The Year of Needy Girls by Patricia A. Smith

Author:Patricia A. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2016-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

October 3

To the Editor, Bradley Register:

I am writing in reference to the letter dated October 1 by “Concerned Citizen.” I, too, cannot imagine the horror that the Rivera family must face each day, knowing how their little boy met his end.

But it seems to me barbaric to already condemn the man in custody, before we know the extent of his involvement. I am urging my fellow citizens to remain calm and let the legal system work as it is supposed to.

Beth Ann Farraday

Bradley, MA

Chapter Three

In the park, most of the leaves had fallen now and drifted into piles in the grass and on the walkway, the late-morning sky pulsing with seventy October degrees. SJ looked over her shoulder. She kicked at the dry leaves and pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

She hated seeing Deirdre so unhappy. At night when Deirdre slept—she claimed she wasn’t sleeping at all these days but SJ was the witness—SJ looked at her face, quiet and unguarded, and remembered their first nights together, the wonder and terror of sleeping with another person. SJ always thought that aside from the possibility of pregnancy, teenage sex wasn’t the huge issue people made it out to be. No, it was the euphemism for sex—sleeping with someone—that was the bigger issue. Sex in cars, on beaches—furtive, groping sex—that wasn’t intimate at all. Too often it was embarrassing. But sleeping. Sharing a bed while you slept, while you dreamed, while you were at your most unguarded and vulnerable, that was the most intimate thing imaginable.

Did Deirdre sleep gratefully, able only then to ignore what was happening in her waking life? SJ’s greatest adult fear—one that she might not be able to admit out loud, one that she could hardly admit to herself in those private, dark moments—was that someone might find her incompetent. Now, with hindsight, she understood that her . . . thing with Mr. Freeman had happened in the first place because he had seen SJ as smart and dedicated. For SJ, that was everything. So it threw her off to have the police questioning her at the library. She thought it made her colleagues wonder about her and so they might gossip and tell stories and question her professional judgment too. Librarian circles were tight, and SJ hated to think that her association with Mickey was now the preferred topic of conversation.

Deirdre, on the other hand, seemed so unconcerned about what people thought. How can you do it? SJ wanted to know. How can you get up in the morning, go for a run, buy groceries, while being that person other people don’t want? She thought about it now, walking through the park, looking left and right, conscious that she might bump into Deirdre on her run. When you weren’t a teacher, an attorney, a librarian, or stockbroker anymore, how would you know who to be? How to act? What your place was in the world?

An ambulance screeched past. Two women pushed small children on swings. One yelled, “Higher, Mommy, higher!” The other squealed.

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