The Right Time (8 page)

“Whose fault is that?”

It was frankly amazing to see, once again, how quickly Townsend went from inert to furious. She looked like she’d just as soon strangle Hennessy as take her next breath.

“Mine, I guess. How long have you been smoking?”

She shrugged, but answered. “Three…four years.”

“Would you like me to buy some nicotine patches for you? I hate to see you suffer like this.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she stared, clearly torn between puzzlement and fury. “Why are you so fucking nice to me one second and torturing me the next? Why not just let me have my cigarettes?” She stood up and leaned against the door, her thin, almost willowy body not coming close to blocking it. “Why do you fucking care?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Hennessy admitted quietly. “But I do. Not just because it’s my job to enforce the rules, either. I genuinely care about you, and I’m not going to let your nasty temper stop me.”

Townsend flopped back down in the chair and stared at her. Then a flicker of life showed in her eyes. “There has to be a house leader who can’t stand one of her little monsters. Can we switch?”

Hennessy had to laugh at her tenaciousness. “Do you honestly think anyone else would take you? I haven’t talked about you with the other house leaders, but word is spreading like wildfire. You’re persona non grata, and you’re my cross to bear until August.”

“I should live so long.”

“You will if I have anything to say about it. Now, let’s talk about your paper.”

She stuck her index finger out and twirled it in a lazy circle, showing utter boredom. “Spare me the lecture.”

“This is my job, Townsend. I’ll go get you some coffee, but we’re going to talk about this.” She stood and asked, “Black, I suppose?”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s harsher that way. Seems like your style.” When Hennessy returned, she handed over a cup of coffee and kept a mug of tea for herself. “Now, let’s make one thing clear. I don’t expect you to be a carbon copy of your mother. I promise I’ll try to never compare you to her, okay?”

“You’ll be the first teacher I’ve ever had who didn’t, but I’ll give you a fair try.”

“Great.” Hennessy beamed a smile, surprised when Townsend returned it with lesser brilliance. “That being said, I’ll admit to being disappointed with this effort.”

Her lips turned down at the corners, the harsh expression so at odds with her fine, rich-kid features. Why did so many wealthy people have such lovely, delicate attributes? Did money just wash away anything rough or coarse?

“No kidding? Fisting isn’t your cup of tea?”

She wasn’t going to engage her sarcastic comments, mostly because she knew she’d lose the battle. “I’m not talking about the content. I’m talking about the style. I specifically asked you to write about something that moved you, but you didn’t capture any emotion at all in this piece. This reads more like a technical manual.”

“Wait just a fucking minute,” Townsend managed, scrambling to sit up and inhabit her chair the way most vertebrates did. “You don’t care that I wrote about being fisted…you only care that you couldn’t feel my pain?”

“Pain, excitement, fear, trepidation, desire, longing. I have no idea which of those emotions you felt while that woman was…fisting you.” It was hard to spit that word out, but she wasn’t going to show how it turned her stomach to think of the act—one she hadn’t known existed until the day before. “What did it feel like when she first asked you to go to her apartment? What did you expect? Did you have second thoughts while you were walking over there? Set the stage! What was the night like? Cool, damp, warm, hot? Let me feel how your emotions matched or conflicted with the weather. Tell me something to let the excitement build while you’re walking over there.”

“You’re serious,” Townsend said, staring blankly.

“Of course I’m serious. The piece needs to build. If you’re going to do this in chronological order, it’s important to let the reader start to worry or get excited—let us feel what you felt.”

The dubious look she gave Hennessy didn’t belong on a kid her age. You should have had to be at least thirty to look that jaded. “You want to know if my pussy was getting wet while we walked?”

She wouldn’t let her see the flinch. Once Townsend knew she could get to her with that kind of talk, it was over. “If that’s how you feel emotion, yes.” Hennessy took a breath and made herself think of the descriptions in the piece. “Tell me how you felt when you realized she was going to put her whole hand into you. Didn’t you have even a moment when you were afraid she might tear something? It didn’t sound like you were very excited when she began. What was going on in your mind? Tell me what causes a girl to let a strange woman try to…do that…when she’s not even sexually excited.”

“I live to serve,” she sneered. Despite the nasty expression, Hennessy could see something hiding behind it. She only hoped it was shame.

“I’m not looking for romance. It was obvious that you didn’t care for each other, so go the other way and talk about how desolate you must feel to let a complete stranger violate your body that way. Hell, in my county a person would get life imprisonment for doing that against a woman’s will.”

The anger roared back, so close to the surface it might have shown on her skin. Townsend’s cheeks reddened and her green eyes turned into chips of stone. “It wasn’t against my will. I’m not a victim!”

“Fine. Then talk about how empty your soul has to be to give your body over to an unknown woman who might, intentionally or unintentionally, injure you. Maybe this is just me, but I’d prefer never to have to have my vagina stitched up. What’s it like to not even care?”

Dismissively, Townsend said, “She knew what she was doing. Didn’t you hear the part about the lube?”

“Sure. But what I’m asking is for you to strip away the veneer. I don’t want to know the technical details. It doesn’t matter if the reader doesn’t know how to fist someone after they read your piece. What does matter is that they know what mindset you have to have to let a stranger do whatever she wanted. Let the reader feel what drives you to be so reckless with your health and your safety. That’s what’s interesting.”

