by LP Tvorik
“Smile?”
“Yeah,” he flashed a grin at me, as if demonstrating his point. It kinda reminded me of one of Momma’s smiles. His mouth was smiling but his eyes were sad and far away. “I made some stuff up about how monsters like fear so you gotta fool them into thinking you’re not afraid. If you smile they go away.”
“That’s dumb,” I said. “You shoulda just told him monsters aren’t real.”
“Nah, he’s too smart for that,” the boy said.
His answer confused me, but I didn’t press. “I can’t really smile at everyone like a creepo on my first day of school, though,” I said. “They’ll think I’m crazy.”
He smiled at me again, at that. This time it reached his eyes in a small way. Just a quick glimmer that might have been the moonlight.
“Yeah, that’s true,” he agreed, nodding. He sat forward, dusting his hands off and clasping them together, resting his chin on his fists in a mock display of thoughtfulness. “It still kinda works, though.”
“It does?”
“Yeah, I mean… don’t smile,” he said, grinning at me. I caught the full force of it, in that moment. It was like the sun broke loose in the middle of the night. “But I guess, y’know… Jakey was scared of the monsters and he couldn’t sleep because he was scared. But when he smiled he wasn’t scared, so the monsters left him alone.”
“Fake monsters.”
“Real to him.”
“Fake monsters,” I repeated, firmly.
“Okay, okay. So you’re scared of fake bullies.”
“Bullies are real!”
“But you’re pretty. They’re not gonna be mean to you.”
I felt my face heat at the unexpected compliment, but scowled. “Bullies are mean to everybody.”
“At first, sure. But they’ll leave you alone if they don’t think it bothers you. They’re like the monsters. They bully you so you’ll be sad. It’s the sadness they want. Not you. Jakey smiled and his monsters left him alone. You just gotta pretend you’re happy and the bullies won’t touch you.”
“That won’t work,” I said, with absolute certainty.
“Have you tried it?”
Of course I hadn’t. I’d never been bullied. I had been with the same kids since preschool. I was popular. I had at least twenty friends. Maybe more. If there were bullies at my school, I’d never been able to see them through my crowd of allies. Allies I’d left behind.
I sniffed back tears as my vision blurred. “No,” I said forlornly, wiping a tear from my cheek.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, pushing himself to his feet. “I was trying to help. You’re not supposed to cry.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I said through my tears.
I buried my face in my hands, but I heard him approach and I felt him brush against me as he boosted himself up onto the rock. He nudged my shoulder with his. “Where are you going to school?” he asked.
“Sand Hill Junior High,” I said.
“Well, then, you’re wrong.”
I lowered my hands and frowned at him. “Wrong about what?”
“About not having any friends!” he said brightly.
I shook my head, utterly lost.
“I go to Sand Hill, too,” he explained. “At least for now. So you’ve got one friend.”
“We’re not friends,” I snapped at him. Daddy never let me be friends with boys. I asked him, once, if my classmate Jeremy could come over after school and he put me in timeout. I didn’t understand it, but there were a lot of things about Daddy that I didn’t understand. The only thing I did know was that if he said something it was best to listen. “Don’t tell anybody we’re friends,” I hissed into the darkness, suddenly very aware of the waywardness of my birthday adventure and the potential consequences thereof.
The boy’s face went still at my words, and the smile dropped away. He swallowed and nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh, slipping off the rock and sitting back down in the sand. “Okay.”
“Why do you want to be friends, anyway?” I asked, confused by the apparent sadness on his face. He hadn’t just moved here. He probably already had friends. Why did he care?
He shrugged, reaching for a new stick and drawing zig zags in the dirt. “I don’t,” he muttered to the sand.
“But you said we were friends.”
“Cuz I thought it’d make you feel better,” he said, as if I was stupid for asking.
“Why do you even care?”
“Because you were sad.”
“Why do you have to be my friend to make me feel better?”
“That’s a stupid question!” he snapped at me, glaring.
Hurt, I clamped my mouth shut. I thought it was a pretty good question. He’d already made me feel better. We didn’t have to be friends, especially not at school. It didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe I was stupid.
“I just don’t get it,” I mumbled, flopping back on the rock and staring at the sky. The moon was directly overhead—a massive, glowing orb that hung in the sky and seemed liable, in that moment, to drop right onto me.
“What don’t you get?” the boy sighed impatiently.
“Nevermind, it doesn’t matter,” I said to the sky. “My dad wouldn’t let me be friends with you, anyway.”
“Your dad?” His tone perked up.
“Yeah, my dad… he doesn’t like me to be friends with boys.”
“That’s why you don’t wanna be friends?” His voice was bright with hope and I sat up, gripping the edge of the rock. The gritty texture of the stone dug into my hands.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I do wanna. I just can’t.”
“Sure you can!” he said cheerfully, bouncing to his feet and hopping up onto the rock next to me. “We’ll just be secret friends!”
“Secret friends?”
“Yeah, like… we can meet here sometimes and talk about stuff. And if anybody’s mean to you at school I’ll beat ‘em up. I just won’t tell nobody why.”
