Deeper

THANKSGIVING BREAK West

Don’t get involved, I told myself in the beginning. She’s not your problem.

But I was already involved, even then. By Thanksgiving, I was so involved with Caroline, I almost couldn’t stand to see her.

Everything I told her was a lie.

We weren’t going to be friends, I’d promised. But what else do you call it when you text somebody a million times a day and look forward to seeing them even though you just fucking saw them?

What do you call it when you know when somebody has class and what material their next test is about, and they know when you’re going to be working and how many hours it is since you slept, so they bring you all your favorite junk food to help keep you going?

Caroline and I were friends.

I was lying about it.

I told her I wasn’t going to touch her, but I touched her every chance I got. Brushed my arm against hers. Leaned into her with my knee. When she turned her back, I checked out her ass and thought about how it would feel in my hands. When she leaned over the table, kneading, I looked down her shirt.

I’d find reasons to get inside her personal space. I’d watch her skin get pink and patchy, and I’d love it.

I wasn’t any kind of saint. Even though I couldn’t have her, I did my best to make her want me. I made sure she was thinking about me, and I didn’t stop when I found out she wanted to ask out some guy she’d met playing rugby.

I ramped it up.

I treated her like she belonged to me, even though I wouldn’t have her and I wouldn’t let her have me, either.

I told Caroline to admit how she was feeling—how she was really feeling—but when she’d ask me, “What’s on your mind?” I wouldn’t say, I’m worried about my mom because she said her back went out and I think she must be missing shifts at the prison. If she gets fired, she’s going to get whiny, and Bo’s never been around her when she’s like that. He might dump her for being a useless drag—which she is, I swear, my mother whines like nobody else alive—and if that happens, I’ll have to go back home.

What would be the point?

I was two different people, and only one of them was real. The real West Leavitt lived in a trailer in Silt, Oregon. He talked to me all day long. Check on your mom. Make sure she gets groceries so Frankie’s got something decent to eat. Pick up another shift at the library, because you never know. You just never know.

Whereas the guy I was in Iowa—he was the clothes I put on to get where I needed to go. He was me, pretending to be the kind of person Caroline has been every minute of her life.

Whoever you are when you’re born, you can’t just shake that off. We like to pretend we can. That’s the American dream, right? No limits. But the truth is, you might get rich, but you can’t buy the way rich people are. You can’t just put the right clothes on and belong. You’re still going to think like a poor kid, dream like one, want like one. You’ll still flinch every time another student asks you, So what does your dad do? or Where are you going for break?

It’s hard work, teaching yourself not to flinch. Learning to be someone you’re not.

That’s what I was doing at Putnam. I was working. I wasn’t there for laughs, or to party, or to find the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was there to make the rest of my life happen, and it was a full-time project.

People like Caroline don’t have to worry about the groceries or the rent. They can assume all that shit’s taken care of, and then they just have to figure out what they want and go for it.

Where I’m from, assuming you’re going to get into med school is like assuming you can walk on water. It’s a fairy tale, and people who believe in fairy tales are idiots.

I didn’t get to Putnam assuming anything. I got there on the charity of a rich alum whose wife I fucked.

I knew what I was doing. I would have done it again.

I hated it, but I would have done it.

I hated lying to Caroline, but I lied to her. If I’d told her the truth, it would’ve broken her heart.

I couldn’t have her. That was the truth.

I could only have this one thing, if I worked hard enough. Nothing else.

Caroline texts me on Saturday. What are you doing?

I’ve been sleeping.

I woke up at dawn and walked around campus in a fog—a literal fog, I mean, the air full of thick white mist—and felt like some lost ghost haunting the place. I stayed out there too long, not dressed right for the wet invasiveness of the weather.

When I came back to the apartment, I was shuddering, and it was so fucking quiet that I got this creepy feeling, like maybe I didn’t exist at all. I got out my phone and scrolled through yesterday’s texts from Caroline and Frankie and my mom.

It’s Thanksgiving break, I told myself. Not the apocalypse.

But I still felt strange. I sat on my bed, staring out at the fog, and polished off the last few inches in Krishna’s bottle of butterscotch schnapps.

I stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

When Caroline’s text wakes me up, the phone says it’s four o’clock, but it takes me a few seconds to figure out that means afternoon. I slept all day. My fingers are stiff, my mouth tastes like garbage, and my dick is half hard for no reason.

Nothing. You?

The phone rings. It’s her. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You sound sleepy. Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry. I can go. You go back to sleep. I know this is, like, your one big chance to be lazy.”

“It’s all right. How’s your break going?” We’ve only exchanged a few texts since she left on Wednesday. I haven’t known what to say to her. She’s pissed at me. I’m pissed at myself. I think we’d be better off not seeing each other at all, but if we’re going to stop, it’s going to have to be her who stops it.

