Free Things I’ll Never Say by Ann Angel Page B

Maynard’s pretty mother, opened the door.
    We couldn’t hear what they said, but we could see the surprise on Harriet’s face and the sudden, frantic effort Ruthie made to close her coat over the purple ruffles of her PJs. When Maynard was called to the door, he and his mother both looked at their visitor with a mix of confusion and pity. After a brief conversation, Ruthie dropped the overstuffed guitar pillow she’d carried to the door and turned to face the Ferrari. “Momma!” She ran from the curb, her face clenched tight like a fist, fighting tears. “Momma!”
    Mrs. Kepner was out of the car, just opening her arms, when the bicyclist came around the corner. The rest of us, behind the fence, saw it all — the way Mrs. Kepner fell to her knees when the bike and Ruthie collided. The way Ruthie landed on the sidewalk like a floppy rag doll. Sue Racine stood frozen, one hand over her mouth. Some of the other girls screamed. And me? I kept hoping that Ruthie would stand up like she had when she’d fallen down with the groceries, that she’d wiggle her toes and arms at us. “See? I’m fine.”
    She didn’t, of course. In fact, when the mechanic and the cyclist finally helped her to sit up, it was clear from the way her right elbow angled out like a broken wing that Ruthie wouldn’t be “fine” for quite some time. It was a whole week before she came back to school. And even then, she couldn’t write letters or work math problems on account of the cast on her arm. Sue Racine said we all had to sign it, that we needed to be extra nice to Ruthie so she wouldn’t tell what we’d done.
    We needn’t have worried, though. Ruthie told everyone that she’d made a mistake and gone to the wrong house. She let the adults suppose that, just like always, the joke was on her. But even as she saved us from blame and worse, the victim of our cruelty, the naive butt of our constant, merciless teasing, had clearly decided to punish us in her own way. Ruthie, you see, never spoke to Sue or the others again. She never looked at them hopefully when we chose up teams in gym. She never laughed when Sue’s best friend did her imitation of our math teacher, sleazy Slater. And she never asked any of them to add their signatures to those of the social outcasts who covered her plaster arm with hearts and
X
s and
O
s. In fact, there was only one member of our group exempted from this silent treatment, only one person whose favor she still curried. Only one she asked to sign her cast:
    â€œI know you didn’t have nothin’ to do with that mean trick,” she told me, handing me a fat pink marker. “I know you was helping your mom with her dinner party.” So I was shamed into signing a noncommittal, dashed-off “Get well soon” on the cast. I continued, just as before, to be the reluctant object of all Ruthie’s lavish overtures, her confidences, her persistent attempts at intimacy. And because she wouldn’t be carrying groceries anytime soon, Ruthie and Mrs. Kepner almost never took a shopping trip without me. Which is why, when her mother and that mechanic finally got married and decided to move back South, it was only me, out of all the kids in school, who Ruthie promised to write to.
    They left town right after the school year ended. And good as her word, Ruthie sent me three letters the first week. Two the second. And one a week for three months after that. I thought about writing her back, but something always stopped me. It wasn’t just that popular kids didn’t write someone like Ruthie. After all, no one would have known if I’d slipped her a note now and then, if I’d responded to her enthusiasms about the house they found with a stable right next door, about skinny-dipping in their neighbor’s creek, and finally about her new school. I never answered those letters, though, never wrote her a single