“So it’s insect murder jewelry,” he says, softly, and I think the floor drops from under me.
My whole brain is white noise, screaming, and panic sirens. I close my hand around the necklace. I’m pretty sure my mouth is open and my face is tomato-red, and we’re juststaringat each other.
What the fuck. Oh God, what thefuck. Two nights ago Max told me he thought I couldn’t come more than five times in thirty minutes and I proved him wrong while he told me about all the things he’d do to my clit, and now that dirty mouth is maybe two feet away from me and I might actually die from the embarrassment and shame and guilt of it all.
“I have to go,” I say, still completely frozen in place.
James doesn’t answer.
“There’s—I don’t—must grade worksheets!” I shout, basically in his face, andfinallymy feet work and I hightail it out of there.
* * *
I don’t grade worksheets.Instead, I freak out that the English teacher with the cute dimples and the nice smile has seen me naked about a billion times. Not just naked. Naked and Doing Things, dirty things, exactly the kinds of things that nice women probably shouldn’t do at all and definitely shouldn’t doanonymously on camera—
I take a deep breath, face in my hands, and tell myself to quit it. And I try, I really do, but twenty years of learninggood girls don’tmeans the shame is always right there, below the surface, no matter how much I’d like to banish it.
But everything else about our relationship also makes me panic. Psuedo-relationship. Friendly internet fuckery. Whatever.
I put my head down on my desk for a while and just… stay there until it’s very dark outside. By the time I manage to look up again, I’ve come up with a plan:
All I have to do is avoid James for another two months, give or take, and everything will be fine. Right?
* * *
I can hearthe screaming from the driveway, the moment I open the driver’s side door of my Toyota, and I sigh. It’s not like I’ve ever heard my parents’ house bequietor anything even approximating quiet, but must there always be screaming?
The moment I open the front door, balancing a pumpkin pie in each hand, my niece Ashlynn runs directly into my leg, falls down, looks up at me, gets up, and sprints off.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” I tell the back of her head.
“Those go in the dining room,” says my sister Hannah’s voice, as if I’ve somehow reached my mid-twenties without knowing where the pies go. “There’s a serving thing for them, I think it’s the one next to the Pumpkin Christ.”
I take a deep breath and remind myself not to swear, or use the Lord’s name in vain, or bring up evolution, or use the wordchoicein literally any context, or… you know what? Easiest to keep my mouth shut, usually.
“What,” I ask Hannah. “Is the Pumpkin Christ?”
She gives me a long-suffering look.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” she says.
“How is everything?” I ask, and what I mean ishow’s your life and also your girlfriend, but she’s very much not out to our parents so I keep a lid on it.
Hannah sighs.
“Fine,” she says. “I’m putting in my annual Good Daughter time, and then I’ll see them again next Thanksgiving. Go put those down before you get run over by the munchkin mob.”
“Quit telling me what todo,” I say, but I take the pies to the dining room and put them down anyway.
* * *
The Pumpkin Christ,as Hannah called it, is a fake pumpkin with Jesus painted on one side. It’s on the dessert table. I do not ask questions about it, because my parents are free to celebrate their religion in any way they choose, and if that way is with Jesus’ face on a fake pumpkin, great. More power to them.
It would just be nice if their religious expression didn’t also involve telling their grandchildren that dinosaurs and people co-existed because the earth is only six thousand years old, or trying to bully the county school board out of teaching sex ed in public schools, or cutting off contact with their children whose “lifestyles” they don’t approve of.
Hannah’s very justified in not being out to them.
“Sadie!”
