All The Ugly and Wonderful Things 12

  

 

9

CASEY

December 1982

 

On the last Friday of Casey’s duty, Wavy came home in the afternoon and took a shower. That was strange enough, but then she went up and down the stairs a few times between her bedroom and the bathroom. Casey listened to it all curiously, while she coaxed Val into doing a few exercises. Val’s lassitude wore even Casey out, so they were watching TV when Wavy came downstairs.

 

Instead of her usual jumper, she wore a pale green dress with a fitted bodice and delicate shoulder straps. She was starting to develop, and the dress showed that off, fitted around her little breasts and her narrow hips. The outfit looked expensive, but of course, she wore big, heavy boots with it.

 

In one hand, she carried a matching sweater and a camera. Under her other arm, she had a wrapped package. She put the box and the camera on the coffee table and sat in the rocking chair next to the sofa, carefully, like she was worried about rumpling her dress.

 

“You look very pretty. Are you going to a birthday party?” Casey said.

 

Wavy nodded and reached up to adjust her hair.

 

She’d pulled it up into a chignon, but it was already slipping out. Delicate strands of blond fell around her ears, and it looked like she had sneaked some of her mother’s makeup. Thirteen seemed too young to be wearing makeup, but Casey wasn’t her mother, who was sitting right there on the sofa. If she thought Wavy looked too adult, she didn’t say anything about it.

 

All Val said was, “What’s in the package?”

 

Wavy didn’t answer.

 

“Is Kellen coming to get you, to take you to the party?” Casey said.

 

He took her to school every morning and he was the one who brought her home so late or not at all, according to Patty. As for Mr. Quinn, Casey had seen him maybe half-a-dozen times in the four months she worked for him. At first, he was attentive and gentle with Val, but the last time he came, they argued. The kind of argument Casey had overheard many times.

 

Him saying, “You’re not trying. You don’t even want to get better and be with me.”

 

Her saying, “Why should I try? Is Dee still at the ranch? Is Sandy? Is that little cunt Ricki still at the ranch? I wish you’d left me there to die on the side of the road.”

 

“Well, you know what, baby? I wasn’t the one who called 911. Kellen did that.”

 

After that, Mr. Quinn kept paying Casey and Patty, but he didn’t come back. His brother, Sean, visited occasionally and that seemed to do Val more good than her husband’s visits. He got her talking, made her laugh.

 

On the last day of an assignment, Casey liked to “wrap things up” by offering last-minute advice and encouragement. With Val, it seemed like wasted effort. Instead of talking, they sat in front of the TV, as Casey’s time there ticked away. At six o’clock, she would go home for the weekend, and on Monday, she would start a new assignment.

 

Normally, Wavy went outside as soon as she heard Kellen’s motorcycle, but that evening she stayed in the rocking chair, smoothing her dress like she was nervous. The engine cut off and for several minutes, there was silence except for Val’s TV program. Then the sound of boots on the front porch.

 

Casey had never seen the front door used, but that night, Kellen even rang the bell. Wavy got up and opened the door for him. He came in, looking nervous, and frowned in confusion when Wavy handed the package to him. Casey scooted forward on her seat, curious despite the fact that she might never get to tell Patty about this.

 

“This is for me?” he said. “You didn’t need to get me anything.”

 

The rocking chair groaned under his weight when he sat down. After he tore off the wrapping paper, he looked into the box with a blank look on his face. Then he lifted out what looked like a cast iron pot. No, a motorcycle helmet. He turned it over in his hand, forcing a smile.

 

“I really appreciate it, sweetheart, but you know I don’t ever wear a helmet.”

 

Frowning, Wavy slid her hand around the back of his neck and into his hair. Kellen nodded.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. If I’d been wearing a helmet that day, I wouldn’t have gotten my head so banged up. Okay. Okay. You ready to go? You look really pretty, but it’s cold out there. Are you gonna be warm enough in that?”

 

Out of the closet she took a fleece-lined leather jacket and put it on over the sweater that matched her dress. Then the camera was remembered and the jackets came back off. Casey didn’t wait to be asked. She picked up the camera and posed Wavy and Kellen, side by side. Because of the size difference, the camera had to be turned on end to make them both fit in the frame. Neither of them smiled for the picture, as awkward as high school prom dates.

