“You’re seriously underestimating how much I like espionage. And it’s just until school ends.”
“Is that how you want to spend your senior year?”
“I don’t want to spend it wondering what could have been.”
His expression turned morose, inward-looking.
“Evan,” I said again, and he focused on me. “If I hadn’t left that night, if this kept going…would you still think we should stop now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you really want to stop?”
“No,” he said softly.
There was no desperate collision of bodies this time. We moved in small increments, my fingers lacing through his, my neck craning toward him. My gaze fixed itself on his jaw, the place just under his lower lip where sandy stubble graded into smooth skin. His free hand came up and touched my mouth, traced it, fingertips pushing in, against my teeth. Again I grimaced. I saw him through my wet eyelashes, blurrily. Unbearable. All this restraint, everything furled and reined in, while the rain came down with pure wrath.
A car roared past, throwing up a tsunami against his door.
We both started. It must have broken the trance, because then his arms were around me and I was on my knees, kissing him, pressing his back to the window. I tasted glassy rain and my own wet hair tangling across my face. He didn’t stop me to fix the shot. He wanted me as I was, raw, unedited. His hand ran up the back of my bare leg, his fingers stroking the inside of my thigh. I gasped against his mouth. Lost a sandal. Rubbed my face against his jaw, hard, feeling the grit. Mark me, I thought. Give me something to take away with me. Something I can touch when I’m alone, remembering this.
When we stopped to breathe he took my face between his hands. “You don’t know what you do to me. I can’t look at you in that classroom.”
“You look at me all the time.”
“And do horrible things to you in my head.”
My blood was wildfire. I felt my swollen mouth, my sharp teeth digging into my lip, my dreamy half-shut eyes, and knew what I looked like to him. “Do them to me,” I said. “Take me somewhere.”
He gave a long, long sigh. His lips were bright red from my attentions. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.” Two fingers on my chin, pinching gently. “This is moving very fast. We should think it through. Think about how to be less conspicuous.”
My face lit up with dark glee. “I can be discreet. I can be Harriet the f**king Spy.”
His hands moved to my ribs. Palms cupping my br**sts, rubbing my wet shirt into my skin. It chafed, but I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted this. Imprint yourself on me, I thought. It felt like he held all of me, gathered there next to my heart, small enough to fit in his hands.
“I wish I could take you away,” he said in a rough, eerie whisper.
I shivered. “How am I supposed to make it through the weekend?”
“I was wondering the same thing.”
We kissed for a while, soft, sweet goodbye kisses. We traded numbers. We touched each other’s faces, hands. The glass had gone opaque, glowing with fuzzy spots of color, the way a camera blurs background lights. We kissed again. I tried to think of another excuse to stay in his car, and he smiled, reading my thoughts.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Just don’t stop.”
I stood in the rain, watching his car go. A string tied to it looped around my heart and pulled tighter and tighter until it sheared clean through.
—3—
At seven Saturday morning I woke to Mom’s voice, a raven screech ravaged from cheap alcohol and cigarettes.
“Babe! I made breakfast. Let’s go shopping.”
I pulled my pillow over my face, wondering if I had the discipline to suffocate myself.
“Get up, lazybones.”
Curtain swish. Holocaust sunlight ignited my bed, seeping through the pillow.
“Go away,” I groaned. I’d been having a weird dream about being chased through a cornfield by a wild dog. I couldn’t see it when I looked back, just the ripple through the stalks. But when it growled I felt its breath on my neck, hot and toxic.
By “made breakfast,” she meant bought McDonald’s. At least it wasn’t her usual liquid meal. I scarfed an egg sandwich and observed the woman who gave birth to me. Sunlight was not kind to her face. Her eyeshadow looked greasy, not covering the dark circles so much as completing them. Her lipstick was thick and tacky. No one still wore magenta except ironically.
Once upon a time, this witchy skeletal creature was a teenage girl, like me. Her eyes were a clear peridot, her skin poreless alabaster. She was beautiful. Men and boys worshiped her.
I shuddered. I had the disturbing sense of looking into a mirror that showed the future.
“What do you need to shop for?” I said.
“For you, silly.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “You never buy me things.”
“It was a good week. We got some extra cash.”
Translation: I sold a lot of meth to kids your age.
“And you’re going to spend it on me.” Not a question. A tentative statement.
“I can’t stand looking at them ratty clothes. You need something nice.”
Them ratty clothes were good enough for Mr. Wilke, I thought.
“You can just give me the money,” I said. “I’ll buy them myself.”