he friendship between Billy and Marie-Ange grew over the years into a solid bond that they both relied on. Through their childhood years, they became like brother and sister. And by the time he was fourteen, and she thirteen, their friends began to tease them about it, and asked if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Marie-Ange always insisted they weren’t. She clung to him like a rock in a storm, and he called her faithfully every night at her Aunt Carole’s. Marie-Ange’s life with her remained as bleak and as gray as it had been from the first moment she saw her. But seeing Billy in school every day, and riding home on the bus with him, was enough to keep her going. And she visited his family as often as she could. Being with them was like taking refuge in a warm safe place. She visited them on holidays, after fulfilling her obligations to Aunt Carole. For Marie-Ange, Billy’s family was her haven. They were all she had now. She didn’t even have Sophie anymore. She had written to Sophie for two years, and was still puzzled by the fact that she had never had a single answer from her. She was afraid that something terrible must have happened to her. Otherwise, Sophie would have written.

In some ways, Billy had replaced Robert for her, if not her parents. And as she had promised to, she had taught him to speak French during lunch and recess. By the time he was fourteen, he was almost fluent, and they conversed with each other in French frequently in the schoolyard. Billy called it their secret language. And her English had improved to the point that she scarcely had an accent. But given her fraternal feelings for him, it was all the more surprising to her when he told her he loved her, one afternoon as they were walking to the school bus. He said it under his breath, with his eyes cast down, and she stopped to stare at him with a stupefied expression.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said in answer to what he had told her. “How can you say that?” He looked startled by her response – it wasn’t what he had hoped for or expected.

“Because I do love you.” He was saying it to her in French, so the others wouldn’t understand them, and to them, it sounded like a heated argument, as Marie-Ange said, “Oh, alors, t’es vraiment con!” She told him he was a jerk, and then she looked at him and started laughing.

“I love you too. Okay. But like your sister. How can you go and mess everything up between us?” She was determined not to let him risk their friendship.

“I wasn’t trying to do that,” he said, frowning, wondering if he had said it wrong, or perhaps at an inappropriate time, but they had no other time together. He still wasn’t allowed on her great-aunt’s farm, and the only time they had together was in school, or on the school bus. Except for her rare visits to his parents’ farmhouse. It was even harder for them during the summer, when they weren’t in school together. Instead, they would both ride bicycles to a meeting place they had found the year before, and sometimes spent hours by a small stream, sitting there and just talking to each other, about life, their families, their hopes and dreams and their futures. She always said she wanted to go back to France when she was eighteen, and planned to get a job as soon as she was old enough so she could afford to. And once he had said that he wanted to come with her, although for him, the dream was even less likely and more distant.

They rolled along after that, as they had always been, devoted friends and buddies, until the following year in the summer, when they met at their secret hiding place. She had brought a Thermos of lemonade with her, and they had been talking for hours, when he suddenly leaned over and kissed her. He was fifteen, and Marie-Ange had just turned fourteen, and they had been best friends for nearly three years then. And once again, she was startled, when he kissed her, but she didn’t object quite as violently as she had the year before. Neither of them said anything, but Marie-Ange was worried, and the next time they met, she told him she didn’t think it was a good idea for them to do anything to change their friendship. She told him in her innocent way that she was afraid of romance.

“Why?” he asked gently, touching her cheek with his hand. He was growing into a tall, handsome young man, and sometimes she thought he looked a little like her father and brother. And she loved to tease him about his freckles. “Why are you afraid of romance, Marie-Ange?” They were speaking English, because hers was still far superior to his French, although she had taught him well, and he even knew all the important slang expressions, which he knew was going to impress his French teacher in high school. They were both starting high school, at the same school they’d been, in September.

“I don’t want anything to change between us,” she said sensibly. “If you fall in love with me, one day we will be tired of each other, and then we will lose everything. If we stay only friends, we can never lose each other.” It was not entirely unreasonable, and she remained firm about it, although no one who knew them would have believed that. Everyone had always believed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend since their childhood, even Aunt Carole, who continued to make disparaging remarks about him, which always made Marie-Ange angry, although she said nothing to her.

