Sex & Violence Read online

  I nodded, not really knowing what she was getting at.

  “So I slept with Taber, okay! It was my first time!” she said in a loud, harassed rush, as if I had beaten it out of her like a cop with a phone book.

  Well. That I didn’t see coming. Baker with Taber, the four-ton noseguard? Jesus.

  “It was kind of a weird accident,” she continued, less loud now. “We were watching a movie at his house in town while his family was out here at the lake. For two weeks, we’d done everything else you can do in Marchant Falls. There was nothing else left, you know?”

  I nodded as if I understood. But I didn’t care, because now I was panicking about where the hell Jim Sweet was. Since I was cornered naked with his also-naked, kind-of girlfriend and backstroking across the lake didn’t seem like much of an escape plan.

  But Baker obliviously jabbered about Taber. How he bought her Dairy Queen. How they played tennis and went bowling. I was getting a little nauseated, when she paused and looked back to shore, as if someone was coming.

  Was it Jim? Jesus Christ I needed to get out of here!

  “So that night?” she continued. “When the movie ended? We were sitting on his bed, and he just kissed me. And the next thing I knew, we were doing it and …”

  She stopped. Which was understandable. But I was glad she was done describing the fuck out of it. My head was busy with exit strategies that didn’t involve my male frontal nudity.

  “It was pretty awkward,” she continued. “But also very cool. I mean, he’s this huge guy, you know? And because he plays football, you might think he’s super rough. But he was a virgin too. And the whole time he touched me, he was so gentle. And shy. It was like he was almost worried, like he thought he would break me or …”

  “Well, no kidding,” I interrupted, because I couldn’t help it anymore. “Taber’s huge. He probably could have broken you.”

  I wondered if I’d been an asshole to say that, but she went on.

  “So then Jim came home and Conley got ungrounded. For a while, it was kind of awesome. Romantic and tragic.”

  “So, you’re non-monogramous because you’re secretly in love with Taber?” I blurted out, because I was anxious for her to get on with it. Girls have this way of telling stories where you think they’ve come to the point, but then the whole thing shifts and then they’re explaining their eating disorder or some other thing you don’t see coming. Reason #476 to never have a girlfriend.

  “No! I mean, Christ. I don’t know! The first time you have sex with someone it’s not necessarily wonderful in terms of performance. But that doesn’t mean anything, right?”

  Sure it does, I thought. It means don’t have sex with her again.

  “I guess before that night, I hadn’t really considered Taber, you know?” she said. “Until those two weeks, I assumed a lot about him. Around Jim, Taber’s always quiet. Jim sort of dominates everything. So after we did it, Taber went back to being quiet. And then Jim asked me out. Which was stupid—why did I say yes to Jim? Probably because I was mad at Taber. Why was he such a pussy about it?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t him,” I suggested. “Maybe Taber knew Jim liked you and felt guilty or something.”

  “Maybe” She swam toward me. I could hear loons calling across the water, and a Roman candle flew up and sent spools of reflected light in spirals on the water around her shoulders and everything, Baker, too, was so beautiful that I felt dizzy. Almost-Weepy. Dr. Penny had been on me lately about medication for my anxious brain; I wondered if it would kill my chronic crybaby tendency too.

  Hey, Dr. Penny? I imagined myself asking. What about a pill for when you’re naked with this cute chick in a lake in the middle of the night after you got caught making out with your boss’s half sister and the cute girl’s telling you all this shit about some dude she slept with and also she’s gorgeous, but you can’t imagine touching her because you’re afraid of everything and everybody …

  “Anyway, Conley’s a cunt and I’m just … I’m a complete wreck, I guess.”

  In addition to feeling certain my insanity was now probably visible to Baker, I was reeling how she could look so pretty while calling someone the c-word.

  “Jesus, Evan, are you even listening?”

  “I should have told you about Jim,” I stuttered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get it, I guess. I thought that was how you wanted it with him.”

  “Well, no. But it’s okay.” She swam past me toward the dock. “I forgive you. Friends?”

  I nodded and looked away when she got out of the water. Waited the appropriate time for her to put on her bathrobe and step into her boots.

  But when she said good night, I stopped her.

  “You want to go to Story Island tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Get Tom and come by for breakfast in the morning.”

  I flopped back into the water, watched her go. Exhausted by the whole thing. How would I ever get clean again?

  Dear Collette,

  Is half of the shit guys do to impress chicks entirely lost on you? I think you don’t even notice all the crap that we do.

  For example, I suspect you don’t know this, but no guy wants a girl who is bigger than he is. This is not a fatness thing. Most guys want a girl who looks like a woman, with tits and ass and stuff. But, also, he wants to be as big as her, so side-by-side things look proportional. He doesn’t want to look like a little scrawny weasel with a caved-in hairless chest and stuff.

  Not that I want a lot of hair on my chest, really. But just that I don’t want it to look like the chick I’m with is babysitting me.

