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Our arms and legs are wrapped in and around one another. I’ve lost track. I don’t know what’s “J.D.” and what’s “me.”

Our pulse, our blood, our bodies, we become one. I thrust, deep into his body—and his into mine. I lose myself. I don’t know where—or who—I am. I’m lost in the
us
. Pleasure builds. I feel it. Rising from my source. I cry, “Ahhhhhh!!!”

We shake, violent and shoot—me into him, him into the air. Pleasure pours out our bodies. Pleasure radiates through our body. Pleasure is possibility. Possibility is pleasure.

We hover. There. In. Between. Held aloft by the water.

I lean forward, over his shoulder. He turns his head. Our lips touch. We kiss. Hungry, our mouths close the circle. Energy flows through our bodies. We. He. I. Vibrate. Cells light up. We are a bright beautiful being. Love here, love there, love everywhere.

I eat from the tree of knowledge. Pleasure. Sin? The apple nourishes. Sustains me. Gives me pleasure and life. The snake eats its tail. The circle is complete. Heart racing, my palm hovers over his chest. His heart races. He slides his body over me, a magical sea creature. His movements slosh foamy water over the edge of the tub.

I’ve never felt this close to another person. Maybe when I was born. We breathe. Our breath is one. And as our pleasure ebbs, our bodies relax and float, dropping down, into dark, watery depths. Our hulls settle, and rest on the ocean floor.

We stay there till the water chills. J.D. pulls the plug. The water drains. We stand.

“Wait,” he says. He returns with fresh towels. “Arms up.”

Obedient, I stand there, naked as a child after a bath.

Satisfied as an adult after a hard, tender fuck.

W
e sneak back, into the safe house. A digital clock glows, red numbers marking the hours since we left. We climb up, into our bed. Gravity and exhaustion pull me down to the sheets.

My heart. My head. My body. My soul. I vibrate. I feel connected to everything, and everyone.

“Listen.” J.D. puts headphones over my ears. Music. A singer’s voice echoes, seeps into my head:

Daylight seeps through the window coverings, stains the dark safe house. I close my eyes. I breathe, deep, into my core. For the first time in my life, I feel safe, and I fall asleep in his arms.

“I
wanted to know,” I say, unsure how to ask.

Marci and I stand at the sink. She slops the soapy sponge on the dirty plates; I rinse and dry.

“About what?” She hands me a plate.

J.D. sits on the window ledge, strumming a guitar. After Halloween, he went acoustic.

Click click click.

Dead bolts tumble. The front door opens.

“About sex. Are there any rules about, um, you know, people hooking up?”

Kidd steps into the kitchen, peels off a ski cap and drops his backpack.

“How’d it go?” Marci asks.

He doesn’t answer, lost in a bad mood. He drops to the floor, legs spread. He reaches down, fondles his crotch and looks at me with an evil grin. “We can do what we want with our bodies.”

“Cuz there’s always condoms lying around!” Peanuts shouts from the main room.

“But it can get complicated
if
,” Kidd says. His eyes make me wonder if he’s been hanging out with Blue-Eyed Bob, taking serial killer lessons. “There’s a friendship between two people and one of them starts having a relationship with somebody else.”

He twists his body, speaking to me but looking at J.D.

“People call each other on their shit. So,” he says, turns and glares at me, “if somebody’s having sex coz they’re
lonely
or
bored
, that’s
definitely
gonna be out in the open.”

“Yeah,” Peanuts says, walking into the kitchen. “People
talk
about it.”

“Like, for example, Coco—” Kidd says, eyes fixed on J.D. “Nut.”

“Hey,” Marci warns.

“
Ben
,” he says. “I’m speaking to
you
. Or you gonna act like you don’t hear me?”

“I hear you,” I say, and look him in the eye, running a carving knife under the hot water. I hold it up and dry the blade. “Everyone does.”

“Just like everybody knows you’re
fucking
him because you’re bored shitless and you don’t know what else to do. Right?”

The question / accusation was one of Moustapha’s favorite tactics. I ignore him. This makes him furious. Were we alone, Kidd would grab my head and drown me in the soapy water. Peanuts cracks up, doubled over with laughter.

