by Lucas, Helen
What would the town say? Everyone at school…
I didn’t care, at that moment. Let them talk behind my back. Let them make fun of me, let them treat me like a common whore—I didn’t care anymore. I was done with them, done with my father, done with this two-bit little town.
I had found Damien, after all.
And I would hold onto him for as long as I could. Whatever that meant…
DAMIEN
Sarah and I got home late. Fortunately, her father was already passed out, drunk. Dakota was too—we peeked into her room and saw her snoring, loudly, brutally, her little mouth hanging open, her dress—if you could even call it that, it was so short—more like a long shirt, if even that—pulled up, revealing her pink, little-girl panties—which displayed a tell-tale wet-spot.
“I’ll need to find who’s been doing this to her,” I growled as we slid the door closed.
“She went off the deep end last year,” Sarah murmured. “As soon as she hit puberty—really lost her mind. Staying out late every single night. She used to be a great kid. Straight A’s and everything. Now, her teachers call the house at least once a day to let us know that she hasn’t shown up for class.”
I felt my face contort darkly.
“She’s family now,” I said softly, taking Sarah’s hand. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Don’t get into too much trouble,” she whispered, hugging me. I felt her breasts press against my chest, smelled her perfume, mixed with the sweat of our love-making.
She was family now too—Sarah was. What did that mean for me? I hadn’t decided yet. I felt my cock hardening and I had to do everything I could to refrain from grabbing her by that lovely little ass of hers, from dragging her into her room, throwing her down on the bed, and conquering her once more, making her scream into my hand so we didn’t wake up the whole goddamned house—hell, the whole fucking neighborhood.
“But a little trouble is okay, right?” I murmured, smirking, a note of mischief in my voice. I couldn’t help myself.
“Just a little,” she said, returning my smile, even though I could tell that she was still troubled.
I leaned in for a kiss and she brushed me to the side, my lips finding her soft, smooth cheek. I was amazed at how sexy, how arousing the smooth softness of her cheek could be… But I knew what that gesture meant. Knew that she wanted me to stop, to take my time.
“Damien, we need to slow down… We just went so far tonight, babe…” she whispered, though she didn’t let me go, still letting me hold her tight—hold her in the house she had grown up in. The house she had hated every since she was a kid—I could see it in her eyes, see it in the tilt of her head as she looked around, hating every piece of the house, hating the way the lights hung and the feel of the carpet on our bare feet—we had tossed out shoes off as soon as we got home, our feet were so tired from dancing by the end of the time; of course, she had worn some absurd shoes, the kinds girls always wear to dances and stupid things like that—while my feet ached from fighting.
“Fine, we’ll slow down,” I conceded, waiting for her to pull away from me. But she didn’t.
“I’m scared,” she said finally. “I have something now that I thought I would never have. And I don’t want to lose it.”
“So don’t lose it.”
“But you can’t promise that I won’t lose it. That I won’t lose you. My life is about to change, like, impossibly next year. Yours too, if you get your GED.”
“We’ll take it one day at a time,” I whispered, leaning in for another kiss. She brushed me to the side once more, which I expected—I pressed my lips gently into her earlobe as she leaned her chin on my shoulder, her make up rubbing off on my neck and collar.
“Fine. One day at a time.”
“We’ll think about things tomorrow. Until then…”
“Goodnight, bro,” Sarah whispered finally, letting me go—though, as she let me go, she stood on her toes to kiss me her lips hot and needy.
She drifted down the hall, to her room. As I turned, I saw Dakota’s face, wide-eyed, staring.
“What the hell are you looking at?” I growled without a second thought.
“That was one hell of a goodnight kiss,” Dakota murmured. I ducked into her room, shut the door, and flicked on the lights. She was still drunk, I could tell—though sobering up. She winced as the light hit her eyes and I grabbed a chair, taking a seat across from her bed, where I could stare her down.
“Turn off the light, Jesus Christ…” Dakota murmured. “Don’t you know what time it is?”
“Time for you to listen up, hun,” I whispered. Dakota’s watery, reddened, puffy eyes stared back into mine.
“What the hell were you doing making out with Sarah?” she said finally. “That’s not right.”
“And what you do is right?”
Dakota looked away from me.
“I didn’t say that.”
I grabbed her face by the chin and forced her to look at me.
“Listen to me, kiddo. What you’re up to—that ain’t right. What those boys are doing to you—I don’t know who the hell they are, how old they are—that ain’t right.”
“Oh, shut you. You’re the one getting all up in—what’s it called? Incest?”
I scowled. I wanted to slap this kid, but I knew sure as hell that wouldn’t help things.
“There’s gonna’ be hell to pay if you come home drunk like this again.”
