Page 1226 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

The boy wrapped his arms around Poke and kissed her.
This was really weird. Bean had seen grownups do that plenty of times, but what would kids do it for? Poke was nine years old. Of course there were whores that age, but everybody knew that the johns who bought them were perverts.
Bean had to get closer, to hear what they were saying. He dropped down the back of the packing crate and slowly walked into the shadow of a kiosk. They, as if to oblige him, turned to face him; in the deep shadow he was invisible, at least if he kept still. He couldn't see them any better than they could see him, but he could hear snatches of their conversation now.
"You promised," Poke was saying. The guy mumbled in return.
A boat passing on the river scanned a spotlight across the riverside and showed the face of the boy Poke was with. It was Achilles.
Bean didn't want to see any more. To think he had once believed Achilles would someday kill Poke. This thing between girls and boys was something he just didn't get. In the midst of hate, this happens. Just when Bean was beginning to make sense of the world.
He slipped away and ran up Posthoornstraat.
But he did not head back to their nest in the crawlspace, not yet. For even though he had all the answers, his heart was still jumping; something is wrong, it was saying to him, something is wrong.
And then he remembered that Poke wasn't the only one hiding something from him. Achilles had also been lying. Hiding something. Some plan. Was it just this meeting with Poke? Then why all this business about hiding from Ulysses? To take Poke as his girl, he didn't have to hide to do that. He could do that right out in the open. Some bullies did that, the older ones. They usually didn't take nine-year-olds, though. Was that what Achilles was hiding?
"You promised," Poke said to Achilles there on the dock.
What did Achilles promise? That was why Poke came to him -- to pay him for his promise. But what could Achilles be promising her that he wasn't already giving her as part of his family? Achilles didn't have anything.
So he must have been promising not to do something. Not to kill her? Then that would be too stupid even for Poke, to go off alone with Achilles.
Not to kill me, thought Bean. That's the promise. Not to kill me.
Only I'm not the one in danger, or not the most danger. I might have said to kill him, but Poke was the one who knocked him down, who stood over him. That picture must still be in Achilles' mind, all the time he must remember it, must dream about it, him lying on the ground, a nine-year-old girl