by Robin Talley
I was terrified of what it could mean for Tammy. To be honest…I was terrified of what it could mean for me, too. Was her aunt making some kind of threat?
The guitar music pouring out of the tape player was smooth, melodic. Pretty. I tried to focus on it, but thinking about music made my mind shift into thinking about Midge Spelling. That was no good, either.
The images were fresh in my mind. The way she looked on that poster. The way Johnny had wrapped his arm around her waist, leaning into her as though they had their own private language. The way her lips curled around every sound she uttered.
Kevin pulled over beside a park a few blocks south, and I leaned over to kiss him before he’d even turned off the engine. He laughed, but he went along with it, twisting the key with one hand and sliding the other around my waist. I shut my eyes, until I realized I was still thinking about Midge.
I was kissing him, but I was thinking about kissing her. I was wondering—and not for the first time—whether kissing a girl would feel different from kissing a boy.
Would she be that much gentler? Would her skin feel that much smoother?
I wrenched my eyes open. Kevin was so close all I could see were his pores and his eyelashes. I’d never noticed how thick they were.
This wasn’t fair. He had no idea what was happening in my head. I couldn’t tell him, but I couldn’t let it keep going, either. I may not know what it meant to be “in love,” the way the disco singers talked about, but I knew what I had with Kevin wasn’t it.
I pulled away.
“I, um.” I took a long breath. I’d never imagined saying these words, but suddenly I was absolutely sure they were the right ones. “I think we should break up.”
He froze, his arm still around my waist. A second later he drew back sharply. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re…” He shook his head, as though he was in a fog. “What?”
I fumbled for my purse. “I’m sorry. I should go.”
“Go where? What are you talking about? Things have been kind of off lately, sure, but…you show up out of the blue and say you want to come here, I thought—”
“I’m sorry, Kevin.”
“Please stop saying you’re sorry.”
“I—Okay.”
I wanted to apologize again. I wanted to say it as many times as it took until he believed me, but it was clear he wasn’t going to.
I climbed out of the car, and by some miracle, I didn’t start crying until I’d made it halfway down the block.
The bus stop was one street up. If I walked slowly enough, I might be able to make the tears stop before I got there.
I shut my eyes, expecting Midge to float into my mind again. The usual image of her growling into a microphone, her lips curved wide.
Instead, the face I saw Tammy’s.
Tammy, laughing with the women at the bookstore. Tammy, rolling her eyes at Peter in the living room, Dallas playing on the TV screen behind us. Tammy, crying quietly in the O’Sullivans’ kitchen.
Tammy, dressed in rumpled clothes on my doorstep, smiling faintly as my whole world changed to let her in.
When I got home, the house was dark. I grabbed an open box of Lorna Doones someone had left out on the kitchen counter and dragged myself up the stairs. I’ve been lying on my bed ever since, writing, hoping—
Wait. That was the door.
She’s home. She’s here.
More later.
Sharon
Monday, June 19, 1978
Dear Harvey,
It’s six in the morning, but I’ve already been awake for an hour. Sharon’s fast asleep. I know because I can hear her snoring all the way downstairs. She has a very distinctive snore, but she’s a light sleeper. I snuck down here so I could write without waking her up.
Aunt Mandy’s back in my life, Harvey. I can’t believe I was naive enough to think I’d left it all behind. But to think she’d talk that way to Sharon…
I should back up. There’s a lot I need to tell you.
Javi asked me to help him clean out the walk-in cooler after we closed last night, so I got home late. I was starving, and I went straight to the kitchen, but before I could open the fridge there were footsteps behind me and a hand on my elbow.
“Hey,” I said softly. I knew it was Sharon before I turned around.
“Hey.” She let go of my elbow, but she wasn’t smiling. “You need to come upstairs.”
I wanted to be pleased—I’ve been living here for almost three weeks, but it still feels as if I’m trespassing in Sharon’s bedroom. She hasn’t hidden the fact that she doesn’t want to be alone with me. But from her dark look, I knew something was wrong.
“Come quick,” she said. “My brother’s out, but he could come home any minute, and I don’t want him to hear.”
By then I was getting really worried. “All right.”
I followed Sharon up the stairs to her room. It was dark, with only the distant light of a street lamp from the window to see by. My sleeping pallet was rolled up on the floor beside the dresser, where I always tuck it after I get up in the morning, and there was a folded piece of notebook paper on top of it. Sharon bent down and grabbed the paper, holding it out to me.
I sat on the floor, my back against the dresser. Sharon sat on the bed across from me as I unfolded the letter and smoothed it out on my knees, tilting it so I could read it in the faint light. I was wearing a pair of jeans I’d bought at a secondhand store Sharon took me to, and the denim at the knees was almost threadbare against the crinkled paper. It was strange to read a letter from Sharon while she sat there, watching my reaction.
