Bridge to Terabithia

“Well—” Lord, Leslie was loving this. She’d string him out forever. “Well, today she was so mad at her father that she told her so-called friends Wilma and Bobby Sue about it.”

“Yeah?”

“And those two—two—” She looked for a word vile enough to describe Janice Avery’s friends and found none. “Those two girls blabbed it all over the seventh grade.”

Pity for Janice Avery swept across him.

“Even the teacher knows about it.”

“Boy.” The word came out like a sigh. There was a rule at Lark Creek, more important than anything Mr. Turner made up and fussed about. That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn’t believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them. By tomorrow every kid and teacher in Lark Creek Elementary would be talking in half snickers about Janice Avery’s daddy. It didn’t matter if their own fathers were in the state hospital or the federal prison, they hadn’t betrayed theirs, and Janice had.

“Do you know what else?”

“What?”

“I told Janice about not having a TV and everyone laughing. I told her I understood what it was like to have everyone think I was weird.”

“What’d she say to that?”

“She knew I was telling the truth. She even asked me for advice as if I was Dear Abby.”

“Yeah?”

“I told her just to pretend she didn’t know what on earth Wilma and Bobby Sue had said or where they had got such a crazy story and everybody would forget about it in a week.” She leaned forward, suddenly anxious. “Do you think that was good advice?”

“Lord, how should I know? Make her feel better?”

“I think so. She seemed to feel a lot better.”

“Well, it was great advice then.”

She leaned back, happy and relaxed. “Know what, Jess?”

“What?”

“Thanks to you, I think I now have one and one-half friends at Lark Creek School.”

It hurt him for it to mean so much to Leslie to have friends. When would she learn they weren’t worth her trouble? “Oh, you got more friends than that.”

“Nope. One and one-half. Monster Mouth Myers doesn’t count.”

There in their secret place, his feelings bubbled inside him like a stew on the back of the stove—some sad for her in her lonesomeness, but chunks of happiness, too. To be able to be Leslie’s one whole friend in the world as she was his—he couldn’t help being satisfied about that.

That night as he started to get into bed, leaving the light off so as not to wake the little girls, he was surprised by May Belle’s shrill little “Jess.”

“How come you still awake?”

“Jess. I know where you and Leslie go to hide.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I followed ya.”

He was at her bedside in one leap. “You ain’t supposed to follow me!”

“How come?” Her voice was sassy.

He grabbed her shoulders and made her look him in the face. She blinked in the dim light like a startled chicken.

“You listen here, May Belle Aarons,” he whispered fiercely, “I catch you following me again, your life ain’t worth nothing.”

“OK, OK.”—she slid back into the bed—“Boy, you’re mean. I oughta tell Momma on you.”

“Look, May Belle, you can’t do that. You can’t tell Momma ’bout where me and Leslie go.”

She answered with a little sniffing sound.

He grabbed her shoulders again. He was desperate. “I mean it, May Belle. You can’t tell nobody nothing!” He let her go. “Now, I don’t want to hear about you following me or squealing to Momma ever again, you hear?”

“Why not?”

“’Cause if you do—I’m gonna tell Billy Jean Edwards you still wet the bed sometimes.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Boy, girl, you just better not try me.”

He made her swear on the Bible never to tell and never to follow, but still he lay awake a long time. How could he trust everything that mattered to him to a sassy six-year-old? Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

EIGHTEaster

Even though it was nearly Easter, there were still very few nights that it was warm enough to leave Miss Bessie out. And then there was the rain. All March it poured. For the first time in many years the creek bed held water, not just a trickle either, enough so that when they swung across, it was a little scary looking down at the rushing water below. Jess took Prince Terrien across inside his jacket, but the puppy was growing so fast he might pop the zipper any time and fall into the water and drown.

Ellie and Brenda were already fighting about what they were going to wear to church. Since Momma got mad at the preacher three years back, Easter was the only time in the year that the Aarons went to church and it was a big deal. His mother always cried poor, but she put a lot of thought and as much money as she could scrape together into making sure she wouldn’t be embarrassed by how her family looked. But the day before she planned to take them all over to Millsburg Plaza for new clothes, his dad came home from Washington early. He’d been laid off. No new clothes this year.