Girls Only: Pajama Party

Pajama
Party

Armed and Ready.

That was the name of the nail polish Casey
was using to paint my toenails. It was a ghastly color, a brownish army green with
a pearlescent tint. But I consoled myself that it was better than the black
licorice she’d painted her own toenails with. I was more into pretty pink
polish with names like
Lovey Dovey
and
Jamaica Me Crazy
, but
Casey’s truth or dare question had hit far too close to home for my liking and
I’d taken the dare instead. So I was letting her paint my toenails
Baby-Shit-Brown—er,
Armed and Ready
. Anyway, it wasn’t like nail polish
remover hadn’t been invented yet.

“So, truth or dare?” I slurped Peanut
Butter Capt’n Crunch from my spoon, crunching happily. I’d won our
cereal-eating contest—Casey had barely made it through her second bowl—and this
was my prize. The entire box of Peanut Butter Capt’n Crunch was mine—all mine!
I hadn’t really eaten the stuff since we were thirteen or so, back when we used
to do sleepovers like this on a weekly basis, but so far I wasn’t disappointed
with my re-acquaintance with it. Unlike the Spaghetti-O’s we’d microwaved for
dinner. I shuddered just thinking about it. We’d fed those to the dog.

Casey kept teasing me that I was going to
regret all this in the morning when I was puking up Capt’n Crunch along with
all the wine we were drinking. Granted, the wine was definitely a new addition
to our last sleepover of the summer—maybe our last sleepover ever. That thought
made me sad and I gulped down the rest of my glass of wine, shuddering at the
bitter taste it left in my mouth and following it quickly with another spoonful
of cereal. Quite the combination!

“Truth.” Casey lean forward, holding her
long blonde hair out of the way so she could blow on my toes to dry the polish.
The sensation gave me chills.

I grinned at her response. We always said
“truth” first. Of course, if the question was too difficult to answer, we
switched to dare in an instant. It was technically against the rules, but we’d
played that way forever.

“How big is Lance’s dick?” I knew I’d
surprised her with the question, but I couldn’t help myself. I really, really
wanted to know.

“April,” she warned, putting the brush back
into the bottle and twisting it closed, tossing it into the plethora of bottles
jutting up haphazardly on the bedspread in a myriad of colors.

“Come on.” I leaned forward,
conspiratorial. “You used to tell me everything. So spill. Does Lance have a
nice, big…
lance
?” I waggled my eyebrows at her for effect.

She cleared her throat and shrugged. “It’s…
sufficient.”

“Sufficient?” I gaped at her, appalled. “You
poor, poor girl!”

“Oh shut up.” She grabbed the little
plastic tub off my night table and started putting the nail polish bottles
away. “Look who’s talking. You haven’t had a cock in over a year!”

“So let me live vicariously.” I grinned. “And
you know that’s not a real answer. I want a measurement.”

Casey sniffed, setting the full tub aside. “I’ve
never measured.”

“I bet
he
has. Every guy does.” I
wiggled my toes, testing the polish, making sure it was dry before hopping off
the bed. “I have an idea.”

“Where are you—?”

I ignored Casey’s question, running to my
mother’s room. No one was home. My mom and stepdad had gone to her high school
reunion thing three hours away and were staying there overnight. They trusted
me, and why wouldn’t they? I’d never given them any reason not to. They’d left
us alone during sleepovers for years, and the only trouble we’d gotten into was
eating too much pizza and watching movies until three in the morning. Besides,
I knew they’d rather have us at our house alone than at Casey’s house with her
drunken stepfather. He was always home—always out of work—while Casey’s mother
worked two jobs, one cleaning floors during the day at Target, the other at
night tending bar.

“April, what—?” Casey’s eyes widened when I
leapt back into the room and she saw what I was brandishing like a sword in my
left hand.

“Remember this?” We’d first discovered it
on a foray into my mother’s bedroom looking for make-up, jewelry and dress-up
clothes when were about thirteen.

She snorted laughter. “Who could forget
The
Terminator
?”

“So, using this as a model…” I plopped onto
the bed, tossing the monster dildo between us. It was at least a foot
long—maybe more—big, black and formidable. “How big is Lance’s cock?”

