“So I found out what’s in those goofy letters my sister is sending to Matt Davey. You want to see?”
Abigail and Suzie nod eagerly,yesyesyes, crowding in closer.
“I found it in Cathy’s drawer last weekend after Dad grounded her.”
Hazel slowly unfolds a piece of pink notepaper from her shirt pocket. Around the edges, a hand-drawn border of flowers and peace signs, little hearts scrawled in red ink.
“Read it.” She passes it to Abigail. “Out loud.”
“‘Dear Matty,’” Abigail says in a mimicking falsetto that makes Suzie and Hazel giggle, “‘I wish I could see you on Friday, but my stupid parents are being lame. Thinking of you, Cathy. Kiss-kiss-kiss.’”
“Pretty boring, right?” Hazel grins. She looks anything but bored. “Light the candle, Suzie.”
Suzie takes the lighter Abigail is holding out, flicking it nervously. She has to curve her hand around the flame to keep it steady. There is a hiss of water through the pipes as a toilet is flushed somewhere in the building, and all three girls laugh nervously.
“You watching?” Hazel holds the notepaper over the candle flame, high enough to draw heat but not go up in flames.
“Oh my God!” Suzie whispers. “Look!”
Brown letters are forming on the surface of the notepaper, seemingly conjured out of nowhere. They appear in Cathy’s distinctive hand between the lines of inked text, a secret message slowly rising to the surface.
Abigail whistles low under her breath. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s amazing.”
“That’s lemon juice.” Hazel pulls the paper away and snuffs out the candle with pinched fingers. “You have to heat it up to see it.”
“What does it say?”
Hazel grins, turning the paper to face them. Abigail and Suzie read it with their eyes slowly widening, hands pressed over their mouths.
“OMG, Hazel, your sister is aslut.”
“Does she reallydothat?” Suzie’s eyes are round, her cheeks lightly pink. Suzie, who still goes to Sunday school and whose father collects her from every party right at the door.
“This is so cool, Hazel. Hey, we should do this!”
“Right?” Hazel is nodding. “Then we can talk about anything we want and no one can see it. Only us. It’ll beoursecret.”
“You can do this with lemon juice?” Suzie is incredulous. It looks like magic to her. Her parents willnotlike that.
“Sure! Or vinegar. I looked it up. You know in the Second World War, they used urine.”
“Ewww!”
“I’m just saying, if it’s acidic, it works. And you don’t need a candle, a radiator will do. Any heat source, the book said.”
“We’ll use a code so we’ll know if a letter has a secret message or not.” Abigail taps her fingertips together thoughtfully. “Like a lightning bolt.”
“A smiley face,” Suzie says. It’s her parents she is thinking of. Trying to imagine them stumbling on a stack of letters with lightning bolts drawn in the corner. It would look too punk to them, maybe make them suspicious. A smiley face, though? Well now, that’s just cute girl stuff.
“Don’t expect me to be writing any dirty letters like that, though,” Suzie adds, frowning. “That stuff’sdis-gust-ing.”
Suzie stands in front of the shelves at the back of the pharmacy, so absorbed by the memory that she is almost unaware that she is shaking. She is still looking at the receipt, the little smiley face in the corner.Coincidence, her rational mind insists. But Suzie isn’t convinced. It’s not just the little face. It’s the slightly crumpled texture the paper has. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Suzie remembers that summer so well, the bitchy secrets they had passed to each other, all as caustic as the cut lemons they’d used to write them. Her wholeroom had smelled of citrus that summer, and the juice had made her fingertips raw and cracked. That’s when she’d started washing them, over and over again. Slowly, carefully, she turns the paper over. Printed on the back is a receipt. Suzie notes the name of the pharmacy and checks the date and time at the top, her heart quickening. It’s a short list of purchases, but there at the bottom are two packs of Wonderland gum.I haven’t tasted this since I was fifteen, Hazel had said, and even though she’s alone, Suzie speaks aloud, in an awed, low whisper.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
When she returns to the counter, the man is standing a little to the side with his head lowered, watching her from beneath beetling brows. Suzie smiles at him, despite the feeling of unease tightening in her chest.
“Sorry. We don’t have it. I can order it in, it should only take a few days.” She turns to the computer. “I just need your wife’s name.”