“If I had a secret, could I tell you and would you promise not to tell anyone in the whole wide world?”
“Huh? Yeah. Sure.” I’m at the good part in my RL Stine book and don’t want to stop.
“I’m serious.”
She is serious. When I look up from my book, I realize she’s been crying. Like red-eyes crying. But she’s wearing her favorite purple dress with sparkly black shoes—the one she calls her “pop star” outfit.
“What’s wrong?” She doesn’t move other than to look over her shoulder toward where her house is and then back to me. “Emmy?”
“Never mind. I’m fine.” She smiles as she sits beside me but makes a funny sound when she does. Like she’s trying not to cry.
“You okay?” Something’s wrong with her. Emmy never cries.
She bites her bottom lip and nods before looking over her shoulder again. Something’s wrong.
“Em?” I nudge her with my elbow. “If you’re gonna tell me, then you need to tell me quick because my mom’s gonna come out soon with my lunch, and then we’re going to have to walk to school. So what’s wrong?”
“You have to pinky promise, Grant Malone, that if I tell you this secret, you won’t ever tell another person, ever, ever, ever. If you do, I’ll never be your friend again. Promise me. Cross your heart and hope to die.”
“But I—”
“Not even your mom or dad or brothers or anyone.” Her eyes fill with tears again. Girls and tears. I’d roll my eyes if she weren’t so upset.
“Okay. I promise.” I cross my heart and link pinkies with her. “Is that good?”
“Yeah. You really promise?”
“Yes. I promise. What’s the big deal?”
“You know how my mom goes to work at night?”
“At the hospital? Yeah. It’s super cool she gets to help people.”
She nods and licks her lips and then looks down to where she’s picking the skin around her thumbnail so it bleeds. “Well, when she goes to work, sometimes my dad hurts me.”
“Hurts you? Like he spanks you when you get in trouble?” I’d give anything to have a mom like hers who doesn’t believe in the belt on your bottom. My dad says it builds respect. I say it builds a sore butt.
“No.”
“No? Then . . .”
“He comes in my room and holds a gun to my head and molests me.”
A tear drops on her thumb, but all I hear is the word “gun.” I don’t know what molests means, but I know guns are serious. The million lectures my dad has given me and my brothers to never touch one fill my head, and I know this is bad, but . . .
“Emmy . . . why would he do that?” I look around the street and wonder if my mom can hear inside the house.
“Because he says I’m pretty and he loves me.”
“But . . .” My dad has a gun, too, and he doesn’t do that to me. I don’t like the icky feeling in my tummy. My book slips from my hands, and I don’t like what we’re talking about, so I concentrate on the creepy monster on the cover as I shove it in my backpack. “I don’t understand. I—”
“I don’t, either.” Another tear falls, and the way she says it makes tears burn in my eyes.
“We should tell my mom. She’d know—”
“No!” she yells as she grabs my hand and squeezes it so hard it hurts. “You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone. He said it would hurt my mommy if I tell anyone, and I don’t want her hurt, Grant. He said this is what daddies do and . . .” She hiccups over a sob, and I don’t know what to do.
“Grant! It’s time to get going,” my mom calls from the house. “Oh, hi, Emmy. Look at how pretty you look today. Just like one of the Spice Girls.”
Emmy smiles for the first time since she got here to walk to school, and I wonder if maybe she’s fibbing. Sometimes she does that. Girls always want attention, or at least that’s what Cooper says.
Em stays where she is on the sidewalk as I jog up the steps to get my lunch from my mom. After I shove it in my backpack, I give her a hug goodbye.
For some reason, when I hug her, I have to blink away the tears before she sees them.
“Have a good day, honey,” she says and then she gets that line in her forehead like when she doesn’t believe what I’m telling her. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
Emmy’s dad is mean.
“You have to pinky promise, Grant Malone, that if I tell you this secret, you won’t ever tell another person, ever, ever, ever. If you do, I’ll never be your friend again. Promise me. Cross your heart and hope to die”
“Yeah. I’m good. Just got something in my eye is all.”
