Текст книги "Deeper"

Автор книги: Robin York

Соавторы: Robin York,Robin York
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

He lifts an eyebrow. I don’t smoke, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how. I need the rush right now—the way the nicotine will sharpen up the edges of everything, make me wary, make me smart.

I need to get smart.

He hands me a cigarette, and when I put it in my mouth and cup my hands around the tip, he gives me a light off his Zippo.

“What’s he got over you?” Bo asks.

“I knocked him down a fire escape. Might’ve cracked his ribs. Assault, I guess. Especially if he went to the hospital afterward.”

“Was there a witness?”

“His friend. And Caroline.”

He nods.

“I’ve sold to the friend,” I add.

“More than once?”

“Yeah.”

“So he tipped off the cops.”

“Probably. I mean, anybody could have, but probably. You think they’ll be back?”

“Yeah.”

I purse my lips and inhale, grateful for the small, rustling sound of the paper igniting. Grateful to have this tiny curling spark to look at, this tight fullness in my chest as I hold the smoke in my lungs.

It’s good to have somebody to talk to.

“You think I should just stop selling? Lay low for a semester?”

“If you can get by without the money.”

I hesitate. Take another drag. Grow some balls and admit, “I end up sending most of it to Mom.”

He makes this sound—I’m not sure what it means. Kind of a laugh, except with pain in it. He’s not surprised, though. There’s resignation in that laugh.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Smokes his cigarette down to the filter, drops it onto the dirt floor, grinds it out.

“She don’t need it,” he says.

“What’s she doing with it, then?”

He shrugs.

“You don’t have any idea?”

“Presents I don’t need. Clothes and shit for her and Frankie. I think she gave money to one of your cousins to get rid of a baby, but she won’t talk about it.”

I let that sink in.

“She’s going out to see your grandma once a week.”

He doesn’t mean Mom’s mom, who used to live in California but is dead now. He means Dad’s mom.

He means a decade-old rift between my mom and my dad’s family has been quietly repaired, and she didn’t tell me. That my money’s paying for stuff Dad’s people need—or stuff they want—because that’s the way Mom is with money. If she’s got it, she’ll give it to anybody, for anything.

If I’ve got it, she figures that’s the same as if it’s hers.

“Has he been back here?”

I don’t have to tell Bo I mean my dad. We both know what this conversation is about, and it’s a relief to talk around the undercurrents beneath the words, dig up the buried wires without having to name them.

The longer I stay here, the more obvious it becomes that, underneath, things are deeply fucked up.

Five miles away, living in a piece-of-shit trailer in the kind of trailer park nobody lives in if they have a better option, there’s a man with my eyes. My mouth. Fucking things up just by drawing breath.

“Once,” Bo says. “I drove him off with a shotgun.”

“What’s he want?”

Bo gives me a pitying look, and I take another drag on the cigarette and stare at my feet.

Stupid question. He wants what he always wants. Whatever my mom’s got. Her heart. Her cunt. Her money. Her pride.

He wants Frankie’s loyalty.

He wants to win everybody over, bring them around to his side, get them feeling sorry for him, looking at the world through his eyes, thinking, Man, he’s had some tough breaks, but he’s a good guy. I’m glad it’s all working for him this time. I’m glad he’s pulled it together.

He wants to make my mom fall in love with him, and then when she’s so far gone she can’t even remember what happened before, he wants to punch her in the gut.

The last time I saw my father, he kicked me like a dog. Spat on me. Left me there, my lip split, curled around the pain.

I don’t know why my mom can’t understand. That’s what he wants.

“Has she seen him?”

Bo doesn’t answer for so long, I think he’s not going to. He moves down the bench, swipes at an untidy spill of potting soil, rubs the dried brown leaves of a plant between his thumb and forefinger. “While I was down in California selling the crop.”

“She tell you?”

His expression darkens. “You think I’d fucking let her live here if she told me? I heard it off a guy I know. She says it’s bullshit.”