“And what about you fucking Sarah?” Dakota growled.
“What makes you…”
“Oh, please,” she said, rolling her eyes. If she hadn’t been totally sober and awake before, she certainly was now. “I can tell when a girl’s just gotten reamed. From experience, if you want to know.”
“Fine. What are you going to do about it?” I said in exasperation. “Go to your father? My mom?”
Dakota’s face softened.
“No, Jesus, of course not. Sarah seemed… Happy… With you. I wouldn’t do that to her. Just… You know it’s weird.”
“I won’t argue with you on that.”
“So, I don’t know. Just lay off me.”
“Not going to do that either, kiddo,” I whispered, patting her cheek instead of slapping her. “The big difference between me and Sarah and you is that we’re adults.”
Dakota groaned and dove under the covers.
“God, that’s what grown-ups always say. You’re the worst.”
I just laughed and drifted towards the door.
“You get some sleep, and try to sober up before your dad sees you.”
“Oh, he doesn’t fucking care,” Dakota muttered.
“Fine. But I care.”
“Fuck you.”
“Good night, hun.”
“Go to hell.”
I could tell it was going to take a while longer to reach her. I just hoped we could get her on the right path before she turned out like… Jenna.
I went back to my room, sloughed off my tuxedo jacket, and unbuttoned my shirt a few buttons down. But before I could go any further, I found my hand reaching into my pocket, almost as if it had a mind of its own, and taking hold of my wallet.
I reached into it, and found her picture: the two of us, smiling, only… What was it now? It would have been two summers ago.
Two summers. Almost two years since she’d… Since…
How could I ever tell Sarah about Jenna?
It had happened when I was in basic training, back in the States—before I deployed, before I knew what war was, how terrible it was, and what was worse—coming back afterwards.
Even now, thinking about it, I felt the ache in my ribs from where they had been broken by the grenade, felt the burns start to itch, as if I had bugs crawling all over my skin…
She was beautiful in all the worst ways—too skinny, with bright blue eyes that were too big—so big that they looked into your soul, into your heart, could see exactly what you wanted, what you needed in life.
; And then? Then, it was up to her whether or not she gave that to you. That was the kicker. She could lift you up, or she could tear you down, with one glance, one shake of her blonde hair, shoulder length and always a little messy, like she was already late for something.
My bunk mate described her as a hot mess, and I’d have to agree with him. But she was the first girl I’d ever fallen in love with. And I fell hard.
Weekends were devoted to her, so long as I didn’t have any other duties on base—any duties that were mandatory or which I couldn’t sneak out of, at least. Hard partying, shots of Jägermeister discoloring our lips as I tasted hers, as I inhaled the deep, bitter scent of cheap cigarettes that always seemed to cling to her clothes, to her hair, to her very being—even when she hadn’t smoked in days.
Her drug of choice was different, as you could easily tell from the marks on her arms. She worked at a bar in town, universally agreed upon by everyone at the base to be the worst of the worst, the most hellish dive south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But hell if I didn’t make it my usual watering hole as soon as I rolled in.
I was young, and I was mad, and I suddenly had more money than I had ever had in my life. Sure, it wasn’t much—but Uncle Sam was paying my room and board, and he gave me a suit to wear to work five days out of the week, so I had money to burn. All the guys did—when you drive into a military town, you’ll see the tell-tale signs: the bars, the auto dealerships, the pawn shops—here’s how a usual night goes: you get liquored up with some friends, stumble over to a Cadillac dealership just as it’s closing (they always seemed to close late on Friday nights, and I’m sure for this very reason). A greasy looking man in an ill-fitting suit, wrinkled as hell like he just unpacked it after a cross-country flight, meets you, tries not very hard to get you to leave, and then agrees to show you some of the newest models, since you’re a boy in uniform and you’re doing so much for the country.
Before you know it, he’s got you sitting down at the negotiating table, but you’re in no shape to negotiate. You sign a lease that eats away half your pay-check or more, and you’ll be paying off that lease for longer than you’re in the service. It might work out, so long as you get a good job later on, so long as you never have a wife and kids, so long as you never go to school and need to stop working, and so long as you’ll keep the car for ten, fifteen years, and it never breaks down, never needs no sort of repairs.
But those are a lot of so long ases, and I’ve seen plenty of guys finish up their trek a month or six or a year later, at the next shop down the road—a pawn shop, where they unload the car for damn near nothing, and certainly less than what they’re paying on the lease.
That was the world Jenna lived in—a place where everything and everyone got used up and spit out when you couldn’t afford them no more.
