I didn't suggest they come up to visit me. Even meeting
halfway would've taken her out of her comfort zone. "I'l
be there tomorrow night, remember? Taking him to the
movies? Power Heroes? "
"You could come on Friday, instead. Spend the
weekend."
She might be able to know what my face looked like
without seeing it, but I doubt she knew about the shudder
crawling over me at the thought.
"I can't. Busy."
She didn't push it. "Okay. Fine."
We were so alike, sometimes it was scary. Which, of
course, was one reason why I'd moved away. We hung
up.
I stripped out of my clothes and headed into the bathroom,
wishing the conversation could be washed away as easily
as soapsuds down the drain. Growing up, I'd lived with my
mom in a series of low-income-housing apartments, rented
trailers and dilapidated houses owned by men who often
seemed more interested in the way my mom cooked and
kept house than anything else about her. There had never
been enough of anything, but especialy hot water for
showers.
In the best of them, I'd been able to sneak a late-night
shower when nobody else needed to use the bathroom,
the washing machine wasn't running and nobody was
cleaning dishes. In the worst of them, I'd sought the
shower as a refuge from the shouting and the slamming
doors, shivering under spray that turned frigid long before I
was ready to get out.
I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest
I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest
unit and cheapest maintenance package in one of
Harrisburg's hottest new apartment buildings. Unlimited
hot water might be wasteful, and I didn't care. I took
advantage of it every chance I could.
By the time I came out dressed in a pair of stretched-out
fleece pants and a T-shirt that had been threadbare when I
stole it from Austin's drawer, I felt better. I fixed myself a
sandwich and a glass of cold milk, and I set it on the table.
The note was stil there.
It slid into my hands as though it had been made for my
fingers. The same black letters stroked this paper with the
same black ink, and this time, with nobody to see, I
brought it to my nose and breathed in deep.
Fresh, good ink smels like nothing else in the world. I
closed my eyes and breathed again. The paper stil had a
scent, faintly musky like cologne or perfume I didn't
recognize. I sat to study it. Bold, heavy strokes of the pen
carved the number on the front. No envelope, no name, no
postmark to show where or when it had been mailed. Not
even a fingerprint smudge to give me an idea of the size of
the hand that had written it. The elegant handwriting
showed no gender.
showed no gender.
Without an envelope and stamp it couldn't have come
through the mail, which meant someone had pushed it
through the slot. The wrong slot, again. They'd taken the
time to write the number on the front, but hadn't paid
attention to the number on my mailbox. It wasn't a note for
me, and I should not have read it. If I hadn't, everything
would have been different.
If only I'd done the right thing.
Chapter 12
You wil take your finest paper and your best ink.
You wil write down in explicit detail your most erotic
experience. It may be real or it may be fantasy, but you
are to write it without error in your best handwriting,
without blots or misspelings.
You wil return this essay to me by Thursday.
The note listed the same post-office box as before.
I blinked and read the note again as heat rose in my
cheeks. I closed it and put it aside. I shouldn't have read it.
It wasn't for me.
I opened it again, read over the words in that fluid,
beautiful hand that gave away nothing of its origin, and
something twisted inside me. Finest paper and best ink.
Already I could feel my fingers curving around the pen,
my secret thoughts onto paper. I even knew the paper I
would use. Creamy white, unlined, bordered in gold. It
was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so
was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so
intimate and explicit as had been demanded. I had only
two sheets.
I folded the card carefuly and slipped it back into the
envelope, closing it up as tenderly as I might pul the
blankets higher on a lover next to me in bed when I woke
to a chil. I pushed it away from me on the table, and
folded my hands while I stared at it. The mystery of who
was sending these notes, these lists, had been
overshadowed by the more intriguing enigma of why.
I got up from the table and puled a glass of water from the
tap, but even though I drank it back in a few quick gulps,
more the way a practiced drinker wil take whiskey than
water, it didn't cool the heat rising in my throat to my
cheeks. I turned, my back to the counter, and leaned. The
note sat on my table. Not accusing.
Inviting.
In a long, long list of sexual experiences, what would I
consider my most erotic? Not the first time I ever sucked a
guy off, or the first time I came from someone's else's
hand. Not the first time I ever fucked, either. Al of those
had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.
had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.
Quite a bit bad. I had a long list of experiences I could
have written, but what was the one worthy of my finest
paper? My best ink?
