How Are You Going to Save Yourself

by JM Holmes

  She stared directly at him. She actually cared. Back in high school, he used to tell his boys he skipped English class instead of admitting he was in the honors class.

  “I get it,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, good exists and wrong exists outside—they just exist. It’s not like it changes case to case.”

  He wanted to make the world safer for her and knew that admitting as much was foolish.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Like if something is wrong once, it’s wrong every other time.”

  A knock shook the car. “Get out!” A man’s voice.

  Rolls leaped out of himself before he turned to the noise, right outside his door.

  “Get out!” the man said again.

  Tayla opened the door quick and was into the morning. Rolls quickly locked the door after it shut.

  “Open it!”

  “Dad, stop!” Tayla yelled.

  Her father banged the driver’s-side door and pulled at the handle.

  “Get in the house!”

  “Dad, don’t!”

  He banged his fist again. “Get the fuck out!”

  Rolls knew how that convo would go and he didn’t feel like throwing hands with a forty-something-year-old. It was five fifteen a.m., too early for that shit. Plus, when her dad banged on the window, Rolls noticed how meaty the fucker’s fists were. His boys would never let him live it down if he got knocked out over this girl.

  Rolls looked into her father’s eyes, inches away, kept staring. Her father probably knew because he’d done the same shit years ago. He jerked at the handle and the plastic lever snapped free. Rolls flinched and scrambled to put the car in drive. He eased off, giving her dad time to back away from the car. The man spun and kicked the door with the heel of his sneaker. The move was smooth—made Rolls think it was a good play staying in the car.

  “If I see you again, I’ll break your fucking jaw!”

  When he was ten yards past, Rolls slowed and opened his window. His half-drunk pride got the best of him and he stuck his head out the window to say something, sobered up a bit in the cool morning air, and just spat instead.

  THE ONLY OTHER time Tayla had ever been grounded was when she walked down to the Blackstone alone at ten years old. Her dad said he’d grounded her so she would learn right from wrong. He said he’d grounded her because she knew better. Her mom had said they only wanted to keep her safe. Her mom took away her for fun books because she liked to read more than watch TV.

  This time she didn’t feel like she was being kept safe. She enjoyed spending time with Rolls. He had corny lines—they all did—but his mind would switch over and he would talk to her for hours about things unrelated to her eyes or lips or body. She didn’t think about bringing him home, not after that night, anyway, but she thought Candace would’ve liked him.

  She spent her punishment around the house reading Jane Austen or one of the other boring dead authors assigned to her for summer reading. She wanted to ask Rolls what to read. In between time, she volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club, which she liked because the kids were cute and rambunctious. On days when she felt the urge to drift, she’d lay out by her neighbor’s pool in the hot August sun pretending she didn’t need sunblock. Her parents hadn’t taken her phone, so she texted Rolls nonstop. A lot of Sorry, my dad is a lunatic texts.

  While she was grounded, at the beginning of August, Rolls sent a package using Britt’s name. Her parents gave it to her without question. The frame was dark wood, inside—a watercolor. Her figure was chestnut-colored, outlined in white, all on slightly beige paper. Her sundress was streaked with magenta and yellow, making the green-hazel of her eyes pop. Without any heavy strokes, her features looked like they were floating. Their initials and the date they’d met were written in messy script at the bottom. She thought he’d painted her slimmer in the picture. There was also a mixed CD of Barrington Levy and Tarrus Riley tracks with a few ’90s R&B jams thrown in—she loved the Ashanti and Big Pun jam.

  So many sweet-sounding tracks that made her run back the nights in his car and decide she would’ve done it different. Sometimes she wished she’d let it happen in the backseat, just in case he left for school before she could see him again. She talked to Candace, who said she’d been right to say no. Tayla tried to explain how Rolls made her feel.

  “You’ll feel that way again,” Candace told her. Tayla wasn’t sure. “You only get one first time and it shouldn’t be with a hood rat in the back of a hoopty.”

