The boys who wanted to be my friends, they were like me—well, “like me” in that there was something odd about them no one could put their finger on—and so, like me, they were pushed to the margins of the gym and lunchroom. They were boys who moved too often, boys with an ever-present inhaler or a stutter or a lazy eye, boys who were too smart not to be resented for it.
So after I’d been at a new school for a month or two, one of those boys might find an excuse to talk to me. He’d ask for the math assignment as if he didn’t always write it down. He’d slide into the chair opposite me in the lunchroom and tell me about his plans for his science fair project or Halloween costume. And one day, months down the road, he’d invite me over after school—to study for a history test, or to try out the mechanism on the science project. At some point I learned the word for this: a pretext, a reason that’s really an excuse. The boy’s parents were still at work. We went up to his room. It almost always happened that way.
I should have said no. Every time, I wanted to say no. I knew it was the right thing to tell him to leave me alone, but he’d already been snubbed by our classmates a hundred times over. How could I say no?
So that’s what happened with Dmitri and Joe and Kevin and Noble and Marcus and C. J. Every time I went over to his house thinking this time I could avoid it, this time he wouldn’t be too nice or come too close. This time I wouldn’t be tempted.
Eventually I realized something. Whenever you tell yourself, This time it will be different, it’s as good as a promise that it’ll turn out the same as it always has.
After C. J. we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. We were in the car one morning and I said, “Maybe I shouldn’t go to school anymore.” She didn’t answer. “Mama?”
“I’ll think about it.” But by that point I guess she’d already decided to leave.
* * *
The highway seemed just as desolate as it had the night before, nothing but gas stations and empty strip malls. I brightened at the sight of an awning proclaiming FRESH HOT BAGELS before I noticed FOR RENT in the window. I’d almost reached the Greyhound station when I saw a sign marked EDGARTOWN, HISTORIC TOWN CENTER. Maybe I could stop at a real restaurant, warm up and get a good breakfast before I bought my ticket to Sandhorn.
After a few blocks the road turned into a good old-fashioned Main Street. It was still early, and most of the shops weren’t open yet: an ice cream parlor, a secondhand bookshop, an Italian restaurant. A church, a real estate agent, an art gallery with pictures of sailboats in the front window, another church, a florist, a drugstore, another church: it seemed to go on and on before I found the coffee shop, where a handwritten sign in the window offered 2 EGGS, HASH BROWNS & TOAST, $1.99. Just what I needed.
As dead as it was on the street, the bustle in the little one-room diner more than made up for it. I smelled coffee and felt a pang of longing for Mama. A waitress eyed my rucksack and told me I could sit at the counter. All the people in the booths along the wall looked up from their plates as I passed, bumping my rucksack into the other waitress as I went, and I mumbled an apology.
I got to the counter and one or two of the men glanced up from their newspapers. There wasn’t a single stool.
* * *
After Luke we moved to Baltimore. My mom got a job in a law office—it was always accounting or law; her typing speed was the one thing she could take anywhere—and for a while we pretended everything was normal.
Then, just before Christmas, Mama brought me to a party at her boss’s house. Like I said, after what happened with Luke and Penny Wilson she could never trust me with a babysitter.
Before we left she sat me down on the sofa. “This is the first really good job I’ve ever had, Maren. I have friends—people I can talk to, people I can have a laugh with at lunch. And there’s something else: I might be up for a promotion soon.”
“That’s great, Mama.” But I couldn’t be happy for her, not when she was only telling me this out of fear that I’d ruin it for her, that I’d slip up again and we’d have to move away.
“It could be great for both of us, if you could only…” She sighed. “Please, please, please be good. Promise me you’ll be good this time.”
I nodded, but it was never a matter of trying hard enough to be good. It was like leading me to a banquet and telling me not to eat.
It was a proper grown-up cocktail party, with shrimp arranged around bowls of bloodred dipping sauce and women with perfect manicures sipping from long-stemmed martini glasses, laughing a little too loudly as they popped their olives. There was a cathedral ceiling in the living room, and the Christmas tree went up all the way to the top.