10

KELLEN

For the longest time, I’d been trying to give Wavy her poker winnings, but she kept saying no. When she finally asked for some money, it was to take me out for my birthday, to this really nice steak house in Garringer. I’d been there once before with Liam and some of his friends, but they were all tweaking and made too much noise for that place. It was quiet with nice carpet and leather booths and chandeliers.

I didn’t want the waiter looking down his nose at Wavy, so I got a haircut, and I wore a new pair of jeans without grease stains, with the one and only dress shirt I owned—the one I wore to my ma’s funeral. That was about as dressed up as I knew how to get. I wasn’t too sure about me, but Wavy looked like she belonged there. She went floating across the dining room after the hostess, that fancy dress swishing, and her neck all bare. We had a corner booth with candles on the table that made Wavy’s hair like a halo around her face.

“You’re so pretty,” I said after the hostess was gone. I’d already told Wavy that a buncha times, but she seemed to like it. And she was beautiful. I figured her dressing up was part of my birthday present, so I ought to let her know I appreciated it.

I ordered for both of us, which I’d been told was what a gentleman was supposed to do. Then I ordered a bourbon and coke, which was probably not a gentleman’s drink. After the salads came, the waiter left us alone.

“You know, this is the first time a girl ever took me on a date,” I said.

That made Wavy smile. She pressed her lips together and held her breath.

“Happy birthday,” she said.

“Thanks. Aren’t you glad I didn’t show up at your house drunk off my ass in the middle of the night this year?”

“I liked that birthday.” She exhaled too fast, ended up with not enough breath to get her to the end of the sentence, so the last part didn’t make any noise at all. When she reached across the table, I took her hand and turned it over so the ring picked up the candlelight and sparkled.

“So did I. I felt like such a jackass waking you up, but then you were so nice, like you were glad to see me.”

Wavy was maybe getting ready to say something else, but the waiter came back before she could. He looked at our hands together on the table, but I didn’t pull mine back. It wasn’t none of his business.

“Are you finished with your salads?”

I was. Wavy hadn’t touched hers, but the waiter took them both away when she nodded. After our dinners came, she pushed her plate off to the side to watch me eat. When the waiter came back with my third drink, he said, “Is there a problem? Is her entrée not to her liking?”

“No, it’s fine. She’ll just need a box.”

We got to giggling after the waiter was gone. Wavy took her fork and moved the food around on her plate, and I ate a few bites to make it look better.

After I finished my steak, she scooted around the booth to sit next to me. Her dress strap was slipping down her arm so I lifted it back into place. I couldn’t believe how soft the back of her neck was, where her hair was sneaking out of its pins. I’d never seen her hair up like that.

“This is a really nice birthday present. You planning it for me. Nobody ever did that for me.”

She kissed my cheek, and that was when the waiter came back with the check. I didn’t say a word when Wavy added up the tip and counted her money into the leather folder. I wanted to let her give me something. It was important to her.

She picked the movie. Not Annie, which was a kid movie, or Porky’s, which looked dirty. Poltergeist. I was the one jumping in my seat at the scary parts. She laughed and squeezed my hand. After the movie, we went by the store for ice cream. She paid for that, too.

At home, I made myself another drink and, even though I knew she wouldn’t eat it, I scooped up two bowls of ice cream. She carried hers out to the living room, cupped in both her hands like a prize. I turned on the TV to some old movie on PBS, and settled into my recliner. Wavy stood there, waiting for an invitation.

“Well, come on.” I patted my knee.

Like I figured, she wasn’t gonna eat her ice cream. She put it on the coffee table before she sat on my lap. Somewhere in the last five years, she musta been eating something, because she’d grown. There was a time when she fit all the way in my lap, but now her legs were long and her head reached my shoulder. The way she leaned into me was the same, though. She trusted me. When I pushed her dress strap up, she shivered, but then my hands were cold from the ice cream.

The movie was just background noise, while Wavy watched me eat my ice cream. Mint chocolate chip, that was what she picked.

