The Treasure Box by Penelope Stokes Page B

Little Pigs’ Barbecue, a local teen hangout, the afternoon before their seventh grade history midterm. “Let’s go home and study,” she said. “You can have dinner at our house.”
    Hattie had refused. “Some of us are going out,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at a gang of pimply-faced boys and longhaired girls who jostled one another on the hood of an old blue convertible. She didn’t say so, but the message was clear:
    Vita was not invited.
    â€œBut it’s a school night,” Vita protested. “And the exam tomorrow—”
    â€œYou’re not my mother, OK? So quit hovering.” Hattie stormed away, and Vita went home to study alone.
    The call came at 11:35 that night. A one-car accident, head-on into a telephone pole on a deserted road outside of town. The driver, a sixteen-year-old sophomore who had received his license five weeks before, had been killed instantly. Hattie had gone face-first through the windshield. Half a twelve-pack of beer lay on the floorboard, and six empty cans littered the backseat.
    The doctor wouldn’t let her into the room, but Vita went to the hospital anyway, every afternoon for a week. Not a single one of Hattie’s new friends ever once set foot in the place. Finally the nurses let her go in—ten minutes, they said. No more.
    The visit took less than five. Hattie sat propped up in the hospital bed, her face a patchwork of stitches and puckers and swollen bruises. It had taken the ER doctors nine and a half hours to remove the glass from her face and put her back together. Half an inch closer, and she would have lost her right eye.
    â€œHow’d you get in here?” she slurred, her mouth twisting in a direction it wasn’t meant to go.
    â€œI’ve been here waiting to see you every day since the accident. The nurses finally let me in.” Vita set a small potted plant and a card on the bedside table. There were no other flowers in the room, no cards, no balloons. Just bare white walls and a hanging drip that went into a needle in Hattie’s left elbow. Her eyes flitted back and forth from Hattie’s ruined face to the window, to the muted television, to the foot of the bed. She didn’t know where to look.
    â€œGo ahead and say it.” Hattie turned her head to one side and closed her eyes.
    â€œSay what?”
    â€œ I told you so. ”
    â€œI didn’t say that.”
    â€œBut you thought it.” She opened her eyes. “So high and mighty, Vita. Always right. Always in control.”
    Vita frowned. “I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came because—”
    â€œBecause you wanted to see the freak? Well, go ahead. Take a look. Take a good hard look.”
    â€œYou’re not a freak, Hattie. The doctors can fix it. It’ll take some time, but it’ll be all right. At least you’re alive.”
    â€œYeah,” she said. “Guess I should count my blessings.”
    â€œI’m so sorry, Hattie. I just want you to know that—”
    â€œThat you’ll always be my friend?” Hattie interrupted. “Don’t say it, Vita. Just don’t. I can’t stomach your pity. So just leave, all right?”
    Vita left. For a while she held out hope that the accident might serve some good purpose, that she and Hattie could be friends again. But it never happened. Hattie recovered, got out of the hospital, and went on with her life—a life that no longer included Vita Kirk. Once, in high school, Vita saw her in the parking lot, getting onto a motorcycle with some guy twice her age.
    She wore a black leather jacket with a skull and crossbones embroidered on the back. The banner above the skull read Scarface .
    Hattie lived, but the friendship died. Vita never really understood why. What she did understand was that when you cared about people and trusted them, they betrayed you. Always. One way or another, they always left you,