Secret Star by Nancy Springer

worse. The open side was screened by sumac, so he had some privacy. Tess noticed a black circle of ground inside a ring of stones where he’d built a campfire. No fear that anybody would see. There was nothing around but pasture and woods, no houses or anything, for probably a mile.
    Kam got on his knees near the fire ring, rummaging in a knapsack. Tess stood and watched as he pulled out a packet of graham crackers, and her stomach started to howl like a chained dog.
    â€œC’mon in, sit down,” he said. He handed her the crackers and kept rummaging. “I’ll get the fire going and cook us some soup.” He pulled out a couple of dented cans of store-brand beef-and-barley condensed.
    Tess settled in with her back against an upright and gulped graham crackers. Kam had firewood ready, stacked along the back of the run-in shed to stay dry. She sat, eating more slowly once her belly quieted down, and watched him break a punky dead branch into kindling.
    He said, “That guy at the IGA must like you.” He looked up from his kindling and gave her a flicker of a smile. “He acts jealous as a rooster.”
    If Kam was trying to make her feel better, he was succeeding. Butch, an actual boy, seemed to like her? But—nah. Tess said, “That’s just the way Butch is. Acts like he owns the place.”
    â€œHe’s territorial, all right.” Kam crumpled a piece of newspaper, tented slivers of punk wood over it, and lit a match to it. The paper blazed, then dwindled. Little flames licked up from the wood. Kam fed finger-thick sticks to the small fire, then pulled a dented metal pot out of his knapsack, got up, and headed down through hoppleberry bushes to the creek. In a few minutes he came back with the pot full of water and said, “Thank you for getting him out of my face. You keep saving my ass. Thank you.”
    He seemed to mean it. Tess set down the graham crackers in surprise. “You could have handled him.”
    â€œMaybe.” He crouched to open the soup cans. “I’d rather not. I’ll stay out of a fight whenever I can.”
    â€œYou—you will?”
    â€œNot much punch in this.” He lifted his withered hand and glanced at her. “Guys like whatsisname, Butch, they scare me.” His shoulders shivered. “Anything happens to the good eye, that’s it, I’m blind.”
    She shuddered with him. Okay, it made sense. Of course he wasn’t a fighter.
    But—she had thought—
    Tess blurted out, “What happened to your other eye?”
    Mixing soup, his hands stopped moving. He canted his head and looked up at her. The sun was going down, putting Kam and everything inside the cowshed into shadow. Firelight flickered on his face; shadows moved but he didn’t. Tess couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling. He stared so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer, like she shouldn’t have asked the question.
    He said, “My stepfather.”
    At first she didn’t understand. Then she started to understand, and she couldn’t speak.
    Oh, my God. It happened when—when he was just a little kid .
    â€œHe killed the eye just hitting me all the time,” Kam said.
    She didn’t want to believe she had heard him right. “Your—your stepfather? Your own family?”
    â€œBeat me silly whenever he felt like it.” Hard and blunt as creek stones.
    â€œGod,” Tess whispered. “Kam, that’s awful.”
    He tilted his head down. He turned back to fixing soup.
    She said, “Your scars—” She hated to ask, but she needed to know. He was Kam, he was just right, he was the greatest thing since somebody took electricity and ran it through a guitar, yet—nothing about him was making sense to her. He was tough, yet—he wasn’t a tough guy at all? “Your hand—”
    â€œHe did that too.”
    She didn’t ask how. “Was