Chapter 3 Before
BEFORE
She’d never felt this happy—happy and warm, both inside and out, sitting in the back seat alone, while the guys joked and argued about music, sports teams, whether girls (women) minded having sex during their periods, which should have made her embarrassed but didn’t, because they talked and joked as if they trusted her not to be disgusted.
They didn’t ask, “Have you . . . ?” or “Would you . . . ?”
The only question she got from up front was, “Too breezy back there?”
“No. It’s great.”
“Let me know if you want the window up a bit, or we can close them all.”
“No, it’s good!”
Nothing to worry about, hair whipping in front of her face, loving the humidity, the darkness, the view of cornfields lit up by a half-moon once they got past the suburbs, the smell of cigarette smoke, which she liked, sometimes more than cigarettes themselves.
“You don’t smoke?” he asked when they stopped at a liquor store to pick up another case of beer.
“Occasionally.”
“Smoking is bad for you. And it’s worse for a girl. You’ll have wrinkles before you’re thirty.”
“You hear that?” came the familiar voice from the front passenger seat. Less kind, but not enough to ruin her mood.
“Yeah, I heard it.”
“When I tell you not to do something, you talk back.”
“No, I don’t,” she said, wishing he’d stop, wishing he wasn’t here at all.
But that was part of the package. Sometimes he’d let her come along with him and his friends.
Sometimes he wanted to show her off. Sometimes he wanted to pretend she didn’t exist. Whatever.
She planned to have her own fucking great time.
The car was noisy and the back seat vibrated as they drove farther west, toward a forest preserve along a shallow river that smelled like mud on hot nights. The state cops rarely bothered people for hanging out there, as long as parties stayed small and quiet.
When her eyelids grew heavy from the beer and the heat, she forced them open.
She pulled the can from between her legs and took another sip, even though it was the drink itself that was making her tired.
She must have pulled a face, not a fan of beer but only of beer’s effect, because he started laughing. It was a good-natured laugh.
She looked up in time to see his eyes in the rearview mirror, staring.
She wiped the grimace from her face and sipped again, trying to hide her distaste.
He was still staring. She looked down again, bashful and tipsy, the tips of her ears blazing hot, but he wouldn’t be able to see that while driving.
The back seat was her place. The better place.
She rubbed her sweaty palms on the thighs of her jeans.
No doubt her face was shiny, her hair a mess of tangles from the wind.
She was grateful for the darkness. All the windows were still down, and she liked this, too—the rush of air, the noise that covered the guys’ voices so that she only got snippets, curse words, howls of laughter.
Back home, she’d stepped out the front door just as a new argument was brewing.
That’s why they’d let her go, even though it was late, because they wanted time alone, without an audience.
Things were bad. They didn’t ask questions about where she was going or when she’d be back. No mention of curfew at all.
Normally, she drank wine coolers, and never too many at a time. Two firsts, then. The beer, the no curfew.
No, three. Riding in a car with a much older man who had bought her the beer, let her choose the music, even if it was mostly drowned out by the roar of the wind. A man who was still looking at her in the rearview mirror, which made her nervous and excited at the same time.
You’ll hit a deer if you keep doing that, she thought.