—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.”
Please, Jesus, don’t go with me.
Mom smiled. Her porcelain caps shone brilliantly. The majority of her teeth were fake, the real ones rotted out by meth. “If I got to pay to spend time with you, I will.”
Zip, thunk. Arrow right in the heart. It sank deep, quivering. I knew this woman loved me in some delusional way. I just preferred when we both ignored that fact.
She chain-smoked in the van. I hung halfway out the window, texting Wesley. Please kill me. Girls’ day out with Mom.
He texted back, Who’s the girl?
Good old Wesley.
We drove through sleepy Carbondale, green lawns and campus commons, to the University Mall. Ice cold AC, that soda pop smell in the slightly carbonated air. Mom took me straight to American Eagle. We passed a rack of pre-torn, pre-faded jean shorts, indistinguishable from what I was wearing except for the price tag. I raised an eyebrow. Translation: told you so.
“Get what you like,” Mom said. She held a mesh tank against her boobs, turning left and right.
“I’ll meet you at the register,” I said, slipping away.
Alone on the hardwood floors under champagne-colored lights, I’ll admit it—I felt slightly glamorous. I couldn’t stop looking at myself in the mirrors. I knew I was pretty. I’d never been one of those angsty girls who needed constant reassurance. When your mom’s skeezy “business partners” hit on you when you’re twelve, you learn fast. I’d been aware of male attention since before menarche. I knew I was desirable. I knew how to wield that as both a tool and a weapon.
I’d never really thought of myself as beautiful, though.
The girl in the mirror was beautiful.
Part of falling in love with someone is actually falling in love with yourself. Realizing that you’re gorgeous, you’re fearless and unpredictable, you’re a firecracker spitting light, entrancing a hundred faces that stare up at you with starry eyes.
The girl in the mirror stared at me. She blinked slowly, knowingly. She seemed to be looking at something bright—chin raised, eyes distanced, guarded. Button nose and full lips. Her mouth was open slightly, a sliver of white visible. She had the kind of effortlessly slender body older women hated her for. Despite what Wesley said, her breasts were average, even on the small side, but she carried them in a way that made you aware. She carried her whole body that way. Spine straight, each limb flowing loosely and easily. She only had bones when she needed them. Rich chestnut hair spilled over her bare shoulders, an elegant mess.
I looked at her and thought, I don’t know who you are.
A group of girls drifted past, laughing in brazen tones. They smelled like a walking Bath & Body Works ad. They were moisturized and shining and tan, but beneath that was pudginess, acne, bulimia, self-hatred. They were processed. I was natural, uncultured and untamed.
My phone vibrated.
Britt, the girl from history class, asking about our project. After I’d responded and put it away, I still felt it. His number was right there, snug against my ass. Any moment, I could reach out to him, connect. For now it was comforting just knowing it was there. But I knew this kind of comfort wouldn’t last. I’d need more.
Mom didn’t bat an eyelash at the armful of clothes I dumped on the counter. I watched the register tick up, growing increasingly nervous as we hit $100, $150, $200. No way would she go for this. She’d stop the cashier. Oh god, she wasn’t stopping the cashier. There was going to be A Scene.
$242.18.
Mom pulled out a wad of twenties. I tried not to gawk.
One of the laughing bulimic girls watched us leave, her eyes glinting jealously.
I was too stunned to say thank you. I followed Mom to the food court, feeling like a delivery person, about to give this to some kid who really deserved it.
She bought us a huge plate of orange chicken and picked at it, eating like a bird.
My body tensed, expecting a blowup. It couldn’t go this long without turning ugly.
“Want to see a movie?” Mom said.
My mouth dropped. We hadn’t done that since I was little. I cleared my throat, blinked. Something weird was happening in my chest. It was an actual feeling for this woman.
“I’m kind of tired,” I said.
Her eyes widened. She looked like a sad raccoon. Her mascara made spider legs out of her eyelashes.
“Maybe a short one?” I suggested.
I couldn’t believe myself. I knew she was manipulating me. I didn’t know why yet, but I knew better than to buy her shit. Remember what she’s done to you, I thought. Remember those nights she left you alone on the couch with a man who kept saying how pretty you were, who touched you, so she could squeeze more money out of him. Remember her going to jail for possession and sticking you in a group home for three months. Remember she’s the reason you’re so screwed up.
I didn’t remember anything.
I sat with her in the refrigerated theater, smelling her cigarette breath and way-too-young perfume, watching a terrible movie, laughing.
