“Yeah.” Static buzzed in my ears. I hadn’t known it was possible to feel so good.
“You didn’t make any noise.” His face was still buried in my neck, his words muffled.
“Sorry?”
He lifted his head. His hair stuck up in all directions; sex hair, I thought with a thrill. “I said, you didn’t make noise.”
“Should I have?”
He furrowed his thick brows and regarded at me with unfamiliar intensity. “You should if you want to.” He paused, reconsidered. “I should make you feel like you need to. Like, feel so good that you can’t help but to.”
He delivered this so seriously, with intensity I hadn’t even known he possessed—intensity I hadn’t thought him capable of—that laughing felt wrong, even profane. “Oh,” I said.
“Has anyone ever made you come, Imogene?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He grinned, and I realized, with a flush of embarrassment, that this of course meant that no one ever had. “You’re a sweetheart,” he said.
He nestled his face back into my neck. His breathing slowed; after a few minutes, I wondered if he had fallen asleep. His breath tickled my ear. He was a giant sack, with pointy ribs and coils of scratchy black fur on his chest. I thought again of wrapping my arms around his back, prone and useless as I was beneath him, but I was too afraid to wake him. If he woke, it would end.
But it had to end. We couldn’t wake like this, our sticky sweat-dried bodies stuck together like two slabs of deli meat, my toxic mouth in such close proximity to his nose, my makeup a beige smear on his pillow and spotty skin exposed. We couldn’t wake like this, because that would mean we had spent the night together, rather than simply joining our bodies in the wee hours of the morning when the line between dream world and reality is so fuzzy that nothing you do really counts anyway. Not to mention I was also developing an urgent need to pee.
It didn’t occur to me at the time the most pressing reason why I could not stay—that I’d be caught.
“Adam,” I whispered to the back of his sleeping head. And, when he didn’t answer, louder: “Adam!”
He snorted back into consciousness. “Huh?”
“I have to go.”
He shook his head, his scruff tickling my neck.
“No, Adam, I really should go.”
He rolled silently off my body. I felt newly naked and cold and desperate to see his face, but it was turned towards his wall. I scooted to the edge of his bed and reached for my clothes. I’d slid one leg into my underwear when suddenly Kip clutched me from behind. He bit my earlobe.
“I’m going to make you come, Imogene,” he said. Then, just as quickly, he turned back to the wall and slipped under his covers. By the time I’d dressed, he appeared to be fast asleep once again.
Me, I thought as I walked across the dead campus. He wanted to make me come. He wanted to make it good for me. Me.
* * *
I slept the whole next day, waking in brief dazed respites to the sound of the rain battering overhead. I could hear voices downstairs, their shouts and laughter mingling with my dreams.
“Your turn, Meggy.”
“Hey, what about me?”
“Oops, sorry, Raj. Go for it.”
Raj. I thought of his reaction to Chapin’s question about our relationship, how he’d said we barely even talked. I actually couldn’t remember the last time we’d spoken; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken to any of them. We were no longer a pack, grading our papers together, eating meals together. I ate alone in my bedroom. I slinked around the Hovel when everyone else was asleep. A few days before, I’d seen Babs a few paces ahead of me as I left Dale’s classroom, and I’d actually stopped, crouching down to idly rifle through my book bag until enough distance stretched between Babs and me that I wouldn’t be obligated to talk to her.
More accurately, they were still a pack; I just wasn’t a part of it. Perhaps I knew they were the kind of girls who would invite me into their fold if only I made the effort, but it felt better to pretend that I’d done all I could, to bask in self-pity rather than to try.
My phone, tucked beside me in bed, was my silent companion. I willed his name to appear on my screen. Kip, Kip, Kip. He’s still sleeping, I told myself. Then later, He’s studying. And over and over I slipped back into sleep, revisiting the night I’d spent with Kip in my dreams.
