“Number sixty-two?” calls the cook again, and I want to yell that I have a twelve-year-old in crisis and to just give me a goddamn minute.
“Can you just get the food?” Elodie’s voice breaks, and the door inches shut. “I’ll use toilet paper for now.”
So I do, and after I’ve paid, I find Elodie waiting for me on the sidewalk outside, her Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School drama sweatshirt tied around her waist. She’s toying with the arm of it, flapping it back and forth while she stares at the ground.
“Hey,” I say, trying my best to show that I’m someone she can confide in. Not a friend, not a parent, but somewhere in between. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Elodie sinks down onto a bench next to a bus stop. “It’s really not a big deal,” she mumbles, toeing the ground with one of her striped Keds.
The way Elodie and I have cracked jokes and talked about Broadway, it almost felt like hanging out with a friend. And while she’s plenty independent, now she feels very, very twelve.
“I don’t like talking to my parents about any of this,” she says.
“You don’t have to be ashamed of your—”
Her eyes flash to mine. “I know I don’t have to be ashamed of my body,” she says quickly. “I’m not! Really. I’m more than happy to let it do its monthly thing. But I don’t want my parents to know about it.”
I urge myself to stay calm. “You don’t want your parents to know when you need more pads?”
“I don’t want them to know I started my period.”
Oh.
Again, I arrange my face into something I hope looks neutral instead of alarmed. “How long has it been?”
“Um . . . four months? I’ve been tracking it in my bullet journal. It was supposed to get here next week, like I said, but I know sometimes they’re not super reliable when you’re just starting, and . . .” She starts playing with the arm of her sweatshirt again. “Should we go eat? I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”
I don’t move from the bench. She’s had her period for four months and hasn’t said anything to her parents. “Can I ask why?”
A long sigh. “They treat everything that happens to me as the Best Thing Ever. Elodie ate a slice of apple for the first time? Better take a photo. She scraped her knee? Put her Band-Aid in the book.” She drums on the bench with one hand, tapping out a melody I don’t recognize. “I didn’t want the wrapper of my first pad in the album,” she says. “With a giant caption that says ELODIE’S FIRST KOTEX.”
I try my best not to laugh at the imagery. “I’m sorry. You do realize it’s a lot of work to hide something like this. They’re going to find out eventually.”
“Yeah, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” At that, she gives me a half smile.
“If you want to talk about period trauma,” I say, not quite believing I’m discussing menstruation with a twelve-year-old in front of a neighborhood Mexican restaurant. “Mine happened in the middle of gym class. While I was wearing white shorts. Needless to say, I was not picked first for dodgeball.”
Elodie holds her sweatshirt sleeve to her mouth, trapping a gasp. “You win.”
“I have to grab a couple things from Walgreens anyway,” I say, gathering the takeout bag as I get to my feet. “So if we happened to get a box of pads while we’re there . . .”
“Then I guess that would be okay.” She gives me a pained look, and I know the discomfort of translucent public bathroom toilet paper all too well. “Do you mind if we take an Uber?”
By the time we get home, we have to reheat the burritos, which a much-brighter-spirited Elodie asserts makes them taste even better.
“So,” she says when we finish, helping me sort everything into compost, recycling, and trash. “You’re probably going to tell my parents?”
I consider this. I want her to be safe, but I don’t want to break her trust. They have to know, but I’m not sure I should be the one to tell them. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I think you should.”
“I know, I know. I just—” She breaks off, twisting her mouth to one side. “If they reach for the book, I am running away and changing my name. To something really basic, like Amy or Janet, so they can never find me.”
“Fair.”
Though Russell only wanted me to come for dinner, I can’t resist when Elodie asks me to run lines with her. And when Russell gets home at a quarter to nine, almost Elodie’s bedtime, he and I are both shocked to see each other.
He looks both lovely and exhausted, blue eyes warm and hair windblown. Especially now that I’ve seen the scrapbook photos, I can tell where age hangs on him: in the soft creases at the corners of his eyes, the few threads of gray woven into his hair. The slump to his shoulders, like he carried too much weight too soon, but he’s doing his best.
And there’s that tug in my chest again, the one that seems entirely unique to Russell Barringer.
“You’re still here?” The question is incredulous, but not cruel.
I scramble to a seated position from where I’ve been lounging on the couch, suddenly self-conscious. Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome. He only asked about dinner, after all. “I had no idea this much time had passed. I’m sorry—I can go.”
“No, no, I’m glad you two have been hanging out.” He places his gear bag in the hall before hanging his coat. “And hey, the house is still standing. That has to be a good sign.”
“The dad jokes. They hurt me.” Elodie tosses her script on the sofa cushion between us. “Did sports win?”
“By a landslide.” He turns to me with a gleam in his eye. “Do you see how she belittles what I do for work? The thing that puts slightly charred caramel popcorn on the table?”
This way they joke around with each other does something to my heart, too. There’s a layer of nostalgia there—a pang, really. If I ever had this with my mother, I don’t remember it.
“You just about ready for bed?” Russell asks.
Elodie gives the staircase a prolonged glance, her shoulders drooping. “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about first.”
I get to my feet, fiddling with the strap on my bag. “I should go.”
“No, you don’t have to!” Elodie must realize she says this a little too quickly, a little too loudly. “I mean. I’m the one who dragged you into this scheme.”
Russell stares between the two of us, looking deeply confused. “Scheme?”
“I’ll just, um, wait down here,” I say, settling back on the couch.
“Night, Ari.” Elodie gives me a quick squeeze. “Thank you,” she says into my ear.
She and Russell disappear upstairs while I sit awkwardly in the living room, answering a few work emails.
About fifteen minutes later, Russell comes back down, looking even more exhausted.
“So that was . . . a lot.” He sinks down into the armchair opposite the couch, runs a hand over his stubbled face. “I can’t believe she felt she needed to hide her period from us. We’ve always encouraged her to come to us about anything, and we’ve tried to be as open as we can with her. Our parents were so old-fashioned that we were terrified to go to them when Liv got pregnant. I never had a sex talk—I think they were shocked I even knew what sex was.”