“You don’t believe her.”

“I haven’t made my mind up yet. But you know what happens if I find out she’s seeing him behind my back.”

Fuck. Yes. I know what happens.

He’ll toss her out on her ass, and she’ll deserve it.

Frankie, too. Bo’s not going to be raising a nine-year-old kid who doesn’t belong to him. Not without my mom in his bed.

He turns toward me. Walks close, clamps his hand over my shoulder. “I wish it wasn’t like this,” he says.

I can’t look at him. I look out at the stars and finish the cigarette.

It’s the weight of the past, suspended over our heads by a frayed rope.

It’s a woman holding a knife in her hand, one cut that could ruin everything for me. Ruin Frankie. Ruin Bo. Ruin her.

It’s like this, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Frankie flings herself over the back of the couch, her forearm pressing against my windpipe. “Do you really have to go?”

I tilt my head back and grab her by the waist to flip her over onto my lap.

In the air, she feels so insubstantial, her bones hollow like a bird’s. I tickle her until she’s shrieking.

“Quit it, West! Swear to God, quit, stop, please! West!”

I let up, and she scrambles away from me, skinny legs in skinny jeans, thick socks, a shirt with short little zippers at the shoulders that isn’t warm enough for winter or young enough for her.

Mom and Bo are both at work. This morning it’s just Franks and me and a bus I’ve got to catch if I’m going to make my flight back to school.

I’m leaving, but I don’t think I’ll be away for long.

Since that night out in the greenhouse with Bo, I can hear the clock ticking. The hands are flying around the dial like in some movie, blurring, blending, until time is tissue-paper thin.

My mother’s eyes never light on anything for long. Her hands are nervous, her replies evasive.

Weeks from now, months if I’m lucky, I’m going to get a call that makes me drop everything and fly home. And the truth is, I don’t have to go to Putnam at all.

I never had to.

I told myself when I left for school that I was doing it for Frankie and Mom, but I could have taken better care of them if I’d stayed here. Enrolled at the community college. Kept an eye on Frankie, kept my dad out of that trailer.

I went to Putnam because I wanted to.

I wanted to know who I could be if I wasn’t tethered to this place. What I could accomplish on my own.

Anything, Caroline would tell me. You can do anything.

She believes it, too.

Caroline could never understand how selfish a thought like that can be. How selfish I am for having left and for being about to leave again when I know how things are here.

Frankie’s smiling at me, breathing hard, her collarbones peeking out of the neckline of her shirt, her bottom lip chapped, her teeth a little too big for her face.

She’s got black crap all around her eyes, long earrings dangling almost to her shoulders.

She’s nine years old.

She needs somebody who will set limits, send her to bed, tell her to get off the phone and wash her face.

She needs me to make her do her homework and to manage Mom, who can only pass as a decent parent if there’s somebody around to make her work at it.

She needs me.

Resentment spikes in me, dark and poisonous.

I wish I knew some way to give her back. If I knew how to stop caring—to become as faithless as my father—then I could go to Putnam and stay there. Send Frankie a card on her birthday.

I could make myself over into Caroline’s West, with wide horizons and endless options.

“I’ll miss you,” my sister says.

Fists clenched, I have to close my eyes.

I would leave you behind if I could.

I wish I could. I want to.

But I open my eyes, open my mouth, and tell her, “I’ll miss you, too. I’ll be home in a few months. Then I’ll take you somewhere cool. Portland, maybe.”

“Really? What about San Francisco? Keisha says they have sea lions there, and there’s this store that’s all kinds of chocolate. That’s where we should go.”

“Yeah, I guess we could go to San Francisco. Maybe go camping on the way. See the redwoods.”

“Camping? No way. Camping sucks.”

“When have you ever been camping?”

“I know about it! You sleep in a tent and don’t shower, and spiders fall on your head. No thanks.”

I’ve never been camping, either. But who’s going to take her if not me?

“We could have a fire. Make s’mores. We’ll find a place to stay with a shower.”