She studies me again, but Grayson cries inside, saving me from more questions. “Don’t rub it then, okay?” I nod before she says the same thing she says every day when we leave to walk the straight shot of a street to school. “I’ll watch you guys from here until you get to the school gates, and then I’ll meet you at the tree after class to walk home with you.”
“’Kay.”
When I jog down the steps, I hate that Adam from across the street is standing there with Emmy and waiting to walk with us. I need to talk to her and ask if she’s really telling the truth. Her dad seems nice to me.
And he’s not a police officer. Only police officers and bad guys have guns and he’s not either of those.
But my tummy still hurts.
“You promise?” Emmy mouths to me from where she stands beside me in the girls’ line while I’m in the boys’ line. We’re in the very back this morning because we were battling in two square and neither of us wanted to quit first and lose.
“I promise.”
“If you tell anyone, I’ll never be your friend again. I might even ‘bad word’ you.”
“’Bad word me?’”
“H-A-T-E,” she spells, and I forgot that her mom thinks the words hate and stupid are bad words worthy of television time being taken away.
“I promise, Em. I promise, okay?” I say loud enough that the kid in front of me turns around to shush me like I’m going to get the boys’ line in trouble.
Emmy just stares at me like I told her we’re getting to watch a Disney movie after lunch instead of doing work . . . I think the word for it is hopeful. I’m not sure, though.
But even as we start our morning paperwork, I can’t stop thinking about what Em said.
“He puts a gun to my head and molests me.”
Even after our circle time when we move into writing in our journals, I think about it.
But she seems fine. She seems like Emmy. The red in her eyes from crying is gone, and she’s pulling out the dreaded composition notebook so she can write about Helen Keller. Just like we all did yesterday. And the day before. I don’t care about Helen Keller because I already know the important stuff—that she was deaf and blind.
“Mrs. Gellar?” I shoot my hand up as high as it will go, hoping her answer will be the same as every other time someone has asked.
“I don’t know the meaning of this word in our book.”
“You know where Webster is,” she says, using the class-decided name for our dictionary.
I walk to the corner of the room and open the book, struggling with the paper jacket when it falls off the hard cover. When I glance over my shoulder, no one is near me, but Emmy meets my eyes and smiles softly.
M.
It takes a few seconds for me to find the word.
Molests.
And it takes me even longer to figure out the definition.
To assault or abuse (a person, especially a woman or a child) sexually.
I snap the book closed, my cheeks red because there is the word “sex” in the definition, and I don’t really know what that is except for it’s what Cooper says only mommies and daddies do and he’s never going to do it.
But I know the word assault. My dad uses that word all the time when I get to visit him at work and he talks cases with other officers. So, if he uses the word, then I know it means bad things.
Does Emmy have this same molestation disease these suspects my dad talks about have? But she isn’t a suspect. She didn’t do anything wrong.
Did she?
The bell for recess rings.
Guns. Mr. Reeves. Molest. Assault.
“Bet I’m gonna beat you at two square again,” Emmy says, and I run to follow after her.
“Mr. Malone.” Mrs. Gellar’s sharp tone—like I’m in trouble—stops my feet from running when I know I shouldn’t be running in the classroom.
“Yeah?”
“The word is yes, not yeah. We’re working on grammar,” she says as she walks toward me with her hand on her back and her big, pregnant belly—that Cooper says you get from having S-E-X—leading the way.
“Yes?” I correct.
“Head on out, Emmy. Grant’s going to go back and put Webster in his proper place. He’ll be there in a minute.”
I grumble and shuffle my feet as the door to the playground shuts, taking the sunshine with it.
Guns.
Picking up Webster, I make sure the jacket is on . . .
Mr. Reeves.
Then I slide it into the bookshelf . . .
Molest.
Finally, I turn to head to the door.
Assault.
“Mrs. Gellar?” I ask, my voice breaking and heart beating so fast I can feel it against my chest.