“Okay, I guess. I mean, Thanksgiving was okay. Now everybody’s gone, and it kind of sucks.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Janelle and her fiancé already went home. My dad went over to some friends of our family’s in Marshalltown.”

“He left you home by yourself?”

“He wanted me to go with him, but I didn’t feel like it.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“Late, I guess. It’s for dinner, but this friend is a judge, too, and they usually drink after dinner and sit around telling judge stories for hours.”

“Huh. So what are you up to?”

“Nothing.” She makes this soft sound, kind of laughing at herself. “I’m bored. Three days off school, and I officially have no idea what to do with myself. Plus, I’m lying on my bed in my room, which hasn’t changed since high school, so I kind of feel like I’m in this weird time warp, like I never went to college at all, and nothing that happened at Putnam was real.”

I reach down to adjust myself. I’m picturing her on her bed, and it’s not helping the hard-on situation. In real life she’s probably got her sweats on and her hair in one of those floppy-mess ponytails, but in my head she’s wearing that pajama top from the first night at the bakery, white panties, and nothing else. Lacy panties—the kind that go down over her hips like shorts, her pussy a pink shadow underneath.

“But then you wouldn’t be talking to me,” I say. “Since you know me from Putnam.”

“Yeah. It still kind of feels like that, though.”

“Like what?”

There’s a hitch in my breathing. I’ve got my hand on my cock, stroking.

Fuck. I shouldn’t. She’s interested in another guy, and I’m an asshole. I shouldn’t.

But I don’t stop. I haven’t heard her voice in a few days. I’ve been alone so much, I’m not sure I can stop. My hand is dry and hot, pulling so hard it’s almost cruel.

“Not real,” she says. “Like my worlds are colliding, only not, like, colliding. More like mingling or something?”

“Are you sober?”

She laughs. “I am. That just makes it weirder. Are you?”

“Yeah, why?”

The reason I’m picturing those white panties so vividly is she wore them in one of the pictures online.

I know her pussy is pink beneath those panties, shaved, because I’ve seen it.

I don’t deserve to be her friend.

I have to stop.

“Your voice is all scratchy,” she says. “You don’t sound like you.”

I’m not who you think I am.

I’m an asshole with my hand on my cock, picturing you, because I want you.

I want you all the goddamn time, and it’s making everything impossible.

“Who do I sound like?”

She’s quiet for a second, and then she laughs again, shy now. “I don’t know.”

I want her to say something dirty. I want this to be phone sex, for Caroline to tell me she’s blowing me, I’m fucking her, she never wants me to stop.

I’m loathsome.

It only makes my hand jerk faster.

“Tell me what your room looks like,” I say.

Tell me what you’re wearing. Tell me what you want me to do to you.

So she describes it—purple walls painted when she was eleven, a desk that she got in trouble for carving her name into, a daybed, whatever the fuck that is—and I turn my face away from the phone so she can’t hear my breath, broken.

“West?”

“Yeah?” I sound strange. I’ve lost track of everything but the sound of her voice and the slick flesh moving under my palm.

“Will you come, West?”

The sound of my name, the way her voice wraps around it. The breathy intimacy of her request. She wants me with her, and I do come. All over my hand.

“Sure.” I’m so wrecked, I have to clear my throat and try again. “Sure, yeah, I’ll come.”

It’s only when I’m getting in the car, asking her for directions, that I understand what a terrible idea this is.

By then it’s too late to back out.

“Boost me,” she says, and she giggles. Actually giggles, like a kid. “C’mon, West! Give me a boost!”

She’s got her hands on the roof, one foot denting the gutter—though it’s already pretty trashed at that spot, she must always go up this way—and her ass wiggling in my face. I’m pushed up against the railing of this tiny balcony off Caroline’s bedroom on the second story of her giant house, the cold of the metal seeping through my coat, wondering how I got myself into this insane situation.

She slips, shrieks, and knocks against me, hard. Without thinking, I get an arm around her waist, the fingers of my other hand wrapped tight around the rail. I wonder how this balcony is attached to the house. A few bolts? What’s the weight limit? What’s this fucking thing for, anyway? It’s not as if she’s going to string the laundry out her window to dry.

“You’re crazy,” I tell her, but she just laughs.

“I’ve done this a zillion times. Give me a boost, and I’ll help you up.”

“It’s November.”

“There’s no snow or ice. The stars are good up here. Come on.”

I figure either I help her up on the roof or I spend the next hour of my life trying to talk her out of it. Plus, if we keep trying to do this her way, we’re going to end up dead.

