The Female of the Species (15 page)

I'm curled into a ball to conserve heat, my pajama-pants-clad knees touching Alex's as our voices blend in the dark, pitched low and secretive so as not to wake my parents.

“Why is it called making out?” she asks.

This is the kind of thing Alex wonders about: instead of talking about making out, she wants to know the origin of the phrase. And I'm totally going to grill her on exactly what she thinks constitutes making out in a minute, but it's actually a decent question, and like everything Alex says, it insists you stop and think about it.

“I don't know,” I say. “Because you're definitely not
making
anything yet, and if it's hot and heavy there's
probably more
in
going on than
out
.” She giggles a little, telling me that she knows exactly what I mean, and that means it's my turn to ask questions.

I know Jack Fisher the same way he knows me—we grew up together, could identify each other's cars on the road and even give a casual wave when we meet. But beyond that I couldn't tell you if he's the kind of guy who's telling all the others about how far he gets with Alex, or if he keeps pussy talk on the down low. I don't know, and I don't know if Alex even understands that shit like that happens, that it's possible the feel of her nipples might be public knowledge now, or that the sounds she makes when she's in the dark alone with him might get reenacted in locker rooms.

Alex will mutilate people who slip things in my drinks, and I can't do that for her. But I can protect her in another way, help her navigate the twisty paths of her first relationship and try to stop her from getting played, or at least buffer the blow when it happens.

“So have you guys . . .”

“No,” she says, but doesn't offer anything else.

“I haven't either,” I tell her. “I was close, with Adam. But then we broke up.”

“As much as I catch Park looking at you, I think you'll have another opportunity soon.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “We've been texting, but nothing's,
you know, happened. Truth is, Adam's the only guy I've ever even kissed. So I'm not going to all-out bang Park the first time he tries anything. But it's not like I don't want to.”

“Me either,” Alex says. “And it doesn't have anything to do with my sister, either.”

We're quiet for a second, letting that settle in before she goes on.

“Do you think you'll be okay with being touched after what happened at the church?”

“I don't know,” I say, and it's the truth. “I haven't had a chance to find out yet.”

I've had a few nightmares, ones that end with the tweakers getting what they wanted. I wake up rolled in my blankets as if they were a cocoon, layers of cotton protecting me from the real world.

“Sex seems so intense,” Alex goes on. “A lot of people are casual about it, like putting part of someone else's body inside of your own isn't that big of a deal. I don't understand that. It's your genitals touching someone else's genitals.”

“Only you would describe sex like that,” I say.

“Well, that's what it is,” she shoots back.

“Yeah, and now I, like, never, ever want to do it.”

“Yes, you do,” she argues. “And I do too, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not something that
I'm going to do with Jack just because I'm his girlfriend and we're supposed to.”

“So in other words, you're not Branley Jacobs,” I say, going for a joke that falls flat. I hear it not cover the distance between us and immediately wish I hadn't said it.

“You shouldn't be that way about her,” Alex says. “I hear what people say and I bet half of it isn't even true. And even if it is—fine. She's no different from you and me; she wants to have sex. So let her.”

“Easy to say when it's not your boyfriend she's having sex with.”

“Was Adam your boyfriend when it happened, or had you already broken up?”

Technically I don't know, and the burn has faded. My words lack the heat they used to, like I'm saying things out of habit and not because I actually feel that way anymore. I think of Branley that day on her doorstep, and how she's been a little nicer to me in the halls, saying hi sometimes when there's really no reason why she has to.

“I kind of don't think so.”

“Me neither,” Alex says. “She likes boys, and she can get them. You were hurt by that, but it wasn't Branley who hurt you. It was Adam.”

“Fine,” I say. “But Branley and Jack used to hook up all the time, Alex. I mean, like, they cut their sexual teeth on each other's crotches and never really stopped even when
they were dating other people. So how would you feel if you found out Jack still had Branley on the side?”

“I'd be pissed,” she says. “But not at Branley. She doesn't owe me anything.”

“Would you, like, rip Jack's face off?”

She laughs, a loud one that she has to muffle with her hands. And part of me is a little bit shocked at that and part of me revels in it.

“No,” she says, like maybe she considered it for a second. “But I'd definitely punch him in the dick.”

My turn to laugh.

“So hey,” I say, finally finding a moment to talk about something that only she and I talk about. “Remember the day I hit Branley?”

“Uh, you only kind of hit Branley,” Alex corrects me, and I give her a little shove in the dark.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, and I told you the difference between thinking about hurting someone and actually hurting someone is—”

“Is like fucking huge, yeah,” I interrupt. “But here's something weird I've been thinking about.”

“Oh boy,” Alex says, and I shove her again.

“Shut up, I listen to all the weird shit you think about all the time.”

Alex makes a
pfft
sound in the dark.

“Okay, so, here's the thing. I realized that yeah, I
think about violence sometimes, but I fantasize about apologizing, too.”

“That's fucked up,” Alex says—and she hardly ever swears. “Explain.”

“Like if I see someone bullying somebody in the hall or whatever, it bothers me and I'll think about it a lot, like
a lot
. To the point where I replay it in my head and create this situation where I'm really nice to them, and tell them I'm sorry that happened or whatever, ask them to sit with us at lunch.”

Alex is quiet like she's thinking, so I keep going.

“My mom and dad get all these Christian magazines, right? And when I was little there were always pictures of kids in Africa with cleft palates on the back cover, and if you give five bucks or whatever they can fix this kid's face. There was this one girl who was a big mess, like her face was split in half, and I had this whole thing where I pretended I made Mom and Dad go to Africa and adopt her. She'd come home and live with me and we'd fix her face, but also she'd be my sister because I never had one, and I'd give her half my room and half my toys and half my clothes.

