Free My Almost Epic Summer by Adele Griffin Page B

can hardly breathe, but I can’t stop watching.
    Once Starla has returned to the point where she started, she pauses. Her breath is shallow. She holds up the key. “D, who took away our Love,” she intones, “Wise and Perfect as a Dove.” She’s quoting her own appalling poetry.
    “Starla, it’s not a crime to break up with someone,” I say. “But you—you’ve robbed this guy’s store, and now you’ve messed up his car. Those are crimes.”
    “You can’t judge me. You’ve never been in love.” Starla reaches over, bringing the point of her key to the underside of my chin, and for a half second I wonder if she’s going to scratch me, too. I don’t speak, I don’t move, even my lungs seemed to have stopped functioning. Starla holds my eye. Then she pockets the key. “When you’re in love, when you want to be with someone so much that you’ll go with that person anywhere, you’ll ride in his car and let him drive you where he wants and let him touch you where he wants and do what he wants and then he has all that . . . information about you, to tell his friends or whatever he wants to do with it—that’s a crime, too, okay?”
    I try to imagine D telling his friends all the secret details of Starla. About where her hidden moles are located and if she’s got bikini rash or bad breath. And while D doesn’t seem to be the type to gossip, I guess that’s not the point.
    “Call it a tie now,” I tell her. “Because now you have information, too. You know who robbed Shady Shack. And you know who messed up his car.”
    She smiles. It’s a sad little-girl smile. “And you know it, too, right? You’re my Witness.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Because if I didn’t have you watching, it’s like it didn’t happen.”
    “It happened, I promise.”
    This seems to relax her. Now she looks around, as if she’s just remembered where she is. “Y’know, every time I put on my Off Duty sign, one of those moms complains. No joke. Every single time. What, I can’t even go to the bathroom?” She wipes her shiny forehead with the back of a hand. “I need a cold drink. Come with me.” She eyes Shady Shack. And I know what she wants to do. She wants to gloat, to waltz and loiter up and down the aisles, stealing looks at D, making him uncomfortable, enjoying her information.
    “Actually, I brought juice pouches,” I say. “Shady Shack’s so overpriced.”
    “Ha, I can get you a discount.” Starla winks.
    I haven’t done anything wrong, of course, but even sharing this laugh with her makes me feel guilty.

Longing and Disappointment
    STARLAMALLOY ’S JOURNAL
    D, there are Rumors that you are Free of Me. I am Happy for you. I want you to be Free. But. Know this: Freedom has its Price.
    A Heart that Beat for you,
    Still Beats with Love
    Without You.
    The poem doesn’t rhyme, and yet it retains the distinct Starla quality of being terrible.
    I log off and pick up Sister Soledad’s note.
     
     
    From: [email protected]
    Dear Irene,
    I’m sorry not to have written you back promptly, but I’ve been a bit down in the dumps. Recently I have learned that Sister Maria Martinez has requested to be reassigned to Sisters of Saint Luciana, a convent right outside Lima, Peru. She has family there, and she leaves in less than two weeks.
    It is impossible to think about this house without Sister Maria inside it. She is the heart and soul and life of the Holy Trinity. She brightens up every room she’s in.
    Don’t be too upset with Whitney’s presumably perfect days at tennis camp, or Britta’s summer in Texas. And don’t be upset that you are resentful. Envy is, alas, a natural condition. I am recommending Tender Is the Night as a story about people who on the surface seem to have everything. It also has those inimitable Jazz Age hairstyles.
    Fondly,
    Sister Soledad
     
    Sister’s S’s note is more personal than I am used to. I never think of Sister S as “down in the dumps.” I’ve never thought about her