“Besides,” he adds, “we’ll be much more
comfy on the couch than in my tiny bed.”
Then he scoops me into his arms
and carries me over the threshold
like I’m his bride.
As We Cross the Room
Heading
toward
the couch,
I realize
that I’m holding
my breath.
Mom and Dad’s eyes
are following me
from every picture frame,
their
smiles
fading . . .
And with each step Luke takes,
the distance between the doorway
and the destination seems to
widen—
like this is all
just a strange dream . . .
Then Somehow—We’re There
And he’s lowering me
onto the cushions.
So gently,
as if I’m made of glass.
And now he’s darting
from window to window,
closing
the curtains.
The room’s getting darker,
but there’s still enough light
for me to see
those family photos.
For me to see
my parents staring at me.
Luke sits down next to me,
and murmurs,
“Alone at last.”
He Looks into My Eyes
He tells me
how beautiful I am.
How perfect.
He starts
kissing my neck,
then kissing my shoulder,
then kissing
his way down
my arm,
kissing
and kissing and kissing
till he reaches my hand.
Then he spreads open my palm,
pressing his lips into the center of it.
It’s so romantic, I can hardly stand it.
And now,
it’s not just my throat
that’s on fire.
But All of a Sudden
Luke stops kissing my palm
and presses my hand down onto his knee.
He sucks in
a sharp breath.
Then he takes hold of my wrist
and begins guiding my fingers,
guiding them
up along his thigh,
guiding them
so slowly . . .
up . . . and up . . .
and up . . .
toward . . .
toward . . .
His Crotch!
Wait . . .
What?
This isn’t
what was supposed to happen.
He hasn’t even
touched my breasts yet.
Not even
the outside of my T-shirt.
I’ve listened to enough
of Rose’s descriptions
of what she did (and didn’t do)
with the guys she’s dated
to know
that some major steps
are being skipped right over.
And That’s When I Remember
I remember what Taylor
told Rose and me about Evan.
How he knew it was right because
his body and his mind and his heart
were all saying
just one word.
And I realize that my body
is saying, “I’m not ready for this.”
My mind is saying, “Not here,
with my parents watching.”
And my heart?
My heart doesn’t know what to say.
I Try to Pull Away
But Luke just tightens his grip
on my wrist
and starts murmuring
about how long he’s waited,
how long he’s waited
for me to touch him like this,
and about how the kissing’s been lovely,
the kissing’s been brilliant,
but a man needs more,
more than kissing,
and he’ll go mad,
stark raving mad
if we don’t take things
to the next level.
Then suddenly—
he reaches down with his free hand
and with
one smooth motion,
he unzips his fly.
But
Just as he’s about
to press my hand down
onto his boxers,
I hear
myself saying, “Stop!”
in this weird strangled voice.
And that’s when
I finally manage to wrench
my wrist free.
Luke lets out this awful groan.
I shrink away from him,
pulling my knees up to my chest.
He rakes his fingers through his hair.
“I don’t get it,” he says.
“I thought you cared about me.
I thought you wanted to make me feel good.
I thought you were a woman.
But maybe you’re still
just a kid.”
His Words Burn
Like a slap across the face.
“I’m not a kid, Luke. I’m not.”
“Then please, Lily. Touch me.
Touch me like a woman touches a man.”
I look into his dark eyes
and realize there’s tears in them.
Tears.
I can’t stand it.
I can’t stand
making Luke this unhappy.
I squeeze my eyes closed,
so I can’t see my parents watching.
Then I grit my teeth
and let him ease my hand onto him,
fighting back tears
of my own.
He Moans
And whispers the words I’ve waited
all my life to hear him say:
“I love you, Lily.
I love you . . . I love you . . .”
My heart feels like
it’s going to burst.
“I love you too, Luke.
I love you so much.”
But I don’t understand
how a person
can feel so awesome
and so awful
at the exact same time.