She had started using, she told me, when she started working at the bar—Harry’s? Rick’s? Something like that—a name you would never remember. She had been seventeen, or even sixteen, by my reckoning—using smack to get through long shifts, to relax afterwards, to have a good time with whichever soldier she decided to take back to her mother’s trailer.
It was me one night—the night I lost my virginity, gasping into her cigarette-scented hair in her tiny room as I rode her, pounding her as hard as I thought she could take, though for her, it was damn near nothing at that point. Afterwards, she held me tight and then she pushed my head down and told me what to do as she used me, used my mouth, used my lips to take her own pleasure, finishing up with a gasping, squealing orgasm that I worried would wake up her mother.
But no. Her mother was fast asleep, drunk and on the toilet. She wouldn’t be waking up for another four or five hours. Four or five hours at least.
We made love hard and fast, like animals in heat. Like I said, she showed me what to do. She taught me things I didn’t know, things I had no way of knowing, things that drove me wild to know, knowing how to drive her wild.
Those were our weekends. Even as she deteriorated.
Even as I watched her body waste away before my eyes, her own eyes growing larger in her skull, becoming deeper set as her body seemed to eat itself, consuming her own flesh relentlessly, horrifically.
We broke up for the third time a week before I was supposed to deploy. And that was the last time I saw her.
Just about the last time anyone else ever saw her: I found out from a few buddies still in training weeks later that she had overdosed within a few days after the break up.
No one even thought to tell me.
Or maybe they were trying to protect me.
Whatever it was, I hated it—hated losing her, hated the thought of how her final moments must have been: strung out on a couch, the couch of someone who didn’t know her or care about her—this was her dealer—her arms scratched up, torn up, destroyed by needles, feeling her life’s energies slip away as she disappeared into the darkness of the final abyss…
That was the path that I knew waited for Dakota if she didn’t stop now. She was family. I couldn’t let it happen to her.
If not for her… Then for Sarah.
SARAH
Damien and I avoided each other on Sunday, as if out of a pre-existing agreement. I had to go to work anyway, and god knows I was already exhausted from my wild weekend—there was no way I had the energy for a long, drawn out discussion about our relationship or the argument that might result from it…
And there was no way I had the energy for the passionate encounter that might come next. There was no way I could take Damien again: my body was already sore and aching from our lovemaking, after all… My flesh was swollen and throbbed with each step I took as I arrived at my job.
I work in a pet store on the other side of town. Sundays are usually pretty busy days, though I rarely actually have to do much of anything: it’s mostly families with kids who come. The kids want to look at the fish, the gerbils and hamsters, and when it’s puppy season, you can bet we’ll be packed with little whipper-snappers begging their parents for a new dog…
But today, it was surprisingly quiet. And that was good, because I needed the rest.
As I arrived, I donned my green smock, imagining what Damien would think if he saw me wearing this dowdy thing. Well, he didn’t need to be with me all the time.
Mitch arrived after an uneventful hour with a big bag of French fries and two milk shakes. We split the fries and I told him about last night.
“Oh. My. GOD,” he all but screamed, covering his own mouth as if to keep from wailing.
“God, keep it down…” I murmured. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Um, yeah, yeah, it IS a big deal,” Mitch declared. “Not only did you just lose your virginity, FINALLY, but you…”
He looked around, catching sight of a family of four standing not far from us—the parents glowered disapprovingly at my friend and Mitch smiled sheepishly, waving at them and lowering his voice.
“But you lost it to your brother. That’s incest, Sarah! You’re so bad!”
“No, it’s not incest,” I scowled. “It’s not. He’s my stepbrother.”
“That’s almost as bad…” Mitch murmured, looking away from him. His black eye from the previous night was still visible. I decided to change the subject.
“Does it hurt? Your eye, I mean.”
“Yeah. No. I mean, it’s fine,” he said with a sigh, though I could see tears shining in his eyes. He had been bullied ever since we were kids, since before he came out. But now, it seemed to be getting worse and worse.
“You should tell the school,” I offered, for like the seventh time. “After all, this is, like, a violation of your civil rights…”
Mitch just rolled his eyes.
“Honey, this is Laramie, Georgia. They don’t give a damn about a sixteen-year old fag’s civil rights. They might just send me to Pray-Away-the-Gay camp. Besides… Teddy is the police chief’s son. There’s no way they’d do something that might jeopardize his chances of going t
o some big state school and playing football and date raping his way to graduation.”
I bit my lip. I knew he was right, but the truth sucks to hear sometimes. Teddy was indeed the son of Police Chief Oliver Richards. Richards was a good friend of my father’s, which made sense—a lawyer and a cop, they had had a number of run-ins over the years and eventually, I knew, developed a respect that soon became—collaboration? That was the wrong word. But I knew that unless it had the approval of my father and Richards, little got done in this town.