Heart Like Mine A Novel - By Amy Hatvany Page 0,33

you want to flaunt yourself like that in front of everyone?” her father asked.

She’d sighed at the time, wondering how, exactly, she was supposed to answer a question like that. “I was just thinking it would be good exercise,” she told him. She loved how the girls looked in their tight red sweaters and short pleated skirts. She loved the bounce of their ponytails and the way all the football players swarmed around them like bees.

He’d looked down at her over the top of his black-rimmed glasses. “You can take a walk,” he said. And that was that.

Now it was Friday night and Kelli sat with her parents at the dining room table inside their small brick house. Her mother had made them pasta for dinner—sauce from a jar over mushy egg noodles. “This is good, Mama,” she said, even as the bite she had just taken stuck in her throat.

“Thank you, dear,” her mother said. Her graying blond hair was pulled into a loose bun at the base of her neck and she wore a black dress sprinkled with tiny white flowers. She looked at Kelli’s father. “Thomas? How’s your dinner?”

“Just fine, thank you,” her father said. He took a gulp of milk, then moved his gaze to his daughter. “How was school today, Kelli?” He wasn’t sure how to talk to her lately. She had always been pretty, but now . . . it made him uncomfortable, to see his daughter this way, knowing how men were. What they’d want to do with her. She used to be a skinny thing, with knobby knees and barely any fat on her at all, but her body had blossomed over the last year, her hips rounded and her waist nipped in. But most disturbing to him was the swell of her chest, the way it pushed at the blouses she wore, like it was anxious for the world to notice the change. He wanted to protect her, but he didn’t know how. It was hard to look at her now, hard to understand that this was still his little girl.

Kelli nodded. “It was good,” she said, then took a deep breath. “There’s a basketball game tonight at the gym. All the kids are going.” She paused, feeling both her parents’ eyes on her. “Do you think . . . would it be okay if I went, too?”

Her mother stitched her thin brows together over her pale blue eyes. “You have youth group,” she said.

“I know,” Kelli said. “I thought I could miss it just this once. Please?”

Her parents were silent, staring at their daughter. When they were in high school, both of them were more interested in studying than attending sporting events or dances. Thomas wanted to work in a bank and Ruth never had aspirations to be anything but a housewife. He loved the structure of numbers and strict procedure; she loved the time she spent taking care of their home and volunteering at their church. They didn’t stray outside of the path they knew their parents wanted them to be on; they never pushed any limits.

Though they were not demonstrative people, they loved their daughter, and up until she’d turned fourteen, they’d assumed she’d simply behave as they had at her age. But sometimes, there were traces of makeup on her face when she came home from school, evidence of misbehavior that she’d failed to wash thoroughly away. Ruth told Thomas this was normal teenage rebellion, that as long as she was coming home at all, they should be grateful. “It could be worse,” she said. “Much worse.”

They did what they could, of course. Ruth only bought Kelli the most shapeless tops and baggy slacks for her to wear at school. She thought of it as armor against the army of young men who would surely try to have their way with her daughter if given a chance. They kept her busy with youth group and church services; they discouraged the activities that might lead her off course.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Thomas finally said. “Maybe another time, when we can go with you.”

Kelli nodded, knowing it was futile to try to convince them. At least she had asked, which was more than she’d usually do. They finished dinner in relative silence, and after Kelli helped her mother clean up the kitchen, her father drove them over to the church. They had Bible study that night, which met in the far corner of the sanctuary while