“A fire would be good,” she says. “As long as there’s a shower. And you would have to kill all the spiders.”

“I can handle that.”

Whatever has to be handled—spiders, nightmares, homework, fathers—I can handle it.

What choice have I got?

I stand. “Hug me goodbye.”

She gets up and wraps her arms around me.

I kiss the top of her head. Her hair is soft. It smells like pink chemicals, and all the resentment in me is gone, washed away as if it had never been.

We walk down the driveway together. She chatters about San Francisco.

She watches me from the road. Waves whenever I turn around.

She belongs to me. I can’t do anything about it.

It’s five miles into town, but I get lucky and hitch a ride with one of Bo’s neighbors.

I look out the passenger window at the landscape, white and wheat, beige and brown, the sky wide open and relentlessly blue.

It doesn’t look like Iowa. It looks like me. Those colors the colors I’m made of, the dirt of this place in my bones, silted up around my heart.

I can’t keep being two people. The clock’s running down, my time almost up, and I won’t let myself string Caroline along, let her think I’m some other guy, some Iowa version of myself, when I’m not. I don’t get to be.

I’m Frankie’s.

I can’t be Frankie’s and keep Caroline. I wish I could, but there’s no point in wishing.

Every time I kissed Caroline, I pulled her deeper in. Deep and then deeper, until I couldn’t come home again without bringing her along.

“Here’s my girl,” I told my mother. “The pretty one.”

I sat on Bo’s couch in the dark and told Caroline, “I want inside you. I want you here.”

But I was pretending. There’s no world that has Frankie and my mom and Caroline in it, all of them belonging to me.

I’ve made a mess of things. That’s what it all boils down to. A heinous fucking mess.

Caroline is in me, and now I’ve got to cut her out.

JANUARY
Caroline

Winter break was endless. I slept in late and padded around the house in my slippers. The rest of the world was working, productive, but I had nothing to do.

I played six million games of Minesweeper, which—yeah, I don’t even know. Obviously there are better games. I couldn’t bring myself to commit to anything that involved more than one level or any sort of complex strategy.

It was draining, being home. Christmas in the Caribbean wore me out. Having to smile so much. Having to talk about my classes, my friends, my interests, and never mention West or the bakery, Nate or the pictures, any of it.

Keeping secrets is exhausting. When your whole life turns into a secret, what then?

I told my dad about rugby. He didn’t like the idea of me playing a tackle sport.

“You should play golf,” he said.

“Dad, I hate golf.”

“What’s wrong with golf?”

Golf made me think of West. How he caddies, so he must know when to hand somebody a nine iron or a sand wedge. How he must have opinions about drivers and wear some kind of a uniform—a crisp polo shirt, khaki shorts. He must look so different.

I pored over Google maps, searching for golf courses in Oregon, trying to guess which was his.

My grades came. Two A’s, two A-minuses. Dad put them on the fridge.

He asked if I was going to see Nate, and when I reminded him we broke up, he said, “You were friends before you were going out. Maybe it’s better not to burn that bridge.”

Obviously, I didn’t call Nate. I took a four-hour nap instead.

For New Year’s, Dad took me out to dinner and made a big thing out of letting me drink a glass of champagne. The next morning he gave me his credit card to buy myself “something nice.” Because I got good grades. Because he was so proud of me.

When I showed him the cashmere sweater I’d bought at the mall—the exact shade of West’s eyes—he kissed my temple, rubbed my shoulder, left me alone to watch bad movies in the den.

At night, long after Dad was asleep, I lay in the glow of the TV and waited for West to call.

I dozed off sometimes. I was so tired.

But when the phone rang, I woke up. I laughed. I craved. I yearned.

I flushed hot, dug my teeth into the flesh of my thumb, whispered words I never thought I’d own.

“Want you.” “Need you.” “Inside me.” “God, West.”

He would tell me things he wanted me to say. Dirty things that somehow weren’t dirty with him, they were just true. They were real. He would tell me, and I would say them. Anything he wanted.

