The Little Friend

All the girls—including the ingrate Lee Ann—burst into laughter. Do what, Harriet?

Screw, said Harriet, chillingly. Screw is a perfectly good word.…

Oh yeah? Idiotic snickers—they were filthy, all of them, the whole sweaty, menstruating, boy-crazed lot, with their pubic hair and their perspiration problems, winking and kicking each other in the ankles. Say it again, Harriet? What’s it mean? What’s she got to do?

Zach and Zig had now turned to the subject of beer drinking. “Now tell me this, Zig. Would you drink something if it tasted bad? And was bad for you, too?”

“Phew! No way!”

“Well, believe it or not, that’s what a lot of grown people and even kids do!”

Zig, astonished, surveyed the audience. “Kids here, Boss?”

“Maybe. Because there are always a few really dumb kids who think drinking beer is cool, man!” Zach gave the Peace sign. Nervous laughter.

Harriet—who had a headache from sitting in the sun—squinted at a cluster of mosquito bites on her arm. After this assembly (over in ten minutes, thank Heavens) there was forty-five minutes of swimming, then a Bible quiz, then lunch.

Swimming was the only activity Harriet liked or looked forward to. Alone with her heartbeat, she winnowed through the dark, dreamless lake, through the sickly, flickering shafts of sunlight that penetrated the gloom. Near the surface, the water was as warm as bathwater; when she swam deeper, spikes of cold spring water hit her in the face and plumes of powdery murk rolled like green smoke from the plushy mire on the bottom, spiraling with every stroke, every kick.

The girls only got to swim twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday. And she was especially glad that today was Thursday because she was still reeling from the unpleasant surprise she’d had at Mail Call that morning. A letter from Hely had arrived. When she opened it, she was shocked to see a newspaper clipping from the Alexandria Eagle which read EXOTIC REPTILE ATTACKS WOMAN.

There was a letter, too, on blue-lined school paper. “Oooh, is that from your boyfriend?” Dawn snatched the letter away. “ ‘Hey, Harriet,’ ” she read, aloud, to everybody. “ ‘What’s happening?’ ”

The clipping fluttered to the ground. With trembling hands, Harriet grabbed it up and crunched it in a ball and stuffed it in her pocket.

“ ‘Thought you’d like to see this. Check it out …’ Check what out? What’s that?” Dawn was saying.

Harriet, her hand in her pocket, was clawing the newspaper to shreds.

“It’s in her pocket,” Jada was saying. “She put something in her pocket.”

“Get it! Get it!”

Gleefully, Jada lunged at Harriet and Harriet hit her in the face.

Jada screamed. “Oh my God! She scratched me! You scratched me on the eyelid, you little shit!”

“Hey you guys,” someone hissed, “Mel’s gonna hear.” This was Melanie, their wigwam counselor.

“I’m bleeding!” Jada was shrieking. “She tried to put my eye out! Fuck!”

Dawn stood stunned, her frosty lip-glossed mouth hanging open. Harriet took advantage of the confusion to snatch Hely’s letter back from her and jam it in her pocket.

“Look!” said Jada, holding out her hand. On her fingertips, and on her eyelid, was blood—not a lot, but some. “Look what she did to me!”

“You guys shut up,” said someone shrilly, “or we’re gonna get a demerit.”

“If we get another one,” said someone else, in an aggrieved voice, “we can’t roast marshmallows with the boys.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Shut up.”

Jada—fist drawn theatrically—stepped towards Harriet. “You’d better watch your back, girl,” she said, “you better—”

“Shut up! Mel’s coming!”

Then the bell had rung for chapel. So Zach and his dummy had saved Harriet, for the moment at least. If Jada decided to tell, she’d get in trouble, but that was nothing new; getting in trouble for fighting was something that Harriet was used to.

What worried her was the clipping. It had been incredibly stupid of Hely to send it. At least no one had seen it; that was the main thing. Apart from the headline, she’d hardly seen it herself; she’d shredded it thoroughly, along with Hely’s letter, and mashed the pieces together in her pocket.

Something, she realized, had changed in the clearing. Zach had stopped talking and all the girls had got very still and quiet all of a sudden. In the silence, a thrill of panic ran through Harriet. She expected the heads to turn all at once, to look at her, but then Zach cleared his throat, and Harriet understood, as if waking from a dream, that the silence wasn’t about her at all, that it was only the prayer. Quickly, she shut her eyes and bowed her head.

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