Until I Find You

braces. Before either of them noticed, Jack had bled all over Emma and himself—and her bed, several stuffed animals, and the aforementioned bra. (The one that appeared to be strangling a teddy bear.)

There was blood everywhere; more alarming, Emma and Jack were still attached. While Emma searched her messy bedroom for a hand mirror, they were clumsily—in Jack’s case, painfully—linked. His lower lip was hooked to her wired teeth. And the hand mirror, when Emma finally found it, offered a confusingly reversed view. They were caught in the act of failing to disengage his lip from her braces when Emma’s mom came home and skillfully, in a matter of seconds, separated them. “Maybe you should get your upper lip waxed, Emma,” Mrs. Oastler said.

Did he need stitches? Jack wanted to know. There was every bit as much blood as when Lucinda Fleming had attempted to eat herself. Dangerous kissing was not new to Jack Burns!

“It’s just a puncture wound,” Emma’s mom said, pinching his lower lip between her thumb and index finger. She didn’t seem to mind the blood. Jack recognized her perfume from his many nights with her push-up bra. Mrs. Oastler, the instant he remembered her stolen bra, spotted her black bikini briefs on Emma’s bloodstained bed. “I wish you’d play these games with your own underwear, Emma,” Mrs. Oastler said. By the evidence of Emma’s white panties with the lace waistband, which were still wrapped around Emma’s left ankle and draped over her left foot, it was clear that Emma and Jack had been playing a game with her underwear as well. But Mrs. Oastler took more of an interest in recovering her black bikini briefs. “You’re evidently a precocious boy, Jack,” Emma’s mom said.

“Jack knows all about tattoos,” Emma told her. “He knows all about yours, anyway.”

“Really? Is that true, Jack?” Mrs. Oastler asked.

“If it’s a Rose of Jericho, I know something about it,” he said.

“Go on—show him,” Emma told her mom.

“I’m sure Jack doesn’t need to see another Rose of Jericho. I’ll bet he’s already seen his share,” Mrs. Oastler said.

“Well, I’d like to take a closer look at it myself,” Emma told her mother. “Now that I know what it is.”

“Maybe later, Emma,” Mrs. Oastler said. “We can’t send Jack home all covered with blood.”

“You’ve got a vagina above your vagina, and you won’t let me get a butterfly on my ankle!” Emma screamed.

“Ankles hurt,” Jack offered. “Tattoos hurt where there’s nothing but bone.”

“It seems that Jack does know all about tattoos, Emma. You should listen to Jack.”

“I just want a butterfly!” Emma screamed.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Jack,” Mrs. Oastler said, ignoring her daughter. “I’m going to take you to my bathroom, where you can wash up. Emma can wash up in her bathroom.” Emma’s mom took Jack’s hand and led him down the familiar path to her bedroom, which was connected to a large bathroom with wall-to-wall mirrors. In her other hand, Mrs. Oastler carried her black bikini briefs, which she twirled around and around her index finger. In the slight breeze made by her swinging panties, Jack became more aware of her perfume than before.

She removed his bloodstained shirt and tie and filled her bathroom sink with warm water; with a wet washcloth, she wiped his face and neck, being careful to gently pat his punctured lip, which was still bleeding, if only a little. While Jack washed the blood from his hands in the sink, Mrs. Oastler rubbed his shoulders with her cool, silky hands. There wasn’t any blood on Jack’s shoulders, but Emma’s mom seemed almost as comfortable touching him as her daughter was. “You’re going to be a strong boy, Jack—not very big, but strong.”

“Do you think so?” he asked.

“I know so,” Mrs. Oastler said. “I can tell.”

“Oh.” He realized why her hands felt so cool and silky. She was rubbing his back and shoulders with her black bikini briefs.

“You’re obviously very mature for your age,” Emma’s mom continued, “whereas Emma, although she’s a big girl, is somewhat immature in other areas. She’s not at all at ease with boys her own age, for example.”

“Oh,” Jack said again. He was drying his hands with a towel while Mrs. Oastler continued rubbing his back and shoulders with her panties. In the mirror, he could see her intense, serious face, framed by her pixie haircut.

