She looked disappointed when Seth said, “Nina and I’ll do the dishes.” Actually, the look was more than disappointed. She held Seth’s gaze until he finally looked away. Then she sighed a little. I guess she thought it would be nice, all her boys together like that, at an ice cream parlor, maybe like they used to do when they were little. But I didn’t spend a lot of time feeling bad about it, because as soon as the door shut behind them, Seth grinned at me and asked, “Wanna try again?”
This time, in Seth’s room, we didn’t bother with a towel. Seth pushed down my cutoffs and bikini bottoms and went down to the ground with them, looking up at me as he pressed his tongue to my skin.
My legs were shaking, so I sat down on the edge of his bed, and my legs fell open to make room for his mouth. He licked and licked like a cat at a bowl of cream, and when the inside of me felt as wet as the outside, we tried again.
This time, Seth touched my face and looked into my eyes as he fit his penis up against me, as he pushed inside.
The next day at school, there was Apollonia Corado again, her cheeks dark red with shyness, her gaze cast down, a bow in her hair like a child.
Jesus. I hate her.
???
School goes like this:
The day begins with zero-period AP Chemistry. I don’t like chemistry. But I got in to the AP class, and you don’t just not do an AP class because you hate the subject. Most of my other classes are AP, too, and the best thing about that is that it means that Seth is in them with me.
Lunch means either going off campus with Seth or pretending not to care if he says he can’t. The day begins and ends with Seth. If his Acura isn’t in the lot when I pull in, the breath in my chest can’t release until I see him in class.
I know it isn’t okay to care this much about a boy. I know it’s not feminist, or whatever, to make all my decisions based on what Seth would think. I know I’m pitiful. If Seth wants to hang out on a Tuesday afternoon, I call in sick to the shelter. If Seth wants to have sex and I’m on my period, I’m the one to suggest that I give him head. If Seth’s energy is off—if he’s tense or angry or distant—it’s like the molecular makeup of my skin shifts along with it, growing tight and prickly and uncomfortable. I’m a glove that warms to the touch. I’m a sheath that responds to what’s inside of me. I’m a chameleon, an octopus, a cuttlefish, and Seth is my only environmental variable.
After lunch is AP Literature with Mr. Whitbey. I guess if I had to choose, English would be my favorite subject. And not just because Seth is in it and Apollonia isn’t, but because I like writing the essays. You can say whatever you want in an essay, as long as you defend it. There’s no right or wrong—there’s just why.
When the last bell rings, I get what I need from my locker as fast as I can so that I can be out in the parking lot before Seth gets there. I will arrange my expression into casual disinterest and wait for him to come to me.
My school day is completely average and unremarkable, save for the presence of Seth. Not worth talking about. But it is because of Seth that there are these moments. Little glimpses into something vast and unknowable.
Like when Seth gave me that sideways smile as he held open the door for me last Friday. Tuesday, when I pulled out my ATM card to pay for my lunch at Spinelli’s and Seth waved it away, passing his to the waitress instead, pinched like a cigarette between his index and middle finger. When Seth laughed just loudly enough for me to hear during American Lit class, when Whitbey, who everyone knows is gay even though he talks about his “spouse” instead of saying “husband,” performed a dramatic reading of “The Bells,” that poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and when he said the line, “To the moaning and the groaning of the bells,” I whispered, “Balls.”
I know it’s not cool to define yourself by a boy. Girls are supposed to be independent, these days. We should be Strong Female Characters, we should be tough and self-motivated and grrrrrls instead of girls. We’re supposed to run the world—girls—and look unapologetically into the camera. We don’t have to smile. We can cross our arms or curl our hands into fists. Except that while we’re being tough and independent, we really should be beautiful, too; we’re just not supposed to notice, or to care. It’s more attractive not to care if you’re attractive. That’s the idea. I know what I’m supposed to be, and who I’m supposed to be with Seth, but my desire for him overwhelms me at every turn, it fills my throat like an awful tumor, and I am powerless to define myself any other way.
It’s his smell, and his eyes, and the way he cuts his nails straight across. It’s the way he looks just after he’s come, his face softened and sweeter than normal. It’s the way his fingers look glazed like a donut after they have been inside of me. It’s everything. He is everything.
Last night I dreamed that our house was made of birds. The walls were feather coated, expanding and contracting as the millions of birds that comprised them breathed in and out, in and out. Our staircase was the long curved neck of a giant flamingo, its body curled at the bottom, holding perfectly still to accommodate my weight as I made my way downstairs. There were no windows—only eyes, many eyes, blinking black bird eyes, staring at me as I walked through the great room. The floor was feather coated too, but then it changed its mind in the way dreams do, and instead of feathers I was walking barefoot on tiny sharp beaks, their curved and pointed edges digging into my heels, the pads of my feet, my toes, and then they started to squawk, to cheep, to scream, and the beaks opened and closed and bit my flesh, and dry black bird tongues licked me, and I tried to run but fell instead, and the eyes and the beaks and the feathers consumed me.
“I bought you a present,” Seth tells me, Monday after school. We’re standing by the trunk of his Acura, me backed up against it, him, legs wide, imprisoning me there. His hands rest on my hips.
“You did?” I am cautious. It’s our anniversary—three months—but I don’t expect him to remember it. Men don’t remember anniversaries, and that’s okay, my mother has told me, because then, when they do eventually remember—when it’s too late—then, the gifts are better.
“ ’Course. It’s our anniversary, isn’t it? I’m not a total douche,” Seth says, and he kisses me. “Two months, right?”
I feel my face react to his mistake—my forehead clenching into tight ugly lines, my lips hardening—and he laughs. “You’re so easy,” he says. “I know it’s three months.”
Then he reaches into his pocket, and I think he’s going to pull out a box, a little jewelry box, blue velvet, just the size for a ring—not an engagement ring, of course, because that would be ridiculous, but maybe a promise ring, or just a ring, any ring at all.
Instead, he fishes out his keys and pulls me off the trunk, popping it open with a push of the remote.
There’s a box in there, too big for jewelry. No wrapping paper, just a plastic bag tied around it. A shoebox, maybe? But he’s never asked me what size I wear.
“Thanks.” I pull loose the bag ties.
“Don’t take it out of the bag,” Seth says.