Pieces of Us (7 page)

Katie

M
y teeth chattering, goose bumps rising on my arms, I stand on my tiptoes and whisper in Sasha’s ear, “Let’s get out of here.” I pull him far away from the lake houses.

I’m thinking of warmth, of his arms around me, of our bodies colliding somewhere out of our grandparents’ vision. Our usual spot—the first place we kissed—is the creek. Behind the willow trees, blankets on us, no one can see what we’re doing. We’ve never made love, but we’ve come close. He’s never pressured me, always said he wanted to wait and make it special. I used to agree, giddy at the idea of the
first time
. I imagined planning a date and circling it with a big pink heart on my calendar. There would be music and flowers and stars above us. Right before we did it, he would lean in real close and whisper, voice full of feeling, “I love you so much.” It would be this special summer moment, like all those songs about romantic summers.

Then I met Ethan.

I didn’t forget Sasha or what we had planned. I just thought of Ethan as my school boyfriend. I never thought of sleeping with him. I liked doing a special cheer for him at halftime, my fingers pointing at him. I liked the gaggle of cheerleaders following me, staring at me, like I could spread my magic
The Couple
fairy dust on them. Maybe I should have left more magic for myself.

“The grandparents are at some Bingo-athon,” Sasha says now, stopping at his cottage. “Kyle’s at the arcade.” He extends his hand to me, like I’m still a princess, and I follow him inside, pulling at my bathing suit along the way.

“I’ve missed you,” I say, falling onto the bed. He tosses a T-shirt and shorts my way and turns around while I change, like seeing that would be too intimate.

“Me too.” He gets on top of me, and he feels stronger than before, or maybe I’ve just forgotten. I like his muscular chest weighing me down, his chiseled arms pulling me closer. His hands go under my shirt and I pull him closer to me. Then he kisses me deep and pulls my clothes off, and I panic.

Not that he hasn’t seen all of me before, but his moves and kisses feel more urgent than I remember, his hands more insistent, and I think,
Our first time can’t be like this. Katya and Sasha’s first time is supposed to mean something. I don’t want this right now.

He’s panting but can tell I’ve become a statue. He pulls back. “I’m sorry. It’s just been so long. I want you so much.”

He lays his head on my chest, mumbling more apologies, telling me he’ll wait until whenever I’m ready. He wants everything to be perfect.

When Sasha talks like this, it’s so easy to forget that this body of mine has already done it. And there weren’t any stars out that first night. Chris didn’t even have glow-in-the-dark ones on his ceiling. That first time wasn’t real, anyway. The other time with Chris wasn’t, either. Those times weren’t perfect. They weren’t with Sasha.

We start kissing again. This time he’s more gentle. This time I’m the one who pulls him to me. I want him, too. I want his weight, his arms, his body imprinted on mine to block out the others. I move my hand to him to finish him off, and he tugs at my hair.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says when I’m under the covers, in his clothes again, goose bumps gone.

“You too,” I say, running my finger along his eight-pack. I trace shapes on his abs and chest, asking him to guess what I’m drawing. We always play this game after. Usually, he guesses wrong.

“A heart?” he tries, after I’ve drawn a cat.

“You think I’m that boring and predictable? That
girly
?”

“I like girly,” he says, getting on top of me again, kissing me deep and hard on the mouth, pulling the shirt over my head once more.

I’m digging my nails into Sasha’s back and pulling at his sweat shorts when the door opens and Kostya walks in.

“Shit, asshole. You don’t bother knocking?” Sasha yells, throwing a blanket over me.

I freeze again. Exposed again. But I remind myself that this isn’t Katie’s life. It’s Katya’s. And it’s safe here under the blanket, in Sasha’s arms. I manage to give a small wave. “Hey, how’s it going?”

Kostya stutters, stumbles, backs out of the room mumbling a bunch of
I’m sorrys
before slamming the screen door of the cottage.

Sasha flops down on the bed, fuming.

I put my hand on his arm. Despite Kostya being the same age as me, he oozes innocence. He’s not like Chris. Not like Ethan. He didn’t mean it. “I’m fine, okay? You can relax. Not like he planned this or anything.”

