Chapter Text
On a breezy Monday morning in summer vacation, Jamie is left to her own devices. Her friends from school have left Wilson County for camp, her parents are back at work, and her brother is too old to play with Jamie these days, or so he says. He’s only a year older than her, but he has better things to do than to babysit her. So she sets off to the creek by herself.
All set up with her pirate hat and her wooden sword buckled in the belt loop of her shorts, she trots down the street towards the creek.
The tire swing and the treehouse her dad built for Jamie, her brother and their friends are hard to find if you don’t know of their existence, so Jamie is surprised to find another girl sitting on the bank of the creek on her way there. The girl is sat with her back towards Jamie, hugging her knees as she looks out over the softly cobbling water. She appears so lost in thought that she doesn’t even hear Jamie coming. Jamie stands still, afraid to jar the girl, and just watches her. Her long brown hair is twisted in beautiful braids, and she’s wearing a pretty summer dress. Jamie has dresses like that, buried in the back of her closet to avoid her mother suggesting she should wear them. She hates them, but on this girl it looks very nice.
Jamie doesn’t know how long she stands there for, watching the girl watching clouds pass on the water’s reflection. She wonders if she goes to school with her, if they know each other, but she doesn’t want to disturb her.
She ducks with a squeal when a blackbird drops itself from its branch and caws as it passes right by her head. Her sword drops from her belt loop, and as she rushes to pick it up, she finds the girl already staring at her.
“Hi,” Jamie stutters, quickly gathering her wits and standing straight with her chin up.
The girl giggles softly and turns further around.
It’s Betty from school. She’s in second grade too, going on third after the summer, same as Jamie. She’s smiling now, but Jamie can see that she’s been crying. The tears are still on her cheeks.
“Hi,” she says.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Betty says. “Are you?”
An idea occurs to Jamie right then. She has never taken anybody to the clearing by the treehouse before except her brother, but Betty looks like she can use a swing on the tire swing today. There hasn’t been a day when swinging over the creek didn’t take all of Jamie’s sorrow away. “Do you want to come to the swing?”
“What swing?”
Jamie beckons her to follow. She leads her to the clearing, where the grass is extra green, and the sun pushes its warm rays through the leaves above. The air smells like the honeysuckle on the waterfront, and birds chirp the songs of the summer from morning till night time. And there at the edge, Jamie points Betty to the tire swing.
Betty gets on it hesitantly. She needs Jamie to push her the first few times, but once she’s all set, she swings for what feels like hours. Her shrieks of joy echo over the creek as she reaches out to the leaves above. And when she finally comes down, she crashes down beside Jamie in the tall grass, still laughing. Jamie looks at her and grins.
“What’s with your hat?” Betty asks after a moment, squinting up at her.
“I’m a pirate,” Jamie said, pointing at the skull on the front of it. Wasn’t it obvious?
“Where’s your ship?”
“Up there.” Jamie nods to the treehouse, hidden behind the leaves.
They climb up there, and sit on the cushions Jamie’s brother had taken from the old garden set to bring up there. Jamie lies down her sword atop the treasure chest in the corner and takes off her hat, and finally musters up the courage to ask Betty what she had been doing sitting by the waterside all by herself when Jamie stumbled upon her.
“I ran away from home,” Betty says. “Not forever. I just needed a quiet place.” Jamie nods slowly. Sometimes when everybody was home at the same time, she longed for the quiet of the woods too. But it still didn’t explain why Betty had been so sad.
Betty must see her puzzled face, because she sighs, and after a moment begins to tell Jamie everything. Her dad had come home from a trip that morning, and her mom hadn’t wanted to let him inside. There had been lots of shouting, and eventually slamming of doors, and when Betty had come in to see her dad, he had pushed her aside and gone to the garage without another word.
“Where did he go?” Jamie asks, not knowing what else to say. “On his trip?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Betty shrugs. “He never says. He just leaves sometimes. For a couple of days, or weeks, and then he comes back. He always comes back.” Jamie thinks she sounds a little sad as she says the last part.
After a while, Jamie picks up her hat and jumps up from the creaking floor. She reaches her hand out to Betty to help her up. They stand up by the window of the treehouse, where Jamie’s dad had installed the wheel of her pirate ship last summer.
“We can go anywhere we want from here,” she tells Betty.
“Even the moon?” Betty asks.
“Even to Saturn.”
Over the summer, Jamie and Betty meet again and again on the clearing by the creek. Jamie hurries over there almost every morning to wait for her new friend, excited to spend another day with her. She brings the sweet tea that her mom makes in a flask, and they share it while they sit on a blanket in the shadow. They take turns on the swing and climb the ladder of the treehouse with ease. They talk about everything, from Captain Hook’s flying ship to their classmates, or they say nothing at all, just listen to the crickets sing and the water whistle down the stream.