“I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing,” Marci says. “I mean, if everybody knows what’s going on, it’s all out in the open. Nobody gets hurt.”

“Ben, you prolly know about the buddy sleepover,” Kidd says, ready to rant. He loves nothing more than the sound of his voice. He loves it the way other people worship their dicks. He stands, walks to the fridge and opens it. “It’s harder for us to pull them off since we’re ‘Co-Ed,’ but not impossible. What does he tell you? When he crawls up the ladder and slips into your bed? ‘
Dude
, I’m wasted. I’m so drunk! I’m so fucking horny! My dick is
so
hard!’”

He leans forward, foraging in the fridge. I visualize him falling inside and the door slamming shut. We try to open it, but it’s stuck. He suffocates. End of Kidd.

“‘Ahh! Hey! Wha’ … Oh! Oh! Oh! Papacito,
that
feels good, yeah, mi’jo, fuck I’m
so
damn wasted. Whoa! I’m
so
wasted. I’m. Ah, ah, ah … AAAA!!! Dude, what just happened? My ass burns. I gotta crash!’”

I summon my mental powers.
Push
. A charity truck picks up the fridge. They can’t get it open, either. Another truck drives it to a landfill and dumps the fridge. Years later, Kidd escapes. Serial killings ensue. When he’s caught, the headlines read, “I Was a Teenage Mummy.”

“If that’s what it sounds like having sex with you,” I say, hand tightening on the knife. “No wonder he left.”

Kidd holds the O.J. carton to his lips and drinks. His throat bobs. I hate the sound—the glub-glub-glub. Done, he burps, the way people harsh a fart. I hand a clean glass to Marci, who passes it to him. He looks at the glass. Will he smash it? Or use it? He pours O.J., drinking glub-glub-glub. Done, he burps.

“
Then
, you wake up the next morning and the one playing the man sits up and goes, ‘Fuck! Dude, I don’t remember
anything
. Last night? I was
so
out of it, bro’.’”

“I don’t think sex with more than one partner is necessarily bad,” Marci says. “I mean if—”

“You don’t know
shit
,” Kidd explodes, drops the carton on the sink, slamming the fridge door. “You fat, nosy bitch, he’s
mine!
”

“—if
everybody
knows what’s going on,” she finishes.

“
I do
know what’s going on,” Kidd says. “I’m not making up this shit. They keep me awake at night with their stupid, fucking frat boy nonsense. That
is
a problem.”

“Yo, Kidd? I don’t belong to
nobody
,” J.D. says. Calm, he props the guitar against the wall. “Not you. Not him. Nobody. I belong to
me
.”

Kidd steps forward. J.D. mirrors him.

“Time out,” Marci says, stepping in-between them. They
could
move around Marci, but her body barricade gives them an excuse to stay apart. “J.D., go to the roof. Kidd, wait there.”

Still, I expect a fight. At the last second, either one could snap and throw down. J.D. parts the curtains and opens the window. A gust of cold air blasts the kitchen. He pauses.

“I need my jacket.”

“I’ll get it,” Peanuts says, jumps up and runs out.

“I want to say one thing,” J.D. says. “Why do you ‘suddenly’ have a problem with
me
having sex? It’s not any different than before except—”

Peanuts returns with a puffy, Frosty-the-Snowman jacket. J.D. pulls it on and ducks out the window.

“Your cig’s in the pocket.”

“—that it’s not with you.”

“J.D.” Marci sighs. “He won’t say it, but he does.”

We all know what “it” means. Love. I sneak a look at Kidd’s face. He’s angry and scared. He turns away.

“When he was fucking Jeremy,” J.D. says, speaking to us but mostly to Kidd. “
Everyone
knew. I never said a word. Fucking in the closet, ‘accidentally’ leaving the door open. You never,
never
heard
me
complain.”

“J.D., you’re not going to like hearing this,” Marci says. “But sometimes you play with people’s—”

“I never played with nobody or their heart.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you were going to, weren’t you?” J.D. pats the pockets, feeling for lighter and ciggies. “I tell people exactly—
exactly—
what they can expect.
Always
. But some people,
some people
hear what
they
want. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Cold wind ruffles the curtains. J.D.’s gone. I start to follow. “No,” Marci says, grabbing my arm. I pull away, but there’s no point. The window slams and shuts me out. “Bed.”