There were words I didn’t say, though.

I miss you.

I love you.

I must have thought there would be time for that later. After break, when I saw him again, we’d be different. We’d be close—as close as we were on the phone. We’d be real.

I hadn’t learned yet that when your whole life is a sham, real isn’t something that happens to you.

When you surround yourself with lies, all the real things start to break.

I’m back in Putnam for all of an hour before I head over to West’s apartment.

I can’t help it. I need to see him.

I wanted to pick him up at the airport last night, but he’d left his car in Des Moines, and he was getting in late. So I tracked his flight and saw when he landed, a quick twenty-minute drive from me in Ankeny. I imagined him driving to Putnam alone in the dark.

This morning, I’d promised my dad I would hang around for lunch after my sister and I went to the bridal shop to pick up my dress. Janelle grilled me relentlessly about boys, wanting to know if I was over Nate yet. “You should start thinking about meeting a new guy,” she said at least six times. “It’s not good to focus just on school.”

Dad said I shouldn’t jump into anything.

The whole time, I was thinking about West an hour away. Almost close enough to touch.

I want to take the fire-escape steps two at a time, but I stop myself. They’re icy. I knock on the door, short of breath, heart pounding. I’ve been imagining this moment for weeks. The entirety of break spent anticipating this reunion, this kiss. West pressing me up against the wall. Pushing his weight into me, his hips. Me running my hands over his arms and his back. Getting lost in him, as surely as I’ve been lost in my own head all month.

When he opens the door, though, nothing’s the way I imagined it.

His face is blank. As blank as the sky, as gray and cold.

I wait for him to recognize that it’s me—to warm—but he just says, “Hey,” and then I realize he has recognized me. And this is my reception.

He doesn’t step aside to let me in. He’s dressed for work at the restaurant—black slacks, white button-up, shined black shoes. So handsome it’s a little scary, with his eyes that way.

“Hey. You’re back.” I have this nagging urge to check the door, make sure I’m at the right apartment. In the right dimension.

“I’m back.”

“Did you have a good flight?” Gah. We were supposed to be kissing by now.

He turns away and grabs his coat out of the closet. “It was fine. I’ve got to go in to work.”

“On a Thursday?”

“I picked up a shift.”

“Can I walk over there with you?”

He shrugs like it’s nothing to him one way or the other.

I’m baffled. Just the other night he said he wanted to get inside me, build me up, fuck me hard until we were both bruised and shaking, and then he wanted to do it again, slow, sweaty, trembling, and watch me when I came.

He said that. Two nights ago. I didn’t make it up.

When he brushes past, he smells like wool and peppermint, and he doesn’t even look at my face.

I follow him down the steps.

He’s put on a hat I’ve never seen before, black-and-dark-gray stripes, thick and thin. I look at the spot where it meets the back of his neck. My fingers itch to touch him there.

His mood keeps me from doing it. His mood is a real thing dividing the space between us, as solid as granite.

Go away, his mood says, and it reminds me of the other times he’s been like this. Weeks ago now.

I’d almost forgotten. All the rules we’ve had between us—I guess they were suspended over the break. Our talk of touching, of wanting, the dirty thoughts we exchanged, made me forget.

I’m not sure what the rules are now, but I know that whatever they are, they’re fully in effect.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Really? You seem kind of distant.”

He turns partway toward me, hands shoved deep in his pockets. For an instant, his whole face is a wince. “I guess I don’t feel much like talking.”

You felt like talking the other night.

You talked me into two orgasms before we got off the phone.

I heard you come.

What the hell is wrong with you?

I should pick one of these things and say it, probably. But I just spent a month at home not saying any of the things I really felt. West was the only person I opened up to, and even with him, I censored myself.

My throat is tight.

We come to an intersection. The pile of iced-over snow reaches my waist, but there’s a cut shoveled into it, and we pass through. I crunch over frozen gray slush in the road. The restaurant is half a block up on the right.

