Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Harriet hung up the telephone, walked upstairs and into her mother’s bedroom—without knocking—and presented herself at the foot of the bed. “Tomorrow I’m going to Camp Lake de Selby,” she announced.

Harriet’s mother glanced up from her copy of the Ole Miss alumni magazine. She had been half-drowsing over a profile of a former classmate, who had some complicated job on Capitol Hill that Charlotte couldn’t quite get the gist of.

“I’ve called Edie. She’s driving me.”

“What?”

“The second session already started, and they told Edie it was against the rules but they’ll take me anyway. They even gave her a discount.”

She waited, impassively. Her mother didn’t say anything; but it didn’t matter what—if anything—she had to say because the matter was now squarely in Edie’s hands. And as much as she hated Camp de Selby, it wasn’t as bad as reform school or jail.

For Harriet had called her grandmother out of sheer panic. Running down Natchez Street she’d heard sirens wailing—she didn’t know whether it was ambulance or police—before she even made it home. Panting, limping, with cramps in her legs and a burning pain in her lungs, Harriet locked herself in the downstairs bathroom, stripped out of her clothes and threw them in the hamper, and ran herself a bath. Several times—while sitting rigidly in the bathtub, staring at the narrow tropical slashes of light that fell into the dim room through the venetian blinds—she’d heard sounds like voices at the front door. What on earth would she do if it was the police?

Petrified with fear, fully expecting someone to bang on the bathroom door at any moment, Harriet sat in the tub until the water was cold. Once out of the bath, and dressed, she tiptoed down to the front hall and peeked through the lace curtains, but there was nobody in the street. Ida had gone home for the day, and the house was ominously still. It seemed as if years had passed, but in reality it was only forty-five minutes.

Tensely, Harriet stood in the front hall, watching at the window. After a while she got tired of standing there, but still she could not bring herself to go upstairs and she walked back and forth, between the hall and the living room, looking out the front window every so often. Then, again, she heard sirens; for a heart-stopping moment, she thought she heard them turning down George Street. She stood in the middle of the living room, almost too frightened to move, and in a very short time her nerves got the better of her and she dialed Edie’s number—breathless, carrying the telephone over to the lace-curtained sidelights so she could watch the street as they talked.

Edie, to give her credit, had leapt into action with gratifying speed, so swiftly that Harriet almost felt a little stir of renewed affection for her. She’d asked no questions when Harriet stammered out that she’d changed her mind about church camp, and would like to leave as soon as possible. She’d got right on the phone to Lake de Selby; and—at initial reluctance from some mealy-mouthed girl in the office—demanded to be put on directly to Dr. Vance. From there, she’d sewed up the arrangements, and when she called back—within ten minutes—it was with a packing list, a water-ski permit, an upper bunk in Chickadee Wigwam, and plans to pick Harriet up at six the next morning. She had not (as Harriet believed) forgotten about camp; she had merely grown weary of struggling with Harriet on the one hand, and on the other hand Harriet’s mother, who did not back her up in these matters. Edie was convinced that Harriet’s problem lay in not mingling sufficiently with other children, especially nice little ordinary Baptist ones; and as Harriet—with effort—kept her silence, she had talked enthusiastically over the telephone of what a grand time Harriet would have, and the wonders which a little discipline and Christian sportsmanship would work for her.

The silence in her mother’s bedroom was deafening. “Well,” said Charlotte. She laid the magazine aside. “This is all very sudden. I thought you had such a terrible time at that camp last year.”

“We’re leaving before you wake up. Edie wants to get on the road early. I thought I should let you know.”

“Why the change of heart?” said Charlotte.

Harriet shrugged, insolently.

“Well … I’m proud of you.” Charlotte couldn’t think what else to say. Harriet, she noticed, had got terribly sunburnt, and thin; who did she look like? With that straight black hair, and her chin stuck out that way?

“I wonder,” she said, aloud, “whatever happened to that book of the child Hiawatha that used to be around the house?”

Harriet glanced away—toward the window, as if she were expecting someone.

“It’s important …” Charlotte tried, gamely, to recover the thread. It’s the arms folded across the chest , she thought, and the haircut . “What I mean is, it’s good for you to be involved in … in things.”

Allison was loitering outside their mother’s bedroom door—eavesdropping, Harriet supposed. She followed Harriet down the hall and stood in the door of their room as Harriet opened her dresser drawer and took out tennis socks, underwear, her green Camp de Selby shirt from the summer before.

“What did you do?” she said.

Harriet stopped. “Nothing,” she said. “What makes you think I did something?”

“You act like you’re in trouble.”

After a long pause, Harriet—face burning—returned to her packing.

Allison said: “Ida’ll be gone when you get back.”

“I don’t care.”

“This is her last week. If you leave, you won’t see her again.”

“So what?” Harriet jammed her tennis shoes in the knapsack. “She doesn’t really love us.”

“I know.”

“Well why should I care then?” replied Harriet, smoothly, though her heart skidded and jumped a beat.

“Because we love her . ”

“ I don’t,” said Harriet swiftly. She zipped up the knapsack and threw it on the bed.

Downstairs, Harriet got a sheet of stationery from the table in the front hall and, in the fading light, sat down and wrote the following note:

Dear Hely,

I am going to camp tomorrow. I hope the rest of your summer is good. Maybe we will be in the same home room when you are in seventh grade next year.

Your friend,

Harriet C. Dufresnes

She had no sooner finished it than the telephone rang. Harriet started not to answer, but relented after three or four rings and—cautiously—picked up the receiver.

“ Dude ,” said Hely, his voice crackly and very faint on the football-helmet phone. “Did you hear all those sirens just now?”

“I just wrote you a letter,” said Harriet. The hall felt like winter, not August. From the vine-choked porch—through the curtained side-lights, and the spoked fanlight on top of the door—the light filtered ashy and sober and wan. “Edie’s taking me to camp tomorrow.”

“No way!” He sounded like he was talking from the bottom of the ocean. “Don’t go! You’re out of your mind!”

“I’m not staying here.”

“Let’s run away!”

“I can’t.” With her toe, Harriet drew a shiny black mark through the dust—pristine, like the dust on a black plum—that frosted the table’s curved rosewood pedestal.

“What if somebody saw us? Harriet?”

“I’m here,” Harriet said.

“What about my wagon?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet. She had been thinking about Hely’s wagon herself. It was still sitting up on the overpass, and the empty box, too.

“Should I go back and get it?”