He Sighs
Like he’s never
felt anything so good in his life.
Then suddenly he gasps,
and scrunches up his face,
almost like he’s in agony
or something.
A second later,
his head drops back against the couch,
and I realize
he’s finished.
As he sits there with his eyes closed,
catching his breath,
I get this weird feeling—
like he’s forgotten I’m even here.
And a couple of minutes after that,
his mouth falls open, and he starts snoring.
I turn away from him and curl up
into a ball on the cushion beside him.
The Next Morning in Photography
Mr. Lewis wanders around the room,
snapping photos of our hands.
“Our hands are full of stories,” he says.
“Stories about what they’ve made,
what they’ve held, what they’ve touched . . .”
My cheeks blaze as I flash on what mine
were touching just yesterday.
“Our hands are our autobiographies,”
he says. “Show me a man’s hands
and I’ll show you his passions.”
“Oooo . . . ,” some loser behind me snickers.
“I’d rather see a woman’s passions.”
Mr. Lewis whirls around to face him.
Th
en he gives the kid the finger!
The class sits here in stunned silence.
“You see?” Mr. L says. “My hand told him
the whole story with one simple gesture.”
And we all crack up.
Then he asks us to study the hands of the person
sitting next to us, to see what we can learn.
Presley and I exchange a glance.
I have to fight the urge to sit on mine,
to keep him from seeing them.
Because I mean, what if, you know,
it shows?
But Then
I tell myself
to stop being ridiculous.
Presley says, “You first,”
I put one thumb in each of my ears
and waggle my fingers at him.
“Hmmm,” he says, stroking his chin.
“I see you’ve had a very . . . a very silly life.”
I cross my eyes and he laughs.
So I laugh too.
And
I’m not sure why,
but joking around with Presley,
with a boy my own age—
makes me feel like a bird
that’s been freed from its cage.
At Lunch with the Triatomics
Taylor says he and Evan are brainstorming
ways to use chemistry to stop global warming.
He says they still can’t believe Trump
pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord.
He says Trump’s sure got a lot of nerve.
Then Rose points out
that “nerve” rhymes with “perv.”
And Taylor asks if I’m still seeing mine.
This sort of thing
happens all the time lately.
They always manage to work
the conversation around to Luke.
They won’t stop grilling me,
and giving me these penetrating looks,
like they’re trying to see into
the very depths of my being.
Though I’ve gotten
so good at rolling my eyes,
so good at laughing off
their endless questions,
so good
at convincing them
their imaginations are working overtime,
that sometimes I even believe me.
Luke Isn’t Able to Get Me Alone Again
Till Wednesday, when Mom goes to the dentist.
He picks Alice and me up from school,
then drops her off at ballet.
“We better hurry,” he says,
giving my knee a quick squeeze.
“Her class will be over in forty-five minutes.”
He steps on the gas, pushing every red light,
till we’re back at the deserted
rooftop parking lot at the mall.
He ushers me into the backseat with him,
kisses me for a while, then unzips his pants
and asks me to do the same thing I did last time.
When I reach for him, he moans,
then locks his hands behind his head
and starts telling me he loves me.
But I can’t figure out
why I feel so . . . so . . . Oh, I don’t know.
Sort of lonely, I guess.
I mean, he’s saying he loves me.
But does he love me?
Or what I’m doing to him?
Love Is Strange
Stranger
than it is
in books.
Not anything
like it is
in books.
Not to Mention Confusing
I mean,
I should feel happy
that Luke wants to be alone with me so often.
Shouldn’t I?
So how come when he picked me up
after school today and told me we could
sneak off to the parking lot for an hour,
I felt the opposite of happy?
When we got there,
he tugged me into the backseat,
unzipped his fly, and asked me to do
the same thing as the last two times.
But even though he said he loved me,
being with him didn’t seem
as romantic as it used to be—
back when all we were doing was kissing.
And his kisses felt . . . different today.
