Mr. Renkin grinned. His torso pushed back against her hands, which weren’t putting up much of a fight, and kissed her again, this time so intense that it smacked her head back against the brick wall.
Ms. Willoughby winced and pulled her face away while reaching for the point of contact. “Ouch, damn it.”
“Sorry, baby,” Mr. Renkin said while pecking her cheeks with military precision until she recovered, dropping her hand from her head.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked. “Let’s go back inside. We can finish this at home.”
Mr. Renkin puckered out his lower lip, pouting. She reached her hand to his cheek and gave him a simple kiss, but he took it as a green light and shoved his tongue back into her mouth. Ms. Willoughby practically choked as she pulled her head away.
“I’m serious,” she insisted. “If we get caught out here, we’ll both be fired.”
“I know,” he whispered into her ear before lowering his face to kiss her neck. Ms. Willoughby closed her eyes as her protest waned.
Jenny knew where this was going and knew it was too late to speak up now. She closed her eyes and did her best to stay perfectly still in the crouched position she found herself in.
She tried not to listen.
She tried to put her mind somewhere else.
Then her legs began to shake.
She held her squat for as long as she could, afraid to move, until she lost the battle and shot upright to avoid falling to the ground. She heard the wood chips beneath her crackle and adjust under her shifted weight. She opened her eyes, staring down. Was the sound as loud as she thought? Was it only in her head? There was only one way to know.
Jenny looked up.
Mr. Renkin’s eyes were on her.
Or so she thought at first. Could he see her? She couldn’t tell. He didn’t blink, but he didn’t stop what he was doing either. Jenny could feel her dinner curdling and rising toward her esophagus. She averted her eyes, fighting to keep her food down and her impression of Mr. Renkin somewhat intact.
When they finally left the courtyard, Jenny’s nausea abated, but she was sweating, only in her armpits, not from physical activity or nerves but from the intensity of it all. She felt a sense of power that she couldn’t wrap her head around. She felt older somehow. If Mallory had witnessed that, she would have made such a big deal about it. Jenny wasn’t like that. It was just sex. No big deal, she thought, trying to convince herself of her maturity.
Jenny slapped her palms against the window, said a little prayer, and scooted the glass up, confirming it was unlocked. She wriggled her fingers under the opening and lifted the window just enough to crawl her skinny body through and head back to the dance, where she had a date with a slippery cup of soda.
I HAD ONE great love in my life. His name was Mark, and I met him when I was thirteen years old. We shared our first kiss when I was fourteen and it was messy. I didn’t know what I was doing; he did. I just tried to keep up. When he pulled away, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I’d never seen a movie where the heroine finally kisses her hero and then projectile vomits. We were special.
As long as we were together, Mark never made me puke again. The first time he reached inside my underwear, I definitely experienced some nausea, but it didn’t last. I’ve tried for years to pretend that my time with Mark was anything but perfect, to move on, to chalk it up as typical first love. I was a teenager, for Christ’s sake. How could it have been real?
It’s hard to explain how he opened me up. I had spent years perfecting my curt-little-bitch demeanor after my mother’s suicide, something my father, in particular, did not enjoy. I was distant and I was difficult. I didn’t even know what I wanted most of the time.
The other girls in my class were equally into Mark and soon forgot about me and my drama. We were at that age when a hot guy, especially one who wouldn’t give you the time of day, was infinitely more interesting than anyone else. I could have shown up with both of my arms missing and the conversation still would have been, “What kind of music do you think he likes?”
I had one class with Mark every day from 10 to 11:15, and it became the only hour of my day that mattered. I watched the other girls fawn over him and I was jealous, but I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t a fawner. The grown woman in me is extremely proud of that little girl, but trust me, at the time, I hated my defiant self. How would Mark ever register my existence?
Well, he did. Slowly over the course of the year, he began to notice the girl who wasn’t noticing him, or so he thought. He chose me. We became infatuated with each other, but we were both too stubborn to say anything.
After nine months of purposefully standing close to each other, brushing against each other when we could, I committed the ultimate feminist sin. I failed a test on purpose and pretended I needed a tutor. Mark was amazing at math. I was a fourteen-year-old girl attracted to a guy’s math ability. That’s how messed up I was. And what’s worse, it worked. Those after-school meetings allowed us the opportunity to finally give in.
It didn’t take long, alone, both of us leaning over the same textbook. Things were happening in my body that I thought I might have to see a doctor about. Puberty, holy shit. Two weeks after my first tutor session, Mark kissed me, and I puked.
The next four years were a perfect blur. When I looked back, I couldn’t even remember things chronologically. All I had were moments that fired at me, unrelenting, until I had to lie down on the floor, close my eyes, and breathe like I was about to give birth.
That didn’t happen as much anymore. I was too numb to let myself feel like that. It had been eight years since the day Mark ended it. He wanted me to go out and experience what life was like without him, to find myself, to be sure of what I wanted. I will never forget the day; it was my eighteenth birthday. Mark Renkin was thirty-two.
If I had to label it, Mark was a pedophile; it was statutory rape. That fucking depressed me. I didn’t like to think about it that way. Pedophiles were gross bald skeeves in vans who raped little kids. Mark played soccer and looked like he could be in commercials. I had tits and pubes already. I’d seen enough TV to know real pedophiles lose interest once that stuff happens. I could tell myself whatever I wanted, but when my almost-fourteen-year-old sister was found raped, I thought of Mark.
He was never violent with me, but when people started asking, “Do you know any grown men who would want to have sex with a child?” I did.
IT WAS A SMALL TOWN. I saw Mark way more than I wanted to, but after years of trying to exchange pleasantries, we had stopped speaking. As soon as I saw him anywhere, I would immediately turn around, walk away, and count to thirty before I could stop and reenter the world.
I hadn’t exchanged a single word with Mark in five years as I approached his front door. He still lived in the same modest house on Sanford Hill that I used to visit for hours after school. It was within a half mile from my own home at the time, but the woods provided enough seclusion for me to feel like I was a world away from my family.
We would sit on his wooden porch swing most nights in the fall. It was my favorite season. He would sit all the way to the right, and I would take up the rest of the swing, leaning against his shoulder. I would cover myself in a warm patchwork blanket and throw a loose corner over Mark’s knees, my arm over his waist, my hand tucked behind his far side.
The swing was still there, but had suffered during the eight winters. The wood was splintered in several spots, and it wavered in the fall breeze as I ascended the steps onto his front porch. The days were growing shorter, and daylight was already