Want to hear?”
“No,” I say, covering my ears like a baby. I need a second to think, but with my ears covered, I can suddenly hear the whir of bombs dropping in the newsreel footage and the blasts when they hit their targets, and I realize I have to stop Hal from going off to fight.
“I’ll tell,” I say. “I’ll tell your mother. She’ll keep such a strict eye on you, you’ll never get away.”
Hal pushes me up against the wall of the building, both hands on my shoulders. I know he’d never hurt me, but I’ve never seen him so angry and it scares me.
“You gotta promise not to tell a soul, Helen. Not even Janie.”
“I can’t.”
“You owe me, Helen. Haven’t I always done things for you and never asked nothin’ in return? Didn’t I fix up that bike for you when you wanted one? Didn’t I take the blame when your schoolbooks fell in the river? Wasn’t it me who helped you learn your sums? You’re a smart girl, Lanie, but you never would have passed those tests without my help.”
He’s right, of course. Looking at Hal now, with the rain-clear light making his features sharp, I can see on his face he’s counting on me. He’s never done that before. I feel myself sag against the wall, and he removes his hands from my shoulders, but his voice is still firm.
“Promise,” he says. “Promise you won’t tell.”
I look at my shoes again, but now all I notice is how the edges are growing wet from the grass and how my feet are about the same size as Hal’s, and I hear myself say, “Okay. . . I won’t tell.”
Hal takes a step back and studies me for a minute. He reaches out and rubs my shoulder a bit, like he’s worried it might hurt. It doesn’t. Nothing hurts except my head, and maybe my heart.
“Thank you, Lanie,” he says. “You wait and see. I’ll do you proud in the army. Maybe I’ll even bring home a medal.”
He’s smiling now, and he’s once again the old Hal, the one who spent a whole summer building me and Janie a tree house. I can’t imagine Hayden’s Valley without him.
He backs away, then turns and heads over to his buddies, who have watched the whole scene. The three of them glance up at the pool hall, then decide to head back up Main Street instead. Hal looks just once over his shoulder at me, and it’s not a friendly, good-bye kind of look, but more like he’s making sure I’ll keep my promise, and that’s when I feel my frustration rise.
It’s not fair what he’s asking me to do, to just let him go off and get himself shot. It’s not fair to ask me to keep such a secret. I’ve seen the newsreels. I know what happens in war. And Hal’s in worse danger than most. What if he loses his glasses? What if they break? Then being the best shot in Hayden’s Valley won’t help him a bit.
So I make a decision I know will cost me Hal’s friendship, but it’s better than being responsible for his death. I’ll find a way to tell Janie. I won’t break my promise to Hal, I won’t tell her directly what he plans to do, but there’s a guessing game we sometimes play, and if she guesses, then that’s different. I pace the sidewalk outside the building for several minutes, but Janie doesn’t appear. Finally, I run up the stairs and into the pool hall, but I don’t see her anywhere. I take a tentative step inside and call her name. Several kids turn, but none are Janie.
I ask some of the kids gathered around a pool table. One of the older boys cues up a shot. “Janie left,” he says. “Went off with Maxine.”
I look toward the open back door and realize that’s why I didn’t see her leave.
“Where’d they go?”
“Don’t know.”
I rush across the room and look out the back door. I expect to see Janie sitting out back talking to Maxine, but no one’s there. And no one is in the alley either. While I was out front trying to save her brother, Janie was leaving me behind to run off with Maxine Land. If it was anybody but Maxine, I might not mind so much. But Maxine’s been trying to steal Janie’s friendship for months now. She likes the way Janie dotes on everything she says and does.
I’m so angry I feel tears stinging the backs of my eyes, and I make for home before any of the kids see them fall. When I get there, I head straight to my room. If Janie comes looking for me, I’ll tell Mother to send her away. That way she’ll know she can’t just ditch me whenever the mood strikes.
I’ll figure out what to do about Hal tomorrow. He said he wasn’t leaving for a few days anyway. There’s plenty of time.
5 - The Accident
I didn’t see Janie at church the next day. Mrs. Brey said she was ill, but I wasn’t sure that was true. I thought she was avoiding me, feeling bad maybe for leaving me like that. I considered telling Mrs. Brey about Hal, but he was watching me carefully, and I never got the chance. I was planning on telling Janie today at work, but she didn’t show up for the morning train. I guess maybe she really is sick.
