Chapter thirteen:

 

 

I walk across the street. It’s dark and late and rainy and cold. And the storm has hit, but it’s not nice just sitting in it. I prefer to be watching from my window rather than living and breathing the storm.

Lights have come on in windows.

People laugh and joke and cheer in houses.

No crying walls or screaming doors.

No tears leaking through broken windows.

Not here. This is a nice neighborhood, and I guess I can already see why she likes it here. Once upon a time, perhaps I would have liked to live here too. I bet you don’t hear prostitutes banging clients while you eat your soup, Carrie.

But it’s just stuff, and things, I’ll tell her. You don’t need it, you need me.

And she’ll agree.

Of course she will.

Because I’m right, and she knows that too.

There’s a small gap between her brownstone house and the next, and I slip down it, splashing through the mud. It soaks into my beloved sneakers, and I try not to get too annoyed that this is probably the end for them. They’ve survived rainstorms, but they won’t survive this night.

I keep going further into the shadows, hoping to see a window soon, because I don’t really like the dark, even though I know there’s nothing to be afraid of. Not really. And it’s weird because this reminds me of the time we ran away together.

It was dark and wet, like tonight.

We were hiding behind Mrs. McElvers’ shed in her back yard. It smelled of cat piss and rat poison.

“I’m not going back,” Carrie said.

“I won’t make you.”

“You don’t have to stay with me, Ethan. I don’t always need you to be here,” she said indignantly, her fiery eyes daring me to leave.

“But I will, Carrie. I’ll always be here,” I assured her, like I always did.

She shivered from the cold. Her bruised eye and cut lip were blatant under the moonlight. The light of a streetlamp fizzed on and off intermittently by the front of the house, and I didn’t like it. It scared me more than the dark because it needed to be one or the other. It couldn’t be both. It wasn’t allowed to be both dark and light. Night and day. Good or bad. ‘You could only be one or the other,’ I wanted to say to that light.

“Will he be mad?”

“I don’t care,” she said.

“Will she be mad?” I asked.

“She won’t even notice I’m gone,” she replied. “Not until he needs something from her because I’m not there.”

I didn’t know what she meant, so I said nothing.

Carrie opened her brown backpack and pulled out one of her mother’s bottles of cheap vodka.

She unscrewed the lid and took a large swig and then she offered the bottle to me. I shook my head no, because I’m too young to drink and so is she. And I don’t like the smell, so I can’t imagine that I’ll like the taste of it.

And then she laughed.

I didn’t like it when she laughed, and she knew that, so she leant forward and pressed her mouth to mine and kissed me when she saw she’d made me sad. I didn’t like the taste of her mouth. It tasted like the vodka and that tasted bad. But I liked her kisses.

I preferred her kisses to her mocking.

We kissed for a long time. And despite the cold and rain and the horrible flashing light, we both felt calmer. When she pulled away, her pupils were wide.

“You’re dangerous, Ethan,” she said.

And I laughed, because I wasn’t dangerous; I was just cold and hungry.

Carrie leaned forward and kissed me again, and I welcomed her mouth and her lips and her tongue. Then she reached for my hand and pressed it to her left breast. It was small but firm.

“They’re still growing,” she told me.

“I like them like this,” I said quietly, in awe of her.

“Do you want to touch me?” she asked.

I shrugged, because I was already touching her so I didn’t understand. I shook my head and she laughed again as my cheeks grew hot and my hands trembled. I liked feeling her breast; it made my stomach feel strange.

She took my other hand and pressed it between her thighs, right at the top where her panties were. It was hot and damp and my body shivered. She pressed my hand closer to her until I felt dampness seeping through her clothes and onto my hand, touching her, feeling her warmth seeping onto my fingers. It was the most intense thing I had ever experienced.

My fingers were wet and I was shaking, and she laughed again and pushed me away from her. She reached for her mom’s vodka again and started drinking, and then she told me to go home to my mommy.

I stood up. I didn’t want to leave her out there on her own.

I wanted to keep on touching her.

I wanted something more, but I didn’t know what.

I was sad and confused and scared. And my stomach ached. And my jeans felt too tight.

So I turned and ran, and even now I feel guilty about it. Even now I know I did the wrong thing by leaving her there, and I should have stayed with her. I should have drunk the vodka with her.

When I got home, Mom was mad because I was late. And because she knew I’d been with Carrie again. And because my clothes were soaked through from the rain and I was shivering so much my teeth chattered.

She told me to go upstairs and have a bath before I caught a cold, but I feared it was too late.

I felt like a little kid, even though I was nearly a man.

“I’m thirteen now, Mom,” I yelled. “I’ll do what I want.”

And then I stormed upstairs, and I went to the bathroom because I was wet, and I didn’t want to catch a cold and I didn’t like being wet. It made me feel sticky and gross. I hated the way my jeans stuck to my thighs.

I put the plug in the bathtub and turned the taps on full, and then I undressed and looked in the mirror. I still looked like me, but I felt different, funny, more grown up. I looked at my hand and saw that there was blood on my fingertips.

I checked my body for cuts, but there were none, and then I realized it was Carrie’s blood. I stared at my fingers for a long time—long enough that the bath had filled too much and I had to let some water out before it overflowed.

When I got in the bath, I let my hand with the blood on it dangle over the side of the tub. I didn’t want to get rid of the blood just yet.

I felt connected to Carrie in a way I’d never felt before. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

And I wondered if she’d let me touch her again one day.