You put the phone back on the hook, return to the armchair, and draw your knees up to your chest. Your thighs ache and your groin throbs. His invasion left slick, snail trails glistening across your skin and your nerves won’t stop trying to twitch them away.
No sex ed class could ever have prepared you for what just happened.
“You’ve got a body that just don’t quit, sweet thing,” he says on the ride to your house. He drives too fast and pays more attention to you than to the road. It’s scary but thrilling. The admiration in his voice dives straight into the pit of your stomach and smolders there. “You’d better get my sister to bring you around more often so I can see what I’m missing.” His gaze lingers on your chest, lifts to your face. “’Cause I’ve been missing a lot.”
Your laugh is a shaky exhale because you know, right then, that he’s going to come into your house and you’re going to let him. He gave you your first real kiss, is spending his time and gas and no matter what Ardith says, he must like you because he left another girl behind on Christmas, just so you wouldn’t have to walk home alone in the cold.
Heart pounding, you reach into your wrist bag and turn off your cell phone.
You’re glad you were thrown out of Ardith’s. Gladder still that you went over in the first place, because now you know what you’ve been missing, too.
“You warm enough?” he asks, meeting your smile with a curious one of his own.
You nod, suddenly shy, and stare down at your bracelet. What would he think if he knew how old you were and that he’d been the first to kiss you?
He doesn’t ask, but if he does you decide to lie and say you’re sixteen. No, fifteen. Then you decide not to offer up any information at all. You don’t want to seem young and stupid and you definitely don’t want him to know he’s got an inexperienced ninth grader on his hands. You pick at a hangnail, wondering if he’ll ask you out and if he does, where you can go to show him off to your classmates without revealing your age. Maybe the mall?
“Whoa, you actually live here?” he says after you point out which driveway is yours. “This place is huge.”
“Yeah,” you say and give a decent, bored shrug. “I’ve got it all to myself, too. My parents are away.” You hold your breath, wondering if he’ll take the bait, wondering if you said it right or if you just made a fool out of yourself.
“No kidding,” he says, leaning back in his seat and running a finger around the edge of the steering wheel. “Must be great, having a little peace and quiet when you need it. I mean, you’ve seen how crazy it is over there. Kind of gets to you after a while, especially on Christmas.” He glances over at you from beneath sleepy lids and his mouth curves into a hopeful smile. “Want some company?”
“Okay,” you croak, and scramble out of the car before you realize he’s on his way around to open the door for you. “Oh. Uh, sorry. Uh, this way.” Cheeks burning, you scurry up the steps and fumble with the keys. Finally get in, turn off the alarm, and lead him into the family room, praying you haven’t left anything embarrassing lying around. “Uh, want a fire?”
“Oh yeah,” he says, smiling like you two are sharing a joke, only you don’t get it yet. He ditches his coat, wanders over and surveys the contents of your refrigerator, choosing a Molson from your father’s stock. “Merry Christmas, beautiful,” he says as you set the gas flames dancing merrily along the log. “Jesus, this is great. What a buzz.” He chugs the beer, smacks his lips, and retrieves another. Wanders in closer, gives you a lingering once-over, and trails a cool, damp finger down your cheek. “Sweet lady.”
“Merry Christmas,” you whisper, because the musky heat from his body is hotter than the fireplace and you feel buzzed, too, but not from alcohol. It’s almost too much, this miracle of having your dream come true, of being alone with a gorgeous guy who likes you, who thinks you’re beautiful and wants to spend the holiday together—
The phone rings.
“Leave it,” he says, holding you with his smoky gaze, and when it stops ringing, he takes it off the hook. “No interruptions.” He sets his beer on the coffee table, pulls you tight against him, and murmurs, “Now, let’s do this right.”
You don’t answer because suddenly he’s kissing you and you haven’t even closed your eyes yet. His mouth goes from hungry to ravenous, his chin stubble grates like a loofah, and his tongue forces your jaws so wide the hinges creak.
