“Yeah?”
“I told her just to pretend she didn’t know what on earth Wilma and Bobby Sue had said or where they had got such a crazy story and everybody would forget about it in a week.” She leaned forward, suddenly anxious. “Do you think that was good advice?”
“Lord, how should I know? Make her feel better?”
“I think so. She seemed to feel a lot better.”
“Well, it was great advice then.”
She leaned back, happy and relaxed. “Know what, Jess?”
“What?”
“Thanks to you, I think I now have one and one-half friends at Lark Creek School.”
It hurt him for it to mean so much to Leslie to have friends. When would she learn they weren’t worth her trouble? “Oh, you got more friends than that.”
“Nope. One and one-half. Monster Mouth Myers doesn’t count.”
There in their secret place, his feelings bubbled inside him like a stew on the back of the stove—some sad for her in her lonesomeness, but chunks of happiness, too. To be able to be Leslie’s one whole friend in the world as she was his—he couldn’t help being satisfied about that.
That night as he started to get into bed, leaving the light off so as not to wake the little girls, he was surprised by May Belle’s shrill little “Jess.”
“How come you still awake?”
“Jess. I know where you and Leslie go to hide.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I followed ya.”
He was at her bedside in one leap. “You ain’t supposed to follow me!”
“How come?” Her voice was sassy.
He grabbed her shoulders and made her look him in the face. She blinked in the dim light like a startled chicken.
“You listen here, May Belle Aarons,” he whispered fiercely, “I catch you following me again, your life ain’t worth nothing.”
“OK, OK.”—she slid back into the bed—“Boy, you’re mean. I oughta tell Momma on you.”
“Look, May Belle, you can’t do that. You can’t tell Momma ’bout where me and Leslie go.”
She answered with a little sniffing sound.
He grabbed her shoulders again. He was desperate. “I mean it, May Belle. You can’t tell nobody nothing!” He let her go. “Now, I don’t want to hear about you following me or squealing to Momma ever again, you hear?”
“Why not?”
“’Cause if you do—I’m gonna tell Billy Jean Edwards you still wet the bed sometimes.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Boy, girl, you just better not try me.”
He made her swear on the Bible never to tell and never to follow, but still he lay awake a long time. How could he trust everything that mattered to him to a sassy six-year-old? Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
EIGHT