“There’s not enough punishment in the world for either one of us, but that’s not why we’re here, is it?”
I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so I said nothing. I just closed my eyes and leaned into him.
“When will you be eighteen?”
“January fourth,” I whispered.
He was quiet for a minute. And then he said the thing that threw my heart into a cardiac trauma level of happiness.
“I’m taking you to Minneapolis.”
We set the date for the weekend after my birthday. He told his wife he was visiting some old friends and I told my parents I was going to look at the U of M. Dad had insisted I apply there in case I decided to go to school closer to home next year and they were both thrilled—or as thrilled as they could get—when I told them I was going to take a campus tour. When Mom offered to drive up and back with me, I told her I’d arranged to stay with a girl I’d known freshman year whose family had moved up to the suburbs.
“She wants to take me to the casino for my birthday,” I told them one night over beef stroganoff. Dad chuckled and Mom frowned and both of them told me I wasn’t allowed to lose more than twenty dollars, but that’s all it took for my story to become rock-solid. That was usually key with my parents. By admitting a slightly bad thing, I could blind them to any other possibilities of misbehavior. And even if they suspected anything else, it was probably along the same line of things I could do now that I was turning eighteen—getting a tattoo or buying cigarettes. Sleeping with my married English teacher was so far off the radar it was laughable.
The rest of December moved like a freaking iceberg. Every day dragged out. My shifts at CVS were an endless line of customers. Tommy took me to the drive-in and tried to feel me up under my sweater. Portia got a cold and then gave it to me, with a sore throat and cough and everything. The only good part was Peter’s class, where I sat in front as always and pretended not to ogle his every movement. I chatted with Portia and Maggie and argued most of Peter’s lecture points, just like I always did. The only physical contact we had was when he collected homework assignments; he had everyone pass their papers to the front and then he walked along the front row picking up the stacks. I handed him my row’s papers and our fingers brushed. That was all.
One day, though, the week before Christmas, I was just finishing a text on my phone when the bell rang, and Peter immediately said, “Hattie!”
It was loud and everyone stopped talking to see what was going on.
“Yeah?” I hit send before looking up.
“Phone on my desk. Now. You can pick it up after school.”
I trotted my phone up to his desk, ecstatic about violating the no-cell-phone-in-class policy. I thought it was genius, finding the excuse to see me alone, but after school that day a whole group of sophomores had invaded his room to study for the MCAs.
He glanced up from the middle of the horde when I came in and said, “Oh, Hattie. Your phone’s over there. Leave it at home next time, okay?”
I nodded and grabbed it, completely deflated after spending half the day dreaming about a brush of skin, a murmured promise, or even a stolen kiss behind the door.
It wasn’t until I’d finished collecting books from my locker that I noticed the message. I had a new text, sent from myself, to myself, a half an hour ago.
“From her hair the heads of five crucified also looked on, no more expressive than she.”
Is this you? I keep looking, can’t help myself. Looking for you is my only sustenance.
Check your right front tire.
I practically ran out of the building, through the parking lot, and found a rectangular package on top of the tire, hidden from view in the wheel well and wrapped in gold.
I got inside the truck and opened it, making sure no one was watching me. It was a book, a hardcover edition of V, by Thomas Pynchon—the book he’d wanted to get autographed the first time I stumbled on him in the chatroom. It felt like a lifetime ago. There was nothing written inside. He’d been careful not to create any link between us, but I couldn’t care less about that right now. He’d given me a Christmas present.
I smelled the wrapping paper and whispered it—“sustenance”—feeling as giddy as I ever had in my life.
I got another unexpected present, too. Gerald sent me a camcorder with a note in his swirly handwriting about hard work and dedication to perfection. Portia and I spent the last few nights before break performing our favorite movie scenes for the camera and it helped the time to pass.