Chapter 11

Darry came into my room Tuesday morning to get me. I hadn't said much during dinner the night before, and no one had really spoken to me. Darry mustn't have told them about what had happened because everyone seemed pretty clueless about the whole thing.

So the next morning he brought me into the kitchen for breakfast, only he mentioned nothing about eating.

"I want to talk to you," he said, and picked me up to stand me on a chair. I thought that this was a little strange, because whenever Darry talked to me, whether it was to yell at me or just to casually mention something, he looked down to me. Now on the chair I was pretty much looking him in the eye.

"I talked to Kathy's parents last night," he said, holding my arms in his big hands. "They aren't going to tell your principal about what you did, but I told them that you weren't going to be around Kathy anymore."

I nodded. I didn't really want to be around her ever again anyway. I never wanted to see her again.

"Look Lily," he said, his voice sounding a little deeper. "I know what your friend said upset you, but you can't do anything like this again. Kathy's parents threatened to call the police about this. I don't think that they would ever actually do that, and I don't think much could come of charging a little kid for hitting another kid, but you have to understand that we have to be careful about things right now. The last thing any of us need right now is the fuzz coming in and deciding that this isn't a good place for you guys to live."

I felt tears coming to my eyes, and couldn't help but feel responsible for everything. If only I hadn't hit her, then we wouldn't have to worry about getting taken away. If that happened, it would be all my fault.

"Now don't cry," Darry said sternly. "Nobody's gonna do anything right now. I just want you to be careful, and think before you do things. You can do that, right?"

I nodded yes, and sniffled.

"Okay." He lifted me down to the floor. "Go on and get ready for school."

I hesitated for a second, deciding on something that I had wanted to ask since I ran away from Kathy the day before.

"Darry?"

"Yeah?"

"Did," I started, unsure of how to put things, "well, when you talked to Kathy's, I mean, what did they say about her?"

He raised an eyebrow, obviously not understanding what I was asking.

"How bad did Kathy get hurt?" I asked quickly, ashamed to be wondering such a thing.

I saw his jaw tighten, and then he looked away from me as he replied, "You gave her a nose bleed."

"Really!" I squealed in delight.

"Hey now," he said carefully. "What did we just talk about?"

"I know," I said, but really I was a little pleased with myself. My first punch, and already I was making somebody's nose bleed. Heck, if I was that good already, I would probably be able to beat up boys one day.

As I left the kitchen I slowed around the corner and peeked back through the doorway. I wanted to see how mad Darry seemed at my reaction to learning about how bad Kathy was, but I what I saw surprised me. He was smiling! For the first time in a while, Darry was smiling. And at something I had done. It was almost enough to make me happy about having to go to school.

My second day in Mrs. Fitzsimmons class was about as fun as the first day. She had me do the blackboards again at recess, and asked me to correct math tests this time. I was actually glad to be in her room, because as much as I hated to admit it, I was scared out of my mind to have to face Kathy. By the end of the day, as I made my way to gather my things up and head home again, Mary Alice met up with me. I had been running a bit late that morning and didn't see her at all, but now she was full of questions for me.

"Did you really knock her out?" she asked in wonder, grabbing her bag and standing next to me.

"What?" I asked, almost laughing. "You mean Kathy?"

"Yeah! Everybody was talking about it. And I wasn't even there to see. So you really beat her up, huh?"

"No!" I walked alongside her. "I barely even punched her, and then I ran away right after I did it. Didn't even get a chance to see for myself how bad it was." I would have exaggerated the story to anyone else who wanted to know, but I felt comfortable enough with Mary Alice to tell her the truth.

"Well everybody's saying she fell down and passed out. At first I didn't believe it, I mean, why would you hit Kathy?"

"She called me a greaser," I said, knowing that Mary Alice might understand what I felt. Her parents came from the same background that we did, and had had her when they were still teenagers. They were a few years older than Darry, but still fell into a "greaser" type category. It was funny though, because I had never really thought of her family as greasers. Maybe their clothes looked like it, and her dad slicked his hair back just like my brothers did, but compared to them even Darry looked like a thug.

"I heard that she called you that after. You know who I saw after school?"

"Who?"

"Tommy."

"Tommy Hollis?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Him and his friends heard that you punched Kathy 'cause she called you a no good, dirty rotten greaser."