It’s getting dark out, even though it’s only four o’clock. The world feels dim and threatening. A car goes by, and the crunching noise its tires make sounds like a threat.

It’s cold. So cold.

“What are you doing later?”

“I’m on until late.”

He doesn’t say when he’ll be home. He doesn’t invite me over.

That empty thing he does with his face—it’s a trick. An act he’s figured out how to do. It drives me crazy, because I don’t know how to hide myself like that, and I haven’t done anything to deserve his retreat.

It makes me think of that day in the library when I tried to slap him.

The way he was that day—that’s West. That was me, too. Both of us there that afternoon, angry, intense, impulsive, real. Whereas this—this is just West being an asshole.

“What’s your class schedule this semester?”

Another shrug. “I’d have to check. I haven’t memorized it.”

There’s a slight sneer in that sentence. I haven’t memorized it, like I’m sure you have.

West has never sneered at me before.

He’s teased me, challenged me, seduced me—but he’s never mocked me.

Something is really deeply wrong here.

I screw up my courage and catch at the sleeve of his coat, pulling him to a halt right in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Did something happen to you? Last night, or on your way back here?”

It’s a long shot, but he could have an excuse. An explanation. He could.

“I told you, nothing’s the matter.”

“Then why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

I push at his biceps with my fingertips, looking up at his empty face. “Like this.”

He kind of rolls his eyes at me. Not all the way, but he glances up at the sky, like I’m hassling him. Some random, troublesome girl. “I think you have the wrong idea about us.”

“What does that mean?”

“Showing up at my apartment. We’re not gonna be like that.”

We’re not gonna be like that.

That’s what he’s getting at with this routine of his. That’s his purpose. “You’re pushing me away.”

He still won’t look at me, and I think at first it’s more of the same thing—a way for him to pretend I’m getting predictably whiny now, female histrionics in full effect—except his eyes are glistening. His Adam’s apple works, bobbing as he swallows.

His voice is full of gravel when he tells me, “It’s just, I’m gonna be busy.” He clears his throat and continues, “I’ve got eighteen credits this semester, plus an extra bakery shift, and I don’t think—”

“Who do you think you are?”

“What?”

“Are you the same person who I talked to on the phone two nights ago? And the night before that, and the night before that, and twice a lot of days, when the house was empty with Frankie at school? Was that you, or was that some other guy who just sounded like you?”

“You know it was me.”

“So what are you saying?”

He crosses his arms. Completely unable to look at me. “I’m saying I want to back off this thing.”

“This thing.”

“Us.”

“You’re breaking up with me?”

“We were never going out.”

The words drop onto the ground between us, and I look at the place where they land, right in front of his feet. The frozen gray slush. West is standing braced—his legs wide, his arms crossed, the restaurant door ten feet behind him, glowing like a beacon.

He planned this. He was ready for it.

And he’s still doing a really terrible job of pretending not to give a shit.

We were never going out.

We’re not friends.

He told me less than forty-eight hours ago that he wanted to tongue my clit until my thighs were trembling. I don’t know what’s changed. Something. Nothing. He hasn’t bothered to tell me.

Because, after all, when does he ever bother to tell me anything?

I should be angry, but I’m so surprised and so fucking disappointed. I thought I’d be in his bed right now. I thought we’d be smiling, naked, rolling on a condom so I could finally, finally, feel him inside me.

Instead, he’s so far away, I can’t even find him in his own face.

“Right,” I say slowly, looking at those five pathetic words on the ground. “We were never going out.”

He glances at the restaurant behind him. “I gotta go.”

I should let him.

I should tell him to go fuck himself.

But I need something, some rope to catch hold of, some idea what happens next. So I ask, “Will I see you? At the bakery, or will you come to the rugby party Saturday, or … ?”

“I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah. Great. That’s just fucking great, West.”

His eyebrows have drawn in, like maybe I’m getting to him a little bit.

It could be because tears are making hot tracks down my face, puddling beneath my jaw, cooling on my neck.

