with the side of her fist as if it had insulted her terribly.
“Nothing.” Ren shrugged. “I was just trying to make her feel better. I don’t get her.”
“She’s dealing with some pretty difficult issues right now. She’s confused about a lot of things.”
“She cries all the time.” Ren sidled up beside Cork and looked outside. “She never used to cry.”
“Ever?”
“I mean over nothing. Like right now.”
“What happened just now?”
Ren took a breath and let out a heavy sigh. “She said she was afraid nobody cared about her. I told her I did. I told her she was just like a sister.”
“You didn’t.”
“What’s the big deal?”
Charlie rubbed her fists against her pants-wiping away the pain or wiping off hemlock sap, it was hard to say-stuffed her hands in her pockets, hunched her shoulders, and started walking away, kicking at the ground as she went.
“Let’s go out on the porch, Ren, so we can keep an eye on Charlie.”
They settled on the top step. It was late afternoon and quiet. A quilt of fallen leaves covered the ground; soft yellow sunlight and long dark shadows overlay everything. It reminded Cork just a little of autumn afternoons in Aurora when he sat on the front porch of his house on Gooseberry Lane and admired the street, the neighborhood, and the town he was happy to call home.
“You’re coming right up against a line that all people cross, Ren. Every man, every woman. It’s a tough one, so tough in fact that most societies seem to have developed all kinds of complicated rituals to help folks through it. You know, if you were a Shinnob in the old days, you’d have to know how to play a courting flute to get the girl you loved to marry you.”
“I like Charlie. We’re best friends. But I don’t, you know, like her like a girl. I never even thought of her like a girl. I mean, look at her.”
Ren’s point was well taken. She was slender, breastless, and her head, covered by the dark bristle of her returning hair, looked like a dough ball rolled in iron filings. Her movements were fluid and explosive, and at the moment, kicking viciously at the ground, she resembled more a playground bully than a burgeoning young woman.
“Is there someone you do like that way?” Cork ventured.
Ren seemed totally absorbed in pulling at a wood fragment that was separating from a porch plank. Finally he said, “I guess. Her name’s Amber. But I don’t want to tell Charlie that.”
“I wish I could say there’s a right way to go about something like this, Ren, but every situation is different. Mostly I’d advise you to do your best to be honest with Charlie. If you tell her things that aren’t true, hoping to spare her feelings, you’ll only end up making everything worse in the end.”
Ren succeeded in breaking loose the long splinter. He tested the point of it against his thumb. “Why does everything have to change?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. I only know it does and that you can’t stop it. What you can do is figure how to deal with it.”
The boy looked at Charlie, who stood with her back resolutely turned toward them.
“So…should I talk to her?”
“What do you think?’
“I guess.”
Ren roused himself, descended the steps, and headed toward Charlie.
The exchange with Ren caused Cork to think about his own children, the stumbling of his daughters particularly as they’d made their way across the threshold of adolescence to the worldly realizations that awaited them on the other side. His son was only seven, but he’d make that journey, too, someday. Cork missed them, missed them terribly, and he was suddenly afraid that somehow in his absence-or even because of his absence- horrible things might be happening to them. He wanted desperately to hear the music of their laughter, feel the bump of their hearts against his chest. He wanted to protect them, but it felt to him as if they were on the far side of the sun.
Watching Ren make his awkward way toward Charlie, struggling to find the right words to keep their friendship sealed, Cork understood that at the moment he couldn’t do anything about his own children. He could, however, do something about these. And he would. He’d be damned if he’d let any harm come to them.
Ren’s feet crunched on dry leaves. He knew Charlie heard him coming, although she didn’t turn around. He stopped a few feet shy of her.
“Charlie, I’m sorry.”
He circled so that she had to look at him.
“What do you want?” She glared at him.
“I don’t want you mad at me. Well, that’s okay really, ’cuz you’ve been mad at me before. I just don’t want you mad because you think…”
“What? Think what?”
“I don’t know.” He felt hopeless, all the right words hiding. “If you were gone, I think I’d die.”
“So go die.”
“Damn it, Charlie, I mean it. Remember when my dad died, everybody got all weird around me, even my mom. Everybody except you. I could still goof around with you, talk to you like always. That helped more than anything anybody else tried to do for me. I mean, you were just being you, you know. I mean it. If I lost you, I’d be lost, too.” He scratched his forehead over his right eye although nothing itched there. “I’m sorry if I hurt you or something…”
“Shut up.” She said it quietly, without anger. She stared at her boots. “I don’t know what’s going on, Ren. Sometimes I want to cry for no reason. Sometimes I feel all this stuff and it scares me because I don’t know where it’s coming from. I look in the mirror and I hate who I see. This head.” She slapped at the dark bristle. “I’m not pretty like Amber Kennedy. I don’t have boobs.”
“You want boobs?” he asked incredulously.
“I didn’t used to but I do now. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Look, I think it’s a heredity thing. Did your mom have big boobs?”
“The pictures I’ve seen of her, yeah, I guess.”
“Well, there you go,” he said with a flourish of his hands. “You’ll have boobs, too, someday. I’ll bet anything. Ask my mom. She knows all about that stuff.”
Charlie glanced up, frowning a little. “I should ask Dina Willner. She’s the one with the boobs. You sure noticed.”
“Ah jeez, Charlie. She’s, like, pretty and all, but way old. I know that.”
“You don’t like her?”
“Well…” He thought about what Cork had advised. The truth. “I like looking at her and all, but I don’t really want to talk to her or anything. I like talking to you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Way better.”
She smiled. “I like talking to you, too.”
Ren reached out and rubbed the bristle on her scalp. “I probably shouldn’t have helped you shave your head, huh?”
“It’s okay. But I’m thinking I’ll let it grow for a long time before I cut it again.”
Ren shook his head doubtfully. “If it gets too long you’ll trip over it when you’re running bases.”
She punched his arm lightly. “Not that long, dude.”
“And listen, if you had boobs you probably couldn’t swing a bat.”
“Yeah, but I’d have a nice cushion whenever I had to slide into second.”
They laughed, and for a little while Ren’s world felt right again.
