We ordered two pints of beer, foam glittering as it dissolved. Her hands danced across the tabletop while she told me all the things she’d been holding back.
Six months ago, Laney Keating came to her. A friend of mine knows your sister. Half sister, technically. Frankie Baylor, friend of Ellis and Vada. Former webcam girl turned entrepreneur. Every year Tam and Frankie visited each other, in Maine snow or English rain. Frankie doted on Tam, beseeched her to move to America, to live like real sisters. But Tam’s mom was sick, stuck in limbo on NHS waiting lists. Without Tamsin she’d never get to her doctor’s appointments. She’d give up, wither.
“It’s not an excuse,” Tam said. “I’d have done something fucked-up one way or another. It’s in my blood. But at least my fucking up in England served another purpose.”
Frankie excelled in school and fast-tracked herself into college; Tam dropped out of sixth form and robbed the posh boys she slept with. They bought her designer handbags, heels in snakeskin and gold lamé, perfumes she never even sniffed before hawking them on eBay. She’d fuck a boy till he shared his bank card codes. The last day he ever saw her, she’d say, Meeting a friend. Be a good lad and I’ll suck your cock when I’m back.
She cleaned out his account. He never got that blowjob.
“I didn’t give it all to Mum,” Tamsin said. “I wasn’t bloody Robin Hood. I was selfish, young, stupid.”
And overconfident.
Which was how she got caught.
She messed with the wrong wealthy white boy. He told his dad, who pulled some strings. The policeman who came to her flat was tall, handsome, smiling. In a svelte voice he explained how it would be.
You’re going to shag me, he said, or you’re going to jail.
From the corner of the room, Mum, her eyes clouded with dementia, said, Stupid cow. What’ve you done?
“Tamsin,” I breathed.
“It’s not what you think. He never forced me, physically.”
“It’s coercion. It’s still—”
The word I could not say.
“You have to understand,” she said, leaning toward me, “that my life improved with him. He earned a steady paycheck. Took care of us. It wasn’t force—he paid for sex. I sold it willingly.”
“If he held something against you, you didn’t have full agency. You were a captive. A captive can’t give consent.”
Tam shrugged. “We’re all trapped by something. Freedom is an illusion. It’s the wind in your hair as you plummet off the cliff’s edge.”
“How could you love someone who hurt you?”
“How could you?”
“Hurt” was such a small, insufficient word for these things.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what he did to you, Ren.”
If she hadn’t used my name, I don’t think I could have answered. But she validated my identity, let it supersede the past.
Made it the slightest bit easier for me to reclaim.
Once upon a time, I told her, there were two girls, two friends who were more than friends. One of them wasn’t really a girl, and the other could never accept that. They hurt each other. Fought incessantly. Tried to cut each other loose, move on, but some awful unbreakable thread would not sever. Bound together and miserable, they stewed in their own toxicity. One of them—the one who wasn’t really a girl—wanted to hurt the other in a permanent way. A way that would free her from their entanglement, forever. Let her become the person she was meant to be. So she found a boy who was willing, and gave her body to him. Not completely—there were certain things she would never do. But she put her mouth on him, tasted him, let him taste her.
The other girl raged. I hate you, she said. You’ll give yourself to anyone but me.
I don’t know who you are anymore.
I hope it makes you sick. I hope you choke on his fucking come.
I hope he destroys you.
And he did.
Because this boy had a friend who whispered poisons in his ear. A friend who would one day name himself Crito. Crito said a girl’s “yes” had no expiration date, and if she took it in the mouth, she was a slut and she’d take it anywhere. The boy had tried before, pressed his hips against hers, and she shoved him away. What’s the problem? he said. It’s less work for you. She said, Just don’t.
One night, drunk on Crito’s venom and his manifest destiny as a male, the boy told the girl who wasn’t a girl, Lie back.
Her instincts were frazzled, unreliable. She thought he wanted to suck her off. It felt good, sometimes, when she closed her eyes, thought of it in a queer way. Just one boy sucking another boy off.
But she could never tell him that. He’d hurt her.
If she knew he could hurt her, didn’t she know this could happen?
Didn’t she let it happen?
She lay back.
When he put his whole weight atop her she realized her dreadful mistake. Don’t, she said, and, Please, Adam. Please.
Bewildered, he said, You’re a virgin.
Because of the blood.