She’s already got her foot up again, her ass pressing into my groin. My hands grip her hips automatically, guiding that sweet, soft pressure right where I want it.

I’ve forgotten all about helping her up, but Caroline finds purchase with her other foot, and then she’s gone, up, up, and away.

I’ve just helped a stoned girl onto the roof of her suburban mansion. After getting her stoned.

I’m going to hell for this.

Her hand is in front of my face now, white and small. “I’ll help you up.”

“I can do it. Move over.”

Her hand disappears. I climb up. She’s flopped onto her back, looking at the sky. The black coat she’s wearing kind of disappears into the dark shingles, and the moonlight catches the row of silver buttons like a landing strip that leads to her smile and the sparkles in her knit cap.

“Lie down,” she tells me.

I just stand there and look at her for a minute, because she’s perfect. Her hair is loose. Her guard is down. She told me she was worried the pot would make her paranoid, but she wanted to try it, anyway. Instead, it’s made her soft and receptive, blown her pupils up so her eyes look huge and dark, full of wonder.

I feel like I’ve performed some kind of miracle.

“Wow,” she says. “You look so weird from here.”

That makes me smile. I kneel on the roof next to her, enthralled by her teeth. I only took a few hits off the pipe I brought, but it’s been a while since I smoked. I could look at her face for an hour. I want to touch her hair, feel how soft it is. Run my fingers through it, over her throat, down that line of buttons and up under her shirt, pushing it out of the way to expose her skin to the moonlight. I want to make her cold so I can warm her up with my body, my mouth, my hands, my tongue.

I want to make her belong to me.

“What is it?”

“Promise me you’re not going to fall off the roof and get killed.”

“I’m not. I told you, I’ve done this a million times.”

“Why’d you need a boost, then?”

“I never come up alone. Janelle usually boosts me.”

“You allowed?”

“Sure! Oh, wait, you mean by my dad? No. Well, sort of. He knows we do it, and we’ve never gotten in trouble or anything, but it’s definitely frowned upon. We never come up when he’s home.”

She told me when I got here that he’s not going to be back for hours. That he’ll probably end up staying over with the Marshalltown friends. Too much booze to drive. But she made me park around the side just in case.

If she were a girl back home, there wouldn’t be any mistaking the invitation. My dad’s gone. Come over. Bring weed.

If she were a girl back home, I’d have a string of condoms in my pocket and a shit-eating grin on my face.

But she’s Caroline, and I’m not sure she has any idea what she does to me. Not like I’ve been subtle, but I said I wouldn’t come after her, and she said she doesn’t want me to. She’s thinking about some other guy. Scott.

So I don’t know. If she has an agenda, I don’t have a clue what it is.

“Lie down,” she says. “You’re blocking my stars.”

I lie down, elbows behind my head, and look up.

“It’s cloudy.”

“Shh.”

“There’s no stars.”

“Shhhhhhh,” she says again, with a lot of drama. “Shut up and enjoy the firmament.”

I smile up at the sky. Stoned out of her gourd, Caroline’s even bossier than normal. And she still says shit like firmament.

We look at the cloudy dark mess in the sky for a while. The night’s actually not half bad. The clouds are thick, but they’re moving in fast masses, and sometimes the moon escapes and brings some stars with it. Better than the usual Iowa sky, so often gray-white and thick with moisture. Fucking oppressive. The sky seems taller back home somehow.

It’s crisp out, but not as cold as it ought to be for the end of November. I’m wearing a heavy zip-up sweatshirt over a flannel and a T-shirt, and I’m comfortable enough, except for the strip of skin along my lower back where my shirts have all pulled up because I’ve got my arms above my head. I feel the roof through my jeans, numbing my ass.

It doesn’t matter. Being high makes everything crisp and sharp, but it also makes it so I just don’t care about shit like whether I’m warm. The buzz turns down the radio station in my head, constantly tuned to Oregon, and tunes in to Caroline.

She’s lying on her side, staring at me.

I feel her breath on my face. The warmth off her body.

I know exactly how far I’d have to move to kiss her, and it’s not far enough.

“I can see every single hair on your face,” she tells me.

“I shaved.”

“No, I mean, like, your pores. I can see all the places where the hairs come out. It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird. It’s my face.”

“Your face is weird, though, West.”

“Thanks.”

She laughs, a wash of spearmint-scented breath over my ear. “Please. You don’t need me to tell you how pretty you are.”

“Guys aren’t pretty.”

“Have you seen your roommate? He’s the prettiest girl on campus.”

“You should tell him that sometime. He’d be so pissed.”

“It’s not like it’s hurting him in the dating department.”

“Krish doesn’t date, Caro.”

“You know what I mean.” She leans closer.

