im standing in the middle of a gravel road, it’s a dead end. my extended family lives here in the woods, half an hour drive from civilization. my cousins are playing in the with road some of the neighbour girls that live down the street, i’m 6 years old. i’m wearing a striped shirt i really like, with frills at the bottom.
she runs up to me and shoves my arm and runs away shrieking and laughing “you have cooties!” this is a game of tag, which i am no good at. in hindsight i wonder if the “cooties” tag game was a reference to avoiding people who have STDs. i wonder what “cooties” are, but based on the context i figure it must not be good, because everyone’s running away from me before i’ve even started chasing back. her name is n*cole ev*rett. she’s 8. i’ll see her every summer vacation until i turn 12 or so. she’ll be my best friend away from my best friend, both of which will abuse me. she will be the lesser of two evils.
she stays the night with me at my aunts house, i stay the night with her at her parents house. she has one older sister and one younger sister, the latter of which is adopted and is very socially awkward. my cousins sleep in a pair of bunk beds. josh on the top, me on the bottom, porsche on the top of the other bunk, and mack on the bottom. they will all bully me and make me hate myself before i turn 10. we start playing things like truth or dare. no one ever suggests a dare because everyone knows this game is for revealing who you have a crush on. no one wants to tell. the noise of the box fan in the doorway lulls me to sleep night after night, it’s too hot to breathe. my stomach churns with anxiety. i don’t like anyone. i am afraid. i am afraid of everyone.
we stay up too late giggling and get in trouble a hundred times. they separate us a hundred times, and we sulk a hundred times. she’s funny and she makes me so happy. she kisses me with cherry chapstick on, the pressure of someone else’s lips strange on mine at 6 years old. no one knows, and she knows i wont tell, because she knows im afraid of everyone. she doesnt want me to be afraid of her.
summers pass. her parents are never home at night because they’re both overnight p*lice officers, and they sleep all day, krista and autumn are always out with their friends. she rubs her hands up under my shirt and brushes over my chest. my heart is in my throat.and i feel sick with anxiety and i don’t know what to call anxiety yet so my head swims and im terrified. i feel uncomfortable because i dont think you’re supposed to touch other people there. she rubs my stomach and moves her hand between my legs and feels around. she kisses me again with cherry chapstick, pushing her warm wet tongue between my lips.i would be frozen with fear if i werent shaking so much. she tells me not to be afraid, its just practice. practice for what, i cant imagine at 10 years old, but she wants to help me. she’s funny and makes me so happy. i try to stay inside my body but i know this isnt right. i say nothing. she knows i wont tell, because she knows im afraid of everyone. she doesnt want me to be afraid of her.
another school year passes, another summer comes. she tells me to touch her, too. it’s just practice. she moves my hand over her chest until i learn to do it on my own. she pushes my hand between her legs until i learn to do it on my own. she tells me im improving. despite the terror churning in my belly that someone will come in, or her parents will wake up, and they’ll call me disgusting and tell me its my fault and tell my mother im doing bad things, i feel like i want to keep improving at whatever it is im supposed to be getting better at. night, after night, after night, summer after summer after summer, i want to get better. i want to be told that the fear is worth it.
she moves away. i don’t get to say goodbye. year after year passes, a hollow forming slowly in my stomach like a black hole, eating away at the edges of my mind. did it really happen? was i making a big deal out of nothing? is that something everyone does? is everyone else not afraid when they do it? i cant ask. i cant risk my mother finding out i did something bad, she’ll hit me. i dont want to be hit. in fact, i dont want to be touched at all, ever again. long pants it is. long jackets in summer it is. i try to stay inside my body. im empty.
year after year, again and again, more doubt seeps in, slowly dripping into my memories, obscuring them. maybe it wasnt that bad and im overreacting. maybe itll pay off somehow, even though no one else has initiated that kind of thing with me all this time. pants turn into the same pair of jeans i wear every day for 3 years. my grey sweater becomes my safe space, so much so that my friends always draw me wearing it. some part of me feels like i’m naked all the time, no matter how much i’m wearing. people can see the shape of my body and its so, so ugly, couldnt be uglier. i cant hide nearly as much as i want to. i cant stop being in the body i have as much as i want to. it was so long ago, it shouldnt matter to me anymore, i try to stop worrying about it. relief by forgetting almost comes.
she moves back. i’m in high school, still wearing jeans, even to bed, but sporting tshirts these days. my grandmother says i should go say hello. the same sickness churns in my stomach, i dont think i can see her again, but there’s so many questions i want answered. i knock, the floor of the trailer is still warped. the wallpaper is the same. her parents are still cops and are still gone 12 hours of the day. i sit on her floor and she flops onto her bed, turning on the t.v. she starts telling me about all the relationships she’s had and the boys she’s fucked. everything in her room seems to have cherries on it. she still smells like cherry chapstick. my mouth is bone dry and i cant look at her.
we’re sitting on my cousins trampoline, the same night, a cherry lollipop in her mouth. i ask her, if she remembers, What We Did, before. this is the only question i manage to ask. a long beat of silence, my heart slowly suffocating me sitting still in my throat, hammering hard. “yeah,” she says, “i’m sorry” i anticipate all of the anxiety and fear and self loathing to disappear into the aether because she’s sorry, i cant believe it, ive wanted this for so long,but my heart sinks back into my chest, and down into my stomach, and out my feet, into the earth, into the core of the earth, melting into the core. “thank you,” i say. i don’t feel better. i don’t feel better at all. i never see her again.
a year or two later, i’m in my moms car that i’m driving, and i hear a song start on the radio. it sounds like a boy singing, but for some reason the theme is about kissing a girl and it being a really weird thing to do, and i figure a woman must be singing. the chorus starts, “the taste of her cherry chapstick” sinks into my ears and melts inside my skull, im swimming, swimming. “you’re my experimental game”, my body is copying itself, there’s me in the driver seat, me in the middle ,me in the passenger seat, me outside the car, repeating, repeating. everywhere i go afterward this pop sensation seems to be playing. i figure there must be a thousand of me by now, creeping outside my body, getting further and further from the epicenter of my pain.
“i kissed a girl”, or rather, a girl kissed me, and i didnt like it. why didnt i like it? maybe im broken after all.