It could be that.

“You have a great shift,” I tell him. “I’ll see you around. It’s a good thing we’re not friends, or else maybe I’d miss you. Or something more than friends—it’s a good thing we weren’t going out, or I’d be gutted right now. But, you know, we’re not. Going out. Obviously. It’s so obvious, I’m not sure why I didn’t get the memo on that. Maybe it was all the phone sex, addling my stupid female brain. Or, hell, maybe it was all those hours we spent together at the bakery, hanging out, or that time when I slept in your bed and cried on your lap on the bathroom floor. I just got confused about what we are. I didn’t get the memo.”

“Caroline—”

I take a step back. I lose my footing, slip, and fall on my tailbone. The pain pushes up more tears. When West offers me his hand, I swat it away. “No. I’m fine. Enjoy your night.”

I lumber up, and if his eyes have thawed at last—if his expression is full of as much misery as I’m feeling—damn it, I’m not going to let it matter.

I’m going to walk away from him before all of it can catch up to me.

I walk fast, and then I start to jog, because I’m afraid if I let myself feel everything that’s in me right now, I’ll have to accept that he’s breaking my heart on purpose, and he won’t fucking tell me why.

The rugby party is legendary.

It’s actually three parties. Starting right after dinner, there’s a pre-party in Rawlins lounge that’s just for the team. At nine, the whole-campus party kicks off in the Minnehan Center, which is always packed with bodies, because the rugby team throws the first big party after winter break, plays the best music, and never runs out of beer.

In between the two parties—well, that’s why it’s legendary. The blow-job contest.

Last year I missed it. I guess I was studying. But this time there’s no question I’m going. I helped Quinn with the planning, showed up to decorate Minnehan with paper cutouts of fierce rugby-playing women and this sort of oversize mural thing on the wall, which I think was supposed to be a life-size representation of a scrum but ended up looking like a giant lesbian orgy, all tongues and hands. Really we’re just lucky nobody from the college is paying attention to the decorations, because wow.

Wow.

Quinn says she’s going to save it and put it up in her dorm room after the party.

I made cheese-and-salsa dip and cookies, but nobody’s hungry. They’re thirsty. Quinn brought three gallons of fruit punch and three bottles of vodka. We mix the drinks right in the red plastic cups. Mine makes my stomach hurt—vodka always does—but I sip it, standing on the fringes, watching the others dance.

I don’t want to drink too much. I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid, like show up at West’s door and yell at him.

Like tell him that even though I know he doesn’t do parties, and he wants to back off this thing, I wish he were with me tonight.

So I could kick him.

And then probably kiss him.

I’d like to drink six drinks in a row, but that would be kind of dumb. So. Here I am, sipping my Solo cup of punch slowly and carefully like a good little girl, and when Quinn tries to get me to join her in an interpretive dance-off, I just smile and say, “No, thanks, I’ll watch.”

I’ll watch Bridget and Krishna laughing together on the other side of the room, my friends who aren’t officially supposed to be here, except they helped Quinn and me set up, and nobody cares, really.

I’ll watch Quinn undulate, pretending to be a jellyfish, because that’s her assigned interpretive-dance theme.

I’ll watch the door, even though he’s not coming, wasn’t invited to this party, would’ve said no if I invited him.

I’ll stand here and watch my life pass me by, because I’m a good daughter, a party planner, a brownnosing rule-following coward. And the way things are going, that’s all I’ll ever be.

We leave the lounge wrecked, put on jackets and hats, twine on scarves, stumble out into the overcast night. The temperature is in the high twenties, the snow thick and slushy. We slog toward the rugby field along the train tracks to a spot behind the Minnehan Center that Quinn and I diligently cleared off earlier. Forty feet of snow-free track gleaming in parallel lines.

