Sex & Violence Read online

  So the next day during chapel, when Collette Holmander came to Connison, I was waiting for her, happy that I’d barely done anything to get her in the first place. Though Collette herself was somewhat left-of-normal, actually, compared to other girls at Remington Chase. Maybe I’d just failed to recalibrate left when I crossed the Mason-Dixon.

  Collette was from Boston. She swore a lot and constantly got demerits from Ms. Stahlman, the girls track coach. Plus she was a redhead, which, since The Cupcake Lady of Tacoma, I couldn’t help but find attractive.

  I locked the door and Collette flopped against me on my unmade bed and we made out until her shirt was off and I was so hard I was almost sick to my stomach. But before I could test the idea of where she was on the sex thing (I usually started with this basic hand motion toward the belly-button area and then just a little lower toward the edge of the panties, as if to acknowledge they were there, as Girls Who Said No were always touchy about things going in that direction), Collette just shoved her (ringless) hand down my pants and jerked me off. Then she popped up and put back on her clothes.

  “Chapel ends in four minutes,” she said, running out the door before I could even move.

  These secret chapel make outs went on for a couple of weeks. It was dangerous, because Patrick could have come in at any time, and I didn’t want to imagine what he’d do if he found me with the one girl at Remington Chase who wasn’t afraid to curse him out across the dining hall. So I couldn’t talk to Collette except during chapel or at track practice, when I’d see her doing the long jump and get wood at the sight. I could barely look at her at all without getting wood, to be honest.

  One night I went to dinner with Patrick and one of his friends, a tall blond guy who played basketball, whose name I instantly forgot except for the fact that it ended in III. (People at Remington Chase tended to have fancy names like that, even if this asshole looked about as aristocratic as the guy who changed my father’s oil at the Mercedes dealership in Charlotte.) III was nice enough but sort of interchangeable, in the way all The Rammer’s friends were. Bulky, athletic, sort of dim. Focused on giving each other shit and getting drunk and doing things like sitting around in someone’s room and talking about all the pussy they wanted but instead of actually getting up and doing something about it, just watching crap old movies like Apocalypse Now or A Clockwork Orange over and over, rewinding the super-insane violent parts and spitting chew into soda bottles and farting, all activities to ensure no females would ever come near them. Some of these guys had girlfriends, but they seemed uninterested in crossing the regulated sex divide Remington Chase had built up around the dorms, like it was more fun to hang out with each other and call each other a fag every second, which was crazy to me, since all their male bonding was highly gay, in actuality.

  Hanging around with guys like that did nothing to increase my chances of finding chicks, which annoyed me, as The Rammer made sure our room was regularly crammed with guys like that. And which was the main reason, before I started getting naked with Collette, that I liked to skip chapel.

  III didn’t have a lot to say, which was fine with me. I never liked talking about myself in a new place, but if people asked, I occasionally made stuff up. Nothing too crazy, like that I came from circus people. But boring stuff—I’d say I had three older sisters. Or that my father was a diplomat, my mother wrote cookbooks—that kind of shit. But that night in the cafeteria we just sat there silently eating our shitty meals (slopped-together biscuits and chicken for the entrée, unless you wanted to eat from the salad bar—another good way to get The Rammer to call you a fag).

  I was moving around the biscuits in the rat-fur-colored gravy when Collette bounced by to ask for the relay handout for track—which she hadn’t gotten because she was late again. I told her it was in my backpack downstairs in the common room.

  Patrick tore himself away from his tray long enough to notice Collette. Between mouthfuls of chicken and biscuits, he said something like “Quit slobbering all over my roommate with your nasty-ass firecrotch.”

  Instead of recoiling in horror like most dainty girls at Remington Chase would have, Collette snapped, “Why don’t you take some more steroids, you goddamn needledick!” Then in a nicer voice: “I’ll be in the common room downstairs, Evan.”