It’s hard to concentrate on my job today. I keep thinking about Hal and how much he’s gonna hate me when I tell his sister what he plans to do, and I wonder if maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and let him go. And now I’ve got my cousin John on my mind, too. My aunt came over for Sunday dinner yesterday and sobbed, right there at the table. She said a transport ship had been sunk on the way to Europe, and what if John was on it? Now I’m worried too and feeling guilty on top of it all. There’s a letter to John sitting half-finished on my nightstand. He’d asked me to write, and I’d promised I would, but I’ve had other things on my mind these last couple of weeks. Silly things, now that I think of them. Like this fight with Janie.
In the midst of all my dark thoughts, I hear a voice. It’s Martha.
“I told you to slow down,” she says, “not let them pass altogether.”
“Huh?”
She waves in the direction of the conveyor belt, and I see that I’ve let a piece pass me right by. Betty has pulled it off the line and set it next to her drill, grinning at me smugly.
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” I say, reaching for the next piece.
“Got your mind on bigger things?” Betty asks.
“Some fella, no doubt.” Martha adds.
I’m in no mood for their teasing. The rain clouds that favored us over the weekend have lifted, and it’s hotter than ever in the assembly room today. I didn’t have time to fix my hair this morning, and it’s so frizzy I can’t keep it out of my eyes. I brush it away with the back of my hand.
“Poor little Helen,” Martha says. “So young to have boy troubles already.”
Betty laughs. It’s a laugh that’s a little too loud and a little too deep to be real.
I lean closer to my drill, trying to shut out the sights and sounds of these women, but Martha keeps right on going.
“Why, when I was her age, Betty, I wouldn’t have dared even talk to a boy. But girls are a bit fresher nowadays, don’t you think? What with the war and all.”
I move still closer to my drill.
“Oops, you missed another one,” Martha says.
I’m sure it’s not true, but I turn my head to the left to check the belt just in case, and that’s when my hair gets caught in the spinning drill bit. I feel my head jerk forward and start banging against the drill press. Thump, thump, thump. My head is aching, and my scalp is burning where the hair is being torn loose. I hear someone scream. It sounds like Rita.
“Turn it off, Helen!” she’s shouting.
Someone else is calling for Mr. Mueller, the foreman. I reach around to the back of the drill press and turn it off. As the bit stops turning, I manage to untangle myself. There’s a quarter-size clump of hair that’s been ripped from my head, and when I touch my fingertips to my scalp, they come away bloody. My headache is getting worse now, and I feel faint from the heat, but mostly I’m embarrassed as several women gather around. I can’t believe I let Martha and Betty get to me. I want to prove to everyone that I can take care of myself, so I push Rita’s helpful hands away. I accept a handkerchief from one woman, though, and hold it to my head. Just then, Mr. Mueller
appears, his thick moustache quivering above his twitching lip.
“What happened here?” he demands.
“Helen got her hair caught.”
“Well, I can see that. Where was your hair net, girl?”
I stare at him, feeling like I need to sit down. “What net, sir?”
He fixes his hands on his hips and rises on his toes so he can look me in the eye. “The one I told you to wear on your first day here.”
“You never told her nothin’,” Martha says. “You wasn’t here.”
He glares at Martha, and I can tell he doesn’t like her any more than the rest of us do, but this time she’s telling the truth.
“That’s right,” Rita agrees. “I think you were out that day, Mr. Mueller.”
He looks from woman to woman and they all confirm Rita’s words with slight nods of their heads.
“Humph,” he says, dropping back onto his heels. “All right, then. Rita will take you down to see the doc. Then you go on home, girl.”
“I don’t need to go home, sir. I’ll be fine.” If I clock out early, I won’t get my full day’s pay.
He puffs out his chest. “I’m the foreman here, and I say you go home. I don’t want some slow- handed girl whining about her aching head all day.”
“More like you don’t want your supervisor finding out you blew the record,” Betty says, with a nod toward the company sign for our department that boasts: 63 Days Without an Accident.
“Just get her out of here,” Mr. Mueller says. “And wear