There was a spare room near the front door, and Mrs. Gash told us we could go in and put our coats on the bed. No one came in behind us, so my mother closed the door and said, “Don’t talk to anyone. If anyone says hello or asks your name you can tell them, but that’s it—I don’t want anybody thinking you’re rude. Just read your book.”
“Where?”
She pointed to an armchair in the corner of the room, and I went over and dropped into it with a sigh. “I’ll bring you a plate and something to drink. Please, Maren—please stay here and be good.” In a few minutes she returned with the promised plate of shrimp and crackers, asked me one more time not to leave the room, and left again. I ate the shrimp and watched as three women came in, shrugging off their coats and shaking the cold out. No one noticed me sitting in the corner.
The pile of coats grew and grew, and after a while people stopped coming in. I could see a fur coat peeking out at the bottom of the pile and I got up, reached in, and petted the sleeve. I thought I might like to burrow into the coat pile and take a nap so that when I woke up it would be time to go home, so that’s what I did.
Under the coat pile it was warm and safe and cozy, and in every breath I smelled perfume and cigar smoke. I fell asleep. The shrimp hadn’t satisfied me, though, and my stomach rumbled as I dozed.
Some time later I felt something brush my cheek, and in a second I was fully awake, my heart pounding. In the darkness I sensed a hand reach into a pocket by my shoulder, fumble around, and pull something out—I heard the soft rattle of a box of matches. Then I felt the pause, because whoever it was had realized I was inside. I felt a sharp poke from above.
“Hey!” I said, swimming out of the pile of tweed and Gore-Tex and boiled wool. A boy stood beside the bed. He had a pointy, turned-up nose that made him look like some friendly rodent in a storybook, and tortoiseshell glasses that were too big for his face. On the carpet at his feet was a small pile of things from other people’s coat pockets. “Who are you?” I asked.
“I live here. Who are you?”
“I belong to one of the secretaries.” He had his left hand in a fist still held out in front of him, as if I wouldn’t notice unless he made a move to conceal it. “You were going through the pockets, weren’t you? I saw you. You took out a matchbox.”
“I wasn’t going to steal anything. I was only going to look.”
“Yeah, right.” I wriggled out of the coat pile and stood in front of him. “What’s your name?”
“Jamie. What’s yours?”
“Maren.”
“That’s a funny name.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like I’ve never heard that before.”
He looked at the floor. “Sorry.”
“Find anything good?”
Jamie opened his hand, and an accordion of condom packets spilled out. Of course, I didn’t know what they were then. Maybe he didn’t either, and that’s why neither of us asked.
I pointed to the pile on the floor. “You said you were going to put this stuff back, didn’t you?” He nodded. “But how can you keep track of which pockets you found them in?”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Maybe put them back in the pockets, any pockets if you can’t remember, and then they can figure it out at work on Monday.”
“All right.” He pluc
ked a pack of Marlboros out of the pile and tucked it in the pocket of a navy blue peacoat. I helped him put everything back, and when the floor was clear he just stood there and looked at me for a minute.
“What?” I said.
“You like stars?”
“The kind in the sky?”
He nodded. “I’ve got a telescope. Want to see it?”
“Sure.” I followed him out of the guest room and up the stairs.
“I got it for Christmas last year,” Jamie said over his shoulder. “My dad studied astronomy in college, so he knows a lot.” His bedroom was at the end of the hall and by the time we got there I could hardly hear the noise of the party.
I’d never been in a boy’s room before. There were Star Wars things everywhere—the sheets and the comforter and a poster of Han Solo and Princess Leia on the wall above the bed. There was a full-size cardboard cutout of Darth Vader in the corner by the closet door and a coin bank shaped like R2-D2 on the night table. It was very tidy, and I could picture Mrs. Gash reminding him to clean it even though no guests would be coming upstairs. Mrs. Gash was a just-so kind of mother.