  After dinner, I went to meet Collette, trailed by Patrick and III. Patrick hung back in the hallway, dicking around with his phone, but III stood at my shoulder, his arms crossed over his tie. Collette offered up some Lemonheads from a box, and I shook my head, though III grabbed the box and toppled it into his hand.

  “Jesus, have some,” Collette snatched the box back. “So, Evan. Farrah says she’s sorry she can’t come watch our meet,” Collette said, a little too sweetly. “Her parents are coming down to visit.”

  “Collette, tell Farrah to stop that shit.” III was suddenly all crabby. Then, as Collette rolled her eyes at him, III turned to me and said, “Come on, man, we’re leaving.”

  I didn’t say anything as we headed back to Connison. Patrick was lagging behind us talking on his phone still, probably to a girl, because he kept saying all these wishy-washy, breathy things: Yeah … I don’t know … Probably … That’s funny. Though for all I knew, he was talking to his mother. Of course, I didn’t know how to talk to one’s mother on the phone, not having one anymore.

  Beside me, III breathed out a big sigh. “You’re new here, and you seem like a good guy. But I would avoid anything with those bitches. Collette’s always doing some dumb shit for Farrah. The whole thing last year with Patrick”—I noted III didn’t call him The Rammer, either—“and now she’s all up into everyone’s business. And he’s still pissed that she dumped him. But—really—stay away from Farrah. Because she’s been screwing with Tate Kerrigan since Christmas break, and he’s not sane when it comes to her.”

  “I barely know Farrah,” I said.

  He considered this while Patrick murmured on the phone a few yards behind us.

  “Girls make a big fucking deal about stupid shit,” III continued. “But so does Tate, when it comes to that blonde bitch. He’s been with her, on and off, since seventh grade. Even if he fucks someone else, he doesn’t want her with anyone else. And he knows she’s got some stupid crush on you, even if she’s just doing it to make him jealous. But it’s working, trust me. Tate’s my roommate, and he’s been a complete asshole lately. So don’t fuck with this. Really.”

  So I didn’t fuck with it. Really. I avoided Farrah even more. But I didn’t stop with Collette, and the next two chapels she let me take off more and more of her clothes. Her skin was pure white and covered in freckles. During Friday chapel, the day before our first track meet, I pulled off her skirt and was kissing her belly and she was sighing in this soft, happy way.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “Because I like to.”

  “It sucks that it has to be secret,” I said.

  “That’s because last year Patrick told everyone what we did together in bed,” she said.

  “You think I’m some douchebag who goes around telling people everything?” I asked. “I’m not that kind of guy, Collette.”

  This was marginally true—I wasn’t that kind of guy. But not because I was honorable. I just never had any friends to tell in the first place. I didn’t mention this to Collette, however.

  “You have no idea how shitty that was, Evan,” she said. “And while, no, I don’t think you’re a douchebag, I’m not giving anyone any more opportunities. Because now I’m the firecrotch of Remington Chase. Everyone thinks I’m so bad.”

  “I think you’re pretty good, actually,” I said. I pushed down her panties a little.

  “You’re alone in that,” she said, breathing heavily. “Everyone else just thinks I’m a slut.”

  “Why are you a slut but Patrick’s not?” I asked. “Or me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But if you keep doing that”—she pointed to my mouth right above her panties
—“I’m going to lose my mind.”

  So I pulled her panties off all the way and she lost her mind. Me too.

  Our first track meet was in Charlotte, and it went late. I sat in the back of the bus with Collette and a couple of other people. I’d won the 3000 and placed third in the 1500, so I was feeling exhausted but good. In the dark, Collette’s fingers brushed mine. I looked at her and knew exactly what she was thinking. Or what I hoped she was thinking. Who can ever tell what girls are really thinking?

  We walked from the field house with our gear, and the others left us to go to the freshman and sophomore dorms. Then, when it was just me and Collette and I was considering how I might get her naked, my father called. Collette leaned against the brick wall of the library courtyard while I had the same conversation with Adrian Carter we’d had since he left me at this godforsaken school.

