“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said.
“It’ll be fine.” I swallowed every bit of spit in my mouth to add, “Mr. Wilke.”
We were staring at each other when the final bell rang. Together, we walked back into class.
It was both the longest and shortest hour and a half of my life, and at the end of it all I remembered was him saying, “See you Thursday,” and eyeing me a heartbeat longer than anyone else.
Wesley gaped at me. “Holy shit.”
I guess he was staring at my boobs. I’d totally forgotten them. I’d forgotten my entire body. It was just this cloud of blood floating beneath me, an occasional warmth.
“I see what that lady meant now,” Wesley said. “You’re very talented.”
“Shut the f**k up,” I said lazily. I could not stop grinning.
“What are you so happy about?”
I pushed my gigantic smile at him, knowing how my face looked: rapturous, flushed, the sort of pupil-dilating ecstasy that makes guys lose it. I didn’t care if it was teasing. I gave zero f**ks. “Life,” I said. “Being alive.”
“Creepy.”
I laughed, and spun my lunch tray on the slide counter. A tater tot went sailing into oblivion.
Mr. f**king Wilke.
At the beginning, you’re happy to simply be near them. To look. To bask. It’s a gift fallen from heaven, accidentally nudged off a golden table, still glimmering with stardust.
I didn’t have insane ideas about janitor closets and locked doors yet.
I was just happy.
Wesley took out his phone while we ate and started filming. It’s expensive, records in HD. I was so high on myself I let him. I leaned against the cafeteria window, squinting, looking for Mr. Wilke’s car. It gave me an obscene thrill. My sweat was in that car. I’d come in that car. It was there somewhere, in the middle of all this wholesome kiddie shit.
My skin seemed to inflate with blood. I felt everything pressing against me: air, voices, eyes. Like being on X. I wanted to touch everything, be touched everywhere. I wanted everyone to know how alive I was.
Wesley watched me through his phone camera.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“Escaped mental patient.”
I loomed close to the lens. He tried to edge away. “Joke’s on you,” I said. “I never escaped. This is the asylum.”
“You’re f**king crazy,” he said admiringly.
“Just you wait.”
On my way home I saw Mr. Wilke’s car in the lot, from a distance. I stood in the gravel, eyes out of focus, remembering how the leather stuck to my bare skin, until someone honked. I don’t remember biking home. I don’t remember anything. Was it even a day, or merely an interval of sunlight and bells and doors until I was alone, Mom out on a sale, the house blissfully quiet and dark? I took a bath for the first time in forever. Pinned my hair up, found an old bottle of orange oil. We always have candles. Count on a drug house for candles. I lit a few and slipped into water so hot it could strip me to the bone. Dragged a loofah along my shins, my upper arms, slow as sin. My skin needed stimulation.
My everything needed stimulation.
When I get myself off, it’s usually a utilitarian thing. Sex logic. The shortest path to what I want.
Not tonight.
I parted my knees, let a hand trail along my thigh and settle where gravity decided. My eyes closed. The memories came flooding back. The gritty, scratchy feel of his face against my br**sts. That soft hot mouth pulling at my ni**les. I sank lower in the tub, letting the weight of the water cover me, crush me, like his body had. Ran a finger over my lips beneath the water. It wasn’t the same. I craved the hardness of him, that smoky leathery smell, that overwhelming sense of masculinity all around me, forcing its way inside of me. Candlelight flickered at my eyelids. I touched myself the same way, lightly, flickeringly, warm water swirling around my fingertip. It could almost have been a tongue. I remembered him teasing me with the head of his dick, making me tell him my name first. I breathed faster. Bit my lip. Slipped my finger inside. Water lapped at the porcelain, a wet smack like skin. God, if only he was the one f**king me right now. This was his finger, I thought. Not mine. This was him, shoving me against the classroom wall, his hand inside my underwear, his finger snaking inside me, f**king me as I grew tighter around him. His thumb circling my clit without touching the tip. His finger sliding in to the knuckle, stiff and quick, that I took as deeply as I could, that made me ache in a place tucked so far inside it didn’t seem real, the root of me. His finger f**king me and filling my belly with heat that built higher and higher until I couldn’t contain it anymore and it spilled over in a white-hot rush. His hand making me come, making my thighs tighten and my voice cry out and my honey spread all over him, giving myself up to the water, to this man in my head.
Tuesday.
Carrot sticks and cream cheese.
Me spending way too much f**king time checking my hair between periods in case of an Evan sighting.
My P.E. teacher: “Yes, I’m a lesbian. No, that is not a job requirement.”
Wesley filming a fight in the hall. Blood gushing from a guy’s nose, a long red creature that kept crawling and crawling out, endless.
A sudden, cold rain drenching me on the way home. My invincible skin not even feeling it.
Wednesday.
The familiar smell of clove cigarettes.
A girl in history asking if I wanted to work on a report together.
Lingering storm clouds, turning the world below into zinc and aluminum.