Sasha doesn’t say anything, and I squeeze his arm. “You saw how embarrassed he was. I bet he’s never even gotten past first base, right?”

For some reason, he laughs. “He sure looks that way, doesn’t he?” And for some reason I get goose bumps again.

Kyle

W
hen it all started years ago, you were ten and Alex twelve. He thought he was so big because he was in seventh grade but already wrestling and playing football with the eighth graders. He liked to say that he could get more ass than most of them—which you’re pretty sure meant heavy hooking up. Back then, that kind of talk impressed you, even though you didn’t get all of it. The day it started, you and Alex were on the floor of his room playing Mario Kart on the Wii. Alex’s flavor of the week, a
curvy
fourteen-year old—you think her name was Deedee or Deirdre or Daisy, but Alex always called her D—was on his bed making dumb comments. She kept asking him to play with
her
buttons instead of the controllers’. “I’m worth the wait, babe,” he told her, not looking at her, not taking his fingers off the controller. Then he elbowed you and smirked, and you laughed like you totally got the joke.

You beat him three times. Fair and square—Alex would never throw a game. He punched you in your arm a little too hard—you had a small bruise the next day—but you knew he respected you. He would have punched you harder had you lost. “I’m done,” he said, getting on the bed with D. She was wearing one of those shirts that looked like a kerchief, and Alex put his hand on her exposed stomach, right above her bellybutton ring.

“You can stay and keep playing if you want,” he told you, sliding his hand further up under her shirt. You felt funny staying, but D didn’t seem to care. She just giggled when Alex tickled the skin on the underside of her arm, and she grabbed one of his arms, around the biceps.

“So strong,” she said, flirty, in awe. D was a freshman in high school, since Alex thought dating anyone in middle school was beneath him. He’d started lifting after your dad died and had the beginnings of a six-pack happening. Back then, you still wanted to know his secrets, you still wanted to know how he hooked himself all these chicks.

D giggled again, and when you turned around to look at her and Alex, you saw that her top was up by her collarbone. You’d never seen a bra on a girl before, just on mannequins. No one in your grade even had anything to put in a bra. You couldn’t help but stare. It was pink and lacy, with little hearts all over it. You were afraid Alex was going to get mad at you for staring, so you got up to leave, but he grabbed your arm. “If you leave, you’ll miss your turn.”

You stared at him, face hot.

“C’mon,” he said, smiling. “She doesn’t bite.”

“I sometimes do,” D said, giggling. The giggle made you more uncomfortable.

“You gotta learn sometime,” Alex said, and then pinned D’s hands down. She laughed and protested and you couldn’t tell if she was really into the game or not.

“Aww. He’s shy,” she said. And that was when you saw she
was
into it. So you sat on the bed, but it was weird. Really weird.

“Go ahead. Touch her,” Alex said. He still held down D’s arms, as if she wasn’t a willing participant.

Your hand shook as you slowly moved it to the bra. You laughed nervously, and the laugh sounded geeky. Like the kind that kid in your class had, the one who always wiped his nose with his sleeve and then inspected the snot like it was treasure or something. You didn’t want to be that kid. That’s why when Alex said, “Give them a squeeze,” you did it, even though D didn’t look as willing as she did before. But she squealed, “Alex, you’re so bad,” and laughed.

And when Alex finally let her free, imprints of his fingertips visible on her pale arms, she just ruffled your hair and said, “You just got to second. Congrats, little dude.” And you knew you should have been happy and thought it cool, but you didn’t. You felt nauseated and embarrassed.

So you looked at her, said “Thanks,” and walked out of the room as fast as you could, ignoring the squeals and laughter behind you.

Julie

S
pit,” says Kyle. We’re both straddling a bench, there’s a pile of cards in front of us, and he’s looking oh so cute with his dark, spiky hair.

I cough up a loogie and coat the dirt under our feet, and he laughs. Then, I take a card from the smaller pile of cards in my hand and toss it into the center. He does the same, his left dimple winking at me as he does it. Has he always been this cute? Sure makes Derek easier to forget.

