He got what he wanted, and he left.
I was the transaction. The release. The thing he needed tonight, after losing a friend, after whatever is going on that I can’t see. He used me the way everyone does.
And the worst part, the part that makes me press my forehead against the cold stove and close my eyes and wish I were someone else, is that I wanted it. Every second. Every command. Every humiliation. I wanted it, and he knew it.
I go upstairs, legs still fighting the good fight against a hurricane of nerves. The corridor is empty.
I deliver the chocolate to Anya and go straight to my room, where I lock the doorbehind me.
My hands are still shaking, and my body is still humming with the aftershocks.
I press my palms against my face.
I don’t know what happened.
I don’t know what happens next.
I don’t know if I’m shaking because I’m trapped in a house with a man who did that to me, because he walked away after, or because some dark, honest, irreducible part of me is already wondering when he’ll do it again.
The room is quiet, and I am here alone in the dark with the taste ofpleasestill on my tongue and the ghost of his hands still between my legs.
I don’t sleep.
I don’t even try.
17
ELLIE
Two nights.
Two nights of lying in the dark with my eyes open and my body replaying a loop I can’t shut off. Every time I close my eyes, his hand is there, between my legs, inside me.
Every time I close my eyes, I hear myself sayplease.
And every time my body responds the same way. Heat building low in my stomach, spreading downward, the treacherous wetness returning…
Twice, I pressed my thighs together and willed it to stop.
Once, at 3 a.m., I gave in with my own hand, my own fingers, eyes squeezed shut, chasing the ghost of what he did in under four minutes.
It wasn’t the same. Not even close.
I’m not doing this again. I’m not lying in the dark thinking about a man who made me orgasm on his kitchen counter and walked away. He disappeared. Two days, no sign.
It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything. I won’t let it mean anything.
I throw myself into work. Since I arrived, she’s gone fromshy to full conversations and a sense of humor that emerges in flashes.
Bernard the sparrow has evolved.
What started as a math device, a simple character I invented to make multiplication less painful, has become an entire fictional universe, and I’m no longer entirely sure who’s in charge of it.
“Helena wouldn’t say that,” Anya tells me, not looking up from the illustration she’s adding to today’s chapter. “She’s not so mean…”
Helena is the crow. Bernard’s best friend, a character Anya approved of immediately.
“You’re right,” I say. “How would she say it?”