I busied myself with cleaning my tidy kitchen but was
unable to put the list from my mind. The first few notes had
been simple, if enigmatic, instructions. Eat oatmeal. Work
out. Be beautiful. It had been something of a game, these
suggestions implanted in my brain and leading me toward
the choices I'd have probably made anyway even without
the suggestions. But this…this was different. What had
seemed harmless before had become slightly more sinister.
Also, a heluva lot sexier.
Late night.
The only light comes, flickering blue, from the TV in the
corner. The sound's turned down low because it's not so
important to hear what's being said as it is to see what's
going on. I've seen this movie before, a few times, in
pieces, but it's the first time I've ever seen it al at once.
He lifts his head from kissing me when it comes on, his
hands stiling on my bely where they'd been wandering
their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This movie is hot."
I push his face back to mine and take his mouth to keep
his attention on me, not the TV screen. I open my mouth
and legs to him, puling him down on top of me. Puling him
close. My heart's open, too, though I haven't yet t
old him I
love him. Those are words for prom pictures and class
rings.
We don't have that, him and me. We have the backseat of
his car, we have the space beneath the bleachers after
school. We have the back row of the movie theater. We
have the basement in his parents' house and this couch.
But when I hear the song, the one my mom plays over and
over on those old mix tapes from her youth, I lift my head
from his kisses to see what's going on. I know why she
loved this song. She'd been a fan of Duran Duran in her
youth, complete with fedora hat and bleached-blond
streak in her hair, just like the bass player. John Taylor, the
same guy singing this song. Wel, not singing it. Chanting it,
sort of. I knew she loved this song because he sang it, but
until now, I hadn't known this was the movie it had come
from.
The woman on the screen bites her finger. The slide show
she's watching cycles through to another picture, but the
movie doesn't show what she's looking at. Only her. She
touches herself, her thighs opening, her head faling back in
ecstasy as she makes herself come.
He watches me watch. His hand presses flat on my chest,
over my heart. My breath had caught in my throat and I let
it seep out, slow and silent, not wanting him to know I'd
been holding it.
"Do you do that?"
I tear my gaze from the TV to look at him. "What?"
He jerks his chin toward the set. The movie's moved on to
something else, but I know what he meant. "That. Do
you?"
"Do I touch myself? Do I get myself off?" I hitch higher
against the arm of the battered couch his parents donated
to the basement. A cat had scratched it; a dog had lifted its
leg on it. We'd fucked about a thousand times on its faded
cushions, or maybe only ten.
He sits back. His shirt hangs open at his throat. I'd been
the one to undo the buttons. The waistband of his boxers
peeks from his jeans. Beneath the denim his cock had
throbbed, hard and hot, moments before.
I know him now, though not as wel as I wil eventualy. He
doesn't know me very wel at al and never wil. Yet this is
different, this coyness as he scrubs his hand over the brush
of his hair and grins.
"Wel. Yeah."
"Do you?" I pul down the bottom of my sweater and
cross my arms over my stomach.
He laughs low. I've known him for years, since elementary
school. I've watched him become a man. He sounds like a
man when he laughs, al low and growly deep. Rough-
edged.
"Wel, yeah," he says. "Al guys do."
"But you don't think al girls do, too?"
"I'm not asking what al girls do. Just you," he points out.
He knows how to work me. And, because I want to
believe I'm the only girl in his thoughts, I answer his
question honestly. Later we'l both lie.
"Yeah. I do it."
He clears his throat. "Realy? I mean, you realy—"
"Wank? Masturbate? Pet my pussy?" I guess I'm trying to
shock him. Make him blush. He's not the blushing sort.
"Is that what you cal it?"
"What do you call it?"
We're whispering, though his parents sleep a ful two floors
above us and we haven't bothered to keep our voices
down about anything before. He leans forward and so do
I. He smels faintly of cologne and more like fabric
softener. His mother does his laundry. Mine doesn't.
"Jerking off, I guess."
"I don't cal it anything," I admit. "I just do it."
"How often?"
I laugh, then, and look to the movie for strength. The
couple in the film are fucking in what looks like a clock
tower. Their hands scrabble at each other as they pul off
their clothes.
"Whenever I feel like it!"
He laughs. "How often do you feel like it?"
I don't want to tel him about the nights I've spent with
other boys' hands on me, revving me up without finishing
me off. Or the blank-fronted books I sneak from the
shelves of the family down the street who pay me to watch
their kids while they go bowling. I've learned a lot more
about sex from those books than I've ever learned from a
boy. Until him, anyway.
