Sweet Romance15 min read
You Smacked Her Back — And the Whole Village Watched
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I cracked open a bottle of water under the blistering sun and swallowed a long, cool gulp.
"Ah—" I let the relief show on my face.
Edison Cook reached over without asking and took the bottle. He drank one careful, slow sip as if he were savoring something that could disappear.
"Charlotte," he said, passing the bottle without looking at me. "Do you want some?"
Charlotte Barnett, who had the sort of gentle smile girls in magazines practice in front of mirrors, tilted her head and asked me, "Hannah, if the three of us share the same bottle, are you okay with it?"
Edison shoved the bottle back into my lap, his hand cool against my palm. "I mind."
I blinked. Silence folded like a paper fan.
This was the third day of our summer volunteer stint in the countryside. We had mud on our boots and rice mud on the soles of our feet. We had planted seedlings until our shoulders ached. After the water ran out, Edison drove the old tractor to town and came back with three cups of milk tea. I gulped mine down in two swallows.
Charlotte looked at me like she had discovered a new kind of magic. "You're really the kind who drinks a whole cup? I only take a few sips and I'm fine."
"Don't waste it then," Edison said, snatching the untouched cup from her. "If you can't finish it, give it to Hannah."
Charlotte didn't know whether to be stunned or offended.
Since childhood, Edison had always teased me until I cried. Once a goose chased me across a yard, and when I grabbed it in panic and shook until it stopped moving, Edison came over and laughed like he had seen the sun rise. "Hannah," he'd said, trying to tuck the laugh away. "It's okay. It died because you were strong."
The goose belonged to Finbar Golubev, an old farmer at one edge of the village. I thought he would make me pay. He didn't. He cooked the goose, and I ate two bowls with watering eyes.
After we finished the milk tea and finished planting, dusk folded into the rice paddies. I walked over to Finbar's yard and found a notice from the village head. The notice said everyone had to gather at dawn to go to the county for vaccinations. Finbar refused. "Can't take my plow," he said, stubborn as an old tree.
"Don't worry, I'll plow for you," I promised.
The next morning I woke before the roosters. Edison opened his door and yawned. "Hannah, why up so early?"
"To help Finbar," I said.
"All of it?"
"Yes."
He hesitated. "I heard he has two acres."
I wanted to cry into my hat. "You have to help me."
"Eigh—" He wanted to refuse. Then I offered to help him build a pig pen later, and he caved. He came with me into the sun, and we worked until our skin tasted like rice grain. When the heat beat down so hard, I collapsed beneath a locust tree for a nap.
Edison was gone. I frowned; he always went to nap under a different tree to be annoying. Suddenly I heard the heavy growl of an excavator. There was Edison, grinning in the driver's seat. He had hooked a huge claw to the ground and was using it like a massive hoe.
He called, "Hannah! Hannah!"
I pretended not to hear. He called again, louder. I stood up reluctantly and walked toward the sound, when a large shadow suddenly swallowed me.
The claw swiped me up—me, a clump of grass, and a handful of mud. My stomach abandoned me as the world swung. My knees turned liquid.
Edison sat in the cabin, eyes wide behind the dirty glass. "This—this lever—it's stuck! I called, then it stalled. I thought you'd hear me."
Tears welled. I tried to say what every kid wants to say in that situation: "Put me down!" I screeched. He dabbled with the controls, then he jumped out and put his arms under me. "Jump. Trust me."
"You promise?" I asked.
He opened his arms wide. "Jump."
I closed my eyes and let go, dropping into a harbor of muscle and dust and the smell of gasoline. We toppled onto the earth. I hauled my hands across his chest to shove him, but he lay there smiling.
"You're terrible," I said between tears and laughter.
From the side of the old locust tree, a freckled boy raced over with wide eyes. "Edison's so mean! He made Hannah cry!"
That freckled boy—Nathan Acosta—was a little loudmouth. By dinner the entire village had turned the story into a different kind of yarn: "Edison put Hannah into the claw and kissed her!" I ran and explained, "No, not like that," until my lungs were empty.
A few days later, the village slaughtered a pig to celebrate Li Nainai's son's return. Edison had to help skin and scald. Nathan found a frog and shoved it down the back of Edison’s trousers to get revenge for the locust-claw story.
