The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [39]
“You can’t hide with me,” I hissed at him. “You’re supposed to find your own place.”
“It’s too late,” he said. “He’s almost done counting.”
Billy crawled inside. The shed was tiny, with barely enough room for one person to fit in crouched over. I wasn’t about to say so, but being that close to Billy scared me. “It’s too crowded!” I whispered. “You gotta leave.”
“No,” Billy said. “We can fit.” He rearranged his legs so they were pressed up against mine. We were so close I could feel his breath on my face.
“It’s too crowded,” I said again. “And you’re breathing on me.”
He pretended not to hear me. “You know what they do in the Green Lantern, don’t you?” he asked.
I could hear the muffled shouts of the other kids being chased by the boy who was It. I wished I hadn’t chosen such a good hiding place. “Sure,” I said.
“What?”
“The women are nice to the men.”
“But what do they do?” He paused. “See, you don’t know.”
“I do,” I said.
“Want me to tell you?”
“I want you to find your own hiding place.”
“They start by kissing,” he said. “Ever kissed anyone?”
In the narrow rays of light that shot through the gaps in the sides of the shed, I could see the rings of dirt around his skinny neck. “Of course I have. Lots of times.”
“Who?”
“My dad.”
“Your dad doesn’t count. Someone not in your family. And with your eyes closed. It doesn’t count unless your eyes are closed.”
I told Billy that was about the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. If your eyes were closed, you couldn’t see who you were kissing.
Billy said there was an awful lot about men and women I didn’t know. He said some men stuck knives into women while they were kissing them, especially if the women were being mean and didn’t want to be kissed. But he told me he’d never do that to me. He put his face up next to mine.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“No way,” I said.
Billy smushed his face against mine, then grabbed my hair and made my head bend sideways and stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was slimy and disgusting, but when I tried to pull away, he pushed in toward me. The more I pulled, the more he pushed, until he was on top of me and I felt his fingers tugging at my shorts. His other hand was unbuttoning his own pants. To stop him, I put my hand down there, and when I touched it, I knew what it was, even though I had never touched one before.
I couldn’t knee him in the groin like Dad had told me to if a guy jumped on me, because my knees were outside his legs, so I bit him hard on the ear. It must have hurt, because he yelled and hit me in the face. Blood started gushing out of my nose.
The other kids heard the ruckus and came running. One of them opened the shed door, and Billy and I scrambled out, pulling on our clothes.
“I kissed Jeannette!” Billy yelled.
“Did not!” I said. “He’s a liar! We just got into a fight, that’s all.”
He was a liar, I told myself all the rest of the day. I hadn’t really kissed him, or at least it didn’t count. My eyes had been open the entire time.
The next day I took the ring to Billy Deel’s house. I found him out back, sitting in an abandoned car. Its red paint had been bleached by the desert sun and had turned orange along the rusting trim. The tires had collapsed a long time ago, and the black rag roof was peeling. Billy was sitting in the driver’s seat, making engine noises in his throat and pretending to work a phantom stick shift.
I stood nearby, waiting for him to acknowledge me. He didn’t, so I spoke first. “I don’t want to be your friend,” I said. “And I don’t want your ring anymore.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t want it, either.” He kept looking straight ahead through the cracked windshield. I reached through the open window, dropped the ring in his lap, and turned and walked away. I heard the click and clunk of the car door opening and closing behind me. I kept walking. Then I felt a sharp sting on the back of my head as if a little rock had hit me. Billy had thrown the ring at me.