The Six Rules of Maybe

jackets, his denim one, over a tossed-on dress. I hadn’t realized how big she had gotten— they had gotten—her and Jitter. The streetlights and the night shadows showed her solid roundness and curve of her back in some way that the daylight never did. Her hands were shoved into the pockets of Hayden’s jacket. She walked fast; she knew where she was going.
    “It’s one a.m.,” I said.
    She froze, her hand to her chest. She spun around. “Jesus, you scared me,” she said.
    “It’s one a.m.,” I said again.
    “What are you doing, spying on me?”
    Only a guilty person would have thought so. The psychology books have a word for it. “ Projection ,” I said, knowing she wouldn’tknow what I meant. “Not everything is about you, anyway.”
    “I was just going for a walk,” she said.
    “Right,” I said.
    “Scarlet …”
    “How about if I come along?” I said. That anger—it was back. I heard it in my own voice and felt it pushing against my chest.
    She rubbed her arms as if she were cold. I bet Jitter would have preferred to be tucked into a nice warm bed, instead of out there in the night, staying up too late, heading to places he shouldn’t be heading.
    “You know, you used to be nice. I liked you back then. What happened to the nice person that used to live here?”
    “Oh,” I said. “I see. I’ve got it figured out now. You’re nice as long as you go along with what other people want. You do or saysomething people don’t like for once, somehow you’re not nice anymore.”
    She wasn’t looking at me, more at a point down the street, somewhere she was wishing she was. But then, she did look. “Are you going to tell anybody about this?” she said.
    “Anybody? Like who? Like our mailman? Like your second-grade teacher? Oh, you must mean your husband .”
    “Goddamnit.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe how unreasonable I was being.
    “You get pregnant so you … what, have some sort of answer. Maybe so you don’t have to be all these things you were supposed to be. Right? Okay, I got that much figured out. You wanted some sort of rescue and you got it, but you picked a really fabulous rescuer. Really. It’s, like, the smartest thing you did in all this. Probably, the smartest thing you’ve ever done.” She turned away from me, but she didn’t leave. She just stood there and took it. Maybe she was relieved someone had a conscience, even if it wasn’t her.
    “But now … Buddy Wilkes? That’s what comes between you? High school loser boyfriend who doesn’t even want you?”
    “God!” she cried. She put her hands up to her face. I wanted to feel bad for her, but I couldn’t. I was so angry with her, maybe seventeen-years’ angry. But especially-now angry. For having everything and for everything not being enough.
    “Just … why ?” I said.
    The night was quiet. Just some crickets, the shimmery shush of trees in the night wind. A man’s faraway cough on a faraway porch.
    She looked at me and her face was wet with tears. A strand of her hair stuck to her cheek. And then she said something I didn’texpect her to say. It was so unexpected that it stopped me right there. “What would happen if I let go and loved him, huh? What.”
    My breath caught. Before I knew what was happening, my own throat closed up, tears rushed forward. I swallowed hard. I felt some deep loss and recognition at those words— let go . The words seemed so large and impossible and dangerous. I wanted to run to her and hold on, the same as I used to when I was little and scared. I’d get in her bed and she would be the big sister and everything would feel safe, but this time, maybe we’d just hold on to each other. We’d both hold on against big dark things of the night that snatched away what you most needed.
    “What would happen?” My voice shook. I could barely say the words. I didn’t want to say them, but they were the ones that most needed to be spoken. “Maybe you’d be happy.”
    She looked at me for a while. And then she turned back the way she had come, back to her basement bedroom and to the sleeping body of her husband.

Chapter Twenty-one
    T hat night, I had one of those dreams where you try and make a phone call but can’t, no matter what you do. There was an emergency and I needed to call Mom, but I couldn’t remember her number and every time I tried to dial, something interfered. It’s the dream equivalent of the moment in the horror movies when