You wait to be swept away but your arms hang like dead fish around his waist and your tongue is just sort of dodging his. You must be doing it right, though, because he’s going crazy all over you like a chained-up dog set free.
He squeezes your breasts. You gasp at the rough pain and your sounds inspire him. He grinds against you, mashing your skin to your bones and chewing on your neck.
“God, you make me so hot,” he says and then your shirt goes up and your pants hit the floor. He whips off his own clothes. Together you stumble backward to the couch and fall in a tangled knot. His teeth smack your mouth and his chest is dead weight. You’re lying on your hair and are trapped staring at the ceiling.
He tugs your hand down to his thing. You don’t know what to do with it, so you do nothing. Impatient, he locks your fingers tight around him and begins moving in your palm.
“Oh yeah, baby,” he says.
You drag your head up, freeing your hair, and notice he has dandruff. And that the skin behind his ears is oily. You can smell his scalp.
You shouldn’t be able to do that, should you? You shouldn’t be able to think while he’s kissing you, or care that he’s smearing saliva in an ever-widening film around the outside of your mouth. You shouldn’t keep whispering, Wait, stop in your head or aloud, or wincing when his nails gouge a soft spot or be repelled by his shuddering, sour-beer exhales.
You should be melting, enraptured, adored, moaning and sighing in dreamlike ecstasy—
His hands slide down to tug at your thighs and bruises form beneath his fingers.
You stiffen.
He thrusts against you, prodding for entrance, and then suddenly a red streak shoots up and into you and you zoom away from yourself, but it’s too late because you can feel it all, and the invasion is staggering.
“C’mon, don’t just lay there,” he mutters. “Help me out, will you?”
You turn your face into the cushions because if he puts his sloppy mouth on yours again, you will throw up in it.
He collapses, and you’re buried beneath a sweaty landslide. You don’t move. Is this it? Did he finish? Are you free?
“Turn over,” he gasps, propping himself up and pulling you onto your knees. “This’ll do it.” He pokes your butt. Your muscles clench in immediate and panicked outrage.
You rip loose and crawl to the corner of the couch. Forget being a ninth grade baby. You’ve had enough.
He laughs. “Cherry, huh? You’ll learn.” He fans his groin and stares at his hard-on with almost fatherly pride, then stretches out with his head near your drawn-up legs. “Take a break. I have to cool down.”
Your ankle is wet. He’s licking your leg. “You mean it’s not done?”
“Nope,” he says and yawns. “I can go forever when I’m drinking. Hand me my beer, will you, and some of that Johnnie Black over there, too.”
You inch away and rise on shaky legs. “I have to go to the bathroom.” You skim past the powder room and upstairs to your father’s bathroom, locking the door behind you.
The mirror is heartless. You’re red, raw, and blotchy. Your hair is knotted, your mouth swollen.
You scald yourself in the shower, scrubbing until his smell fades. Pull on your father’s baggiest sweat suit, hoping it’s enough to protect you. You wish you’d eaten an onion or drawn a cold sore on your lip. You wish he would leave. Or die. You wish you hadn’t told him you were alone in the house.
By the time you creep back to the family room, he’s sprawled out snoring. His legs are spread wide and his mouth has gone slack. The bottle of Johnnie Walker is
almost half empty.
You turn away, sick.
You take a paring knife from the kitchen and sit on the floor across from him. Push up your sleeve and, hand splayed, lay your forearm across the gleaming marble coffee table. Drag the point across your skin and watch, bemused, as the blood wells and runs in a rivulet down the side of your arm. “One,” you say, because he is now your first, the one you will always be damned to remember.
And then his car alarm goes off. He scrambles into his clothes, grabs his keys, and staggers out the front door. You follow him and lock it, listening as the siren is abruptly silenced, as he clomps back up the steps and rattles the knob. Bangs on the door, calls you a bitch and a tease, and chugs off in his car.
Despite the fire, the family room is chilly. You huddle in a chair, but your frayed nerves won’t stop trying to flick away his presence.
