Secret Star by Nancy Springer

trembling any longer, just limp and dead-feeling. They sat there.
    â€œDamn,” Tess said.
    He looked up at her with a flicker of a smile, rubbed his face to dry it, then stood up and went to fetch the pot of water from the fire.
    The warm water soothed her hurt arm. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and the wound was just a shallow two-inch gouge. After he had soaped it and rinsed it Kam tied one more bandage around it and let it alone.
    Her shaking had stopped. But not her anger.
    â€œGraham crackers?” Kam offered.
    â€œI’m not hungry.”
    He crouched and looked at her. “You feeling okay to walk home now?”
    â€œI told you, I’m not going back there. Not ever.”
    He sat cross-legged and looked at her some more. “A few things aren’t real clear to me,” he said finally. “Like, you said you wanted to hug your father when he came in the door, but you couldn’t. How come?”
    She didn’t even have to close her eyes to see him in the doorway, haloed in light. Big. Blond. Handsome.
    With a big ugly fishing knife in his clenched hand.
    With words a ten-year-old girl didn’t fully understand coming out of his mouth.
    Kam asked, “Why was your mother hiding in the kitchen?”
    Because she was afraid.
    Same reason Tess had been hiding behind the stair railings.
    â€œHe was—drunk, maybe,” she whispered. “He was—being ugly. He had a knife.”
    â€œThreatening Mr. Mathis?”
    Tess couldn’t remember the ugly words. Just Daddy telling her father to get out. “Maybe.”
    â€œThen—when Mr. Mathis shot him—it was self-defense.”
    Maybe. But it didn’t seem to make much difference. “I still hate him,” she said. “He should have told me.”
    Kam puffed his lips like he was getting exasperated. “Look, Tess—as far as I can see, your stepfather must walk on water. Your father comes in and threatens him, your mother shoots him, he ends up in a wheelchair, and he raises you? He’s disabled, with practically no income, yet he keeps you instead of sticking you in an orphan home or something? What’s that sound like to you?”
    She sat silent.
    Kam said, “It sounds like love to me.”
    She couldn’t say a word.
    He said, “I’ll trade places with you, Tess.”
    â€œGo ahead. I’m not going back.” Her voice wavered. “I don’t care if my father was a mean sleaze, Daddy still shouldn’t have killed him.”
    â€œTess …”
    â€œI’m mad, damn it!”
    â€œTry being mad at the jackass who did that to you,” Kam said, gesturing at her arm.
    â€œButch?” She had told him about Butch, but now she rolled her eyes. “He’s a pants-wetter, he’s still shaking. Forget him. I’m so mad at—at the world, I guess.…”
    â€œTry to get past the anger,” Kam said.
    â€œHow?”
    It was dark, and the spring peepers were talking. The only light on Kam’s face was firelight, and in that warm light his eye shone, his rugged face glowed, he was beautiful—how, Tess wondered, could she ever have thought that he was ugly? He had broad shoulders, wise brows, a heartbreaker smile. He was smiling it now. Yet he knew all about anger. He had better reasons to be angry than she did.
    â€œHow do you get past the anger?”
    She meant him, personally, and he knew it. He shrugged. “I cry.”
    He was so brave. She gazed at him.
    He said, “Did you love your father, Tess? The blond sleaze?”
    Oh, God damn him. Oh, God damn it.
    Then the tears came.
    Benson Mathis knew at once that something was wrong, because when Tess came in she didn’t speak to him and didn’t look at him and didn’t give him a chance to ask what was the matter, just rushed to her room and shut the door. Then Kam came in, and Kam looked at him, a quiet, steady look.
    â€œShe