by Selena Kitt
“Ohhhhhh I’m coming!” Erica shook the bed with her climax, her body trembling as she rubbed herself with the vibrator, her gaze never leaving the screen where the guy was pumping himself in his fist, shooting long, hot streams of white stuff. It fell in thick strands, most of it beginning to drip down the crevice.
Seeing it dribble down, a slow river parting the folds of her sex, was too much for Leah. She came too, biting her lip to keep from crying out as her body quaked with her release, dancing with it, her thigh brushing against the soft skin of Erica’s leg, making her orgasm even more intense.
Erica turned off the vibrator and stroked her thighs with her hands, her eyes still-half closed. Leah got up and stopped the movie, the sight now almost a visual assault, too intense in the wake of her climax.
“You were right,” Erica murmured, looking at her friend. “You told my dad we’d be good—but that wasn’t just good… it was fantabulous!”
Leah pulled her skirt down. “Listen, I should get home and change.”
Erica frowned, leaning up on her elbows. “You want to hang out later?”
“Call me.” Leah turned so Erica didn’t see how red her face was as she headed toward the door.
The images she’d seen over the last twenty-four hours—the photographs, the movies, Mr. Nolan masturbating, Erica playing with Handy Hannah—flashed through her head as she walked home. She knew she could never unimagine them—and the scariest thing was that she didn’t really want to.
Chapter Four
“Bless me father, for I have sinned...”
Those were the words Leah was dreading. She couldn’t say them.
They had mass every morning at Mary Magdalene in the church with all the girls from the middle and high school and the little kids from elementary too. The college itself was small, only half a building—the other half was used by the high school girls—in a block-long four-corner complex that included the church in one corner, the college and high school opposite, and the elementary and middle schools parallel to those. In the middle was the rectory, where the priests lived, and beside it, the convent for the nuns.
The church itself had always been a beautiful sanctuary for Leah, a place she had come to every morning of her life, crossing herself as the girls entered the first vestibule in a long line. They would heap their coats and metal lunchboxes on the radiators before mass, the smell of tuna and egg salad rising around them as Father Patrick and Father Michael spoke strange but beautiful words in Latin, their backs to the congregation, who knelt on padded kneelers.
She didn’t understand a word of the service—only boys were allowed to learn Latin—but the sound of it was like familiar music anyway, the motions of the priests and altar boys a beautiful dance. It was nothing like the elaborate show on Sundays, of course, but it made her heart sing every morning all the same. She would stare up at Jesus on the cross, the scenes painted on the walls and ceiling above memorized, stories taught to her in catechism and collected fondly in her imagination along with fairy tales and Dr. Seuss, and feel a sense of peace and joy that settled something wild in her soul.
But mass this Monday had felt extra long, and every word sounded like a personal pronouncement that she, Leah Weldt, was going to hell. She was filled with shame and guilt all day, and at noon before lunch, when the girls crowded around outside the confessional, talking in small groups and snapping their gum, those feelings had turned to a burning fever in her body. The girls weren’t allowed to chew gum, even in college, but they did anyway, risking Sister Abigail’s wrath and tucking it between cheek and teeth whenever she was looking.
They were supposed to be standing in a quiet line saying the rosary, waiting their turn, but Sister Abigail had taken someone disruptive to see Mother Superior and they were momentarily without supervision.
“I can’t do this,” Leah whispered to Erica.
Her friend was sitting against the wall, knees up, a copy of Peyton Place tucked into her geography book. The way she was positioned, Leah could see Erica’s underwear—which wasn’t unusual, in an all-girls’ school where they were required to wear skirts, they often got careless—but it made Leah remember what had happened in the worst way. She had avoided the Nolans all weekend, surprising her mother by staying home and playing 45s on her record player all day and settling on the couch at night with her to watch The Honeymooners, but when she’d seen Erica that morning at mass, it had all come back like some strange, surreal dream.
“Do what?” Erica didn’t look up from her book.
Leah nudged her friend’s hip with one of her saddle shoes, hissing, “Confession!”
Erica looked up then, puzzled. “Why not? Swearing, lustful thoughts, self-flagellation, yack yack yack, thirty Hail Mary’s and ten Our Father’s later, and you’re all righteous again. What’s the hang-up?”
Leah stared at her, blinking and speechless.
“Well fine.” Erica stood and brushed off the back of her skirt. “Then let’s put an egg in our shoe and beat it.”
“Cutting class?” Leah groaned. “Adding yet another sin to my growing list? You’re not helping!”
“Okay.” Erica shrugged. “So you’re ready to go in there and tell Father Michael about our little movie watching session on Friday?”
“Shh!” Leah put her hand over her friend’s mouth, looking over at the group of girls closest to them to see if they’d heard anything. “You’re evil!”