Already, some people are milling around—mostly players’ friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. As we take bottles out of backpacks and unwrap disposable shot glasses to line them up along the tracks, the crowd grows. I’ve got a cloth envelope full of money. I’m supposed to be the cashier, but when Quinn sinks to her knees beside the tracks and says, “Let’s go, girls. Line ’em up!” I don’t want to anymore.

I don’t want to be on the outside, looking in.

I find Krishna’s head in the crowd and beckon him over. “You’re the cashier,” I tell him, pressing the envelope into his hand.

“Only if you do me for free.”

“Fine. You can be my first.” I catch Quinn’s eye. “I want in on this.”

“Sweet! We’ve got another virrrrgin!”

The idea that I’m a blow-job virgin is patently hilarious, but no one is mocking me here.

She makes some room beside her, gets me a shot, sets it up on the tracks in front of me. “All right!” she shouts, and the crowd starts to gather in around us. “You all know how this works! Ten bucks gets you two blow jobs—one for you, one for the awesome, amazing, ass-kicking rugger across the tracks. You pay your girl, she lets you stick your tenner down her shirt, it’s all very kinky. We all go on the same whistle. The drink goes on the tracks, and you have to drink it with your hands free in one try. If you choke or spit it all over your face like a loser, go to the back of the line. If your rugger chokes or gets it on herself, you can have your money back. If you both swallow like big kids, you can pay another ten and go again if you want. You all know Krishna?”

Eyes turn toward Krishna. Heads nod.

“Right. Everybody knows Krish. You need change, talk to Krish. I’m also appointing him the asshole referee. This is supposed to be fun to raise money for rugby. Yes, the shots are called blow jobs. Yes, it’s ever so naughty. But if you step over the line from fun and games to junk-grabbing or name-calling or any other form of small-minded assholery, Krish is going to give you the boot, and a dozen pissed-off ruggers are going to back him up. This is a safe space. For ev-ery-one. Got it?”

More nodding and some cheers. The crowd’s happy, we’re happy. We aren’t the only ones who threw a pre-party. “All right! Let’s do it! Where’s my whistle girl?”

Somehow, Bridget has the whistle. The first row of takers pays their money and gets down on their knees.

“Hands behind your backs!” Bridget yells.

I tuck my fingers into my back pockets, just so I won’t be tempted.

Krishna winks at me.

“Suck them down, girls!” Bridget cries, and blows the whistle.

I dip my head. It’s awkward just getting my head down to the level of the tracks, and I have to open my jaw wide to fit my mouth around the shot glass. Wide enough to make it ache. As I sit up, something flashes in my peripheral vision, a camera or a flashlight or just light gleaming off the tracks.

I see myself from the outside. Head thrown back. Eyes closed. A parody of exploitation.

The shot slides down my throat—Baileys, Kahlúa, whipped cream. Burning and cold at once, foreign and alarming. I stifle my gag reflex. My eyes tear up. It’s impossible not to remember hands in my hair, pulling too hard. Nate’s dick shoved farther down my throat than I wanted it, and this same sensation right at the borderline of gagging.

It’s not funny. It’s not.

But when I swallow and lift my head, nobody’s got their hands on me. I have Quinn on my right. Bridget with her whistle, smiling. Krishna across from me with whipped cream all over the front of his black jacket, wheezing with laughter. “That is fucking gross,” he says.

“You lose!” Quinn taunts. “Back of the line.”

It’s the strangest thing, because I’m not drunk, and I’m not traumatized, and I’m not crazy.

I’m not a dumb cunt.

I’m not a slut, I’m not frigid, I’m not a disappointment.

I’m just a girl who did a shot off the train tracks, high-fiving her friends, savoring the warmth spreading down her throat and into her stomach.

It’s stupid. But I’m okay. I’m actually kind of happy.

The next couple of shots are guys I don’t know. I get the second one down but choke on the third, and that guy waves off the money when I try to give it back. I let him buy another round even though he’s not supposed to. He chokes and dribbles whitish-yellow fluid all over his chin, which is sufficiently disgusting that we both bust up laughing. “I’m Aaron,” he says, offering me his hand.