The Virgin

“Did they tell you your score?”

“He did,” Elle said. He meaning Søren.

Her mother’s body stiffened. “He did? Why?”

“He was in charge of my probation, remember? And I had to keep my grades up. One day I was struggling really hard with my pre-calculus. I was in tears because I couldn’t figure it out. He caught me crying into my math book. So he made me some hot chocolate and sat next to me on that bench that’s across from his office door. And he told me he’d seen my school records and that my IQ was something very special. I told him I didn’t feel very smart right then. He said IQ wasn’t a measurement of what you know but how fast your brain works. If the brain was an athlete, then math wasn’t my event. But someday I would find my event and when I did, nothing would stop me from doing whatever I wanted to do with my life. Then he helped me with my homework until I had it halfway figured out.”

For a long time her mother only looked at her. Elle picked up the pages off the counter.

“Maybe this is my event,” Elle said, clutching the pages to her chest.

“I should have told you how smart you are,” her mother said. “I shouldn’t have let that be something he got to tell you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. You were so confident, so arrogant growing up...I assumed you already knew you were the smartest girl around. You certainly acted like you knew everything.”

Elle laughed a little. “I was an arrogant little shit.”

“Was?”

“Okay, I am. Still am.”

“You know, I’d have to send you to your room sometimes instead of fighting with you because I was scared you’d be able to talk your way out of whatever trouble you’d gotten into. You certainly ran circles around me with your logic sometimes.”

“Still don’t know what the point of making a bed is if I’m only going to sleep in it that night and mess it up again.”

“Same reason we get up every morning and try to make our world better even though we know someone is going to mess it up. That’s why.”

Elle laughed and nodded. “That’s actually a good point. You’re pretty smart, too, Mom.”

“Thank you. Glad you finally noticed that.”

“Only took me, oh, almost twenty-seven years.” Elle would be twenty-seven soon. Too soon. Time was passing quickly and she still didn’t know what to do when and if she left the abbey.

“You’ll behave, won’t you? You’ll get rid of that story?”

“Sure. Of course. It never existed.”

“I sleep easier knowing you’re here and not out there. I don’t want them to make you leave.”

“Are you sure?” Elle asked. “I mean, really? This is your world. Being a nun was your dream. I know it’s probably distracting having me here.”

“Out there,” she said, nodding toward the windows, toward the big wide world outside the walls of the convent. “Out there, I can’t see you, and I don’t know what’s happening to you. I don’t know if you’re safe or if you’re scared, if someone is hurting you or helping you. Here, I can keep an eye on you. I know you’re safe. I know you can’t stay here forever. But while you’re here...yes, I’m glad, Ellie.”

“Thanks, Momma. Thanks for taking me in despite...you know.”

“You left him and that life you were in. All is forgiven. And yes, I think you’re very talented. But write a real book, please.”

Elle took a step forward but her mother was already gone. She sat down on a chair and laid the handwritten pages of her book on her lap.

She’d spent all morning folding laundry, but now she unfolded. She unfolded every single sheet of paper that her mother had crushed and crimped. With a sweep of her hands she flattened the pages and put them back into order.

She had no intention of destroying her story. She’d cut her own hand off before she burned any book, especially one she’d written. No, she would do something else entirely. She’d finish writing the book. And she would get it published. And she would make money off it. And then her mother would see that her book was a real book. People did have sex, after all. Why shouldn’t she write about it?

It needed a title, her book did. That would make it real. A thing must have a name. She couldn’t go on calling it “the story” or “the book.” And once it had a title then she could figure out what to do next. Although she’d read books all her life, she had no idea how to get one published. But she’d figure that out later. Finishing the book was step one.

Elle flipped through a few pages and stopped to read a random section.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” John asked as he soaped his hands and ran them over her inner thighs and the raw skin of her torn hymen. He’d taken her home like she’d asked him to but instead of putting her in his bed and making love to her again, like he had in the woods, he’d run a bath, set her in it and washed the dirt and blood off of her.

“Does it matter?” she asked, wincing as the hot water scraped the most sensitive places inside her. “Would it have stopped you?”

Daphne looked at him and saw him now as if for the first time. Before she’d lost her virginity, he’d been a monster to her. Mr. Apollo—six feet four inches tall, powerful, able to kill her brother without breaking a sweat. But now she saw he was a man, a human man, not a monster, not a god. A scared man who had made a terrible mistake and had made loving her his penance.