After I set the empty bowl on the coffee table, she handed me my drink and scooted further up my legs. She leaned into me real nice, slipped her arm around my neck and put her cheek up against mine. That moment was a good birthday present by itself, just to sit with her and be happy together. During the movie, her hair had come out of the bobby pins, so I smoothed it out over her shoulder and snuck in a sniff.

When I got that first prickly heat in my crotch, I figured it was the booze. I shouldn’t’ve had another drink. It felt so good sitting there with Wavy, her hand stroking the back of my neck, but it didn’t seem right either. Even if it was just the bourbon, I had no business letting her sit on my lap when I was worked up.

“Let me up, sweetheart. I gotta step out,” I said.

She made this annoyed sound, but she got up. In the bathroom, I splashed some water on my face and took a piss. That put me back to rights.

As soon as I sat down, she came right back to my lap. With the problem taken care of, I wanted her there. She brushed her cheek against mine and then she gave me a cold little kiss on the corner of my mouth. Minty.

“You finally ate some of your ice cream?”

She nodded.

“Why won’t you eat it with me here?” I didn’t expect an answer, because I’d asked before and never got one.

“No looking,” she said.

“So, if I close my eyes, will you eat your ice cream before it melts?”

She thought hard about it, walking her fingers along the ribbing on my undershirt. When she got to my bare arm, she ran her finger over the scar from my wreck, staring at her ice cream the whole time.

“Cover them,” she said.

Once I put my hands over my eyes, she picked up her bowl. Like I was her favorite chair, she stretched back against me and rested her head in the triangle my elbow made. I didn’t cheat, wasn’t even tempted to look, but I knew she was eating. First came the squeak of the spoon scooping up ice cream. Then the sneaky sound of the spoon going into her mouth and coming out clean. After a couple bites, she put the bowl back on the coffee table.

“Are you done? Can I open my eyes?” I said.

“No.”

She shifted in my lap to straddle me, getting her knees into the gaps between my legs and the sides of the chair. Then she rested her head on my shoulder and said, “Lean back.”

I took my hands off my eyes, but didn’t open them. I eased the recliner back, and she settled into me with a sigh.

When she put her cheek against mine again, I turned my head, hoping for maybe one more kiss. She gave it to me, cold and soft. The next kiss was still cool, but getting warmer. Every one after that was warmer and softer, like ice cream melting, until she gave me a kiss that wasn’t just a peck on the lips. Her lips were warm but her tongue was still cold.

“Hey,” I said. I didn’t want to startle her.

“Hey.”

That wasted word surprised me, so I opened my eyes. She was looking at me. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but deep down I knew what would happen if I closed my eyes. I did it anyway. Closed them and waited for her to kiss me. It started with both of us shy, but not too long after, her mouth was full on mine, and then her tongue slipped past my teeth to my tongue. All the while her arms got tighter around my neck.

After that, there was just one kiss that kept on going, which was what I liked. She let me play with her hair, and after a while, I petted her bare shoulders. I wondered how it felt to her with my hand being so rough and her being so soft. To me, it was like all the skin on my palms coming awake after being asleep. Same way I felt lying under the sky at night. The stars rubbing across me, making static electricity.

Until she gasped into my mouth, I didn’t even know what I’d done—slid my hand down from her shoulder to cup her little tit in my palm. She leaned into me and her dress slipped down, leaving her naked in my hand. Her nipple went hard in the curve of my thumb, and she shivered. Made me shiver, too.

I tried to pull my hand back, but she pressed hers over mine to hold it there.

“Orion,” she said.

She ran her fingers down my belly to my belt buckle and unhooked it. I brushed her hand away, and I was gonna refasten the buckle, except if I sat up and did that, I figured that would be the end of her kissing me. So I pushed her hand away and kissed her some more. Her hand went right back to my belt, like a fly that won’t quit buzzing around. She unthreaded the belt and opened the button on my jeans.

I had to stop her.

I opened my eyes and sat up, but it only made things worse. Her eyes were thunderhead dark, her lips were red from kissing, and I’d turned her hair into a tumbled mess. She was straddling my lap with her skirt riding up. Holding her by the hips, my forearms rubbed against her bare thighs. Just short of letting go of her and dumping her on the floor, I didn’t know what to do.

The zipper on my jeans came down with some help from her, but mostly from the pressure of a hard-on that had built up on me like a temperature gauge going into red.

“Wavy, you can’t—”

“I want to,” she said.

She kissed me until my blood pounded in my ears, like I was fixing to have a heart attack. She held the back of my neck with one hand and, with the other, she petted my dick like it was a wild animal. Real gentle at first. Then she closed her fingers around me as far as they would go, and goddamn, when she squeezed a little harder, it was far enough.

“Wavy.” That was me begging, and not for her to stop.

As much as I always wanted her to kiss me, I didn’t have no idea how desperate I was for her to touch me like that. I couldn’t even recollect how long it was since somebody besides me had. And Wavy. Wavy. Her hand was so soft, not a callous on it. Took less than a minute to get me off. As soon as I came, I knew what I’d done. My stomach turned over and, for a second, I thought I was gonna be sick.

“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. Jesus fucking Christ. What are we doing? Get up. Get up.”

She did what I said, slid off my lap awkwardlike, and staggered back a step. Standing there with the TV flickering on her face, she looked like she was worried about me. A string of cum dripped off her hand and she wiped it on the front of her skirt. I stood up, trying to get my pants fastened, but I was all thumbs, and my dick was still half-hard. Goddamn belt opened up easy enough in her hands and I couldn’t hardly get it to close.

“I did it wrong?” she said.

“No—it’s—oh, God, Wavy.”

“You liked it with the girl at the party.”

“Wha—what party? What girl?”

With the hand she’d wiped on her dress, Wavy drew a slithery line up her arm. She’d seen the girl with the snake tattoo giving me a hand job? That was the last time somebody else had touched me.

“But you, Wavy. It’s not okay for you to do that.” I couldn’t catch my breath and my voice wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Why?” she said.

“Because it’s not. You—it’s—it’s dirty for you to do that.”

She flinched like I’d slapped her.

Standing there, both of us not talking, I saw the thing I shoulda looked at first—the ring on her finger. It was my fault she didn’t understand. When I told her she was too young to get married, I figured she knew I was talking about sex. But I bought her a wedding ring. I promised there wasn’t gonna be other girls, and there hadn’t been. I didn’t even look at other women anymore. Maybe I was the one who didn’t understand.

“Wavy—” As shitty as it was, I wasn’t getting ready to apologize. I was so ashamed of myself, I was gonna say, “You can’t tell anybody about this.”

Before I could, she clamped her hands over her mouth and said, “Mama was right. I am dirty.”

She was gone like a flash, leaving the kitchen door slapping in the frame.

I stood in the middle of the room, shocked as hell, wondering where she learned all that. The kissing, the other stuff? Did Liam’s girls talk about sex with her?

No, that was my fault, too. Except for the one skin mag I threw away, I hadn’t done anything with the other magazines in my nightstand. How many times had she been there without me and looked at those pictures?

Wherever she got those ideas, she was only thirteen. All those times I said, “I’m not that kinda guy,” maybe I was that kinda guy. What happened hadn’t just happened. There was that whole half hour of us making out before she unzipped my pants. I’d had plenty of time to put a stop to it, and I didn’t. Because I liked kissing her. I liked all of it, no matter how messed up that was.

My pa was a crazy, mean drunk who beat the shit out of my ma and us kids. Alcohol did that. It didn’t make you do what I’d just done.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame the booze. I don’t think I’d ever been as sober as I was right then.

11

KELLEN

I paced up and down, until the TV played the national anthem and went to the test screen. Standing there in the quiet, I knew how bad I’d fucked up. Not just that fooling around with Wavy was illegal—considering all the other laws I’d broken, I didn’t care about that—but that up ’til then, I’d never betrayed anybody I loved. Wavy trusted me, and I took advantage of her.

I got my gun out of the drawer next to the sink and pushed the clip in. When I was younger, I thought about it plenty of times. Just put the barrel in my mouth, pull the trigger, and paint the ceiling with my brains.

