Rain (Hudson 1)

"How are we going to get out tomorrow night, Rain? It's a school night. Mama won't let us go anywhere," she fired at me quickly; obviously she'd been brooding about the problem.

"I thought about that. You know how I hate lying to her, but in this case, I don't see any way out of it."

"So?"

"We'll pretend we have to study for math. It's exam time. You're going to work with Alicia Hanes and I'll be going to study with Lucy Adamson," I said. "We'll ask them to cover for us later if Mama should ask. She won't, I'm sure."

She nodded, surprised I had thought it out.

"I know how much you hate doing this kind of thing. I owe you big, Rain," she said.

"You don't owe me anything. We're sisters," I told her firmly.

She smiled.

"Yes," she said. "We're sisters."

Even so, my conscience was bothering me so much after I went to bed that I lay there feeling like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb. As soon as that clock struck seven and we got up, it would just explode. But maybe I was still the cockeyed optimist Roy accused me of being. I looked forward to going through the turmoil and freeing Beni from the chains of humiliation and scandal she had wrapped around herself. By this time tomorrow, I thought, it would all be over and we could get along with our lives. How I longed for that. It was funny how the life I thought was so terrible before looked so desirable now.

In the morning I planted the seeds for our story about the need to study in the evening. Roy didn't look like he had gotten much more sleep than Beni and me. He sat with his eyes half shut and didn't question anything I said. Mama looked a little skeptical about Beni wanting to study, but I explained how important the tests were and how it might make the difference between passing and failing the quarter. Every time I looked at Beni's face, I had to look away. Despite her experience at it, she was a poor liar. Her face was a window pane. Anyone could gaze into those eyes and see right past the untruth.

Ken never got up before we left for school, not that he would have cared about anything I had said. I couldn't recall a time he had ever asked any of us about our school work. Even when we were little and we would show him our pictures or stars on homework papers, he would glance with barely any interest, grunt and move on to something else.

On the way to school, I learned why Roy was so tired and why he'd had so much trouble falling asleep himself. When Beni pulled ahead to talk to Dede Wilson, Roy practically lunged to my side, taking my arm to slow me down.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Just a little tired," I said thinking he might suspect something now.

"I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. It was too fast and it wasn't fair to you. It bothered me all night thinking about it. I couldn't sleep much and you know how unusual that is for me," he added with a smile.

"I know." I smiled, too.

"I don't want you to hate me, Rain."

"I could never do that, Roy," I said growing serious. He nodded and then Beni fell back and he drifted away from us.

"Roy suspect something?" she asked.

"He looks upset. I'm so scared, Rain," she said.

"Me too," I admitted, which widened her eyes. "But we'll be fine," I told her.

It was just as hard for Beni at school as I expected it to be for me. Because she had come to my rescue the day before, her hot and cold weather friends were running ice water through their veins and shunned her as well. At lunch, she and I sat together for the first time in a long time. We could see Alicia and Nicole mocking us across the way, and I knew it bothered Beni so much she couldn't eat.

"You ought to think about what a friend really is supposed to be, Beni," I told her. "Those girls are just using you for their own amusement. The fact is they would do the same thing to each other that they're doing to you."

She nodded, but she didn't look convinced.

"I won't have any friends in school. The other girls don't like me," she said.

"They will when they see you're not with those nasty girls anymore," I assured her, but Beni didn't think that was much of a solution. To Beni, most of the other girls were boring or immature. Once you go speeding along recklessly and are excited by the adventure and the danger, it's hard to slow down and cruise with the careful, ordinary folks. Despite what had happened to her and how she had been abused, she couldn't help but be attracted to those who lived on the edge. I knew I should have felt happy my sister was spending so much time with me, but I couldn't help feeling sorry for her too. She had to make great changes in her style and her thinking and I was afraid she wasn't capable of it. What was even more frightening was I was afraid I couldn't really help her.

After school she and I went to the pawn shop. We knew of other kids who had gone there--many of them to fence stolen items. In fact, the short, balding, pasty looking man behind the counter gazed at us suspiciously when I produced the bracelet. He had skin that was dry and wrinkled, and dull, watery gray eyes that peered at us with vague disgust. The shop itself smelled rancid, like a room that had been flooded. The wooden floors looked damp, as if they were rotting, and there was enough dust to choke ten vacuum cleaners. The lighting was dim, maybe deliberately so because it made everything you put before him appear plain and worthless. He put on thick glasses and turn

ed the bracelet around in his short, fat fingers that were stained with nicotine at the tips.

"It's real gold," I said. "You can see where it's stamped 18 carat right on the snap."