  Also, you know that strutting thing guys do? With their chests all puffed out and their arms hanging from their sides in an affected way, like they’re carrying invisible beach balls? Like their biceps are just TOO HUGE for their body and they can’t walk normally from all the bulk? Tell me this doesn’t turn you on. Tell me this is something you laugh at. Because I HATE that strutting douche shit. And sometimes I think guys don’t do that for chicks, anyways. I think they do it for other guys, just to demonstrate their toughness and muscularity. Which makes me want to punch something.

  Also, do you really give a shit about our muscles? Or our cars? I think you only care about hair. I swear, chicks used to talk about my hair all the time. Which made me feel gayer than anything else. I mean, literally gay. Like, if a girl liked my hair so much, it must mean I was cultivating some hairstyle thing. Really I just never wanted to get it cut. It was laziness, not style.

  Later, Evan

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next day, after scarfing down waffles with sweetened ricotta from Keir’s farm—everyone complimented him on it, but all I could wonder was how Brenda could sleep with a guy who wore a shark’s tooth necklace with the world’s tightest purple muscle shirt—Tom dropped Baker and me at Story Island, saying he’d be back around noon.

  Baker didn’t say much the entire walk to the Archardt House, which sucked, because it meant I had nothing to think about except for how I shouldn’t stare at her ass. That and how I wanted to hide from her the whole reason for my coming back to the island in the first place. Soren & Melina.

  We went into the Archardt House, just like before, me pushing open the door for her, though this time she didn’t bitch about it and I didn’t lord it over her. She was excited to show me the library, and it was very cool. Every wall was crammed with books, and there was a long ladder that rolled along a track. Plus a couple of rotted-out leather chairs and a desk that probably weighed as a much as a tank.

  “I think it’s my favorite room so far.”

  “That’s because you haven’t been upstairs,” she said. Was she being flirty? I didn’t get her. Still, because I was a damn dog, I watched her go upstairs, just like before, except this time it was 100 percent pervy. Then I hauled ass back to the oak tree.

  I hadn’t imagined it. Soren & Melina. The letters were blocky and masculine, but it wasn’t like you could exactly write in cursive with a knife
.

  I walked until I came to the summer kitchen. We’d only looked in it briefly, so I stepped inside, and a bird skittered out over my head, which made me almost shit myself. The summer kitchen was full of dead leaves and old nests and had a musky, nasty scent. There were chipped enamel countertops and an old black stove. The place looked like a perfect location for kids to get wasted or make out. Baker called that kind of thing a historical desecration. She said it was bad enough we were damaging the integrity of the Archardt House by coming in without permission and proper equipment.

  The cupboards were full of broken mason jars, but there was one in the corner that wouldn’t budge. I knocked it with my fist until it swung open. On the top shelf was a glass peanut butter jar full of dead bugs, fishing lures, and lead weights. Beside it, an old BB gun. On the bottom shelf was a ragged, blue cloth-covered book, big as a notebook and bound with a faded leather strap that looked like a man’s belt.

  I unstrapped the belt and opened the book. The cover page had a circle drawn in pencil and inside it, also written in pencil, was this:

  Soren,

  I have always loved how you love your home.

  This is your book to show me how much.

  Love,

  Melina

  The book was all drawings and charts and lists. A diagram of a raven’s wing, sketches of beaver dams. Lists of fish caught, the dates and times and coordinates in the lake, weights and lengths. Bullhead, northern pike, walleye, bass. Feathers and flowers and leaves pressed into the pages. It was kind of beautiful, actually.

  I knew just a little about my Uncle Soren. He’d been an outdoorsman and a marine. He didn’t have a permanent address. And he didn’t get along with my dad. That he was an artist on top of all that was unexpected. He couldn’t have been more different than my father.

  Soren’s book pushed through the seasons as if they weren’t months apart but days. Winter ice fishing. Summer storms. And drawings. Dragonflies, geese migrating, a hand-built canoe, boats turned over on the shore, leaves changing colors.

  I heard Baker calling my name. I latched the belt back over the book, shoved it in my backpack and stepped out of the summer kitchen.

  “Evan? What are you doing?”

  “Just looking around,” I said.

  “Tom just texted me. There’s a thunderstorm coming, so he’s on his way.”

  She looked at me suspiciously, like I’d been jacking off or something in the summer kitchen. We started back toward the drop-off point, and to avoid any more questions, I asked her how long she’d known Kelly.

  “Since seventh grade, why?”

  “What’s this whole Everything-But thing?”

  “Oh, poor Tom,” Baker laughed. “It’s pretty hilarious.”

  “It’s not hilarious. It’s completely insane.”

  “That too. Kelly’s building the sex thing up way too much. She’s going to be so disappointed when it finally happens.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand Kelly’s moral flexibility, of her bargaining shit down with Jesus. I thought it was somewhat decent of her to give Tom something to work with. But I also agreed with Baker. Like penis-vagina sex would really change anything about their relationship and their behavior. Such a simple thing, really, compared to all the unholy activities they did in an effort to maneuver around it.

  “You have to tell me now,” she said. “Because I told you. And I’ve never told anyone about that before. Not even Conley knows.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About Taber and me,” she said, like I was brain-damaged. “You have to tell me your First-Time story.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m assuming you’ve had a first time?”

