‘He always got mean when he was drunk,’ Diane continues. ‘So mean.’ She drops her gaze. ‘I’m sorry for what he tried to do to you, Evie.’
I shake my head, then jump a bit at the pain it causes. ‘Let’s not talk about that. And hey, how do you know my name anyway?’
Diane’s eyes meet mine. ‘We’re in the same English class, remember?’
I sort of feel like a creep for not remembering. Then again, even though I go to English class pretty often, I still make it a habit to cut about once a week. And anyway, it’s not like Diane and I have ever spoken before tonight.
‘Are you older than me?’ I ask. She seems like she is. ‘Shouldn’t you be in junior classes?’
‘Yes, but I’m a year behind,’ she says. ‘It’s one of the reasons I moved in with my aunt and came to Eastside. To make up the credits.’
‘Why didn’t you make up the credits at River Oaks?’ I ask.
‘It’s complicated,’ she says. Her eyes go blank, and we sit in the silence together for a moment. Then she stands up, stubs out her smoke, and walks around behind me. ‘Let me check the back of your head.’
Suddenly she’s a total Girl Scout, her fingers carefully combing through my dark hair. I tense, fighting off the fresh memories of those moments outside the bathroom. As Diane pulls aside a lock of my dark brown hair, I wince.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘It’s all right. How does it look?’
‘It’s not so bad. It’s stopped bleeding, and I think it should heal on its own.’
‘Do you have any aspirin? It kind of aches.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t offer you some right away.’
This girl has true company manners.
Diane walks a few steps down the hallway to the bathroom. Without the pressure of my eyes on her, I try another question she might not want to discuss.
‘We need to figure out what we’re going to do next,’ I say, raising my voice just a bit to make sure she can hear me. There’s no response. I hear the shutting of a medicine cabinet door. Then Diane walks out with a bottle of aspirin, takes out two, hands them to me, and refills my water. She still doesn’t say anything. I swallow the aspirin and try again.
‘I mean, what I’m saying is, if the fuzz come looking or asking questions, we need to figure out how we’re going to answer them, don’t you think?’
I say this with the voice of authority, but the truth is I have no idea what to do. I only know I must know more than Diane. I should have kept myself out of this mess in the first place, so now I suppose I’ve got to get us out of it, too.
‘You’re right,’ Diane says at last, her voice soft. ‘I keep thinking about the switchblade.’
‘Can it be connected back to you?’ I ask.
There’s the longest pause. I hear Diane take a deep breath, exhale shakily. ‘I don’t think so,’ she whispers. Then she eases her way back to her chair. ‘And I’m not going to tell you where I got it, either.’ Her voice is firm. Her eyes determined.
‘I’m not asking where you got it,’ I say, holding both hands up in surrender. It’s a side of Diane I haven’t seen yet. Tough. Which sounds strange, considering she’s covered in a dead boy’s blood.
‘I think we need to clean ourselves up the best we can and throw these clothes away,’ I say. ‘Or hide them until we can burn them or something.’ Again I think about what Connie or Juanita or Sunny would do in this situation, but I need to admit to myself that I’m in territory even they wouldn’t recognize, and I know it.
Diane nods. ‘My aunt won’t be home until late, if at all,’ she begins. ‘I could loan you some clothes.’
We end up in Diane’s bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s like a neat oasis from the rest of the messy, cramped house. A pink chenille bedspread is stretched tight over a twin bed. A tiny brown teddy bear wearing a black bow tie rests in the center of the pillow. There’s an oval-shaped fluffy pink rug centered perfectly in the middle of the wooden floor. A little white vanity in the corner is filled with tiny glass bottles and jars and tubes of lipstick, all organized in careful rows like soldiers in some beauty army. A blue teardrop bottle of Evening in Paris perfume stands out. The walls are mostly blank, though, except for a small painting of daisies next to the window above Diane’s bed. No photographs. No record player. No stacks of Seventeen magazines or pictures of Bobby Rydell or the Beatles tacked up with pushpins.
It’s almost creepy.
Diane is combing through the closet and pulls out a light blue skirt and sweater set that must have cost more than my mother’s entire week’s pay cleaning rooms at the Shamrock Hotel.
‘I’m a little bigger than you,’ she says, ‘but it should do.’
By bigger she means curvier, but Diane is too polite to say something like that. I think about the way Connie would describe her if she’d had a few drinks and was feeling mean. But Diane doesn’t deserve that. I head to the bathroom to change, thinking about the girls who were so nasty to Diane by the concession stand. Were they jealous of Diane’s good looks? No, they mentioned something she did. Something so bad she shouldn’t have shown her face in public. I wonder what they would say if they knew what she did for me less than an hour ago.
When I come out of the bathroom, Diane is in a mint-green bathrobe and is holding a paper sack. ‘I’m going to wash up first, but you can put your clothes in here,’ she says. ‘I’ll hide them in my closet until we figure out where to get rid of them.’
‘Don’t forget your sweater on the counter,’ I remind her. She nods.
I dump my tired blouse and skirt from the secondhand store into the bag, where they land with a thud. I peer down at myself and can’t help but grin.
‘You look sweet,’ says Diane. ‘Really sweet.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, looking up at her. I’m practically swimming in her clothes, but they’re comforting somehow.
Diane smiles. ‘You can keep them until you fill them out. I’ve got heaps of clothes.’
Heaps of clothes. She says the words with a shrug in her voice.
I get my smokes from the kitchen table, and Diane walks me to the back door.
‘Listen, lay low tomorrow,’ I say, trying to sound like I know what I’m doing, for myself as much as for Diane. ‘Don’t go anywhere. I need to think about this for a little bit, figure out what’s safe for us next.’ What I mean is that I need to get help from the others.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘If you think that’s best.’
Diane’s eyes start to water up again, but she gets a grip and takes a deep breath.
‘So what about Monday?’ she asks. ‘Do I go to school?’
I nod. ‘Act as normal as you can. Come find me and my friends in the cafeteria and we’ll talk more then, okay?’ I cringe a little inside at the thought of a tea sipper joining me and my friends, but I’ll deal with that later.
‘Or I’ll find you in English class,’ she suggests, raising an eyebrow. ‘We have that before lunch.’ I get that she’s sort of making a joke.