I sat there, arms crossed in the back seat of the car, refusing to talk to Andrew and watching as the fields whipped by the window. Nothing was going to change my mind. I was going to stay a good girl, no matter what. No matter what I had to do, no matter who I had to convince. I knew I was capable. I had to be. Because if I wasn’t, I didn’t know what else would remain for me.
Chapter 2
Animal instincts
Donna bounced into the room, greeting me with a perky hello like she had been waiting for me to come through the door all day long.
"Hey," I replied glancing over my shoulder at her as I pulled more clothes out of my bag. Mom had tried to convince me to pack fun outfits, but I had shot her down. I wasn’t interested in anything but my usual safe options: long skirts, blouses that buttoned up to the throat, and hairbands to pull my long, wheat-colored hair back.
"I can’t believe you’re actually here!" she exclaimed excitedly leaping around me to land on the bed in the guest room I had been given to sleep on for the next few weeks. "We’re going to have so much fun.” She grinned and reached over to squeeze my hand.
Donna was twenty, the same age as me, though that seemed to be about all we had in common any more. She had cropped dark hair and mischievous blue eyes that glimmered in the late-afternoon sun. The last time I had seen her, we had been seventeen, and she had been as nervous as me about the thought of going off and striking out into the adult world. She had never had a boyfriend back then, though she was planning on heading out to college. So, I supposed she had that over me. Maybe that was why Mom had sent me out here because she thought someone a little more normal would be enough to keep me going. Get me out of my own head a little. I resented the very thought of it, even though I knew she was just trying to help.
But the Donna I had known back then had been more like me than the version I saw now. She had cut all her hair off, and I could see the hint of a tattoo peeking out over her low-slung jeans. She was dressed like she had come straight from the eighties. I loved the way she looked even though I would never admit it. Maybe because I knew there was no way in holy heck I could ever have pulled off an outfit like that without feeling like a fool.
But she seemed to move around like she knew she was the hottest thing in the world, and it was hard not to think she might be right. She swung her hips when she walked and tipped her head back when she laughed. The guys at her college campus must have been going crazy over her.
"I’m not sure about fun," I muttered to her without thinking as she lay on my bed.
Her eyebrows shot up.
"Hey, what’s wrong with fun?” she replied, tapping my arm. "You anti-fun all of a sudden?”
"Mom didn’t tell you why she sent me up here, did she?” I sighed.
She shook her head. "I thought you guys were just stopping by for a visit so she could get a break for a hot second," she teased. "Must be driving her crazy by now, with you still at home ..."
"Yeah, well, that’s certainly what she thinks," I replied.
"You mind if I ask you something?”
"Go ahead."
"Why are you still at home? I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense. As soon as I got out, it just … it felt like the whole world opened up for me, you know?”
The way she said it, spreading her arms out wide as though she was giving the entire planet a hug, made it sound a little enticing. But then I saw the glint of a piercing in her belly-button, and remembered that she wouldn’t have put it there for nobody to see. I wondered just how many times she had given herself away by now. Five? Ten? More? I hadn’t even kissed a boy, and she had probably lapped me a hundred times by now.
"I don’t want to leave home yet, that’s all," I replied firmly. "I’m happy there. I don’t see why I should move on."
"And that’s why you’ve been sent here, then? So you can see what life’s like on the other side?”
"I think that’s what she was going for, yes," I agreed. I decided to leave out the bit where I mentioned the clitoris-numbing surgery. After my mother’s reaction, it had been made abundantly clear to me that people didn’t get where I was coming from when it came to that.
"I think she’s done something brilliant," she replied. "I can show you the ropes! Show you how everything’s done. We can go out partying, get drunk, meet boys ..."
Honestly, even the mere mention of stuff like that made my body feel like it was seizing up. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. I looked at her outfit again, and tried to imagine myself in something similar--no, no, I would drop dead on the spot. People would take one look at me and know I didn’t belong. I had never so much as had a sniff of booze in my life. Lord knows what it would open up for me if I did. I still felt as though I was teetering on the edge of giving in to my baser desires, but there would be nothing to hold me back if I had something to take the edge off.
"Hey, calm down." Donna laughed, apparently seeing the panic written all over my face. "I’m just fooling with you. I won’t do anything you don’t want, okay?”
"Okay." I breathed a sigh of relief. "I don’t think that I would be a very good party buddy."
"Hey, everyone is once they get a couple of beers in them and learn to let loose," she assured me. "We’ll turn you into a party girl yet, don’t you worry!"
"I don’t think that’s quite what Mom was going for." I laughed. "She didn’t send me here just to have me come back as a worse version of myself."
"And what’s so wrong with partying?” she demanded. "There’s nothing wrong with it at all. Everyone does it. I bet your mom did, back in the day."
"And she was probably wearing an outfit like yours when she did," I joked.
She gasped in faux-shock at my playful insult. "I don’t know if I will ever recover from that savage burn," she replied, laying the back of her hand over her forehead like she was in a dead faint.
"I’m sure you’ll survive." I offered her a hand and pulled her upright. I still didn’t quite know what the I was doing here, but at least I was around her again. I enjoyed her company, even if I couldn’t quite relate to the person she had become since the last time we had seen one another.
"You want to go down for dinner?” she suggested. "Thom has cooked up a lasagna for us, and he’s a really good chef."
She always referred to her father by his first name--I supposed there was something friendly in their relationship, given that they had lived alone together for the last ten years or so since her mother had left. I couldn’t imagine having that kind of closeness with my own father. I hadn’t seen him beyond a few awkward meetings post-divorce that had tailed off by the time I turned sixteen. I didn’t want to see him anymore. I guess there was some part of me still fearful that he would take one look at me and see I had let him down in some foul way. His voice still lived on in my head, pulsing in my brain. I didn’t need to see him to feel his influence.
"Yeah, I guess I could eat." I hadn’t had much of an appetite since we’d left the house that morning, but some of the fear and nerves were lifting and I was starting to see how this could be a little fun for me. I didn’t have to take any of it in, for sure, but I could enjoy being away from the stress of my mother, the mounting pressure she put on me every time she peered over my shoulder to see what I was getting up to on the computer.