I used to think about it when I was lonely and miserable, but now it seemed like something I deserved. Except Wavy had said, “I’m dirty,” and I couldn’t stand for her to think she did something wrong. I didn’t want her going through life thinking she was so dirty I had to kill myself after she touched me. Whatever I deserved, she didn’t deserve that.

The temperature gauge at the kitchen window showed forty-two degrees. I’d let her run out into the night, wearing that skimpy dress with no coat, knowing she’d have to cross two highways and the meadow to get home.

I put the gun away and washed my hands. Then I put her coat and sweater in the saddlebag, and rode. I scanned the shoulder ahead for her as I went, but I’d waited too long.

At the farmhouse, the porch light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. I wasn’t brave enough to call her name, so I stood in the kitchen and listened until I picked out two clear sounds. Splashing water and a muffled hiccup.

I tapped on the bathroom door, and there was a hiccup followed by silence. There was no latch on the door and, when I pushed it open, it thudded against something. Wavy’s boots. The air burned when I sucked it into my lungs. Bleach.

I got down on my knees and crawled to the tub, saying, “I’m sorry, Wavy. I’m sorry I let that happen. That was all my fault and I’m sorry.”

I put my hand down and found her crumpled up dress. I couldn’t see a thing, so I reached for her, but she smacked my hand away.

“No one touches me. I’m dirty. I’ll make you dirty,” she said.

“You’re not dirty.”

“Dirty whore.”

“You’re not dirty and you’re not a whore.”

I couldn’t take the scrubbing, the sound of her feeling dirty. Even knowing she wouldn’t like it, I reached out to stop her.

She screamed and tried to shove me away, but I caught hold of her hands, and got the bar of soap and the washcloth away from her. Her arms were slippery, too hard to hold. She jerked one free and managed to punch me smack in the left eye. Lit up the whole inside of my skull. I been in bar fights where I didn’t get decked that hard, but once I had her tucked under my arm, she wasn’t big enough to put up a real fight against me. The water running off her soaked through my jeans and made the floor slippery. She’d been washing in cold water and bleach.

When I reached for the towel I knew was hanging behind the door, something sharp—Wavy’s knee—caught me in the kidney, almost doubled me over, and I slid into the wall with a thump.

“You kids quit making so much noise,” Val yelled from her bedroom.

I waited for Val to open the door, turn on the light, and find me wrestling with her naked daughter, but Val didn’t get up. She didn’t even call again. It boiled my fucking blood.

“You stupid bitch! I could be in here raping her! And you can’t even get your ass out of bed to come see what she’s screaming about? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

No answer to that.

While I was yelling at Val, Wavy finally stopped fighting me, and I got the towel around her as best I could. In the dark, I carried her up the stairs, expecting more darkness, but the moon lit up her whole room. Full moon. Did that explain what I’d done?

After I got Wavy under the covers I took the towel and dried her hair. She laid there shivering and let me.

“You have to talk to me,” I said. We weren’t gonna solve this with charades. “You’re not dirty. Why would Val say that?”

“Liam not to be trusted.” She always said it that way, like it was his name.

“What about him?”

“Sitting on his lap.”

“When?”

I knelt next to the bed, with the covers pulled tight over Wavy, but she slipped a hand out of the sheets and touched my arm. Then she found my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back.

“Before I could read,” she said. “And Mama said, ‘Don’t touch her. That’s dirty! If you touch her you’ll go to hell! No one touches her!’”

“Did Liam do something to you?” After what I’d done, I knew I didn’t have no business feeling self-righteous, but this hot thing welled up in me. If Liam had messed with her, I was gonna kill him. Choke his fucking neck with my bare hands. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“What was he doing when Val told him that?”

“Reading to me.”

I tried to picture Liam with Wavy on his lap, reading her a story. I couldn’t manage it ’til I remembered even my pa did some nice things. Took me to a few ball games. If Jesse Joe Barfoot had a few days when he was a decent father, maybe Liam had some, too.

