But the big thing is, we liked each other. We saw each other just as we were and that was all we needed. It was great not to hide from her. I guess I felt I could get away with that because her life was so busted up, there was no threat that she’d turn around and judge me. We became pretty close, and sometimes in the evening she’d even come out in her PJs to talk. When her mom called her back in—because her mom had all these rules about just when she could go out and exactly what she was allowed to do—I’d see her run up onto the porch through the dusk, and I’d wait outside on the street until she showed up at her bedroom window and waved good night down to me.
Now, I won’t say I loved her.
But I really, really liked her.
We definitely had feelings for each other, but the amazing thing is that we knew all of each other’s dirty little secrets, and it didn’t matter. I felt I could tell her anything, like there was no pretense, you know? She didn’t hide from me, either. And we didn’t have to wear masks and imply things about how rich our parents were or how great we were in school or how cool our lives were in general. I couldn’t wear a mask anyway—it wasn’t something I was good at doing, faking. You might think I was, because I say I’m good at hiding, but wearing a mask isn’t like hiding at all. With a mask, people always know you’re right behind it, and they always try to peek through. With hiding they don’t see you at all.
After school started, Suzie confided in me all about the problems she had getting along with these nasty girls in her class, and about how much pressure her mom put her under because they couldn’t really afford her school on her mom’s skimpy salary—this very expensive prep school, it was—so her mom had, you know, these very heavy and extreme expectations and everything.
Suzie could tell me anything. And I could tell her anything too, all about how I felt so out of place sometimes, in the neighborhood, I mean, and how I felt we just didn’t fit in like other families there, because I hadn’t been brought up doing the same stuff that most other neighborhood kids had, and I just couldn’t relate to them. And when I told her these things I noticed she would hold my hand.
I would never have thought to criticize or judge her—all I wanted to do was know she was feeling okay and things were decent with her, and I think that’s what she felt about me.
Maybe I was in love with her but I didn’t know it at the time, because when things changed I really got confused.
And things did change.
It happened after two summers, after what I’ll say was a pretty blissful time we’d had just hanging out and being friends.
And it wasn’t just puberty.
I mean, I guess that’s sort of what it maybe boils down to, but that wasn’t all of it.
We both went through it at the same time.
And to tell you the truth, at first it wasn’t a big deal.
We still saw each other almost every day. We still talked and were close.
But something had happened to her that was pretty incredible, even though I didn’t notice it at first.
She became really beautiful.
I mean, she became almost a woman.
How it happened I don’t know. I mean, you couldn’t tell by looking at her mom how Suzie would turn out, because her mom was really pretty fat. I’d seen her by then, although she wasn’t the whale Carol and his mom made her out to be—I think they said that out of sheer competitiveness or something. Suzie never got fat. She just really filled out, and whatever tendency she had toward fat, let’s just say it all went into the breast area.
That doesn’t happen to every girl, you know. Just a few in this right-off-the-bat way.
I guess it really happened gradually, but I hadn’t paid attention. She was no longer a skinny kid, and her body now fit her face, but what difference did it make to me? We still talked to each other about everything and I still sat on the curb with my feet on my scooter and watched her ride her bike up and down the hill to dry her hair; that’s all that mattered to me, I suppose.
It was the day that Carol came back from a trip to New York that it got ugly. I mean an ugly thing happened.
We were sitting on the porch again, the veranda, all three of us, and I forget how it started, but after bragging to us about some commercial, Carol told some semidirty joke. And then Suzie told one she’d heard at school, and then I did, and we were all laughing, and then we did this wrestling thing we always did, just wrestling one another down until they squirm, and then laughing some more.
But this time I swear Carol had this sort of squinty look in his eyes when he looked at Suzie—I mean an exceptionally squinty look—like almost a pissed-off look. I’d noticed it on his face since he’d first seen
