In the Woods When First We Met

96. Jane Knows.

By Tuesday night, Billy knew he was better and would be perfectly well enough to attend school the following day, but he hoped he could appear sick a bit longer so he could have another day like today- hanging around the house, alone, reading magazines, napping, tossing a ball into the air and catching it....anything at all, as long as it wasn't school work.

Before he went to bed that night, there was a knock on his door.

"Who is it?" Billy said, trying to make his voice appear raspy and strained, in case it was his mother.

There was no answer. Jane opened his door, marched straight in, and said, "I know what you did."

Billy looked up from his baseball magazine.

His heart caught in his throat.

But then he looked back at his magazine, turned the page and said in a bored voice, "I don't know what you're talking about." His voice wasn't strained sounding anymore; he'd dropped that act once he knew it was just his sister.

Jane sat down on his bed. "Don't lie to me, I know about Anne."

Billy wasn't reading the magazine anymore, but he kept his eyes glued to it.

"Was it not enough to scare her, you had to cause injury, too?" She asked, upset, thinking only of Anne's wrist. "You hurt her, Billy! You hurt her for real! How could you do something permanent like that?"

"Well I wouldn't call it permanent. She's fine," Billy said, casually flipping through the pages.

"Okay, not permanent, permanent," Jane said. "But still, something that lasts...you didn't just yell at her and send her on her way. You had to make it physical? It could be weeks or even months before she's okay again!" Jane, again, was talking about Anne's wrist.

"Look," Billy said, finally setting aside his magazine and sitting up. "Maybe it was a bad thing to do, but what she did was worse. I couldn't let her go around spreading lies about our sister."

"What she said about Prissy ended up being true, didn't it?" Jane whispered.

"No!" Billy said. "He kissed Prissy but that doesn't mean that anything else happened. Prissy wouldn't do that."

"Well Prissy's doing something," Jane said, "And I don't think Anne should have said anything about it, either, but if she saw it and said something, then she was only telling the truth!"

Billy sounded furious. "You shouldn't be defending that trash. If she says nasty things about our sister then something nasty needs to happen to her!"

"But-"

Billy interrupted, saying angrily, "Don't feel sorry for her. Think about it: she knows everything about intimate relations; she wouldn't know about that stuff unless she was putting out. She's probably had every guy she's ever met. Even that dumb foreign farmhand the Cuthberts have...she probably sneaks off to the barn to do nasty things with him."

Jane felt confused. What did that have to do with Anne's wrist?

"She's a tramp, Jane. Don't give her a second thought. What I did to her was nothing she hasn't done before, probably a hundred times. ...I just made it hurt, that's all. To teach her a lesson."

Jane stared at him. She had thought they were talking about Anne's sprained wrist. But Billy had...