And Val was crazy as hell. The kind of person who could see her daughter on her husband’s lap and think the worst thing. Might explain why Liam never went near Wavy. If your wife accused you of doing something nasty to your baby daughter, you might think twice before you ever touched her again.

“He didn’t touch you? Not—” With her holding my hand like she still trusted me, my throat about closed up around what I wanted to ask. “Not in your private place?”

“No. She said he would, but he didn’t. She said all men would.”

“Wavy, I’m sorry I—”

“Now you’ll go to hell and it’s my fault, because I’m dirty.”

“If I go to hell, it won’t be because of you.” I was definitely going to hell, but that wasn’t her fault. “And you’re not dirty.”

“You said.”

“I said it was dirty, not that you were dirty. You’re a good girl.” My knees were killing me, so I sat down cross-legged next to the bed, keeping her hand in mine.

“Why is it dirty? You liked it,” she said.

“Because you’re thirteen.” There were a lot of other reasons I shouldn’t have been fooling around with her, but that was the big one. “You’re not old enough.”

“I’m old enough to like it.”

She pulled more of my arm under the edge of the sheet and pressed her cold, bare little tit into my hand. I jerked it away without even thinking. For a while, she laid there quiet. Then she snaked her arm out of the covers and dropped something that clattered next to my knee.

I patted the floor and found her ring. I’d been so hell-fired against anybody turning it into something nasty, and then that’s what I did.

“Wavy, this is yours. I gave you this because I love you.”

She turned over, away from me, and sighed real heavy. She’d used up all her words. Maybe for months. I’d never heard her say so much. Holding that ring in my hand, I came up with three things I could do. One was really bad. One was too awful to even think about. That left me just the one option.

The radiator rattled and it got me moving. I pitched the wet towel on top of it and sat down on the bed. I held the ring on the tip of my pinky to keep track of it while I pulled off my boots and jacket. I shoved Wavy toward the wall and lifted up just the quilt, keeping the sheet between us. She was wound tight when I put my arm around her, her spine stiff against my chest.

“I love you, Wavy. I love you.” I said it until she relaxed. “Now put your ring back on.”

She didn’t move, but when I leaned up on my elbow and reached for her hand, she didn’t pull away. As I tugged on her arm to turn her towards me, I let the sheet fall back so her tits were naked in the moonlight. They were beautiful, and she trusted me enough that she’d let me touch them. She stared at the stars on the ceiling while I put the ring on her finger.

“It’s not dirty,” I said. “I was stupid to say that. It’s not dirty if you love me as much as I love you. And I love you all the way. But we gotta go slow. We went too fast tonight.”

She wiggled the ring on her finger, and I worried she was gonna take it off again.

“That night I first saw you, I was going too fast. There I was rubbernecking at you and dumped the bike. Wrecked me up. I don’t want to wreck us up like that. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She eased her hand up my arm to touch the scar. The ring was still on her finger and she looked at me, looked me in the eye. Real slow, like a striptease going in reverse, she pulled the sheet up to cover herself and nodded.

12

WAVY

March–June 1983

Kellen was unhappy. I could smell it on him.

I went with him when he got his hair cut, and the barber said, “Hey, this ain’t your daughter, is it, Junior?”

“No.” Kellen swallowed hard and said, “This is my girlfriend.”

I was happy to hear that I was his anything, but the ring was heavy on my finger and I wished he’d said, “This is my fiancée.”

The barber looked at me while he cut Kellen’s hair. The way Kellen looked at engines, to figure out what was wrong with them.

To see what the barber saw, I looked at myself in the mirror behind the barber chairs. Too young. I tried to be more like Sandy, but I still looked like a little girl.

Opening my jacket, I pushed my shoulders back against the chair and slid my hips forward. I crossed one leg over the other so that my foot dangled. Then I rested my forearms on the chair and let my hands hang from the wrists. Slowly, I leaned my head back and made my eyes soft. The look Mama used to make Liam come to her after they fought. The limp limbs that invited, the soft eyes that promised things.

The barber would have come to me, if the invitation had been for him, but Kellen blushed and looked away. I didn’t know what to do, because the things Mama and Sandy did when Liam was upset, I wasn’t allowed to do those things to Kellen.