  “Don’t be bougie,” Tayla said.

  “You don’t be stupid. Lust comes and goes.”

  Tayla was quiet. They didn’t talk about much else. They had never been open about sex in her family.

  While grounded and bored, she started to touch herself for the first time. His face would come up out of the darkness of her imagination. His body was absent. She sat and focused on the gentle feeling, humming and warming and building in pulses through her body. She concentrated on the waves as if she could lose them if she didn’t. They became more intense, she pressed her fingers harder, small circles trying to coax Rakim’s face out of the darkness, and then her bladder felt full and she stopped, afraid to wet her sheets. She wanted to visit him at school and be introduced to his artist friends. She made up her mind to sneak out.

  ROLLS DIDN’T SAY shit to his boys, except that, no, he hadn’t smashed. They all wondered why she didn’t come around anymore and he played it off like it was nothing. He didn’t tell them about the texts, that he used smiley faces in the messages, that for some reason they’d gotten carried away talking in the car instead of fucking.

  Despite her age, he could see her at school with him, holding her own. He lied to his boys, said he needed some new, and they nodded and understood. They told him he better hit that before he left for school again—you know what’s gonna happen when you’re gone, right? Junior year? They’re gonna turn her ass out. He knew that wouldn’t happen, not to her, but he sat with the words for a while anyway. He’d been sitting with their words since grade school. It wasn’t his boys’ fault. He was weak enough to believe them. That was the problem.

  His dad asked what the hell had happened to the car.

  Rolls said he’d parked it at King’s Roast Beef with the cramped lot, and the dent was there when he came out.

  The handle?

  Rolls was silent.

  His next payday was short. There was no further conversation.

  He spent his days filling page after page with sketches of Tayla in different outfits—dresses, surgeon’s scrubs, judge’s robes, butt-naked with stripper heels, construction getups. His favorite was one of her flying a biplane with goggles and the aviator helmet you see in old movies. The curly spirals of her hair billowed from the edges of the helmet, and along the side of the plane, one word, Freedom.

  Then, on a Saturday in late August, she called and said to pick her up at the Boys and Girls Club.

  HE THOUGHT OF bringing flowers, but thought better. He was going to take her to Taco Bell, but as Tayla walked to the car, her red sundress made her look like she was levitating, and people didn’t levitate at Taco Bell. They went to Luke’s for four-dollar cheeseburgers instead. Not that people levitated at Luke’s, but at least they brought you menus when you sat down.

  Once they were at the table, the conversation was easy. They talked about Tayla’s parents and things at the camera store. Rolls told her he had to photograph a wedding with his dad later that day. He told her he was also getting into graphic design. They had a lot of free refills. Tayla seemed at ease. Whether the date was revenge on her father or not, he didn’t really care.

  In the car, she kissed him, and the fat softness of her lips pumped him up.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” she said.

  “What, like the park?”

  “Aww, that’s cute,” she said. She lowered her eyes.

  “It’s the middle of the day. There’s nowhere to go.”

  “Y
our loss,” she said. She put on her seat belt and Rolls backed out. Once he was on Exchange Street, he called Dub. Dub was home, but so were his mom, his little brother, and Gio. Rolls looked over at Tayla and said they could use Dub’s basement.

  She shrank into herself and was silent during the ride. Rolls glanced over a few times to see her chewing her hair. His eyes slid down to where the tops of her tits popped out of her sundress and below to where the looser fabric hid the folds of her stomach. Her brown-green eyes caught the summer sun and brightened. As they reached Division, she started to pick her nails. By the time they got near the Manor, he had to lean over to kiss her on the cheek. “It’ll be fun,” he said.

  THE BASEMENT WAS unfinished. The concrete was painted gray, with flakes and dirt and cobwebs everywhere. She thought the tight space made Rolls seem huge. There were some items stashed in the corners—broken bikes, old lawn mowers, a wheelbarrow with only one handle, some children’s toys from the lives of previous tenants, things forgotten.

  She touched his stomach lightly. “Here?” she said.