“Why are you hovering over me like a vulture?”

“I like watching your jaw move when you talk. I can see, like, muscles and stuff. I never noticed before.”

“Maybe ’cause we don’t usually talk with your face three inches away.”

“That’s probably why,” she says solemnly.

“Or because you’re stoned.”

“Another strong possibility.”

I close my eyes. I feel like something important is slipping away from me and I’m supposed to want it back, but I don’t. I don’t want anything that means I’m supposed to keep apart from her.

“You are, though,” she says.

“What am I?”

I want her to tell me what I am. I walked in to this house of hers, this house with its big white columns marching along the front and its granite countertops, the deep white carpet in the living room that must be new because there’s not a stain on it. I walked in and got lost.

I don’t know who I am. She’s the only thing here I recognize, and it makes it harder to remember why I’m not supposed to put my hands back on her hips, pull her on top of me, kiss her cold lips, and push my fingers underneath her hat to feel the warmth of her hair, her head in my hands.

The only thing I know in this place is Caroline.

What am I?

When I open my eyes, she’s right there, looking at me. Looking into me.

She strokes one light fingertip along the bridge of my nose, pausing at the tip. Then skips down to the groove above my mouth. Over my upper lip. She’s drawing me with her finger, and it brings something up that I’ve shoved down inside me, buried in earth, covered over with a rock.

I don’t know what to call it. Greed. Need.

She’s touching me like I’m fragile, precious, and it’s making me want to flip her over, pin her wrists down, climb on top of her and do things to her until she feels boneless, desperate. Until the only word she can make with that mouth is my name, over and over. I want to know every fragile hollow of her body, and I want my tongue on them, my name inscribed in some secret language only Caroline and me even know.

“You’re beautiful,” she says.

I’m dangerous.

I sit up, scooting over a few inches and trying not to be too obvious about it. My hands are shaking.

“You’re high,” I tell her.

“I know.”

“How’s the Internet treating you lately?”

I ask because I want to remind her of the money. I want us to be a transaction, logical, bounded. I miss the bakery walls. When I’m on the clock and she’s nothing more than a visitor, we both have a role to play. On this rooftop, there aren’t any boundaries. I’ll put them back up, if that’s what it takes.

“That company you hired doing what you want them to do?”

She’s turned away from me slightly, not giving me her back but not showing her face, either. I think I must have hurt her feelings. She asked for it, though, touching me like that. “I’m supposed to get a report every month, but so far I haven’t seen one. Maybe because of the holiday, they’re delayed or something.”

“Does it seem like it’s working?”

“I don’t know. I decided I was better off not Googling myself all the time, so I stopped.”

“Makes sense.”

She wraps her arms around her knees. “I’ve been thinking about changing my last name.”

“Seriously?”

She doesn’t answer me. She’s looking out over the backyard.

“To what?”

“Fisk. That was my mom’s name.”

“Don’t let him do that to you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it like that. I just think—”

“Don’t let him win. Not like this. It’s not who you are. You’re no coward.”

She whips around, eyes flashing. “I didn’t say I was going to do it. I was just thinking about it, and I have every right to think about it if I want to.”

I lift my hands. “Fine. Think about it.”

That just pisses her off more. “You have no idea what it’s like. I walk around campus knowing people are talking about me behind my back. I look around my classes, and I can’t tell who’s seen me with my legs spread. Could you stand it, if it were you?”

“If everybody on campus had seen my dick? Sure. It’s just my dick. It’s not me.”

“Maybe. But it’s different for guys. Nobody would call you a slut if that happened. They’d just think you were, you know, kind of a tool. Or that you had too much to drink. Not that you were worthless.”

“If people think that, they’re idiots. Why should you care what a bunch of idiots think?”

“Because the world is full of idiots, West! And because it matters to people who aren’t idiots. My dad’s not an idiot, okay? He’s smart. But if he finds out … if my sisters find out? Or what if I go to law school and I try to get a good clerkship, but I can’t because my vagina’s on the Internet? You know how much that would suck?”

“It would, okay, I get that. But changing your name—that’s who you are. That’s you.”

“Women change their names when they get married.”

“Apples and oranges.”

“No. It’s always arbitrary. It’s a decision I can make if I want to. And I’m surprised you’re being a jerk about this. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am on your side, I just … He put those pictures up there so people would call you names. He was pissed at you, right? He wanted you to feel shitty. And I think if you change your name—that’s what he wants. That’s probably even more than he ever wanted. That’s what all of them want, for you to be ashamed of yourself, but you didn’t do anything to be ashamed about. You took off your clothes with a guy, sucked him off, let him fuck you—big fucking deal, Caroline. So they call you a slut, and they call you a frigid bitch, and it doesn’t even make sense. I mean, pick one, right? None of it means anything about who you are. Those pictures aren’t you.”