“Perfect timing.” Erica glanced around. “Sister Abigail’s gone, and I know I’m not up for one of Sister Helen’s usual lectures on the Church’s revisionist history—I don’t care what they say, Jesus was clearly a Jew.”
The confessional door opened behind them and Leah sighed as another girl went in. She couldn’t—she just couldn’t. It wasn’t just knowing they had looked at the photographs and watched the movies, or even that they touched themselves together. That was bad enough, but sitting in the dark and telling Father Michael the thoughts she was having about Mr. Nolan? No way. The prospect made her feel weak with dread.
“Okay.” Leah grabbed Erica’s arm. “Let’s split.”
“Leah!” It was Erica’s turn to sound shocked. “Have you flipped?”
Leah nodded, grabbing her book bag off the floor, saying loudly, “Let’s go to the bathroom.”
Erica snickered as they left the church proper and went into the breezeway. “Good cover.”
“I’m no expert,” Leah agreed. “So how do we get out without being seen, Houdini?”
“Follow me,” she said, and Leah did, down the corridor and through a door.
“Where are we?”
“Storage room.” Erica made her way through a maze of shelves with all sorts of vestments, candles, candle lighters, and statues.
The whole Nativity scene was stacked into a corner, the baby Jesus wrapped in a shroud in the manger. The oddest thing was the hundreds of boxes full of heavenly host. Leah stared at them as they passed, looked at the stamped sides: Cavanagh Communion Hosts 1 1/8”, marked either with “white” or “wheat” flavor.
Erica grinned back at her friend when she saw Leah looking at the boxes. “Do you think Christ was white or wheat?”
“You are so going to hell.” Still Leah couldn’t help grinning too. They were nearing a door at the back of the room and Erica pulled it open, heading down a dark flight of stairs.
“Where are we?” Leah felt her way down, holding onto the railing.
“Church basement now.” Erica waited for Leah at the bottom. “Bobby meets me here sometimes.”
“Oh my God!” Leah mentally added her taking the Lord’s name in vain to her list of sins for the week. It was a small trespass, considering. “He’d be shot on sight if they found him!”
“No one finds him,” Erica assured her as Leah followed her through the dark basement. There were small windows near the top of the concrete walls that let in a little, shadowy light.
Around the corner, Erica pulled open another do
or and waved her friend through.
“What is this?” There were cots all along each side of the long, narrow walls of the room they stepped into.
“Old storm cellar-slash-bomb shelter, I think.” She started up the ladder to the left and pressed on the door above her head. “Either that, or this is where they do all the experiments on the really bad kids.”
Leah snorted, following Erica up the ladder and waiting as she pressed at the door. They were in their uniforms, of course, and Leah could see right up Erica’s skirt from this angle and the flash of white made her remember what had happened on Friday.
“They leave this open?” Leah winced at the brightness as Erica finally heaved the door open with a little grunt of effort.
“Bobby broke the lock.”
Leah shook her head, incredulous, as Erica gave her a hand up and swung the door shut again. They were standing just outside the brick wall surrounding the entire block, making it look like some prison fortress. The storm cellar was a slanted thing made of long planks and painted brown to blend in with the brick.
“And we’re made in the shade.” Erica grabbed her friend’s hand and swung it. “Let’s go to my house and do something we’ll have to confess later.”
“I’m boycotting confession.” Leah glanced over her shoulder as if someone might be watching them.
“Come on, there are yummy rewards for being bad.” Erica squeezed her fingers. “We don’t even have to miss the first fifteen minutes of American Bandstand today!”
Erica had a point. They made good use of those last few hours they should have been in class, stopping by Woolworth’s for a chocolate malt, taking home some moon pies and Necco wafers, a bag of Better Made potato chips and two Cokes. Then the girls curled up on Erica’s sofa and made pigs of themselves while they watched the entire episode of American Bandstand without interruption. It was a real treat.
Erica turned the television off and stretched, her blouse pulling out of the waistband of her skirt, revealing skin. “What do you want to do now?”
“We should do homework,” Leah answered, her head filled with the memory of watching her friend play with Handy Hannah. Leah tried to push the thought away, but she couldn’t when Erica sat cross-legged in her skirt, her panties clearly visible underneath.
“Now what kind of fun would that be?” She rolled her eyes. “If you’re gonna skip school, you gotta make it worth it!”
“Well… you could show me more of your dad’s collection.” Leah couldn’t believe she mentioned it first. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to even think about it, let alone ask about it.
Erica grinned. “Now we’re talking. Come on.” They left their wrappers and empty bottles strewn all over the sofa and headed for the secret door. Leah’s body was already buzzing with anticipation.
“What about your dad?” The clock on Mr. Nolan’s desk read 4:05 p.m.
“Late night. He said he had something to do at the church. And Solie won’t be here ’til five”
Solie came to cook dinner every weekday except Friday, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays she was there during the afternoon to clean. She didn’t work weekends though.