#
That night, I sprawled on my bed with my ancient laptop, ostensibly researching my history report but actually Googling Mr. Wilke. Not much internet presence. Some placeholder profiles on social networking sites. Some blurry JPEGs. Even those tiny, pixelated images made my heart spin like a top. I saved the best one to my desktop, glancing at it while reading about the Cold War.
Not good. I was becoming obsessed.
New search: Illinois age of consent laws.
We were legal.
That night at the carnival was legal, obviously, and even if it happened now, as teacher and student, when he was in a “position of trust or authority” over me, it would still be legal because the cutoff was seventeen. As an eighteen year old, I could legally fuck my teacher.
Of course, if anyone found out, they’d fire him in a heartbeat. He’d probably never teach again.
Something heavy thudded downstairs.
I put in my earbuds and lay back, eyes closed. The Constellations, “Right Where I Belong.” Mellow and bluesy and bittersweet. Just how I felt.
A tepid breeze ghosted through the room, smelling of grass and dying summer. The cicadas were so loud I heard them through the music, the rattle of a million rainsticks. What are you doing right now? I wondered. What if I called?
Something heavy fell again. My bed vibrated.
I sat up, yanking out my earbuds.
Thump. Thump. Crash.
I stormed downstairs, calling for Mom.
A man stood in our living room. Rangy, gray beard, jeans so oily they looked like leather.
“Your mom had too much to drink,” he said.
Mom was on the floor. He was trying to help her to the sofa.
“Jesus,” I said, kneeling. Her skin was cool to the touch. “She wasn’t drinking. She’s cold. What did she take?”
The man gave me an unreadable look.
“Mom?” I shook her. She was breathing, but shallowly. “Mom, what did you take?”
I thumbed open an eye. Her pupil contracted in the light. She moaned, rolled away from me.
Thank fucking god.
I turned to the man. “Who are you?”
“Paul.”
“Paul,” I said curtly, “carry my mom to bed.”
He carried her, and I held her head up. I pulled the cover over her. Turned on the lamp. Found her cell and pressed it into Paul’s hand.
“You’re going to stay with her until she comes down,” I said. “Check her pulse every ten minutes. If it slows, or she gets colder, or stops breathing, call a fucking ambulance. I can’t do this again.”
Paul had trouble paying attention to my mouth. He stared at my legs like they were talking.
“Hey.” I snapped my fingers.
He looked up.
I took a picture of him with my phone. “Now I’ve got you on file. Don’t fucking leave her until she comes down.”
Paul’s beard twitched.
I shut the bedroom door and leaned my head against the wall in the darkness. My throat twisted shut. Selfish bitch. She had never, ever let me be a kid.
A wedge of hot amber light fell across me. Paul stepped out of the bedroom. For a pathetic second I considered hugging this stranger. I needed to be hugged, by anyone.
Paul put a hand on my back. My shoulders knit. The hand slid down to the top of my ass.
I slammed my elbow into his gut. He gave a small, stifled gasp.
“Touch me again,” I said, “and I’ll fucking kill you.”
I walked fast out of the hall, but once I turned the corner I ran for the front door. Slammed it behind me. Dropped onto the top step, breathing wildly.
God, my life was a fucking joke.
I pulled my phone out, intending to call Wesley, to beg him to meet me somewhere, but before I could a new text popped up.
From Mr. Wilke.
Just a photo, no words. A ribbon of fireflies zigzagging through the night. The fiery spokes of a Ferris wheel. The merry-go-round like a giant music box. Deathsnake, a sinuous line of lights rising into the sky, dropping off into oblivion. It looked like a small galaxy, a fog of colored light hanging around it like a nebula. He’d taken it from his house. The lights he saw every night.
My heart calmed. I stared at the screen, forgetting the life behind me. Wish I was there, I replied.
A moment later, his response: Me too.
Somewhere in the universe, two hearts reached out and connected.
Then a figure stepped into the light streaming from the house, a shadow falling over me.
I leapt up and ran for my bike in the garage. Pedaled furiously down the street to the highway. I headed for the water tower, racing as fast as I could, even when I was alone with the arctic starlight and the wind keening in my ears.
At the reservoir I jumped off my bike, letting it fall. Used my momentum to run up the hill. Breathless, sweaty. My blood sang in my veins at hypersonic speed. I climbed to the crow’s nest, feeling savage. I could kill someone with my bare hands right now.
Wesley sat on the driftwood boards, a point of orange fire frozen beside his face.
“Maise?”
I collapsed beside him, rolling to my back and staring up at the fat-bellied tank. Drank air that tasted like clove smoke.
