissa? I’m sure Mr. Blatt will let you come back, Lucy. Boys get in fights all the time and they—”

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s not that at all. That doesn’t matter now. It’s not even important.”

“Well, then what?”

“My fucking
dad,
”
she said, practically spitting the word. As she said it she dropped suddenly to the ground, sat lotus-legged on the floor of our little personal forest. I fell to my knees beside her.

“What about your dad, Lucy?”

She didn’t look at me. “My mom thinks he’s found us.”

“Found you? What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“I mean
found us.
So we have to move again.”

“Lucy, I don’t get it. Why do you have to leave because your dad found you?”

She scowled at me and I was sure she was about to call me stupid, but instead she reached to her jaw and ran her finger down the long line there that I’d once taken for a birthmark.

“’Cuz of this,” she said. “’Cuz my dad put it there. And lots of others, too.”

“He…?”

She sighed shakily, but in talking seemed to regain her composure. “That’s what my dad does when he gets drunk. He gets crazy. He knocked my mom out once. I still remember the sound of the punch and coming into the room and seeing her there on the floor, not moving, like a pile of old garbage. And my dad coming at me with a kitchen knife in his hand. He grabbed me, pulled my head back by the hair, and—well, I don’t remember the rest. That was just the last time. He’d done it before.” She picked at pepper leaves on the ground. “Knives. Lit cigarettes. He was always careful to do it where it wouldn’t show, until the last time.”

We sat there silently. I could hear crickets chirping. I didn’t know what to say. I had absolutely no idea what on earth I could possibly say.

She took the little pepper leaves into her fingers and slowly tore them apart, studying each closely, holding them to her nose and breathing in their spicy odor. “When I was being punished,” she said, her voice strangely calm now, dispassionate, “one thing he used to do was make me pull my pants down and then stick things into me. The toilet paper roller or the handle of a screwdriver or something like that. In my butt. In my privates. He’d say, ‘This is what happens to bad girls, Lucy.’ He’d do it when Mom wasn’t home and then tell me he’d stick a gun in there the next time if I said anything. He has a gun, too. A couple of ’em.”

After a moment she added expressionlessly, “Anyway, we’re moving.”

I swallowed. “Why isn’t he is jail, Lucy?”

“Oh, he’s been there. They let him out. One month, two months, six months. They always let him out. And he comes looking for us…I’m not from around here, you know. I’m not from anywhere around here. I grew up in Wyoming. Near Casper.” She was silent for a time. Then: “Do you believe in God?”

“Um…” I hesitated. “I don’t know. Sometimes I do.”

“Know what I think?” she asked, looking at the sky. “I think that there are people that God hates.”

“Why would He hate people, Lucy?”

“Well, why does He love people—some people? Who knows? Who knows why God does anything? Why does He let wars happen? Why does He let little babies starve? I mean, God is everything, right? He’s everything and everywhere.”

“I—I don’t know. He’s supposed to be, I guess.”

“If He’s everything, then He’s not just love, He’s hate, too. And I think that there are just some people that God hates. That’s the only way to understand the things that happen in the world. When I hear about a bad thing happening to somebody I just can’t help but think: God must’ve hated that person.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“My parents use drugs,” I blurted out.

Lucy looked at me.

“That’s why they got rid of me,” I said. “They use…heroin and things like that. And they sell it. They think I don’t know about it, but I do. We live in this nice house with a maid and everything but they’re…dope pushers,” I said, remembering the phrase from the school assembly. “I always thought dope pushers were, like, weird dirty people on street corners. But my dad owns a store, a nice one—three of them. Like a chain. They sell radios and stereos and, like, electronic stuff there.” I had never told anyone about my parents. No one. But Lucy’s revelations seemed to demand my own. “My mom, she—she actually worked as a model for magazines. But that was a long time ago. Now she’s a—” I could hardly believe I was saying it, but out it came—“My mom’s a drug addict. They’re just…messed up. Both of them.”

We sat silently together.

“I don’t wanna move again,” Lucy announced finally. “I hate moving. I never have any friends. I don’t know anybody. My mom…I love my mom, but she’s just—I dunno. She’s talking about us going to fuckin’
Mexico.
”
She was silent for a moment. “Her life would be better if I wasn’t around. He always hit me more than he did her. I think…I think if I wasn’t there he might not come after her at all. Crap, maybe I should just kill myself. I’m not worth anything to anybody.”