Their relationship continued to flourish all the way through high school. She watched him play on the basketball team, he came to see her in the junior play, and they went to their senior prom together. With the exception of a few random dates, he had never had a girlfriend, and Marie-Ange continued to say she had no interest whatsoever in romance, with Billy or any other boy, all she wanted was to finish school, and go back to France one day. And her great-aunt wouldn’t have let her go out with boys anyway. She had strong opinions about it, and was prepared to enforce them. She had continued to threaten Marie-Ange with the state orphanage for all the years she’d been there. But on prom night, Aunt Carole finally agreed to let Marie-Ange go to the dance with Billy.

He came to the farm the night of the senior prom, in his father’s truck, to pick her up. And Aunt Carole had let her buy an ice blue satin dress that was almost the same color as her eyes, and made her blond hair seem to sparkle. She looked beautiful, and Billy looked appropriately dazzled.

They had a great time that night, and he and Marie-Ange talked endlessly about the scholarship she had earned, and which she was not able to use, for college. The university was fifty miles away, in Ames, and Aunt Carole had made a point of saying she would do nothing to help her, she would not lend her a truck or a car, and said she was needed on the farm. She offered her neither money nor transportation for college, and Billy was outraged.

“You have to go, Marie-Ange! You can’t just work for her like a slave for the rest of your life.” Her dream had been to go back to France at eighteen, but it was obvious that when she turned eighteen that summer, she was not going to do that. She had no money of her own, and never had time to work, because Carole always needed her to do something, and Marie-Ange felt obligated to her. She had lived with her for seven years, and to Marie-Ange, they had seemed endless. But college was now an unattainable dream for her, the scholarship covered tuition, but not books, or dormitory, or food, and even if she got a job, she couldn’t make enough to cover her expenses while she went to school. The only way she could go was if she stayed on the farm with her aunt, and commuted. But Aunt Carole had seen to it that that couldn’t happen. “All you need is a car for chrissake,” Billy raged on the drive home. They had talked about it all evening.

“Well, I don’t have one. I’m going to turn the scholarship down next week,” Marie-Ange said matter-of-factly. She knew that she had to get a job eventually, locally, so she could make enough money to go to France, but she had no idea what she’d do when she got there, probably just visit and come back. She had no way of staying in France either, nowhere to live, no one to live with, no way of making a living. She had no skills whatsoever, and no training. All she had ever learned was how to do chores on the farm, not unlike Billy, who was going to be taking agricultural extension classes. He had dreams of helping his father on their farm, and even modernizing it, despite his father’s resistance. He wanted to be a modern-day farmer, and he thought Marie-Ange deserved a real education. They both did. It made him hate Marie-Ange’s great-aunt all the more for not letting her go to college. Even his father understood the importance of taking classes, although he couldn’t go to school full time. His father needed him too much on the farm to allow him to do that. He urged Marie-Ange to work on her great-aunt some more, and not turn the scholarship down until later in the summer. And as they drove home that night, they were in good spirits. They were both excited about graduating from high school.

“Do you realize we’ve been friends for nearly seven years?” Marie-Ange said proudly. Her parents had died seven years ago that summer, and in some ways, it still seemed like minutes, in others aeons. But she still dreamed of them and Robert at night, and she could still see Marmouton in her mind’s eye as though she had just been there. “You’re the only family I have,” Marie-Ange said to Billy, and he smiled. They both entirely disregarded her Aunt Carole, although Marie-Ange always said that she felt indebted to her, for reasons that escaped Billy. Marie-Ange had lived with her, but Carole had used her mercilessly for the past seven years, as maid, nurse, and farmhand. There was nothing Marie-Ange didn’t do for her. For the past two years, her great-aunt’s health had been failing. Marie-Ange had to do even more to assist her.