“What happened to you?”
I waited until I had my breath back. “My mom overdosed.”
“Is she going to live?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” I sat up. “Maybe. I really don’t give a fuck.”
I felt him looking at me. I slid to the edge of the platform, dangling my legs off. Thirty-foot drop to grass and dirt. Probably not fatal.
“What’s your greatest fear?” I said, gripping an iron strut angling overhead.
Wesley exhaled. “Being alone for the rest of my life.”
“That’s a good one.” My fingers flexed. “Mine is being my mom.”
I kicked myself off the platform.
Wesley yelled something. My arms held; I swung out over space, light as air. It seemed I could let go and just float to the ground like ash.
Arms around my waist.
His attempt at “rescuing” me almost resulted in both of us falling. I kept telling him to let go, let go, but he wouldn’t. We toppled backward, his arms still locked around me. I wrestled free.
“Jesus,” I said. “You almost made that a murder-suicide.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he screamed.
I stared at him.
His cigarette lay smoldering on the boards.
“I’m not like you,” he said. “I don’t want to self-destruct.”
“What?” I said in a soft voice.
“If you want to kill yourself, don’t do it in front of me. Don’t make me try to save you.”
I watched, speechless, as he climbed down the ladder and stalked off through the tall grass.
Then I stood there alone. The cherry still burned. I stubbed it out with my toe and sat down. I felt empty, a sort of diffuse hunger, a gnawing sensation in my belly and lungs and throat.
The world shivered brightly.
Don’t. Don’t fucking cry.
I took my phone out. Lost myself in those lights, the stupid pixels that formed words that meant everything.
From up here I had a view of the carnival, too. I snapped a pic. Mine was farther out, a sprinkle of rainbow glitter. I sent it without a message. His reply, almost instantaneous, was what I’d expected, and I smiled.
Wish I was there, he said.
Me too, I answered.
I pressed the phone to my chest, a warm rectangle of light irradiating my bones. I wasn’t sitting there alone. I wasn’t alone anywhere anymore.
Something made me check the screen again. I’d read it fast, teary-eyed. It was different when I read it the second time.
What he’d actually written was, Wish you were here.
#
Wesley met me Monday morning outside calc with a carrot cupcake.
“Olive branch,” he said.
I split it with him.
“Hey,” he said, licking frosting from his lips, “if shit gets crazy at your house, you can come to mine. My mom won’t try to give you advice. She’ll just stuff your face.”
On impulse, I hugged him. He was ungodly tall. “Thank you,” I said somewhere in the vicinity of his xyphoid process.
When I let go he was blushing.
A pang of guilt. Had I been leading him on, by habit? Nip that in the bud. I flicked his ear. “Hiyam’s having a homecoming after-party. You want to go and drink her booze and stare at her tits?”
“Fuck yes.”
I walked into Film Studies later that morning feeling more in balance with the universe than I had in a long time. Which meant, of course, that the universe had to swing a big rusty wrench straight into my face.
He wasn’t there. A sub sat at his desk.
“Where’s Mr. Wilke?” I said.
The sub shrugged. “His instructions say you can use this period to work on your semester project.”
Wesley and I slipped out after she took attendance.
“This is fucking weird,” I muttered.
“Why?”
Because he drove me home Friday. Because we made out in his car, in the rain. Because he said he thought of doing terrible things to me in his head.
“I don’t know. He didn’t seem sick last week.”
“Mysterious illnesses often strike the elderly.”
I kicked the back of Wesley’s knee.
“Are you gonna spend the whole day pining for him?”
Yes. “Meet me in the lab in ten. We can start on our masterpiece.”
Where are you? I texted Mr. Wilke when I was alone at my locker.
I waited for a reply. Five minutes. Ten. Then I sighed, and tossed it in, and buried myself in schoolwork.
He finally responded that afternoon. Court date. Nothing major.
I didn’t reply.
A minute later, he added, I miss you.
I stood at my locker as kids milled around me and felt like I was on a movie set, surrounded by extras. Their lives were so small, so simple. So scripted. No one had a secret life like this. No one was texting the teacher they’d fucked, the teacher they were planning to fuck again.
I want to see you, I said.
I expected a brush-off. I did not expect him to say, Can you meet me outside school?
Yes. God, yes. Where?
He gave me an address not far away for a pickup.
And then where? I said.
Wherever you want.
