Page 103 of To Love or to Lose
The fear in her voice could mean one of two things: either she doesn’t want Logan to tell their parents, or she doesn’t want her brother to be disappointed in her.
“No, he hasn’t heard anything about this,” Winnie assures her, taking a seat next to her and Gracie on one side of the booth.
I lead Gwen over to the other side of the booth, both of us sliding in across from the other girls.
“You guys need to tell us what happened.”
Eloise slides in the booth beside me, setting two baskets of fries down on the table. She must have gone back to thekitchen to grab them, knowing comfort food would most likely be needed.
Gwen looks over at me, tears already forming in her green eyes. “You’re going to think we’re so stupid.”
I place my hand atop hers. “We all make mistakes, Gwen,” I say, not denying the fact that lack of common sense may have caused this.
She pulls the hand I’m holding out from under my grasp and back down in her lap. “Not you.”
I’m stunned at her confession. “I hope you don’t actually believe that.”
“It may seem hard to believe that Evie isn’t perfect, and even if she is, rest assured El and I aren’t,” Winnie speaks up, nurturing more to my sister’s insecurities than I could’ve. “We’re here to listen, and to help. Not to judge you or compare your mistakes to our own.”
Mae leans further into Winnie, finally cracking as she runs her hands up and down her sweater-clad arms. “We thought they liked us.”
Her statement causes tears to fall down all three of the little girls’ faces.
“Who?” Eloise asks, glancing around the diner.
“They’re already gone,” Gracie says, wiping her eyes.
I can no longer wait for them to beat around the bush; clearly, something happened that is causing them emotional distress, and I need to know what.
“Start from the beginning.”
For the next thirty minutes, they talk about how they met a group of three boys that go to Fairwood Prep. After talking to them for a few weeks and ensuring they were who they said they were, the girls agreed to meet up with them.When I asked how they got to the diner, they said that the boys picked them up.
These boys are sixteen years old.
My knee-jerk reaction is to yell at them, especially my sister, because she’s smarter than this. She’s capable of understanding the type of danger she and her friends put themselves in.
Instead, all I ask is, “What happened next?”
Gwen takes over because of how hard Mae is crying.
“We all came in and sat down. We ordered milkshakes and everything was going okay.” She pauses, as if to add, “at least we thought it was.”
“Until?”
Gwen looks overtly ashamed, and I know that she’s the one Mae was trying to protect. That’s why they wouldn’t tell the story at first.
Because something happened to Mae.
“I was so nice to him,” she says while Gracie wraps an arm around her shoulder.
“Mae, you know a sixteen-year-old boy is way too old for you,” Winnie says. “You’re still in middle school. There is no reason for you to be going out with boys that can already drive.”
In the grand scheme of things, adults with a three-year age gap are not abnormal. But a tenth— maybe even eleventh—grader talking to an eighth grader?
That’s wrong.
“I didn’t care how old he was, I just wanted someone to like me.” Her voice raises slightly, making her frustration apparent.