They imagine sailing to faraway places in their ship, away from Wilson County, Pennsylvania, to France and to India, never coming back home. Sometimes when Betty doesn’t want to play pirates, she’ll pretend to be a princess, princess Elizabeth of Neverland.
This is a game Jamie is less fond of.
“I don’t wanna be a princess,” she tells Betty one morning.
“You wanna be the queen?”
“No,” James grunts, slashing at the weeds with her wooden sword.
“Then you can be my prince.”
Jamie pauses her attack on the grass to consider this. “Okay.”
Betty crouches down to pick some of the daisies Jamie has ruined. She sits for a long time, tying them together, and then she gets up, holding it in her hands like a frail little bird.
“Kneel,” she says. Jamie kneels. “I hereby crown you Prince James of Neverland.”
Prince James bows her head to receive her crown. After this ceremony, they dance around the clearing together, James stumbling over her feet trying to keep up with Betty, but once she gets the hang of it, she has to admit it’s kind of fun.
It is during one of such dances, at the end of summer, that Jamie feels a sudden urge. It hits her suddenly, while Betty twirls under her arm and she catches her again. She stops dancing and holds Betty still against her. Her eyes grow wide with the realization of what she is about to do. She leans in slowly, and Betty doesn’t pull away when their lips touch.
Even after they let go, they stand blinking at each other in the heavy rays of the sun. Jamie isn’t sure this was part of the game, but neither of them says anything.
They sit in the treehouse after, drinking Jamie’s sweet tea in silence.
“We can’t tell anyone,” Betty says after a while.
“Tell anyone what?”
“That we kissed.” She frowns upon saying the last word, as if she can’t believe it herself.
The thought to tell anyone about the kiss hadn’t even occurred to Jamie yet. Whose business is it but theirs? Just like everything else that happens on the clearing, it’s their their little secret. Jamie wouldn’t even share it if she had anyone to tell.
“Cross my heart,” she says.
Both of them cross their hearts, and they shake hands in agreement.
“If we don’t tell anyone,” Jamie begins hesitantly. She focuses her eyes on the grass stains on her shorts. “Does that mean we can do it again?”
“James!” Betty says, her mouth open in surprise.
Jamie blinks at her, and feels her breathing pick up. Maybe she had made a mistake. Maybe Betty had just been playing a part down there.
But then Betty leans in close and gives her another kiss. Jamie grins to much to give her one back, but it’s good enough.
They lose track of time that afternoon in the treehouse. But Jamie doesn’t want the day to be over yet. She walks the extra blocks to Betty’s house, as they hold hands and skip over the cracks in the sidewalk. But when they get to Betty’s house, the door swings open, and a big bald man with a red face stomps off the porch.
“You’re late,” he snarls. “Where have you been all damn day?” His voice booms across the front yard.
Betty lets go of Jamie’s hand, and she doesn’t look back when her dad grabs her by the arm to take her inside.
“Hey!” Jamie shouts. “Don’t hurt her!”
Betty and her dad both look over their shoulders before they reach the steps of the porch. Betty’s eyes are big and sad. She shakes her head just slightly enough for Jamie to see.
“Get off of my lawn,” the man shouted back. The door slams shut behind them.
Jamie hears more shouting from behind it, but she stands in her place, unable to move. Until the shouts die down, and the street lights turn on, and Jamie knows she has to get home too.
“Did you know we have a spare bedroom in our house?” Jamie says a week later. Betty’s dad hadn’t let her leave the house the whole week, but now that he’s away again, she finally gets to come to the clearing again, just in time before school starts again next week. “It’s full of toys and stuff Alex and I don’t use anymore, but if we take it all out, you can sleep there. Or you can just sleep in my room, if you want. I won’t mind. My mom makes the best pancakes. We can go to school together, and come here whenever we want. It’ll be great.”
“James…” Betty sighs. She’s sitting on the swing with her head hung low, only swinging as far as the wind will take her.
“Yeah?” Jamie looks up from where she’s pacing the clearing, back and forth as she plots out her plan.
“I can’t just come live with you,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“But why not? I live closer to school than you do. Your mom can visit whenever she wants.”
“I guess we can dream,” she says, so quietly that Jamie can barely hear it. But she does.
She turns her back to Betty, walks away towards the trees, and then she screams.
Birds fly up from their branches, skittering away in panic. Just one long wordless scream, and then she takes in the aftermath. The world answering her in silence, the sharp ache in her throat.
She flinches when she feels a touch on her waist, but then sinks into Betty’s arms.
“It’s not fair,” she says, her voice creaking.
“I’m okay,” Betty whispers.
Jamie turns around so she can hug her back. “We’ll go one day,” she says. “Far away. We can do what we want. No more secrets. Just you and me.”
Betty nods.
Jamie gets on her tiptoes, just high enough to reach Betty’s forehead with her lips. Betty squeezes her closer.