I gently tugged the girl in question to my side. Her back was stiff, almost certainly due to nervousness.
“That’s me,” she said. “I’m sorry for barging in earlier, and for eavesdropping.”
Jill panicked at the clear self-recrimination in Nito’s voice and waved her hands around in front of herself to refute it.
“No, I should be the one apologizing! I’m sorry you had to hear something so grating. I wou—”
“It wasn’t grating!” Nito’s voice echoed around the room after her outburst.
Paula and I were both wide-eyed. Jill froze as well, looking blankly at Nito. She’d covered her mouth, apparently just as surprised as we were at how loudly she’d spoken. Her cheeks reddened at being the center of attention, but she clenched her fists and fixed her gaze on Jill.
“It was absolutely, absolutely wonderful. I loved your singing. It wasn’t grating in the slightest.”
She gradually trailed off as she spoke, but she still got the whole thing out before averting her gaze in embarrassment. I was overwhelmed at how much she’d grown. She was unaccustomed to people and very reserved, and yet she’d gotten her thoughts across so firmly! Paula smiled softly at her, before gently poking Jill in the shoulder.
“What do you say?”
“Th-Thank you. I’m happy to hear that.”
Jill had carefully considered Nito’s feelings and responded sincerely. While the thanks were exceptionally awkwardly given, they were still effective. Nito cautiously raised her gaze and exchanged a small smile with Jill. It was a conversation rooted in mutual awkwardness.
“Looks like you’ve got a new friend, Jill,” Paula said.
Jill had immediately moved to wave her hand, so I cut her off by speaking to Nito.
“Aren’t you happy about that, Nito?”
“I am,” she answered brightly.
Jill floundered, searching for somewhere to put her hands, before finally clasping them together in front of her chest.
“I-I’m not sure becoming friends with me is a good thing,” she managed haltingly.
“That’s not true,” Nito said, offering her own hands to Jill. “I want to know more about you, and I want you to know more about me. So I want to be friends.”
I had to look up at the ceiling and slap my forehead to keep a hold of myself after hearing that. Honestly, I wanted to leave the room and shout my feelings out. While I was trying to recover, I felt something pat my shoulder. Glancing over, I saw that Paula had come up beside me. She was holding her other hand over her mouth. Even in the darkness of the theater, I could see the film of tears welling up in her eyes as she moved her face closer to mine.
“She’s so pure. Oh, my heart...” she whispered, her voice dipping to the low register of a man’s for the first time I’d ever heard.
I said nothing and just nodded deeply. We were only on the fringes of it and we were in that state. Poor Jill was making a low groan in the back of her throat. Her eyebrows had furrowed and the corners of her mouth had turned down as she screwed her eyes shut. I could see her clenching her teeth. It was the face of someone doing their best not to cry.
“I-I wand do be friends with you doo...”
She might actually have been crying, after all, but Paula and I both had some dust in our eyes so we couldn’t tell. By the time we’d cleaned our eyes, Nito and Jill were hand in hand—a girl and a young woman with just a handful of years between them, now friends.
“I-I’m sorry for that display...” Jill said, lowering her head.
I refuted her comment entirely, but Jill wouldn’t accept that. It was a little late now, but it occurred to me that maybe it’d have been better for me to be outside. Having a guy around must have been pretty unpleasant at times like this. At least, for everyone but Paula.
“Come on, Jill, you’re all friends now. You can’t keep looking at the floor forever.”
Jill let out a slight gasp, probably because she didn’t remember having made friends with me. I couldn’t make an appeal as sincere as Nito’s, though, so I had to take advantage of Paula’s phrasing.
“It’s great to have more friends, but we’ve got to go for now.”
“Oh, you won’t stay to watch me dance?”
“There’s someone else I want to invite to the festival. He’s called Monty. Do you know him? Up by the lake.”
“Yeah, the thunder rat,” Paula replied, face twisting.
“You have history?”
“He yelled at us constantly as kids. Well, it was our fault for messing with him in the first place, but I’m still not comfortable around him.”
The word “yell” was far from what I’d expected.
“But he’s seemed so calm most of the time...”
“He used to be different. When his daughter got ill and died, he lost all his energy.”
That wasn’t information I’d gone looking for, and I felt almost guilty for knowing it. Finding out something like that without the person in question being around wasn’t great. Paula let out a gasp as well and put a finger over her lips.
“Getting too chatty is all part of getting old. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
I nodded silently.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I think you’ve got your work cut out for you. He’s not one for big gatherings like that.”
“I had a feeling he wasn’t,” I said with a wry smile.
Still, asking didn’t cost anything. I told Paula and Jill we’d come again sometime, and then we left the theater.