“They are, though. I’m the pictures. The pictures are me. There isn’t anything else anymore. I think about this guy I met, Scott? You know why I haven’t called him? It’s because I’m wondering, How long will it take him to find the pictures? And he doesn’t know my name yet. When I met him, he actually thought I said ‘Carrie,’ so he thinks my name is Carrie, and it’s like … What if it was? What if I were Carrie Fisk? Then I wouldn’t have to worry, How long until he knows? What will he think? What will he do?”

“If he’d judge you for that, he’s a dick and you’re better off not knowing him.”

“It’s not … It’s not even him, West, it’s everybody. Everybody says, Be careful what you do with pictures. The Internet is forever. Don’t post drunk shots on Facebook. I could be sixty years old, and the pictures might still be online. They could be there for the rest of my life. So what if Scott doesn’t care? What if we date for years and get engaged, and then his mom finds out? Or his dad, or his great-aunt, or whoever? What if he has some pervy cousin who jacks off to my pictures and tells Scott, you know?”

“What if you die in a freak accident next week? What if your firstborn gets leukemia? Jesus, Caroline, don’t make this the center of your entire fucking life!”

I hear what I sound like in the silence afterward.

Pissed off. Accusing.

I feel like the lowest thing. Worse than a worm. Something rotten, disgusting. Something decayed in me.

I’m as bad as every guy she’s worried about. I jerked off talking to her on the phone a few hours ago, and if that doesn’t make me a pervert and an asshole, I’m not sure what would.

I just hate hearing her talk about this other guy. I hate that her hope is attached to a name that isn’t mine, her future to a name that isn’t hers.

Shame floods through me, a hot impulse that makes me angry she’s not talking. Makes me fill the silence with more stupidity. “It’s normal,” I tell her. “It’s tits and a cunt, legs, an ass—it’s not the end of the fucking world, Caro. You think you’re so fucking special, but there’s a million other girls’ cunts online, and most of those girls aren’t moaning that their lives are over just because some random dude is getting off looking at them.”

Quiet again. In the nice neighborhood where Caroline lives, everyone is sleeping tonight. That makes me feel vile, too. That she should live in this place that’s just exactly the kind of place where I want to put Frankie. Surrounded by safety.

That I am the thing here, tonight, that’s making her unsafe.

I risk a glance at her face. She looks like I slapped her.

I did slap her.

The worst part is, there’s no reason for me to be mad at her. I’m not—I’m just mad in general.

I’m mad the world sucks so much, that this should have happened to her, that she should feel so bad about it.

I’m mad that sex can’t just be sex, it has to be everything else, too—money and power and misery and pleasure all mixed together. Because I want her, I’m mad at her, and it’s fucking stupid.

The whole thing. Stupid.

I sigh and stand up. Pace out the rooftop. This giant house where Caroline spent her whole life, sheltered from anything half as bad as what her punk-ass ex-boyfriend did to her. He probably grew up in a house like this, too. Probably wrecked her whole world without a second thought.

I walk back toward Caroline.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “That came out … I’m just sorry, all right?”

She shakes her head. She’s got her arms wrapped around her legs, her head turned away. “You know, I never called it that?”

“It?”

“Cunt,” she says, like the word tastes bad in her mouth. “Pussy. Slit. Tits. Cock. All those words—they never had anything to do with me before.”

She angles her head toward me, and I see her eyes, full of tears. “I don’t want them to have anything to do with me.”

I sit down a few feet away. Not sure what to tell her.

“There are so many things I’m not sure I can ever get back,” she says quietly. “I mean … I get what you’re saying. I get that life doesn’t end because of a couple grainy pictures online. But it kind of does, too, you know? Because now everything I’ve seen people say about me is in me. I have a cunt, I am a cunt, I’m dressed like a slut, I am a slut, I’m frigid, I’m a bitch, I want cum on my face—all those dirty things that never used to apply to me and now they do. They just eat away at me. So if I feel something, if I want a guy, if I get … if I get wet for a guy, if I want somebody to kiss me—it’s not the same anymore. It’s always going to be full of that stuff, either because I’m pushing all those words away or because I’m trying to figure out how to make them mine. And I hate that.”

I wish I didn’t know what she meant, but I do. I can’t tease a woman, work for a smile, get her off with my tongue inside her, without thinking about what she wants from me. What I’m going to get for it.

That’s the thing about trading sex for favors. It makes everything feel like a transaction.

“Do you want somebody to kiss you?” I ask. “Is this all theoretical, or …”

Her arms wrap tighter around her legs. “It’s not theoretical.”