#
I sat on an old cold case outside a derelict gas station half a mile from school. The sun banged off chrome pumps scabbed with rust, ricocheting into my eyes in bright bullets. Heat baked up from the cracked concrete. A tin sign pocked with BB holes creaked mysteriously, no breeze touching it. I reclined in a cool bath of shadow, my body relaxed, my mind going a million miles an hour.
He pulled up like a movie star, one arm propped on the headrest, mirrored aviators flashing.
I got in. The seat leather scorched my legs.
We didn’t speak. He took his sunglasses off. His eyes were tender and soft beneath. He wore a pinstripe shirt and tie with jeans, sleeves rolled up, hair wind-tossed. Sun gilded the feathering of stubble on his cheek.
We didn’t kiss.
Our hands met on the scalding seat between us.
I breathed fast. I hadn’t been this scared since I got into that rollercoaster car by myself. This was the same thing, really—getting on a ride that might destroy us.
Worst Case Scenario: he loses his job, I get kicked out of school.
Best Case Scenario—
I don’t know. What is the best case scenario? Sneaking around, peering out of curtains? Lying to everyone we know?
I thought of that Robert Frost poem they love to ruin for you in high school. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. This was where my life forked. I could only go one way; in the other, Gwyneth Paltrow plays my alternate self like in Sliding Doors, ending up miserable or happy. That was the question. Which one was she? Which was I?
I knew which one I was.
The fearless one.
I squeezed his hand.
The silence between us rang. It made everything so clear. I saw my thoughts reflected in his face, the trepidation fighting with a very simple, very biological need. He looked at all of me, my fresh teenage skin, my adult certainty, my old soul. No one had ever looked at me so completely. No one had ever seen me as such a whole, rounded person.
Yes, I thought. This is the road I want.
He squeezed my hand back, then took the wheel.
#
It’s amazing how much you can communicate without words.
We drove onto the highway, through neat green rows of soybeans raking to the blue horizon. My window was down, hair lashing my face. The air smelled chemical with a tang of sickly-sweet fermentation. A blade of sunlight lay across my legs, making my skin glow.
I glanced at Mr. Wilke. His look made something deep in me ache. I held on to the feeling, letting it open inside of me, blossoming, filling me from toes to fingertips with a tension somewhere between hunger and pain. By habit I put my thumbnail between my front teeth. I hadn’t meant it seductively, but Mr. Wilke stared, a smile flitting around the edges of his mouth.
Great job, Lolita. Now you just need some heart-shaped sunglasses.
I felt his eyes on me, hot as the sunlight. I knew he was watching every move. I tilted my head back, eyes half-closing, the wind playing over my face. My heart beat a slow, bluesy rhythm. It felt like acting, like being on stage, every camera on me, bewitched.
The car slowed.
We both looked at the motel sign, then each other.
He turned.
Crunching gravel. Parking space. Engine off, ticking. Heat swarmed into the silence, becoming almost a sound, a high locust whine buzzing against my skin.
I heard him breathing. He wasn’t quite looking at me, his gaze landing somewhere on the dashboard.
We knew what we were doing, Your Honor.
He put his sunglasses back on and popped the glovebox, handing me a second pair. I laughed softly. Like this would hide anything.
Maybe it wasn’t for other people. Maybe it was for us.
It was a lot easier to face him without seeing his eyes. My reflection in his lenses: a girl without fear, her lips slightly upturned, knowing.
He got out and headed for the registration office.
Panic attack.
I flipped down the sun visor, clawed at my hopeless hair. What had I eaten since I brushed my teeth that morning? What planet had I been on? No memory of anything between waking and the moment I got into his car. I couldn’t sit comfortably in my own skin. Every tendon was a violin string stretched taut, dying to sing out at the faintest touch. What if it was different? What if I’d ruined it by lying, leaving? God, what the hell could he possibly see in a screwed-up eighteen-year-old? How screwed-up must he be to get tangled in my life?
Footsteps on gravel.
I slapped the visor up.
No more thinking.
I opened my door, slammed it shut loudly, defiantly. My senses focused on small things: the pumice scrape of his shoes, a splash of sun on a steel bumper. He opened 112 and went in first. I followed, closing the door behind me.
Dim inside, afternoon light straining through muslin curtains. There were heavy drapes to either side of the window that we didn’t touch. I had impressions of square silhouettes in the murk but all I really saw was him. Taking his sunglasses off, setting them on the bureau. Moving toward me. Taking my glasses off, too. I blinked at the dust suspended in a cloud of sunlight.
I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to step further into the room for a while.
