by Emilia Finn
My brain is still too slow, too woozy and fucked-up, so my vision turns blurry. All I see is cascading blonde hair, and a little smudged mascara. Em looks fine after last night. Healthy. And if her father wasn’t ready to kick my ass, I suspect she’d be smiling and regaling me with tales of what I missed – or forgot – after I took off with Grace last night.
“EmKat…” My voice is croaky and soft, even to my own ears. But the scent of her shampoo, the way she somehow brings sunshine with her, rather than the darkness that wants to eat me up, helps clear up the whooshing in my stomach. “I’m sorry about—”
“No, stop.” She spins to face Bobby, moving so fast that her hair whips my chest. “Daddy. You need to get mad at me, not him. I’m the one who took a flask of vodka to the dance.”
Bobby’s eyes flash, first with shock, then with rage. They snap to me. “Seriously? We’re gonna lie now too?”
“No, Daddy!” Em tries again. “I really did. It was me, and I’m sorry. I was being dumb and impulsive and—”
“Be a man,” he says to me. “Accept your wrongdoings, accept the punishment, and earn her back.”
“Yes, sir.” I grab EmKat’s arms and shuffle her to the side, and when she’s out of the way, I stand taller and be the man I plan to be for the rest of my life. Brave, worthy, and Em’s protector. “I understand. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”
“Do whatever the fuck your mom wants you to do. Clean her house top to bottom, and don’t talk back. Not one single time.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Then you’ll come and clean my house too.”
“Daddy!” Em is horrified, embarrassed, and angry, all at once. “Absolutely not.”
“Go home, Emma Katherine. You’re not allowed to hang with Rob until he earns it back.”
“Daddy!”
The heavyweight fighter looks to his daughter and growls. “Don’t do it, baby. Don’t get your ass grounded because of this constant need to be his wingman.”
“But, Daddy,” she whimpers. “You don’t understand—”
“Move along, Em.” Mom crosses the kitchen and opens the liquor cabinet door, and grabbing out every bottle we have, she shakes her head, and slowly begins emptying every one into the sink. “It won’t happen again, B.” She sighs and watches as the liquid runs down the drain. “Alcohol will never again come from our house.”
Dad stands from his seat at the counter. The silent one in this grouping, the observant one, he pushes his chair in and leaves the kitchen with a shake of his head.
He’s disappointed, and though hurting any of these adults puts an ache in my very soul, disappointing my dad might be the worst of all.
All because I got caught up being jealous about one girl, and reacted by getting drunk with another.
Yeah, you a man, Rob. Well done.
My family has never been truly messy people, but years and years of buildup of dirt means the grout between our tiles isn’t white like it’s supposed to be.
Well… twelve or so hours ago, it wasn’t. But it sparkles now.
I work on my hands and knees, and though the tile hurt my knees at first, the sting long ago faded to a type of numbness, a background noise as my family exists around me. They do whatever it is we usually do on a weekend; bake, watch TV, hang out with the neighbors. But all the while, I remain on the floor with a sponge in my hands and a bucket of hot water never too far away.
The front door opens behind me, but I don’t turn around to see who it is. I stopped doing that hours ago. Instead, I keep working, and pray whoever is here ignores me. I’ve had enough of the heckling, the joking, the dumb jabs about me being on my knees.
But then my nose comes up, like a hound on the scent. It’s her, I know it is.
When I turn, I catch sight of EmKat, just like I knew I would. She’s showered since she was last here. Changed. Brushed out her elegant waves. Now she stands in jeans and a slouchy gym shirt that is tied at the side to make it fit better. Her feet are bare, her face, the same. Her eyes are bright, but bags underneath show how tired she truly is.
She makes her way across my wet tile in silence, a type of mourning burning in her eyes, and sitting on the very bottom step of the staircase, she wraps her arms around her legs, and breathes out a sigh of sadness.
“It’s fine.” I say it before she apologizes. “I’m sorry if I put you in danger last night. I swear, Em.” I toss my sponge to the floor and push up to sit on my haunches. “I was only gonna have one or two, but then shit got blurry, and I got messy.”