"Do you feel like it now?" he asks when it becomes clear
I'm not going to answer.
"Do I feel like coming now?"
He's used his hands on me, put his cock inside me, put his
mouth on my mouth and on my body. I've come with him
more than a few times. But not every time.
more than a few times. But not every time.
"Wil you?" he asks. "While I watch?"
I don't know what answer to give. I only know I want to
give him everything he asks for and some things he hasn't. I
nod.
He sits back against the couch's opposite arm. I'm not sure
he'l even be able to see me, painted in shafts of white and
dark from the TV's glow. I'm not sure I want him to see
me do this without a shield of shadows.
I've never done this in front of anyone, and at first I'm not
sure how to start. In the privacy of my bedroom I'd have
the door locked and soft music playing in the dark. I'd be
naked, or wearing only panties and a T-shirt. Now I have
to navigate the barriers of my jeans and sweater,
underpants and bra. So I start by touching my breasts
through the wool, not because I usualy feel my boobs
when I'm masturbating but because I think that's what he
expects me to do, and doing it wil buy me time to find the
nerve to folow through with the rest of it.
The smal noise that eeps out of his throat convinces me I
made the right choice. My hands feel smal on my breasts,
which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember
which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember
the last time I touched them this way, cupping and rubbing,
trying to tweak my nipples to points. The sweater is too
thick for this, so I shift until I can pul it off over my head.
Another smal noise from him, and I bite my lower lip. My
fingers tiptoe over the slopes of my now-naked chest, over
the lace and satin of my best bra. The one I bought from
Victoria's Secret with my babysitting cash. The one I wear
on every date. Beneath its expensive material and breast-
lifting bands of metal, my nipples have gone tight and
aching.
My palms slide on the smooth fabric. When my thumbs
pass over those hard points, I bite harder. Soft flesh dents
under my teeth. It doesn't hurt yet, but if I don't ease up I
wil soon taste blood.
I close my eyes because it's easier to be what I think he
wants me to be when I'm not watching him watch me. And
it gives me darkness, which I'm used to and prefer for this
sort of thing. I feel my skin, softer than the bra that has
been through lots of washings and, despite its cost, wasn't
made to last.
I go away.
I go away.
From this basement
, which always smels a little of wet
dog though his dog died years ago. From him, the boy-
man watching me. Even from the TV and the movie in the
corner that started al of this in the first place.
I go away to the place where everything feels good, and I
don't have to think about anything but the whisper of my
fingertips along my sides. Down across my bely, which
wil never be flat enough no matter how many crunches I
do or lunches I skip. The metal button on my jeans isn't
cold or warm, it's the same temperature as my skin. My
fingers miss it in their first walk across, though the belt
loops snag my touch.
I don't open the button at first. I slide my hand down the
front of my jeans. My panties are already damp from the
hour we've been on the couch. Sometimes, though I'd
never dare tel him this, no matter what I'm about to share,
my pussy gets wet even before we start kissing.
Sometimes, when I'm in the shower getting ready to meet
him, I do what I'm doing now with my hands, which is rub
them al over my body and pretend they're his. Sometimes
I spend the entire date—the movie, the dinner, bowling,
whatever it is, waiting for it al to be over so we can get to
whatever it is, waiting for it al to be over so we can get to
this part. The couch, the backseat. His hands and mouth
on mine. His cock inside me.
I gasp aloud when my finger finds the smal bump at the
front of my panties. I don't have room to stroke, so I
satisfy myself with pushing gently. I use my middle finger.
The fuck finger, he cals it. It's the one he uses inside me to
get me ready before he uses his dick, but when he touches
my clit he uses his first finger. Or his thumb, if I'm on top. I
didn't come to his bed or his backseat or his couch as
anything close to a virgin, but I don't want to think about
who taught him how to do that.
I can always get off faster by myself than with someone
else. I'm already close. Another gentle press of my finger
pushes a shudder through me. My toes curl against the
cushions. My hips lift a little.
I don't have room to do this right, so now I unbutton my
jeans. My zipper ratchets apart, tooth by metal tooth. My
jeans open. I hook my thumbs into the sides and push
them down, over my hips and thighs. They get hung up at
my knees, and he reaches forward to grab a handful of
denim and help me.
In my bra and also-best panties I lean back and give