“Scott?”

“Sure, Scott. I mean, maybe. I just met him. But what if, right? Why does it all have to be spoiled before it’s even started?”

“It’s not spoiled.”

“It feels spoiled.”

“That sucks.”

“It does.”

She traces a circle on her kneecap with her fingertip. “I only talked to him for a couple minutes. I liked him. He’s easy, you know? And Quinn got ahold of his number for me, but I just haven’t … I don’t want to think of him like that. I want all those words and body parts to have nothing to do with any of it. Except they do.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much inevitable if you’re gonna date the guy.”

She looks right at me for a second, then back at the roof. “I was starting to feel almost like I could do it, earlier today. Call him up and ask him out after break. I thought … But I have to say, you kind of ruined that whole idea, so thanks.”

There’s a smile in her voice, though. A small one, but it’s there.

“I get that I was a prick, but I don’t get what I ruined. You’re gonna have to explain that.”

“I don’t think I can do it. Any of it. I’m going to become a nun.”

“That would be a waste.” Now I can see the smile, the apple of her cheek lifting, though she’s still not looking at me.

“No, I can see now it’s the only way.”

“Sister Caroline,” I say. “Martyr of Internet Porn.”

She lifts her head. I can’t look away from the brilliance of her teeth, her lips, because I have this sudden, awful, amazing idea, and I’m focusing all my attention on keeping it from coming out of my mouth.

I could kiss you, is what I’m trying not to say.

I could make you forget all about those fucking pictures.

I could make you feel good, wipe out all that shame, show you what’s supposed to be going through your mind when you’re with a guy.

I could. Me.

“You like him a lot,” I say instead. Because she’s already made her choice, and I’m not it. I wasn’t even an option.

“He’s fun.”

“Fun is a little lukewarm.”

“No, don’t. Don’t pick on him. He’s great. Or he could be great. He seems like he could.”

“Too bad he’s so ugly.”

“No, he’s hot, too. Quinn said.”

“Quinn’s into girls.”

“Quinn’s bi.”

“Seriously?”

“You didn’t know that?”

I shake my head.

“Well, she is. And she thinks Scott is hot.”

“So you ask him out, and then you dive right in and kiss him. See what happens.”

I watch her when I say it, because whatever her reaction is, I’m going to memorize it. I’m going to use it to remind myself whenever I need reminding.

She’s not mine. I can’t have her. That’s final.

“I will,” she says. “That’s a great idea.”

But the face she makes—it’s not going to work out as the reminder I wanted.

“You look like you’re thinking about licking a slug.”

“Don’t tease me. I’m working on it.”

I want to tease her, though. I feel suddenly, thoroughly stoned on this idea I’ve had. It’s made it to my brain, I guess. It’s worked through my system in one fast heady rush.

Nothing is real but her and me and this ocean of dark we’re drifting in.

Nothing is real but the way I feel lighter when she smiles. When I’m teasing her, I feel like maybe I’m somebody, after all, and not just a son and a brother, an employee, a quick fuck. I’m more than a student, an impostor, an arrow on its vector toward a goal. Like I matter to her.

Like I matter for me and not for what I can do for somebody else.

“If I said you should suck him off, maybe, maybe, I’d expect that face. But kissing? How can you be into a guy and make that face when you think about kissing him?”

“It’s complicated. Shut up.”

“I’ll shut up when you answer the question.”

“No. I’m not—why are we even talking about this?”

“Because you’re stoned. You have no filter.”

“I do too.”

“We just talked about your cunt. The filters are definitely off-line.”

She laughs and buries her face in her hands. “That was your fault.”

“Everything is my fault.”

I can’t stop this. Can’t stop myself. Not when she’s making me feel this way.

Her shoulders are shaking. I’m not sure when she quits laughing and starts crying, or if she even does quit. It’s maybe all the same thing. Laughing and crying together.

I just know that when she looks up, the tears make her eyes shine, and that’s where the stars are.

That’s how it looks to me. Like the stars are in Caroline, and the whole world is just me and her.

Because I’m stoned.

And because I’m in love with her.

“This, too, Caro,” I say, leaning in. “This is completely my fault.”

When our lips meet, she breathes in, and that’s all that happens. Maybe for a second, maybe forever—it’s hard to tell when you’re stoned. Time gets unpredictable. Sex gets much bigger and much smaller, both, because you can feel everything. Every hair, every breath, every heartbeat, every firing inch of skin. It’s distracting. I get distracted by how Caroline’s mouth feels soft but dry, and it’s like shaking hands, this kiss. Taking her measure. Saying hello. It’s not sexy. It’s … interesting.

“Weird,” she says against my mouth.