  “Everything going okay, Evan?”

  “Yeah. How about you?”

  “Things are not going well here,” he said. He launched into a technical explanation that I didn’t care about and could barely comprehend. My father’s very smart. But not smart enough to figure out when someone doesn’t give a shit about what he’s saying.

  “Sorry to hear that, Dad,” I answered, when I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “You need anything?” Anything = money.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Grades okay?” I hope you’re not flunking anything.

  “Yeah, they’re fine.” Though I was flunking almost everything but chemistry.

  “Well, good. Call me if you need anything. Good night.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  I would never call him. It’s not that my father’s a dick, necessarily. He’s just a little distant. Silent. I mean, growing up he seemed normal enough. But then my mother died and he got stuck raising me by himself and that turned him into whatever he was now. Not a dick. But not much of a dad, either.

  “Walk with you to Fountaineau,” I said.

  “You can’t come in, though,” Collette said, her hand grabbing mine.

  “Herst patrolling?”

  “She’s gone this weekend. But that just means there’ll be a ton of people hanging around.”

  “Feining’s never around Connison.”

  “Feining’s new and probably banking on girls not being as slutty as I am,” Collette said. “And at this school full of Jesusfreak virgins, he’s probably right.”

  “You’re not slutty,” I said.

  “You’re sweet, Evan,” she said. “But in the minority, I think.”

  I stopped and looked at her, barelegged in her shorts with her track hoodie zipped to her neck, and I pressed her against the brick of the library building and kissed her. Not violently or anything. But because she seemed a little sad and because she turned me on and because once we got to Fountaineau, we’d have an audience of girls.

  “You can’t do it with me here, Evan,” she said, after a while, pushing me away and zipping up her hoodie. I had kind of gotten sloppy with my hands everywhere, because even post-race sweaty, she was still crazy-hot to me. I hoped she wasn’t pissed about me getting so pervy, because the library courtyard was pretty public and well lit. But she was smiling, shaking out her hair.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Where can I do it with you, then?”

  “Your room,” she said. “This Monday during chapel. From 9:28 to 10:13.”

  I stopped. Because though we’d done a lot of various naked activities, we’d never done it.

  She kept on walking toward Fountaineau. “Buy some condoms,” she said over her shoulder.

  I stumbled to catch up. “I have condoms.”

  “You’re so dirty.”

  “You mean slutty,” I said.

  She laughed. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m going to catch shit if anyone sees me with you.”

  I kissed her again, but a minute later she pushed me off.

  “Monday,” she said, pressing a finger to my lips. “Focus on Monday.”

  When I came back to my room, Patrick and III—I really should have learned his name—were drinking beer. III was watching some crap on Patrick’s laptop, and Patrick was dismantling the smoke alarm. I didn’t even ask. I set my shit down and went to shower.

  The Connison showers were sort of notorious. Not in a prison way, though I’m sure that kind of crazy hazing shit had happened. But while all the other dorms had separate shower stalls, Connison just had a big room full of showerheads and no privacy. Maybe the powers that be assumed that by junior year you could handle being naked around your classmates. Probably not even that much thought had gone into it. The shower room had a door separating it from the urinals and sinks, so at least you didn’t have to bare it all while some dumbass was taking a piss.

  At ten at night, no one was in the shower, so at least I could relax. Not relax enough to yank it, which was thing #476 that sucked about boarding school: no yanking it in the shower, like I was used to.

  After about ten minutes, I shut off the shower, dumped all my stuff into my shave kit and wrapped my towel around myself. I hoped that by the time I’d finished brushing my teeth, Patrick and III would have passed out or gone somewhere else.

  But when I opened the door, I nearly slipped on my ass. Because right there by the rows of sinks was Tate Kerrigan, smiling. Next to him was Patrick Ramsey, his ham face all sweaty. Not smiling.

