She’d watched a scene in one of the after-dark movies they got on their new cable box. Movies she watched when her mom was zonked on pills and her dad out who knows where. Some nights, she and Dom watched together, faces flushed, hands clamped over mouths to silence giggles. Other nights, she double-checked the TV den curtains to make sure they weren’t open even a crack, and lay on her stomach on the brown couch, touching herself, the fake leather creaking and cracking.
She stood in front of Mr. and Mrs. Fox’s bed, her feet planted on the plush carpet. She was cold. Goose-bumped all over, even on her nipples. She swayed from foot to foot. Rocked her hips side to side. She lifted her hair into a pile on her head and let it tumble to her shoulders. She held a hand out to Spencer. Isn’t that what the women in sexy movies did—an invitation, Join me—and Spencer (was it harder now, she couldn’t see and hoped to God it was so they could get on with it) climbed off the bed. He was beautiful—she saw that now. Tall and strong like the photos of Michelangelo’s David in her history textbook. She rubbed her butt against his muscled thigh and let her fingers slide down his chest.
“Is this good?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hell yeah. Let’s get on the bed.”
He told her to sit on him, and it was her turn to grind but everything under her felt soft and mushy. He grabbed her breasts and twisted. She winced.
“Does this feel good now?” she asked.
“Stop fucking asking me that.”
He flipped her on her back and a velvet pillow fell over her face and she felt trapped, like she was underwater, and something sharp was inside her. His fingers jabbed in and out with a wet thwock-thwock sound. It hurt. Like when she tried those no-applicator tampons you had to stick up inside you using your fingers.
“Shit,” he said. “You’re too dry.”
He jumped off the bed and before she could ask, “What should I do?” he turned on the lamp. She was blind and naked and stubbed a toe looking for her clothes. She followed him out the bedroom door still buttoning her shorts.
She needed to stop him, get a sense of where they stood, before he went downstairs and told the kids—what? She wasn’t sexy enough. She was a prude. Worse, he’d lie and tell them she’d been a slut when nothing had really happened. Had it?
She reached the bottom of the stairs and heard the screen door click shut.
He was leaning against his car—a black BMW convertible with seats that heated at a touch of a button—a sixteenth-birthday gift from his grandfather even though he’d only just got his learner’s permit.
He lit a cigarette and as she walked through the grass, wet under her bare feet, she asked, “Can I bum one?”
They smoked. She asked him a dozen questions in her head. Is there something wrong with me? Can I make it better? Will anyone ever love me?
He flicked his cigarette into the azalea bushes and then he was backing her up against his car, the moisture on the black metal seeping into her T-shirt as he bucked into her, harder and harder. She dropped her cigarette when he kicked her legs open, first the left, then the right, so she was off balance, her legs far apart. He ground into her, his knees bent. He kissed her once, sloppily, exhaling into her mouth so she tasted tobacco. He lifted her off the ground with the last thrust, followed by a groan, and fell forward, his forehead pressed against the car door, trapping her between his heaving chest and the car.
She was pretty sure he’d gotten off, but he didn’t look like the guys in the pornos afterward—sleepy and sex-drunk. Satisfied.
A sound came from the road. The wheels of a bike, maybe. Spencer backed off like he’d been caught breaking a law. He jogged back to the house in his loping soccer stride and she followed. “Spence?”
The screen door snapped shut.
She hurt. Stung between her legs. Hip bones aching. She couldn’t go back in. She’d sit and wait for Penny. Even if she’d wanted to walk home in the dark—the moon was just a sliver, like a flashlight running out—the caterpillars were out there. Her feet were wet and streaked with bits of grass. Damn it—she’d left her shoes inside.
She felt like she’d failed an important test. One she couldn’t retake. Boys were like that. Spencer had made her like him, trust him, then kicked her feet out from under her, made her a fool, and she knew if she tried to fight back and opened her mouth, the trap would only tighten. She couldn’t win.
The sound on the road again. Wheels moving over the asphalt on Horseshoe Lane. Maybe, she hoped, it was Dom, come to rescue her on his bike. He’d been an expert spy lately, popping up outside parties. Her mini guardian angel. Like his favorite Greek god, Hermes, he was a chronic eavesdropper.
She walked up the gravel driveway, the sharp stones pricking her feet. Her soles were soft after a long winter in socks. It would take weeks of walking on the pebbled beach and the barnacled rocks in the shallows before her feet toughened.
“Dom?” she called toward the dark street.
Metal clanged. A whirr of wheels. Then a figure glided out of the dark, stopping at the top of the driveway, a skateboard flipping up to stand as he braked. She let out a strangled Oh! and clamped a hand over her swollen lips. To cover a smile.
“Shit, sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
It was the Marshall boy. He hadn’t scared her so much as excited her. This cute boy materializing from out of the dark. Like in one of Dom’s myths. Gods and demigods dropping to Earth to rescue beautiful virgins. Like poor Laurel, transformed into a tree to escape the rape by Apollo. She imagined the boy, on his skateboard, riding a streak of silver lining from the heavens down to Avalon Island.
Of course, she wasn’t going to tell him all of this, and just said, “Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m Maddie.”
“Brooks.” He held out a hand and she shook it, giggling, immediately hating the way it made her sound like a ditz. She’d never shaken a boy’s hand. Never known a boy who had held his hand out like she was as important as any man.
“I saw you,” she said. “And your family. At the fair.”
“Oh yeah.” She heard the eye roll in his voice. It was too dark to see his face and he had his hoodie on. “That was mental. My dad bugged when he saw those kids making like they were going to brawl.”
“It was lame. Things aren’t usually so”—she paused—“disorganized here. It’s a pretty uptight place. Lots of rules and stuff. Military vibe, you know?”
“Totally.”
She liked his laugh. A little gruff. A man’s laugh. She looked back at the house—the bottom floor’s windows lit gold. Her shoes were trapped in there.
“You look cold,” he said.
“I left my shoes and jacket inside. But”—she thought quickly—“I’m locked out.”
“Can’t you just ring the bell?”
“I can’t.”
She tried to make up a lie to explain why she was here—shoeless, arms bare in the cool sea breeze, but her thoughts were jumbled; all the places Spencer had humped, poked, and pinched were sore, and she was coming down from her high. She wished she could curl up on the dewy lawn and close her eyes.
“I just can’t.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask questions. “Now I’m stuck with no way home.”
“Can’t you call your parents?”
“Nope.”