An eight-year-old Jazz Michaels slipped through her bedroom window and onto the roof outside. The night air was cool against her arms. She’d been in too much of a hurry to put on her coat. Old shingles slipped loose under her sneakers and fell to the yard below, but she wasn’t afraid. She’d made this daring journey dozens of times, though never quite as quickly as she attempted to do so now.

With a huge jump and an equally enormous amount of luck, she could make it from her roof to the neighbor’s just three feet away. If she fell from here, she’d break her arm, or leg… or neck, but this was one of those days when not jumping—when staying behind in her cold, angry house—was far scarier than taking the leap.

She landed on all fours with a thud, grappling for purchase on the flat, sloping roof, then pulling herself into a crouch. Just a few more feet to go now, less than a yard to safety, to Nathan.

“Please be home, please be home,” Jazz muttered under her breath as she closed the distance to her best friend’s window. Almost there…

“Jazz!” he cried, shoving his window open and startling her. He yanked her through in one fluid motion. “I thought we agreed. No more sneaking. You could get hurt!”

“I didn’t, did I?” she answered with a hand on each hip and the hope she looked braver than she felt. Oh, how she hoped Nathan couldn’t see the way her arms shook under the sleeves of her worn pink and white softball T-shirt.

“What’s wrong?” Nathan wrapped her in a hug, and Jazz finally allowed herself to fall apart in his arms.

He pulled back to look at her, his brown eyes searching her blues for an answer she wasn’t sure she felt ready to give. “Jazz, you’re my best friend. You can tell me anything.”

She sniffed and wiped her runny nose against her sleeve. “I’m scared, Nathan,” she whispered. “What if he—? Or she…?”

“You’re freaking me out.” He sounded not only concerned, but also scared. “What happened? Is it your parents?”

She nodded. The shiver was back worse than before.

“Did something happen? Did they hurt you?”

“No, no, it’s not that…” She took a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen would bring her courage. But for what? Her mother had made her promise not to tell, not to tell her teachers, her grandparents, or even Nathan. But how could she not when this particular secret ate a hole right through her chest in the place where her heart should be?

Jazz didn’t know a lot about love, other than that it was dangerous. And scary. And definitely for grownups only. If not for her parents’ example, she might think that she loved Nathan—like a brother or cousin or something—but she knew better. She knew how love made people do crazy things and speak hurtful words.

She didn’t want that with Nathan. His friendship was too important to ever say those three horrible little words.

And yet, here he was, waiting for her to say something, anything.

“Mom said it’s a secret just for family,” she answered at last. Her voice shaky, hardly her own.

Nathan grabbed her hand and willed her to look him in the eye rather than at his feet. “I’m family, Jazz. We’re better than family. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

She shook her head sadly. What had she hoped to get out of coming here? It wasn’t fair to Nathan that she couldn’t explain herself, but how could she ever put what had happened into words?

“What if we got married?” he blurted out, quick to offer a solution. “Then we’d be, like, official family. And you could tell me, right?”

She laughed at the serious expression on his face, but he didn’t join her. Instead, he dropped to one knee as they’d seen people do in movies and on the TV.

Nathan grabbed Jazz’s hand. “Jazz, marry me. Right now, and I promise to protect your secrets. I promise to protect you.”

She tried to laugh, but she was still too shaken to do anything other than cry. “Nathan, this is ridiculous. We’re too young to get married.”

“Then let’s get pre-married.”

“Pre-married? What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I just made it up, but c’mon, Jazz. Tell me what I have to do for you to feel better. I hate seeing you cry.”

She rolled her eyes at Nathan, feeling some distance from the scene she had witnessed back at her own house. After a deep, steadying breath, she said, “We don’t have to get married, but I’ll tell you.”

He nodded vigorously and rose from the floor.

Once they were seated side by side atop his Transformers bedspread, she let him in on the big secret she wasn’t supposed to share.

“Last week I saw my dad hit my mom hard in the stomach so nobody could see the bruises. She said it was the first time he ever hurt her and that he didn’t mean to and wouldn’t do it again, but I don’t think she was telling the truth. That’s when she told me to forget I saw anything and made me promise not to tell.”

Nathan hugged her against his side but didn’t say anything. He combed his fingers through her hair, the way her mom sometimes did, seeming to sense the worst was still to come.

And it was.

Jazz wanted to cover hear ears to stop the memory of her dad yelling, the terrifying thuds one after another, and her mom crying. Instead, she took another slow breath and swiped at the stubborn tears refusing to leave her alone.

“Tonight my dad was angry again, and he pushed Mom so hard she fell down the stairs.” Saying the words didn’t make Jazz feel better, but she knew telling Nathan was the right thing to do. “I heard the whole thing from my room, but I was too scared to go out and help my mom. I-I-I came here instead.”

Nathan’s eyes darkened as if now he had secrets he needed to hide. She hated making this his problem, too, but she needed someone to know, to support her, to… help.

“You did the right thing,” he said, giving her another squeeze before moving toward his bedroom door with determined steps. “I’m going to get my mom. She can help.”

“No!” Jazz sobbed. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“I know but…” One breath followed another until Nathan stood taller. His birthday was six months before Jazz’s, but he looked so much older right now. “Some secrets aren’t meant to be kept, and this is one of them. What if he hurts you next? What if your mom needs to go to the hospital? We have to get help.”

Jazz thought about what Nathan had said as she waited for him to return with his mother. There were two kinds of secrets—some were okay to keep, but others held untold dangers. Maybe that meant there could be two kinds of love, too.

She continued to think this over as Nathan’s mother treated the wounds on her own mother’s arm and side. She thought about it the next morning when she realized her father’s car had not returned that night.

Three weeks later, she still hadn’t reached a conclusion about whether there could really be two kinds of secrets, two kinds of love, but she did know two things for sure.

Her father wasn’t coming back.

And that fact made her very happy, indeed.