  “Carter,” Tate said. His stupid hair was all gelled and crunchy. “Why you gotta fuck around with what doesn’t belong to you?”

  “Uh … ?”

  “This is for firecrotch,” Patrick said, reaching forward and grabbing my head, his hands in my hair, slamming my face against the shower door and then Tate kicked me in the stomach and I fell on the orange industrial tile and spit up a blob of blood and the last things I remembered were Patrick Ramsey calling me a fucking fag and Tate Kerrigan laughing when my nose broke open under his fist.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I thought I heard Collette crying. People were over me, putting things on my body, moving quickly, touching me everywhere. Everything hurt. Far away Collette was saying No, no, no, no, please, her voice so sad in a way I’d never heard it. Desperate and begging. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or awake.

  When I woke up I felt like I was padded in cotton, like a layer of air separated me from the world. My father appeared. Nurses appeared. A police officer appeared. It was easier to shut my eyes, because it took too much energy to open them and I couldn’t see that well.

  Soon I became accustomed to my father looking down at me, his usually shaved head sprouting golden blond fringe, like he’d been unable to shave it down as had been his practice since his twenties, when he’d started balding. And I became accustomed to two nurses. A woman with a daisy-chain tattoo on her wrist who smelled like caramel. And a male nurse with hair as red as Collette’s. Every time he came in, my eyes filled with tears. He probably thought I hated him. Maybe that’s why they brought in the shrink a few days later. But I wouldn’t talk to the shrink or anyone else. There were stitches on my tongue, and it hurt to talk. It hurt to do anything with my mouth—even eat Jell-O. Once the male nurse brought me tater tots—maybe he was trying to be nice because I love tater tots—but they hurt my mouth, and I threw them up, which hurt worse.

  The police officer came back; I could hear him arguing with my father.

  “Just do what you have to and let us alone,” my father said. “We’ll come back for court. But we’re moving out of state when he gets out of the hospital. Whatever that girl’s family does is their business.”

  I tried to sit up, to ask if Collette was okay, but my chest ached, and that was when I realized that it was covered in a huge plane of a bandage. That I’d had surgery. My father said they’d removed my spleen. A little while later, the daisy-chain tattoo nurse came in to get me out of bed for a walk. I got up and walked with her, because I didn’t want to be accused of being weak, but I hated it. It was embarrassing hav
ing a tiny lady who was at least a foot shorter than I was lift me out of bed. But I could barely lift my head and my chest burned. That was the incision, and also, the nurse said, broken ribs.

  The daisy-chain tattoo nurse made me walk the ugly, beige hospital hallway, every day, wearing these horrible socks with sticky dots on the bottoms. A little farther each time. To the waiting lounge. To the nurse’s station. To the drinking fountain. The drinking fountain day I didn’t want to get up at all because I was so tired and my chest hurt—and I had won the 3000 just a week earlier. The drinking fountain day, I itched my nose and the plastic ID band on my wrist ripped open the cuts in the corner of my mouth and blood poured out all over my hospital gown, but the daisy-chain tattoo nurse didn’t notice right away until I was crying. Crying like a fucking baby and then she said, “Oh, honey,” and that made me cry more until she got me back to my room and re-bandaged my face.

  It felt like I would spend the rest of my life in the hospital. That I would never go home. I didn’t know where we lived, anyway. I had never been to the place, because my father rented it after moving me into the dorm. I thought about what I’d left behind at Remington Chase. My backpack and some books and clothes. My track bag. I thought of the circle necklace my mother gave me when I was eleven. I sat up then, and my chest hurt.

  “Where is my necklace,” I croaked out to my father. He tried to take my hand, but the right one was covered in a bunch of smaller bandages, the left was wrapped up in an Ace bandage. He said, “Shh. They took it off during surgery. I have it in my pocket. Shhh, Evan. Shh.”