44 Chapters About 4 Men (4 page)

It was badass—not the house, obviously. The house was a dilapidated piece of shit. But Knight had the place all to himself and would actually let us hang out there after school. Peg would keep the fridge stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon, we could smoke inside, and she had cable. It was a teenage utopia.

Every afternoon, we—being the entire punk-rock lunch table crew—would head over to Peggy’s, cram ourselves into her itchy shapeless 1970s couches (me vying for a spot next to Lance), crack open some beers, and scream at the top of our lungs at whatever legless transsexual or little-person biker gang or kung fu hillbilly pimp happened to be on
Jerry Springer
that afternoon. All the while flicking Camel butts at the already overflowing ashtrays.

Knight usually spent the first hour or so letting the dog out and patching the place up, which gave me just enough time to get a good buzz on and work up a nice little flirt with the owner of the lap I was sitting on—not that it mattered. As soon as Knight finished his rounds, he’d flop into Peggy’s tobacco-colored steel-wool upholstered recliner with a PBR in hand and pin whichever poor fucker I was talking to with a glare so murderous that he’d be out the door before my bony ass even hit the ground.

This routine continued for weeks until, one day, I realized that it was just Knight and me. I knew the crowd had been dwindling, but I hadn’t realized just how much. I always rode with Knight to Peggy’s house because (A) I was fifteen and had no car, and (B) whenever anyone else had offered me a ride, Knight would immediately twist their arm behind their back and smash their face into the hood of the nearest car, T.J. Hooker–style, until they took it back.

I couldn’t even ride the bus home because I
technically
didn’t live in that school district.

By November of my sophomore year, Knight had single-handedly made himself my only means of after-school transportation without me even knowing it.

Every day after the final bell, whether I liked it or not, I would be sucked into the crowd of eager teenagers fleeing the building, twirled and tossed along like a spindly leaf in a stream, and deposited onto the front lawn, right at Knight’s feet. Leaning against the flagpole with his arms crossed, he looked like something out of the skinhead version of
The Outsiders
—tight white T-shirt, classic Levi’s 501s held up with a pair of thin red braces (skinny suspenders), black steel-toed combat boots, and a felonious gleam in his eye. The only things missing were a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve and hair.

Even though there was something unmistakably sexy about his iconic style, potent self-confidence, and potential for violence, I still wasn’t attracted to Knight—mostly due to my subconscious awareness that he might possibly kill me—but I had to admit, I liked the attention. Knowing that the entire school saw this modern-day Brando waiting for me, day in and day out, made me feel like I was a little bit of a badass, too.

I had always just been this quirky, perky artsy chick who had crazy hair and dressed like Gwen Stefani. I was somebody that everyone knew—because I stuck out like a sore thumb with my bright red or orange or purple waves, glittery eye shadow, and leopard-print velour stretch pants tucked into white Dr. Martens—but nobody of any real consequence.

But now…now I was
untouchable
.

I was also slowly becoming Knight’s
precious
.
His attention to me was so focused that I felt like an ant sizzling under a magnifying glass whenever he looked at me. It was as if he were memorizing the exact size, shape, and location of every freckle and zit on my virginal face. God, it made me squirm. I never had a problem making eye contact with people until I met
Knight
.

Now, sixteen years later, I still catch myself talking to people’s shirts.

At first, I was pretty freaked out about hanging out with Knight alone, but I had no idea how to avoid it. With no bus, no car, no one brave enough to risk the wrath of “Skeletor the skinhead” by offering me a ride, and both my parents at work (okay, one of my parents at work and one of my parents sleeping off a hangover), he had successfully made himself my only option.

And I went along with it because, well, I didn’t know what else to do. I had never interacted with someone so, so angry, or aggressive, or powerful before. My parents were peace-loving hippie potheads, for Christ’s sake. Nobody ever raised their voices or hands in anger at my house. Hell, most of the time, my parents couldn’t even raise their eyelids all the way.

Maybe it was the paranoia talking, but one thing my parents would do, practically every time I left the house, was warn me that there were people out there who liked to kidnap cute little girls like me and do bad things to them. It was drilled into my head.

See a creepy-looking van? Run! Some skeezy guy seems to be following you? Run! Somebody put his hands on you? Stomp on his foot, and knee him in the balls!

The way I saw it, I was one wrong move away from being chained up in Knight’s basement with a steady diet of semen and floggings for the next ten to twenty, so I’d try to play it cool. I went with Knight to Peggy’s house every day to keep him happy, and basically, I did everything I could think of to keep him strictly in the friend zone.

And you know what, Journal? It worked.

T
here, at Peggy’s house, without anyone else around, in the idle hours we spent drinking and smoking and watching daytime TV after school, I actually became friends with
Ronald McKnight
.

When we were alone, Knight would become a completely different person. He was sweet and candid and chivalrous. Knight would carry my backpack and open my beers and light all my cigarettes, like a
gentleman
. He would tickle me until I cried, and on occasion, he’d even remove the forty-pound steel-toed boots from my feet and rub my arches in slow, deliberate circles with his callous thumbs while we talked.

It was during these unusually intimate moments that I could sometimes get Knight to open up. I learned about the stepdad he hated, the anger he harbored toward his mother, and his real father whom he hadn’t seen since he was a kid. The whole time I thought I was breaking down Knight’s walls, but in reality he was the one chipping away at mine. Making me feel special. Giving me the illusion of safety.