“You left with Grace.” Em’s voice cracks with something I’m not sure my tired brain can pinpoint. “You were dancing, and then kissing.” She swallows, and glances across to the empty living room.
Everyone is outside, playing, gossiping, hanging out. Which is probably why Em is here now. She waited all day until the parents got busy.
“Did you… uh…” She clears her throat, and glances everywhere but at me. “Um… word is out that you and Grace… Is it true?”
My uncomfortable truth squeezes my insides, so I grab my sponge and get back to work. “Word is out?”
“Yeah. It’s on social. Grace said she bagged you, and she was bragging about it.” She stops for a moment – long enough that I glance up and meet her sparkling eyes. “Is it true?”
I look down again, unable to remain upright under the pressure of her gaze, and scrub a spot of invisible dirt. “It’s true,” I admit with a rasp in my voice. “I got messy, then I got carried away. She was there, and she…”
I hate myself. More than I ever expected I would after losing my virginity. I mean, isn’t this every teenaged guy’s dream? To get it done, do it well, and if you can, do it with a hot, popular chick? So why do I feel gross? Why do I despise this new fact about myself?
“Yup,” I say simply.
Silence settles over us. It’s painful, suffocating, and dark.
But then EmKat shatters it, and me, when she murmurs, “Me too.”
My eyes snap up to hers. “What?”
She nods and forces a small, fake smile. “Calvin and I…” She draws a long breath until her chest expands. “He was nice, and a total gentleman. He can hold an intelligent conversation,” she rambles, “more intelligent than I gave him credit for. And then… well… we kissed. And…” She shrugs. “Ya know.”
“So you’re… you…” Why, in this moment in my life, does it feel like a million knives are stabbing me from the inside out? Why does it hurt so fucking much? “Wow. Both of us, on the same night.”
She snickers but it’s fake. I know it is. It’s her trying to deescalate a massive fucking argument. Even if that argument hasn’t yet begun. “Same night,” she murmurs. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Are you…” I glance over my shoulder to the front door to make sure no one is coming in, then back to Em. I study her with fresh eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurting or anything? Can I get you something?”
Her cheeks blaze, red and vibrant with embarrassment. “I’m fine. He was… um… gentle.”
My stomach threatens to revolt. It balls and swirls, like hot lava circling the drain. “I mean… you were safe, right?”
“Of course.” She looks anywhere but at me. At the spotless floor, the stairs, the doorway that leads to the living room. But then her eyes widen and snap back to mine. “You too, right? You were safe?”
“Definitely.” Of that, I’m completely and utterly sure. “I promise.”
Finally, she smiles a real smile and helps loosen the knot in my throat. “Can I sneak in tonight and hang out?”
I bark out a painful laugh and go back to scrubbing. “Your dad is literally going to kill me someday. You know that, right? He won’t want to, and he’ll be sorry for doing it. But it’s inevitable.”
“I’ll protect you,” Em whispers on a gentle laugh. “Promise.”
Emma
And Now I’m Seventeen
I stand under the bleachers on the
edge of our school’s running track. It’s sweltering hot, the humidity is sitting somewhere around three hundred percent, and there is no breeze to break any of it up. It makes my blood hotter than is safe. The air burns my eyes, and I have swampy – everything. My butt is sweaty, and the space under my boobs – boobs that grew another cup size over summer break – itches and perspires. My armpits are wet, and my socks are soggy.
It’s a totally glamorous look that makes the guys lust after me… not.
But still, I stand in the hotbox passing as shade, and with a Sharpie poised between my fingers, I graffiti the underside of the seats while Rob runs his laps in the sweltering and potentially life-endangering sun.
I mean, surely there are laws against this, right? There must be some kind of child protection that forbids the track coach from making Rob run all these miles in the heat.
I have one wireless headphone in my ear. This way, I have one ear for music, while the other remains empty to hear if Mrs. Crab comes racing in my direction to bust me for doodling on school property.