Mr. Wilke put his hand under my jaw, raising my face. My body pressed against the cool metal of the door. I ached like I’d been asleep, or watching a long movie, and needed to be pulled, stretched, used. It made my face sullen, made his eyes narrow. We looked at each other with that resentment you feel when you want something so much it’s causing you pain, so much you start to hate it a little. There was a whiff of gasoline and the city on him and that smokiness I’d become addicted to. I put my hand on the knot of his tie. His mouth opened, as if I’d touched some live part of him.
Our lips met.
What happened felt more like chemistry than a kiss. Pure liquid heat on my lips, dissolving into me, trailing a hot line down my chest and pooling in my stomach. My heels rose off the floor. All of me rose, unanchored, held down only by his weight pressing me to the chilly slab of the door. We kissed as we could not have done until now—like lovers. He tilted my head, slid his tongue into my mouth, not urgent or hurried but in a way that made me feel the inevitability of this. The hand on my jaw moved over my chest, my belly, to the button of my shorts.
I’d had some practice unknotting ties.
When I tugged it free he pulled back, those full red lips slanting in a half-smile. This made it easier to unbutton his shirt. He watched me, letting me have my way with him. Raised his arms obediently when I rolled up his undershirt. I wanted to press it to my face, smother myself with it like ether. But he took my wrists and pinned them above my head and something trembled in me, somewhere between blood cells and neurons, a liminal space where I wasn’t quite mind or body. God, he was going to fuck me right here, against the door.
His hands let go and mine stayed raised, obedient. He unbuttoned my shorts, knelt to take them off. Warm breath sighed between my thighs, making me feel my own wetness. Large, careful fingers slid beneath my underwear, pulling, fingertips running down my legs. I bit my lip so hard I tasted sweet copper. He kissed my hip, moving along the soft crease of my thigh, moving lower as his hands spread my legs open. I couldn’t. I couldn’t anymore. I thrust my fingers into his hair and pulled his head back, making him look up at me. My face said it all.
He stood, unzipping himself, taking the condom from his back pocket as I pulled him out of his jeans. His dick felt huge and burning hot in my hand. I slid my palm around the base and he froze, the muscles of his chest chiseled against his skin, unmoving. My fingers stroked the fine silk over that hardness, pumping slightly in my hand. Just touching it made me curl up, everything in me going super tight. He put the condom on himself. Lifted me suddenly under the knees, making me grab him for balance. Then it was only my spine against the door and his dick thrusting inside of me, and I lost all breath, all function, all everything. For an endless moment all I felt was penetration. Slow and hard. Slow and deep. He made sure I felt every single thrust. I was hard inside, too, my body coiled and tense, and the first few moments were so poignant it was almost painful. Then the rhythm took over, and the world began to fade back in. My bare thighs rubbing against his jeans. The way his abs flexed, the muscle rolling, the little trail of bronze hair he pressed against my navel. The viperous motion of his body as he fucked me. He held me a few inches above him and raised his face, watching mine without kissing me. The way we looked at each other was more intimate than a kiss could have been. I saw his pupils dilating like a pulsing black heart. I saw every tremor of strain and pleasure that went through him. I watched what I did to him, how vulnerable he became as he gave himself to me, fucking me but also being fucked himself, that slightly lost, boyish look coming into his face as he got closer and closer. A fire built in me, leaping from cell to cell, setting my body slowly alight, but I made myself keep my eyes open and watch him. His eyes closed, his eyebrows rising helplessly. His fingers dug into the backs of my legs. His dick was so hard and thick inside me that all I felt was a sweet fullness in my core. Every time he sank in completely and compressed my clit, a bolt of pure electricity shot up through my belly. My eyes were open wide when the tension in me changed from resistance to surrender, and I started to gasp uncontrollably, and didn’t tell him I was coming, but he knew. The fingers clenching my legs tightened like claws. I came so fast and hard it was like a flash of sheet lightning, a blinding white bliss, there one second and gone the next, and I gaped at the shadowy room, dazed. He kept going for a few more seconds, groaning, thrusting hard one last time and then rocking through the aftershock, settling against me, our weight easing limply against the door.
His head rested in the crook of my shoulder. I ran a hand over his back, light, unsure of myself yet, of this closeness. It was like an awful pounding clock had finally stopped ticking. The silence in the room was peaceful, melancholy. I breathed in the smell of him. Of us. My sweat on his body, my wetness on his jeans. I wanted to pause this moment and linger in it, looking around, memorizing.
He pulled out gingerly, but didn’t let me down. His arms tightened. He carried me to the bed.
My breath fluttered in my lungs.
He laid me down and lowered himself beside me, looking up at the ceiling. We reached for each other at the same moment, our hands linking in the small gulf between us.
