.’
She says apologetically, ‘There isn’t that much more to tell.’
He is careful to control his tone. ‘What do you mean, there isn’t that much more to tell?’
‘Understand, by the time Lucy got there we were all pretty far gone. Then at the ass end of that night Lucy went off in the Jeep. We saw her go.’
Her voice drops. ‘God help us, we were thinking, Serves her right.’
‘Ma’am!’
She sighs. ‘That’s pretty much it.’
‘Wait!’
‘Remember, we were eighteen. So Lucy went off with them and that’s the last we saw of her, she was valedictorian, but she didn’t show up for the speech. Something went down, nobody will talk about it and we try not to ask. The School Board never did get names so everybody’s safe – Sallie’s dad let that cat out of the bag and he never guessed what a big relief it was for all of us. See, those were not boys from South Side High that Lucy went off with and it wasn’t that gang from Bradenton, they were our boys that we wanted to grow up and marry, and some of us have.
‘By the time the School Board met on it we were all off in college in Gainesville or Tallahassee or Atlanta so we couldn’t forget it, but we didn’t have to testify.’
‘And?’
‘That’s it.’ She spreads her hands, and they are empty.
‘That’s all you have to tell me? That’s your big secret?’
‘Yes. Lucy went off with them and we let her go!’ She’s trying hard to come up with something more for him, but this is all she can manage. ‘We weren’t there and God knows the boys won’t tell.’ She takes his hands. She is desperate to explain. ‘We protect each other, OK?’
‘No.’ He finds it necessary to drive it in. ‘You wouldn’t even tell me who was in the Jeep,’ he adds, although he already knows.
A bad sound comes out of her. It is the sound of a woman losing it, so when Nenna answers it’s a partial answer. ‘Brad was driving.’ Tears are coming down her face, so swift and dense that they roll into her mouth and a bubble seals it as her mouth stretches wide in soundless grief. It shimmers until finally it pops. Words come out, but nothing he can use. ‘We saw what was happening and we let her go!’
35
Steffy
They’ve been riding around in Mr Bellinger’s ragtop Buick, like, forever. Wild, being out with Carter at this strange, still hour when real people are locked inside their houses, but while they were running free at the tippy end of Pierce Point the dark bled out of the night; too late turned into too early and Steffy is fucking exhausted.
Carter looks tired too, hunched over the wheel with his cheeks caved in, but Steffy isn’t about to end this, even though she’s beyond ready to go home.
She can’t.
She loves him so much!
Plus, she can’t go back to her house just yet. It’s way too early to get caught sneaking in, and her mom hasn’t been sleeping much since the big fight. Cough in the night and the woman comes in to check on you; get up to pee and she springs out. Steffy doesn’t dare show until it’s time for breakfast somewhere, or her mom will find out that instead of staying over at Jen’s house as advertised, she’s been out all night, running around with Carter Bellinger.
When he yanked her aside after the Saturday night movie she thought, OK then. This is it. He grabbed her elbow in the parking lot, clamped her hand under his arm and growled into her hair, ‘Want to do something really trippy?’
Steffy’s heart jumped. In a shitty week, maybe things weren’t so shitty after all. She had to act like she could care less – because this was Carter, that she was in love with, asking her, and it was so very, very important to her, so she shrugged him off and mumbled, ‘Sure.’
Perfidious Jen smiled that smile and pretend-zipped her mouth as though she and Carter never did Whatever: Nobody will ever know.
Pathetic, her being this excited. God only knows what she was expecting when they headed for Bayfront Drive. It’s been this and that with Carter for so long that Steffy needs it to get serious, even though she’s scared. It’s way past time.
When was that, around midnight? Forever ago. She was excited to be in the convertible, which Carter’s dad loans him even though his license got suspended last