She was right. The three of us did talk about it often. I wasn’t sure why I was being so defensive. They stared at me, at my silence.
“I think we talked about it all the time because we weren’t really serious about any of the boys. It was something abstract.”
“Huh?” Lana said. “Return to English.” She tugged on her earlobe.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that when you like someone, I mean really like him, you feel different about discussing the intimate details, even with your best friends. Does that make any sense?”
They just looked at me.
“No,” Lana finally declared. “It doesn’t. We’ve shared things we wouldn’t tell our own mothers. Nothing is sacred when you have a real friend, and I thought we were all real friends.”
“We are! I don’t know, maybe I’m just embarrassed about my feelings right now. Maybe I’m surprised at myself.”
“That’s too deep for me,” Suzette said. She rose and began washing her dish and glass.
“He’s going to hurt you, you know,” Lana said. “Boys like Kane can ruin you if you’re not careful.”
“Stop it, Lana,” Suzette said. “You don’t know that. You sound jealous.”
“I’m just trying to give her some advice. She doesn’t have anyone else but us,” she whined. She was trying to defend herself, but her remark was like a dart thrown into the center of my heart.
They had mothers to confide in if they needed to. I didn’t. That was what she meant about my not having anyone else but them.
“I mean . . .”
“Oh, shut up,” Suzette said. She turned back to me. “Where’s he taking you for dinner?” she asked, anxious to get us all off the topic.
“The River House.”
“Wow.”
“He can afford it if anyone can,” Lana said. “I’ve never been there. My father won’t spend the money.” Now she did sound a little jealous.
“What are you going to wear?” Suzette asked.
Her question brought relief. I stood up quickly.
“Something of my mother’s. Come on up to my room. I just brought it inside from airing out. It’s been in a closet for . . . a long time. I’ll show you,” I said, and we were back to being best friends.
They both thought I looked beautiful in the dress.
“Everyone says your mother was beautiful, too,” Lana offered as a way of recovering for her remark in the kitchen.
Afterward, we sat around talking about different fashions, clothes other girls wore at school. They both went on about the boys they liked, but each admitted she didn’t see herself getting too serious with any of them. At least, not the way I seemed to be getting serious with Kane. Our conversation ran on to upcoming parties and events, how we were all going to spend our Christmas holidays, and hopes for some sort of “real” New Year’s Eve party.
At some moment during our chatter, I found myself drifting off and thinking about Christopher and Cathy and how these kinds of conversations and plans were things they could only imagine. If they really were up in that attic for more than three years, they missed the heart of their best young years, having boyfriends and girlfriends, going to parties, just hanging out, and having endless phone calls.
How could their own mother permit that to happen, permit them to miss these years, these experiences? How did she think they would turn out? Why did she let it go on and on so long? Didn’t she realize that they would be socially immature the first day they returned to the world? It would be like coming up out of a coal mine and into the light of day. They would be blind for a while.
Suzette was the first to realize I was off somewhere else and suggested that she and Lana leave. “We can tell when someone is dreaming of what’s to come.”
“No, I . . .”
“You want to be fresh for your date,” she said. “Do what my mother does. Lie down with pieces of cucumber over your eyes.”
“Ugh,” Lana said. “How smelly.”
“You bathe or shower afterward, dummy,” Suzette said, and we left my room.