She picked up the toy, a little smirk on
her face, and I just knew she was remembering the first time we’d found it,
both of us giggling and horrified. What would you do with such a thing, we’d
wondered? Neither of us would have an experience with actual male genitalia for
years, and I have to admit, the first time I saw a real cock, I’d been a little
disappointed.

The Terminator
had given me very
distorted expectations!

“I can’t.” She put it down, shaking her
head. “Lance would kill me.”

“He doesn’t need to know.” I picked the toy
up, hefting it my hand. “Come on. Is it this big?” I slid my finger along the
veined length, about five inches from the tip. “This big?” I waggled my eyebrows,
going a little further, about eight inches now. “This big?”

I raised my eyebrows and smirked, holding
the whole, humungous thing between my palms.

“Dare! I’ll take the dare!” Casey countered,
vehemently shaking her head at me and batting the toy away when I leaned in
toward her with it.

“Okay, fine.” I twisted the knob at the
bottom of the dildo, making it hum to life. “I dare you to fuck yourself with
The
Terminator
.”

“April!” Her jaw dropped. She was truly
shocked. “You’re crazy!”

“So tell me then, how big is Lance’s dick?”
I had her cornered and we both knew it.

She was going to have to tell me, and once
she opened those floodgates, I was hoping for a deluge of information. We’d
always talked about our boyfriends and every little thing that happened on our
dates, from first kisses to rounding first base to first times. We shared
everything. Until Lance. What was it about this guy that made Casey clam up?

“You’re a brat, April Cohen!” she hissed at
me.

“It’s truth or dare, remember?” I raised my
eyebrows at her, wielding
The Terminator
menacingly. “I
double
-dog
dare you! If you’re not going to tell me the truth, you
have
to take the
dare.”

“I do not.” She stood and walked away,
taking the tub of nail polish, her back to me as she put it on my dresser, but
I could see her face in the mirror. I didn’t like that look—sad and a little…
scared? Of what?

I frowned and bit my lip, considering,
looking at my best friend in her UCLA sweats and t-shirt. This time next week,
she would be soaking up the California sunshine, and I’d be walking on the
campus of Boston U amidst the changing autumn colors. It would be the first
time since fourth grade music camp that we’d be separated for a significant
length of time.

“Well you know what this means.” I stood,
coming up behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror. I looked ready to go to
prom, aside from the baby-doll nightie, my hair all up and curled, make-up
perfect.

“No…” Casey’s voice trailed off, her eyes
widening slowly with dawning realization as a mischievous smile spread across
my face. “Nooo!”

But it was too late.

“Tickle penalty!” I grabbed for her as she
ran, catching the waistband of her sweats as she dove toward my bed.

Casey howled, twisting and laughing
already, even though I hadn’t touched her yet. Her sweats slipped further down
her hips as she made another attempt to get further away, already begging me,
“Please
no no no, don’t, not the tickle penalty, not the tickle penalty!
”

I leaned against her legs on the bed,
pinning her, getting ready for my tickle assault, when I glanced down and saw
the bruises. These weren’t just a few “Oops I ran into the coffee table” sort
of bruises either. These spread across her behind like a Canadian sunrise, all
oranges and blues and purples.

I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my
throat.

Casey looked back at me, wide-eyed,
horrified. “Get off me!”

“What happened?” I whispered. I couldn’t
take my eyes off the damage. Then I saw a tell-tale bruise on her hip as she
turned, her sweats pulling down further as she tried to get away—a large
handprint, definitely four fingerprints, like grip marks. A man’s hand. “Oh my
god, it was Lance, wasn’t it?”

I felt Casey’s whole body collapse beneath
me, boneless, face buried in her arms. I climbed to the side, stretching out
beside her on the bed, speechless. And furious. I’d been resentful of Lance and
the Casey-time he’d stolen from me all summer, but while my friend had grown
more and more distant, I’d never suspected anything like
this
.

“I’m going to kill that bastard,” I said
through clenched teeth, reaching out to stroke her fine, blonde hair.

“April,” Casey warned, turning her
tear-streaked face to look at me.

“Don’t ‘April’ me!” I scoffed. “He deserves
to be drawn and quartered!”

