Pg. 5

Aaron and I would talk still, for a while longer. And although he had kissed her, although she had run away, he would never talk about Nor anymore.

He'd ask me, instead, what I did with myself. He knew there was nothing, that I did nothing that did not involve him or Nor. I would make up stories, stories about other friends I had made, a happy girl to whom people flocked, just to feel better about themselves.

A while after he kissed Nor, he started the games again.

One night, while hiding in an alley on the edge of the woods, he used his hands to do things that were not kissing. While he did this, he told me about his new friends, the ones that he liked to be seen with during the day and into the gloaming. The friends he left when I came around, because he didn't want anyone to know about our games.

"Porter likes to set fires. He set one yesterday and left one of my books near it. They all thought it was me. My mother near on tanned me bare." Here he lifted his shirt so I could see the marks, dark streaks, some tinged with faint tracks of blood.

I hated looking at the marks, but loved that it distracted his from hands from my skirt, where they were kneading and bunching but not actually doing anything. He had ruined so many of my skirts that way.

"Why would you play with people who cause trouble for you?"

"You cause absolutely no trouble for me at all, Cyn." He would do that, make up names for me that sounded dangerous or interesting. Mine wasn't. But he liked to feel like it was, like I was. It made him feel I was worth playing with.

"Not me, Aaron. Those boys. Everyone knows who they are, those boys. Everyone knows they're the ones who tore up the funeral field last summer and everyone knows they're the ones who stole that man's horse last month, and everyone knows --"

"That I'm one of them?"

"You're not, Aaron."

"I'm no good, haven't you heard?"

And of course, I laughed. What he meant was that everyone would tell him, over and over again, that he wasn't any good, that his brothers and sisters had all or would all amount to something. That he wouldn't. And instead of being bothered by it, he embraced it. He ran to those boys, the ones that revelled in being ignored like dirty secrets. He wanted to be a dirty secret, too.

"You're laughing, Cynda, but you know I'm right," He reached for me, it was time to play again. "You know I'm right, and you like it." He began not kissing me, and a light went on in my parents' house. He pulled me further into the shadows.

"Aaron, girl, I know you're there," It was my father. Of course he knew we were there, if he thought about it hard enough he'd know what we were doing, too. Aaron cringed, as though he could read my thoughts.

"Aaron, your mother is looking for you." He closed the door and the light disappeared. Aaron pulled me into the shadows, closer to the woods, and I froze. He seemed to like me freezing, and grabbed my hands for one last round. Then he shuddered and patted my head before running off across the village in the direction of his home.

I closed my eyes and listened closely. I could hear his mother screeching in the distance, and the firm slap as she hit him squarely with something large and flat.

Aaron never made a sound.