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DO YOU REMEMBER that time I stole the keys to my dad’s hunting cabin up on the mountain and we all went out there in Vincent’s truck? We were all crammed into the front seat together, and Vincent made the girls sit in the middle, and he said that you couldn’t sit next to Damian, so I ended up next to him, and you ended up next to Vincent?

I spent that whole ride up the mountain with my thigh pressed up against Damian’s. I was wearing this pair of really short cutoffs and he was wearing shorts, too, but more of his leg was covered than mine.

At first, he tried to move his leg away from mine, but I knew there was no room, so I just pressed my leg back into his, and eventually he gave up. He looked at me from time to time during that trip.

It was one of those moments with us, moments I used to tell myself meant something.

You know, before you showed up, Leo, Damian was not opposed to the idea of us—of him and me. He was smart enough to see that it was what my dad wanted of him, and I remember the way he would look at me, like the way he would eventually look at you, really. Like I was something that he needed to make sure he handled well, a challenge he needed to rise to, like I was something to attain.

Then you showed up, and he didn’t look at me like that anymore.

I was relieved.

I never told anyone this before, but the reason I went out and subjected myself to what I think could only be called voluntary sexual assault when I was barely pubescent was because I wanted to disgust him.

Damian, I mean.

He thought of me as a challenge? Okay, I was going to be a challenge. I was going to be so thoroughly tainted and used up when he got me that maybe he wouldn’t want me anymore. How would he handle a girl who’d been passed around the whole town and the nearby towns besides? Would he still want me, then?

You might say that you can’t be voluntarily sexually assaulted, but let’s be real. When I was thirteen, I did not look twenty-one. That man who had sex with me? What the fuck was wrong with him? I was too young to know better. What was his goddamn excuse?

Anyway, there were other times with Damian and me, and I don’t know why I want to tell you about them. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself or something, or to make it sound like Damian always wanted me. I don’t know if Damian has ever really been allowed to want anything for himself. I don’t know if he knows how.

Would you encourage him to do something selfish, Leo? After I’m gone, when you two are together? Would you? For me, or for him, or just because?

Make him take up some stupid hobby, something that’s expensive and indulgent, something he does just for himself. On his birthday, give him head and don’t make him get you off. Just… be good to him. He’s not good to himself, not really. He punishes himself a lot. He’s too hard on himself.

Do you remember Vincent’s nineteenth birthday? You were out swimming in the river off the boat, but Damian had drunk too much, and he was throwing up on the shore? After that, he sat there, gazing out at everyone.

I brought him a bottle of water from the cooler on the boat and I sat down with him and we watched all the people out there in the water.

I teased him about drinking too much.

He said he was a pathetic lightweight, all right. Something like that.

We talked like that for a little bit, just about light topics, and then, somehow, I don’t know, the topic of you came up. Maybe just because you were out there swimming or something and we were looking at you.

He said that sometimes he wished that you had more experience, because then it wouldn’t all be on his shoulders to figure out how to make you happy. I knew he meant not just sexually, but in everything else. I could see it, then, how he was so young and so solemn and so frightened because he had an adult responsibility on his adolescent shoulders.

I told him I could help him. “I know how to make her happy,” I said to him. “I’m her best friend.”

He gave me a look and it was so, so grateful.

And the look went on a little too long, and he said that if you were more like me, he would know that it would be okay, because I told people how to make me happy. I told people what I wanted. “I’d know where I stood with you, Opal.”

That was it. It was only that. Maybe it really didn’t mean anything.

But I suppose that I think about it only because I thought about doing it then, about getting him to mate me. And I thought that if I did it while I was in heat, that he wouldn’t say no, that he’d give in, because some part of him wanted me.

I told myself that I would never do that, that he might want me, but that I didn’t want him, and that I would never do that to you, Leona. Because you were my best friend, and I knew it would destroy you.

But I did think about it.

We had another moment, once, Damian and me. It was right after you two had sex for the first time. I never told you that he talked to me about it, but he did.

I don’t know where you were at the time. I think Damian had been doing something with my dad, because my dad took him out on these walks in the woods where they would talk all about what it meant to be the cyning of the pack and stuff like that. So, this was probably after one of those walks, I think.

Damian and I were in my bedroom. Nothing happened, and it wasn’t like that. I know I said it was another of one of these moments between us, but maybe these moments were all in my head, I don’t know.