The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart Page B

rumored to speak in tongues.
    But unlike other friends, Sonia showed me what was different about this new place without ever seeming to require me to change. The slight Texas accent I acquired, the knowledge of how to two-step—I picked up those things on my own. With Sonia, I belonged for the first time with a person, instead of pretending to belong to a place. When one of us walked into a room alone, “Where’s Sonia?” or “Where’s Cameron?” was the first thing said.
    Sonia didn’t explain to me, at first, why I’d seen her mother hit her, why she couldn’t multiply seven times eight. That time in the gym, we climbed out of the pool and walked in silence outside, where we stood dripping in the courtyard, wringing out our hair. I asked her how she was going to get home.
    “I don’t know,” she said, like it didn’t much matter.
    “We can give you a ride.”
    “That would be nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
    After that she was silent. I took her silence to mean that I was a reminder of the scene I’d witnessed, that she now wished I’d disappear, and that she’d avoid me in the future. I knew this was how I’d behave if I were her, but the thought that Sonia might ignore me made me sad. I wanted to be her friend. Already I wanted to protect her, less because of pity than because of my admiration for her resolve, which seemed to me to make her deserve protection all the more. There she was, soaking wet, her clothes clinging to her body, and for all I knew she could still feel the sting of her mother’s slap against her cheek. But she stood without hunching her shoulders or twisting her legs, with no appearance of self-consciousness. When a boy from our English class walked by, I crossed my arms over my chest—my nipples were showing—but Sonia just said, “Hi.” She met his gaze like there was no need for explanation, and he didn’t ask for one. She embodied the lesson I’d learned from my dealings with my father: Show no weakness. The world will use it against you.
    At last my mother arrived. She didn’t offer her usual explanations for her lateness; she was too busy staring at me and Sonia. “Mom, this is Sonia,” I said, opening the front door. “She needs a ride.”
    “Nice to meet you,” Sonia said. “Do you mind taking me home?”
    “Of course not,” my mother said, and only then did Sonia climb into the car. “What on earth happened to you two?” my mother asked.
    I didn’t look at Sonia. “It was freshman hazing,” I said. “Some of the upperclassmen pushed a bunch of us into the pool.”
    “That’s terrible,” my mother said.
    “No, no,” I said. “If they haze you it means they think you’re cool. It would be worse if they ignored us.”
    “It’s hot out, anyway,” Sonia said. I chanced a look back at her. She met my eyes and smiled, this smile she had that made her look like a child given an unexpected gift, a smile that said she was delighted with you, and amazed at her own good fortune. I’d passed a test. She knew I’d keep her secrets.
    Sonia’s house was in a subdivision not far from the one where we lived. It didn’t have any of the southwestern flavor of our house. It was gray brick, tall and narrow, and I imagined that her mother peered at us, witchlike, out of a second-story window, malevolence in her eyes. Before she got out of the car, Sonia asked if I wanted to come over after school the next day. “If that’s all right,” she said to my mother, and my mother, surprised by her politeness, said of course it was.
    “Okay,” I said, resisting the urge to ask if she wouldn’t rather come home with me. As Sonia walked to her porch and climbed the steps to her front door, I felt like we were delivering her back to captivity, like she was a princess returning to the castle of her long imprisonment.
    “I’m glad you made a friend,” my mother said.
     
     
    During French the next day, Sonia passed me a note that said,
Wait for me at the end of