Jamie had a bookcase above his dresser, and I cocked my head and scanned the spines—The War of the Worlds, Isaac Asimov, and a row of Choose Your Own Adventures that turned my stomach at the thought of Luke—as he went to the big black telescope on a tripod by the window and made some adjustments. Then he opened the window and a cold gust shot through the room, sending the pieces of a solar system mobile clattering above the bed. “Now turn off the light,” he said.
I flipped the switch by the door and came over to stand beside him, shivering in the draft. “Obviously it’s better when we take it up to the roof, but I’m not allowed up there without my dad.” He stepped away from the telescope and gestured that it was my turn. “Here, I’ll show you the Pleiades. You can see them without the telescope, but it’s much cooler with it.” I bent forward and put my eye to the lens. A perfect cluster of stars shone brightly at the end of a dark tunnel. “See them?”
“Yeah,” I whispered. He was standing close to me, so close I could smell him. Irish Spring. His mother had made him bathe before the party.
“You know the myth about the Pleiades?”
“No.”
“They were the daughters of Atlas. You know, the guy who had to hold up the world?”
“Yeah?”
“So after the Titans lost to the Olympians and Atlas was punished, the sisters were so upset that they all killed themselves, and then Zeus felt sorry for them and made them into stars so they could keep their father company for the rest of time. That’s just one version, but it’s the one I like the best. My dad tells me how all the constellations got their names.”
I stepped away from the telescope. “Now I’ll show you the Milky Way,” he said.
I could hear footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later Mrs. Gash turned the light back on. “Jamie? What are you doing up here?” It hadn’t felt like we were doing anything wrong—I’d completely forgotten Mama’s warning—but there was something funny in his mother’s voice.
“Jamie was just showing me his telescope,” I said. “We’re looking at the Pleiades.” The boy still had his face pressed to the eyepiece.
Mrs. Gash nodded to me. “Jamie, listen to me. I don’t want you and Maren up here by yourselves.”
He turned around only to say, “All right.” Then he went back to the telescope, and his mother folded her arms, watching us.
“I mean now, Jamie. Why don’t you bring our guest downstairs and get her something to eat? Do you like shrimp, Maren?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gash.”
“Try the sugar cookies too. Jamie and I made them from scratch.”
Jamie sighed as he followed us out of the bedroom and down the stairs. We wandered over to the beverage table set up near the Christmas tree, where he poured two cups of punch out of a cut-crystal bowl and handed one to me. “Sorry about that.”
I shrugged. “Thanks for showing me the Pleiades.”
Mrs. Gash had gone back to her hostess duties, and no one else seemed to notice us. I saw Mama talking to two women over by the fireplace. She was telling a joke, and when she got to the punch line they threw back their heads and laughed.
“C’mon!” Jamie grabbed my free hand and pulled me down the hall, away from the noise of the party, and I hastily sipped my punch so I wouldn’t spill any on the carpet.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s something else I want to show you downstairs.”
The basement door was next to the spare room. It was cold down there, and it smelled like paint and mold and mothballs, and the only light came from a naked bulb in a ceiling crisscrossed with unfinished beams. There was a washer and dryer at the foot of the steps, and the rest of the space was full of old furniture and stacks of cardboard boxes. The concrete floor was bare apart from a gray length of carpet in front of the laundry machines. “Why did you bring me down here?” I asked. “It’s nicer upstairs.”
He laid his punch glass on top of the dryer. “Let me see it.”
“See what?”
He tugged at a belt loop on his jeans, his eyes on the carpet between our feet. “You know.”
There’s something I want to show you downstairs. My mistake. “No,” I said. “You first.”
He unzipped his fly and let his jeans fall to his ankles. There were comets and rockets on his underpants. Then he tucked his thumbs inside the waistband and pulled them down and back up again so fast that I hardly got a look at it. “Now you.”
I shook my head.
“You said you would.”
“No, I didn’t.”