Night after night, he sat next to me on the sofa, watching TV. Never on my bed or the recliner. He held my hand, but he didn’t put his arm around me or touch my hair or kiss me.

If he didn’t want to touch me, I could accept that, but I wanted to touch him. That was never against the rules before, but it was now. All of December he didn’t let me touch him, and then I spent winter break at Aunt Brenda’s without him. Now January and February were gone, and I still wasn’t allowed to touch him.

Even though he wouldn’t say it, I knew what he felt. I’d felt it enough to know. Dirty. Too dirty to touch. Too dirty to be touched.

If he wouldn’t touch me, that was bearable, but to have him look away from me wasn’t. I needed him to see me.

On the sofa that night, after the haircut, he reached for my hand. I looked down at his jeans, the ones he wore for his birthday that got ruined by bleach. Bright white spots already going threadbare. Because of me. I pulled my hand away and said, “I’m too dirty to touch.”

He jumped like a bee had stung him and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees.

“No, sweetheart. I told you. You’re not. You’re beautiful. I love you, but you’re only thirteen. So we can’t be fooling around.”

He didn’t look at me when he said, “You’re beautiful,” so he might as well have said, “You’re invisible.”

“I’m sorry I made you dirty.” Saying the words felt like swallowing burning cigarettes, but I had to say them.

“You didn’t make me dirty. You couldn’t, because you’re not dirty, okay?”

“Then you’re not dirty.”

“Okay, I’m not,” he said.

I slid my hand along his belly toward his buckle, but he shoved my hand onto my leg and pressed on it to make it stay. “Don’t, Wavy.”

After that my words were hot enough to burn my tongue, but I couldn’t swallow them, either. They stayed in my throat, so that I almost couldn’t breathe. I stood up and went into the kitchen, because I wasn’t going to cry in front of him again. As quietly as I could, I pulled on my coat and slipped out the back door.

Orion was in the sky, but the clouds hid him, so there was no sense cutting through the woods, where it would be dark. I followed the safety rule—walk facing traffic—and made it as far as the second stoplight before the Panhead rumbled up behind me. Kellen rode ahead and turned around to pull up facing me.

“Get on. I’ll take you home if that’s where you want to go,” he said.

I ducked my head and kept walking. After I passed him, he turned the bike around and pulled up beside me, going the wrong way down the highway, his boots dragging in the dirt of the shoulder. His arms were bare, muscles tense as he braked and clutched. He came out in his T-shirt after me, so I was guilty twice. I made him unhappy and he was cold, but walking was the only thing that kept me from crying.

“Please, Wavy. You’re breaking my heart and I don’t know what to do.”

He was unhappy when I was there, he was unhappy if I went away, and I was miserable. Now I understood what Mama’s hot, scary eyes meant when she danced with Uncle Sean. They meant everything was broken.

“I broke everything that made me happy,” I tried to say, but I had to press my hands against my eyes to stop the flood.

Kellen grabbed my wrist and put my cold fingers to his warm mouth. After he kissed the ring, the worst of the words slid down my throat. He lifted me up to the gas tank in front of him and when I kissed his neck, he didn’t stop me. After I kissed his neck, I kissed his cheek. After his cheek, his lips, and then he kissed me back. He loved me. If the mouth was a dirty place and he wasn’t afraid to kiss mine, I wasn’t too dirty.

A car honked, and Kellen said, “Get on the bike, sweetheart. It’s cold out here and we’re giving everybody a show.”

After that we only pretended to watch TV. Slow was a game. While Kellen ate the dinners I cooked for him, I ran my hands along his shoulders until he took off his shirt to have his back rubbed. Once I rubbed his back, I could touch his bare chest and his belly. Almost to his belt buckle.

Even more than I wanted food, I wanted his flesh. I wanted to touch the places where he was hard, and the places where he was soft. He didn’t like his soft places, but I wanted them the way I wanted mashed potatoes made with real butter. I had nothing on my body like the warm damp crease between his tits and belly. Nothing like the muscles that bulged in his arms when he used the pulley in the shop ceiling to hoist engines out of cars.

