Switch

knew this, just that I did the way I knew each day when I

went in to work how to gauge Paul's mood and keep him

focused on work so he didn't hassle me about the job with

Vivian.

What frightens you?

What frightens you?

I tapped the pen against the paper, then my lips.

I want to know what makes your palms sweat but gets

you hard at the same time. What frightens you because

you want it so badly?

It wasn't a question I'd have been able to answer without a

lot of thought, but that was the point. To make him think. I

sealed the note in a matching plain envelope and ran it

down to the mailboxes. Eric was working another twelve-

hour shift and I knew he wouldn't get home until after I'd

gone to bed, but I didn't want to get up early to deliver it,

either.

I went online to pay bils and make some changes to my

Connex account. I hadn't been on it in weeks and had a

page of friend requests to approve and friends' list entries

to scrol through. Nothing terribly interesting, since the

people I knew from home were stil doing what they'd

been doing when I left.

Even so, I got sucked into watching a series of 'ghost-

sighting' videos and 'true alien abductions,' and so I was awake when my phone hummed and a new text message

awake when my phone hummed and a new text message

came through.

I'm afraid of being owned.

Not of being 'pwnd' which was something else altogether.

I sat back, the computer forgotten, my heart thundering in

my ears and my mouth tasting something like honey al at

once. It was the sweetness of anticipation. Expectation.

He was afraid of being owned.

So that's exactly what I gave him.

I found it in one of the kiosks in the center of the mal. It

sold hair barrettes of tooled leather, belts, along with

necklaces of cord and beads. And there, hanging

unobtrusively on a rack with a slew of others that didn't

even turn my head, was the bracelet.

Flat black leather about an inch wide, fastened with a

snap. It was the sort worn by teenage emo or skater boys

and could be tooled with any number of phrases or

designs.

'Help you?' The boy in skinny jeans and high-tops leaned

'Help you?' The boy in skinny jeans and high-tops leaned

around the kiosk to catch my eye.

I lifted the bracelet. 'I'd like this.'

He looked at me through the fringe of his long bangs.

Bangs on boys. There was a fashion statement I was