The knocking starts. It’s Ardith, and she won’t stop until you let her in. You do, but if you look at her she’ll hurt you like her brother just did.
She perches on the coffee table in front of you, moves the paring knife around behind her, and says, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” you mumble, praying she doesn’t say another word.
And she doesn’t. She goes into the kitchen and makes cappuccino.
You follow her and sit at the table. Look into her eyes and see no malice, only understanding, so you tell her everything.
She hands you a mug and a lit cigarette, then pulls herself up onto the counter and lights one of her own. Watches you with a gaze too old for her age.
“You knew he was a dog,” you say, and your voice cracks under the accusation. It isn’t fair, but you owe her the right to be right.
“I tried to tell you,” she says, shaking her head. “Why do you think I never brought you home with me before?” She sips her coffee. “I don’t suppose he wore a condom?”
You blink. “No.” You never thought of that. “But I don’t think he…you know…in me.”
Ardith shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to. Sperm leaks out and goes on an egg hunt way before that. It’s biologically programmed to find and fertilize an egg and the only thing that stops it is death. It’s like the Terminator. That’s what it does. That’s all it does.”
She’s scaring you. You pluck at your bloody sleeve, hating the thought of something happening inside that you have no control over.
“When’s your period due?” Ardith says, sliding off the counter.
“This week.” It’s due December twenty-ninth, and the thirtieth is your fifteenth birthday. Sweet fifteen and never been…well, hopefully never been pregnant. You clench a fist and push it into your tender abdomen. Bounce it harder. Imagine dislodging tiny Terminator sperm from your insides and watch the virulent paisleys tumble down into the void. There’s no way you can wait four days for this nightmare to end. “How do you bring on a period?”
Ardith doesn’t know, so you search online. The morning after pill is perfect, but it needs permission and you’d rather use a hanger on yourself than listen to the fit your parents will pitch if they find out.
“Well, then I hate to say it but you’re kind of out of options. The only other idea I can find is major exercise and heat,” Ardith says, leaning back in the desk chair and looking at you like she’s waiting for you to cry.
You don’t. You can’t.
So you spend the days until New Year’s Eve running up and down the staircase until your muscles burn, sleeping with the heating pad, and dreaming of deserted vineyards.
On New Year’s Eve, while you and Ardith are drinking Red Deaths, cursing her brother for giving her a wicked black eye over the rock-on-the-hood incident, and dancing wildly on your marble coffee table, your uterus seizes in a massive cramp, as though it’s being dragged down out of you with a dull meat hook. You run to the bathroom to check your underwear and discover the spreading stain, the pale, pink passport to freedom.
You explode back into the family room, where you and Ardith laugh and hug and shriek in celebration. Put on your coats and prance down Main Street, fishing for an exciting way to end the year.
The first taker is an old guy in a Honda, who keeps tugging at his fly.
You say, “Get the hell away from us, you perv,” and laugh as he curses you and blasts off. The next is Horace, your housekeeper’s son, but he’s on his way to a family party and that’s not what you had in mind, so you wish him a happy New Year, take the complimentary joints he offers, and keep trolling.
The third car to pull over is Officer Dave Finderne. The joints are hidden safely in your tube top so you descend on him, giddy. “Where have you been? We bought doughnuts and then couldn’t find you! We turned fifteen and you missed it! Can we treat you to a cup of coffee? C’mon, you have to say yes; it’s a New Year’s tradition!”
He shakes his head and smiles, and even though he’s turning you down, the sight of him lightens the darkness in the pit of your chest.
“How much have you girls had to drink tonight?” he asks, exiting the car. He’s just as tall as you remember and you’re glad; you were afraid you had somehow made him bigger than he was.
“Only a little,” Ardith says brightly, forgetting to cover her black eye.
“Yeah, just a little,” you burble, grinning as he transfers the flashlight’s beam from her to you. “For a New Year’s Eve toast, you know. Another tradition.”
He gives you a look that says you’re not fooling anybody and refocuses on Ardith’s shiner. “Who did that to you?”
