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Calvin Kellogg is a distance sprinter for the Boone Bombardiers, the local public high school. Their outdoor track route and basketball facility can be seen from our third-floor lounge. A certain segment of the Boone girls has been, well, spying on him for years. He’s tall and lean with longish hair that he wears tied back when he runs. While a chance encounter on the streets of Boone will feed the fantasies of some of my classmates for weeks, he doesn’t move me.
“You can Skype me during track season. I’ll sign you up for a monthly subscription box of tampons and pads. Jeanette and Kira” —I jerk my thumb toward the suite next door—“will still be here for Friday movie nights, and the running club has fifty girls in it.” I pull the smaller girl in for a tight hug. I would’ve never survived these past four years at the Boone School for Girls if it wasn’t for her. “I know you think this is a mistake and that Leka is the worst person in the world and that I’m violating every feminist tenet in the book by going back home, but this is what I want. What I’ve always wanted.”
“Then you’re dumb,” she mumbles into my breastbone.
I release her and set to packing up the last of my things. Most of my stuff is already in boxes sitting at the end of my bed in hopeful anticipation. Or maybe, subconsciously, I’d been planning to leave regardless of the outcome with the Dean of Students.
Audie folds my nightshirt and places it in the suitcase, but she’s not done questioning my decision. “I don’t say this to be mean, but have you considered he doesn’t want you home, Liz? He’s a grown man and maybe he doesn’t want you complicating things. That’s why I got dumped here, remember?”
“Yeah, and that sucks, but Leka had different reasons.” Audie ended up here when her mom was dating the current stepdad. He didn’t like kids, and so Mrs. Duetermeyer conveniently got rid of Audie.
“And those are?”
I saw a man get his throat sliced through with a steak knife and blood got all over the expensive dress Leka bought me to attend my first middle school dance. “He just felt it was for the best.”
Audie hands me the planner and my pen cup from off the top of my desk. “Listen, darling, you’re sweet and innocent and I’ve never brought this up, but have you considered that at thirty plus—”
“He’s not old.” Leka intentionally aged himself up on his identification papers so he could claim he was my guardian. I don’t know exactly how old he is, but I think it’s only an eight-year difference. Not that it matters to me.
“—or however the hell old he is,” Audie continues as if I hadn’t interrupted, “that he’s busy getting his freak on with one or two or ten different girls? A young girl at home is going to cramp his style.”
Innocent? One of my first memories is my mom humping some stranger for money. Before I could count, I was being forced to do things that adult women would be traumatized by. The only reason I got over that bad past was because of Leka. There was never a time that he didn’t catch me when I threw myself at him. I believe that will still be true. I’ll drive back to the city, go up to the apartment, and see him inside. I’ll drop my bag to the floor and run into his open, welcoming arms. Then, because I’m older, he’ll carry me into his bedroom and I’ll finally be fully his.
I believe this because in all the years we lived together before I got sent to Boone, the only female that mattered to Leka was me. “He’s not like that. He never, ever brought a woman home.”
“And he was there every night and every morning when you woke up?”
I want to say yes, but Leka was often gone until the wee hours of the morning. But that was because, well, he was doing stuff that wasn’t entirely legal, and most of those things are carried out at night. At least…that’s what I’ve always presumed. The thought of Leka having sex with someone other than me makes me want to barf. He’s mine, my inner voice howls.
At my silence, Audie clicks her tongue. “Oh, Liz. Sweet, virginal Liz who doesn’t even use our showerhead like she should.”
“Kira wore it out.” We watched Secretary a month ago and directly after the credits, our suite mate Kira got up and went into the bathroom. The shower ran for a solid thirty minutes, and ever since then we can’t get the jet feature to work.
I don’t blame the girl. I had lurid dreams of Leka that night. I hadn’t thought I was into that kind of sex, but the idea of Leka bending me over the desk and taking me forcefully from behind turned me into a hot, sweaty mess. I woke up shivering with my hand between my legs for a week straight.
