Piper Williams Character Analysis

I have to admit...Piper is pretty smart. But she’s going to get in trouble for this, I just know it.

“Numbers Nat, we need you!” Theresa interrupts.

Natalie looks up.

Piper hands Nat the money, rolled up in a handkerchief. “Three dollars and twenty cents split four—excuse me.” Piper looks at me. “Three ways.”

“One dollar six cents, two cents left over.” Natalie rocks with pleasure.

“Extra two cents goes to me,” Piper says as Natalie counts out each share.

But right where the chain link meets the cement wall, I see a gap.

[...]

I look down at Natalie. She hasn’t moved a muscle. I won’t be able to see her once I get up there. But I know better than to try to move her once she’s all set up.

I’ll just make it quick, that’s all. A couple of seconds to look. One minute, that will be enough. A ball could be sitting right there out in the open, just waiting for me. I know this is a lousy idea. But it doesn’t matter. A gap in the fence is a magnet. It just is.

“I know what Mrs. Kelly says. I’m talking about Moose now and what he thinks. He’s good with Natalie. They’ve worked out a relationship. We have to respect that and trust him.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“You have to let him care about her his way.”

And then something I can’t hear.

“I got one child who has everything,” my mom says, “big, strapping, healthy, smart...makes people laugh. Got kids coming over looking for him night and day, just like at home. Little ones, big ones and the girls—they all like Moose. But Natalie, Natalie doesn’t have the whole world looking out for her. She needs me.”

“Moose needs you too.”

“Me? I’m not going to upset Natalie. She likes me,” Piper says.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my hand on the door.

Piper scoffs. “Can’t I at least say happy birthday?” She looks so earnest, so sincere, smiling her sweet smile. She’s even prettier without her hat.

“How did you know it was her birthday?”

“Theresa told me.”

Natalie is holding hands with a man convicted of some awful crime. It’s so strange, so awful, and so...normal. Natalie doesn’t look weird. She’s my older sister. A sixteen-year-old girl holding hands with a man not much older than she is.

This is terrible.

This is good.

“People know, Mom. They know.”

“They don’t know!” she cries, tears streaming down her face. “You don’t know! She won’t have a chance at sixteen. No one will take her. No one cares about an adult that isn’t right. It’s only kids who have a chance. It’s too late if she’s sixteen. Don’t you see?”

“Yeah, but Mom, you can’t pretend! It’s worse. People know—”

“No one knows. They don’t know and they don’t care. Put her in an institution. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? Lock her up with all the nuts. She has to be TEN. It’s the only chance she has!”

“I figured Capone could write back in the book—you know, underlining very faintly in pencil the way the cons do.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Let’s say you want to say, ‘I need your help.’ You go carefully through the book and look for an I and underline it. And then an n and underline it and an e and so on until you’ve spelled your whole message.”

“‘I like your mother very much’?” Piper says when she reads it.

“You got to say something about the guy’s mother.”

“Why?” she asks.

“Because then he remembers he has one. And he knows we know her too. Makes him act better. It’s The Mom Rule—all guys use it.”

“This is Al Capone we’re talking about. I don’t think he’ll fall for a cheap trick like that.”