I didn't try to tell her that that wasn't really what she had called me. It was better if Kathy looked like the bad guy in all of this.

"How did Tommy find out?" I asked. I thought it was pretty great that he knew, and he didn't even go to my school!

"All the kids 'round us know about it," she said, like I should have known. "Even my sister heard, and she hasn't started school yet. You know what else?"

"What?" I asked as we stepped outside.

"Kathy's mom called my house and talked to my mom last night. She told her that Kathy's not allowed to play with me anymore."

"What did your mom say?" It was one thing for a kid to say to another kid that they couldn't be friends anymore, but when a parent called up another parent to say so, it was just insulting.

"She had a bird when she heard it. She told Kathy's mom that I never did anything wrong and that if anything she should be telling me to say away from her. She even talked about you. Said that you had every right to hit Kathy for being so mean to you, and if she had seen you hit her she wouldn't have said anything about it because she deserved it so much."

"Really?" I asked. "She said that?"

She nodded profusely. "Oh sure. I've never seen her that mad before! I thought she was gonna break the phone she was yelling so loud!"

I couldn't believe it. Not only had her mother defended me, but she actually seemed to care about me. And Mary Alice didn't even seem upset that I had hit Kathy, who was her best friend too. Rather, she was her best friend. Now though, I guessed that it was just going to be Mary Alice and I, no third party. But really, that didn't upset me. I was actually a little relieved to know that Kathy wasn't going to be around anymore.

"You know Kathy didn't even come to school today?" Mary Alice informed me. "I bet she was being a baby about getting punched."

As we passed by the same area of the fence where everything had happened between Kathy and I the day before, I suddenly remembered something.

"I saw you take that makeup from the store!" Kathy had said. Now I wondered how many people besides me had heard her. Maybe they wouldn't understand what she had meant by it, or maybe she was going to tell on me. Darry had just spoken to me about being careful about the things I was doing lately. What if someone told him that I had done it? Or what if the police heard somehow? Would they come after me? I hadn't even touched the lipstick and blush since I had hidden it in my drawer I was so scared of getting caught with it.

"You want to come over and play?" Mary Alice asked. It didn't seem like she had heard anything about my stealing the makeup, and if anyone had heard about it, it would have been her.

"I can't," I answered her question. "I'm grounded."

"Still?" she asked.

"Yeah. I thought you were too."

"Well I am, but my mom got so tired of having me in the house that I'm not even allowed inside now until supper. I'm supposed to get inside just before my dad gets home so that he doesn't know that she's letting me outside. Why don't you come over? Darry won't get home until the same time my dad does anyway. That's at least an hour."

I seriously considered staying out with her, but decided against it. I didn't need Darry catching me out there, and even if he did understand how I felt about the whole thing with Kathy he was starting to get pretty fed up with me for everything else. Instead of going over to play with Mary Alice I went home, and went straight into my bedroom.

I didn't want to touch the makeup, but with nothing else to occupy me I couldn't help but feel like I should take it out and at least look at it. It was a big mistake to do that though, because the second I had it out of my drawer I wanted to try it on. At first I told myself that if I never used it then it wouldn't really count as stealing, but when you've got something you know you aren't supposed to have in front of you, and no one is around to stop you from using it, it's nearly impossible to resist.

I felt almost grown up as I put the lipstick on, and import too, like I had someplace special to go. The blush was a little bit harder to put on, seeing as I didn't have a brush to apply it with. Right away I cursed myself for not taking a brush too, but then realized what I had just thought. I felt so frustrated with myself for thinking that I should have stolen something, and angrily rubbed my fingers in the blush pallet and then furiously wiped them across my cheeks.

Satisfied that I had put enough on, I closed up the cases and put them back in my drawer. Now the only thing to do was get myself into the bathroom to see what I looked like. That was a pretty easy task, seeing as I was the only one home. I shut the bathroom door behind me just in case, and climbed up on a stood to look at myself in the mirror.

There is a reason children shouldn't be allowed to put their own makeup on, and I was looking at it. First of all, my application of the blush made my cheeks look lopsided. When Meg had put it on for me I could hardly tell that there was any. Now though, there were obvious streaks from where my fingers had brushed across the skin. Also, the blush was up about three inches higher on one side than it was on the other. I tried pushing each side up with my palms, but the only thing it did was push the colour right into my cheek line. The steaks were still there, and it didn't look anything like I had pictured it.