Kellen’s slow game was different, like getting a wild rabbit to take a piece of carrot from my hand. If I tilted my head a certain way when he kissed my mouth, he might kiss my throat, too. If I reached my arms up around his neck, his hands would slide down to my waist, searching for skin to touch in the gap between my T-shirt and skirt. I had to invite him, like the stories where you have to invite the vampire in.

Sandy said, “The right outfit will make or break a date.” Kellen would never take off my dress, but he would help my T-shirt creep up and up. Sandy was right about that, too. The tight shirts made me look older. They made Kellen want to touch more than my hair, and he didn’t mind how small my tits were.

If I went slow enough, I was allowed to touch him almost everywhere. Almost. He said, “Slow down,” so many times that even when he let me go faster, I went slow to tease him. A different game. To make him say, “Faster.”

One night in the meadow, we kissed until our lips were raw, and my T-shirt was off and my panties were wet under my skirt from rubbing against his thigh. He would run his hand up my legs, but he was too nervous to touch me there. Finally, he let me unbuckle his belt and take him in my hand. I went slow, so slow, until he was breathing hard and his voice was deep in his throat when he said, “Wavy, you’re driving me outta my mind.”

“You said slow,” I whispered in his ear.

Laughing, he squeezed my arm hard enough to hurt, and said, “Goddamn, I know I said slow, but that’s not what I meant. You’re gonna kill me if you keep doing it that way.”

I didn’t kill him, but I made him beg, sweaty and gasping. He didn’t even beg for anything. He was just begging, with my name in between. “Please, Wavy, please,” until his hips lifted off the quilt and he came. A strange word for it, like he was leaving somewhere else and arriving in the meadow with me.

Summer played games, too. It changed time, changed fast and slow.

Secretly, I knew, Kellen wanted to go fast. He said, “No, don’t. We can’t, sweetheart.” Alone with me, he turned his back while I went swimming, unless I kept my T-shirt and panties on. When Donal came swimming under the full moon, though, I took off all my clothes to swim, and Kellen watched me. I came out of the tank naked and went to him, trailing water through the grass. When I put my arms around him and stamped my wet shape on his T-shirt, he didn’t say, “No, don’t.” He said, “Oh, Wavy,” in his begging voice. He ran his hands down my slippery sides to my hips, and kissed me until Donal said, “Ew, gross! No suck-face!”

Summer had so many tricks. The nights lasted longer than the days, even though the angle of the Earth’s axis meant that was impossible. The night couldn’t be longer, but summer made it seem that way. Summer sneaked time for me, taking a minute from February, three minutes from English class in March, ten whole minutes from a boring Thursday in April. Summer stole time to give me another hour under the stars with Kellen.

The only time summer slowed down was for the two weeks at Aunt Brenda’s house. Time stolen from me instead of for me.

The night before Aunt Brenda picked us up was the Fourth of July. Kellen bought fireworks: rockets for Donal and sparklers for Sandy and me. Then we took the bike around the lake and back to Kellen’s house. He let me lie on top of him on the sofa and he kissed me for so long. Nothing more than that, even though his heart pounded under my hand.

“I better take you home soon so you’ll be ready when your aunt comes in the morning,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“Yeah, sweetheart, we better.”

I pressed my leg between his, where Orion’s belt kept him closed up in his jeans. I loved how kissing made me soft between my legs, but it made him hard in the same place. It was wonderful magic.

Kellen groaned and said, “You need to sleep. I need to sleep. I gotta go pick up that wrecked Knucklehead tomorrow.”

I went but not before I left him a message. Once he had the bike started, I darted back into his bedroom. Going down on my knees on the linoleum tiles—so much like a classroom—I dug into his nightstand and found the magazine. I’d looked at it so many times, it opened to the page I wanted. The pleasure I wanted. I laid it on his pillow and ran back out to the bike.

Would he understand the message? Would he think it was dirty? No. He said, if you love me as much as I love you, it’s not dirty. I loved him all the way and that meant nothing was dirty. He wasn’t afraid of my germs. He wasn’t scared of me sneaking inside him.