Lon’s sitting on the couch watching TV as I walk in. He does a double take after glancing at me. “Wow! I like your shirt.”
“Thanks,” I say, running my hand over the plastic printing for the millionth time in the past hour.
“Renée called,” Lon says, going back to Samurai Jack, who is tearing art-deco robots to shreds. “She wants you to call her.”
I’m in my room with the door shut in five seconds, and I’m punching numbers shakily into the phone in eight. For some reason, hearing about her twisted past has only made me want to talk to her more. This girl may not be normal, she may not be “okay,” but she cares for me, and all I want to do is let her know how amazing I think she is.
The venom snorts.
Always the superhero, Locke. Go ahead, try to face something this terrible. I can’t wait.
Ignoring its voice is impossible, and I shudder. Blurting something out at the wrong time is not an option here. Don’t be toxic, Locke. Careful.
A droplet of sweat forms in the center of my forehead and begins to trickle annoyingly down the bridge of my nose. After two rings, it’s hanging on the tip of my nose, and I’m about to wipe it off when someone picks up the phone, at which point the droplet sails down and spatters onto my pants.
“There’s no excuse for you calling me so late, you know.”
Caller ID. I hope. “Well…actually, there is.”
“Oh, really? And that is?”
“How’ve you been?”
“Ha, yeah,
that’s
gonna work. Answer my fucking question, Locke, why didn’t you call me?”
As my mouth opens, the venom screeches in the back of my head, louder and louder until it’s all I can hear. Even considering her parents up has sent it into a psychotic tantrum. My throat feels closed up, and I have to clench my eyes as hard as I can just to concentrate. No, no, no, not now. Think of something, Locke, something good and reasonable, something that isn’t the truth.
“Look…Renée, you being Andrew’s sister, that’s a delicate issue for me. You know?”
“Nope. Keep going. How so?”
Fantastic. “Look, Renée, why didn’t you mention that your brother was Andrew Tomas?”
“Hmm, what about him?”
Oh boy. This isn’t easy. “Well, I mean, I don’t want to sound like a wuss or a jerk, but the kid threatened me with physical violence because I wanted to date you! And I—”
“Waitwaitwait. Stop. You want to date me? You never mentioned this.”
“Y’know, my mom actually brought this same thing up—”
“Oh, wow, you discussed me with your mom?” She chuckles. “This is some serious shit. I guess you really
do
want to date me.”
“Well, I only curled up with you in my lap and made out with you for about an hour.”
“I’ve done similar with boys who I’ve had no intention of dating.”
Suddenly my head is filled with a picture of me force-feeding these faceless boys glass. Glass mixed with wasps. I tell it to shut up. Venom talking. “So the idea never crossed your mind?”
There’s a pause before she says, “The thought
did
cross my mind, yes.”
“Well, yes. I really want to date you.”
“There it is, out in the open.”
“So.”
“Go on.”
“There’s…not much to go on about. I’d like to date you.”
“Well,” she says, sounding somewhere between annoyed and giddy, “if that’s the case, maybe you ought to ask me out?”
I remember my mom’s words and cringe. “Would it be okay if I dated you?”
“Wow. I don’t know.”
“WHAT?!”
“Well, that had so little confidence behind it. ‘Would it be okay’—I’m not sure I can date someone who—”
My mouth shakes, falters—
And then something new happens.
Renée’s comment acts as a challenge, a shove, and I can’t help but shove back. The venom fills me, screaming in my ears and blazing through my blood, and takes hold of the words in my mouth. There’s no poison, though, just the confidence and grandiosity the venom gives me, the godlike part of the change, as though I’m…
tapping into
the dark reservoir in me, taking what is needed, leaving the muck and the pain behind. It’s the venom and I speaking as one, communicating as a full being.
“Okay then, fine,” I say, fueled by this new sensation. “Renée, I want you to be my girlfriend. I want to be your boyfriend, and I want to be your boyfriend right fucking now. That cool?”
“You see?” she squeals into the phone. “That was perfect! A little harsh, but perfect! So, yes, okay.”
“Okay?”
I can almost hear her smile. “Okay. You’re my boyfriend now. Perfect.”
The words hang on to the strings between my heart and stomach.
You’re my boyfriend. Perfect
. I’ve never been
anyone’s
boyfriend. Amazing.
“Hey. You really like me?”
She titters. “Of course I really like you, you buttface. I’d be in a bad place if I didn’t like my own boyfriend.”
“Call me that again.”
“You’re my boyfriend,” she purrs. “My wonderful, wonderful boyfriend.”
Wow.
“And your first action as my boyfriend is to wash my feet!”
Huh?
The door’s open when I get to Renée’s, and the lights are out in the front room of her apartment, but I can see a faint yellow glow coming from a room off to the side. A jab of cold hits me right in the chest as the venom spits horrid images of her father, straight razor in hand, leaning over her mangled corpse with a terrifying smile on his face. Sweat begins to prickle behind my brow as I stomp in, eyes frantic, hands clenching. I call out her name, scared, desperate. Please, oh please, oh please—
“In here!” she yells. “Lock the door behind you.”
When I get to her room, there’s no one there, only the window-lit silhouettes of a Goth kid’s paradise. I call out her name again, softer this time, and nearly jump out of my skin when the outline of a door right next to me says, “No, in
here
.”
I open the door slowly, and I’m hit with a wall of steam. Once it clears, I’m greeted with basic white tile walls, a white sink, a toilet with a fuzzy purple seat cover, and Renée in a bathtub overflowing with suds. She glances up at me and smiles a little at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve been waiting,” she says, and then flicks her lip ring with her tongue.
Mother of God.
Hormones and romance both flood my brain, like the venom’s good twin who’s charming and horny all at once. My hand copies another part of my body and immediately goes up, shielding my eyes from the one thing I want to keep looking at. “Whoa, hey, Renée, I’ve only been your boyfriend for about twenty minutes here!”
“Oh, be quiet, you.” She laughs. “I’ve got enough suds on top of my body that Superman couldn’t see it right now. Your virgin eyes are protected.”
Sadly, she’s right: There’s a mountain of white fluff over her, everything under her armpits completely opaque out of my line of vision. I walk over to the far wall and sit where I can see her face. As I lower myself onto my haunches, a foot with black toenail polish and a loofah dangling from the big toe rises out of the suds like a very cute shark.
“Scrub,” she commands.
Foot fetishes are an absolutely foreign concept to me, maybe because up until now I associate feet with stepping in dog shit or wearing tennis shoes, neither of which are the pinnacle of sexiness. Feet are about utility, not hotness. And yet I’m absolutely, positively enamored of Renée’s foot. Each tiny toe seems alien in its shape and size, a sculpted variation on the normal model of the human digit. I can’t help but go over every inch and crease and line with the loofah in the greatest detail. The arch of her foot reflects the curves of her body; her toenails, painted black of course, seem too delicate to belong to a human being. There’s a little callus on her heel, which I run my finger along and get rewarded with a small sigh in the back of her throat. I can’t help it—I take off my glasses, lean forward, and press my lips against the ball of her big toe, soft and cushiony beneath my kiss. Renée lets out a soft “Oh” and then lets her left foot drop slowly back into the water.
I slip my glasses back on and figure out a way to talk again. “Left done. Right, please.”
“Just the one will be fine for now, thank you,” she says with sincere contentedness. “That was extremely pleasant, Mr. Vinetti.”
“Just doing my job as your”—breathe in—“boyfriend, Ms. Tomas.”
She chuckles. “I didn’t actually think you were going to wash my foot.”
“Neither did I.” I sigh. “Guess you just bring out the gentleman in me.”
Her eyes flutter open, and it hits me like a two-ton sack of wonderful. Makeup or no, she’s beautiful. I lean slowly forward on my hands and knees and plant a kiss on her lips as carefully as I can; this boyfriend thing is new, and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. She responds slowly, her breath shaky and hot, the whole kiss a little too tentative for either of us. Our tongues touch, just a little, and I’m stuck, frozen, enraptured by this person I’m somehow allowed to be dating.