When a crack of thunder pulled me from sleep at a little past one in the morning and I reached over automatically to check my phone, I finally had a message waiting for me: Come over. It had been sent two minutes before; it was fate. Without a moment of hesitation, I slipped a bra under my T-shirt, pulled on a pair of yoga pants from the floor, and tiptoed to the bathroom to brush my teeth. My eyes were bright, my cheeks flushed, and the few spots I’d had the day before had faded, almost disappeared. I’d never woken from sleep looking this … was radiant the right word? Yes, radiant.
Then I sped across campus—dodging puddles, avoiding light, the rain drenching me in heavy, cold sheets—through the door of Perkins and up the stairs. Before I’d even fully awoken, I stood before Adam Kipling’s door, hair stuck to my face in dripping clumps, my hands shaking—from nerves, from cold, from the thrill—but ready nevertheless.
“Come in,” came his voice from within. I hadn’t even knocked yet. I hadn’t even texted him back to say I would come.
I opened the door. He lay naked on top of his sheets, hands laced behind his head, grinning.
“You’re wet,” he said.
I nodded. He had a knack for stating the obvious.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
He coolly watched me undress. His eyes followed me as I crossed the room towards him. He scooted over and patted the space next to him on the bed. And then, feeling as though only a few minutes had passed since our bodies were last stuck together, he pulled my face towards his and sucked me in.
* * *
The days that followed continued the same. The rain persisted, tireless and indifferent. The study period for midterms began that Monday, and the boys filled the library armed with books and notebooks, prepared to catch up on all that they had slept through throughout the semester in five days—though of course they would all still pass. Without any classes to teach or papers to grade, I slept away the days, thinking and dreaming of nothing but Kip, until I was summoned again to his room by night.
After we’d have sex—Bang? Fuck? Make love? I still wasn’t quite sure what kind of sex it was we were having—I’d make a map of his body. I’d trace it with my fingers, catalog it in my mind—the irritated bumps under his jaw, the pink jagged scar on his left elbow, his dry bony knees. He was frank about his body, talking about it like it was a something hanging on the wall, open for discussion. “My nipples are different sizes,” he said once. And, another time, “I have no butt. And it’s hairy, too. Look.”
And I looked, though of course I had before. I loved his nearly nonexistent glutes, flat and sunken in like deflated balloons and covered, like the rest of his body, in thick dark hair. I loved his bumps, his scars, the bones jutting from his skinny frame. He was the most captivating combination: objectively good-looking, yet not so untouchably attractive that he couldn’t be had. He wasn’t a movie star or model, in an airbrushed stratosphere all his own and worshiped from below; he was there, walking among the rest of us, as attractive and desirable as he was real and flawed.
We didn’t talk about my body like we did his; after having sex (Banging? Fucking? Making love?) I usually found a way to slip back beneath the sheets, to hug my arms around my chest, to find some way to cover up my nakedness. I didn’t feel the way about my body as I did the skin of my face—wanting to hide it, willing eyes away from it—but it still didn’t feel right to have it studied in the clinical way I took in his. It wasn’t until Sunday night, the night before midterms would begin and after the sixth time we’d had sex (Banged? Fucked? Made love?) that he even acknowledged
my body.
“You know, Imogene,” he said, sitting up in his bed, legs spread and half-soft penis flopped between them as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “you have a really nice body.”
“Do I?” I said.
He pulled me up onto my knees, propped me on his lap. He ran his hands down my sides and over my hips, looking at my body—no, leering at my body—as though it was his own, as though he owned it. The thought excited me.
“Yes,” he said, “you do.”
“Thanks.”
He laughed. “You’re a sweetheart.”
And then before I had to leave we did it again—whatever it was—and for the first time I felt it—the big It, the pulse, the spark—that compelled me to clamp my knees together and force from my throat a single helpless moan.
I was deep in sex—drugged, stunned. I’d never felt less like myself, and I couldn’t get enough. But with each postcoital contemplation of Kip’s bedroom ceiling, I knew I was getting deeper into something else. It would be ridiculous to call it love, but nothing else seemed to fit, except perhaps fear. Yes, I was afraid. I was deeply afraid.
