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After it was over she rubbed baby powder all over me. I admit that there was something strangely erotic about it, and suddenly I realized why Avery was a sexual deviant. She never really gave me details about Gavin, but every once in awhile she’d let something slip, and it was always scandalous. Now I understood. She got waxes. That’s what happens to a girl when she gets a wax. She turns . . . sexual.

“Okay, now turn over,” Luana instructed.

“Huh?”

“Over over,” she said, motioning with her hands.

Oh my God.

“No, I’m okay,” I said.

Luana giggled. Again. “You be fine. We get backside and make it pretty.”

Make it pretty?

“Um . . .”

“Your husband like,” Luana explained.

“I’m not married.”

“Your boyfriend like.”

“I . . . he . . . um . . . no.”

Luana encouraged me by pushing on my arm. I turned over because I didn’t know how to argue with someone who couldn’t speak English all that well. Violent shaking of my head didn’t seem to translate, and she didn’t look like she was letting me leave until she put some hot wax in my crack. I brought most of the paper table cover with me as I rolled over. We had fun peeling it off my sweaty body.

“Please, Luana,” I whispered. I swear I thought I was going to cry.

“Spread,” came the cheery reply.

“I can’t. I can’t do this. No one has ever seen me up close and personal like this.”

“You have cute booty! Let’s make better. Now spread.”

Okay. The woman barely spoke English yet she knew the word “booty”?

Aside from feeling like I shit myself, the wax wasn’t that bad. It was over in two seconds flat, and then Luana rubbed more baby powder on me.

“You look,” she said as I sat up on the table feeling utterly violated.

“At?”

“Look look!”

“My vagina?”

Luana laughed. “You so silly. Look how pretty you are.”

I glimpsed myself, something I was too scared to do while she was ripping out my hair. And I gasped. All gone. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Completely bald and exposed.

“See? Pretty,” Luana said, patting my thigh.

I smiled weakly and let her kiss my face before telling me she’d see me in the lobby for payment.

“So?” Avery asked on our way out.

“You’re a bitch and a half.”

Avery burst out laughing. “Look, if I would have told you everything, you’d never agree to come.”

“Damn right!” I snapped.

“You could have told her no,” Avery replied.

“I tried. I. Tried. The woman barely speaks English. All she knows how to do is giggle.”

Avery unlocked the car doors, and I climbed in.

“Cadence. You’ll be happy you turned over.”

I shook my head, yanking on the seatbelt and shoving the buckle in place.

“Easy on my baby, please,” Avery said.

“What does that mean? I’ll be glad I turned over?”

Avery smiled that all-too-familiar mischievous smile.

“Look, all I’m saying is that men in our generation are much more . . . experimental. And I’ve learned that it’s not so bad to experiment. It can be quite nice, actually.”

“Oh. My. God. I am
not
hearing this,” I replied. “You’re eighteen! You’re like a baby! What are you doing having anal sex?!”

“First of all, I’m not a baby. I’m a grown woman. Check it. Second, I never said anything about anal sex. I said I experiment,” Avery clarified.

“Yeah, which means you’re having anal sex.”

Avery shrugged. “All right.”

“All right as in yes, you’re having anal sex?” I couldn’t let it go. It was fascinating and revolting and . . . fascinating. Really freaking fascinating.

“You haven’t earned the details, sister. Sorry,” Avery replied with a smug smile.

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t even care.”

“You totally care.”

“You’re right. I totally care! Please tell me, Avery. I’m dying to know,” I pleaded.

“I feel like I’m corrupting you or something.”

“You are, and I don’t care. I just have to know about this because my mind refuses to believe it.”

Avery let out a long sigh and nodded. “Okay, first and most important: Lube.”

***

I didn’t wear the skirt today as an invitation, but he took it as one. And a challenge. I thought he was out of his mind, but then I suspected Mr. Connelly had a way of executing recklessness in a subtle, controlled way. Impossible to anyone else, but he could do it.

Everyone was working in pairs or small groups the last fifteen minutes of class, and the room hummed with low talk and laughter. I stayed in my seat because no one offered to work with me. Mr. Connelly circled the room a few times before walking past my desk and knocking my notebook onto the floor in front of my feet. He bent down to pick it up, squatting on the floor for the few seconds it took me to spread my legs and give him a glimpse of my panties. I blame it entirely on the Brazilian wax.

Mr. Connelly stood up and handed me my notebook.

“Sorry, Cadence. I’m clumsy,” he said, then moved on to the group behind me.

I could actually feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. I’d blushed a thousand times because of Mr. Connelly, but this time was excruciating. My face literally hurt, and I didn’t want to know how red it was. I concentrated on my breathing, and read the page summary in my math book over and over again until the dryness of the material drained the color from my face.

The bell rang, and I hopped up.

“Cadence, I have a letter for your parents,” Mr. Connelly said. “Hang back a minute.”

I hovered near his desk until the last of the students shuffled out. He sat down and looked me over.

“Come here,” he said. I walked over to stand in front of him. “You’ve been very naughty, you know.”

My heartbeat sped up.

“You show me your little pink panties in class when you know I can’t do a thing about it.”

