Chapter 1 #3
She opens the front door and sees her parents on the couch—two frizzy-haired pear shapes—huddled over the remote.
“Hi, Mom, hi, Dad,” she calls.
She unlaces her boots in the entryway as her parents start to tell her their daily list of complaints: the humidity, the traffic, the leaf blowers.
Susan had been an “oopsie baby,” conceived long past the point her mom had thought was possible and kept for the sheer miracle of the matter.
They hadn’t planned on having children, but Susan knows they love her and that they’re grateful for the blessing of a healthy daughter. They often tell her so, at least.
Susan’s parents aren’t like other parents.
They’re suspicious of technology, the government, Western medicine, and sometimes of chain stores like Target and Super Stop he was an anomaly, something only boys were granted permission to be.
One day he met Susan’s eyes as they passed each other in the hall and that was all it took for Susan to become obsessed with everything about him.
The way other people looked at him; his effortless power; his coolness.
She wondered what it would be like to not have to try so hard. To simply be beloved because you exist.
She was a little jealous of him, if she was being honest with herself. It seemed so easy to live in his skin. She imagined that if he liked her, some of that power might transfer to her. She’d learned about osmosis in bio.
Susan started doing things to try to get him to notice her, like listening to the bands on his T-shirts and putting their lyrics in her away messages on AIM.
Even music that she hated, like Thursday or Thrice.
She stopped wearing dresses with combat boots and began wearing tight T-shirts with tighter pants, bowling sneakers, and a white belt with silver pyramid studs, trying to look like the kind of girl he might like, or at least look more like him, lingering near his locker when she knew he’d be there.
Finally, after weeks of this, he’d flashed a crooked smile at her, nodded, and said, “Susan.”
In return she only nodded back, too caught off guard for anything further, and walked away. (“So mysterious, Suzie,” Katie would tease her later.)
That night Susan held her breath as she pulled up AIM. His screen name was xFISHxMANx; hers was, for his benefit, motionisntmeaning.
She messaged him: “hey, it’s susan”
He wrote back, “hey you. oh sick, thrice.”
It worked: He’d gotten the reference. She beamed at the screen.
After that, their conversation didn’t go beyond “what’s up” and “nm u” but he did start saying hi to her in person every day—not just hi, but “Hi, Susan,” in a way that told her there was something special going on between them.
Every night he IM’d her about nothing, and her heart soared higher and higher.
She would have been content for things to stay this way forever, but one evening he messaged her, “wanna go do something”
Heart pounding, she wrote back: “like what”
He took five minutes to reply: “idk maybe just drive around”
Her parents were already asleep when he picked her up an hour later in a black Jeep Wrangler with all the windows rolled down and an Early November song blasting. She crept out of the house and then got into the car, smiling nervously.
“What’s up,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
He drove her to Huntington Harbor and parked in the public parking lot, and then they just sat there, listening to music and looking at the moon reflecting on the inky water.
The air smelled like Kyle’s Axe body spray and the fish that died every fall in the heat and then bobbed morbidly to the water’s surface, lifeless mouths gaping.
“Do you take all the girls here?” she asked, hoping to make him laugh.
“Just you,” he said, not laughing.
She didn’t know how to take that. She didn’t believe it.
He reached for her hand then.
“Sorry my palm is so sweaty,” Susan said, feeling vulnerable, this physical manifestation of her nervousness giving her no way to fake being calm.
To her relief he just smiled at her, that sideways flash of straight white teeth.
She tried to remember if he’d ever had braces or if he was just blessed.
They held hands for a moment, skin sliding on skin, and she felt warm and alive, like his attention confirmed she really did exist, like without it she might vaporize, become nothing but a cloud. Oh wow, people would say as the fog of her floated past. That mist looks like Susan.
Then, slowly, he started guiding their hands toward his lap. He was moving so gradually that it didn’t occur to her to question where he was taking her until he pressed her hand into the crotch of his skinny jeans.
This is fine, she thought. This is what people do. There, she felt the lump of what she had to assume was his erection, though she couldn’t be sure. It was smaller than she expected it to be. Really squished in there.
A few years prior, she and Katie had done some light research into the matter, asking Jeeves to show them naked adult men on the family computer after another abstinence-only video in health class left them with more questions than answers.
Susan’s only reference point for what should be between Kyle’s legs came from their somewhat horrifying findings, pictures that made Katie giggle and Susan gag.
Kyle’s didn’t feel anything like the erect weapons she’d seen online. It was something else, something less significant.
Susan froze but kept her hand there, unsure what was expected of her. It couldn’t feel good for him over his tight pants like this, but what did she know?
After what seemed like an eternity the lump softened and she pulled her hand away.
He said, “Okay, then,” and took her home.
When she got out of the car, she wasn’t sure what to say or do, so she squeaked, “Thanks!” and then ran back inside, where she took a scalding- hot shower while wondering why she felt like unzipping her skin.
“There was just something so weird about it,” Susan said, describing the scene to Katie as they lay around her house the following afternoon.
“It is strange that he didn’t kiss you before trying to get a hand job,” Katie agreed. “But maybe he’s just not as experienced as we assumed? Maybe he has no idea what he’s doing.”
“Maybe,” Susan said, not convinced. On the contrary, it seemed like Kyle knew exactly what he was doing.
“I mean, I feel like he’s obsessed with you,” Katie said. “Why else would he want to go listen to music by the light of the moon?”
Susan didn’t have an answer to this. She’d spent such a long time willing him to like her, and now that he was showing interest, she didn’t know what to do with it.
Still, they met up several more times over the next month, each nearly silent drive ending with her sweaty hand perched on his wilting erection, followed by an awkward goodbye. She kept waiting to enjoy herself more—isn’t this what she’d wanted?—but enjoyment never came.
One night he messaged her: “are u ever going to want to h/u”
The message was a jump scare. Without thinking, she hit the power button on her computer.
She stared at her blurry reflection on the black screen, paralyzed by a tidal wave of shame.
Susan didn’t know much, but she did know that she didn’t want to hook up with Kyle.
There was only one way out of this mess, and that was to go cold turkey.