“Her mom.” She’d been worried that telling too many people would betray Shelly’s trust, but once Julia said it, she felt a weight lift. That meant it was the right thing.
Charlie breathed out. She expected him to ask lots of Charlie questions. When was she hit? How often? Had Shelly considered telling a school counselor instead? Was Julia even sure it was true, because Shelly was kind of a liar. But all he said was, “That’s awful. It makes sense, but it’s awful… I wondered what you guys were doing out there for so long. I was afraid she was being mean.”
“She wasn’t. I think she wanted to get me alone. But she was so turned around she didn’t know how to make it happen, except by doing what she did.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. He was still standing in front of her. She scooted so they could share the sill. The window was still open, their backs precariously exposed. Jostling, he lifted his arm, circled it around her waist. His hand cupped her stomach, then reconsidered and went loose. She liked the smell of him: expensive detergent and pretzels.
“Is that okay?”
She nodded. “I was lonely in this house before. It’s nice that you’re here.”
Charlie looked at her in a way that she felt all through her chest. “What else happened with Shelly?”
“It was going on for a while. I don’t know how often. It wasn’t the hitting that bothered her. Kids I knew in Brooklyn used to get spanked and they’d laugh it off. It was the secret. That’s what was messing her up. She thought she was going crazy,” Julia said. “She thought we all knew the secret. She thought we knew but weren’t helping.”
Charlie took this in. Didn’t seem surprised by it. Julia remembered how he’d talked about 118, and its perfection. “Did you know?” she asked.
“I wondered,” he said. “But it’s not something you ask somebody. Not Shelly, at least. And like Dave said, everybody’s got problems.”
She leaned into him. His hand flopped around, and then decided. He rested it on her hip. She leaned into his chest and started crying again. He was wearing a Giants T-shirt and shorts, warm and damp with sweat.
“I keep wishing I’d done or said something different. Then she wouldn’t have fallen,” she said between sobs. “My family wouldn’t be in trouble.”
“It’s okay.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not your fault.”
She sat up. His eyes were wet, too.
“What is it?”
He sniffed. Breathed until he had control. “I keep thinking the worst of this has happened, and then another worse thing happens… Your dad got blamed and that was bad. The whole block went after him, even my parents, and that was worse. It turns out Mrs. Schroeder was hurting her and we never even knew. She must have been so sad. That’s bad, too. But you know the worst part?”
Julia shook her head.
“She’s down there, Julia. Shelly’s down there. She fell and she’s probably dead and I knew her since we were five. I shared ChapStick with her and I took swim lessons with her and I shared my Pirate’s Booty every day of third grade with her and she’s gone. People in your life can just go away and you never had the chance to say good-bye. I’m sad now but I won’t be forever. I’ll forget her. That’s the worst thing. We all just move on, until we’re dead, and then everyone else moves on.”
He was crying now, trying to hide it. Gentle, she took his hands away from his face. “You won’t forget her,” she said. “I send her messages with my mind. I push them out and down the hole. I tell her I love her. I tell her to stay strong.”
He smiled through his tears. “I like you, Julia.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, and she didn’t want to think about it, because they were talking about Shelly, and Shelly was more important. Still, he made her feel safe. She liked being close to him. This was a stolen thing in the night. A remedy to the trouble with her mom and dad, and to the mean thing she’d said to Larry. A good kind of secret in the midst of so very many bad ones. She turned her face. Closed her eyes and leaned in.
It took a second. And then she felt his lips. They were warm and soft and wet from tears and spit.
It was a quick kiss. Her first. A good one, too.
“Was that okay?” he asked.
“I liked it.”
He squeezed her waist. Kissed her again. She opened her mouth. He opened his, too. This one lasted longer, and she felt it in the rest of her body, not just her lips. She wasn’t as scared anymore, or as lonely.