I can’t breathe.

“I think you need a spanking, Cadence. For being such a bad girl.”

“Mr. Connelly!”

He chuckled. “Well, what will you give me then? You were naughty. I can’t just let you walk out of here unpunished.”

I thought for a moment, then whipped my head around to look at the door. No one coming inside. No one peeking through the door window. I turned back to Mr. Connelly and took his hand. I moved it under my skirt, steering his fingers to the crotch of my panties. I’d only been touched here once before. I didn’t like it then, but I liked it now.

He moved his fingers back and forth over me all the while he stared at my face. His touch was light at first, and it almost tickled. But then he increased the pressure, and a moan escaped my lips. I jumped back. What the hell was I doing? We were at school!

I cleared my throat as I smoothed my skirt. “You said you had a letter?”

Mr. Connelly smirked. “Hmm. Where did that thing go?” He folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair.

I was embarrassed by my boldness, embarrassed that he wielded a power over me that compelled my sensuality. I wanted to slap that smug smile right off his face.

“I’m not the naughty one. You are!” I blurted, then spun around to leave.

Mr. Connelly laughed hard, then cleared his throat when the classroom door opened. The assistant principal walked in.

“So make sure your parents get that letter, Cadence,” he said as I gathered my books.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“Cadence, you need to hurry. The bell’s about to ring,” Mrs. Jackson said.

“Yes ma’am.”

I glanced at Mr. Connelly, whose face was unreadable, and hurried out of the room, making it to English just before the tardy bell. I was flushed and shaking, mortified that we’d nearly gotten caught. How stupid could I be to let him touch me at school?

But I couldn’t deny the rush. I was terrified when that door opened, but at the same time, I liked the idea of nearly being caught—the threat of our secret being exposed. I’d have to mull that over in English and try to understand why recklessness was so attractive to me now. It was never that way with me before I started seeing Mr. Connelly. And it wasn’t like Mr. Connelly was a risk-taker. Well, that’s not entirely true. He had to be a bit of a risk-taker to secretly date me. Suddenly, I realized I was no different. I was nothing but a risk-taker. A wildly inappropriate panty-revealing risk-taker. What the hell was happening to me? And why did I like it?

Me: Do you have plans this weekend?

Mark: The usual. Why?

Me: I want to spend the weekend with you.

Mark: The entire weekend? How?

Me: Avery and I are “volunteering” at a women’s shelter from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.

Mark: Cadence.

Me: Mark.

Mark: That’s so wrong.

Me: What? Volunteering? I thought that was a good thing.

Mark: You know what I mean. Lying about volunteering at a women’s shelter? Come on.

Me: Do you want to spend the weekend with me or not?

Brief pause.

Mark: When can you be here?

***

“When do you think your parents will catch on to these fake community service projects?” Mark asked, sitting on the couch.

“Never,” I replied, lying on my stomach on his living room floor. “They adore Avery. They think she’s a saint or something. Ruth or Esther from the Bible.”

Mark said nothing as he leaned over to get a good look at the page. “‘Ten Ways to Turn up the Heat in Bed’,” he read out loud. “Scandalous.”

“And informative. Where do you think women learn all their tricks?”

No response.

“Mark?”

“Shhh. I’m reading,” he said.

I closed the magazine.

“Hey? What did you do that for? I was learning,” he said.

“You really care to know about this stuff?”

He tossed his ungraded papers on the coffee table and plopped on the floor beside me.

“I find you utterly fascinating, Cadence. I want to learn everything about you and how your brain works and what you like to read and learn and all the stuff that makes you so very female.”

I grinned and opened my magazine. “Feathers.”

“Feathers?”

“Apparently feathers are where it’s at,” I said. “Seductive and goose-bump inducing.”

“Keep going,” Mark said. He peeled himself off the floor and walked to the kitchen. I heard the clinking of glass and the pop of a cork while I prattled on about G-spots and how to locate them. “Red okay?” he called.

“Red what?” I called back.

“Wine,” he clarified.

“You’re gonna let me drink wine?” I asked. Suddenly I had no interest in ways to set fire to a bedroom.

He walked in with two glasses filled halfway with dark red liquid.

“You’re spending the night. I have no intention of taking advantage of you. And I won’t let you get crazy,” he said, offering me a glass.

I took it a little too greedily. As crazy as this sounds, I’d never gotten drunk. Yes, I got high on cocaine, but I’d never gotten drunk. Why didn’t I choose the lesser of two evils? I don’t know.

“And you’re not getting drunk,” Mark said, like he could read my mind. Or maybe he could sense my eagerness to get my little fingers around the glass.

I smiled and took a sip. I’d never tasted wine. It was rich and smooth, heavy and dark. I took another sip. Bizarre, I know, but I imagined I was a vampire drinking blood. I knew blood tasted nothing like this. (Another, slightly longer sip.) I licked a wound on my knee when I was six and discovered that blood tasted biting and metallic. (And a big ass gulp.) But I pretended I was drinking blood anyway because I thought it was sexy. And because I wanted to be a vampire for a few minutes. The headiness was almost instantaneous. Perhaps that’s why I wanted to be a vampire.