He was the first boy she’d felt entirely comfortable around. She could eat wet foods in front of him and be opinionated and goofy. They even mostly argued well. He detested inconsistency or contradiction. When Penny told him she was lactose intolerant, Bobby acted as if he’d caught her in a lie when she ate tuna salad in front of him. He couldn’t believe mayo didn’t have milk in it until they Googled it.
August seventeenth was Bobby’s birthday. Celeste had gone to bed right after dinner, and Penny had snuck an entire bottle of zinfandel from her mom’s stash. She and Bobby passed it back and forth while watching Ysel, the star of La Déesse!, make duck aspic. They were sitting on the couch. Actually, he was sitting. Her legs were flung on top of his, and she was practically lying down. She had to sit up every time she talked to him in case she had a double chin from that angle, and she worried that her cheeks were as bright red as Celeste’s got when she drank. Her mom called it the Asian Flush and Bobby didn’t get it. You were supposed to take an antacid to combat it but she’d forgotten.
Even though it was his birthday, he’d gotten Penny a present. A copy of Zero Girl. He handed it to her in a black plastic bag and told her about it as she thumbed through the water-colored pages.
“It’s a classic,” he said. “And it reminds me so much of you. It’s about a high school girl who has these kinda bootleg superpowers and she vanquishes all her mortal foes and she shoots her shot with her guidance counselor, who’s a total G, by the way, and they fall in love . . .”
To Penny the subtext was clear. A dork with a crush on an older guy, a teacher even, and they end up together because she makes the first move! It was romantic.
“I kept watching his mouth,” Penny remembered. “That’s how you’re supposed to show a guy that you want them to kiss you. At least that’s what I’d read.”
Sam nodded.
It worked. Penny had willed Bobby to kiss her and he had. It hadn’t been her first kiss, but it was pretty close.
Her first kiss was Richard Kishnani at camp when she was thirteen. He had braces and she was attracted to him only because his mother worked at NASA.
And Noah Medina at the movies, whose teeth banged into hers as he was going in for the kill. He was from Florida and had put her hand on his junk. He was wearing crunchy nylon shorts that had to be a bathing suit. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and never came back.
With Bobby, Penny closed her eyes and moved her lips slowly and imagined how if anyone ever asked, this would be the story of her first kiss. This was the one that mattered. The one she’d worked for. Bobby’s mouth felt incredible. Warm. Soft but not too soft. Wet but not too wet. When his mouth opened and their tongues touched, she didn’t feel nervous. It wasn’t slimy or anatomical. It felt good.
By Penny’s count they’d hung out on sixteen separate occasions, which made them friends.
That’s why what happened next was so surprising.
Penny had said stop. She was sure of it. Or else she’d said no. In fact, she’d said it more than once, yet she wasn’t positive it qualified. He kept going.
“Maybe I said it too quietly.”
She hadn’t cried for help. Celeste was right upstairs. Penny hadn’t kicked him in the nuts, as any heroine worth her salt would have done. Instead Penny lay perfectly still and walked backward from her eyes until she was far enough in her head that she was safe. From the couch, pinned underneath him, she turned her head to the side to find Zero Girl open on the coffee table as Bobby stabbed her in the guts with his dick. His dick was purple. Cartoon purple. When he pulled on the lurid condom, she couldn’t believe it was such a bright and happy color. It had taken a few times for him to get it right, and Penny didn’t know why she didn’t scream or rip it out of his hands while he loomed above her. She just knew that she didn’t. She didn’t do any of the things that absolutely anyone with a brain knows to do. All she wanted was for Celeste not to see.
“It’s not as if he beat me up or anything,” said Penny.
“It was so embarrassing,” she continued. “And the thing that’s so confusing is that I didn’t get mad. It felt inevitable in some ways. An obvious conclusion. I saw him two more times after that and was polite.”
She gazed at Sam. He had a serious expression on his face.
“I’m practically fluent in French now,” she said. “My mom thinks it’s because of him when it’s not. He was proficient at best.”
Penny was dying to know what Sam was thinking. She’d never told the story to anyone else.
“Do you think I’m broken?”
SAM.
Sam couldn’t believe a brain as animated and complex as Penny’s had to conk up against that question. It hurt his heart.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think you’re broken.” Sam pulled her body against his and she let him. He felt her stiffen and then fall slack like one of those rag-doll cats that go limp when you pick them up.
She yawned into his chest. They leaned up against each other for a while.
“I gotta go,” she said, pulling away from him. Sam wanted to stop her but knew that he shouldn’t. “I’m tired.” She stood up.
Penny swung sleepily side-to-side while walking out. He followed her down the hall.
“Should I come with you?” he called out.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, swatting the air. “I live ten blocks away. And if you lived here you’d be home already.” Sam wondered where he’d heard that before and remembered it was the huge yellow sign on the apartment complex across the street.
Penny zipped up her hoodie and pulled the hood down low.
“I’ll be fine.” He wanted to hug her. In fact, he wanted to hug her and then build an electrified fence around her. A fence that was encircled by a moat filled with rabid, starving alligators. It was ridiculous, yet Sam hadn’t thought how nerds could be rapists. He thought of rapists as meat-head jocks or else vile faceless monsters who were abused as kids. Part of him was glad she was going to go back inside his phone. It was safe there and Sam had so much he wanted to tell her and ask her that was too overwhelming to do in person.
“I know,” he said, throwing on a black jacket. “But I’ll make you a deal. Next time I show up at your house unannounced, you can walk me home.”
Penny smiled sleepily.
“My sandwiches aren’t as good though.”
“That’s because I am king of the sandwiches.”
“I think he was an earl,” she muttered.
He groaned.
Sam smiled at the back of her head as they trudged down the stairs. He killed the lights and locked up. The night was cool. Just the tiniest suggestion that there was such a thing as autumn in Texas.
They walked companionably in silence. Both with their hands shoved in their pockets. The streets were quiet but not deserted. A smattering of couples reluctant to end their nights lingered by parked cars.
Sam listened to their footfalls, hers alongside his.
“This is me,” she said after a while, stopping at the ghastly facade of her dorm.
He gazed up. “You know,” he said, “I see this building all the time and it doesn’t occur to me that people have to live here.”
The striped blue and salmon edifice with round windows reminded him of a monster version of those plastic Connect Four grids.
Penny laughed. “Ah, but when you’re inside,” she said, “you can’t see it.”
“What a parable,” he said.
“What is a parable?” she asked, tilting her head. “I always forget to look it up, but then again, I’m talking to someone who doesn’t even know what irony is, so . . .”
He laughed. “Nobody knows. That’s a fact. Just like nobody knows the difference between a parable and an allegory. Do you?”
She smiled. “No idea.”
“See?”
They grinned stupidly at each other.
“I think an allegory has to do with characters,” she said. “Something-something Animal Farm?”
“Citation needed,” he responded quickly.
God, they were hopeless.
“Thanks for the food, and the talk, and for being great, and for walking me home,” she said.
They stood regarding each other in front of the elevators, wondering who was going to make the next move and what exactly it would be.
Sam quit while he was ahead. He left his hands in his pockets instead of reaching for her as he desperately wanted to.
“Sweet dreams, Penny,” he said.
“You too, Sammy,” she said.