Oh my god, I thought. Just that. A pleasant daze. My body was full of sunlight. No blood, just liquid blue sky.
I didn’t know how much time had passed when his head turned to me. I looked over, feeling lazily magnanimous. Everything was golden and graceful.
I’d thought his eyes were blue, but in the September light they had a silvery, metallic look, like brushed aluminum.
“Hi,” he said, soft and low.
Something lit up in me like a candle. I propped myself on an elbow, swung my leg across him, and crouched over his body. “Hi,” I said.
It was the first time we’d spoken since Friday.
#
For a long time he held me atop him, looking at me. I kissed him but he broke it after a second. When I tried to get up, he pulled me back.
“Let me look at you,” he said. “Before your guard comes up.”
So I let him look. At first I was nervous, my eyes flickering away, suddenly aware that I wore nothing below the waist. I tucked my hair behind my ear and it immediately tumbled back into my face.
Then I eyed him askance. There was nothing in his expression but curiosity, so innocent it seemed almost childish. My anxiety melted. A slow, small smile took over me. Cocky, not shy. The way I’d smiled at the carnival. I owned every part of me, the nudity, the just-had-sex hair, every mistake I’d ever made, and wrapped myself in it.
Evan touched my cheek and pulled me closer against him. My hair fell around us, enclosing us in a dark veil. I ran my palm over his chest, the smooth-carved muscle, the patch of coarse gold hair across his pecs, the dense, solid bones. Let my hand move lower to the silky down on his belly. God, I thought. You are such a fucking man. His hands moved over me, outlining the slimness of my arms, my hips, stopping on my bare ass, his fingernails pressing into my skin. The innocent look was gone.
“Did you see her?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“The real me.”
“She’s right here,” he said, and kissed me.
The afternoon became a blur of this: of kissing him, and being held, and not leaving that bed. He stepped into the bathroom to clean himself up and brought me my underwear. I put it on but took my shirt off, and we spooned, his hands all over me. We talked as much as we kissed.
“Tell me everything about you,” he said. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“Oh my god. You can not ask me that.”
“Why?”
I sat up, giving him a horrified look. “First of all, because I want to impress you. Second, because it changes on a daily basis.”
“You have one, you just don’t want to tell me. I’ll tell you mine.”
My lip curled with hostility.
He laughed. “Say it together, on three. Ready?”
“No,” I shrieked.
“One. Two. Three. Casablanca.”
“Jurassic Park.”
He broke into a huge grin.
I flopped face-first onto the bed. “I’m going to die.”
“A modern classic,” he said, tickling my heel. “I remember seeing it in the theater and thinking, ‘Someday CG will be as real as real life.’ My favorite scene was when the girl—”
“If you start quoting,” I said into the mattress, “I will actually kill myself.”
He laughed again. His laugh was nice. Not mocking like Wesley’s, but giddy, conspiratorial. I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“Tell me everything about you.”
His laughter faded, but the smile stayed. He lay beside me, his fingertips tracing the curves of my back. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
So I wasn’t far off. He was fourteen when I was born. Maybe Wesley wasn’t far off with his theory, either. And so what? I’d fucked guys older than thirty-two.
“Where did you go to college?”
“Northwestern.”
I peered over my shoulder again. “You from upstate?”
“Just outside Chicago.”
“Snob. Everyone says they’re from ‘just outside Chicago,’ like towns don’t have names up there.”
“It’s true. They don’t. Very confusing for mail carriers.”
He slid a finger under my bra strap and followed it up over my wing bone, cresting my shoulder.
“Why—” I started.
“My turn.” His finger moved slowly toward my breast. “Why did you talk your way into my class?”
Fate, I wanted to say. Kismet. It was in the script.
“I reserved it last year, actually. They messed up the registration.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going to film school.”
His hand stopped. He sat up a little. “Really? Where?”
“I don’t know yet. I mean, I have my top choices, obviously, but I’m trying to be realistic. Hopefully somewhere like USC, or UCLA. I’m kind of torn whether to focus on indie or commercial film. Commercial is safer, I think, because I’ll get a broad view of how the whole process works. But focusing on commercial shit can turn you into a philistine who just churns out garbage, so maybe I should focus on indie stuff. On storytelling, and art. But then maybe I’ll be really naive when it comes to actually doing the work. I don’t know.”
I was rambling. I glanced back at him. He had a slightly dazed look on his face.
“You’re serious about this,” he said.
I gave a half-shrug. “Well, yeah.”