* * *
I overslept the next day (despite sleeping all day, my overnight trysts had left me exhausted) and met up with the other apprentices in the dining hall unkempt and unshowered, with only time to paint over my blemishes with cover-up. I felt betrayed that none of them had woken me up, but then again, why should they have? I wasn’t a part of them anymore. They didn’t owe me anything.
I slopped oatmeal into a bowl and started towards their table. I couldn’t decide where, strategically, would be the best place to sit: Raj I hadn’t seen or spoken to since Chapin had exposed to him my cover story, and Chapin hadn’t acknowledged me since I told her the truth. I suspected she was angry that I had gone to Kip’s that night, that my desire to see him had superseded my desire for her consent. I chose a seat on the end, next to ReeAnn, who always seemed like a safe bet. I felt every head turn towards me. I stared down into my bowl. I hadn’t done anything, I told myself. I had no reason for feeling guilty.
“Hey, stranger!” ReeAnn said. “Long time no see.”
I forced a closed-mouth smile and swallowed a mouthful of oatmeal. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Hi.”
She persisted. “Where have you been?”
Her face was open and friendly, her questions innocuous. Relax, I told myself. “I’ve been busy, just really busy.” I nodded for emphasis. “Just trying to catch up on everything.”
“I totally know what you mean. Grad apps are kicking my ass.”
I kept nodding, even while my heart clenched. I’d forgotten about the impending Master’s program deadlines. I’d forgotten that things were still expected of me.
“What programs are you applying to?”
“I’m, um, torn between a few. Just working on general stuff right now.”
ReeAnn’s enthusiasm was indefatigable. “Totally, totally.”
“Are you guys talking about grad apps already?” Babs turned to us from ReeAnn’s other side. I felt a little flicker of hope. “I was working on mine until three this morning. I can’t even think about them again until I’ve had two cups of coffee.” My hope was quickly extinguished.
Table conversation turned to Master’s programs, with even Chapin looking up from her phone to join in. I concentrated on my oatmeal. The boys began to filter in, flipping through notecards and chattering nervously as they waited in line for bacon and eggs. Though Kip rarely made it to breakfast and my back was to the room, I felt the heat of the boys’ presence—of his potential presence—regardless. I took deep breaths and scooped mouthful after mouthful of too-hot goop into my mouth, fighting off the creeping feeling of terror as talk of the future swelled past.
* * *
After breakfast, we left for our classrooms, where exams would be distributed and the boys would have two hours to go off and complete them on their own. When I’d first heard about the system at lacrosse practice one September afternoon, I had thought it strange that the boys would be allowed to take their exams without any sort of supervision. “Doesn’t everyone just use their books?” I asked Clarence. He shook his head and said that would be cheating. “But I’m sure people do it anyway,” I said. He shook his head and said that everyone signed a waiver saying that they, under no circumstances, would use reading materials or other resources. “But what about the internet? Or their friends?” He shook his head and said those counted as other resources. “But c’mon. Not everyone must take that seriously.” Duggar overheard and answered for Clarence: “You don’t get it, Squeak. No one cheats here. End of story.”
In Dale’s room, most of the boys already sat at their desks, spending a few last minutes with their notes, ready to dash once exams were distributed. Dale sprung towards the door as soon as I entered, so quickly I couldn’t tell where he’d come from.
“Miss Abney,” he said with his usual manic grin. Then, his voice hushed, “Where are the exams?”
I blinked at him, wondering if he had misplaced them. “Sorry?”
“The exams, the midterm exams.” Dale ran his hand through his thin gray hair, his eyes popping out of his head, his manic grin seemingly stuck on his face. “Did you not see my email this morning? Or last night? Or all this week?”
My oatmeal churned sickeningly in my stomach. “Um…” Email. I’d forgotten about email. I’d forgotten that I had a job, that I had parents and a sister, little other than my name and what it felt like to have Adam Kipling on top of me.