  He took in the place and watched her eyes dance around. Her sundress looked diminished.

  “Dirt is sexy,” he said. “You won’t even notice.”

  “This place is nasty,” she said.

  She rose to her tiptoes when he grabbed her ass.

  “Please,” he said. “I’ll get a blanket.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll be right back.”

  Before she could nod, he was gone, leaping up the stairs. She told herself it could be worse. It was the person, not the place. Plus, she knew girls who’d lost it on the third-floor steps at school, near where the old athletic equipment was kept. A boy had gotten her up there once. She’d seen the rows of half-sucked Jolly Ranchers on the ledge and left before anything happened.

  She turned back to the cobweb-covered windows, so small. It was bright and warm outside, but the cramped, narrow windows made it look like the room was shutting its eyes.

  Rolls came back and laid the quilt in the only spot it would fit. A support beam split the space. The blanket was soft—red and white. He leaned her down and knelt between her legs. He didn’t take her dress off, just flipped it up. He pulled his pants down until they hung in a bunch at his ankles. His feet reached off the edge of the blanket and he kept his shoes on. The belt buckle sounded sharp against the concrete floor. His hands were patient, though—the back of his hand, his fingernails running along the insides of her thighs, over her underwear. He was focused like he was sitting over a sketch. She thought his movements felt practiced.

  The lightest touch shifted her attention down, all the energy in her body moving to a single spot. She waited to feel the pressure of something harder, waited so long that wait turned into want. When the pressure came from the tip of his middle finger, she stopped watching him and tilted her head back.

  Rolls loved how her hair fell, how her eyes fluttered. He kissed her stomach and peeled her panties off.

  The stairs creaked and she twisted her head to see. “Rakim,” she whispered.

  He woke out of the dream. She was pointing.

  Dub and Gio stood in a small spot of sunlight near the stairs, their bodies so big they made Rolls look small. She flipped her dress down to cover herself. The sun cut across his friends’ faces. They both leaned back with their hands on their dicks. Their eyes were locked in.

  Rolls sat on his heels and stared down his boys. “The fuck?” he said. He wanted his words back. Wanted something more protective, harsher.

  She thought there was some laugh in his voice. For a minute she didn’t read it as weakness. She thought he was in on it.

  Dub pretended to cover his eyes. G got with it and mocked looking away too.

  “I’m not playing!” Rolls said.

  His boys didn’t move. He knew they’d keep pushing unless he took Tayla and left. She was sitting up, eyes moving back and forth between them. He tried to see his life five years in the future, drive space between him and Tayla, throw her into distant memory, the way most flings pass through our lives. His eyes fixed on her thighs, browner than the last time he’d seen her.

  Dub strode over and G lumbered behind him, too big for the space.

  “You need help?” Dub said. He smiled like he was reading his paycheck.

  Before Tayla could get up, Rolls was rubbing her shoulders.

  “No,” she said. It came out like a word learned from sex ed. She said it again.

  His hands were warm this time, on her face and neck.

  “It’s okay,” Rolls said. “Relax.”

  She wanted to get up and leave but didn’t. Her legs felt cold. She picked at the cotton of her folded dress, coarse like bandages.

  Rolls peeled the dress up again and kissed the inside of her thighs. The softness confused her. Some of her sister’s friends had been with several men at the same time, even bragged about it, though Candace called them sluts behind their backs. His lips were gentle. His cologne had an old scent.

  “Oh, shit, party,” Gio said.

  Dub laughed. She laughed too, nervously. It was someone else’s laugh from somewhere else—her mind racing. She focused on Gio’s face, light with light eyes. He was pretty, seemed gentle. Then she couldn’t believe she was thinking it and wanted to slap herself straight.

  She pulled Rolls’ head out of her lap. “I just want you,” she managed to say.

  Dub smiled and cocked his head. “Don’t hurt my feelings,” he said.

  Tayla looked at him, then back to Rolls. She bunched the dress between her fingers to keep them from sweating. It was the color of a cardinal, a shock of red cloth.