“You know, we could be family permanently,” Billy said cautiously oh the drive home from the prom, and glanced at her with a gentle smile, but Marie-Ange was frowning. She never liked it when he talked that way, and doggedly continued to think of them as brother and sister. “We could get married,” he said bravely.

“That’s stupid, Billy, and you know it,” she said bluntly. She never encouraged him in that direction, for his own sake, as well as her own. “Where would we live if we got married? Neither of us has a job, or any money,” she said matter-of-factly.

“We could live with my parents,” he said softly, wishing he could sway her. He had just turned nineteen, and she was turning eighteen shortly, old enough to be married, if she wanted, without her aunt’s permission.

“Or we could live with Aunt Carole. I’m sure she’d love that. You could work for her on the farm, as I do,” Marie-Ange said, and laughed then. “No, we can’t get married,” she said practically. She didn’t want to. “And I’m going to get a job, so I can go back to France next year.” The dream never died for her, and he still wished he could go with her. In Iowa, working on his father’s farm, his French was virtually useless, but he was happy she had taught him.

“I still want you to go to college in the fall. Let’s see what happens,” he said with a look of determination.

“Oh yes, an angel will fall on me from Heaven,” she laughed at him with good humor, as she had adjusted to not going, “and he will throw money at my feet, so I can go to the university, and Aunt Carole will pack my bags, and blow kisses at me when I leave. Right, Billy?” She had been resigned to her fate since she’d come here.

“Maybe,” he said, looking thoughtful. And the next day he began work on a special project. It took him all summer to do, and his brother helped him. His brother Jack worked in a garage in town in his spare time, and helped Billy find just what he needed. It was the first of August when he finally brought it to Marie-Ange, as he came chugging down the driveway in an old Chevy. It sounded terrible, but it drove well, and he had even painted it himself. It was bright red, and the interior was black leather.

He drove up in front of the house, and looked cautiously at Carole when he got out, it was only the third time in seven years that he had been there, and he had never forgotten the reception he’d gotten the first time.

“Wow! Where did you get the fancy car?” Marie-Ange asked with a broad grin, wiping her hands on a towel as she came out of the kitchen. “Whose is it?”

“I put it together myself. I started right after graduation. Want to drive it?”

She had learned to drive tractors and farm vehicles years before, and often drove her aunt’s pickup truck to town to do errands for her or chauffeur her, and she slipped behind the wheel with a broad grin. It was a fun-looking car, although it was old, and Billy had put it together with spit and baling wire, as he said proudly. She drove off the farm, and cruised down the highway for a while, with Billy next to her, and then she reluctantly turned back. She had to cook her aunt’s dinner.

“What are you going to do with it? Drive it to church on Sundays?” she asked, smiling at him. She didn’t know it, but despite her coloring, she had begun to look just like her mother.

“Nope. I’ve got better uses for it than that,” he said mysteriously, proud of himself, and filled with the love for her she would never allow him, except as her adopted brother.

“Like what?” she asked, curious and amused, as they pulled into her driveway.

“It’s a school bus.”

“A school bus? What does that mean?”

“It means you get your scholarship. All you need now is money for books. You can drive to school in it every day, Marie-Ange.” He had done it entirely for her, and tears filled her eyes as she looked at him in amazement, and he longed to kiss her, but knew she would never let him.

“You’re going to lend it to me?” she asked, lapsing into French. She couldn’t believe it, but he shook his head in answer.

“I’m not lending you anything, Marie-Ange. It’s a present. It’s all yours. Your school bus.”

“Oh, my God! You can’t do that!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely. “Are you serious?” she asked, as she pulled away to look at him. It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever done for her, and she hardly knew what to say to him. He had made her dreams come true, and was literally giving her the gift of college, by giving her a way to get there.

“I can do it, and I did. It’s all yours, baby.” He was grinning from ear to ear, and she wiped the tears from her cheeks as she watched him. “Now how about giving me a ride home before your aunt comes out with her shotgun again and shoots me?” They both laughed at the ugly memory, and she went inside to tell her aunt she’d be back in a few minutes. She didn’t explain about the car, she was going to do that later.

