Secret City by Julia Watts

Author:Julia Watts [Watts, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay & Lesbian
ISBN: 9781594933905
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2013-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

February 22, 1945

Virgie’s been acting real strange around me lately. She’s been almost quiet—or as close to quiet as Virgie can get—and has seemed kind of far away somehow. Yesterday when the final bell rang, I said, “Are you going over to the Red Cross to roll bandages?”

“I’m going,” she said. “You can come if you want to.”

Virgie and Aaron and I walked to the Red Cross in silence. For Aaron, silence is the norm, but for Virgie, it’s downright spooky. Once we got to the door of the Red Cross, Aaron left us like he always did. When Virgie and I were sitting with a stack of bandages in front of us, I said, “Are you mad at me or something?”

Virgie started folding a bandage in a fury. “No, I’m not mad. I just keep waiting for you to talk to me, and you don’t say nothing.”

“I talk to you all the time. What do you mean?”

“I mean, to talk to me about something that happened to you last week. On Valentine’s Day. You know what I’m talking about.”

I knew, but I didn’t know how she knew. “How do you know about the card? You didn’t give it to me, did you, as some kind of joke?”

Virgie threw down her bandage. “I can’t believe somebody could have so much book sense and not a lick of common sense! Can you honestly tell me you don’t know who gave you that card?”

“Of course I have no idea who gave it to me. Why—what do you know about it?”

Virgie rolled her eyes like my stupidity both annoyed and exhausted her. “I swear, how could you not know?”

Neither of us was folding bandages now. “Stop torturing me and tell me.”

Virgie looked around. The room was empty. “It was Aaron.”

“Aaron?” I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if she had told me it was Douglas MacArthur.

“You seem like you’ve got eyes and ears,” she said, going back to her folding. “Ain’t you seen the way he looks at you? Ain’t you heard the way he talks to you?”

“But he doesn’t look at me! He looks down at the ground. And he doesn’t talk to me unless I talk to him first, and when he does, he just mumbles under his breath.”

“That’s because he likes you,” Virgie said, finally giving me a smile.

“But ain’t he like that with everybody?”

“Well, yeah, but with you, it’s worse.” She scooted her chair closer to me and spoke in a whisper. “See, he didn’t know how to tell you how he felt, so I gave him the idea of giving you a Valentine and signing it from a secret admirer. I even helped him make it since boys ain’t no good at that kind of thing. We cut the letters out of one of my movie magazines. Of course, I thought you’d have enough sense to know who it was from as soon as you seen it.” She shook her head.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not too bright.”

“That’s all right,” Virgie said.

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