Some girls say, a part of me was missing until HE came into my life, lalala...but that's not how it was with me and Will. It was more like...the law of the jungle, or something; I bet lion kings and lion queens know each other the way Will and I did. 

It was Eli who told me about Will. They were friends but they were complete opposites.  Eli was sorta smart, but mostly he was nice. He was one of those people who thought if you were good it made other people wanna be good too, but he should've known that wasn't true from the way his wife treated him. She'd say the most awful things and then look at him like she was daring him to do something. Of course, Eli being Eli, he never did, just grinned and shrugged his shoulders, or gave you a look like, well what are ya gonna do...she was a real bitch, but I think part of it was she was tired of him being so nice all the time. Every now and then I feel a little bad about Eli, but we did try to warn him; he might've been sorta smart, but he wasn't very quick.

Eli used to say stuff like, "poverty's a crime" or maybe it was that "property is theft"-thing ...I forgot how it goes now, but it was something about the poor and sick and their place in societylalala.  Anyway, Eli liked helping people, and I guess he thought everybody wanted to help them the same way he did, which made it easier later on.  Eli looked at everyone that way, like, he thought I was sweet just because I acted sweet—figuring out what to be is harder for girls, I think.

I don't mean, what to be when you grow up, or for a living. I mean...like when I was a kid, little girls wore dresses and little boys wore jeans, and little girls couldn't dig in the dirt for buried treasure like boys could. It didn't make any sense and it made me mad until I figured out they didn't care if I really was sugar 'n' spice 'n' everything nice inside, as long as I acted sweet; I could wear a dress and look pretty on the outside and be mean as hell inside, and no one knew or wanted to know, and that was almost as good as buried treasure.  Of course, that's how people figured out they could walk all over Eli, too; I used to tell him, you let people get away with murder. But the good thing was Will and I understood each other from that first night at Eli's party, and I never had to explain this stuff to him. 

The women at that party were all feminist-types and the men were all sensitive-types, and the men were all nodding and agreeing with any stupid thing any woman said just so maybe they could sleep with one of those women later. I hate most of that women's lib crap because after I'd figured out about the dresses and dirt and stuff, I knew being liberated is kind of a personal matter; I mean, if you're really liberated you don't go around announcing you're liberated or worrying all the time about someone not giving you your rights.  I was looking at them all herded together and standing in a pack; the women told themselves they wanted one of these sensitive men who agreed with everything they said, and the men thought they needed one of those feminist types to keep them in line, even though they wouldn't go outside the lines if their life depended on it. And all of them could talk all night about high-minded crap that didn't mean anything once it was dark and they were alone.   

But if you're a woman, until you admit there's been at least one time you thought about what it'd be like for a guy to just take you whether you say yes or no, you don't know shit about liberation. And if you're a guy, until you admit you've thought about just taking a girl without listening or caring whether she says yes or no, you don't know shit about what scares you about women. And I figured it was probably something like law of the jungle stuff like that made Eli's wife be such a bitch.

So I was listening to all of 'em go on and on about how men still oppress women and that it was built into the culturelalala. I watched the men agreeing with the women so they could seem sensitive and still sleep with the women later saying, yes it was "terrible that some men still treat women as though they aren't equals lalala". I was thinking about asking 'em something like, who's your favorite Stooge, or maybe asking, which is better the Addams Family or the Munsters. I knew they'd say the Addams Family,  and then I was gonna tell 'em the Munsters was better because they were working-class monsters and the Addams Family were aristocrats, just to say something smart-aleck. My plan was to slug 'em and curtsy and walk, but that's when I saw Will.

They were all herded together and standing in a pack, and from the back of the room he cut right through the middle of them, he didn't say "excuse me" or anything, he just walked right past them to the front of the room where this purple loveseat was pushed up to the wall. Will looked dead at me and patted the empty space next to him like "Come—sit beside me, now." His head never moved and his eyes never left my face and I hopped up there beside him like a well-trained puppy. They all thought that was just terrible, but no one said anything; instead, they swung their heads and looked at Eli like they were a flock of long-necked birds in a jury box.

But I knew what they were thinking: they were thinking, Will, you're such a pig, in this day and age you can't treat women that way.  Women want men who are sensitive, who listen or at least act like they listen, who think about the world and everybody in it, about people who are hungry and sick and poor, and about how we can help them.  Women like that stuff and if they think you do too, you got a chance—but you gotta go slow and act like you care about whatever the hell they're yappin' about. That's how it works these days, you can't just hold out your hand like it's all about what you want...they'll just think you're a pig, Will.

But Will knew better.  Will knew everything only worked if boy lions did what boy lions do and girl lions did what girl lions do. It didn't work if you tried to trade places because the places weren't the same. When Will put out his hand I came and took my seat beside him, not because he filled some empty place inside me.  It was rightfully my place; he knew like I knew about dresses and dirt and stuff. 

The long-necked jury looked at Eli like, so...the pig is your friend, eh; Eli's eyes got big and white and round, like he wanted to say, "No ! I treat women good, I treat everybody good. That's Will, that's not me."  And it might have made a difference later if he'd actually said that, or if he'd said anything.  But all Eli could do was stand there with a big sheepy grin, so what are ya gonna do, law of the jungle.

A month or so after that party Eli's wife started cheating on him; I don't mean like a fling, I mean it was like she was in heat. Eli acted like it was all his fault, which in a way it was.  When she filed for a divorce Eli was a wreck, crying all the time and sending her flowers and begging her to please come back.  Will and I tried to warn him, you can't expect people not to hurt you or harm you just because you're good and nice all the time. But he wasn't getting any better and we'd given him a fair chance, even after what he did at the party; sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're a boy lion or a girl lion.  Sometimes all that matters is whether you're a lion.

So we loaded up the car and headed out past town. I was wearing my little red dress that was Will's favorite; I told him, it's the perfect dress to wear for burying treasure, and we could not stop laughing. We drove out toward the sunset with the radio turned up all the way. And by the time the sun went down and the woods were jungle-thick, there wasn't so much as a peep from the trunk anymore.