Erica unlocked it and slid the bolt on the door and they stepped into the secret darkroom. Leah felt as if she was entering a whole new world, like some perverted, obscene version of Narnia. “Here we are. A veritable smorgasbord of naughtiness for your viewing pleasure.”
“How long have you known about your dad taking pictures like this?” Leah took one of the “art books” off the shelf in the eerie red glow of the darkroom light, flipping through the photographs with trembling fingers. The pictures were still graphic and shocking—and unbelievably arousing.
“A little while.” Erica edged around the table toward the other door. “He keeps it pretty secret. I don’t think he wants anyone to know.”
“Of course not.” Leah opened up to a page to find a woman kneeling in front of a man, her lips wrapped around his member, her hands bound behind her back with rope. Her belly rolled at the sight, the familiar warmth spreading south. “I mean, isn’t this illegal?”
“Kind of.” Erica opened the second door, turning on the light inside. “I mean, the blue movies and stag films, we all know men watch them sometimes. Someone has to make them.”
“I figured it was happening over in Europe.”
“It probably is,” Erica agreed from the other room, where she was fiddling with the projector. “But it’s obviously happening here too.”
“Do you think he took some of these photographs?” Leah didn’t know why, but the thought excited her more than anything.
“Yeah.” Erica had the movie cued up. “Come on, I want you to see this one.”
Leah abandoned the book, joining her friend in the other room. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
Erica frowned, glancing up at her. “Should it?”
“Well, what if Father Michael knew what your dad was taking pictures of?”
Erica rolled her eyes and snorted. “They’re always telling us sex is bad, but how can something that feels so good be bad? Besides, it’s only bad if you’re not married. After that, you’re supposed to continue making good Catholics for them right? So sex itself isn’t really sinful.”
Leah shook her head, ticking off reasons on her fingers. “It’s bad if you’re not married, it’s bad if it’s deviant...”
“Who says what’s normal? Who says what’s deviant? It’s supposed to be some community standard, but that’s like saying if the majority says it’s wrong, it’s wrong. But the math doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?” Leah sat on the bed next to her friend, whose eyes had that gleam again, but this was different. Leah had coined this one as Erica’s “bloodhound look.” Erica had always been both curious and persistent about finding things out. Throughout their entire friendship, it was impossible to keep secrets from her, because she would simply hound and hound and hound until she discovered the truth. It was, in part, what made her such a good journalist, even if it was just for their little college paper.
“If fifty-one percent of the people say women should wear gloves at all times, then those women who don’t wear gloves should be arrested?” Erica reasoned.
“Well… things change.”
“So what’s wrong today could be right tomorrow?”
Leah sighed, shaking her head. “But the Bible says...”
“Oh for pete’s sake, have you really read the Bible? There’s all sorts of sexual deviancy in that book. From incest to rape, you name it, it’s in there.”
“But the Church...” she protested.
“Leah, does what we’re doing feel bad to you?” Erica grabbed her friend’s hands in hers, squeezing gently.
“I feel guilty,” Leah admitted.
“But you only feel guilty because they told you it’s bad. Just like they once told women it was a sin to show your ankles.”
“I suppose.”
“Think of it this way.” Erica switched tactics. “My dad goes to church and is more religious than anyone I know. He put me in a Catholic school. He insisted I go to a Catholic college. Now, if it was really a sin, do you think he’d be doing it?”
“I suppose not.” Leah didn’t want to argue anymore. It seemed circular and pointless. But the first thought that popped into her head when Erica asked her the question was, if it wasn’t a sin, would he be hiding it?
“Now let’s watch.”
On the screen, two girls were on the beach in their bathing suits, not a soul in sight. They were both wearing bikinis—something Erica had been begging Mr. Nolan for, which he’d steadfastly refused. Leah’s mother wouldn’t let her get one either. Surprisingly, the girls were unmasked, but they wore big black sunglasses. The movie had no sound, but they were clearly talking and giggling together.
“They’re like us,” Leah noted, glancing over at Erica and seeing her hand up under her skirt. Leah’s breath caught, imagining what she was doing under the
re.
“I know.” Erica smiled, her eyes bright under her blonde bangs.
Leah felt an incredible longing to touch herself too, but in the light of day, she just couldn’t seem to bring herself to do it. On the screen, the girls were sitting up, knees touching, and she stared as one leaned forward and kissed the other.
“Oh my God.” Leah watched, fascinated and a little horrified, as their tongues tangled together. The dark-haired girl reached out to slip her hand under the bikini top of the blonde as they kissed. “Erica… what are they doing?”
“It gets better,” she murmured, her gaze on the screen. Leah could see her friend’s hand moving under her skirt and Leah squeezed her thighs together, feeling a hot throb between her own legs.