As I read, though, I quickly forgot how strange it was. Twice, I put down the paper and locked eyes with Sharon, silently pleading with her to tell me what she’d written wasn’t true, but both times she only said, “Keep going,” and folded her arms tighter across her chest. By the time I got to the end, I was trembling.
“She seriously called you,” I said.
It wasn’t a question, but Sharon nodded anyway. “It was bizarre. She talked as if I was incredibly important and completely beneath her at the same time.”
“Yeah. She can almost hypnotize you into believing she really does have your best interests at heart.” My hands shook as I refolded the paper. I blinked hard, trying to focus on what mattered here, when focusing was the last thing I wanted to do. “She didn’t ask if I was here?”
Sharon shook her head, glancing toward the door as though she was afraid my aunt might be standing on the other side at this very moment. “I wouldn’t have told her, anyway, but…no. How did she get my phone number? How does she know who I am?”
Now I was half-afraid Aunt Mandy was hiding outside the door. But there was only one possible answer to Sharon’s question. “She must’ve found the letters.”
She went rigid. “My letters?”
“After I sent you that diary entry by accident, I started carrying them in my purse.” I shut my eyes. I knew exactly what this could mean for Sharon and Peter. Now I had to wait for her to realize it, too. “But when there got to be too many, I hid them in my sisters’ old room, in the space under the top dresser drawer. No one would’ve found them, even if they opened the drawers. Unless they were determined to search the whole room from top to bottom.”
Sharon frowned. I could see her trying to work it out. “Is that what you think happened?”
I nodded slowly. “Once they had the letters, Aunt Mandy could’ve gone into the school rolls to get your phone number. Or she could’ve just called information. She had your address already.”
“How?”
“I…kept your envelopes.”
I knew it was ridiculous, saving envelopes just because Sharon had touched them. But I hadn’t had much to hold onto back then.
�
��If she found…” Sharon’s face had shifted from confusion to alarm. “If she read my letters, she knows…”
“Everything about you. And your brother.” There was no point holding back. She deserved to know exactly the danger I’d put them in.
“There were things in those letters I’ve never told anyone. Things my own family doesn’t know.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Sharon.”
“I have to tell Peter.” She dropped her chin to her chest. “He’s going to hate me.”
I squirmed. “This is my fault, not yours.”
“He’d never hate you. Besides, it’s not your fault, either—it’s your aunt’s.”
“I’m so sorry.” I felt sick to my stomach. “I’ll talk to him.”
“No, don’t.” She shook her head. “This is on me. I’ll do it. But…why do you think your aunt called me?”
“Well.” I swallowed. “She’s trying to figure out if I’m here, and I can think of two possible reasons for that. Either she wants to convince me to come back home—which isn’t likely, since then it would’ve been my parents who called—or she knows I have her check register.”
“Oh, my gosh. I forgot all about the check register.”
“It’s still there.” I pointed toward where I’d left my purse on the floor.
“How would she know you have it?”
“Well, I used that desk more than any other volunteer, and…” I bit my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Sharon.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. She wouldn’t know anything about you, or your brother, if it weren’t for me. Once she realized I’d taken that stupid thing, she probably tore apart the whole house looking for it. With the radio show finally starting, she’s probably trying to make sure no one’s going to find out what they did to get there. And I guess my family didn’t mind my running away, or they’d have searched the house earlier, looking for evidence of where I went.”
I shrugged, as though none of this bothered me, but from the crease that formed between Sharon’s eyebrows, I don’t think she bought it.
“What’ll she do?” Sharon wrapped her arms around herself even tighter. “Come looking for you?”
“God, I hope not. Nothing you said would’ve made her think I was here, right?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Then we’re probably safe for now. It’s a long trip when all she’s got is a hunch.” I sat back against the dresser, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers. I’d forgotten how exhausting it was, being terrified. “Is there any food up here?”
Sharon lifted a box of Lorna Doones. “I was starving, too.”
We devoured the cookies. Sharon hunched forward on her bed at first, but after a while she climbed down to sit next to me on the floor.
She still looked worried. I reassured her again, and again after that, that I didn’t think my aunt was going to show up on her doorstep, but the crease between her eyebrows never went away. I wondered if something else might be bothering her, too.
As she bent over to shake the last few cookies out of the box, I studied the outline of her face in the dim light. For months, I’d wondered what would happen if Sharon and I ever met in person. I’d built up a dozen scenarios for it in my head. Now it was reality, and it was as simple as sitting on a worn rug, talking to the girl who’d once existed for me solely in the form of ripped-out notebook pages.
“What else is wrong?” I asked her after a quiet moment, wiping a cookie crumb off my lower lip.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Did you go out with Kevin tonight, like you said in the letter?”
She glanced at me, then darted her eyes back to the floor. We were sitting side by side against the dresser, and suddenly it struck me exactly how little space there was between us.