Spit is all about speed. We grab cards and match our pairs quickly and lunge for more. I can usually wipe the floor with Kyle. Today I’m distracted. My hands move fast, but not fast enough. I grab for cards at the same time as him and hope our hands touch. Those few seconds of hoping cost me the game.

“Julie, girl,” he says, when he runs out of cards first, winning the round, “you’re out of practice.”

“I guess we’ll have to play everyday, then,” I say, trying to be flirty.

“Sounds like a plan.” He smiles, and I search for its meaning. But what do I know about reading people? Derek used to smile at me a lot. I thought I knew what it meant. Thought he wanted me. Turns out I was just a placeholder for Katie. One day he smiled the same way at her, and she ran away with it.

I wrote this in my journal after I saw their kiss, and Mama read it. Not only did she read it, but she waited for me in my room, the maroon notebook opened before her. I froze when I saw her, and she greeted me with her icy smile. “This is how you feel? That Katie stole him? Really?” She pointed to the notebook, no apology about reading it, no made-up story about how she stumbled on it while cleaning, just looking from the notebook to me. Her blue eyes were bright and eager like she really wanted to know what I would say, like we were in the middle of an argument, not me walking into an ambush.

My backpack cut into my shoulders, and I took it off and put it on the carpet in front of me like a buffer. Yes, that was how I felt. Why else would I have written it? But her eyes—same as Katie’s—bore into me, daring me to say something else. I shrugged. “That’s how I felt then.” My voice was shaky.

She nodded. “And now?”

“I don’t know.” I stared at the shaggy, baby blue carpet. Katie was jealous when the roof leaked and the first carpet in my room had to be replaced. Hers was old, too, but still holding up. I wanted burgundy carpeting, and not fluffy. I wanted Berber—or a cheaper imitation version—so when I walked across it, I didn’t sink in and forget where I was, so I could always feel the hardness of the floor with each step. But decorating was always Katie’s and Mama’s thing. They loved sitting in the living room with a clutter of open furniture catalogs around them. Katie’s dream room was baby blue “bury-your-toes-deep-within-carpet.” And, unlucky for her, the carpet in her room did not grow mold.

“The thing is, dear, it’s not your sister’s fault that boys find her attractive.” Mama smoothed a stray hair and tucked it inside her hair clip.

I knew I should have kept quiet, but I couldn’t help it. Derek was different. Derek had that smile. Derek kissed me. “Derek was mine,” I said, in a voice that reeked of whininess and desperation. My mother hated that smell.

“No, honey. That’s just the thing. He wasn’t.” She shook her head, smile still on her face, pitying me.

“So, what? He was Katie’s then?”

She thought for a moment, picked a piece of lint off her sweater. “Well, he was more hers than yours.” She said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, that it almost made sense. But it didn’t.

“I need to start my homework,” I said.

She nodded and got off my bed, leaving my journal open. “You know … ” she said, when she was at the doorway of my room and I was on my bed. I sat in the same spot she was in seconds before, trying to reclaim it. “It would do you well to take responsibility once in a while.”

“For what?” I didn’t even realize I’d said this aloud until she answered.

“For who you are. We can’t all be the pretty ones. You should find something else that lures them in.”

Now, sitting across from Kyle, I know I still haven’t found that special power that brings in the boys. I can dive, thanks to my dad, but no one cares about that. And Mama doesn’t like that skill anyway because it means I have to wear a bathing suit. I can play a mean game of Spit. Or I could, before I started trying to get Kyle to notice me. I stare at the piles of cards between us, forgetting what to do.

“Your turn,” Kyle says, his foot kicking mine. “Wake up, Jules.”

As he says this, Katie and Alex come up beside us. “Room for two more?” she asks, cocking her head to one side, giving Kyle a flirty smile. She’s being extra nice for some reason, and her tone sounds, what? Apologetic? I can’t quite figure out her expression. But Kyle blushes. That look I know; that look I’ve seen.

“Sure,” says Kyle. “Julie keeps falling asleep anyway.” He gives me a teasing smile. Then he smiles at Katie too, but that smile is shyer.

I smile back. “Oh no, I’m awake now.” This will not happen again. “Wide awake.”