“I know.” Her voice was barely a whisper,
her eyes welling up with tears.

I leaned in close and pressed my forehead
to hers like we used to, hiding under the covers with a flashlight to read
Goosebumps books late into the night, making our blanket-tent warm with our
breath.

“That black eye you got last month wasn’t
from softball, was it?” I tucked a bit of blonde fluff behind her ear. There
was still a ghost of it around her eye socket.

She shook her head, miserable. “He stopped
leaving marks where people could see…”

I blinked, feeling my hand clenching into a
fist at the thought of him hurting her. “You can’t see him anymore.”

“I’m not.” She sniffed, wiping at an errant
tear. “This was… the last. Even his mother says he has ‘anger management
issues.’ Besides, I’m going away to school.”

“This is an ‘anger management’ issue like
Charlie Sheen has a drug problem!” I should have known. Casey had only been
with two other boys, and only one of them had done anything sexual with her.
Lance was her first real relationship. I was kicking myself for not seeing the
signs. “Did you tell him you’re breaking up with him?”

“I was afraid,” she whispered, her eyes
spilling over with tears. “I’m afraid.”

I put my arms around her, felt her
trembling, and tried to keep the rage in my chest from bursting out and chasing
Lance Dawson down like an animal. I tried not to dwell on what I wanted to do
to him—and how protracted and satisfying such torture might be. I couldn’t
believe I’d been jealous, that all this time I’d been dwelling on how
I
felt, missing out on time with my best friend, when I should have been paying
attention to
her,
noticing the signs—the freaking
obvious
signs!

“I’m so sorry.” I shook my head against
hers, closing my eyes and feeling them sting with my own tears.

“It’s not your fault.”

“He picked you instead of me,” I reminded
her—reminded us both.

“I know.” She winced. “I was so damned proud
of that.”

I remembered. She’d been so excited when he’d
asked her out, when he chose
her.
Casey was dainty and really quite
pretty, but she wasn’t overtly so. She was a sort of behind-her-glasses pretty,
under her baggy sweats and sweatshirts.

But that day she’d borrowed one of my
bikinis and her glasses had been tucked into her beach bag, and Lance, a tall,
tanned lifeguard with aviator sunglasses that hid his eyes, had seemed
particularly focused on her shyness, the way she cast her gaze down and smiled
at the sand, her cheeks pinking up when he talked to her.

Now I knew why.

“He picked you for a reason.” The words
burned my throat. I didn’t want to hurt her—but she had to know.

“Because I’m stupid.” Her lower lip
trembled and I touched it with my index finger.

“Because you’re vulnerable.”

She snorted. “Desperate.”

“Eager.” I rubbed her lower lip
thoughtfully with my thumb, remembering how bruised and swollen it had been
earlier this summer, how she’d claimed she’d run into the side of the bathroom
door in the middle of the night.

“Needy.”

I smiled. “Naïve.”

“Stupid.” She sniffed. “But I thought… I really
thought… that he was the only one who would ever want me.”

“Now
that’s
stupid.” I did it
without thinking. Or maybe I’d been thinking it all along. I leaned in and
kissed her, her lips soft and slightly salty from her tears. She tasted like
Spaghetti-Os and wine. She was delicious.

“What are you doing?” Casey breathed as we
parted.

“Showing you.” I lifted her t-shirt, heady
from the wine and intent on proving her wrong. I had to fix this thing somehow.
I should have protected her. I should have been there. How could I not have
seen what was happening? She was beautiful, she was perfect—and Lance was
definitely not the only person who would ever want her.

I wanted her.

I’d always wanted her.

“April…” Her whisper was a warning, but I
didn’t heed it. Instead, I trailed kisses up her quivering belly, finding her
braless, and it was no wonder. Her breasts were bruised too, dirty fingerprints
all over her, like tattoos. This is what she hadn’t wanted me to see, why she’d
refused to dress up tonight during our make-over session.

“Poor baby.” I kissed her bruises, every
one, while she watched, her face pained. “Am I hurting you?”

She shook her head, tracing one of the
bruises near her pale pink nipple with a black-painted nail. “He likes it
rough.”