“That’s fucked-up.”
“Scared the crap out of me. Then. But now?”
Craig was slumped against ancient bark, head tipped back, eyes closed. He would have looked deep in thought, but for the drool.
“Now I wonder,” Nikki said.
Didn’t we all? What it would be like to be one of them. To have power, be seen, be heard, be dudes rather than sluts, be jocks or geeks or bros or nice guys or boys-will-be-boys or whatever we wanted instead of quantum leaping between good girl and whore. To be the default, not the exception. To be in control, to seize control, simply because we happened to have a dick.
“Imagine if it were that easy to get off,” Nikki said. “I don’t know how they ever get anything done. I’d be jerking off nonstop.”
“Not worth it,” I said. “You really want something hanging off you that just pops up whenever it feels like?”
“Or doesn’t.” She giggled. Craig had a tough time getting it up when he was drunk. That October, he was always drunk.
“Or doesn’t. Seems very inconvenient.”
“Good for peeing, though.” She stood up, held the gun tight against her zipper, aimed it at the ground. “I bet I could spell my name. In cursive.”
“You’d be a lady-killer.”
She grinned, spread her legs wide, threw her shoulders back. Held the gun with one hand and smacked an imaginary ass with the other. It was Craig’s favorite pose, though he usually accompanied it with some improvised porn music, bow chicka wow wow. “Yo, dude. Check out my package.”
“Big and hard,” I said. “Just the way I like it.”
“Not as big as your rack,” she said. If I’d let myself laugh, maybe it would have ended there. But I was still wearing my Nikki costume, I’d slurped a deadly puddle of tequila-spiked Jell-O, and it was Halloween — I wanted to play.
“Oh, Craig,” I simpered. “I love your big, hard cock.”
He liked that, dirty talk, always wanting us to assure him, Oh baby you’re huge oh baby you feel so good oh baby I’m so wet oh baby—it said he was strong and we were weak, he was supply and we were demand, he was power and we were need.
“Oh, yeah, baby?” she said. “You want it? You want it bad?”
“I want it so bad,” I said. “Because you’re the most popular guy in all of school and we’re going to look super sexy in our Dreamiest Couple yearbook photos.”
“I do not sound like that, bitch.”
I let my voice go breathy phone sex operator. “Tell me we’re going to be homecoming king and queen, big boy. Tell me how all the peons will gaze at us and we’ll crush them under our big, royal feet. Tell me how you’ll use that rock-hard cock of yours to pee on their parade.”
I raised myself onto my knees and padded toward her, till the gun was in my face. Leaned forward, kissed its cool tip. Tongued the edge, tasted its tang.
She jutted her hips. “You want some of this?”
“I want all of it.” Then its mouth was in my mouth, and I was licking my way around its rim. Nikki moaned.
“Ohhhh, Nikki,” she said, in his voice.
I pulled my lips away, just long enough to gasp, “Mmm, Craig,” then swallowed it again, drew higher up the shaft, cupped her ass in my hands.
“I love you,” she said, hand on my head, forcing me down, then up, into a rhythm. “God, I love you.”
It was no different than sucking at the real thing, hard and slippery and dangerous.
“I love you,” she whispered, nails digging at my scalp. “I love you I love you I love you.”
And so it went, until the real Craig woke from his stupor and realized we were playing without him. There was a manly grunt, a skunk of a burp, and then he lumbered over to us and sealed his own fate in one puff of beery breath: “Step aside, ladies, and make way for a real man.”
DEX, 1992
YOU WANT TO STOP TALKING now,” Lacey said, less like a threat than like a hypnotist’s command.
Nikki smiled. It was a storybook grin, one that might have been called insouciant in some British story of magic and portals. “No. I don’t think I do. Hannah, would you like to hear about the last time Lacey and I came into these woods? Once upon a time, on a night very much like tonight—”
“You really want to find out what happens if you don’t stop talking?” Lacey brandished the knife.
“It’s getting old, Lace. You want to use it, use it. I’m tired of secrets. That’s what all this is about, right? No more secrets.”
I wonder, now, if Lacey knew that once it started, it wouldn’t stop. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Maybe she wanted to tell me, needed Nikki to make her. More games, more marionettes, all of us pulling one another’s strings, turtles all the way down.
Neither of them was looking at me.
“There are worse things than death,” Lacey said. “Maybe you need another bath.” She seized Nikki’s hair, rougher than before, shoved her face into the bucket, held her hard and tight as her limbs spasmed, and it went on and on and then on too long and I shouted at her to stop.
She didn’t stop.
I screamed it. “Stop!” and “You’re going to kill her!” and “Lacey, please,” and only then did she let go. For a long, terrifying second, Nikki didn’t move. Then she coughed up a bubble of water and took a shuddery breath. Lacey did look at me then, hurt painted across her face.
“You still don’t trust me, Dex?”
“I trust you.”
“Then why do you look so scared?”
“Gosh, I wonder why.” Nikki’s head was hanging limp, her voice hoarse, mouth wide and sucking air, and still she managed to sound smug.
“This is getting boring,” Lacey said. “We got what we wanted. Let’s get out of here. Untie her and go home.”
Just like that. She said it like a punishment, like I’d been too loud and whiny in the backseat and she’d been forced to turn the car around.
“We have her on tape,” Lacey reminded me. “She won’t tell anyone. Will you, Nikki?”
Nikki shook her head, dog obedient.
“See? It’s over. Let’s go.”
It could have been that easy. We could have gone home, the three of us, safe and sound and only a little bit fucked up for life by what happened in the woods. Lacey set that before me on a platter, and all I needed to do was reach for it. On the other side of yes: the empty highway, our artist’s loft in Seattle with its lava lamps and dissipated men, the future we’d promised ourselves. That easy.
Nikki looked hopeful, but not only that. She looked satisfied. That’s not why I said no.
We couldn’t stop, not yet. Because Lacey was too eager; because there were still secrets. Because if I let it be over, I would never know what was true.
Secrets were a claim, and as long as they shared one, they owned each other. I needed Lacey to be only mine. We would stay in this boxcar until everything was said. For Lacey’s own good, whether she knew it or not.
“Not yet,” I said. The air hissed out of both of them. “One more confession.”
“You need a break,” Lacey said. “Let’s go sit in the car for a while, listen to some music.”
“That’s right, Saint Kurt will solve all your problems,” Nikki said. “And if that doesn’t work, you can always knock her out and leave her in the woods to rot.”
“Shut up!” Lacey screamed.
I didn’t like her losing control. Nikki shouldn’t have been able to make her do that. Nikki could have no power over Lacey. I couldn’t allow it.
“We should stay here,” I said. “We should listen.”