“As for you, Jack, you seem quite comfortable around older girls and women.” He felt somewhat less comfortable when Emma’s mom ran her silky underwear over the back of his neck and placed her panties on his head, like a hat—like a curiously misshapen beret. His ears protruded from her bikini briefs, where her thighs would normally be. “What on earth will we tell your mom about your lip?” she asked. Before Jack could think of an answer, Mrs. Oastler said: “I get the feeling Alice isn’t quite ready for the idea of you kissing a sixteen-year-old.”

So his mom was “Alice” to Mrs. Oastler, which was only a mild surprise. He should have known. A Rose of Jericho is a fairly lengthy procedure, several hours under the best circumstances—and in this case, on such an intimate area of the body. Jack could easily imagine his mom and Mrs. Oastler having quite the conversation. Lying face-up on a bed or a table, for hours at a time, having a Rose of Jericho tattooed a few inches above your vagina —well, what subjects wouldn’t you feel free to discuss? People became fast friends in less than half the time it took to tattoo a Rose of Jericho. Alice had spent hours staring at Mrs. Oastler’s pubes; in such a situation, how could they not get to know each other? But while Alice had apparently gone along with Mrs. Oastler regarding Jack and Emma’s behavior, that he had cut his lip in a kissing accident might just nip Alice’s friendship with Mrs. Oastler in the bud. In any case, it made perfect sense to Jack not to tell his mother how he’d hurt himself kissing Emma.

“You could say it was a staple, Jack. I was trying to separate two pages of paper that had been stapled together, and you tried to help me. You opened the staple with your teeth.”

“Why would I use my teeth?” he asked.

“Because you’re a kid,” Mrs. Oastler said. She patted her bikini briefs, which Jack still wore as a hat; then she plucked her panties off his head and threw them across the bathroom into an open laundry hamper. It was a good shot. She had a kind of athletic grace, boyish in nature. “I’ll find you a T-shirt, something to wear home. Tell your mom I’m sending your shirt and tie to the dry cleaner’s.”

“Okay,” he said.

Emma’s mom was in her bedroom, opening a drawer. Jack kept looking at himself, bare-chested, in her bathroom mirror above the sink—as if he expected to start growing in some observable fashion. Mrs. Oastler came back with a T-shirt. It was all black, like her bikini briefs, and with the sleeves for the upper arms cut short and tight, the way women liked them. Emma’s mom was so small, her T-shirt was only a little loose on Jack. “It’s one of mine, of course. Emma’s clothes,” she added, disapprovingly, “would be too big.”

His lower lip had finally stopped bleeding, but it was swollen and you could see the pinprick where the wire from Emma’s braces had stabbed him. Mrs. Oastler gently rubbed some lip gloss over the wound. Emma walked into the bathroom while her mom was doing this. “You look like a girl in that T-shirt, Jack,” Emma said.

“Well, Jack’s pretty enough to be a girl, isn’t he?” Mrs. Oastler asked. There was a noticeable measure of shame in Emma’s resentful expression and slouched posture, as if she’d taken her mother’s point to heart. (Jack may have been pretty enough to be a girl, but—in her mom’s estimation—Emma wasn’t.) “We’re telling Jack’s mother that he cut himself on a staple. He was trying to open a staple with his teeth, silly boy.”

“I want to see the fucking Rose of Jericho,” Emma said. “I want Jack to see it, too.”

Without a word, Mrs. Oastler, who wore a tight-fitting pair of black jeans with a silver belt, untucked her long-sleeved cotton turtleneck, which was also black. She unbuckled the belt and wriggled the jeans over her slim hips. Jack could see only the top half of the Rose of Jericho above the panty line of her black bikini briefs. She hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her panties, but before she slid them down, she said: “This, Jack, would be in the category of needlessly upsetting your mom—maybe even worse than kissing a sixteen-year-old, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh,” he said, as she pulled her bikini briefs down.

There it was. (Not the Rose of Jericho. Jack didn’t need to waste a second of his