I could see him thinking back over the past minute and a half. He frowned when he realized I was right. “Well, now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t,” I said.
“This was a bad idea. I never should have brought you down here.”
I took a step toward the stairs. “It’s okay. Let’s go up now.”
“Can you let me do just one thing?”
“What?”
He mumbled something.
“Huh?”
“Let me … kiss you?”
I knew I shouldn’t, but I’d already hurt his feelings once. Hurt them one more time, and you’ll be doing him a favor. Leave. Now. Go.
But he took a step closer, and I didn’t turn and run. Something in me was seizing up. I felt a rumble of panic down deep in my guts. Go, go, go now—if he comes any closer you won’t be able to stop it.
The naked lightbulb buzzed overhead, the chain swaying gently in a cold draft. For a second it was like I was an ordinary girl about to get her first kiss.
Go—leave—NOW …
I put my lips to his neck, pressed them there, and drank him in. I could smell the cocktail sauce on his breath, the little pieces of shellfish rotting in the dark corners of his mouth. I stepped back and looked at him. His eyes were closed and he was smiling like I could do anything I wanted to him and he’d be over the moon about it. This won’t be what you have in mind, I thought. But it’s too late now.
When I was finished I fell onto the scrap of carpet in front of the dryer, shivering so badly I made the machine rumble like it was working. No one upstairs could have heard any of it. Through the speakers in the living room some sister act was crooning, “Take good care of yourself, you belooooong to me…”
I sat there awhile longer, thinking about his telescope and his Chewbacca pillowcase and the Rubik’s Cube on his dresser. Would they keep everything in the room the way it was? Why couldn’t he have left me alone?
I found a crumpled plastic bag on the floor by the washing machine and I stuffed everything into it, his jeans and his red button-down shirt and his boy-who-fell-to-Earth underpants and the bits I couldn’t eat—everything but the tortoiseshell glasses—and then I reached a hand into the cobwebs behind the dryer, searching out the gap where the hose met the drywall so I could cram the bag into t
he wall. I dragged the stained carpet scrap into the darkest corner of the basement. Someone would find it all eventually. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I washed my face, pulled off my pants and turtleneck, and squeezed out the mess under the faucet in the utility tub. There was blood on my undershirt too, but no one would see it. I could wash it at home.
No, not home. There wouldn’t be time for that.
I rinsed out my mouth and sat on the concrete floor with my back to the dryer, waiting for my clothes to dry. I jumped at every sound from the floor above, terrified that someone would come downstairs and find me.
Mama. I had to tell Mama.
I put on my shirt and pants and started up the basement stairs like I’d never arrive at the top. She was coming out of the spare room, our coats slung over her arm. Quickly I closed the door behind me and took a step away from it.
“Maren! We’re leaving, okay? I’ve got your coat.” She handed me my jacket, and I put it on. “Where have you been?” she hissed.
“In the bathroom.”
“You know better than to lie to me. Why were you in the basement?”
I stood there in miserable silence as we heard Mrs. Gash in another room calling Jamie’s name. I felt Mama stiffen beside me. Jamie’s mother came into the front hall a moment later. “Where has that boy gone off to now?”
“He’s not in his room?” Mr. Gash asked. He was standing by the front door, shaking people’s hands before they went back into the cold. His white teeth shone beneath his shiny black mustache.
“Of course he’s not in his room.”
“Check the roof,” Mr. Gash said, laughing over his shoulder as he reached for my mother’s hand. “I’m so glad you could make it, Janelle.” He nodded to me. “Nice meeting you, Maren.” Then, turning back to my mother, he said in a low voice, “We’ll talk first thing Monday morning, all right? Looking forward to it.”
Mrs. Gash went to the foot of the stairs. “Jamie! Jamie, where are you?”
“Me too,” Mama said faintly. She glanced down at me, and I could see how hard she was straining not to show her panic, her horror. Every time this happened she got a little better at hiding it. You didn’t. Please say you didn’t.
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