He pressed so hard it was like
he was trying to pulverize my lips
with his.
So hard I wanted to pull away
and say, “You’re hurting me!”
But he might have thought
I was acting like a kid if I did that.
On Sunday
Dad finally decides to take some time off.
So the whole family, plus Luke,
spends the morning together.
We rake up the oak leaves in the front yard
into an enormous pile.
Then we all leap into it—even Dad.
Luke throws a handful of leaves at me,
and then everyone’s throwing leaves
at everyone else,
and we’re laughing and shouting
and leaves are fluttering down all around us
like pieces of golden confetti.
And for once, Luke doesn’t even try
to shoot me any secret glances.
But I don’t miss them one bit.
The truth is,
it feels great to just
be having fun with him—
with that constant tightness in my chest,
that constant pressure I feel
whenever Luke and I are alone.
Which Luke Thinks Isn’t Nearly Often Enough
We’ve been
meeting in secret
for a couple of weeks now.
Last week, he only managed
to take me to the parking lot twice.
Which was two times more than I wanted to go.
But today when we went, there was
caution tape stretched across the entrance.
And a sign saying the mall is officially closed.
Luke banged his hands
on the steering wheel
and cursed.
I heaved a secret sigh of relief.
“Guess we’ll have to improvise,” he said,
more to himself than to me.
Then he drove us down
the dirt road that winds into the woods
behind the 7-Eleven.
And for some reason,
doing it to him there made me feel
even lonelier than usual.
Now That the Mall Is Closed
It seems like all week long
when I’m at school and Luke’s
supposedly out looking for apartments,
or writing up his research
for the foundation
that sent him to Kenya,
he’s really just driving around,
scouring the city for places where we can
“have our privacy,” as he refers to it.
I refer to it
as places where he can
“get me to do it to him.”
God.
I can’t believe I just said that.
I sound so cynical.
I don’t think
I like the person
I’m becoming.
In Photography
Today Mr. Lewis says
he wants us to take portraits of each other.
Then he pops his camera into my hands.
and asks me to study him through the lens.
I swing it up to my eye and take a look.
“What do you see?” he asks.
“I mean, besides my beautiful brown skin?”
The class laughs.
“Well,” I say. “I see . . . I see the li
ght
from the window reflected in your eyes.”
“Excellent observation,” he says.
“And today, while you’re shooting your portraits,
I want all of you to focus on the eyes.
The eyes aren’t just the windows to the soul.
The eyes are the soul.”
Then he begins pairing students up
and sending them out the door with their cameras.
“Don’t just look,” he calls after them. “See!
Let your eyes see the secrets in theirs.”
And then—
Presley asks Mr. L if we can be partners.
As Soon as We Get Outside
He turns to me and says,
“I promise not to let you see my secrets,
if you promise not to let me see yours.”
“Deal,” I say. And we both laugh.
Then I admit that I hate
having my picture taken.
“My smile always feels so fake,” I say.
“like it’s been taped onto my face.”
And Presley says
he feels the same way.
And I’m not really sure whose idea it is
to do what we do next.
But we find
an old People magazine on a bench,
and start leafing through it
for smiles.
Then
we tear them out,
hold them up in front of our mouths,
and snap portraits of each other.
I wiggle my eyebrows and Presley starts laughing,
letting his paper smile fall from his face.
And that’s when I snap a picture of his real one.
And I can’t help thinking how nice it is.
And When the Bell Rings
And Presley asks me for my number,
so we can send each other
our favorite shots later,
I don’t think anything of it . . .
Now, it’s almost midnight.
And I’ve been lying on my bed,
looking at the pictures we took
of each other.
We both look so . . .
so relaxed . . .
so happy . . .
so young . . .
And when my phone buzzes and it’s Presley,
texting to ask if I want to check out the new
photo exhibit at the museum on Saturday,
I text back Yes! without even thinking.
Because it’ll just be two friends,