I may or may not have a reputation in the teacher’s lounge for graffiti. Mrs. Crab is the gossip, the ringleader of the single-woman cult trying to bring me down. The problem is that, one, two other teachers in that lounge are distant family to me, and they take up arms on my behalf, and two, my drawings are pretty fucking amazing. It’s not really graffiti if it enhances the landscape, but rather, art.
Suck it, Crabapple.
“Emma?”
I smile when a familiar voice calls my name, and since that voice is ‘safe’, I don’t stop drawing.
Calvin is gone, off to his fancy school that he doesn’t have to pay for, and word on social media is that he’s already… uh… adding notches to his headboard. Which is totally cool by me, considering he and I never had anything more than prom night. And the story I told Rob about those events… not entirely factual.
I’m not sure why I lied. It just happened. I blurted my words out before my brain had time to process, and then it was there, a proverbial elephant in the room, and I couldn’t take it back. So… I’ve run with it. And when I actually do lose my virginity, I just won’t tell Rob.
My wrist aches a little, since I’ve been drawing for the better part of an hour already, and my canvas is higher than my head, which means reaching up. But I work on the eyes. I tend toward realism in my work – not true portraits, but something cooler, like the selfies we take with our phones… with filters. Mrs. Crab needs my filters to make her look less beastly, so I make her eyes sparkle now, and her hair less ‘caught in a hurricane’, and when Trent Rogan stops behind me and sets his hands on my hips, I relax back into his half-hug and hum in the back of my throat.
Trent is a senior – I guess I have a thing for them – and he’s nice. The real kind of nice. He’s a sweetheart. He tutors freshmen in his spare time, and according to his entry in the school paper last year, he plans to become a teacher after graduation.
He’s getting started early, but he’s not entirely tunnel-visioned. He still makes time to date… me.
What we have is still kind of new, considering the school year has barely begun, but we caught up during the summer. We bumped into each other at Dixie’s ice cream parlor, we chatted for a second while Luke and Rob ordered for us all, and when Trent left, he did this smile, this thing with his eyes, that made me look twice. Then, a week later, we ran into each other at Dixie’s again, but this time, he came prepared. He friended me on social media just as soon as I gave him the green light to do so, and once that happened, he slid into my messages, and now, here we are.
“You’re drawing Mrs. Crab,” he chuckles by my ear. “Really?”
“She tried to bust me with detention our first day back.” My speech is a little garbled, considering my tongue is trapped between my teeth. It’s how I concentrate. It’s how I work. “She alleges,” I say the word with extra emphasis, “that I set the trash cans inside the science lab on fire. Though, considering she is neither a science teacher, nor a teacher of juniors, how the hell could she know what I do in science?”
“Well… did you do it?”
“Yes.” I laugh. “But it was an accident, and my first statement remains true. How could she know? At this point, I’m ready to call harassment and file some charges. Stalker sounds serious enough.”
“So for payback, you decide to immortalize her under the bleachers for all eternity?”
“Exactly.” I make her nose too big, her eyes too small. I make her lips paper thin, and her teeth a little crooked. “She’s a bitch who has literally nothing important to do with her time, so she picks on me.”
“If you’d stayed in our grade, you could be graduating by next summer.”
“If I’d stayed in your grade,” I counter, “Mrs. Crab and I would have already come to blows. I’d have tossed that bitch into the trash can before setting it on fire.”
“You said the fire was an accident.”
I burst out laughing. “It was. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it a second time. That bitch is lucky I flunked out of her class.”
“Rob!”
Luke’s commanding voice brings my gaze between the gaps in the bleachers. He stands about a hundred yards away in shorts and a shirt soaked in sweat. His hair droops and lays over his forehead. His cheek a fiery red from the heat. But where Rob should be by his side, he’s not.
It takes me a second, a fast study of the bodies on the track, for me to locate him… running this way.
“Ugh.” Trent’s hand remains on my hip, his chest pressed to my back, but his disappointment is palpable as Rob sprints toward us. “He’s gonna hit me again.”