“You’re weird.”

“Look who’s talking.”

I lick her bottom lip, and she sinks to her elbows.

I follow her down and do it again. “Still weird?”

“You’re licking me,” she murmurs.

“How’s that working for you?”

She closes her eyes. “I think …”

I draw her lip into my mouth and bite it gently. It feels fleshy between my teeth, more substantial than it looks. I want to do this to every part of her. Lick it and taste it, bite it, test it. Consume her, piece by piece.

“Don’t think. Thinking isn’t your friend.”

“You’re not my friend, either.”

“Funny.” I get my hand in her hair, my thumb under her jawline, tilting her head where I want it so I can really kiss her.

I think, fleetingly, Don’t, and then I do.

Our tongues meet. Our teeth bump gently, and she makes this sound with her breath that would be a laugh if she weren’t so busy sinking her fingers into my hair and kissing me back.

If we were friends, it would be disgusting. Spit and tongues, teeth and lips.

But we’re not friends.

It’s fucking amazing.

I kiss her hard. I control her, use her mouth, direct her head.

I kiss her soft. Tongue that sexy gap between her teeth. Pull back, let her take over, show me what she likes, how she wants it.

She does want it. Maybe only tonight, maybe for all the wrong reasons, I don’t know. I’m not thinking about it. I’m kissing Caroline, which is better than thinking.

We fall into this kind of haze, nothing touching but our mouths, hands stroking over hair, necks, shoulders. I’m hard, but it feels like a faraway piece of information, with no urgency to it. This isn’t sex. It’s kissing. The forever kind of kissing, where there’s no urgency and no time. Kissing like waves lapping. Perfect kissing.

“Still weird?”

“So weird.”

She’s smiling when she pulls my head back down.

Caroline’s smiling, and we’re kissing, and everything is perfect, until light cuts across her face and she says, “Oh, shit.”

Headlights in the driveway.

“My dad.”

Her Romeo and Juliet balcony turns out to be the perfect height for dropping into the backyard.

My car turns out to be in just the right spot for getting out of Dodge without being spotted.

But the drive between Ankeny and Putnam is way too short for me to sort out what the fuck it is I thought I was doing and way too long to endure the memory of Caroline’s mouth against mine.

The apartment looks alien when I get back. Small and cold and ugly. Empty.

I go into my room and shut the door. I flop onto my back on the bed, feeling tired and used up.

My phone rings. I almost decide not to answer it, because I know it’s got to be Caroline.

I can’t talk to her. I have to get my head on straight first, figure out what that was. Figure out why, when I snuck down her driveway at a crawl with my headlights off, half of me was hoping I wouldn’t get caught and the other half was disappointed, ashamed, fucking furious with her for making me feel like her dirty little secret.

When I glance at the screen, it’s not her, though. It’s my mom.

“Hey, what’s up?” I ask.

Frankie’s voice. “Dad’s here.”

My heart jolts. I sit up so fast that my vision narrows. I have to put my palm to my forehead to steady myself. “Where are you?”

“At home. At Bo’s. He’s—he won’t go away, West. You have to make him go away.”

She sounds like she’s about to cry, her voice high and reedy, right on the verge of losing it.

Frankie never cries.

“Okay, take a deep breath, kiddo. You’re inside, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s outside.”

“Uh-huh. And I locked the front door, but he’s pounding and pounding on it. I’m afraid it’ll break!”

Now that she says it, I can hear the pounding. I’m thousands of miles away, and the sound scares the fuck out of me. I still remember him outside the trailer, yelling at my mom in the middle of the night.

“Michelle! Let me in! Let me into my own goddamn house, you worthless slit!”

He was drunk, Mom told me. He was angry. He didn’t mean it. But I shouldn’t worry, because she would never, ever let him hurt me.

It wasn’t even forty-eight hours later that she let him into her bedroom.

He hurt me plenty.

“West?” Frankie’s voice is wobbly. “I’m scared, West.”

My hands are shaking from adrenaline. I push myself until my back is in contact with the wall. I need something hard to brace against. “I know, sweetheart, but that’s a solid door, and he’s not going to get through it. Where’s Mom and Bo?”

“They went out.”

Drinking, I guess she means. It’s only ten in Oregon. They won’t be back for hours.

“Did you lock the back?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“All right. Can you go do that now for me?”

“Yeah, but West—”

“Just lock the back door. One thing at a time, Franks.”

The pounding grows faint. She’s breathing heavy, fast. Scared to death. I try to focus on the sound of my own inhalations and exhalations.

When she was little and she had a bad dream, I’d take her into my bed and let her curl up beside me, matching our breathing until we both fell back asleep.

“I got it,” she says.

