Teen Angel by Sonia Pilcer

him?”
    “I’ve seen pictures and I know he’s my father, but I can’t remember anything about him. Neither can Rita. She was eight when he died. And Ruth, all she knows is that he left her with two kids.”
    The warm water lulled Sonny.
Everything was okay. So far
. D.B. had poured some Ivory Snow Flakes into the water so they were covered in a white blanket of soap bubbles.
    “Do you know what you want to be when you get older?” Sonny asked. “I sometimes think about that kind of thing.”
    “Sure,” D.B. said. “I want to get married to someone rich. If he doesn’t have money, forget it. I don’t care if he’s older. And live in a big house with maids and servants, and have two children. A boy and a girl. I even know what I’ll name them.”
    “What?”
    “The girl will be named Yvette, after Yvette Mimieux, and the boy either Adam or Jeffrey.”
    “I want to do something special,” Sonny said. “Sometimes I think about being an artist like Kirk Douglas in
Lust For Life
. Ormaybe a writer. If I’m a writer I even know what my novel will be about.”
    “What?”
    “Okay, don’t laugh,” Sonny said, throwing her head back but careful not to wet her hair. She closed her eyes. “It’s all about this beautiful young girl named Sarah who is the illegitimate daughter of this very powerful prince in Europe. When the war comes, he has her adopted so she won’t be killed. Anyway, this peasant couple brings her up but they never tell her anything about her origins. But somehow she has always sensed it. She knows she does not belong with her parents. They don’t even look like her. Well, she ends up running away and I don’t know exactly what happens in between but at the end of the novel she finds her real father. Over the years, he has regretted his decision and he’s searched all over the world for her. They end up living together until she meets this count … I haven’t decided how to end it.”
    “Sounds very good,” D.B. said, nodding her head. “Like it’s real. Where did you get the idea for that?”
    “I don’t know. Inspiration, I suppose. Do you really like it?” Sonny bent forward, clutched at D.B.’s arm, and accidentally kicked her.
    “Will you watch it! I told you I did.” D.B. pulled her arm away from Sonny’s.
    “I never told anyone else about it.” She paused. Then Sonny said, “Do you have a best friend?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, a friend that you’re closer to than other friends. Someone you could tell a really bad secret to, if you had one. Who’s closer than a sister and would never betray you for all the money in the world.”
    “Not really. I used to be pretty close to Mary but not anymore. Do you?”
    Sonny shook her head. “Would you like to be
really
best friends?”
    D.B. thought for a moment. “Sure.”
    “We have to tell each other a secret that we never told anyone else. That’ll be our bond. Like we’re blood sisters.”
    “Okay,” D.B. said, “but first I got to think of one.”
    Think of one?
Sonny was flooded with dozens of horrible secrets but she knew which one she would choose. The worst one.
Did she dare? Suppose D.B. told someone? And then everyone would know
… “Did you think of one?” she asked.
    “Sort of. But you’ve got to promise, really promise not to tell anybody. Do you swear it?”
    Sonny crossed herself, “And hope to die …”
    “Last year my sister got pregnant.”
    “Rita? You’re kidding!” Sonny gasped.
    “Please don’t tell anyone. The only reason I know is because she had to talk to somebody so she told me.”
    “What did she do?”
    “She got some kind of abortion. All I know is she went down to Puerto Rico for two days and when she came back, that was it.”
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah, but the worst part of it was that she didn’t know who the father of the baby was?”
    “What do you mean?” Sonny asked. “How could she not know? I mean, it’s not like she was blindfolded or raped, is