“He’s not gonna hit you.” I rest my left hand on his, a type of protection, comfort, solidarity. “I’ll protect you.”
“He’s a trained fighter, Emma. He hurts when he hits.”
“He only hit because of a misunderstanding. He’s actually a pussycat most of the time. Totally chill. It’s Luke who’s more of a hitter.”
“And you hang with these overprotective clones all the damn time because…?”
“They’re family.”
I turn when Rob circles the bleachers and sprints to the end where he can enter. His breath comes fast, and I genuinely worry for his health. His face burns with heat, but under the rest is a distinct white that says he’s close to passing out.
“Hey, Fart. Wanna see where I’m up to?”
“You drawing?” He stalks forward, slow and steady, as he studies the hand on my hip. “Or are you necking in private?”
“Little bit of A,” I taunt him. “Little bit of B. Are you done out there?”
He glances through the gap I use to watch the runners, then back to me. “I’m done when I say I’m done.”
I laugh at his tough guy act. Like I said, he’s territorial. “So you’re not done? You’re gonna get slammed with detention when coach finds out you didn’t finish.”
He slows in front of me and Trent, glances over my shoulder, and repeats himself. “I’m done when I say I’m done.” Then he grabs me, yanks me out of Trent’s hold, and pulls me under his own dripping-with-sweat arm.
I would cringe, if this wasn’t a daily occurrence for me. Whether at school or at our family’s gym, we’re always sweaty, always smelly, and Rob and I are always together. Even Daddy has chilled out and let me have my best friend back.
“You missed the mole on Crab’s nose,” Rob tells me.
She doesn’t actually have one, but still, I snicker and add that small detail. “Can we go soon?” I ask. “I’m so sweaty I think I sprung a leak. I need water before I die.”
“Yeah, we can go.” He looks over my shoulder to Trent. “To the gym. But it’s closed to the public today, since we have that famous dude turning up to train.”
Shaking my head, I look to my sketch and grin. “To the gym,” I agree. “We can sit in Daddy’s office and wheel the air conditioner in. Summer is supposed to be over,
right? This heat is ridiculous.”
“I think it’s the last spike before cooler weather comes in.”
When I finish Crab’s newest details, Rob gently reaches out and takes my sharpie, and popping the cap on, he turns us away – away from my drawing, and away from my boyfriend. “Let’s go.”
I twist in Rob’s arm, turn to catch Trent’s dejected gaze. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Call me tonight?” He lifts his hand and actually does the phone signal with his thumb and little finger. “Please?”
“Sure. I’ll call around nine.” I wave, smile for him, and walk, only because Rob makes me.
“Turn around, EmKat. He’s weird.”
“He’s not weird.” But I do turn, and roll my eyes as I go. “He’s nice, he’s a gentleman, and the gym is not closed to the public today, dummy. No way is any famous fighter touring right now to spar in this sludgy heat.”
“I know. I just didn’t want him to tag along,” he chuckles. “What do you see in that idiot, anyway? His legs are too skinny.”
“Says the guy who’s yet to grow into his legs,” I joke. “And don’t even get started on me. Trent is nice, he’s smart, and he’s no Grace Risotto, the perpetual pogo stick.” I smirk and glance up to catch sight of the underside of Rob’s square jaw. “Everyone gets a bounce, no?”
“No.” He takes my bag from where I left it sitting on the concrete. My bag is black, which means it absorbs the summer heat and scorches anyone who touches it. But Rob slings it onto one shoulder anyway, then sweeping up his bag, he carries that one too. “Grace’s last name is not Risotto, for starters. And she knows you call her that.”
I shrug, because I have zero remorse for the things I say about her.
She asked Rob to be her boyfriend soon after prom; he agreed, they hooked up a couple times more in the summer – gag! – and then as soon as she went off to college, she started spamming the social media world about her slutty ways.
That would be fine with me, except for the fact she still expects to be Rob’s girlfriend – like she thinks zip codes dictate their fidelity. When she’s home, she’s all his, but when she’s away, she’s thirty other guys’ girl? Not on my watch.