‘I know you can’t stay here forever,’ Juanita says. ‘But maybe you should stay put until Johnny is out and can explain everything to his friends. And to give Betty more time, too.’
‘You mean not see Johnny?’ Diane asks, stricken. ‘He’ll be out tomorrow and I can’t see him?’ Her voice is laced with panic.
‘You’ll see him soon,’ Sunny reassures her.
‘Maybe you could bring him here,’ Diane says. She bites her bottom lip.
Connie shakes her head emphatically. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That would be too risky. I don’t think Johnny should even know you’re here. The cops know Evie and Diane live in this neighborhood. They’re bound to be casing it right now, looking for them. We’re risking a lot just being here together. Tomorrow we act normal, go to school, act like we don’t know anything. Then we wait for Johnny to explain everything to his friends and for Betty to win her daddy over.’
‘It’s not exactly normal for you to go to school,’ Sunny says, arching an eyebrow. Connie kicks at Sunny’s foot with her own, but in a good-natured way.
‘That’s true,’ Connie admits, ‘but I’m willing to make a sacrifice for the good of the cause.’
At this we all allow ourselves a giggle, and Diane lays herself out on her back and stares at the ceiling, losing herself in her own thoughts. It’s still for a minute. Soon, all I can hear is the rush of the cars on Telephone Road, not far away from us.
‘Diane, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how do you get such gorgeous skin?’ a tipsy Sunny asks at last, peering over at her. ‘I mean, I’ve tried every scrub and wash, and my complexion never looks as lovely as yours. Do you use Pond’s?’
Diane gazes over at Sunny with a soft smile. ‘Well, a few times a week I get a big bowl of the hottest water I can find, and I put my face over it and a towel over my head. Like a little steam bath for my face, I guess.’
Sunny’s eyes open wide at this apparently miraculous revelation. ‘Of course,’ she says, her voice a reverent whisper. ‘Diane, you’re an absolute genius.’
Diane starts laughing first, loud and loose. She sits up and keeps laughing, and soon we’re all joining her, except for Sunny, who cheerfully protests that such a beauty tip is evidence of a very high IQ.
A good, warm feeling spreads over me, and it’s not just the Old Crow. I feel like I could sit here like this forever with my friends.
At last we settle down, and Diane draws her knees up to her chin. She looks around at all of us.
‘I want to tell y’all something I’ve been keeping a secret,’ she says, offering me a meaningful glance. I know what Diane is about to share, of course, and there’s warmth in my heart, knowing that she feels she can share it.
‘My heart can’t take much more excitement,’ Connie mutters, making light of Diane’s comment. She doesn’t know what Diane’s about to admit, even if I do.
‘What is it?’ Sunny asks, her expression curious. ‘Is it about Johnny?’
Diane crosses her legs, motions for the bottle. After another sip – this time not so ladylike – she says, ‘I wanted to tell y’all this because … you’ve become … my friends. I know we’ve only known each other for a little while, barely a week. But until I met all of you, I didn’t know if I’d ever have another friend again in my life. Honest.’
I glance at Juanita, whose brow is furrowed and curious. Connie, usually eager to joke, is now staring at Diane suspiciously as Diane reaches up and tugs on a loose strand of auburn hair, takes a deep breath. My heart swells. I know how hard this must be for Diane to say out loud.
‘I’m glad you’re our friend,’ offers Sunny. ‘I mean it.’
‘Me too,’ says Juanita.
‘Same here, but get on with it,’ says Connie, reaching for a Salem. ‘You’re killing us.’
Diane glances at me again, maybe looking for a vote of confidence. I try to give it to her with a nod and a smile I hope reads as reassuring. You can trust them. You can trust us. Slowly, her voice quieter than normal, Diane unfolds the reason she got sent away to Dallas. She talks about the suffocating home and the boredom and the way she couldn’t write a single letter to Johnny to tell him what was happening to her. Her voice is almost a whisper, but it’s laced with confidence that comes from telling a story for the second time and from knowing – she has to know – how much the people listening are on her side. Not on her parents’ side. And not on the side of a world that tells a girl that just because she got pregnant she has to be hidden away like the worst sort of criminal.
She’s among real friends.
Diane speaks, her voice growing louder as she does. More sure of itself. When she finishes, all of us are quiet. I reach out, put my hand on Diane’s back. Leave it there for a beat or two.
At last Connie says something. ‘There was a girl up in Gainesville who’d been sent away like that,’ she tells us, frowning at the memory. ‘She was real messed up over it, and when she got back home, she started pulling stupid stunts, getting in trouble with the fuzz. She told me she was sent away because she was sent away, if that makes any sense.’ She pauses, glances at Diane and then adds, ‘She missed her baby real bad.’
We peer at Diane for her reaction.
‘I think I know how she must feel,’ she says at last.
‘I’m really sorry that happened to you,’ says Sunny, and I can see her eyes are glossed over with tears about to spill. ‘You didn’t deserve that, Diane. No girl does.’
‘Nobody stood up for you?’ Juanita asks, confused. ‘Not even Betty?’
Diane shakes her head. ‘No, but she says now she feels sorry for it. I believe her. But at first, no. And it hurt.’
Sunny frowns. ‘Well, all I know is that if that ever happened to one of us, we would stand up for each other, wouldn’t we?’ She looks around at all of us, ready to take inventory of our answers.
‘Of course we would,’ says Connie, not giving the rest of us a chance to open our mouths. ‘We all would.’ Then, a moment later, she says, ‘My brother still doesn’t know, does he?’
Diane shakes her head slowly, sadly. ‘He doesn’t.’ She takes a deep breath and looks up at all of us, suddenly gripped with a new concern. ‘Please, let me be the one to tell him? Okay? Once he’s out? I want him to hear it from me.’
We nod, and Connie stares all of us down. ‘You heard her,’ she says, giving us her best leader-in-charge voice. ‘Not a word until she says so.’
I can’t help but grin a tiny bit to myself when I think about how just a few days ago Connie wanted nothing to do with Diane Farris. Now she’s acting like her fiercest protector. But with Connie, nothing is ever an act. In her own brash and violent way, Connie Treadway is the most sincere girl I know.
‘Thanks, all of you,’ says Diane. ‘But now I need some more of that whiskey. Pass it over.’
It’s not long until our cheeks start to burn and everything we say seems silly. The edges of the day blur at last, and we allow ourselves a little bit of an escape. Just us. Friends. Girls against the whole wide world.