Free One Heart by Jane Mccafferty Page B

gentlemen, I’ll cry for the rest of my life.” But of course nobody in their right mind makes such a choice. Not usually. You slam on the brakes, thinking you’ll save yourself. You won’t make a show. You’ll be strong. Ivy sat beside me, her head down. I felt her look at me several times with her side vision. Her hands trembled. What she digested, I never knew.
    After that night in her cabin, Raelene would sneak out of her cabin sometimes and sit with me, out on the back stoop of the house. The end of May. A number of the summer campers hadn’t even come up yet, just the ones from certain private schools that let out early.
    Raelene didn’t make too many inroads with the other counselors. They’d asked her, “Where do you go?” Meaning what college. She just looked at them, not understanding the question. They said, “What college?” and she said, “Not sure, maybe next year I’ll go somewhere.” Well, that would’ve marked her an Ada the Fringer in their book. If they hadn’t already decided that.
    She was glad for my company out there on that stoop. My reading stoop, as I called it. Ivy would poke her head out the window and say, “Do you think this is right?” or sometimes, “Keep it down, ladies.” Because we would be laughing and talking and drinking beer. “Come join us, Ivy,” we’d say sometimes, but Ivy felt left out anyway and always said, “I got too much to do, maybe some other time.”
    One night out on the stoop on the first of June after it had rained all day and the kids were all wild banshees doing indoor arts and crafts and Raelene was feeling restless, Raelene said, “You ever want to leave here and go someplace else? I mean someplace that’s not a camp ?”
    I really hadn’t given much thought to that. But I said to her, “Hell yes.”
    â€œMaybe you and me can get some bus tickets. Remember Hambone? The friend I mentioned? He’s like a guy I can trust. We could visit him.”
    â€œHe’s like a guy you can trust,” I said. I liked to tease her about the way she talked. She never minded.
    â€œYeah,” she said, “He’s like that.”
    â€œI don’t know Hambone from Adam,” I said.
    But I was already seeing myself flying through the country.
    You might not want to put yourself on a Greyhound when you’re almost forty-eight. Unless the trip’s short. The destination particular. Don’t just get on the bus with a young girl like Raelene. Buy a train ticket if you need to get away. Don’t let a girl tell you, “We can just waitress our way across the United States!”
    â€œYou waitress, I’ll sit on my hind quarters and watch, honey,” I told Raelene. She gave me one of her smiles.
    And I was already on the bus. I have to say at first it thrilled me, just looking out the window. I didn’t expect it to feel so good. I put my head against the windowpane and felt the vibration of the bus. I watched the land open up, the sky get bigger. I got off and on the bus with Raelene, the tour guide. Greasy spoons were palaces to Raelene. “Look, Gladys! Real genuine midwest coffee cups!” Whatever that meant. We got off and spent one night in a motel called The Wayfarer in Indiana. That was also a palace for Raelene. “Look at these great little soaps! They’re so cute!”
    Of course on the bus I was putting up with the usual Greyhounders. Half had just escaped from the nut-house. A man named Albert across the aisle never shut his mouth. I had to hear his couthless stories. He would look across the aisle and say, “Your arsehole gettin’ sore?” He didn’t understand when I ignored him. “I said your arsehole gettin’ sore yet?” he’d say. And when I still didn’t answer he’d say, “Blessed are the bus riders, for they shall inherit sore