I laughed at that. He looked too skinny to beat anybody up. Skinny and tired, I noticed. I hadn’t seen it from far away, but this close I saw the heavy shadows beneath his eyes and the gaunt angles of his face.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, scowling at me.
“Do you beat up people very often?” I asked, by way of answer.
At that, his face darkened. It was odd. There were so many things about the boy that I didn’t know. Heck, I didn’t even know his name. But it was like he could speak to me without words. I knew my question made him sad, just as surely as I knew I’d hurt his feelings when I said we couldn’t be friends. It was that same, strange sixth sense that told me it would make him feel better if I held his hand.
As skinny as he was, his hand dwarfed mine. The surface of his palm was rough, and his fingers felt strong and grown up as he linked them with mine and folded them over. We both stared at the connection. I was astonished at how unremarkable it was. I’d never held hands with a boy before. I thought it was supposed to be something special. I thought it was supposed to catapult me into feeling like a woman. Instead, it just felt the same as his smile. It felt like going home.
“What’s your name?” I asked, still staring down at my skinny fingers, woven through his big ones.
“Nate,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Alexandra,” I said with a groan.
“You don’t like your name?” he asked.
“Now that’s a stupid question,” I shot back. “Alexandra is my grandma’s name. I hate it. It sounds like a grandma’s name.”
“Well, what do you wanna be called?” he asked.
I laughed. “What, I just get to choose?”
“It’s your name,” he said. “How ‘bout Aly?”
I shuddered. “My family calls me that. Not my friends.
”
“Okayyy. Alex?”
I laughed and shook my head, rolling the names over in my head. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?” I asked.
“Not if it’s your name. If it’s yours it’ll be a girl’s name. Since you’re a girl and all.” Although I wasn’t looking at him, I heard the grin in his voice.
“So… Alex? That’s a good name?” I asked doubtfully.
“Do you like it?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Then it’s a good name. It’s nice to meet you, Alex.” He offered me his free hand to shake, and I stared at it, stifling a giggle. It seemed an absurd gesture, considering we were already holding hands. Then I looked up at his face and saw the humor in his eyes, and I laughed outright.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Nate,” I said, pulling my hand loose from his left and slipping it into his right, letting him pump it up and down dramatically.
“So we’re friends now, Alex?” he asked, whispering conspiratorially.
“Secret friends,” I whispered back.
Right then, in what was otherwise a glorious, memorable, flawless moment, my stomach bellowed out a massive, hungry growl. I hadn’t eaten much of my birthday dinner, and I guess it was coming back to bite me.
Nate snickered, letting go of my hand, and I felt my face heat in embarrassment. I slid off the rock and fumbled with my backpack, pulling out a candy bar and hopping back up on the rock.
“I’ve never heard a girl’s stomach make that sound before.” Nate was still laughing, stretching out on his back as I tore open the candy bar and took a bite.
“I’m hungry,” I said defensively, talking around my food in what Momma would have considered a gross display of unladylike behavior.
“So am I, but you don’t hear my stomach roaring about it like that do you?” he teased, propping his hands behind his head and staring at the stars.
“If you’re hungry I’ve got more.”
Nate stilled my slide off the rock with a hand on my arm. “I’m good,” he said, releasing me when I stopped moving. “I was just kidding.”
“You can have a Snickers,” I said, ignoring him. “I don’t like the peanuts but they’re my brother Tommy’s favorite so I always bring them with me on adventures.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You just said you were.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Well,” I said, slipping off the rock and rooting around in my backpack, “you can just save it for later, then.”
Candy bar in hand, I boosted myself back up and dropped it on his stomach. Then I reclined next to him, staring at the stars.
“Do you know the constellations?” I asked, pretending not to notice when he plucked the Snickers bar off his stomach and peeled the wrapper back, taking a large, hungry bite.
“Some of ‘em,” he said, his voice muffled as he chewed.
“That’s gross, you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.” I nudged him in the ribs and he nudged me right back.
“You were doing it earlier.”
“Which ones do you know?” Better to change the subject before he knew he won the argument.
“Uhhh, the Big Dipper,” he pointed up at the sky.
“The Big Dipper isn’t up right now,” I said, knocking his hand aside.
“Oh…” His voice trailed off as he took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I thought you were asking me cuz you didn’t know. I was just gonna make some stuff up.”
“Mm-mm,” I said, shaking my head against the rock as I chewed on my last bite. “I know all of ‘em.”
“Okay, then, smartass. Show me one.”
“Don’t curse,” I snapped, nudging him again in the ribs.
“Ouch, fine. Show me one… smartypants.”
“That’s Scorpius,” I said, pointing at the J-shaped formation above us.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“A scorpion. Duh.”
“I think you’re making shit—” he broke off when I hissed at him, poised to poke him in the ribs again. “I think you’re making stuff up,” he corrected, stuffing the candy wrapper into his pocket and folding his hands behind his head once more. “All I see is a bunch of dots.”
