Secret Star by Nancy Springer Page A

it—like—the whole time you were a kid—”
    â€œAs long as I can remember he beat me. I left when I was twelve.”
    God.
    â€œBeen on my own pretty much ever since.”
    Her chest hurt for him, her mind hurt. It shouldn’t have happened . “Where was your mother? Dead?” Like mine?
    Kam placed his cooking pot carefully on the dirt floor. He got up and brought two small logs from his stack of firewood. He added a few sticks to his campfire, keeping it small; it was already burning down. He placed the logs one on each side of it and balanced the pot on them, over the embers. He did not look at Tess.
    He said, very low, “She was right there all the time. She let him hurt me.”
    Something sizzled. With a shock Tess saw that Kamo was silently crying. His face did not move, but his scarred cheek shone in the firelight, wet. His tears were falling on the hot ashes at the edge of the fire.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t know what else to say. Her hand lifted toward him, but stopped; maybe he would not want to be touched.
    â€œShe would feed me cookies afterward,” Kam said, his voice stretched tight and hard, like a drumhead.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Maybe he knew what she meant.
    He nodded. “She’s probably still with him.” He left his soup on the fire and sat back, facing Tess. He made no effort to wipe away the tears or hide them. “Hell,” he said.
    She nodded. “So you got out.”
    â€œNot soon enough.”
    She waited. He went on.
    â€œWhat happened was, when I got to be bigger, eleven, twelve, I started to fight back. Made it worse. He beat me so bad sometimes I thought I was gonna die—but one night, the son of a bitch was so drunk when he came after me that I got him down. I got him down on the floor. And then I had to decide.” Kam faltered. His gaze slipped away from her. Looking at the fire, slowly he said, “I wanted to kill him. I wanted to do him the way he did me and then kill him slow.”
    Tess felt her breath congeal in her chest. Twelve years old, he had been forced to decide whether to be a murderer.
    Kam glanced up at her. “See, the ironic thing is, usually kids who get beat up, like me—they grow up to be just like the people who did it to them.”
    But not Kamo. With uncanny sureness Tess knew what he had decided, and she knew his mind was strong enough to make it stick. “You didn’t kill him,” she said. “You didn’t want to be like him. You ran away to look for your father.”
    He ducked his head. He lifted his arm and scrubbed away the tears with his sleeve.
    Tess decided it was time for her to shut up. She sat back, leaned her head against the shed wall and closed her eyes. The soup was starting to heat up; it smelled good. So did the smoke. So did the faint, sweet, grassy aroma of cows that still came up from the ground. Tess heard a quiet slow-dance rhythm start inside her head, yet at the same time she was thinking. About Kam. About what his life had been like.
    He had been serious when he told her nobody had ever loved him.
    He needed to find his father.
    She opened her eyes. He was stirring the soup. “Kam,” she asked, “you sticking around?”
    He looked over at her and nodded. “A little while longer. There’s something I have to do.”
    Tess knew she had to help him. And she had an idea how. It scared her—but she knew what she had to do.
    Daddy was in bed, asleep, when she got home. Since he didn’t have TV to watch, he got bored in the evenings and went to bed early. Or maybe he was still in his silent mood and didn’t want to talk to her. Fine. She wouldn’t have to deal with him until morning.
    Tess felt bone tired, her head ached from too much to think about, and all she wanted in the world was a hot shower. Instead, she bathed at the pump, shivering and muttering to herself. Forget