“I asked you to get a draft to me by Friday.” He tilted his head and stared at me, as though just realizing some horrible truth. “Apprentices always write the exams, Imogene. You knew that, right? You wrote it, didn’t you?”
“Um.” This had to be a nightmare. There’s no way I could have forgotten something so essential.
“Imogene?”
“Um. It seems as though I … Um, the thing is…” My eyes were filling with tears. No, I couldn’t. Nothing would be more disgraceful than crying in that moment.
Dale sighed. “You don’t have it.”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t even do it.”
I shook my head again, feeling a tear slip down my cheek.
Dale turned to the class who, I then realized, had already been watching us curiously. “Class,” he said. “Take out your notebooks and write down the following questions. Okay? Number one.”
I turned towards the board and swiped a hand under my eye while Dale continued with his questions. I couldn’t look at them. Even though they were first years, I was sure they all knew—I had failed to do over the course of half a semester what Dale was now doing off the top of his head. Perhaps he had already prepared those questions, having expected me to fail. More likely, I’d just failed to complete what should have been a very easy task.
As the boys filed out of the room, Dale laid a hand on my shoulder, and the unexpectedness of his touch made me jump. “Imogene,” he said, “what’s going on?” I had expected anger, but his voice was soft. He was concerned; that was worse than anger.
“I’m sorry.” The tears continued to slip from my eyes, out of my control now. “I’m really sorry.”
He handed me the tissue box from his desk, and a sob burst from my chest. He hurried to the door to shut it before my crying could escape into the hallway. Then he pushed me gently towards the chair before his desk.
“Imogene,” he said, sitting on top of the desk in front of me, “tell me what’s going on with you.”
I clutched the tissue box in my hands without taking one, trying to slow my breath. “I’m sorry. I just … have a lot going on right now.”
He shook his head mournfully. I wondered what he thought that meant. Dying grandparents? Dying parents? Dead dog? This sympathy was unexpected, and it encouraged me.
“I’ll be better next week, I promise. It’s just been a … weird week.”
“We’ve all bee
n there,” Dale said. He reached out to touch my shoulder again. He had to lean forward off of his desk to do this, and his touch felt strange. His hair hung over his face as he smiled at me. I tugged a tissue from the box and blew my nose to keep from looking at him.
“Um.” I held the soiled tissue in my hand and peeked back up. “Are you going to tell Ms. McNally-Barnes about this?”
“Hmm.” He furrowed his brow, a pantomime of thinking hard, the pressure of his hand on my shoulder becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “You know what? I should, but I’m not going to. Because shit happens, you know?”
I nodded. I felt dizzy from all that had happened in the last few minutes.
“Just know, Imogene.” Dale’s stare became intense, reminding me strangely of Kip’s when he’d told me he wanted to make me come. “Just know you can always come to me if you need to talk. About anything.”
“Okay,” I said. I desperately wanted to throw away the tissue in my hand, as well as for him to release my shoulder.
“Okay.” He smiled and returned to his perch on the desk, my shoulder finally free from his grasp. “Go get some rest. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay,” I repeated. I handed him back his box of tissues and headed for the door. I looked back after I’d opened it to find he was watching me leave; I forced a smile and shut the door behind me.
* * *
I spent another full day in bed. I imagined that the mattress had begun to take the mold of my body, an Imogene-shaped well permanently printed in its foam. How did anyone ever get out of bed? I wondered. Forget our obligations, our jobs—why would we ever leave the comfort of this thing that knows our bodies so well? I knew I should check my email—who knew what other messages I could have in my inbox waiting for me?—and return that call to my mom that she had made three days before, but instead I drew my shades and burrowed deep under my blankets. I would deal with it all after I’d had some rest. That’s what I needed, according to Dale—some rest.
After dozing off and on for a few hours, my phone buzzed. I was surprised to see it was Kip—what could he want from me in the middle of the day?
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