“What do you want to do? Job-wise.”
“I’ll take what I can get. I’d love to be a PA, get a general sense of how it all fits together. Because someday, I’m going to direct.”
It was as if I’d said something enchanting, romantic. His eyes sparkled. “You’re a creator.”
I thought about that. It seemed too lofty for me. All I did was watch a lot of movies and daydream. But he’d given me an opportunity, one I hadn’t even really acknowledged because I’d been so obsessed with him: our semester project. I could actually make something. If it turned out halfway decent, maybe I could include it on my college app.
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I said.
An electric moment between us, balanced between honesty and fear. Because I was young. Maybe I had more drive than most kids my age, but I was still a “kid my age.” And you know that, Mr. Wilke, I thought. That’s part of what this is between us—the thrill of the taboo. Teacher and student.
“If you’re going to film school,” he said, “there’s something I need to give you.”
My heart skipped. “What?”
“An education.”
#
The first thing he taught me was how to make love.
Before you laugh, know that I’d always hated that phrase. It sounded so corny, so old. Hippies made love. People my mom’s age, though I preferred to believe I was an immaculate conception.
People my age hooked up, fucked, had sex. We didn’t attach frilly ideas of oneness and eternity to a basic biological act. Most of us were from single-parent homes. Those who weren’t wished they were when their parents screamed and beat the shit out of each other. We grew up sexualized, from toddler beauty pageants to the constant reminder that adults were waiting to lure us into vans with candy. The invention of MMS gave us a platform for the distribution of amateur porn.
That’s a lot of conditioning to break through.
#
The afternoon light got that long slant to it, slowly folding into dusk. Half a day had passed since I’d eaten and I barely felt hungry. I didn’t want to stop this thing, lying on a motel bed with this beautiful man, our hot skin always in contact, never breaking apart. He sat up and I sat in his lap, facing him, my legs wrapped around the long lean muscle of his back. I rubbed my palm against the bristle on his cheek. He wore a sleepy, smoldering look, his lower lip jutting out, and it completely worked on me. If he’d asked me to do anything right then, I would have. I kissed that sulky lip. I couldn’t tell the taste of his mouth from mine anymore. Only warmth, softness, pressure.
“I want to see you,” he said quietly. “All of you.”
I breathed quicker. Disentangled myself from him, my eyes locked on his, and stood. I felt like I was in a trance. I’d undressed for other men, and I wasn’t wearing much right now to begin with, but this felt different. He wasn’t just going to see my body. He was going to see me. In the way I undressed, the way I stood there under his gaze, the way I wore my skin.
He moved to the edge of the bed.
I unhooked my bra, slipped it off one shoulder. Let it fall to the floor with cool disregard.
That was the easy part.
I was breathing hard now.
His eyes moved over me, but hovered mostly on my face. That was almost worse. Who am I without this? I thought. Without the seduction I wear like armor, without my bravado and cocksure confidence? Am I really just a little girl under it all?
I tucked my thumbs into my underwear.
And I thought of myself getting into the front of that deathtrap rollercoaster all alone. Of swinging out from the water tower. Of getting into my teacher’s car.
I slipped my underwear down until it fell. Then I stepped out with one foot and kicked it away with the other. I never broke eye contact.
Evan’s lips parted in awe.
I’d like to thank the Academy.
“Now you,” I said.
He stood smoothly. His silhouette blocked the dregs of sun filtering through the curtain. It limned the edges of him, a bronze arc of light on his shoulder, the tips of his hair turning white-blond. His jeans clung tightly and he had to strip them off. He was hard again, totally hard, his boxers doing nothing to hide it. He slipped them off. My eyes didn’t know where to stop. Apparently my hands didn’t either because they were all over him, following the cascading slabs of his ribs, his abs, the smooth chevron of muscle that led to the hard dick I took and wrapped in my fingers. His hands came down on my shoulders, heavily. His breath was heavy, too. He leaned on me, eyes closed.
“I want you like this,” I said.
He looked at me as if he was drugged. I pushed him onto the bed. My knees fit to either side of his waist. We sat face to face again, but without any clothes between us. I was higher than him and he kissed my breasts, his dick stiff against my thigh. The heat of it drove me crazy, my blood percolating, a viciousness winding up in me like a cobra preparing to strike. If he didn’t fuck me, I was going to force him.
He looked up at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, my fingernails carving into his back.