  “Jesus! Give me a little credit!”

  “How can I? You never talk about yourself at all.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because it’s interesting,” she said. “And it’s only fair. I told you mine.”

  “I never asked to hear yours.”

  “True. But it was nice to finally tell someone.”

  “Technically, you told Jim before you told me.”

  “I never told Jim shit,” she said, angry.

  “Maybe you should. Since you’re non-monogramous and all.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” she said. “Come on! Just tell me! You know I won’t say anything.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But no interrupting. No questions or commentary, either.”

  “Why can’t I ask questions?”

  “Because it’ll drag the whole thing out longer.”

  “Okay, fine. But how old were you the first time?”

  “Fifteen,” I said, without thinking.

  “Jesus! That’s super young.”

  “That sounded like commentary,” I said.

  She apologized all over the place, but the whole thing bugged me. Not just because there was no way I’d ever tell her the true First-Time story. There were plenty of other crap sex stories I could pass off as the First—there was no shortage of awkward situations I’d put myself in since Tacoma. But mostly because it depressed me, this guy I used to be. Dirtbag Evan Carter, who lived for that whole game. Profiling, checking every girl out. Who could meet a loadie chick at the drive-in and get her shirt off in less than twenty minutes.

  But the guy I was now? That guy considered it a breakthrough that he’d actually yanked it for the first time a few nights ago. A breakthrough worthy of reporting to Dr. Penny—if I ever told her anything that actually mattered. For a girl, Baker was strangely normal about sex; she had no idea how fucked up I was about this and a million other things.

  “It was in San Diego,” I said, sighing. “My first job at a mall. I took tickets for the merry-go-round in the food court. The Merry-Go-Round Master, people called it. So, I met this girl. Her name was Mandy. And she asked me …”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Interrupting!”

  “You have to give me something to imagine, Evan.”

  “Why do you need to imagine this at all?” I yelled and she shut up. “Mandy was cute, I guess,” I allowed. “A little taller than me, though. She was older than me too. She asked me to front her a couple of bucks because she had to buy tampons and she wasn’t getting paid until the next day and she’d just got her period and none of her coworkers had anything …”

  “Where did she work?”

  “American Eagle. And shut up.”

  “Sorry!”

  “I didn’t have any cash, but I had a credit card my dad gave me for groceries,” I said. “Because my dad always made me buy groceries. Though we mostly ate takeout. Anyway, that’s off-topic … So we went into CVS and got the damn tampons. And then …”

  “You did it for your first time with someone who had her period?” Baker screeched.

  “No! Jesus!” I said. “I didn’t call her for like two weeks. It was gone by then. At least I think it was.”

  “Pretty dickish not to call someone for two weeks, Evan.”

  “That’s because I was kind of dickish, Baker.”

  “Not so dickish that you wouldn’t buy tampons for a girl you’d just met.”

  “It’s not like she asked me to insert the damn thing.”

  “Well, you haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.”

  “Hilarious,” I said. “I’m so glad I told you that.”

  “It is kind of weird that she asked a guy to help her with such a girly problem.”

  “Mandy was a weird chick,” I said. “I suppose she didn’t think I was too threatening. Me being the Merry-Go-Round Master and everything.”

  “I can’t believe that’s a real job! Was it …”

  “Interrupting!”

  She shut up then. We stood at Tom’s drop-off point, which made me hit the gas on this whole dumb story.

  “When I called her, she said we should see a movie and I asked if she wanted to smoke out first. But Man
dy said she had some magic mushrooms. So we ate the ’shrooms in her car and she talked me through it and, yes, I barfed them up in the parking lot. ’Shrooms taste disgusting, by the way. She gave me some gum to get the taste out; she said she loved chewing gum when she tripped. Then we went to the theater—this was at the same mall where we worked—and saw a kid’s movie, I think. Maybe Toy Story? I can’t remember. So anyhow. I’ll skip describing the whole drug thing because it won’t make any sense and who really gives a shit, you know?”

  “People’s drug stories are never as interesting as they think.”

  She was technically interrupting, but since she agreed with me on the point, I let it ride. “Right, so you know the part about the men’s room and the black-and-white tile, so I’ll skip that too,” I said. “Mandy obviously couldn’t drive, so she called this guy to get us, which freaked me out, because I thought she liked me, but the guy just dropped us at Mandy’s house. She actually lived not too far from my house, which was bizarre, considering how randomly we met. I didn’t know this at the time, on account of my pinwheel eyes and everything. But I figured it out later.

  “No one was at her house, except for her tiny little dog who was bugging the shit out of me. Biting my shoelaces. Mandy kept laughing, but it drove me nuts. I hate little tiny dogs, by the way. You could say it’s one of my rules. All dogs must be bigger than a goddamn lunch box, maybe. How’s that?”

  Baker laughed and I couldn’t help but feel a little better about telling her this. Even though it wasn’t the true First Time one.

  “To get away from the damn dog, we went down into the basement,” I continued. “The entire basement was her bedroom. Like, she had a bed and a desk and a television and everything. Even a washer and dryer.”

  “Did you do it on the washer?” Baker asked, all excited.