Charlotte screamed, "There's a frog in Edison’s pants!" Edison hopped like he'd been electrocuted. He blasted away from the pig like a man under a charm. "Hannah! Get it out!"
I fished blindly and felt something slimy. I panicked and said, "It's forward!" before I could think, and the frog squirmed out, sliding free and vanishing into the grass. Silence cratered, and then people laughed until one of the old men put the pork down and clapped.
The next morning I returned, guilty as a thief, to help Edison build a pigpen as repayment. He made mortar; I corralled piglets. I stepped on a tiny tail, and the mother pig shot up, bristling with fury. I ran like a thief. Edison shouted, "Climb the tree!" I scampered up like a monkey and sobbed. The pig stomped, sniffed, and then left, offended. Charlotte arrived in a sundress and a ribbon in her hair, delicate perfume on the air. She smiled at Edison.
"If that dress looked better on me, I'll give it to Hannah," Charlotte cooed.
Edison looked up from his work. "Don't be near her if you know it's rude."
Charlotte frowned and a little pig nudged her dress, then Charlotte shrieked and ended up rolling in muck. She came out ruined and furious. She cried, but not like a child; like an actress whose scene had been interrupted.
Edison and I left town to "redeem" his three-wheel tractor. The police had confiscated it for illegal passenger transport. We walked two miles home under the sun with sacks of oil and rice because Finbar wanted the free gift for a long bank deposit. On the bus, a bag of fertilizer began to wriggle. Out popped a caged chicken's head and, by misfortune, the bird flew straight at Edison.
It pecked his shirt, then latched onto his chest in a scene that would have made poets invent metaphors. Edison howled. I pried the chicken's beak open, earning the whole bus's attention. Everyone laughed until they cried. Later Edison insisted I keep the dress he bought me in a little shop near the county square. He found the skirt and handed it to me in an alley like a thief handing over a prize.
That night, at a cheap hotel, someone slid paper cards under the door like in a movie, smuggling flirtations: "I know a handsome boy, want to meet?" I wrote, "No." The card slid back: "Five bucks for a photo." I said no and shoved the card back out. Edison arrived, rain-damp and apologetic, with gifts and with a look that said he was both proud of his mischief and protective.
"Don't talk to strangers," he said, poking my head.
"You're the one who left me with a frog in your pants," I said.
He passed me a cotton dress. "For you."
I hugged him and felt dizzy.
Edison never did say why he always chose to be near me. He was stubborn and quiet, but he surprised me in little habits. He would take my bottle when I was sleepy; he would let me nap in his shoulder and not complain. He would make jokes that made my eyes crinkle despite myself. He annoyed me into laughter.
On the third week, after we had been re-assigned around because of rain and one chaotic college coordination, the county warned of potential flash floods. The sky collapsed into a blue bruise. A weather siren from a county car came at dusk. The village broadcast asked everyone to evacuate to the elementary school.
I was ready to leap into the bus until I realized Finbar was missing. "He went to the pond to fetch his geese," said Maureen Goto, our elderly neighbor who smelled of sweet tea.
I was about to run when Edison grabbed my sleeve. "Don't go," he said. "I'll find him."
Charlotte shouted from her car, "Edison, don't! Wait for the rescue team!" She wanted the glory of helping but not the risk. Edison didn't wait. He ran into thick rain and fog.
I clung to the bus like a child. But then the last bus left without us. The earth shuddered under the sound of a landslide. Someone screamed. Edison burst from the fog carrying Finbar, who clung to him like a child, and they staggered onto the road. We made the last boarded bus.
At the makeshift shelter in the elementary school gym, a doctor checked Edison and said he had a deep arm cut and needed rest. He fell asleep against the wall with a low fever.
Then Charlotte stepped into the central light. She had been handing out blankets, and then she turned to me, face twisting like a prettier mask.
"That would not have happened if you hadn't made a scene," she snapped without whisper.
I stared. "What scene?"
She leaned forward and slapped me hard across the cheek. "If he hadn't had to save you—"
I slapped back. It was a reflex, a hot flash of outrage. "You started this."
Onlookers murmured. Edison jolted awake.
Tension hung. Charlotte's lipstick smeared slightly as she clutched her cheek.
"You little—" Charlotte sputtered. She pointed at me. "You are making this into—"
"Enough." The village head, Todd Carlson, stepped in. "We'll not have fighting in the shelter."
