Brenda glanced up from the pool, so astonished that her eyeballs showed an extra ring of white. She didn’t know what had gotten into me, either.
“You don’t have to,” Maureen said, her nose crinkled.
“I know,” I said, hopping to my feet and marching off toward the soaring diving board. I made it all of a yard before I wondered why in the world I’d agreed to such a bananas thing and how I could back out of it.
But then Brenda leaped out of the water to follow me, the ruffled edges of her pink one-piece dripping on the hot concrete. “I’ll jump, too!” she said, her strong little-girl thighs tightening with each step.
“I’m not gonna let you two do it without me!” Maureen said, whooping. She scared off a duck that had been eluding the lifeguard. The three of us skipped to the pool’s deep end, weaving through clots of kids. The sun was hot, baking the chlorine smell, but we huddled in the shade of the fifteen-foot platform, shivering as we waited our turn.
“I can go first,” Maureen whispered. “Show you it’s safe. That okay, Heather?”
I nodded. I think I already knew there was no way I was climbing up that ladder.
We watched Maureen’s butt hike toward the sky, and then when her turn came, she ran off the edge with a rebel yell. She plummeted past us, cannonball-style, eyes wide open and nose plug in place. Brenda clutched my wrist, not letting go until Maureen resurfaced with a grin and a thumbs-up.
“I can go next if you want,” Brenda had said, looking at me, her mouth slack, like she’d just realized she’d made a terrible deal.
The same face she wore now.
Maureen, who were those men? Do they know you jumped off the high dive so I didn’t have to?
“Are you okay?” I asked Brenda.
She nodded dumbly and dropped next to me, even though we were right by the sick. She grabbed for a blade of grass and shredded it.
“Are we gonna get in trouble?” Junie asked. “I’m sorry I opened the door.”
“We don’t have to remember,” Brenda said, ignoring Junie, her eyes as deep and hopeless as the quarries. “We don’t have to have seen anything.”
“Come on,” Junie said, whining. “What was in there?”
“Nothing,” Brenda said, eyes still locked on me. “It was too dark to see.”
She held out her hand. I gripped it. It was shaking and cold.
“Swear,” she said, her voice grinding like a rock tumbler. “Swear it was too dark to see anything.”
But I didn’t need to be told not to tell. My brain was already scooping away what was left of the memory. I released the pieces I was trying to make sense of, the story that kept trying to form.Let it go. You don’t have to remember.
Brenda mistook my silence for doubt.
“Her reputation,” she said. “Swear it was too dark.”
There it was. Not only the horror of what we’d seen, but what it’d cost Maureen if others found out. I heard Father Adolph like he wasstanding over us, smiling sadly that he even needed to say it:A good reputation is more valuable than costly perfume.
I squeezed Brenda’s hand, then coughed, my throat tender from throwing up. “I swear.”
The memory returned, Brenda, Maureen, and me at the Muni, three Musketeers against the world. That would never be again. In that handshake, a piece of Brenda closed off to me and me to her, and we both turned away from Maureen.
BETH
The first time, Beth thought she’d lose her mind.
The next time, she went numb.
In the unending hours since she’d been kidnapped, she kept returning to that place. The Emptiness. TheNot Here.
She wasn’t a virgin. Mark was her first, had been her only. She’d punched his V-card, too. He’d wanted to wait until after their wedding, but she knew matrimony wasn’t in their future. When she’d convinced him that she was never going to get married—to anyone—he’d finally agreed to do the deed. The first time had been fumbling, dry and painful, but since then they’d figured out each other’s bodies. Now it was one of the few things she looked forward to with him. She wished she’d had the courage to break up with him cleanly. He deserved that.