“G
et up.” Kidd tugs on my tee shirt. “We’re going down.”

I sit up.

“For what?”

“New stove.”

“Going down?” Another game. Hide-’n-seek. I’m tired of playing. Maybe Kidd’s trying to trick me. I look over the bed’s edge. During my nap, seven lives were erased. The safe house is empty.

“Wait up.” I climb down, nervous about being left out (or, left alone). The front door’s open. Everyone waits in the hallway. I hesitate. I don’t see Marci. “Where are we going again?”

“Basement.”

“I thought we were supposed to stay inside.”

“Inside the
building
,” Peanuts says.

I pull on my orange kicks. By daylight, the corridor looks the same as it did the night I arrived. Only now, I can see the filthy carpet, scuffed walls and burned-out fluorescent lights. It’s a bad horror movie. I walk out. Behind me, the door clicks, shuts. We’re locked out. Single file, we follow Kidd. His legs take the steps two, three, even four at a time.

“Wait.”

The line stops. I bump into Peanuts. Kidd creeps down to the first floor and looks both ways. He motions, waving us down.

“C’mon, move, move it!” One at a time, people turn a corner and disappear. It’s a
The Sound of Music
moment (at the end, when the kids walk offstage just before the Nazis catch them).

My turn. I step down. Light flashes on the lobby walls. Beyond the glass door and metal gate, I see the Real World. “You can always leave,” Sugar said. I remember her words.

“Hey!” Peanuts shouts, pulling me back. “Come on!”

S / he stands in the doorway, between light and dark. I’m tempted to turn and walk away. “Leave,” Sugar said. “You can always leave.” Peanuts holds the basement door open. I look at the street. It’s bright, filled with life. I look back, at Peanuts, standing at the entrance of the underworld. Stay? Or go? No, I realize the question is not here or there. It’s whether I’ll ever stop running. And find home.

“
Come on!
”

S / he must have read my mind. “I don’t want to leave the light. I want to leave this place. I want to go home.” I feel squeezed between my desire for safety and for freedom. Better to live my life with mistakes than live someone else’s life perfectly.

“Hurry up!
”

I turn and walk away. As I step down, and leave the daylight to enter the gloom, I’m aware, painfully so, I’ve made a choice.

T
he basement door slowly closes and … shuts.

Click.

Peanuts is gone. I’m alone. I inhale stale air. If it’s not exactly death, then it’s something close to. Cold and alone, it’s awful here. My instinct tells me to turn and run.

“No!” Peanuts hisses. “
This
way!”

S / he stands there, invisible in the dark. S / he grabs my hand and pulls me down. Truly, s / he believes this is being “helpful.”

“Wait,” I say, trying to buy time. “Let my eyes adjust.”

Cautious, I put out my foot and I step down. Wood creaks. I take another. And another and another and soon I’m at the bottom, swallowed up by the dark.
Halloween II,
I’m Persephone headed off to greet her guy, Hades, and hang out for the winter.

I try to remember something from one of my stepmother’s self-help books. Haifa bought them by the carload. I “walk into my fear.” Two steps, my body stops. This is a test, I tell myself. Or, to use one of my father’s favorite expressions, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I often thought about that in the days leading up to my abduction. It’s only true if—and it’s a
Big
If—“it”
doesn’t
kill you. I step off the flat wood. My foot touches concrete. I’m blind. I reach out. My hand touches stone. It’s cold. At least the Crypt is air-conditioned.

Squeak! Squeak!

I want to think otherwise, but I know the squeaks are not a dog’s toy. I shudder. Squeaks mean
rats
.

“No, go away!” I shout. I’ll scare them. Of course, this is when I would remember the animal trainer on a talk show who said, “Rats are the most difficult animals to train because they’re most like humans.”

I squeeze the thin metal tube. I forgot—I have a flashlight. I press the button. A tiny beam lights my way. I move it over rough concrete walls and bare floors. Rusty pipes and cobwebs crisscross the ceiling.

Sound bounce off walls; they’re faraway and close. The human noise pulls me toward a doorway. Laughter and voices. I’m surrounded by thousands of ghosts.