The holidays with Mike’s family were different: the scent of pine filled the house, and Mike’s mother cooked a ham (I ate some to be polite; it was the first time I’d ever tasted pork), and he and his dad and Ryan tossed a football in the backyard. I felt like I was a guest star in an old black-and-white sitcom.
We were silent on the ride home. Mike turned on the radio, flipping until he found a song he liked the way he always did. It’s a short drive, but it still gave me plenty of time to think. This was the first time he had hit me, but there’d been things before that—pinches and tugs and squeezes. That was all just playing, right?
But—then why hadn’t I been surprised by the slap?
I didn’t kiss him goodbye like I usually did when he dropped me off. I was proud of myself for that. Like I was teaching him a lesson.
But the next morning, he was waiting in the driveway to take me to school as usual and neither of us mentioned what had happened the day before. Maybe I’d imagined it. Everything was back to normal—Mike held my hand between classes, kissed my neck at the lunch table while everyone watched, ate half my sandwich off my plate. For a while, I managed to convince myself that it had just been a bad dream.
I know that’s not what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to break up with him. To tell my parents. To at least not get in the car with him the next day. You’re not supposed to love a guy who hit you. But it felt like it had been a dream. What if it had been a dream? You’re not supposed to break up with a guy you love over a bad dream.
But then it happened again, and I never felt so wide awake.
Wednesday, April 12
Eleven
The Burnout
I let Hiram kiss me today. I’d like to say it was the first time, but it’s been going on ever since I started knocking on his car window in January, even though I had a boyfriend, which I guess makes me a slut in some people’s opinions.
Maybe even in my opinion, but I’m not going to think about that now.
Before that wet winter Thursday, I’d never actually spoken to Hiram. I knew who he was—it seemed like everyone knew who he was, like he’d been a fixture around the school forever even though he’s only one year older than I am and he transferred to North Bay in his sophomore year. He showed up to class (sometimes) and to parties (all the time). He was the school loser, the school burn-out, but he was always around for a good time.
It was raining that first time, not bright and clear like it is today. Knocking on his window was the sort of thing that would’ve scared me before. It was the sort of thing I would’ve asked my boyfriend to do for me, or at least I would’ve asked him to come with me while I did it. Or maybe it was actually the sort of thing I’d wait for my boyfriend to invite me to do with him. But this winter, things that used to scare me had started to seem a lot less frightening than they used to.
Now, with Hiram’s arms around me on this bright sunny spring day, I know I should be worried that someone might see, someone walking to his or her own car, parked somewhere close by, even though Hiram’s car is in the almost-empty far end of the parking lot. Someone could snap a photo, they could even live stream it for the whole world to see. What would my boyfriend do if he caught us together? Maybe he’d challenge Hiram to a fight, the way boys do sometimes, as though they were in prerevolutionary France and he was defending my honor in a duel.
But if I was worried about being caught, I wouldn’t have ever gotten into Hiram’s car to begin with. Just being there—here—at all is as scandalous as kissing him.
What kind of story could I come up with to explain what I’m doing here, kisses or no kisses? It’s wrong to lie, but they’d believe me, if I told a good enough story.
Or anyway, they would’ve believed me before. With everything else going on, I’m not sure they’d believe me now. Maybe they’d think I was only saying it because of what was happening with Mike. Like that one accusation had started a snowball effect or something.
In between kisses, it occurs to me that the name Hiram is about as different a name from Mike as you can get.
Mike Parker.
Hiram—I almost stop kissing him when I realize that I don’t know Hiram’s last name.
Hiram is a good kisser. Better than you’d expect him to be. Or anyway, better than I’d expected him to be. Hiram isn’t exactly traditionally handsome—another way he’s different from a golden boy like Mike Parker—but I’ve always found him attractive, maybe because he doesn’t seem to care about being traditionally handsome. He has a goatee—or is it a Vandyke, I can’t remember what the difference is—but somehow it never tickles my chin. It’s soft, silky, a few shades lighter than the almost black hair on top of his head. His lips are thin, but that makes his kisses gentle, tentative. With each kiss, it’s like he’s asking permission. Or maybe he’s just trying to keep me interested by kissing me so that it feels as if I’m saying yes, yes, yes, over and over again.
In fact, when Hiram touches me, I can barely feel it. Not just because he’s never, not once, been the one to slide my sweater off my shoulders or lift my shirt to my chest—come to think of it, was he the one who kissed me first or the other way around?—but because his touch on my skin is featherlight, cool and soft. I shiver.
“You cold?” Hiram asks. He keeps his lips so close that I can feel them move when he speaks.
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
I nod, but he doesn’t go back to kissing me until I say out loud, “I’m okay.”
I hear the bell ring in the distance. Lunch is over. I have to get to class.
“I better go.”
Hiram nods. “I’ll be here,” he says. He’s never offered to drive me home after school, but I’m pretty sure he’d do it if I asked. I put on my jacket, and press my hands into the worn seat below me. It’s upholstered in a gray fake-velvety material that must have been soft once, but is now spiky, as if someone spilled juice on it and never bothered to wash it properly, like I did once to one of my old stuffed animals. There’s a burn mark below my left knee, maybe a remnant of some other girl who sat here. A girl who wasn’t as careful as I am.
I get out of the car and close the door behind me. Before it slams shut, I hear Hiram say, “I would never hurt you, you know.”
My back is to him so I’m not sure whether Hiram can see that I’m nodding in agreement.
Not all guys are like Mike Parker.
I know that.
Thursday, April 13
Twelve
The Bulimic
At school today, I heard someone saying that maybe Mike’s dad beat up his mom, like that would’ve explained everything, if Mike learned from example. They said of course that wouldn’t excuse it (our student body prides itself on being sensitive and thoughtful, it’s practically in the school catalog), but at least then we’d know why Mike did it. (If he did it. No one said it, but the words still hung in the air like a thought bubble in a cartoon.)