Then, he pounced.

Dear Journal,

On one unusually warm December afternoon, I found myself at Peggy’s house, engaged in a particularly aggressive tickle fight with Knight. Well, it’d started as a tickle fight, but every time I wriggled away, that fucking ghost ninja would chase and recapture me. I made it from the couch to the floor, from the floor to the other side of the coffee table, from the other side of the coffee table to the recliner, and from the recliner to the patch of floor in front of Peggy’s 1950s era wood-paneled television set. With each successive recapture, my efforts to escape would become a little more forceful, a little more panicked. I went from tickling my way free to twisting my arm free to shoving him away and scrambling across the floor on all fours, but it only seemed to excite him more.

By the time Knight finally had me pinned on my back in front of the TV, it was clear that what had started as a flirty, fun exhilarating little chase had quickly devolved into a full contact game of cat and mouse. And now, the game was over. Other than my heaving chest and pounding heart, I was completely immobilized, ensnared by both Knight’s glacial stare and his impossibly strong arms, which were straining and pulsing against the taut sleeves of his Lonsdale T-shirt. It was in that moment that I realized just how stupid and reckless I’d been.

Knight and I weren’t friends. We were just predator and prey. He’d been hunting me for over a year, and my dumb ass just fell right into his trap.

I had two choices—fight a skinhead or submit and pray for mercy.

Without releasing me from his grip or gaze, Knight slowly lowered himself onto me, making his intention clear, and I surrendered. Adrenaline exploded through my body as I braced myself for something aggressive and potentially bloody to happen. Leaving my body to fend for itself, my consciousness floated up to the nicotine-stained popcorn ceiling above to watch the entire scene unfold through splayed fingers.

Rather than devouring me, like I feared, Knight placed a single, lingering kiss on my lips. The shock of his tenderness reeled my consciousness back in, like the snap of a stretched rubber band, and suddenly, I was alight with sensation—the potent scent of dryer sheets and musky cologne filling my lungs, warm lips on my lips, a hard chest on my chest, forceful arms pinning my scrawnier ones to my sides, and the taste of Winterfresh gum emerging, somehow, through the tangled flavors of PBR and cigarettes.

When he finally withdrew from that gentle peck, in yet another unexpected gesture, Knight rested his forehead on mine and released a long pained breath. I felt his grip on my tiny biceps release as well. Calloused hands slid down my arms, all the way to my balled little fists, which he slid up and over my head with no resistance. His movements were so controlled and his breathing so deliberate that it was as if he were calling on every ounce of self-control he had to keep from tearing me to pieces.

Oh, yes, we were definitely predator and prey.

I was sure he could feel my pulse vibrating in the air, radiating off of me like sound waves from a bass drum, as I lay there, suspended in thrilling trepidation. Once he regained his composure, Knight kissed me again.

I didn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Instead, all my resources had been redirected to my brain, which was struggling to form a coherent thought, once Knight’s tongue began swirling around my own in hypnotizing unhurried circles.

Once he released his grip on my wrists and gave my bottom lip one final appreciative suck, all the thoughts I couldn’t quite seem to form during our encounter came rushing into my mind at once. I didn’t know where to begin. I had only been kissed by two other boys, Colton and Brian, in my fifteen years on the planet and never,
ever
had it been like that. That was
hot
. That was—

Oh, fuck…what was that?

Still sprawled on the ground underneath an emotionally unstable bodybuilding skinhead, two notions finally wriggled themselves free from the tangles of my mind. One, Ronald McKnight was in love with me, and two, I was never going to escape.

Part of me loved how sparklingly special Knight made me feel and how passionate he was about me and even, to some extent, how domineering and intimidating and exciting
he was. But the other much bigger part of me was scared shitless and really, really wanted this whole thing to just be our little secret.

Maybe I could keep him at bay until he got bored with me. I certainly couldn’t reject him and risk winding up in
The Silence of the Lambs
–style well under Peggy’s house with my fingernails all bloody from trying to scale the walls. I also couldn’t be seen romantically with him in public.

Oh God, what would my friends think?

My BFF, Juliet, was half-black and half-Japanese, for Christ’s sake!

I couldn’t let people think I was dating a skinhead! This could not get out. This would not get out.

My little secret lasted all of about three days. As it turned out, Knight wanted to shout that shit from a mountaintop. He’d walk me
everywhere
, kiss me good-bye before every class, sit with his arm around me at lunch, and shoot icicle daggers from his eyes at any guy who so much as turned his head in my direction.

Shit, shit, shit.
Somehow, I had become Skeletor, the pet rattlesnake’s,
girlfriend
.

He’d write me love letters with disturbingly graphic illustrations during almost every class and bring me random gifts—a baggie full of Goldfish, a dandelion he’d picked on the way to school, a severed head—each morning.

As embarrassed as I was to be seen with him, Knight was amazingly unfazed by the attention he was drawing. For a guy whose entire reputation had been built on the image of being unapproachable and potentially lethal, Knight couldn’t have given less of a fuck who saw him carrying on like a damn fool, picking flowers and doodling flaming hearts all over his notebooks. I had just settled into a back row desk in my last period class to discreetly unwrap and read yet another intricately folded piece of paper from Knight when three words immediately jumped out from his hasty, psychotic I-have-your-daughter-now-give-me-my-money-style handwriting. He had scrawled something to the effect of: