“Why?” I say.
“Just answer me,” he says. “How old?”
This close I can see the age in his face, a weathered darkness that makes him look older than he probably is.
“Sixteen,” I lie. I hear Liz giggle again behind me.
“Is that right,” he says. He presses his lips together. Clearly he doesn’t believe me.
“We all are,” Liz says, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“You’re still jailbait,” the other one says. “Right, Tim?”
“That she is.” Tim winks at me.
I look down at the desk. Someone has carved into it with a razor: D loves G.
“That’s gross,” Ashley says. She grabs my arm and shoots Tim a look. “We’ll be sitting over here until you can take us home.” Ashley pulls Liz and me to the other side of the room, and the three of us sit on the ground against the wall. Eventually a car pulls into the station. Loud music streams out the windows, and the boys and girls inside yell to one another. Tim goes out to get them gas. The other one, named Gary, ignores us, keeping his eyes on the grainy television.
“We’re not really sixteen,” Ashley says suddenly, and Liz smacks her arm.
“No duh,” Gary says and snorts.
We look at each other. “How did you know?” I ask. Gary shrugs. “Sixteen-year-old girls wouldn’t be stuck at a gas station in the middle of the night. They’d know somebody who could drive them home.”
I feel defensive. “Not every girl.”
Gary snorts again. “Oh, yes they do. You girls get whatever you want.”
I look down at my legs, which are tucked up under me. It sure doesn’t feel like I can have what I want. But I like the idea, stash it away in my mind to come back to later. It is an idea I might need. Later, Liz and Ashley go around back to the gas station bathroom. I’m alone with Tim. He watches me. I look out the window, pretending I’m not aware of his gaze. I cross my legs and smooth my hair, then fold my arms in front of me.
“You sure are a pretty girl,” he says.
I shrug. Nobody’s ever called me pretty before.
“You’ll be an even prettier woman.”
I shift my weight to my left foot and stare at the window. Outside, it is dead quiet, still dark. I watch the shadowy figure of Gary locking one of the tanks.
“Why are you standing all the way over there?” Tim asks.
“Because I want to,” I say. I look straight into his eyes. My heart is pounding inside my chest.
“Come over here.”
I move toward him, my arms wrapped around my waist.
“Come sit on my lap,” he says softly.
“No,” I mumble, my throat tightening.
He raises his eyebrows, starting to turn away, looking, perhaps, for one of my friends.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I blurt.
He laughs, a deep, grown-up laugh. “Oh, yes. I would indeed.”
That’s when Liz and Ashley come back in. I let out my breath, unaware I’ve been holding it. I look down at my suede boots. I can still feel something like sparks beneath my skin, as though I’m made of electricity. That power again, coursing through me. I’m not attracted to him. In fact, I’m repulsed for the most part. But I like how he saved this talk for me. Not Liz, my pretty friend, not Ashley, who already hates him. Just plain, unremarkable me. Finally, five o’clock comes. They take their time, locking drawers, sweeping the floor. At five fifteen, the next shift arrives and Tim unlocks the doors of his tan-colored Chevy. We three girls pile into the back. Tim looks back at me from the driver’s seat.
“Sit up here with me.”
I shake my head. Ashley sets her mouth and looks out the window. She’s getting tired of this, of the games and flirtations. We all are. It’s been a long night. There’s another feeling too: a growing nervousness, the knowledge we’re at Tim’s will. He can take us anywhere he wants.
“Gary, get in back,” Tim says, ignoring me. “Kerry’s sitting there.”
Gary opens my door, annoyed. “Well?”
I look at Liz.
“Just go, or we’ll never get out of here,” she says. Tim smiles when I sit next to him, and I smile back, afraid to upset him. Then he sets a hand on my leg. I look down. His hand is dirty from oil changes, and the skin looks cracked and raw. My muscles go taut. In my head, I start praying: Just get us home soon.
“Tell me where to turn,” he says, but when I tell him, he drives right past the street. He laughs, looking back at Gary, and he takes his hand back from my leg to pound it on the wheel. I hold my breath as he stops short, does a three-point turn, and goes back to the turn. “Just kidding!” he yells.
I close my eyes, thinking of Liz and Ashley in the backseat. They don’t know I flirted, enticing him. If something happens, it will be my fault. Three girls in a strange man’s car. Three girls killed.
“It’ll be OK,” I hear Liz whisper, always the older sister. At the next turn he does it again. We’re only a few miles from my house now, yet it seems a hundred miles away. Finally, at the end of my street, he stops the car. “Hmm,” he says to Gary. “Maybe I won’t take them home after all.” Gary laughs nervously.
“Come on,” I say. “That’s not funny.”
That’s when Tim notices me again, and he puts his hand back on my thigh. I can hear Ashley crying softly behind me. His hand inches beneath my skirt, toward my crotch.
“OK, OK,” he says. “I guess I’ll take you all the way.” He grins.
“Get it, Gary? I’ll take them all the way.”
I squirm, but it’s no use. His coarse fingers worm up to my underwear, scratching and grabbing as I try to pull away. They’re my best underwear, lavender in color, and he traces the edges with his fingertips. I put them on that evening with the thought that just maybe I would get to third base with one of the boys from the city. It seems a long time ago that we were in my house, full of expectation, getting ready for the night. Now he holds his fingers against my crotch—not inside, just against—letting me know he is there. I clench my body, my eyes turned to the window. I want to scream, to push his hand away, but I’m too afraid. Too afraid if I don’t give in, he won’t let me go at all. But there’s something else, too, something growing inside me, something I don’t really want to admit: There’s another part that’s not afraid at all. I almost like it. I know what’s happening isn’t right. But his touch is an inevitable result of the evening. It is my greatest hope—to be wanted. And here, with this repulsive older man, I am getting that. He holds his hand there like he owns me, but really, silently, I’m the one who owns him. Tim drives slowly, his hand up my skirt, along my street. Where before I gave directions, I don’t now. I don’t want him knowing which house is mine. When he is within a few hundred feet, I say hoarsely, “This is fine.”
“Yeah?” He turns to me, an intimate, almost friendly look on his face, a look that suggests we are sharing something special. I keep my own face even.
“Stop the car,” I say. Tim smiles, a menacing smile, but he does. I throw open the door and pull away from him, and I hear Liz and Ashley open the door in back. His hand slips away, and I feel the slow release of my muscles, the relief, like air squeaking out from an almost bursting balloon. The sky is lightening. Birds sing a crazed chorus from the trees. Ashley, Liz, and I run up my driveway, looking back a few times to make sure the car leaves, which it does. My mother is asleep, unaware, so we sneak in, using this as our excuse to not speak about what happened. I pull out cots and sleeping bags, and the three of us lie with our eyes closed, our bodies exhausted, but unable to sleep. I cup my hand over my crotch, aware of the ghost of pressure I still feel there. When my mother wakes, I figure, I’ll come up with some story: Ashley’s mother drove us here early so she can clean their house, and now we’re tired because we’ve been up all night telling ghost stories. Some story suggesting we’re still young, untouched, still safe from our own desires and from the world of men.
As summer turns to fall, my mother makes a decision. She wants to go to medical school. She’s been working as an artist, making jewelry, sculpture, and paintings. But her father was a doctor, and an artist’s hands can morph easily into a surgeon’s. Besides, she needs to find a way to make a living now. She’s used to a particular way of life—a doctor’s daughter, and then an engineer’s wife. Art isn’t going to cut it. This all feels strange, even unlikely, as if my mother has suddenly become someone else. She was always an artist, always eccentric and
