Page 103 of Intrepid

Careful not to draw their attention, as if I could, anyway, I slip down the path between the hedges toward the back door of the house.

The dark hallway inside opens onto the mud room, and another leads to the kitchen, where Jo wipes down the countertops, wearing the stain of strawberry lemonade on her apron. “Oy, what a mess!”

“Where’s Eli?” I whisper.

She smiles, leaning forward on the counter, on which she rests her elbows. “Think I saw him upstairs. How’s the gossip factory?” Jo rolls her eyes, and I giggle, backing myself out of the kitchen.

She knows how much I’ve dreaded this day, because just like I do with Eli, I sometimes sneak away and talk with Jo about stuff.

“Tell me when it’s over,” I say, spinning toward the door, and I race down the hallway, as Jo calls after me.

“Be back down for cake! I’m not doing this alone, girlfriend!” she shouts.

Racing up the stairs, I keep an eye out for my father. If he sees me, he’ll send me back to the henhouse, and I’d rather drown in the pool than sit watching my so-called friends talk about their so-called friends behind their backs.

As I round the staircase, voices, one of them my father’s, draw me against the wall, and I slide along until I’m just outside of the linen room.

“What were you doing in here?” My father’s question stifles the urge to run.

“I was …. I was just.” Eli’s voice is all shaky and quiet like I’ve never heard before. My dad makes him nervous, though. He told me once.

“Turn around.”

“Please. I’ll leave. I wasn’t. I didn’t.” The embarrassment bleeding through the crack in the door is enough to make me barge in and cut Eli a break, so I take a step closer.

“You were touching yourself. Watching those girls just now. Weren’t you?”

I freeze at that, the sting of jealousy burning my chest.

“No, sir.”

“No?” The intrigue in my father’s voice has a wicked pitch, but the betrayal I feel toward Eli for watching those other girls hurts too much to care right then. “Let me see. Show me.”

“No.”

“Show me now, or I’ll call your mother up here.”

I duck low, onto my hands and knees, and peer through the narrow crack in the door, catching Eli standing in front of the window beside my father, who’s cloaked from the others outside by the long drapes.

The folding table in the center of the room hides their lower halves, showing only the red flare of Eli’s cheeks, which is almost painful to watch, as I try to make sense of what they’re talking about.

“Please. I promise I won’t do this again.” He faces my father, head bowed in shame. “Please don’t tell my mother.”

“Show me how you touched yourself while watching those girls.”

I can’t see behind the table to know what has my father’s eyes so rapt, but the prompting tone in his words spins knots in my stomach.

“Mister Kutscher, I swear, I …”

“Perhaps you’d like me to tell your mother what a perverted young man she has for a son. She’ll never clean another house in this neighborhood, this whole city, again.”

I should run to get Jo, but I’m afraid to leave Eli alone. Eyes clinched, I will myself to stand, and my legs obey. I know my father is evil, I’ve seen it in him, and I won’t let him scare Eli that way.

He’s my friend. My only friend.

Harsh breaths, broken by Eli’s sniffles, tell me he’s doing as he was told. Touching his privates. In front of my father. My sick and perverted father who watches him do those things.

“Do you enjoy watching those girls, Eli? Do you imagine prying their skinny little thighs apart and—”