“And it was kind of screwed up because that made me feel better, you know? Like me thinking about doing a good thing took away all my guilt. Kind of like how me imagining hitting Branley helped me take care of wanting to without actually doing it.”

“Except in this case it's not a good thing because that girl in Africa benefits in no way from you daydreaming about being her hero,” Alex says. “If my dad only considered giving us his money instead of actually doing it, I'd be homeless and eating free lunch.”

“And your mom would have to drink bottom-shelf scotch,” I add.

Alex fake shudders. “Good thing we're flush.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“So did you send in five bucks?” Alex asks.

“No. I asked Mom if we could and she said that it was a stock photo that charity had been using since, like, the eighties and she didn't entirely trust where the money went, anyway.”

“That sucks,” Alex says.

“Yeah.”

The conversation dies, each of us drifting away. Alex's breathing evens out and I know she's asleep, but I can't get there myself. Every time I close my eyes I see that girl's cleft palate. I go ahead and pretend that I went to Africa and got her, that she came to live with me and we were like sisters, even though if Mom's right, that girl is probably twenty years older than me, or even dead by now.

But that's not going to help me sleep, so I pretend.

I pretend that I make the world a better place.

Newness wears off.

This is something I've learned about relationships. I've had more than a few run their course, the idiosyncrasies that were once endearing becoming annoying, the jump of my heart into my throat at the sight of her lessening to a skip, then a pause, then the bare recognition that at some point slips into dread, and you know it's time to end it.

It's different with Alex. The newness might have faded, which is inevitable, but it's grown into something better. The panic of not being able to come up with something to say to her has settled into the comfort of companionable silence, my hand resting on her knee, or her head on my chest. The frantic need to be near her
and know how she feels has morphed into an almost pleasant ache of missing her when she's not with me, because I know we'll be together again.

We're happily entangled with each other in my basement, a basketball game on the TV that neither one of us is watching, an empty pizza box on the floor that I really need to grab before it's obvious we have a mouse problem. But I don't want to unravel my fingers from her hair, or shift her off my chest.

There are things I haven't talked to her about yet, though. Things I keep wanting to mention, but am afraid to ruin whatever moment we're in. I tug on her hair to make sure she's awake, fully aware it would be my luck to say something important to a girl who's fast asleep. She sits up, and I immediately miss the pressure and warmth of her against me.

“What?” she asks, pulling her hair off her shoulders and into a ponytail.

“Do you remember when we met?” I ask.

It's an odd question to ask someone in a town this small. Chances are there was never a time we weren't in each other's lives, whether we knew it or not. We probably splashed each other in the kiddie area at the public pool, while our soaking-wet swim diapers sagged forever downward. We may have reached for each other from child seats in grocery carts as our
mothers passed each other at the store.

But I want to know if she remembers the night Anna was discovered, if she thinks of the version of me who participated in that, the guy with a fog in his brain and his pants around his ankles, a half-naked Branley underneath him. I want her to not remember, but I also want to rectify it if she does, prove to her and to me that's not who I am. Being with her has killed that guy.

“Do you mean in the guidance office?” she asks, and my heart lifts at least three feet out of my stomach.

I could say no and come clean, but she looks so happy right now, and bringing up Anna can't possibly be the start to a good conversation.

“Yeah,” I say.

“What about it?”

My mind is still in the woods that night, back when I was still a jackass and she still had normal posture, not always tense.

“Jack?” She taps my leg. “What about it?”

“You said you weren't going to college. Why not?” I blurt the first thing that comes to mind, my initial reaction to her statement months ago that I never got around to asking.

Her face closes immediately, the tiniest shift of muscles making it obvious even in the dim basement that the conversation is over before it even begins.

“I'm just not,” she says, the words even and measured.

I sit up and our legs unfold from each other, the heat we'd made evaporating quickly in the cool, dark basement air. “You've got the grades. You're smart as hell. And it's not like tuition would be a problem.”

Alex doesn't say anything, her eyes shifting to the ground.

I nudge her leg with mine, trying to reclaim the easy communication we've shared before. “I don't understand.”

“It's not for you to understand.”

The first stab of annoyance comes fast and hard, painful because it's a mar on the perfection of our relationship. I never wanted to feel this way. Not about Alex.

“Try to explain,” I say, my hand finding hers.

“My life isn't like yours,” she begins.

“I know,” I say too quickly. She closes her eyes and I know she just felt that stab, too. “Sorry,” I say. “Go on.”

“It's not like yours,” she says again. “You're supposed to move out among people, widen your horizons.”

“And you're not?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head emphatically. “It's better if I don't.”

“It's not better,” I argue. “What are you going to do? Get a job at the gas station? Waste your life flipping burgers?”

“Not better for me,” she says quietly. “It's better for others.”

I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard when I remember the sound of skin tearing, and Ray Parsons's blood on the church stones.

Her hand pulls away from mine, pointing at the empty pizza box.

“You've got mice.”

They scatter as I jump to my feet, receding into the shadows. I grab the box and take it upstairs to the trash, Alex following me and pulling her coat on. We kiss at the door, the conversation unfinished but over.

I lie in bed pondering the wound that the first stab of our relationship left behind, wondering if it's one that can heal or if it will be fatal. I think about the conversation that might have happened if I'd had the balls to ask if she remembered the night they found Anna, and if it would've gone better.

I text Alex and tell her good night, she responds with the same, and I hold my phone tightly, too aware that the present is all we have if I can't mention the past and she won't talk about the future.