There have been times when I’ve considered Raj. Considered kissing him. Considered him as a possible boyfriend. Weighed it over in my mind. How my body sometimes lights up around him. And then sometimes nothing. We tried it once. It was at a party. He was leaning against a wall. Just easy.
“I think we should kiss,” I said, real business-like. Big smile. He reached forward and took my hair in his hands, and I stepped forward into him. We kissed, and my heart stopped. I bit my lip. Covered my mouth. My hands shook. I looked up at him, his hair drooping in his face, those eyes.
“Nothing,” I said, stepping back. “Like kissing a wall.”
“Same,” he said. Those eyes, not off me once.
And we never talked about it again. I promised Sammi it was nothing. Just a drunken experiment.
Raj knows how I feel about Sean Nessel, anyway.
Felt. Fuck. Felt.
* * *
My dad smells like pot and patchouli. He must be so stressed out about this whole thing with me and Sean Nessel that he had to light a late-afternoon joint. He can’t even wait until I go to bed, which is when he usually gets high. This isn’t something we discuss. This is just something I am aware of. What would he say? “I smoke weed.” So I’ve figured out his I’m going to bed early is code for I’m getting high. Give your old man some space.
Raj tells me he’s been running in the neighborhood and he just thought he’d stop by.
My father pulls me into the hallway, and Raj waits outside. He hands me a white paper bag. “Aunt Marce dropped this off,” he says, his eyes so serious.
I open the bag and look inside. It’s a small mint-green box that says PLAN B. I look up at him, horrified. “Dad, oh my God.”
“Don’t oh my God me, Ali. You need to take this tonight.”
Plan B is the pill you take when you don’t want to be pregnant. Pregnant. The word makes me sick. I think of Sean Nessel. What he looked like. His face. His hair. I pinch the inside of my wrist until I can feel pain shooting down my hand.
My father sighs deeply. I can see how upset he is. And stoned. He keeps licking his lips.
“She said not to take it on an empty stomach,” he says. “Maybe have it with milk and cookies before bed. I don’t know.” And he shuffles off.
There’s a note on the box inside.
Ali, don’t worry about this being any more than a light period. You might get a little spotting. Some cramps. Take some Advil. You’ll be fine, I promise.
I love you,
Aunt Marce
I shove the bag in the bathroom, my eyes tearing up.
* * *
Raj and I wipe off the leafy lounge chairs out back. They’re moldy from the fall—no one’s cleaned them off in a while. I’m wearing black sweats and a black Pixies T-shirt, so I don’t care about getting all smudged. Besides, I feel so dirty still anyway. Sitting in sludge is somehow fitting.
“You cut your bangs,” Raj says.
I shrug. Place my hand over my forehead.
“Just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m fine,” I say defensively.
I don’t like that he’s saying this to me. I don’t want him to remind me that he knows something. Or that something happened. I don’t want anything to have happened.
“Okay.” He looks away.
“Why are you even asking me?”
“’Cause I saw you run out of there last night all freaked out. I couldn’t catch up to you. Too many people. And then you didn’t text me back. And Sammi wouldn’t say anything today when I talked to her.”
“I didn’t notice that you texted me.”
I didn’t notice because I had my phone off. Because I chose to ignore everyone.
“Anyway, I saw Nessel this morning at soccer practice,” Raj says.
“Yeah?”
“He said that I should check on you.”
“Oh? What a nice guy.” I crunch my knees to my chest. Hang my head over them like a pretzel.
“Did he say anything else?”
“That you were shaken up.”
“Did he say why I was shaken up?”
I hear Sean Nessel saying it, so innocent. Check on her, dude. She was shaken up, man. And then a surge of rage comes over me, and I turn into a human volcano of spitfire, shaking and sputtering. So I say it because I’m fuming and I can’t hold it in.
“We did it, all right? We did it and it was awful. Like the worst night of my life. Like the worst, worst thing ever. So bad that I don’t even want to talk about it because I can’t believe that it’s me talking to you about something that I feel so fucking embarrassed about.”
I smash my feet in the grass. The damp grass pokes through my flip-flops. It’s the first time since last night that I can feel anything besides my sore thighs and crotch. I don’t want Raj to see me like this. But he’s here. In my yard. And he’s listening.
I cover my face with my hair like that Addams Family character Cousin It. If I could just walk around like this for a few days. I fantasize about finding an escape route through my hair.
I don’t want Raj to worry about me. I know he doesn’t know what to say to me. He knows I’m a virgin. That I was a virgin. We’re close enough for him to know that. If there was a way to bury it. To cover my body with leaves so no one could see me or hear me or find me. Every part of me is telling myself not to speak about last night and to just shove it down into a dark place in my soul so that it just goes away.
Raj curls forward and plops his feet down, leans over so that our knees touch.
But I don’t want to be touched. So I move my knees away.
“What are you thinking about?” Raj says.
I stare at my rusty swing