“Yeah, sweetie? Oh, thanks for fixing Webster,” she says, thinking I was trying to show her I did what she’d asked. “You can go play now.”
“I have a question.”
“You do?” She looks up from the stack of papers she is shuffling through on her desk. “Can it wait until after recess?”
“I’ll never be your friend again.”
“I don’t think so.”
She angles her head to the side and stares at me. “What’s wrong, Grant?”
She’s going to hate me.
“What if someone told you something and made you promise to never tell anyone but you think you should tell someone?”
“Are you tattling on them?”
“No.”
“Are you saying something to make someone look bad so you look better?
“No.”
“Are you worried about their safety?”
I look down to the smiley face I wrote with Sharpie on my Converse and then look back to her.
Guns.
“Yes.”
“Come over here, Grant. Pull up a chair.”
With every step I take, I know Emmy is going to hate me that much more. She can’t hate me. Dad says it’s our duty to help people who are in trouble.
I move a chair toward Mrs. Gellar and sit. “Grant? What is it, honey?”
One of her hands is on her belly, and I stare at it, wondering if I’ll see the baby move beneath her black T-shirt if I look long enough.
“Grant?”
“It’s about Emmy.” My throat is dry. Like if I played really hard during recess and the line was too long at the drinking fountain before coming back into class so I didn’t get a drink.
“What about Emmy?” Her hand rubs back and forth and then stills again.
“She told me a secret, and I’m not supposed to tell, but—”
“What is it, Grant?
“She said when her mom goes to work at night, her dad has a gun and he molests her.” Her hand jerks on her tummy, but I can’t look up because I just broke my promise to Emmy and I’m scared she’s going to hate me. “But I don’t know what that means other than guns are bad and she’s going to hate me and—”
Mrs. Gellar puts her other hand on my shoulder. It makes me stop talking and meet her eyes, embarrassed when a tear slides down my cheek because boys don’t cry.
But it’s Emmy.
“Grant?” Her voice sounds funny—different—and her throat makes a funny sound when she swallows. “When did Emmy tell you this?”
“This morning.” I can barely get the word out. “Please don’t tell her I told you.”
“I won’t.”
I can’t look at her anymore.
My tummy hurts so bad.
“Look at me, honey.” I take in a deep breath, and I feel like such a wuss when I hiccup a sob, but I look at her. “This is what she told you? You aren’t making this up?”
“No.” I can barely get the word out.
“You did the right thing by telling me. Did you tell anyone else about this?”
I shake my head. “No. I promised her, and . . . I promised her.”
“Oh, sweet boy,” she says in a soft voice that makes me think she isn’t mad at me for telling on my friend as she stands and gives me a big hug. It takes everything I have not to hold on tighter and cry like Emmy does when she scrapes her knee—super hard so she can barely talk—but I don’t do it. Instead, I concentrate on trying to make my arms fit all the way around Mrs. Gellar even though her tummy is too big and my fingers won’t touch. She leans back and looks at me. There are tears in her eyes, too, and that makes me worry. “You did the right thing, Grant. I know you’re worried Emmy is going to be mad . . . and she might be for a while, but you did the right thing.”
“Wh-what are you going to do?” Now that I’ve told her, I’m not sure what is going to happen next. How is she going to help Emmy without letting Emmy know I told her secret?
“I’m going to make sure she’s never hurt again.”
“She’s hurt?” I know guns are bad, but I’m confused. How is she hurt? She looks fine to me other than having cried earlier.
“Grant, I need you to do something for me, okay? I need you to go out on the playground for a few minutes and get some fresh air. I don’t want you to tell anyone else about what you said to me because it’s important that Emmy has you as a friend. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Are you sure?” How is she going to do that?
“I’m sure. Now, I need you to go out so I can do a few things in privacy, okay?”
I nod and then drag my feet all the way to the door. I swear I hear her sniffle, but her back is to me, so I can’t be sure. Why would she sniffle? Just as I push it open, I hear Mrs. Gellar on the phone. “Principal Newman? I have a situation that needs immediate attention.”