I grinned. “Crummy-but-not-horrible. The boy who sits in front of me doesn’t like me.”
“If you can, stay out of his way.”
“That’s what the girl who sits next to me said.”
Suki nodded. “And if you can’t, deck him. Don’t you take—”
I said, “Snow from anybody.”
The girl who sat next to me was named Nevaeh. Like my middle name. Ms. Davonte’d called her that. The girl hadn’t spoken to me again, not once the whole day. At recess and lunch I’d kept to myself. Everybody let me.
I asked Suki, “What are we allowed to talk about now?”
She looked alarmed. “Why do you ask?”
“I mean—Clifton doesn’t have to be a secret anymore. Does he?”
She shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about him ever again.”
If people had known Suki and me didn’t really belong to Clifton, he wouldn’t have been able to keep us. That’s what he told us. We wouldn’t have had anywhere to live. We wouldn’t have had food to eat. We would have been out on the streets, which was not a nice place for two little girls, especially girls as pretty as Suki and as young as me.
Only: None of that turned out to be true. We had gotten away from Clifton and we weren’t on the streets. Last week we’d had that emergency placement hag, and she was an old witch, but she gave us beds and meals. And now we had Francine, who was ugly but fine so far.
I sucked in a huge mouthful of slushie. It froze the roof of my mouth and my whole brain and gave me a headache all in a rush. I quick took a tiny second sip, just like Suki’d taught me. The headache melted away. I said, “We should have told on Clifton a long time ago.”
Suki was watching the traffic on the busy road. She said, “Do not lay that on me.”
Her voice rose. She’d gone from happy to ticked off in one second flat. I didn’t have any idea why.
“I just mean—”
“Do you know what he used to threaten me with? ‘Tell anyone,’ he’d say, ‘and you’ll never see your little sister again.’”
“Snow, Suki—”
“You know that place on the way to your old school, off to the right, by the Lutheran church?”
“No—”
“It’s a group home. For girls nobody will take into foster care. Clifton pointed it out to me every time we went past.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering. He’d say, “There it is, the prison for bad girls.” Suki would always shrink a little when he said it, get smaller and quieter right in front of me.
Suki nodded. “He told me if anyone found out what we were doing, you’d go into foster care and I’d have to live in that group home. And then I’d never see you again.”
Her voice could get totally flat sometimes, like a puddle of water, frozen.
“I called the place once,” she went on. “I asked them who lived there. They said, ‘Girls ages thirteen to eighteen who are unplaced in foster care.’ So I knew that part was true.”
“But the rest of it wasn’t,” I said. Clifton was a liar as well as a flaming snowman. We had evidence, after all. It was why he was still in jail. No bail.
Suki nodded.
“I’ll make that video, and he’ll stay in jail.” Our lawyer told me they were going to videotape me telling exactly what happened, explaining exactly what the evidence showed. They’d show it in court when Clifton finally went to trial—it took forever for it to be his turn—so I wouldn’t have to sit in front of him and say hard things in person while he glared at me.
Suki said, “Yep. Everyone knows what he did to you.”
She didn’t mean everyone everyone. It’s not like we made the national news. Not like we were telling anyone at school. I wouldn’t do that, not ever. Suki meant the cops and lawyers and caseworkers and such.
Suki shoved herself off the bench and started running down the road.
“Hey!” I ran after her. When I’d caught up, I grabbed her arm. “What’s the matter?”
She yanked the slushie cup out of my hand and threw it into the street. The last bits of Atomic Lemon exploded across the pavement. A guy in a passing car honked his horn and shouted something rude.
“Hey,” I said, but quieter.
She slowed to a fast walk. Her face was set hard, like stone, but tears rolled down her cheeks. “Suki?” I ran after her again, grabbed her hand. “We’re okay now.”
She looked at me. “You’re okay,” she said. “Sorry about your slushie.”
I curled my pinkie finger around hers. “You paid for it.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
I should have guessed, you know? I should have guessed the parts of the story that weren’t about me. I should have guessed what had happened to Suki.
I’ve learned that some things are almost impossible to talk about because they’re things no one wants to know.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Not even me.
* * *
■ ■ ■
That’s the first hard thing I’m telling you. It might not look hard, not yet, but it’s very nearly the hardest thing of all.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Sometimes you’ve got a story you need to find the courage to tell.
6
Francine was home when Suki and I got back. She said, “Next time you go somewhere, send me a text so I know where you are.”
Suki shot her a dirty look. “With what, the landline?”
Francine laughed, as if Suki meant that to be funny. “Sorry,” she said. “Leave me a note, then, will you? I ought to be keeping tabs on you.”
“Soon as I get a job and a paycheck, I’m buying a phone,” Suki said. “Then I’m getting one for Della.”
Francine waved her hand. “Kid don’t need a phone.”
“She needs to be able to call me,” Suki said. “If there’s trouble.”
“What kind of trouble she going to have?”
Suki said, “You been paying attention at all?”
Now Francine shot Suki a look. “She gets in trouble, they’ll call me,” she said. “That’s what they do. I gotta spend too much of my vacation time hauling your snowflakes outta trouble, y’all be living somewhere else. So maybe just don’t get into trouble.”