Free What We Knew by Barbara Stewart

When we got to the play area with the rocket slide, I tugged Lisa’s shirt to slow down. I started to apologize, but she cut me off.
    “Save it,” she growled. She stuck her head under the towel to talk with Katie. “You can come out now,” she said gently. Katie’s eyes were red from crying. Her breath escaped in uneven bursts.
    “Stupid scummy slimeball jerks,” Lisa muttered, doing her best not to curse in front of Katie.
    Then the sky opened up, pelting the hot asphalt with warm summer rain. A low rumble rippled across the park. Two seconds later, the air horn sounded. Everybody out of the pool.
    “Good,” Lisa said, finally smiling. “I hope those lowlifes get struck by lightning.”
    I’d always known Lisa was fiercely protective. Once she’d yelled in our math teacher’s face to defend me after he accused me of cheating. I hadn’t. I’d just studied really hard—all weekend, at the diner with Lisa. Her reaction today made me wonder what she would have done to the jerk from Troy.
    If I’d told her.
    Why hadn’t I told her?
    I’d skulked home that day feeling shivery and brittle, thinking everybody looking at me knew, like what had happened was as visible as a big black eye.
    We waited out the storm in the Snack Shack, and then we cheered Katie with a trip to the big-box drugstore they tore down all those houses to build. She loves that place. Actually, Lisa and I love that place, too. I hate running errands for my mom, but I never complain when she sends me down there. It’s in a crummy part of town, but as soon as those sliding glass doors part, you could be anywhere. That day: Alaska. A blast of frigid air turned my skin to goose bumps. I checked my reflection in the giant round mirror in the ceiling and made a beeline for cosmetics.
    “I look like a quarterback,” I said, wiping the black smudges from under my eyes.
    “Cotton Candy Frenzy?” Lisa asked, spritzing my wrist.
    I sniffed. “Nice,” I said. “If you want to attract clowns and carnies.”
    I moved down the aisle toward the lipsticks. Uncapping a tester, I asked Lisa if she liked the color. She shrugged. “Not on you.” I drew a stripe on the back of my hand. Too dark.
    “These are your shades,” she said, gathering a handful of tubes and pots.
    After she did my makeup, we wandered over to the magazines and browsed fall fashions. It’s hard to get excited about boots and sweaters when it’s ninety degrees. Everything looked binding and itchy. End-of-summer colors did nothing for me either: brown and ocher and maple leaf.
    “I’m getting these,” Katie said, running up with a pair of kiwi-green eyelashes.
    “Where’d you get money?” Lisa asked.
    “Mom.”
    “Buy me something, too?” Lisa pleaded
    Katie counted her bills. “What do you want?”
    Lisa came back with a bottle of pearly nail polish.
    “Okay,” Katie said. “I owe you for sticking up for me. Even if we are banned from the pool.”
    “We’re not banned,” Lisa said. “And you don’t owe me. He had no right to touch you.”
    “Pervert,” Katie said. “We should tie him up in the woods. Sacrifice him to Banana Man.”
    “That kid’s not a pervert,” Lisa said. “Just a horndog. Please don’t make me explain the difference.” She turned Katie by the shoulders and sent her toward the registers. “Go pay.”
    “I never should’ve told her he’s real,” Lisa whispered. “It’s all she talks about.”
    It’s all you talk about, I thought. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and say Wake up. You’re not a little kid. Monsters don’t exist. Instead I said, “You didn’t tell her about the eye, did you?”
    She picked up a box of hair color and put it back down. “I’m not stupid.”
    “Doesn’t she wonder why you’re sleeping in her room?”
    “I told her my room’s too hot. It’s true. She’s got the better fan.”
    I knew it was the wrong time to bring it up, but I told Lisa that my mom wanted her to stay over Friday