“Top and bottom?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, now the windows.”

“What about the windows?” Frankie asks.

“Check them, just to be sure.”

One thing about Bo—he’s a paranoid guy. Name a conspiracy theory and he’s a believer. Plus, he grows weed in a clearing in the woods behind the house and works as a guard at a prison that regularly releases men who hate his guts back into the stream of society. Bo’s house is a flimsy one-story POS ranch, but he’s got solid locks on the doors and bars on all the windows.

I murmur reassurances.

“It’ll be all right, baby.

“He’s not going to hurt you.

“He won’t get inside.”

But I don’t know. I’m not there. It’s taking everything I’ve got not to grill her for details.

“I checked them,” she says finally. “They’re locked.”

“Good girl. Now get as far from the door as you can so you don’t have to hear it.”

“He’s crying, West.”

“Just tune him out.”

“I feel bad for him.”

“Don’t. He made his bed. Go sit in the tub, okay?”

“Why?”

“You won’t be able to hear in there. It’ll be like you’re in a bubble.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Hey, who called who for help here?”

I imagine her smiling, even though I’m not. I’ve got nothing to smile about.

I hear the shower curtain rings sliding over the rod. Then her breathing is louder.

“You in there now, Franks?”

“Yeah.”

She’ll have one arm wrapped around her knees, just like Caroline up on the roof. I see her in her nightgown, her dark hair hanging over her arms, down her back. Her skinny legs, mosquito-bitten, covered in scratches and sores. Bare toes dirty.

Summer Frankie. But it’s November, and when I talked to Mom on Thanksgiving she said there was snow on the ground. I haven’t seen my sister in three months.

“Should I call the police?” she asks.

I think of Bo’s crop, the plants up to his chin. I know it’s not like that now. He’s harvested for the season. Last time I talked to him he told me he was letting the Indica buds mature, but pretty soon he’s going to be heading down to California to sell.

He doesn’t usually keep any of it in the house. He knows the law. He taught me it’s essential to know what you can go down for, if you’re gonna go down. Never carry enough to get charged with felony possession.

Still. What if he’s not following his own rules? I don’t want to be responsible for calling the cops out to Bo’s house and getting him in deep shit. If he loses his job, goes to jail, then Mom probably loses hers, too, and we’re all screwed.

Frankie’s just a little girl, defenseless, huddled in the tub.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I was watching TV. Mom said to go to bed by nine, but there was this movie on and I knew she wasn’t going to be back, so I watched it, and then I heard him knocking. It was so loud, West.”

“Did you open the door for him?”

“No. Mom said not to.”

“Mom knows he’s back?”

“We ran into him in town. He’s living at the trailer.”

“He’s not. Franks—tell me you’re joking.”

“Yeah, he is! He says it’s his, and we got no right to keep him out of it.”

“That fucker. What happened to Hailey?”

“She moved in with her boyfriend.”

I put my cousin Hailey in that trailer on purpose. I paid up the lot rent for the whole school year. I wanted Mom and Frankie to have a place to go if things went to shit with Bo, but I never thought of this. I never thought I’d be paying for that lowlife son of a bitch to have a home base to terrorize my little sister from.

I shove my heels into the blanket, pressing against the springs. I’ve got my head down, elbows between my knees, and I wish I was with Frankie. I wish I was there for her.

I wish I was where I belong.

“What’s he saying?”

“What do you mean—now?”

“No, I mean, what did he say when he got there? What’s he want?”

“He says, ‘Come out, baby girl. Your daddy wants to see you.’ And he called Mom a bitch, but then he said he didn’t mean it, that she broke his heart and that crap.”

“Don’t go out there, Frankie.”

She huffs. “I know, West. I’m not stupid.”

“Did he sound mad?”

“He sounds drunk.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s all, like, slobbery.”

“Jesus.”

She’s silent a moment. “I don’t hear him pounding anymore.”

She’s more herself now. I think she feels better in the shower with the doors all locked. Plus, she likes knowing something I don’t know. Being the one who tells me things for a change.

“I’m going to see if his truck is still there.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

I hear the shower curtain again, and then her breath is quieter, more even, as she moves through the house to the curtain. “He’s gone.”

“Good. But keep everything locked up.”

“I will.”

We’re quiet. Just breathing.

“Stay with me awhile,” she says.

“As long as you need me.”

It’s hours before she’s asleep. We watch a movie together, talk about nothing—her petty friendship dramas, the new hair bands she got, a singer she loves who’s going to be in a movie she wants to go see next time Mom is off work.

I hang up, finally, to the sound of Frankie breathing, heavy and slow.

She’s safe. She’s fine.

But I feel like I’m falling, and there’s nothing solid for me to grab hold of.