Secrets in the Attic (Secrets 1)

"Yes."

"Well, that was part of the reason I agreed to see him like that. I wanted to see if I could be with a boy after what Harry was doing to me. I wanted to see if I could forget it."

"What happened?"

"I could," she said. "And I enjoyed it, too," she added quickly, and pressed her lips together as if she had just confessed to a priest.

"I don't believe you," I said.

"It's okay. I don't mind your doubting me."

"Why wouldn't you have told me after all this time?"

"I shouldn't have told you now. I see you're getting upset that I kept it so secret. Maybe you're not ready for all this yet."

"I'm not getting upset. I'm just so surprised. How could you keep such a secret from me?"

"I'm sure I don't know everything about you. I'm sure there are things about your brother you haven't told me, for example," she said with a note of annoyance.

"No, there aren't."

"There are things we both don't talk about, because they're so private, so much a part of us, it would be like betraying the people we love. It's not a terrible thing to keep some things to yourself. Anyway," she said, looking at her watch, "let's go work on the pizza for lunch. I want to watch Heart of a Woman. It's my favorite soap opera to watch whenever I'm home. I'll bet you anything my mother's watching it today, too. She used to talk about it as if they were real people, and she was spying on their love lives."

"I can't even imagine how she could be sitting and watching a soap opera today, Karen." I really meant her, as well.

"When it comes to my mother, I can. C' mon," she said, getting up, grabbing my hand, and leading me out of my bathroom. "Afterward, we'll play some Parcheesi and talk more about the boys at school. I know more about many of them, thanks to Dana." She stopped on the stairway and turned to me. "We've got to live as if nothing's happened, Zipporah. Otherwise, we'll go mad."

She continued down.

Maybe we had gone mad already, I thought.

Our chatter in the kitchen was built around the same topics we had discussed before the Harry thing. We were doing it so well that at one point, when we were laughing and giggling, I had to stop to ask myself again if any of it had really happened. Then the phone rang, and reality came crashing back. It was my father, asking if I was all right.

"I could come home for lunch," he said. "It's not a problem."

"I'm fine, Daddy. You don't have to come home to have lunch with me," I said, looking at Karen as I spoke.

"All right. Call if you need anything." He paused and then added, "You haven't had any other calls, have you, Zipporah?"

"No, Daddy. No one else has called."

"Good. There's still no sign of her," he told me. "Apparently, from what I've learned from a friend of mine over at the district attorney's office, there is no proof she got on a bus, either. Of course, she could have hitchhiked her way out of here, or," he said, "she could be hiding somewhere here."

I couldn't speak or even swallow to let me grunt an answer. I felt terrible letting him go on and on about her while she was standing right in front of me in his own house.

"Whatever," he said, realizing I wasn't going to say anything. "Talk to you later. Oh, I have bought our tickets for the New York show, and we'll be staying overnight at a hotel."

"Great."

"Bye. See you soon," he said.

"Bye."

"What?" Karen asked immediately. "Well? What did he say about me? I know he said

something."

"They know you didn't get on a bus. They think you might have hitched a ride out of here, but he said you could also still be hiding somewhere."