Edison shook his head, blood on a towel, and I sat down hard. Charlotte's hands trembled.
In the original series of events that followed in the village, people told loose stories at dinner: Charlotte had spread half-truths about me in the dorm— whispered that I couldn't handle the countryside, that I was lazy, that I had flirted with Edison to get special treatment. In truth, she had often taken advantage of people's goodwill, leaving work unfinished while giving orders.
I didn't say anything. But later, as the shelter settled, I overheard an old neighbor telling the story of the goose.
"Her boots were at the pond," he said. "I saw Charlotte carry something and push the gate open to Finbar's yard. Why would she do that?" Maureen shook her head.
I held my breath.
The next morning the village heard about the evacuation complaints and the county's investigation. Todd Carlson—whose face gets red as a beet when he is angry—called a meeting in the gym under fluorescent lights that hummed like summer bugs. Villagers clustered like a flock of sparrows.
Edison stood up, bandage on his arm. "Tell them," he said, and his voice was small but steady.
I took a breath and stood before everyone. "Charlotte caused the goose to be at the pond," I said. "She forced pork-slaying drama, she mocked the villagers, she pushed animals, she laughed while people were cleaning up. She also spread stories that made people think I was lazy. She slapped me and tried to make the whole emergency about how heroic she was."
Charlotte's lips tightened. "You're making accusation without proof," she said.
Finbar took the stage with surprising nimbleness. He spat into his hand. "I saw her at the pond that night. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't shout, but she put a treat near the gate and laughed. The goose followed it. It shouldn't have left the yard. She knew I wouldn't chase them in the dark." His voice cracked like the bark of an old tree.
People sighed. Someone muttered, "She wants to be noticed."
The village head cleared his throat. "We have witnesses. We have the word from Finbar. Others will speak."
It must have been only ten seconds or ten minutes—the sort of elastic time that pulls into slow agony—before more voices rose like an angry tide.
"She kicked a pig," a man said. "I saw her get out of the pen complaining about the mud."
"She criticized a girl for being fat," a woman said. "She kicked a small piglet and laughed when it squealed."
Charlotte's face moved from pale to hard. "That's not—" she started.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" the head asked.
Charlotte opened her mouth and closed it. She looked toward the school gym's exit and then at the crowd. Her eyes were practiced, like a young actor used to applause, but the applause did not come.
"I'm sorry if I offended anyone," she said in the voice of someone reciting a line. "But I'm under a lot of stress. I'm not—"
"You made fun of Hannah," Edison said. He sounded like a boy at a podium, but there was no podium. "You made fun of her in front of the village kids, then you complained when the mud ruined your dress. You orchestrated incidents to make yourself look better."
Her jaw strained. "You don't know what —" She looked out at the crowd. "No one asked you."
A hush fell like the world holding its breath.
I had rehearsed nothing. I walked forward. "Why did you push the gate open?" I asked quietly.
Charlotte's eyes flared. "I— Why would I do that?" She was smiling now, a brittle smile. "You're always looking for drama, Hannah."
"You told Nathan to put the frog in Edison's pants," I said. "You told him to scare Edison. You told others to spread stories about me."
The gym's fluorescent lights seemed to hum in agreement.
Charlotte's posture shifted. Her smile thinned. "You have no proof," she said, small now. "You can't accuse me."
Finbar stepped forward. "I saw the tracks. I saw her perfume on the gate. Why do you push the gate? For attention? For games?"
Charlotte's face flickered from shock to outrage. "That's not true," she said again, and then her voice broke when an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Becker—Barbara Beck—walked over with a small video on her phone.
"I was helping at the shelter," Barbara said. "I recorded something near the pond that night. I can play it." She hit play.
The small speakers on the phone coughed and hummed, then Charlotte's laugh, unmistakable and sharp as a knife, filled the gym. "Come on, it will follow me," the recorded voice was heard, and then the sound of the gate, then a soft snicker. Everyone listened as if for a verdict.
Charlotte's face turned chalk-white. For a beautiful person trained in smiles, this was not an ordinary expression. "Stop that—remove—" She lunged, but Todd held up a hand.
"People, the recording is part of the evidence," Todd said. "We will hear everyone. We will not be swayed by charm."