“Yeah,” she said. “I… We… I guess we broke up.”
My eyes widened. “What? Tonight?”
She kept her eyes on the shag carpet. “Yeah.”
“God, what happened?”
She told me a story that didn’t make much sense—something about going to meet him after work, going for a drive, then blurting out a breakup. It was obvious she’d left part of the story out, but I didn’t ask what. If there was something she didn’t want to tell me, asking wasn’t going to change that.
“Do you think it’s really over?” I asked.
“Yeah. All through the bus ride home, I ran over what I told him in my head, trying to figure out if there was some way I could take it back. Except…I don’t know if I want to take it back. I like him, but…there’s too much I’m confused about right now.”
“Wow. You two were together for so long.”
“Yeah. I wish…” She blinked rapidly. It was too dark to tell if she was crying. “I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know.”
She brushed a stray hair out of her eyes. The light caught a long, curly strand, making it shimmer.
“I know what you mean.” I tried not to stare. “I keep making huge mistakes because of all the stuff I don’t understand.”
“Like what?”
I sighed. “Remember in our letters, when we said we were going to be totally honest with each other?”
Sharon smiled. I love it when she smiles. “Of course.”
“Well, I mean, obviously I wasn’t really ready at first. It’s so ironic now—I should’ve trusted you from the beginning. I trusted Carolyn instead, and look how that turned out.”
Sharon’s smile faded at the sound of Carolyn’s name. “Why do you think she said what happened was your fault?”
“Because she’s a psychopath?” I sighed again. “No, I think she was just scared. There were a dozen different lies we could’ve used to convince them we were innocent, but she didn’t even want to try. She just wanted to keep them thinking she was a perfect Christian princess.”
I’d cared so much about Carolyn once. I’d thought I did, at least. But it wasn’t as if she’d ever lied to me. I’d known who she was from the beginning. I guess it was my fault all along for not seeing what was right in front of us.
“She’s horrible.” Sharon’s voice was so thick with anger that I jerked my head up, startled. “Going after you, just to save herself. Besides, you were innocent. You know they never would’ve acted that way if you’d been kissing a boy in the stairwell.”
My shock had faded enough for me to manage a half smile. “Good point. Honestly, getting caught has its upsides, too. I don’t love that I’m fending for myself now, obviously, but at least I don’t have to hide.”
“Wow. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Me, either. Not at first. But now I’m glad they know about me. I want everyone to know.”
“Hey, do you think we could go back to our pledge?” She met my gaze.
I nodded, my eyes on hers. “Yes. From now on, no more hiding.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Good. Okay. Then I guess I should go ahead and admit…I kind of miss writing to you.”
I laughed, flushing with happiness. I hoped it was too dark for her to notice. “Me, too, but I miss getting your letters back more.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s what I really meant. I always imagined you in a certain way from your letters. In some ways the real you is exactly what I pictured, but you’re totally different at the same time. Being around you—the real you—well, it makes me dizzy sometimes.”
My smile widened. “Should I say I’m sorry, or…?”
“No, no. But I think, now that you’re here, we should do something fun.”
I laughed. “In sinful San Francisco? You want to prove my aunt right?”
She laughed, too. “Want to come see a punk show with me?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I laughed harder
. “Of course I do. I’ve been hoping you’d bring it up.”
“Cool. We can do it the next time you have a night off and there’s an all-ages show. There are always posters up near the bookstore.”
“Could we go see that band you wrote about? The Prudes?”
Sharon dropped her gaze. “I don’t know. They weren’t that great last time I saw them.”
“But you gushed so much about the lead singer. What’s her name? Marge?”
“I, um. I don’t remember. Hey, there’s a new band I heard about, maybe we could see them instead. The Dead Kennedys.”
“Ha. Great name. Bet they’re from Orange County.”
We kept talking. About music, at first, but other things, too. We talked about Carolyn, and about Kevin. We talked about our parents, and how we’d always felt destined to disappoint them. How we knew we were supposed to feel bad about that, but sometimes it was hard.
When we heard Peter come in, we could’ve gone out to see him, but we both instinctively lowered our voices instead. This night was only about the two of us.
I’m thinking a lot since I woke up this morning to the sound of Sharon’s soft snores in the next bed, but I don’t want to write down the rest of what I’m thinking. I don’t want to have to read it later and be disappointed all over again.
But…she broke up with him, Harvey.
Something’s changing. I don’t know what, exactly, but I’m actually starting to have hope.
Yours, Tammy
Monday, June 19, 1978
Dear Tammy,
I was thinking about what we said last night—how we miss writing to each other—and I realized we could start doing it again. It might be kind of strange to write letters to someone who literally sleeps in the same room as you, but no one else has to know we’re doing it. Besides, we can keep the letters short, since we already know what we’ve been doing all day. But just sitting down last night and writing “Dear Tammy” again felt cooler than I’d ever imagined it would.
