paper? My best ink?

I busied myself with cleaning my tidy kitchen but was

unable to put the list from my mind. The first few notes had

been simple, if enigmatic, instructions. Eat oatmeal. Work

out. Be beautiful. It had been something of a game, these

suggestions implanted in my brain and leading me toward

the choices I'd have probably made anyway even without

the suggestions. But this…this was different. What had

seemed harmless before had become slightly more sinister.

Also, a heluva lot sexier.

Late night.

The only light comes, flickering blue, from the TV in the

corner. The sound's turned down low because it's not so

important to hear what's being said as it is to see what's

going on. I've seen this movie before, a few times, in

pieces, but it's the first time I've ever seen it al at once.

He lifts his head from kissing me when it comes on, his

hands stiling on my bely where they'd been wandering

their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This movie is hot."

I push his face back to mine and take his mouth to keep

his attention on me, not the TV screen. I open my mouth

and legs to him, puling him down on top of me. Puling him

close. My heart's open, too, though I haven't yet told him I

love him. Those are words for prom pictures and class

rings.

We don't have that, him and me. We have the backseat of

his car, we have the space beneath the bleachers after

school. We have the back row of the movie theater. We

have the basement in his parents' house and this couch.

But when I hear the song, the one my mom plays over and

over on those old mix tapes from her youth, I lift my head

from his kisses to see what's going on. I know why she

loved this song. She'd been a fan of Duran Duran in her

youth, complete with fedora hat and bleached-blond

streak in her hair, just like the bass player. John Taylor, the

same guy singing this song. Wel, not singing it. Chanting it,

sort of. I knew she loved this song because he sang it, but

until now, I hadn't known this was the movie it had come

from.

The woman on the screen bites her finger. The slide show

she's watching cycles through to another picture, but the

movie doesn't show what she's looking at. Only her. She

touches herself, her thighs opening, her head faling back in

ecstasy as she makes herself come.

He watches me watch. His hand presses flat on my chest,

over my heart. My breath had caught in my throat and I let

it seep out, slow and silent, not wanting him to know I'd

been holding it.

"Do you do that?"

I tear my gaze from the TV to look at him. "What?"

He jerks his chin toward the set. The movie's moved on to

something else, but I know what he meant. "That. Do

you?"

"Do I touch myself? Do I get myself off?" I hitch higher

against the arm of the battered couch his parents donated

to the basement. A cat had scratched it; a dog had lifted its

leg on it. We'd fucked about a thousand times on its faded

cushions, or maybe only ten.

He sits back. His shirt hangs open at his throat. I'd been

the one to undo the buttons. The waistband of his boxers

peeks from his jeans. Beneath the denim his cock had

throbbed, hard and hot, moments before.

I know him now, though not as wel as I wil eventualy. He

doesn't know me very wel at al and never wil. Yet this is

different, this coyness as he scrubs his hand over the brush

of his hair and grins.

"Wel. Yeah."

"Do you?" I pul down the bottom of my sweater and

cross my arms over my stomach.

He laughs low. I've known him for years, since elementary

school. I've watched him become a man. He sounds like a

man when he laughs, al low and growly deep. Rough-

edged.

"Wel, yeah," he says. "Al guys do."

"But you don't think al girls do, too?"

"I'm not asking what al girls do. Just you," he points out.

He knows how to work me. And, because I want to

believe I'm the only girl in his thoughts, I answer his

question honestly. Later we'l both lie.

"Yeah. I do it."

He clears his throat. "Realy? I mean, you realy—"

"Wank? Masturbate? Pet my pussy?" I guess I'm trying to

shock him. Make him blush. He's not the blushing sort.

"Is that what you cal it?"

"What do you call it?"

We're whispering, though his parents sleep a ful two floors

above us and we haven't bothered to keep our voices

down about anything before. He leans forward and so do

I. He smels faintly of cologne and more like fabric

softener. His mother does his laundry. Mine doesn't.

"Jerking off, I guess."

"I don't cal it anything," I admit. "I just do it."

"How often?"

I laugh, then, and look to the movie for strength. The

couple in the film are fucking in what looks like a clock

tower. Their hands scrabble at each other as they pul off

their clothes.

"Whenever I feel like it!"

He laughs. "How often do you feel like it?"

I don't want to tel him about the nights I've spent with

other boys' hands on me, revving me up without finishing

me off. Or the blank-fronted books I sneak from the

shelves of the family down the street who pay me to watch

their kids while they go bowling. I've learned a lot more

about sex from those books than I've ever learned from a

boy. Until him, anyway.

"Do you feel like it now?" he asks when it becomes clear

I'm not going to answer.

"Do I feel like coming now?"

He's used his hands on me, put his cock inside me, put his

mouth on my mouth and on my body. I've come with him

more than a few times. But not every time.

more than a few times. But not every time.

"Wil you?" he asks. "While I watch?"

I don't know what answer to give. I only know I want to

give him everything he asks for and some things he hasn't. I

nod.

He sits back against the couch's opposite arm. I'm not sure

he'l even be able to see me, painted in shafts of white and

dark from the TV's glow. I'm not sure I want him to see

me do this without a shield of shadows.

I've never done this in front of anyone, and at first I'm not

sure how to start. In the privacy of my bedroom I'd have

the door locked and soft music playing in the dark. I'd be

naked, or wearing only panties and a T-shirt. Now I have

to navigate the barriers of my jeans and sweater,

underpants and bra. So I start by touching my breasts

through the wool, not because I usualy feel my boobs

when I'm masturbating but because I think that's what he

expects me to do, and doing it wil buy me time to find the

nerve to folow through with the rest of it.

The smal noise that eeps out of his throat convinces me I

made the right choice. My hands feel smal on my breasts,

which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember

which are fuler in my palms than in his. I can't remember

the last time I touched them this way, cupping and rubbing,

trying to tweak my nipples to points. The sweater is too

thick for this, so I shift until I can pul it off over my head.

Another smal noise from him, and I bite my lower lip. My

fingers tiptoe over the slopes of my now-naked chest, over

the lace and satin of my best bra. The one I bought from

Victoria's Secret with my babysitting cash. The one I wear

on every date. Beneath its expensive material and breast-

lifting bands of metal, my nipples have gone tight and

aching.

My palms slide on the smooth fabric. When my thumbs

pass over those hard points, I bite harder. Soft flesh dents

under my teeth. It doesn't hurt yet, but if I don't ease up I

wil soon taste blood.

I close my eyes because it's easier to be what I think he

wants me to be when I'm not watching him watch me. And

it gives me darkness, which I'm used to and prefer for this

sort of thing. I feel my skin, softer than the bra that has

been through lots of washings and, despite its cost, wasn't

made to last.

I go away.

I go away.

From this basement, which always smels a little of wet

dog though his dog died years ago. From him, the boy-

man watching me. Even from the TV and the movie in the

corner that started al of this in the first place.

I go away to the place where everything feels good, and I

don't have to think about anything but the whisper of my

fingertips along my sides. Down across my bely, which

wil never be flat enough no matter how many crunches I

do or lunches I skip. The metal button on my jeans isn't

cold or warm, it's the same temperature as my skin. My

fingers miss it in their first walk across, though the belt

loops snag my touch.

I don't open the button at first. I slide my hand down the

front of my jeans. My panties are already damp from the

hour we've been on the couch. Sometimes, though I'd

never dare tel him this, no matter what I'm about to share,

my pussy gets wet even before we start kissing.

Sometimes, when I'm in the shower getting ready to meet