Billy drove on the way back to his farm, and Marie-Ange sat close to him, exclaiming over how wonderful the car was, how incredible the gift, and how she shouldn’t accept it.

“You can’t be uneducated forever. You have to get an education so you can get out of here one day.” He knew he never would, he had to help his family keep their farm, and it was always a struggle for them. But he knew his greatest gift to Marie-Ange was her freedom from Aunt Carole.

“I can’t believe you’d do this for me,” Marie-Ange said solemnly. She had enormous respect for him, as a person. And she had never been as grateful for anything in her life as she was to him at that moment. And he was happy to see her so ecstatic. She was as excited as he had hoped she would be. He loved everything about her.

She dropped him off and hurried home, and when she told Aunt Carole about what he’d done, at dinner, she forbade her to accept it. “It’s wrong for you to accept a gift like that from him, even if you’re planning to marry him,” her aunt said sternly.

“Which I’m not, we’re just friends,” Marie-Ange said calmly.

“Then you can’t keep it,” Aunt Carole said with a face like wrinkled granite.

But for the first time in seven years of living with her, Marie-Ange was determined to defy her. She would not give up college on the whim of this mean old woman. For seven years she had deprived Marie-Ange in every way she could, of emotion, and food, and love, and money. Theirs had been a life of deprivation in every sense of the word. And now she wanted to rob her of an education, and Marie-Ange would not let her do it.

“I’ll borrow it from him then. But I’m going to use it for school,” she said firmly.

“What do you need school for? What do you think you’re going to be? A doctor?” Her tone was derisive.

“I don’t know what I’m going to be,” she said quietly. But she knew that it would be more than Aunt Carole. She wanted to be like her mother, although she hadn’t gone to university, she had married Marie-Ange’s father. But Marie-Ange wanted more than a life on this bleak farm in Iowa, with nothing to enjoy, nothing to celebrate, and nothing to live for. And she knew that one day, when she could escape at last, she would go somewhere, and preferably back to France, at least to visit. But that dream was still on the distant horizon for her. First she had to get an education so she could escape, just as Billy had suggested to her.

“You’ll look like a damn fool running around in that old jalopy, particularly if people know who gave it to you.”

“I don’t care,” she said defiantly for once, “I’m proud of it.”

“Then why don’t you marry him?” Carole pressed her as she had before, more out of curiosity than real interest. She had never understood the bond between them, and didn’t care to.

“Because he is my brother. And I don’t want to be married. I want to go home one day,” she said softly.

“This is all the home you have now,” Carole said pointedly, looking Marie-Ange in the eye, and her niece only looked at her, and said nothing. Carole Collins had given her a place to live, a roof over her head, an address, and an endless list of chores to do, but she had never given her kindness, compassion, love, or a sense of family. She had barely celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving with her. And for all the years Marie-Ange had been there, she had treated her like a servant. Billy and his family had been nicer to her by far than Carole had ever been. And now Billy had given her the one thing she needed to get out of there eventually, and nothing in this world would have made her give that up, and surely not her Aunt Carole.

Marie-Ange cleared away the dishes without saying another word to her, and when her great-aunt went to her room, Marie-Ange picked up the phone and called Billy.

“I just want you to know how much I love you, and how much you mean to me,” she said in French, with a voice filled with emotion, as he wished she meant it in a different sense, but he knew she didn’t. He had accepted it for a long time, and he knew that she loved him. “You are the most wonderful person I know.”

“No, you are,” he said gallantly, but meant it. “I’m glad you like it, Marie-Ange. I just want you to get out of here, one day. You deserve it.”

“Maybe we’ll go together,” she said hopefully, but neither of them believed it. They both knew that Billy was destined to stay, but she wasn’t. She still had a long way to go to get out, but thanks to him, she was beginning to believe now that maybe one day she’d make it.