He looks at us as we pass by. Willow squeezes my hand and giggles.
“Did you see that? He looked right at me.”
Instantly there is a game that I’m not part of.
He approaches us, and I wonder what it would be like to touch his hair, his arms. He tells us his name is Andrew, and Willow shares elaborate stories about herself and the neighborhood while I stumble over my words, not sure of what I want to say.
Later, I watch as Willow gets ready to go back to Andrew’s house that night. She puts on a tank top, tight blue jeans, and Dr. Scholl’s sandals. I think she looks great, but she doesn’t stop there, applying light-blue eye shadow, rouge, and lip gloss to her face as though she’s a painter adding the final touches to her masterpiece.
She takes her time accentuating her eyes with thick black eyeliner and layers and layers of black Maybelline mascara, making sure to separate and lengthen each lash. She plugs in her blow dryer and tugs on her already straight and shiny hair.
I stare at her image in the mirror.
I’m not allowed to wear makeup, but I put on lip gloss anyway.
When it’s dark, Willow and I go back to Andrew’s house. Our parents don’t mind. They think it’s nice that we have made friends with the new neighbors.
There is a light hanging off the side of the garage, casting a stream of yellow down a narrow path, and we follow it to Andrew’s backyard.
He’s lying down on a huge trampoline, and he lifts his head to greet us. We climb up and join him. There is a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a lighter resting next to him. I look the other way, rigid, pretending that this is no reason to be alarmed. Willow, on the other hand, reaches for the pack and, before I know it, she is lying back, propped on an elbow, blowing large masses of smoke into the air, letting down her inhibitions the way Rapunzel lets down her hair. Andrew lies next to her and shows off by blowing rings inside of rings.
The smoke circles above me, cloud-like.
Andrew puts out his cigarette and reaches for Willow. They kiss. I try not to watch their heads moving back and forth but I’m hypnotized by the motion. I put myself inside of Willow, inside her skin, feeling his lips on mine.
Wishing their braces would get stuck together, I announce I’m going home.
In bed I lie awake, thinking about Willow and what she’s done. Thoughts mix in my mind growing muddier like finger paint across wet paper. I question our friendship.
In the morning Willow calls bright and early.
“Wakey, wakey,” she chirps into the phone. “Are you up yet?”
“What time is it?” I answer flatly.
“It’s almost eight. I have to talk to you.”
I open my eyes just enough to see the numbers on my clock. It is 7:22.
“Haven’t I asked you not to wake me up?”
“Yes, but this is important. Andrew and I kissed.”
“I know. I was there.”
“What did you expect me to do? I didn’t know he was going to kiss me.”
“You could have warned me,” I said, wrapping myself inside my blanket.
“You really need to grow up, Callie. It’s not a big deal.”
At this point I know that if I keep this going Willow will be angrier at me than I am at her.
“Now, do you want to hear about what happened last night or should I call Sally and Katy?”
I don’t answer.
“Anyway,” she tries one last time, “I want to show you something. It’s a secret. Come over.”
I decide to go there, knowing that I wouldn’t miss this, and as I put the receiver down, I wonder why she always has to wake me up so early.
Our friends Sally and Katy are in the kitchen eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I get there. Willow has already told them about the night before, punishing me for being late. She pretends like she has no intention of sharing the events of her night with me, and I pretend I don’t care, when we both know she’ll tell me everything, with details she didn’t tell Sally and Katy.
Willow’s mother offers me a sandwich, and the four of us sit around the kitchen table like little old ladies playing canasta, inebriated with friendship.
When Willow is ready, Sally, Katy, and I follow her to her room, which has recently been decorated with plush, wall-to-wall pink carpet. In the center of the room, there is a queen-size bed and night tables the color of canned asparagus.
“Do you want to know my secret?” Willow asks as we lie across her bed, talking. “I’m not supposed to show anyone, but I don’t care.” And she makes each one of us swear not to tell.
Willow pushes a night table away from the wall, revealing a door that is covered in the same patterned wallpaper that decorates the rest of her room. The pattern continues over the door uninterrupted, leaving no sign that the wall has been cut there.
“Behind the door there is a tunnel,” Willow whispers. “It leads to my parents’ room.”
Willow squats and runs her open hand along the edges of the door.
“My father did this for me. If a burglar tries to come into our house I just crawl through the tunnel to his room, to the inside of his closet.”
Sally and Katy think the tunnel is fascinating, and I, in a moment of jealousy and longing, wish that my father had thought about such protection for me.
Sally’s a goody-goody, but Katy’s always breaking the rules, and she dares Willow to go through it. Willow reminds us that her father will go crazy if he finds out she’s told us about the tunnel.
We don’t want to aggravate Willow’s father. There’s something unusual about him, tall and stiff like the buildings he creates; he reads Playboy while he chain-smokes at the architect’s table in his bedroom. A lamp curls up from the desktop and down over his work. The lamp is on all hours of the night while he paces back and forth, up and down the hallways. His bedroom door is never closed. He is always awake.
We hang out in Willow’s room for a while. Sunlight pours through the window, leaving a streak across her bed. The sky is a brilliant blue.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggest, needing to feel the warmth.
The four of us have traveled halfway around the block when the driver of a small brown car, beat-up and dirty, pulls up next to us.
He stretches his thick neck in our direction as he wipes the sweat from his unshaven face with the back of his hand, and calls to us.
“Do you girls know where Crystal Street is?”
Katy and Sally stay back, and I’m tentative too about approaching the car with its driver’s fleshy arm overflowing from his vehicle like rising dough in a bowl, but Willow steps forward. I follow. The car vibrates to the beat of the blasting music, and although an air freshener disguised as a Christmas tree dangles from his rearview mirror, the smell of stale cigarettes permeates the air. Willow begins to explain how to get to Crystal Street when I notice that one of his hands is on the steering wheel and the other is on his exposed flesh, stroking himself as he speaks to us.
I’m scared, but I stay calm, too afraid to act. Willow stays cool, too, and I wonder if she sees. I keep my eyes glued to his, unable to look down while Willow gestures toward Crystal Street. The man thanks us and drives away slowly.
The four of us run through a backyard and on to the next street. We hide behind a thick wall of bushes, bending low to stay out of sight.