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‘I know what you mean.’
‘What do I mean?’
‘Jen and Charlene are toxic and naive but they act like they’re not. I’ve been influenced by them. I’ve been naive. I don’t think about things always.’
‘Yeah. You don’t. You have to work on actually thinking about other people. Other people have a different life from you, Myra. Different pasts, different thoughts. Different ways of fucking managing things. It’s frustrating to me, Myra. You’re not conscious of that.’
‘Okay. I’m sorry.’
‘Stop saying you’re sorry.’
‘Please. Lee. Please tell me what happened to you,’ I said quietly. ‘I want to know.’
Lee wasn’t looking at me. Her breathing was loud. She’d just called me naive. I was tight, titillating, an asshole and naive. I had to remember all these things, qualities of my selfconsciousness.
It took Lee another few moments to talk. There was a man walking his dog on the path at the bottom of our hill. He looked in our direction and waved. He watched us for a few seconds before moving on.
‘She kept me after school a few times to work on things with her, just cleaning the classroom or whatever, or talking about our class and who I liked and didn’t like. I didn’t think that much about it, actually – I was just happy to be with her. We analyzed people and that was cool. I felt special, I guess. But then it kind of progressed, if I can use that word, from it just being easy to talk to her about school to her wanting to talk to me about my family, especially about my mom and dad and how much they let me go out and all that. And I talked. I liked her and I told the truth about all of those things. I didn’t feel strange about any of the time we spent together until she started telling me one day about herself too, stories about how she went on dates with guys but she didn’t ever want to be with anyone. Then she told me she thought the penis was a very ugly organ. She asked me if I’d ever seen a penis before.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know. Grade 6, right? And I hadn’t, of course. So, I think that’s where it turned. Nothing happened that day, but it happened pretty soon after that. She capitalized on something, I guess, the fact that I didn’t know anything about sex and that I liked talking to her. Because then, this one time, she just admitted it. She said she couldn’t help it. She said that she really, really liked me and she didn’t want a boyfriend. And she kept asking me all the time if I was okay with that, if I was okay with her feeling things for me like that. And she said if I was uncomfortable, I should just tell her. But the thing was, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I liked it, actually, and I liked her too. She told me stuff about herself. She was smart.’
‘So, you mean, it was a good experience for you?’
‘No. Not really. I mean, that’s not a bad question, and it was all pretty good until she started wanting stuff from me. Like, first
it was a kiss goodbye on the cheek. Then the double kiss. Okay, once, I remember this really well, after a double kiss she kind of grabbed me by the waist and kept me close. And then she said, “Lee, you have an incredible body. I just think you should know.” She didn’t let go of my waist when she said that. That was when I really felt that something was happening between us. Something uncontrollable.’
Lee paused. She looked past me.
‘I was only twelve, right? So to me, when she said I had an incredible body, I felt like I was hot shit. I had this secret. We started doing more things. I sat on her lap. I let her put her legs between my legs. I used to look at myself naked in my bedroom and think of how she would be seeing it. And I wanted her to see me like that because I felt like I?was addicted to that feeling of her saying, You have an incredible body. I think you should know. We started kissing more. We got to doing it with our tongues. I let her touch my breasts.’
Lee’s cheeks lit up. She looked out, not at me.
‘I wore these special loose shirts and this was just when I was getting tits or whatever. I wore them so that she could feel me there, but she never just felt my breasts when she went under my shirt, she always felt everywhere around them, taking so long to get to them. I closed my eyes and sat on her lap, sometimes facing her and sometimes away from her and I’d just sit there so willing and lap up every single second because every single stroke of it felt so good. She knew how much I liked it. She really knew. I was her lapdog. She had so much power over me.’
‘Lee ... ’
‘No, listen, this one day we were really going at it, probably the most I’d ever let her do. My pants were opened and it was the first time she was going in my pants. I was going to let her do everything that day, it was seriously the day I knew I was going to let her feel me down there, I’d thought about it endlessly, right? And my shirt was up, she was kissing and licking my breasts and I was holding her too, I was really holding her tight because she was sucking and sucking on my nipples so hard I thought I was going to faint from how good it felt.’
Lee looked at me, an open book.
‘Our janitor walks in. He coughs or something. I don’t remember being shocked but she, she immediately starts sobbing. Her whole face goes red and she covers it up with her hands. I think she actually fell down on the floor. I still have no idea how she went from doing what she was doing to full-body fucking sobbing. I remember I pulled down my shirt and zipped up my pants. Then I went out with the janitor and I never saw her again.’
Lee took one huge long drag of smoke and let it out to the light.
‘See, what I realized later, Myra, I mean not until much, much later – because I was a fucking suicidal mess after she left our school and I had to be examined by psychologists and doctors and shit – was that through that relationship with her, I’d just gone along with her feelings the entire time. I felt a lot and I wanted it, yeah, but essentially I just went along with her desires. First her need to talk to me, and then her need to get me to talk, then her need to touch me and her need to know how I wanted her to touch me. But this whole thing happened without me really understanding what my own needs were, or where they came from. I can admit that. I loved her back, right? Just like she loved me.
‘So, it took me all these years to examine what was mine in there. I mean, if she didn’t like me first, would I have liked her? Considered her for fucking? I’m being honest. This is the kind of stuff I have to take responsibility for.’
Lee’s knee was shaking. I moved my hand there.
§
I woke up to low weeping moans from the bathroom. I was too scared to move.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I whispered. I didn’t know if it was morning.
