May says to Paul, “He’ll take good care of her?”
And Paul says, “Of course he will.”
May looks at Billy and says, “You will?”
“You bet.”
May sounds very in charge when she tells him, “You are going to take her to Aladdin. Don’t try to sneak her into something R-rated.” He says he won’t, but I start to feel like maybe he will. I am still snapping the frog on and off my shirt, on and off. The frog is my favorite. I am looking down at the shadows of the trees on the sidewalk.
May gives Billy Dad’s ten dollars. She tells Billy that we love Sour Patch Kids. She makes him promise to get me some. And then May kisses me on the head and says have fun, and she says, “I’ll be back right after the movie’s over.” And she walks off with Paul. I watch the car leave, taking May away, and I don’t want it to go.
Billy says, “So what do you want to do?” My throat gets dry. I squeeze the frog in my hands. I try to swallow. I mean to ask if we are going to the movie, but I don’t know if I say it out loud or not. I find the cherry Jolly Rancher in my pocket that I’d saved from the Village Inn where we had dinner that night. I start sucking on it, but somehow my mouth is still just as dry.
Billy says, “Do you talk?”
I shrug.
He says he forgot something in his car. He says come on. So I follow him over the long stretch of blacktop. The world is dizzy, like something happened to the earth under my feet. We get to a car at the edge of everything. He opens the door. He says get in. I don’t want to. I just stand there. My mouth is really dry still. He says it again: “Get in.” He sounds angry this time. It scares me, so I do what he says. He leans really close to me. I can feel his breath, which smells like something too sweet and wrong and hot and, now that I think of it, I guess maybe like booze.
The sky is dark already, and I wish that it wasn’t. Billy says that he can tell I’m too old for a kid’s movie. He asks if I want to go somewhere instead. “Ice cream?” he asks. I shake my head no. “Have it your way,” he says, but he drives off anyway, and then he parks in an empty lot nearby.
The next thing I remember is that his hand is in my rain forest shirt. Underneath, I mean. I swallow the Jolly Rancher whole, and it hurts stuck in my throat, so I think I can’t breathe. The frog is unsnapped, I remember, because I remember it in my hand, the plastic of it, and I remember thinking about the frog and wishing I could put it back on my shirt, because that is its home. Only now I never can. I would never be able to wear that shirt another time, and it wouldn’t be safe for the frog. He would always be lost.
I try not to think of Billy’s hand or where it is, so I just focus on trying to breathe. His hair is greasy, and his body is long. Too long. He tells me I am pretty.
I wonder if he means pretty like May is. I think of May with Paul and wonder if this is what is happening, if this is what’s supposed to happen. Deep down I know it’s not right, but I pretend, pretend I am like May with her pink cheeks and her lips that look like close-up pictures in a magazine.
I keep thinking she is about to come back. I can hear cars in the distance like ocean sounds. I am listening hard to engines rolling by like waves. Like the silence that isn’t silence when you put a shell to your ear. And then sometimes something gets louder, and I hear a car, and I think it is getting closer. And I think it is May. She is about to come back. And it will stop. As soon as May comes, it will stop. But all the getting closer cars turn away. They go back on the highway. Maybe they are going to California.
When he is done doing that stuff, Billy drops me off outside the movie theater. The sign shines with the movie times. It still feels like there is a sliver of the Jolly Rancher stuck in the back of my throat. I am sitting there on the sidewalk, trying to concentrate on something. I look at the pale scattered stars in the sky, and then at the concrete and the pieces of glass glinting in it, like brighter stars. And then I read the numbers on the movie sign, over and over, trying to figure out what time it is so I could know when my sister would come.
People must be coming out of the movie, because there are voices around. When May jumps out of the silver car and it pulls away, everything is real again. She looks worried. She says, “Laurel! Why are you alone? Where’s Billy?” I shrug. I tell her that he was late for something and had to go. “Were you waiting long?” she asks.
“No, not that much. He just left.”
She tilts a little on her kitten heel, and when she thinks I am okay, she giggles like something good happened, but almost too much, like too happily. She says that Paul likes HardCore Cider, which is even better than the cider that we used to have at the apple farms in the fall.
When we are back in the Camry, I smile at her. And even though I don’t feel well, I think maybe the world is back to normal again, because now we are in the car driving home, and May is my sister. I don’t say what happened or anything about Billy. I know that it’s not what was supposed to happen, and if May knew, she would always be sad. Too sad. She would go away from me. I didn’t want that. And if only I’d never said anything, maybe she’d still be here.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
The day after the party was Sunday. I stayed in bed as long as I possibly could without Dad getting worried, and when I got up, I felt like I was walking through the thickest fog, like the kind that comes off of dry ice. I snuck into the bathroom and washed off the party makeup that was giving me black eyes.
Evan and Sky and May and the movies—it was all this frozen blur. I saw Jason’s face in my mind. I called Natalie and Hannah a bunch of times, but neither of them answered. So I asked Dad to drop me off at Natalie’s and said that I’d walk to Aunt Amy’s from there.
When Dad pulled up and parked in front of her house, he hugged me and held on for a long time, which I thought was strange.
He looked at me and said, “Are you okay today?”
I worried that somehow he could see through me. “Yeah,” I said. “Love you,” and I hurried out of the car before he could ask me anything else.
When nobody answered the door, I went around to the back and found Natalie lying on the trampoline, crying. Hannah was sitting on the edge of it, her knees curled in a ball against her chest.
I stood toward the edge of the yard, listening. Natalie asked, through sobs, “Do you even love me?”