Charlotte's breathing became a problem. Her eyes darted from face to face. She glared first at me and then at Edison. "You set this up! You trapped me! This is—"
People began to whisper. A group of youth around Nathan produced a string of messages shown on a phone: texts where Charlotte had coaxed Nathan into doing small mischiefs. "Make it fun," one read. "Pretend it's a prank," another read. Nathan stood by, hands in his pockets, face flawed with shame but honest. "I thought it would be funny," he admitted.
Charlotte's lips trembled. She tried to hold a public face and failed.
Then the worst happened for her: the schoolteacher, Liesel Neumann, raised her head and recited the list of volunteer duties that Charlotte had neglected—sleeping late, refusing tasks, deriding elders. Others nodded, voices like rain, adding details: "She took bread meant for the elderly and threw it out," one said. "She called Finbar stupid," another said. "She said Hannah was only here for a photo op," a woman told the circle.
Charlotte's face cycled through a gallery of expressions: first bright, then incredulous, then furious, then small, then defensive. She pointed her finger at me, voice cracking. "You are trying to ruin me!"
"Your stories are wrong," Edison said evenly. "You told the county we were lazy, that we unsigned work, that we didn't deserve the certificate. You accused villagers to get attention. You have to answer for that."
"How could you tell?" Charlotte whispered, suddenly like a child accused of breaking a vase.
"Because we work here every day," Mrs. Goto said. "We know the truth."
She sank down on a bench. The room smelled of wet clothes and smoke. People who had once nodded to Charlotte on the path now looked at her like a stranger wearing a borrowed smile.
Her first reaction was fury. Her voice rose to a shriek. "I am not the villain here!" she screamed, and her hand flew out and smacked her own face as if to emphasize that she could not be mistaken.
Then, something else happened: her posture crumpled. The insulation of public glamour tore, and she folded inward.
"You're making up reasons," she tried to say. "Those messages—those are fake. Nathan lied, Finbar is confused—"
"Then explain why you were photographed at the pond?" Todd pressed.
"I— I went to feed the animals. I put the food by the gate—" She choked. "I didn't mean for them to get out."
"Why did you get your dress dirty on purpose?" a woman demanded.
"To show I was helping?" Charlotte snapped. Then she realized she had admitted to orchestrating the scene. Her face flushed. "No, I—"
The accusations kept piling like stones. Voices now spoke over each other—some angry, some disappointed. Someone in the far corner loosed a small, sharp laugh. It echoed. People took out their phones; someone filmed Charlotte trembling. Not a cruel recording—more a document, like a plaque carved in time.
She begged. "Please—don't record me. Please—" Her voice broke into prayer.
A thin, unavoidable silence followed. "You have been getting praise for things you didn't do," Todd said simply. "Stories lead to rewards. That can't be allowed. It ruins trust."
Charlotte's face shifted yet again: denial, anger, then a collapse of sorts. Her eyes went glossy. "I didn't realize— I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean and you did," Finbar said. The power of that sentence made air thin. "You're proud of how you look. You cheat to look better. We are tired of it."
Around the gym, faces that had once admired Charlotte withdrew like petals from a storm. Some muttered "How could she?" Others shook their heads so slowly it felt as if time had been set back.
Edison's voice was quiet, but it cut through like a blade. "You slapped Hannah. That's unforgivable to me."
Charlotte's eyes flicked to him, then to me. "You two are making a show."
"It isn't a show," I answered. "It's what happened. If you had done things honestly, no one would be listening."
In a final move to salvage herself, Charlotte stood and faced the crowd. She asked for forgiveness in a soft voice made louder by the hum of fluorescent light. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'll—I'll do better," she promised. Her body shook as if she were a street performer sweating before a curtain call.
The punishment was not a single blow. It was many small things that combined into public consequence.
Todd announced, "We will remove Charlotte from volunteer duty. The county will be informed that her conduct risks the program's reputation. We will ask the colleges to consider this behavior."
The phrase "remove from volunteer duty" hit like an actual closing door.
Charlotte, who had been used to crowds and praise, experienced a social reversal staged in the gym under fluorescent lights: neighbors who used to smile at the town square now averted their eyes; two mothers left the hall shaking their heads; three elders told tales of behavior that ran contrary to village respect. The more she tried to clamber back, the more the net of witnesses tightened around her.
At first she tried defiance. "You can't—" she cried.
Then she tried to twist: "You're jealous." But no one applauded the twist.