My lipstick was a completely different story. I guess I had overestimated the size of my lips because I had drawn the colour way outside of my lip line. It was possibly the most crooked lip stick job I had ever seen as well, and didn't exactly flatter the shape of my mouth.

Despite the slight overdraw of colour though, I thought I looked pretty good. Definitely a little older than normal. I took some tissue and tried to clean up the feathering a bit, but the leftover stain sort of made it look like I had chapped lips. Other than that I thought I could pass for eleven, maybe even twelve.

I was busy admiring how nice I looked when the bathroom door flew open and Soda walked in.

"Oh jeeze!" he cried. "Sorry! I didn't know you were in here." He was about to leave, but when he realized that I wasn't going to the bathroom he stayed. I noticed the way that he was eyeing me, like there was something strange, and looked away when I realized what it was.

"What's on your face?" he asked, like I had a disease or something.

"Nothing!" I lied, and turned to look at myself in the mirror. Unlike the first time I had makeup on, it was definitely obvious that I was wearing it.

"Are you wearing lipstick?" he asked, coming closer to me.

"No!" I turned my face towards the bathtub, wishing that he would just leave me alone.

He popped his head up in front of me laughed.

"Alright," he said, turning my face so that I was looking at him through the mirror. "Lily, how is this stuff on your face not makeup?"

"It's not!" I assured him. "It's just, um, face paint, from, art. We did face painting today."

"Oh yeah? Thought you were suspended."

"I, I was. But with grade ones, and they did face painting. Don't you remember, everybody does face painting in grade one."

"Really? Because when I was there we were aloud to paint paper, and only paper."

"Oh, you must be getting old then."

"Ha, ha," he pretended to laugh. "You know I get around. I have seen makeup before, and I know the difference between paint and blush."

"Oh."

"Where'd you get this?"

"Mary Alice's mom let me borrow some," I lied. I knew that she wore makeup, and lucky for me, he didn't ask anything else about it. He did have more to say though.

"I told you a couple of days ago that you're too young for this stuff."

"I'm just trying it on."

He laughed, like he wasn't really upset that I was wearing it. "I still think you look cute without it," he added, and then left me to wash it off.

I thought about what he said. I guess it was supposed to be a compliment that he thought I was cute, but cute was for babies. I wished that he had told me I looked prettier with out it, or even just nice, but cute was something you called a five-year-old. If I looked cute and little without it, then maybe I would look pretty and grown up with it.

I still felt bad for taking the stuff, but it was too late to take back. For a while I considered throwing it out just to get rid of it, but there was no use it that. Why would I steal something and then not use it? It was probably better that I got everything out of it that I could, especially since I could have been found out at any minute if Kathy's blabbing got too out of hand.

One thing I will say for whatever company it was that I had was that it was definitely the long-lasting type of cosmetic. After applying water to the lipstick it seemed to make it stick to my skin even worse, while the blush just stayed there, looking dark as ever. Soap helped a little bit, but only by spreading the colours around and making me look like I had scarlet fever.

I couldn't spend much time trying to clean myself up though, because I had to get back into my room before Darry got home. I managed to shut my door just as he came in through the front, and even he had seen me out there, he didn't say anything about it later on.

My fears of facing Kathy the next day were luckily given an extra time to wait. Because she had missed a day of school she had to serve her suspension still, and so she didn't end up in our classroom until the next day. What kept me from facing her on Thursday was the fact that our desks were all the way across the classroom. She, Mary Alice, and I had talked so much at the beginning of the year that our teacher sat us at opposite corners of the room, so thankfully I didn't even have to look at her. I avoided her all through recess, as I'm sure she did me. I wasn't about to apologize for hitting her, and I knew all along that she had no plans to make up with me for the way she had spoken.

By Friday evening Darry decided to let me out of my room. He told me it was because I was only wasting time sitting in there when I could have been doing something "productive". I don't think that was really it though. I think I had actually begun to drive him crazy with my moping around the house all the time, looking like I felt sorry for myself. By the time Saturday morning rolled around things even started to feel slightly normal again. Nobody seemed to be angry and frustrated with me anymore, and even if Kathy was no longer my best friend, I didn't miss her. I was able to go out and play with Mary Alice again, and was extremely thankful for that time I had out with her, because for the first time in over a week, I was able to stop thinking about all of the problems in my life and just have fun for a while.