“My jerk brother. He got mad because I…um, tweaked his car alarm.” She looks at you and you both go off into gales of laughter.
Officer Dave isn’t smiling. “That musclehead hit you?”
“Hey, when you’re God’s gift to women you can do anything you want,” you say, wishing you knew how to spit without dribbling. “Ugh. There’s a joke.”
“You know him, too?” Officer Dave says, looking at you.
“Unfortunately,” you say without thinking and grimace as the memory blasts out. You squash it and look away, but not soon enough.
“I can see I’m going to have to have a little talk with this guy,” Officer Dave says flatly.
“No, don’t,” you blurt, exchanging glances with Ardith. Her brother has moved on to a new girl and all but forgotten you two exist. “Please. It’s over now and everything’s okay. Really. We swear, don’t we, Ardith?”
“Yup.” She slings an arm around your shoulders, pulls you close, and cups your jaw, squeezing your mouth into a squishy face. “Tell me, Officer; would this face lie?” She laughs and leans against you.
You both stumble back against the patrol car. Officer Dave catches your arm.
“Okay, look, this has got to stop,” he says, shaking his head.
“I’m not kidding. The safest place for you to be right now is home—”
“Are you aware that most accidents happen in the home?” Ardith says owlishly. “I mean, it would be impossible to slip and fall in the bathtub out here on Main Street, Officer Dave. Have you thought of that?”
“And if we weren’t out here then we wouldn’t have seen you again, and that would have been awful.” Your face crumples, thinking about how awful it would have been. “You never visit us, Officer Dave. We miss you. We like you. Don’t you like us?”
“Okay, that corks it,” he says, opening the back of the patrol car and escorting you both inside. “Seems like I’m making a habit of taking you home.” He slides into the driver’s seat and sits a minute. “You know, you’re decent kids and I don’t mind cutting you a break, but maybe I’m not doing the right thing. Maybe I should be transporting you to a clinic or a youth shelter instead. I don’t think you belong there, but I could be wrong.” He meets your gaze in the rearview mirror. “What do you think?”
“I think,” you say carefully, making sure each word is whole and perfectly formed so he’ll know you’re sincere, “we should go to my house and stay ther
e. And you could stay, too, and we could give you coffee. Or,” you frown, trying to remember what Lourdes left in the fridge, “we could give you a sandwich. We don’t have any doughnuts and nobody made cookies. I’m sorry.” You lean forward, hooking your fingers through the wire mesh dividing the front from the back. The smells are better here; crisp cologne mixed with leather mixed with shotgun. “We could bring it all out to the car and have a little party. We could talk. It’ll be fun.”
He removes his baseball cap and runs his hand through his hair. “That’s a very nice offer, but I can’t accept.” He sighs. “I’ll take you both home.”
“I’m sleeping at Blair’s,” Ardith says, tugging down her skirt. “If I was home, I’d have to spend the night locked in my room.”
Officer Dave mutters something under his breath and pulls the squad car away from the curb. “Don’t you girls have any other family you can stay with?”
“My only grandmother is in a nursing home in California,” Ardith says.
You think of your unhappy, housebound grandmother and your incontinent grandfather. “No, but you could always take us home to your wife and say you found us in baskets on the doorstep. We’d be good, wouldn’t we, Ardith?”
“We’d be sterling,” she says. “We don’t eat a lot, either. Blair has a debit card so we could even pay our own way. C’mon, Officer Dave, adopt us.”
“I don’t think you’d want an old stick in the mud like me for a father,” he says, turning onto your street and cruising slowly past the lifeless houses.
Ardith stares down at her lap and doesn’t answer.
You gaze out the window, wondering if he’ll remember which mausoleum is yours, and are pleased when he pulls straight into your driveway.
He gets out and opens your door. “Now, do you promise to stay put tonight? If I catch you like this again, I’m going to have to call family services…”
“We’ll stay put,” Ardith says, subdued.
“We’re not really bad, you know,” you say.