Then she tried bargaining: "I'll volunteer extra. I'll say sorry. I'll do anything." Her voice dropped to the kind of pleading that has no sound—it is a presence, like a mouse trembling.
"Please!" she added, pinching at the air.
A child in the front row, Nathan, curled his hands in his lap and looked at her. "I thought she was my friend. She told me to do things and I did them. I was wrong."
This caused a shift: adults who had laughed earlier now looked at their children. Someone photographed the scene discreetly. The photo would live longer than her voice.
Charlotte's expression finally changed to one that most people have never seen in public: mortification turned to collapse, like a paper figure dropped into water. Her eyes filled, and she sank into small body language: shoulders forward, hands to her face, sobs muffled.
Around her, the bystanders reacted. Some people were angry—voices muttering about deceit. Some people expressed sympathy—"She's young," a woman said, "She'll learn." A few teenagers filmed. Some elders clucked. The children were confused.
That was the punishment: exposure, removal of privilege, the loss of audience, the erosion of celebrity. It was not an arrest or a legal condemnation. It was a human social judgment, given weight by witnesses and recorded in photos and small videos that would not disappear. She felt the sharpness of a community's attention, turned now from adoration to distrust. Her social currency drained.
After a long time, she walked out of the gym under the rain, head down. The town's gossip would not be quick to forget the sound of her laugh on the video.
Edison later told me, quietly, "I wanted people to see the truth—not for revenge, but because we couldn't risk more people being hurt."
I nodded. "It felt like a punishment."
"It was." He said. "Public, because it needed to be public. You can't quietly smear someone and keep smiling."
She left village life like a storm passing. People remembered the goose, the frog, the pig, and the wet dress. Charlotte was no longer the girl who smiled in magazine light. She became the girl who arranged pranks and then begged for applause. In the weeks that followed, she avoided our gaze.
Edison and I went back to our routine. We fixed the tractor, we helped Finbar, we sat by the pond to see the ducks. In the quiet time after the shelter, Edison told me things that had been tucked away like coins under a mattress.
"Do you know I traded places with the kid you were supposed to be with so I could be with you?" he said one evening, his voice small like a match flame.
"You paid him?" I asked.
"Two hundred," he said, cheeks coloring. "Worth every cup of milk tea."
"You could have said something earlier," I chided.
"I wanted you to have time where you could stay cool and rest. I wanted you safe."
He said more—about leaving his tractor's rear box off so I would have to cling at turns and therefore hold him; about delaying our return to let us stay in town with air conditioning; about practicing how to smile at me.
It was a lot to carry, and I could feel my chest fill until it overflowed. When he said, "I like you," it landed like a warm stone into the bowl of my heart.
"I like you too," I answered.
We worked through the harvest. When the volunteer program ended, the villagers gave us bundles of cured meat and heads of cabbage. At the gate, an old woman, Maureen Goto, asked to see our certificates.
"I want the red booklet," she said, smiling with two teeth missing like a toothless joke.
I held my volunteer certificate and showed it carefully. Maureen frowned for a second and then made a small, sharp exhale.
Edison put an arm around me. "Maybe in a few years," he said, light in his voice.
"Maybe I'll make you beg," I teased.
He grinned, and in the rearview mirror of the three-wheel tractor as we left, I saw our reflections small and sweaty, and the rice paddies like a green sea behind us.
Later, when I packed my bag, I slipped the little piece of paper that had slid under the hotel door that night into the diary where I wrote our days. It's small and silly, but every time I read it, I remember the night the city felt close and the small card smelled of motel soap.
"You're going to marry me?" Edison asked one evening, half-serious, half like he had put a seed into the soil.
"Not now," I said, and I tucked the dress into my bag.
We waved at the village until the houses were small as paper, and I watched Finbar stoop in his yard, and Maureen swing her broom.
At the county line, I looked back and murmured, "Remember the little card slid under the door? We started there."
He laughed. "That stupid, stupid card." Then his voice softened. "And that was the night I decided I'd rather be sweaty beside you than famous anywhere else."
I smiled. I pulled the diary closer and kept the card pressed flat against its pages. The last thing I wrote before the bus swallowed us and the village shrank into distance was the sentence: Edison held a borrowed helmet like it was a prize. The helmet rattled under his arm like something that belonged to a better future—untested, shining.
That helmet and the small card are mine to keep.
The End
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