Free The Window by Jeanette Ingold

car's four corners, trying to act like we haven't been doing anything unusual, when the patrolman comes to the window. He swings his flashlight around; I see the light when it crosses my eyes.
    "You kids OK?" His voice gets louder, I guess at some indication from Ted. "Everything all right here?"
    "Yes, sir," says Ted.
    But the patrolman says, "Girls?" and waits until both Hannah and I answer.
    "Then you better get on home and get dressed," he says.
    "Yes, sir," says Ted again, and then, once we're driving, we laugh and laugh like we're going to laugh forever. I say, "Ted, he meant us, Hannah and I should get dressed."
    "How do you know?" Ryan asks, and the four of us about die laughing, Ryan the hardest, and Hannah tells Ted to watch the road.

Chapter 11

    H ANNAH AND I wake up in the tent, sometime in the middle of the night. It's cold and damp, and I say, "Hannah, let's go up to my room." We go inside, climb into my big double bed, which is chilly, too, until the sheets warm.
    And then we don't wake up again until Aunt Emma's at the steps, calling that if we're not downstairs within the hour we'll miss lunch.
    "I can't believe we did that, go to town in nightgowns," Hannah says.
    "Me either."
    "My mom would kill me."
    "Aunt Emma, too," I say, even though I don't think she would. "I had fun last night."
    "Me, too." Hannah pauses, and I get the idea she's choosing her next words carefully. "Mandy, don't take this wrong and get all huffy, but I want you to know I really admire you." Her voice takes on a raw edge, like she's suddenly close to tears. "I mean, whatever happens, you just kind of charge forward and deal with it, and I'm not always so good at that."
    There's no way I can imagine she's joking because her voice tells me she's not, and I'm too stunned to answer quickly enough.
    Hannah turns over, and when she speaks again the rawness is gone. "I guess if my folks get a divorce my brother and I will stay with Mom. Dad will probably get us on weekends."
    "Is that what you want?"
    "That's how it's usually done," she says. "Want doesn't come into it."
    "Want doesn't come into it." Gwen's mother's words, and hearing Hannah say them makes the skin on my arms tighten into goose bumps.
    Hannah asks, "Should I pull up another blanket? You shivered."
    "No," and I'm thinking back, trying to remember if I'd told her those words. Maybe they're Texas words, I think, and everyone says them.

    Hannah stays with me through the afternoon, even though she listens every time the phone rings, like she's hoping it's for her. We both know things must be really weird at her house if her mother's not calling her to come home.
    Hannah opens my bedroom window. "Mandy, have you seen Gwen anymore?"
    "No," I say, guilty because I'm lying but still not wanting to tell her about the last time.
    "Come try," Hannah urges until I stand next to her. "Call," she says, insistent in a way that's not like her.
    "Gwen," I yell, feeling stupid, "Gwen."
    I tell Hannah, "This isn't how it works."
    "You mean Gwen won't let me see her," Hannah says, jerking me inside and pulling down the window.
    Pulling it down on the voice in the wind.
    She hasn't heard, but I have. Little Abe is calling Gwen.

    In the evening, when I'm alone again, I go back to the window. To reach out to Gwen, or to wait for her to let me go to her. I've stopped knowing which way it is.
    I find her summer has turned into a chill December, and her house has become a house of careful, small moments....

    Gwen wandered through the rooms, touching this, looking at that, as if she was trying to memorize things.
    Abe came in from outside, dropping his coat in the hall.
    "Want to go play a game?" he asked.
    Gwen swooped him up and hugged him so tightly he said, "Let me down, you're hurting."
    Then she went up to the attic, to her room. She ran her hand along a shell pink wall and starched lace curtain. Looked across the stretching fields, already rented out now that her father was gone.
    She opened