“Get some more,” Ben said. They gathered leaves again and again, moving farther into the woods each time, bending to the ground and scooping them up in their arms, carrying back what seemed like entire forests pressed to their chests.
As she bent to pick up leaves, Ben poked Sally between the legs with the stick he had used to stir the fire. She pretended to ignore him. Ben pushed the stick back and forth, rubbing it not so much against Sally’s crotch as along the inside of her thighs, scratching against her jeans.
As he poked her he laughed, not a regular funny laugh but higher-pitched, like a maniac on the loose.
Sally looked at him the same way her mother sometimes looked at her father and said, “Quit it.”
They lit fires, each one bigger than the last until the flames started jumping wildly and as they stamped them out the bells of their jeans caught fire and the denim glowed red and they could feel the heat on their clean white calves.
The woods filled with smoke and the edge of one of the fires got loose and Ben had to chase after it. Far off they heard sirens, and Sally thought for sure they were for them.
Finally, when they’d scared themselves sufficiently, when both of Ben’s legs were covered with bright red burns so hot they felt cold, he and Sally sat down on the dirt and Sally pulled a pack of Marlboros from the hiding place in her sock.
She shook out one for each of them, then stuffed the pack back into her sock. Ben lit both cigarettes and for a minute held both between his lips smoking two at once, as though doubling the amount doubled the pleasure, doubled the fun.
“That was good,” Ben said as he smoked.
Sally nodded and didn’t say anything. She was practicing inhaling and didn’t want to break her concentration.
“You know,” Ben said, when they were finished smoking and were putting perfume that Sally had stolen from her mother between their fingers so they didn’t smell like tobacco, “I like you better than Julie. Julie wears dresses.”
Sally pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and they both popped huge wads into their mouths to clean their breath.
“I hate girls who wear dresses,” Ben said, as he chomped down on the gum, lips smacking.
They climbed up the hill and out of the woods. Secretly Sally smiled. Julie and Ben were a year older than she; they would be eleven before she was even ten and they were best friends.
“Sal Lee.” She could hear her mother’s voice over the top of the hill. It came through in broken phrases like a radio with static. “Sal Lee. Sal Lee. Come. In this house. Now.”
It was late afternoon; the edge of the sun was just dropping back behind the house at the top of the hill. The TV antenna, the highest point on the block, was set off against the sky like the peak of a church and glowed like gold.
Cars with fathers coming home from work pulled into driveways, throwing shadows across chalk-drawn hopscotch games and ending basketball tournaments by parking in the court. The echoes of metal car doors slamming shut bounced off the brick houses.
Ben and Sally walked slowly, as though they were tired.
“Sally,” her mother called, her voice clear now. They were one backyard from home. “Is Ben with you?”
Sally and Ben gave each other guilty looks and wondered if they were in trouble for the fires, the smoking, or the perfume Sally stole. Neither said anything.
They came around the edge of the house, with innocent expressions spread across their faces as though they’d been Scotch-taped there.
“I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes,” Sally’s mother said. “You’re sleeping over tonight, remember?” she said to Ben. “Your mother dropped off your things. She’ll call later, to say good night.”
Ben’s father disappeared a long time ago. His parents weren’t divorced, but his father just went off one day and never came back. Sometimes the police would think they found him or found a clue that would help them find him, but nothing ever came of it. Sometimes Ben’s mother had meetings for work at night and if the housekeeper was off Ben spent the night at one of the houses up or down the block, wherever there was someone willing to have him.
“Because we have company tonight,” Sally’s mother said, making a big deal over Ben even though he ate over often enough to be called a regular, “we’re using the grill.”
They looked out onto the back patio where Sally’s much older brother Robert was leaning over the grill, attending to the chicken pieces with the kind of precision and commitment seen only in boys in their very late teens who are determined once and for all to do something right.
He didn’t look up when his mother called him.
“Robert,” she said over and over again and she tapped on the glass door to the patio. “Robert, how much longer?”
“Seven minutes, maybe seven and a half,” he said.
Ben looked out at Robert. Robert was taller than anyone he knew, and thinner than anyone he’d ever seen. Ben stood at the kitchen door watching him, until finally Robert took the chicken off the grill and brought it inside.
“Dinner’s ready,” Sally’s mother said. Sally’s father came out from the den, and Ben and Sally washed their hands and dried them on a dish towel while Robert looked on with mild disgust.
“Your nails,” he said to no one in particular. But Ben went back to the sink and washed his hands again, this time scraping his nails back and forth against the soap, leaving five troughs in the Ivory.
The conversation at dinner somehow took Ben away from Sally and divided them into sides, male against female. Sally didn’t like it. She didn’t like being lumped together with her mother and treated like a maid. She just wanted to sit there like everyone else. She hated her father for telling her to get up and get the salt, and Robert for saying, “While you’re at it, get some ice cubes,” and her father even more for saying, to Ben, “Is there anything you need while Sally is up?”
After dinner, Robert and his father balled up their napkins, threw them into the middle of their plates, and got up from the table. Ben sat at the empty table and waited for Sally to finish helping her mother with the dishes.
When everything was washed and dried they were allowed out again. The sky had dropped down into the shade of blue where everything is still, the moment just before night.
“Don’t go out of the yard,” Sally’s mother said.
Ben and Sally hid behind the metal storage shed in the carport and shared a cigarette.
Ben tried a new thing where he took a deep drag and exhaled straight into Sally’s mouth as she inhaled and then when she exhaled there was nothing left.
“Let me do it to you,” Sally whispered.
Ben shook his head and took a drag and this time kept it for himself.
Through the screen door, they heard her mother asking Robert, “Are you sure you turned the grill off? I feel like I smell something burning.”
They each took one last drag and then Ben put the cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and Sally jammed the half-smoked Marlboro back into the pack and hid them again in her sock.
Sally’s mother came to the door, opened it, and called Sally’s name. Behind the storage shed Ben and Sally held their breath and waited.
“Sally,” her mother called again.
Ben’s foot slipped and he fell against the metal shed, with a thud that sounded like the shed had burped.
“Five more minutes,” Sally’s mother said, going back into the house and letting the screen door close behind her.