  Rolls thought about how soon he was leaving for school and how Tayla’s body curved, smooth-skinned. His boys were poison, but girls liked poison. His dad didn’t have enough of it.

  “You’re beautiful,” Rolls said. He searched her face, afraid she’d smell out his game. He took his dick out and began to work it slow.

  “Rakim,” she said again, but her voice was hoarse, muffled by something. She stared at his dick, then his face, disbelieving that this was going down. She grasped at Candace’s words for strength, thought of the way she made men fold. She peered through Dub’s legs to the stairs, as if someone else would stop this, but she knew that was a lie. She was the only one.

  Rolls watched Gio, who still stared at her, but his eyes seemed warm somehow, still, like he had a different fantasy in his mind. For a second they might have seen the same girl, they might have had the same flutter in their stomachs. Rolls wanted someone else to turn back, but the energy fed on itself. Gio knelt down on Tayla’s left, Dub on her right.

  All this for what? To avoid being called bitch-made?

  Dub began unzipping his pants and she turned toward the noise. “It’s all about you,” he said. He stared Tayla straight in the eye and she felt her body tense. They were all focused on her, but not really her, some imagined girl. Their eyes were buried in her body.

  Rolls started sweet-talking her, leaning to the wrong side—“It’ll be a wild story, just see how it feels.”

  Dub grabbed Tayla’s hand, wrapped her fingers around him, and started her in motion. His skin felt softer than she’d expected. She stared at Rakim like she could spit on him. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes and then she knew why. Still, some part of her believed he was in control, wanted to believe it. Like this was an adventure and he was a person who could take her out into the world. But he was too weak to look at her.

  They made a triangle around her, all on their knees, working themselves with their hands, their frames so large she could hardly see around them. Rolls was between her legs, one hand running the length of her bare thigh, the other keeping himself stiff. She crossed her arms over her chest in reflex, panicked, fantasized about kicking Rolls in the stomach and mashing the other two in her hands. There were footsteps on the stairs, slow and loud. She wanted to scream for help but swallowed the sound. Was she really afraid of these boys wh
o told corny jokes and dated high-schoolers? Rolls wasn’t sophisticated. He was grimy. She searched back to the day they’d met for signs, but she was stuck in their presence, the three of them, now. The footsteps trailed off outside. She tried to see where the noise was coming from, but the passage was obscured by Dub’s hairy leg. She tried to look past it but he was jiggling himself in her face and laughing.

  “Just say hello,” he said.

  She put a hand up to block him out.

  “Play nice,” he said, like this was normal.

  Her lips tightened, but they were all smiling. Rolls turned her head back. She searched for something soft or questioning or remorseful in his face. Something convincing? There was nothing sweet there. She turned away.

  But Rolls brushed the hair back from her ear and moved her head so she had to see his eyes again. He leaned over her and brought his lips to hers, felt their softness. Her legs were spread, heels near her ass, like butterfly wings. Then he let some of his weight on her and she lay back down. She flinched away from his kiss, but even his small frame over her was enough to make her feel pinned. He kept his lips on hers until she opened.

  A car started outside.

  Rakim? she said in his ear. She must’ve. He pulled his face back for a second, but the other two still knelt on either side of her head. She wanted to wake Rakim up from wherever he was hiding, make him see the situation as she saw it, as it was.

  Rolls ran the edge of his left thumb gently along her lips, told her again to relax. She tilted her head toward the toy trucks and plastic basketball hoop. Dub slipped the spaghetti strap of her dress down so her bra was exposed.

  Just get up and walk out, she told herself. Some part of her still wanted Rakim to take control. She was mad for that. She’d had nightmare fantasies before. In those, it’d always been a stranger, and she always fought hard. She looked up at Rakim, who smiled, full, not a smirk. He kissed her below her ear, then slid his face down her stomach, his breath warm through her thin dress. He slid his tongue into her and she felt a pang of pleasure.