Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Peals of merry laughter. Edie gritted her teeth and concentrated on the road.

“Oh, what a bunch of crazy old ladies we are,” said Tat. “What those people must have thought.”

“I just hope I remembered everything,” Libby murmured. “Last night, I started thinking that I’d left my stockings at home and that I’d lost all my money….”

“I’ll bet you didn’t get a wink of sleep, did you darling?” said Tat, leaning forward to put a hand on Libby’s thin little shoulder.

“Nonsense! I’m doing beautifully! I’m—”

“You know she didn’t! Worrying all the night long! What you need,” said Adelaide, “is some breakfast.”

“You know,” said Tatty—and clapped her hands—”that’s a marvelous idea!”

“Let’s stop, Edith.”

“Listen! I wanted to leave at six this morning! If we stop now, it’ll be noon before we get on the road! Didn’t you all eat before you left?”

“Well, I didn’t know how my stomach would feel until we’d been on the road a while,” said Adelaide.

“We’re hardly out of town!”

“Don’t worry about me, darling,” said Libby. “I’m too excited to eat a bite.”

“Here, Tat,” said Edie, fumbling with the thermos. “Why don’t you pour her a little cup of coffee.”

“If she hasn’t slept,” said Tat, primly, “coffee may give her palpitations.”

Edie snorted. “What’s the matter with you all? You used to drink coffee at my house without complaining about palpitations or anything else. Now you act like it’s poison. Makes you all wild .”

Very suddenly, Adelaide said: “Oh, dear. Turn around, Edith.”

Tat put her hand over her mouth and laughed. “We’re all to pieces this morning, aren’t we?”

Edie said: “What is it now?”

“I’m sorry,” Adelaide said, tightly. “I have to go back.”

“What have you forgotten?”

Adelaide stared straight ahead. “The Sanka.”

“Well, you’ll just have to buy some more.”

“Well,” Tat murmured, “if she has a jar, at home, it’s a shame for her to buy another one—”

“Besides,” said Libby—hands to her face, eyes rolling with wholly unfeigned alarm—”what if she can’t find it? What if they don’t sell it up there?”

“You can buy Sanka anywhere .”“

Edith, please,” Adelaide snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. If you don’t want to take me back, stop the car and let me get out.”

Very sharply, without signaling, Edie swung into the driveway of the highway branch bank and turned around in the parking lot.

“Aren’t we something? I thought it was just me forgetting things this morning,” Tat said gaily as she slid into Adelaide—bracing herself with a hand on Addie’s arm for Edie’s rough turn; and she was about to announce to everyone that she didn’t feel quite so bad now about leaving her wrist-watch at home when from the front seat there was a breathless cry from Libby and BAM: the Oldsmobile—struck hard, in the passenger side—spun nose-around so that the next thing anyone knew the horn was blaring and blood was gushing from Edie’s nose and they were on the wrong side of the highway, staring through a web of cracked glass at oncoming traffic.

“Oh Harrr—riet! “

Laughter. To Harriet’s dismay, the ventriloquist’s denim-clad dummy had singled her out of the audience. She—and fifty other girls of varying ages—were seated on log benches in a clearing in the woods the counselors called “chapel.”

Up front, two girls from Harriet’s cabin (Dawn and Jada) turned to glare at her. They’d been fighting with Harriet only that morning, a fight which had been interrupted by the chapel bell.

“Hey! Take it easy, Ziggie old boy!” chuckled the ventriloquist. He was a counselor from the boys’ camp named Zach. Dr. and Mrs. Vance had mentioned more than once that Zig (the dummy) and Zach had shared a bedroom for twelve years; that the dummy had accompanied Zach to Bob Jones University as Zach’s “roommate”; Harriet had already heard much, much more about it than she cared to. The dummy was dressed like a Dead End Kid, in knee pants and pork-pie hat, and it had a scary red mouth and freckles that looked like measles. Now—in imitation of Harriet, presumably—it popped its eyes and swivelled its head full circle.

“Hey, boss! And they call me a dummy!” it shrieked aggressively.

More laughter—particularly loud from Jada and Dawn, up front, clapping their hands in appreciation. Harriet, face burning, stared haughtily at the sweaty back of the girl in front of her: an older girl with rolls of fat bulging around her bra straps. I hope I never look like that , she thought. I’ll starve myself first .

She had been at camp for ten days. It seemed like forever. Edie, she suspected, had had a little word with Dr. Vance and his wife because the counselors had established an irritating pattern of singling her out, but part of the problem—Harriet knew it lucidly without being able to do anything about it—was her inability to fit in with the group without attracting attention to herself. As a matter of principle, she had neglected to sign and return the “covenant card” in her information pack. This was a series of solemn pledges all campers were pressured to make: pledges not to attend R-rated movies or listen to “hard or acid rock” music; not to drink alcohol, have sex before marriage, smoke marijuana or tobacco, or take the Lord’s name in vain. It wasn’t as if Harriet actually wanted to do any of these things (except—sometimes, not very often—go to the movies); but still she was determined not to sign it.

“ Hay Hun! Didn’t you forget something?” said Nursie Vance brightly, putting an arm around Harriet (who stiffened immediately) and giving her a chummy little squeeze.

“No.”

“I didn’t get a Covenant Card from you.”

Harriet said nothing.

Nursie gave her another intrusive little hug. “You know, hun, God don’t give us but two choices! Either something’s right or it’s wrong! Either you’re a champion for Christ or you’re not!” From her pocket, she produced a blank Covenant Card.

“Now, I want you to pray over this, Harriet. And do what the Lord guides you to do.”

Harriet stared at Nursie’s puffy white tennis shoes.

Nursie clasped Harriet’s hand. “Would you like me to pray with you, hun?” she asked, confidentially, as if offering some great treat.

“No.”

“Oh, I know the Lord will lead you to the right decision on this,” said Nursie, with a twinkly enthusiasm. “Oh, I just know it!”

The girls in Harriet’s wigwam had already paired up before Harriet arrived; mostly they ignored her, and though she woke one night to find her hand in a basin of warm water, and the other girls standing around in the dark whispering and giggling at the bottom of her bunk (it was a trick, the sleeper’s hand in warm water, thought to make the sleeper wet the bed) they didn’t seem to have it in for Harriet particularly; though, of course, there had been Saran Wrap, too, stretched under the seat of the latrine. From outside, muffled laughter. “Hey, what’s taking you so long in there!” A dozen girls, doubled over laughing when she came out stony faced, with wet shorts—but surely that trick hadn’t been directed specifically at her, surely it had been just her bad luck? Still, everybody else seemed to be in on the joke: Beth and Stephanie, Beverley and Michelle, Marcy and Darci and Sara Lynn, Kristle and Jada and Lee Ann and Devon and Dawn. They were mostly from Tupelo and Columbus (the girls from Alexandria, not that she liked them any better, were in Oriole and Goldfinch wigwams); they were all taller than Harriet, and older-looking; girls who wore flavored lip gloss and cut–off jeans and rubbed themselves with coconut oil on the water-ski dock. Their conversation (the Bay City Rollers; the Osmonds; some boy named Jay Jackson who went to their school) bored and irritated her.