I could have forced him. I had the leverage. But I wanted him to do it, and so I let him take his sweet, torturous time, teasing my nipples with his teeth, sliding the whole length of himself between my thighs, pushing lightly, agonizingly, right against the focal point of that horrible ache in me. At first it was an insane test of willpower. I hit my limit again and again, somehow always starting over, finding a new reserve of patience. Then I realized that he was going to test my patience until it stopped being patience. Until I stopped waiting to be fucked and just experienced this. I made myself let go, made my muscles unravel. Draped my arms languidly around his neck. Looked at his face without thinking anything but how light it made my heart feel, as if pumped full of helium. And when I started to zone out and he slipped inside of me, I made myself stay relaxed. I let him penetrate me so gradually there was never a moment when it felt like he was finally fucking me. It all sort of blended together, fluidly, dreamily. His arms circled my back, holding me against the soft rocking of his body. This was different. This wasn’t being fucked. This was something happening to my entire self, not just the useful parts. There was so little tension in me I didn’t think I could come, until a warmth spreading from my hips and belly became hotter and hotter, and I looked up at the ceiling, gasping like I was surfacing for air, saying, “Come inside me, please, come inside me.” That was it. No holding back. The heat in me detonated in a gentle nuclear burst, annihilating all sensation with soft light. It came on slowly and faded slowly, leaving me tingling, buzzed. Evan kept going a little longer, and then he slowed, and stopped, and held me. He grimaced when he pulled out. He was still hard.
“You didn’t,” I said drowsily.
He kissed me.
I let it go on for a moment and then leaned back, clear-eyed. “Why?”
“I wanted it to be just for you.”
It was like he’d spoken in Greek. I stared at him.
And something very strange happened in my brain.
I rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed, curling my arms around myself. My hand clamped instinctively over my mouth. The room was dark now, its shadows tinted the color of rust and old blood by the parking lot lights.
“Maise?”
The shadows swam in my eyes. I squeezed them shut.
Evan laid a hand on my back. “Why are you crying?” he said in a frightened whisper.
“I’m not,” I said, and sniffed. Perfect.
His hand stroked me tentatively. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I laughed at myself, bitter. “I’m just a fucking headcase.”
“Why are you crying?” he said again.
“Because no one’s ever done that before.”
He swept my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “Done what?”
I don’t think I was really crying about this. I think it was a cumulative effect, all the tension and anxiety of the past few weeks culminating in this perfect day, this perfect happiness. It was relief, not sadness. But he’d been the trigger, and I guess I owed him an answer.
“Done it for me,” I said. “Just for me.”
His arms were around me then, drawing me to his chest. He said something soothing, but it was merely sound. All I really heard was the deep submarine thump of his heart.
#
When I finally stepped outside it felt like walking into a different world. A million new roads stretched before me that I’d never seen before. We put our sunglasses back on in the car, grinning at each other. He took his off when he almost hit a streetlight. I laughed, and said maybe he should let me drive, and surprisingly, he did. It felt both wrong and amazing to be driving my teacher’s car. I stopped at a McDonald’s and ordered fries and vanilla shakes, parking in an empty lot under the stars. Evan said he’d make a special syllabus to prep me for film school.
“Private tutoring?” I said, dipping a fry in my shake. “How scandalous.”
He smiled, but after a moment his eyes went distant.
“How is it going to be on Thursday?” I said.
“I don’t know. I was hoping I’d figure out some way to freeze time.”
I gestured with my fry. “I’ll be discreet. No one will know. I won’t risk your job.”
He looked at me. “It’s not just about me. In fact, it’s less about me than it is about you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I won’t risk your future, or your happiness, or your sanity.”
“Good thing I only have one of those.”
“I’m serious.” He frowned. “Which one do you have?”
“Happiness,” I said, and leaned over and kissed him. Vanilla and salt.
He looked at me a long time when I pulled away. It wasn’t until later that I realized he’d hoped I’d say future. That’s how you know someone loves you. When they want you to be happy even in the part of your life they’ll never see. But right then I was too stuck in the moment, in the visceral pleasure of it all.
“Let’s figure out our battle plan, comrade,” I said.
I didn’t get home till midnight, and getting out of that car was harder than it had ever been. He made me hug the stuffed pony until it smelled like me again. I sat there until I’d finished every last fry. I was ravenous, insatiable. I’d done nothing but fuck him all day and wanted to do nothing else for the rest of this week. Month. Life. When he drove away I took a picture of the receding tail lights, and after his car was gone I stood there holding the photo up to the street, pretending. What is this feeling? I wondered. What is this hunger that grows worse the more I feed it?
They’d come up with a name for it a long time ago. But you already know what it’s called, don’t you?