Townsend’s eyes narrowed and she spat, “So that’s your thing? You get off on reading about danger? Rough sex? Rape?”

“No.” Hennessy stood and walked over to the window, needing a moment to guard against the revulsion showing on her face. “I’ve never read anything that aroused me less.” She moved across the room to stand beside Townsend and gently squeeze her shoulder. “You’ve got so much pain inside you. Let your writing help get some of those toxic feelings out. Use your words to explore how you feel—then maybe you won’t have to spend the night in the hospital with some intern practicing his surgical technique on your vulva.”

“Thanks. That’s an image I’m gonna erase from my memory as soon as I get my magic potion back.”

Hennessy ignored that comment. “I want you to pick one of the pieces we work on this summer and really polish it. It doesn’t have to be this one. Pick one that interests you, and apply the things you learn to it. By the end of the summer I want to see at least one piece that reflects the fire I see in your eyes. You can do this, Townsend. I can feel the talent you have—just waiting for an outlet.”

“Unrealized potential,” she drawled, showing a wan smile. “I’ve been hearing that since first grade.”

Hennessy put all of her efforts into making her smile as dazzling as possible. Her good humor seemed to annoy Townsend more than anything else, and she planned on using it constantly. “Then it’s about time to start realizing it, isn’t it?”

Hennessy was sitting with her cabin mates at lunch on Friday when she saw Mary Ann walk through the dining room, full tray in hand. When Mary Ann caught her eye, Hennessy jumped up and went to meet her.

“How goes it with your special case?” Mary Ann asked quietly.

“Well, I thought I’d outsmarted her. On Wednesday, I assigned them the task of writing about the most interesting museum they’d ever been to. Did you have any idea there was an antique vibrator and dildo museum in San Francisco?”

Mary Ann let out a bark that made a few of the nearby kids look up. “Good Lord, Hennessy,” she said, lowering her voice even further. “I think you might have met your match. This girl sounds like she’s got enough spunk to take on the whole camp.”

“Or burn it down,” Hennessy agreed, only partially kidding.

There were no classes on the weekends, but there were enough games and activities to keep the campers busy every minute. Unfortunately, most of Hennessy’s charges were such overachievers that they’d prefer to stay in the cabin and write or draw. She hated to require them to socialize if they didn’t want to, but she thought it best to organize walks and bike rides just to lure them out and get their blood flowing.

That day, she decided to take her group on a long walk around the compound, to point out the flora and fauna of the palmetto state. She was surprised and pleased to see Townsend shuffle out of the cabin, squinting up at the sun with a malevolent glare.

They started off, making it halfway around the large compound before Townsend was lagging behind. Her chain smoking and drinking had rendered her mostly incapable of sustained physical activity, and she begged off when they reached the water. “Can I lie here on the dock until you guys come back?” she asked, totally out of breath.

“Sure. Do you have sunblock on?”

“Yes, Mother,” Townsend grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“Okay, we’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t roll off and drown. We’d miss you somethin’ fierce.”

A reluctant, but surprisingly sincere-looking smile flashed. “I just bet you would.” She dropped to the dock and was lying, flat-out, as if she’d run into a wall, before the rest of the group had gone five feet.

They finished their loop, then cut back across the middle of the compound to pick up Townsend for the trip back. Hailey scampered ahead, a big, expectant grin on her face. For some reason, much to Hennessy’s amazement, the shy, innocent girl had taken a liking to Townsend. But when Hailey reached the dock, she stopped and stared, obviously terrified. She pointed with a shaking hand, unable to get a word out of her mouth. Hennessy took off, sprinting the last fifty feet, and wrapped an arm around Hailey’s trembling shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“Sp…spider!”

A good-sized sand colored spider perched on Townsend’s collar, and as the pair watched, it skittered along her neck, disappearing from view. That was enough for Hailey to sound the alarm, and she screamed with all her might.

Townsend flew into a sitting position, looking around wildly, arms lashing out. “What the fuck?”

“Spider! There’s a big, nasty spider in your hair, or your shirt, or somewhere!”

Townsend leapt to her feet and yanked her shirt off, surprising all by her braless state. “Where is it?” she demanded, turning her back to Hennessy.

Hennessy stepped forward and ran her fingers along Townsend’s hot, sweaty neck, lifting her hair out of the way to examine her. Combing through her hair with her fingers, she found the spider and tossed it back onto the sand. “I got it. No problem.”

“It bit her! It bit her! It’s poisonous!”

The poor kid was just a bunch of nerves held together by an unending desire to please. “That was a wolf spider,” Hennessy said. “They aren’t poisonous. Trust me on that.”

“Look at her neck! It bit her!”

Hennessy moved around to the front to get a better look, and brushed the hair from Townsend’s neck, taking a brief glance at the mark Hailey referred to. “That’s not a bite,” she assured both girls. “It’s just a…bruise. Nothing to worry about.”

Townsend had the decency to blush as she put her shirt back on, muttering, “Try to get a nap around here and all hell breaks loose.” She strode off, grumbling the whole while.