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  I didn't suggest they come up to visit me. Even meeting

  halfway would've taken her out of her comfort zone. "I'l

  be there tomorrow night, remember? Taking him to the

  movies? Power Heroes? "

  "You could come on Friday, instead. Spend the

  weekend."

  She might be able to know what my face looked like

  without seeing it, but I doubt she knew about the shudder

  crawling over me at the thought.

  "I can't. Busy."

  She didn't push it. "Okay. Fine."

  We were so alike, sometimes it was scary. Which, of

  course, was one reason why I'd moved away. We hung

  up.

  I stripped out of my clothes and headed into the bathroom,

  wishing the conversation could be washed away as easily

  as soapsuds down the drain. Growing up, I'd lived with my

  mom in a series of low-income-housing apartments, rented

  trailers and dilapidated houses owned by men who often

  seemed more interested in the way my mom cooked and

  kept house than anything else about her. There had never

  been enough of anything, but especialy hot water for

  showers.

  In the best of them, I'd been able to sneak a late-night

  shower when nobody else needed to use the bathroom,

  the washing machine wasn't running and nobody was

  cleaning dishes. In the worst of them, I'd sought the

  shower as a refuge from the shouting and the slamming

  doors, shivering under spray that turned frigid long before I

  was ready to get out.

  I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest

  I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest

  unit and cheapest maintenance package in one of

  Harrisburg's hottest new apartment buildings. Unlimited

  hot water might be wasteful, and I didn't care. I took

  advantage of it every chance I could.

  By the time I came out dressed in a pair of stretched-out

  fleece pants and a T-shirt that had been threadbare when I

  stole it from Austin's drawer, I felt better. I fixed myself a

  sandwich and a glass of cold milk, and I set it on the table.

  The note was stil there.

  It slid into my hands as though it had been made for my

  fingers. The same black letters stroked this paper with the

  same black ink, and this time, with nobody to see, I

  brought it to my nose and breathed in deep.

  Fresh, good ink smels like nothing else in the world. I

  closed my eyes and breathed again. The paper stil had a

  scent, faintly musky like cologne or perfume I didn't

  recognize. I sat to study it. Bold, heavy strokes of the pen

  carved the number on the front. No envelope, no name, no

  postmark to show where or when it had been mailed. Not

  even a fingerprint smudge to give me an idea of the size of

  the hand that had written it. The elegant handwriting

  showed no gender.

  showed no gender.

  Without an envelope and stamp it couldn't have come

  through the mail, which meant someone had pushed it

  through the slot. The wrong slot, again. They'd taken the

  time to write the number on the front, but hadn't paid

  attention to the number on my mailbox. It wasn't a note for

  me, and I should not have read it. If I hadn't, everything

  would have been different.

  If only I'd done the right thing.

  Chapter 12

  You wil take your finest paper and your best ink.

  You wil write down in explicit detail your most erotic

  experience. It may be real or it may be fantasy, but you

  are to write it without error in your best handwriting,

  without blots or misspelings.

  You wil return this essay to me by Thursday.

  The note listed the same post-office box as before.

  I blinked and read the note again as heat rose in my

  cheeks. I closed it and put it aside. I shouldn't have read it.

  It wasn't for me.

  I opened it again, read over the words in that fluid,

  beautiful hand that gave away nothing of its origin, and

  something twisted inside me. Finest paper and best ink.

  Already I could feel my fingers curving around the pen,

  could imagine the words unscroling under the tip as I put

  my secret thoughts onto paper. I even knew the paper I

  would use. Creamy white, unlined, bordered in gold. It

  was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so

  was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so

  intimate and explicit as had been demanded. I had only

  two sheets.

  I folded the card carefuly and slipped it back into the

  envelope, closing it up as tenderly as I might pul the

  blankets higher on a lover next to me in bed when I woke

  to a chil. I pushed it away from me on the table, and

  folded my hands while I stared at it. The mystery of who

  was sending these notes, these lists, had been

  overshadowed by the more intriguing enigma of why.

  I got up from the table and puled a glass of water from the

  tap, but even though I drank it back in a few quick gulps,

  more the way a practiced drinker wil take whiskey than

  water, it didn't cool the heat rising in my throat to my

  cheeks. I turned, my back to the counter, and leaned. The

  note sat on my table. Not accusing.

  Inviting.

  In a long, long list of sexual experiences, what would I

  consider my most erotic? Not the first time I ever sucked a

  guy off, or the first time I came from someone's else's

  hand. Not the first time I ever fucked, either. Al of those

  had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.

  had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.

  Quite a bit bad. I had a long list of experiences I could

  have written, but what was the one worthy of my finest

  paper? My best ink?

