'It’s been eight months, six days, and about', Lucy checked her watch 'four hours.'
He laughed. 'You're playing me, right?'
She just stared at him.
'I printed out the journals,' he said.
The confidential, anonymous journals.
She was teaching a class that the university had dubbed Creative Reasoning, a combination of cutting-edge psychological trauma with creative writing and philosophy. Truth be told, Lucy loved it. Current assignment: Each student was supposed to write on a traumatic event in their lives, something that they would not normally share with any one. No names were to be used. No grades given. If the anonymous student gave permission on the bottom of the page, Lucy might read a few out loud to the class for the purpose of discussion, again keeping the author anonymous.
'Did you start reading them?' she asked.
Lonnie nodded and sat in the seat that Sylvia had occupied a few minutes ago. He threw his feet up on the desk. 'The usual,' he said. 'Bad erotica?' 'I'd say more like soft porn.' 'What's the difference?' 'Damned if I know. Did I tell you about my new chick?'
'No.'
'Delectable.'
'Uh-huh.'
'I'm serious. A waitress. Hottest piece of ass I've ever dated.'
'And I want to hear this because?'
'Jealous?'
'Yeah,' Lucy said. 'That must be it. Give me the journals, will you?'
Lonnie handed her a few. They both started digging in. Five minutes later, Lonnie shook his head.
Lucy said, 'What?'
'How old are most of these kids?' Lonnie asked. 'Maybe twenty, right?'
'Right.'
'And their sexual escapades always last, like, two hours?'
Lucy smiled. 'Active imagination.'
'Did guys last that long when you were young?'
'They don't last that long now,' she said.
Lonnie arched an eyebrow. 'That's because you're so hot. They can't control themselves. It's your fault, really.' 'Hmm.' She tapped the pencil's eraser against her lower lip. 'That's not the first time you've used that line, is it?' 'You think I need a new one? How about: 'This has never happened to me before, I swear'?'
Lucy made a buzzing sound. 'Sorry, try again.'
'Damn.'
They went back to reading. Lonnie whistled and shook his head.
'Maybe we just grew up in the wrong era.'
'Definitely.'
'Luce?' He looked over the paper. 'You really need to get some.'
'Uh-huh.'
'I'm willing to help, you know. No strings attached.'
'What about Ms. Delectable Waitress?'
'We're not exclusive.'
'I see.'
'So what I'm suggesting here is purely a physical thing. A mutual pipe cleaning, if you catch my drift.'
'Shush, I'm reading.'
He caught the hint. Half an hour later, Lonnie sat forward and looked at her.
'What?'
'Read this one,' he said.
'Why?'
'Just read it, okay?'
She shrugged, put down the journal she'd been reading, yet another story of a girl who'd gotten drunk with her new boyfriend and ended up in a threesome. Lucy had read lots of stories of threesomes. None seemed to happen without alcoholic involvement.
But a minute later she forgot all about that. She forgot that she lived alone or that she had no real family left and that she was a college professor or that she was in her office overlooking the quad or that Lonnie was still sitting in front of her. Lucy Gold was gone. And in her place was a younger woman, a girl really, with a different name, a girl on the verge of adulthood but still so very much a girl:
This happened when I was seventeen. I was at summer camp. I worked there as a CIT. That stands for Counselor In Training. It wasn’t hard for me to get the job because my dad owned the place…
Lucy stopped. She looked at the front sheet. There was no name, of course. The students e-mailed the papers in. Lonnie had printed them out. There was supposed to be no way to know who sent what paper. It was part of the comfort. You didn't even have to risk having your finger prints on it. You just hit the anonymous Send button:
It was the best summer of my life. At least it was until that final night. Even now I know I will never know a time like it. Weird right? But I know. I know that I will never, ever, be that happy again. Not ever. My smile is different now. It is sadder, like it is broken and can't be fixed.
I loved a boy that summer. I will call him P for this story. He was a year older than me and a junior counselor. His whole family was at the camp. His sister worked there and his father was the camp doctor. But I barely noticed them because the moment I met P, I felt my stomach clench. I know what you're thinking. It was just a dumb summer romance. But it wasn't. And now I'm scared I will never love someone like I loved him. That sounds silly. That is what everyone thinks. Maybe they are right. I don't know. I am still so young. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like I had one chance at happiness and I blew it.
A hole in Lucy’s heart started opening, expanding.
One night we went into the woods. We weren't supposed to.
There were strict rules about it. Nobody knew those rules better than me. I had been spending summers here since I was nine. That was when my dad bought the camp. But P was on 'night' duty. And because my dad owned the camp, I had full access. Smart, right? Two kids in love who were supposed to guard the other campers? Give me a break!
He didn't want to go because he thought he should keep watch, but hey, I knew how to entice him. I regret that now, of course. But I did it. So we headed into the woods, just the two of us. Alone. The woods are huge. If you make a wrong turn, you can get lost in there forever. I had heard tales of children going out there and never coming back. Some say they still wander around, living like animals. Some say they died or worse. Well, you know how it is with campfire stories.
I used to laugh at stories like that. I never got scared of them.
Now I shudder at the thought.
We kept walking. I knew the way. P was holding my hand.
The woods were so dark. You can't see more than ten feet in front of you. We heard a rustling noise and realized that’s someone was in the woods. I froze, but I remember P smiling in the dark and shaking his head in a funny way. You see, the only reason campers met up in the woods was, well, it was a coed camp. There was a boys' side and a girls' side and this finger of the woods stood between them. You figure it out.
P sighed. 'We better check it out,' he said. Or something like that. I don't remember his exact words.
But I didn't want to. I wanted to be alone with him.
My flashlight was out of batteries. I can still remember how fast my heart was beating as we stepped into the trees. There I was in the dark, holding hands with the guy I loved. He would touch me and I would just melt. You know that feeling? When you can't stand to be away from a guy for even five minutes. When you put everything in context of him. You do something, anything really, and you wonder, 'What would he think about that?' It is a crazy feeling. It is wonderful but it also hurts. You are so vulnerable and raw that it's scary.
'Shh,'he whispers. 'Just stop.'
We do. We stop.
P pulls me behind a tree. He cups my face in both of his hands.
He has big hands and I love the way that feels. He tilts my face up and then he kisses me. I feel it everywhere, a fluttering that begins in the center of my heart and then spreads. He takes his hand away from my face. He puts it on my rib cage, right next to my breast. I start to anticipate. I groan out loud.
We kept kissing. It was so passionate. We couldn't get close enough to each other. Every part of me felt on fire. He moved his hand under my shirt. I won't say more about that. I forgot about the rustling in the woods. But now I know. We should have contacted someone. We should have stopped them from going deeper in the woods. But we didn't. We made love instead.
I was so lost in us, in what we were doing, that at first I didn't even hear the screams. I don't think P did either.
But the screams kept coming and you know how people describe near-death experiences? That was what it was like, but kinda in reverse. It was like we were both headed for some wonderful light and the screams were like a rope that was trying to pull us back, even though we didn't want to go back.
He stopped kissing me. And here is the terrible thing.
He never kissed me again.
Lucy turned the page, but there were no more. She snapped her head up. 'Where's the rest?'
'That's it. You said to send it in parts, remember? That's all there is.'
