“Everyone, Jailbait. Do you know how many modern musicians sample Shakespeare or retell his stories in song? The Beatles. Radiohead. Iron Maiden. Metallica.”
“Who?”
He shakes his head. “Okay, here’s one more your speed: Taylor Swift.”
“Does not.”
“Does too. ‘Love Story.’ Total rip-off of Romeo and Juliet. And I think a few others of hers, though I’m not really a Taylor Swift fan.”
“Oh, you’re right,” I say. “I remember the video now. You sure do know a lot about Taylor Swift for a biker dude.”
He laughs, and rests his hand on my head, his fingers tangling with my hair. On the ceiling above us, there’s an X-shaped crack. I reach up and follow it with my finger as I’ve done a hundred times before, this time taking it as a sign: X marks the spot where I’m here with Max Gordon. Just like I’m supposed to be.
“How do you know all those poems you quote?” I ask. “The plays. All the stuff in Hankins’ lit class?”
He shrugs. “Not all of it. Barely anything, really. But I will one day. I’m on a quest to read it all.”
“You are?”
He untangles his fingers, rolls onto his back, and pulls me decisively on top of him. I must look concerned, because he says, “Don’t worry, I just want to talk to you. Not do anything. But, yeah, Jailbait, I’m on a lot of quests, and, I won’t lie, you’re one of them. But in a good way. I like you. A lot. So, I want to touch you. I want to feel you. And, yes, I want to sleep with you—make love to you.” He makes a face at his words. “I want to be inside of you because I want to know every inch of you there is to know.” My stomach lurches, but he quickly adds, “Don’t worry. I don’t mean now, this second. But I’m a big boy, and you’re a big girl, right? And the things I want to do with you, they’re natural. They’re fun. I promise you that. And, it’s just skin. Fingers. Body parts. I want mine on you. In you. I want to make you feel good.”
His words take my breath away, make my cheeks burn, my heart race, and my insides melt and float away.
“I want that, too, Max,” I say, but who knows if he hears me. That last part is barely even sound.
About the whole “Jailbait” thing, Aubrey, let’s get that out of the way.
I know you thought it was crude, but he was only being funny, teasing because I was younger than him. A simple play on words.
It started because he was singing this song called “Jolene” that apparently Miley Cyrus sings. Except it’s not her song, but someone else’s, and really old. Anyway, at first he was singing it the right way, and then, instead of singing her name—Jolene—he started to sing mine, JL. “JL, JL, Jay-ay El, jay-ell”—like that, with a country twang, and he realized it sounded like “jail.”
“Hey, that’s what you are,” he had said, winking. “Jailbait. Since you keep reminding me how young and innocent you are.”
“I’m not reminding you,” I’d said. But, of course, I constantly did.
And you know the funny thing, Aubrey? Regardless of what you and those girls thought of me, Max was right. For as much as you and I fantasized about things in the safety of our bedrooms—your bedroom—in the end, I was way too innocent for my own good.
SUMMER
BEFORE SIXTH GRADE
“Wait, what are you doing, Aubs?” I ask. You’ve gotten up from your bed where we were just kissing pillows and playing pretend, to shut your bedroom door.
We’re alone. Your parents are at work, having decided we are finally old enough to be left here on our own during the day. But Ethan will be home from tennis camp any minute. “I don’t want him spying on us,” you say, rolling your eyes.
We’re playing Boyfriends, which used to be called House or Dress Up, but it’s taken more of a grown-up turn, so we don’t call it those other things anymore. It’s been months since we’ve bothered with the old trunk of clothes in your basement, where we used to fish out your mother’s dresses and pretend to go off to fake jobs, or fake restaurants and Broadway shows.
“Shhh, hold on. I have to show you something,” you say, turning the lock. “I got the idea from a video on YouTube.”
I watch you with the same suspicious look you watched me with last week, when I first suggested we practice kissing our invisible boyfriends for real. “Trust me, it works,” I had told you. “It makes you tingle in all sorts of places.” We’d spent countless hours since placing our open lips to the backs of our hands, moving our tongues in circles over the surface of our own soft skin. Then last week, we had advanced to using pillows as their bodies.
You cross to your desk where you moved Mary Lennox, so we had room to spread out on the top of your lacy bedspread.
“What are you doing with her?” I ask.
“You’ll see. Promise me you won’t get all weird.”
I had bought Mary Lennox for you last year at a garage sale, a present for your eleventh birthday, even though you were already too old for her. She was a vintage doll, still in her box, sealed up like new with a flowered dress, shiny black shoes, and dark curly hair.
You had gone nuts for her, like I knew you would. You still collected dolls back then. Naming her Mary Lennox after the character in The Secret Garden, you gave her the most prime real estate at the head of your bed.
Now, you carry her over and place her on top of your bed, lying down. Your face is serious, concentrating, as you lift up her dress to reveal bland white panties and a bare flat chest underneath.
“Promise you won’t tell,” you whisper, but it’s not a question; you know I am safe, that I am the person you can trust. “I call her Martin Leonard,” you say. “Only for this. And I take her dress up, so she feels like more of a boy.”
You crawl on top of her, position your body down over hers, your mouth on hers, and start kissing. After a minute, it’s like you forget I’m there and you let out these soft little moaning noises. Right there in front of me, you’re humping a life-sized doll.
I’ve never been more desperate to try anything.
When you finally stop, your cheeks are pink and warm. You get up.
“You want to try now?” you ask me.
“Okay,” I say.
I crawl onto her, my heart pounding, and press my lips to hers, disappointed at their hard plastic that has no give. Still, within minutes, I’m flushed and lost in it all, moving shamelessly against her like you were.
When I’m done, you put Mary Lennox back on your desk and lie down next to me, and we breathe side by side.
“Promise me you won’t ever tell. Not a word about Martin Leonard.”
“Okay, I won’t,” I say, relieved you didn’t hear me call her Ethan out loud.
LATE APRIL
TENTH GRADE
“Can we let them out?” Max asks. Mom has an appointment with Dr. Marsdan today, so I invited him over after school. We haven’t been together much since last week.
“Yeah.” I close my bedroom door, and wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss the back of his head, my lips lingering in his tousled hair.