  I busied myself with cleaning my tidy kitchen but was

  unable to put the list from my mind. The first few notes had

  been simple, if enigmatic, instructions. Eat oatmeal. Work

  out. Be beautiful. It had been something of a game, these

  suggestions implanted in my brain and leading me toward

  the choices I'd have probably made anyway even without

  the suggestions. But this…this was different. What had

  seemed harmless before had become slightly more sinister.

  Also, a heluva lot sexier.

  Late night.

  The only light comes, flickering blue, from the TV in the

  corner. The sound's turned down low because it's not so

  important to hear what's being said as it is to see what's

  going on. I've seen this movie before, a few times, in

  pieces, but it's the first time I've ever seen it al at once.

  He lifts his head from kissing me when it comes on, his

  hands stiling on my bely where they'd been wandering

  their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This movie is hot."

  I push his face back to mine and take his mouth to keep

  his attention on me, not the TV screen. I open my mouth

  and legs to him, puling him down on top of me. Puling him

  close. My heart's open, too, though I haven't yet t
old him I

  love him. Those are words for prom pictures and class

  rings.

  We don't have that, him and me. We have the backseat of

  his car, we have the space beneath the bleachers after

  school. We have the back row of the movie theater. We

  have the basement in his parents' house and this couch.

  But when I hear the song, the one my mom plays over and

  over on those old mix tapes from her youth, I lift my head

  from his kisses to see what's going on. I know why she

  loved this song. She'd been a fan of Duran Duran in her

  youth, complete with fedora hat and bleached-blond

  streak in her hair, just like the bass player. John Taylor, the

  same guy singing this song. Wel, not singing it. Chanting it,

  sort of. I knew she loved this song because he sang it, but

  until now, I hadn't known this was the movie it had come

  from.

  The woman on the screen bites her finger. The slide show

  she's watching cycles through to another picture, but the

  movie doesn't show what she's looking at. Only her. She

  touches herself, her thighs opening, her head faling back in

  ecstasy as she makes herself come.

  He watches me watch. His hand presses flat on my chest,

  over my heart. My breath had caught in my throat and I let

  it seep out, slow and silent, not wanting him to know I'd

  been holding it.

  "Do you do that?"

  I tear my gaze from the TV to look at him. "What?"

  He jerks his chin toward the set. The movie's moved on to

  something else, but I know what he meant. "That. Do

  you?"

  "Do I touch myself? Do I get myself off?" I hitch higher

  against the arm of the battered couch his parents donated

  to the basement. A cat had scratched it; a dog had lifted its

  leg on it. We'd fucked about a thousand times on its faded

  cushions, or maybe only ten.

  He sits back. His shirt hangs open at his throat. I'd been

  the one to undo the buttons. The waistband of his boxers

  peeks from his jeans. Beneath the denim his cock had

  throbbed, hard and hot, moments before.

  I know him now, though not as wel as I wil eventualy. He

  doesn't know me very wel at al and never wil. Yet this is

  different, this coyness as he scrubs his hand over the brush

  of his hair and grins.

  "Wel. Yeah."

  "Do you?" I pul down the bottom of my sweater and

  cross my arms over my stomach.

  He laughs low. I've known him for years, since elementary

  school. I've watched him become a man. He sounds like a

  man when he laughs, al low and growly deep. Rough-

  edged.

  "Wel, yeah," he says. "Al guys do."

  "But you don't think al girls do, too?"

  "I'm not asking what al girls do. Just you," he points out.

  He knows how to work me. And, because I want to

  believe I'm the only girl in his thoughts, I answer his

  question honestly. Later we'l both lie.

  "Yeah. I do it."

  He clears his throat. "Realy? I mean, you realy—"

  "Wank? Masturbate? Pet my pussy?" I guess I'm trying to

  shock him. Make him blush. He's not the blushing sort.

  "Is that what you cal it?"

  "What do you call it?"

  We're whispering, though his parents sleep a ful two floors

  above us and we haven't bothered to keep our voices

  down about anything before. He leans forward and so do

  I. He smels faintly of cologne and more like fabric

  softener. His mother does his laundry. Mine doesn't.

  "Jerking off, I guess."

  "I don't cal it anything," I admit. "I just do it."

  "How often?"

  I laugh, then, and look to the movie for strength. The

  couple in the film are fucking in what looks like a clock

  tower. Their hands scrabble at each other as they pul off

  their clothes.

  "Whenever I feel like it!"

  He laughs. "How often do you feel like it?"

  I don't want to tel him about the nights I've spent with

  other boys' hands on me, revving me up without finishing

  me off. Or the blank-fronted books I sneak from the

  shelves of the family down the street who pay me to watch

  their kids while they go bowling. I've learned a lot more

  about sex from those books than I've ever learned from a

  boy. Until him, anyway.