We pull back and stare, astounded. “Damn.”
“Damn indeed,” she murmurs.
Slowly, so as not to faint from sheer head rush, I get to my feet and take a moment to throw my coat into her room. If I didn’t walk away right then, I might’ve jumped into the tub with her.
“So, what’s going on with you? You sounded freaked out when you came in. And don’t give me any nonsense about Andrew.”
I laugh and try to play it off. “Yeah, fearing for my life is nonsense. Besides, your door was open, I don’t know…something could’ve happened.” There. See? Didn’t blow it. Kudos.
“No worries about that,” she says, accompanied by splashing. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“Well, hey, y’know, big city and all, you’re never sure who’s going to try and break in—”
But my words flee from me, because in my fervor I’ve marched right back into the bathroom and discovered what the splashing was all about, ’cause Renée’s standing up.
I’ve never seen a woman completely naked before. I mean, on the Internet and magazines and all that (I’m a teenage male, after all), but a warm, breathing, nude woman is a new sight for me. I always thought that airbrushed beauty was the height of perfection, but I’m wrong, dead wrong. She’s wearing only bubbles, water and suds sliding slowly down her curves, her hips. Her nipples stand out pink on her pale skin, and there’s a tattoo of two snakes intertwined, like those on the Red Cross logo, right below her navel. She has her legs placed together to form a reverse teardrop shape, and the dark patch of hair where they meet is smaller than I expected, yet still unspeakably inviting. She’s leaning against the wall; her body slants slowly downward into a mountain of soapy white. I feel my breath begin to labor in my chest, and I’m pretty sure my glasses are starting to fog up. The look on her face is somewhere between surprise and shy pride; oh God, she’s biting her lower lip. The venom twitches giddily, bearing an ear-to-ear grin.
Well, now,
it sneers excitedly,
you want to take this, or should I go ahead
?
“So,” she says softly, “are you going to hand me a towel or what?”
“I don’t really want to,” I manage.
There’s a moment, an acknowledgment of the tension in the air, and then we’re done. Splash, splash, she’s out of the tub and grabbing a towel. She turns away from me, and for a second I stare at the curves of her body from the back before everything between her mid-thighs and armpits is wrapped in fluffy white cotton. I cough as I wipe off my glasses.
She gives me an over-the shoulder glance and says, “Man, let’s hope the teacher doesn’t call
you
up to the board.”
I look down at my pants and swiftly get the point. She struts back into her room, a David Bowie song on her lips. And I’m about to follow her like a slave when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch something that stops me dead in my tracks.
The sink is lined with containers of pills, orange with the chunky white childproof tops. Prozac, Lexapro, Ritalin, Dexedrine, and a myriad of others. Study aids. Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. A laundry list of dosages, intended effects, alcohol warnings.
“Locke? You coming?”
I shove it to the back of my mind, getting it out of my thoughts for now. This girl is hurt, but she’s wonderful, she’s your
girlfriend
. Be careful, man, for your own sake.
I’m lying on the bed as instructed when she comes back into the room, wearing a H.I.M. T-shirt and her underwear. She bounds onto the bed and snuggles up against me, all warmth and curves. I’ve never snuggled with a girl before, and so far it’s proving pretty great.
“Hey, you,” she says, putting a hand over my heart.
“Hey.”
“You’re my boyfriend.” A shot of energy goes through both of us. Our grips on each other tighten.
“So. About Andrew.”
“Do we really need to keep talking about Andrew? I, for one, am interested in the boyfriend aspect of this conversation. Here: Andrew is my brother. He is also a bully at your school who regularly torments you and wants you to keep your grubby hands off me.” To emphasize the rule I’m breaking, Renée grabs one of my hands and slaps it, firmly, on her ass. My mouth goes dry, and I focus on breathing steadily. “Since this is not going to be the case, he will have to learn to deal with it. You will treat each other with the restrained dislike of in-laws, and all will turn out happily.” She looks up into my eyes and smiles. “Though if you cheat on me, he’ll break your kneecaps.”