“Hey.” He smiled sleepily, fingered the skin at the small of her back.
Leaning down, she kissed him. He returned the kiss, flattening his palm, pressing her toward him. Urgent, awake. She wanted more. She wanted to taste him all over. She wanted the salt on his palms and the sweat between his shoulder blades. The spice of tobacco on his fingertips. The tang of beer on his tongue. She pushed her palm over his hair, finger-combed the waves. He sat up, pulled off his T-shirt and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. She pushed him back to the pillow. Lay beside him and connected the dots of three small moles on his shoulder, each perfectly round and flat, the color of dark chocolate. Raked her fingernails from the curve of his elbow to the seat of his palm, trailing goosebumps. Tongued his belly. His fingers. Sucked on his bared neck, the blood pumping frantically under her mouth. He moaned. Gripped the cords at the back of her neck. She gasped, released him. Opened his mouth with her fingers and kissed him softly there. He pushed back. He unbuckled his jeans and kicked them to the floor. He was the only boy she knew who wore briefs, not boxers—they were electric blue and clung closely to his hips. She liked them. She slid her fingers under their elastic band and giggled as she snapped it, leaving a shocked pink strip of skin. He bucked. Grinned. Let her do what she would. He didn’t tell her he loved her or even that she was beautiful, but she knew that he liked it. She knew that she was wanted.
She didn’t remember all of it, but she remembered that he came. She did too. It didn’t always work that way—Abigail had said a lot of girls couldn’t get off ever. (Had Mr. Ellison told her this? Disgusting thought.) So what was the point of doing it then, Emma had asked her, because since losing her virginity to Jonas Everett freshman year, she’d hooked up as much for her own pleasure as for any boy’s.
In the hospital room, Elisabeth handed Emma her phone. “I charged it for you,” she said.
“Thanks.” The smooth white phone, nestled in Emma’s palm, had a comforting, familiar weight. She curled her fingers around it.
—
As soon as Elisabeth left, Emma scrolled through her missed texts. She stopped on a series from her mom, from that night:
11:32 PM: Hi honey, where are you? Are you at Abigail’s? Everything OK?
12:05 AM: Hello? Do you realize it’s an hour past curfew?
12:12 AM: Time to come home now.
12:12 AM: We will talk about this when you get here.
12:32 AM: Emma Jane. This is your mother. Please do not ignore me.
12:48 AM: Text me or call NOW, please!
1:01 AM: Now I’m beginning to worry…
1:06 AM: I just want to know you’re OK.
1:13 AM: OK I’m calling again. Pick up your phone!!
1:15 AM: Honey?
1:15 AM: You didn’t answer.
1:33 AM: Where are you.
1:34 AM: Are you OK??
1:35 AM: Answer me
1:35 AM: Text me
1:36 AM: Call me I’m trying you again
1:41 AM: Baby?
1:42 AM: Please
Emma dropped the phone. The naked desperation in the messages made her ache—an ache deeper than her injuries, centered in the hollows of her bones. Her mom was her mom, no matter her faults.
No matter that when Emma was thirteen, her mom would gather her parents’ friends in the living room for drinks, then pull Emma to her lap and hug until it hurt. “This is my favorite girl, my best girl,” she said, squeezing her, kissing her neck. “I love you, Emma-Bear, I love you, I love you.” While everyone was watching. The grown-ups with their glasses tilted over their faces smirking because they knew her mom was drunk.
Emma kissed her mom and said she loved her too. Then she squirmed away and went back to her bedroom. But the party people’s voices carried through the walls, hippie music on the stereo and plates crashing on the hardwood floor and bodies thumping into walls and Emma knew that they were dancing. Not dancing like she did, not real, just bodies lurching senselessly around the room. It was no use trying to sleep. She was missing everything. Rubbing her eyes, she pulled her hair into a topknot and went out in her pink cotton nightgown to join them.
The grown-ups careened around the living room. Emma’s mom spun in Randall Neal’s arms. Threw her head back, laughing. “Emma-Bear, you’re up!” she said. “Come here, honey. Dance with us. Emma is the most amazing dancer,” she announced, and Emma blushed with pleasure and embarrassment.
“Jesus Christ, Debra,” said Bob Simonsen, “we know, we know!”
“My little ballerina girl,” her mom said, breaking away to come to Emma, brush her hair back from her face. “When she dances, it’s a—what’s that called, like a religious experience, like a thing you can’t believe—”
“A miracle,” Emma’s dad broke in. He was at the wet bar, pouring drinks.
“Yes!” Emma’s mom leaned down to Emma, who was small for her age, pulling her against her chest. Her cotton blouse released the familiar, heady scent of patchouli and red wine. “It’s like a miracle. God-given, I’m telling you. Her father and I had nothing to do with it.”