  "Do you feel like it now?" he asks when it becomes clear

  I'm not going to answer.

  "Do I feel like coming now?"

  He's used his hands on me, put his cock inside me, put his

  mouth on my mouth and on my body. I've come with him

  more than a few times. But not every time.

  more than a few times. But not every time.

  "Wil you?" he asks. "While I watch?"

  I don't know what answer to give. I only know I want to

  give him everything he asks for and some things he hasn't. I

  nod.

  He sits back against the couch's opposite arm. I'm not sure

  he'l even be able to see me, painted in shafts of white and

  dark from the TV's glow. I'm not sure I want him to see

  me do this without a shield of shadows.

  I've never done this in front of anyone, and at first I'm not

  sure how to start. In the privacy of my bedroom I'd have

  the door locked and soft music playing in the dark. I'd be

  naked, or wearing only panties and a T-shirt. Now I have

  to navigate the barriers of my jeans and sweater,

  underpants and bra. So I start by touching my breasts

  through the wool, not because I usualy feel my boobs

  when I'm masturbating but because I think that's what he

  expects me to do, and doing it wil buy me time to find the

  nerve to folow through with the rest of it.

  The smal noise that eeps out of his throat convinces me I

  made the right choice. My hands feel smal on my breasts,

  which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember

  which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember

  the last time I touched them this way, cupping and rubbing,

  trying to tweak my nipples to points. The sweater is too

  thick for this, so I shift until I can pul it off over my head.

  Another smal noise from him, and I bite my lower lip. My

  fingers tiptoe over the slopes of my now-naked chest, over

  the lace and satin of my best bra. The one I bought from

  Victoria's Secret with my babysitting cash. The one I wear

  on every date. Beneath its expensive material and breast-

  lifting bands of metal, my nipples have gone tight and

  aching.

  My palms slide on the smooth fabric. When my thumbs

  pass over those hard points, I bite harder. Soft flesh dents

  under my teeth. It doesn't hurt yet, but if I don't ease up I

  wil soon taste blood.

  I close my eyes because it's easier to be what I think he

  wants me to be when I'm not watching him watch me. And

  it gives me darkness, which I'm used to and prefer for this

  sort of thing. I feel my skin, softer than the bra that has

  been through lots of washings and, despite its cost, wasn't

  made to last.

  I go away.

  I go away.

  From this basement
, which always smels a little of wet

  dog though his dog died years ago. From him, the boy-

  man watching me. Even from the TV and the movie in the

  corner that started al of this in the first place.

  I go away to the place where everything feels good, and I

  don't have to think about anything but the whisper of my

  fingertips along my sides. Down across my bely, which

  wil never be flat enough no matter how many crunches I

  do or lunches I skip. The metal button on my jeans isn't

  cold or warm, it's the same temperature as my skin. My

  fingers miss it in their first walk across, though the belt

  loops snag my touch.

  I don't open the button at first. I slide my hand down the

  front of my jeans. My panties are already damp from the

  hour we've been on the couch. Sometimes, though I'd

  never dare tel him this, no matter what I'm about to share,

  my pussy gets wet even before we start kissing.

  Sometimes, when I'm in the shower getting ready to meet

  him, I do what I'm doing now with my hands, which is rub

  them al over my body and pretend they're his. Sometimes

  I spend the entire date—the movie, the dinner, bowling,

  whatever it is, waiting for it al to be over so we can get to

  whatever it is, waiting for it al to be over so we can get to

  this part. The couch, the backseat. His hands and mouth

  on mine. His cock inside me.

  I gasp aloud when my finger finds the smal bump at the

  front of my panties. I don't have room to stroke, so I

  satisfy myself with pushing gently. I use my middle finger.

  The fuck finger, he cals it. It's the one he uses inside me to

  get me ready before he uses his dick, but when he touches

  my clit he uses his first finger. Or his thumb, if I'm on top. I

  didn't come to his bed or his backseat or his couch as

  anything close to a virgin, but I don't want to think about

  who taught him how to do that.

  I can always get off faster by myself than with someone

  else. I'm already close. Another gentle press of my finger

  pushes a shudder through me. My toes curl against the

  cushions. My hips lift a little.

  I don't have room to do this right, so now I unbutton my

  jeans. My zipper ratchets apart, tooth by metal tooth. My

  jeans open. I hook my thumbs into the sides and push

  them down, over my hips and thighs. They get hung up at

  my knees, and he reaches forward to grab a handful of

  denim and help me.

  In my bra and also-best panties I lean back and give