“Well they’re not just dots. They’re stars. They’re huge. Bigger than the sun. They’re just so far away they look tiny.”
He made a thoughtful sound, and we sank into comfortable silence, staring at the stars. I don’t know what Nate was thinking about, but I was thinking about how small the sky usually made me feel. Those tiny dots were so massive. Sometimes I felt like a star— so huge and important in my own portion of the world and so puny and insignificant to everyone and everything else.
Normally, it set me on edge, thinking about where I fit into everything. That night, it didn’t. It seemed to me that the spot worked even better at night. The world not only stopped, it seemed to have faded away completely.
Then Nate sat up, breaking the spell. “Well, secret friend,” he said without preamble. "It’s been fun but I gotta go back to where I live.”
“Oh,” I mumbled, stifling my disappointment.
“I’ll walk you home first, though.”
“Why?”
He gaped at me in mock indignation. “Well I wouldn’t be a good friend if I let you wander around in the woods by yourself, would I?”
“I wander around in the woods by myself all the time,” I bragged.
“Sure, but that was before we were friends. C’mon, let’s go.”
He hopped off the rock and held out his hand and I took it, although I really didn’t need his help getting down. He took off his shoes and we stepped across the creek together, still holding hands. We sat on the bank and tucked wet feet back into our shoes in comfortable silence.
“I’ll take the lead,” Nate said, pushing me behind him as I shrugged into my backpack and took a step toward the woods. I planted my feet, arms crossed over my chest, scowling.
“You don’t even know where I live,” I said crossly. “I’ll take the lead.”
“But it’s dark,” he countered, gesturing at the shadowy woods around us. “Aren’t you like… scared or whatever?”
“Of the woods?” I asked. “I come here all the time. I’ll take the lead.”
He didn’t say anything, so I jogged past him into the moonlit forest.
“Wait up!” he yelled after me, and I heard his footsteps pounding the dirt behind me.
When we reached the edge of the trees lining the expanse of perfectly manicured lawn that comprised my backyard, Nate grabbed my arm.
“Hold up,” he hissed. We can’t go through there. Let’s go around.”
I frowned, confused, and pulled my arm loose. “We can’t go around. That’s my house,” I said, pointing at the white-paneled colonial I reluctantly called home.
“Are you serious?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
He swallowed hard and shook his head. “I thought…”
“What?”
He took a deep breath and let it out, taking a step forward and bracing his hands on his hips as he studied my home. I stood back and took the moment to study him. His shoulder blades jutted out sharply from his back, and his graying t-shirt was spotted with tiny holes. I looked down at his feet and saw that the heel of his left shoe was reinforced with silver duct tape.
He’s poor.
And he’d thought I was, too, since I’d shown up in my shabby adventure clothes. I’d never had a poor friend before, and I’d lived in nice houses like this my whole life. Daddy worked with poor people all the time, but I’d never really thought of the fact that they were real people. They’d always been a thing the adults talked to each other about in sad voices, or used as a tool to
make us finish our dinner.
“It’s okay,” I said, stepping forward and linking my arm through his. “We’re not rich. We don’t have guard dogs or anything.”
Nate just shook his head with a breath of disbelief and followed as I led the way, picking my route through dark corners of the yard. There were no fences in my neighborhood, and I didn’t want any nosy neighbors to peek out and see two kids traipsing around in the middle of the night. I’d be grounded until my grandbabies died of old age.
“This is kinda cool,” Nate whispered from behind me as we crawled behind a row of low shrubs. “I feel like a spy.”
“I know, right?!” I whispered back, that fuzzy feeling of home curling into a warm ball in my chest. I’d always felt that way, sneaking about and exploring the outdoors. I felt like a warrior. A strong, stealthy warrior. I liked my dirty old cargo shorts for the same reason. They made me feel like someone else. Someone strong, and I was everything but strong in real life. It’d always felt silly, though, to pretend. Right now it didn’t feel silly at all. Or pretend. Not with Nate’s excitement so palpable and close and real.
We reached my sycamore tree without incident and stood below it, staring at each other. Dappled moonlight illuminated Nate’s face and I smiled up at him. “I’m glad we’re friends,” I whispered.
He smiled back. A full smile that shone out at me from his eyes. “Me, too,” he said.
“Can I have a boost?” I asked, reaching my hands up and standing on my tip toes to show that I needed help reaching the branch above me. I didn’t, really. I could jump up and grab the branch myself. I’d done it loads of times. I guess I just liked the thought of him helping me. “That window up there is my bedroom. I have to climb.”
Nate looked from me to the window, lines creasing his forehead. “There’s no other way?” he asked, frowning at me.
“It’s fine. I do it all the time.” Not true, but he didn’t need to know that. “Just give me a boost.”
Sighing, he stepped forward and sank to a knee, looping his fingers together for me to step in. I stepped into his makeshift foothold and grabbed the branch, using it to steady myself as he stood, boosting me up so that all I had to do was sling a leg over the branch. I straddled it and leaned down so I could whisper to him.