none of that is helping. Once I lose my powers, it won’t be an issue, but then I won’t be able to help Maia.
I need to focus on my mission and ignore the distractions. I look into Genna’s eyes, then down to her lips. They’re sticky and glossy, lacquered with some sort of product she applies regularly from a tube. I should kiss her, but Maia is sitting there, head down, pretending not to pay attention, yet hanging on our every word. I feel her attention.
Perhaps I’ll wait to kiss Genna during one of the rare times that her lip lacquer has worn down. Or maybe tonight, at the party we’re meant to attend.
Genna is still waiting for an answer to why my attention is so easily diverted. I spin a tale of trouble in one of my invented classes, repeating words I heard another student saying earlier in the corridor. She pats my leg comfortingly, telling me how she had that professor last year and knows how tough he is. She leaves her hand on my thigh and I zero in on that, on the sensation, her long fingers and delicate wrist. Free my mind to generate rude thoughts about where I’d like that hand to go, what I’d like it to do.
And if another vision seeps into my imagination, a darker hand with chipped black nail varnish instead of perfect pink, I don’t linger on it. I push it away immediately.
Maia stands up suddenly and I rear back, as if caught doing something wrong. She pulls on a hoodie and stomps out the door without a word. Genna just sighs and shakes her head, giving me a look and a shrug that say, What are you gonna do?
What indeed?
----
The cold wind bites into me, and I welcome it. I am not a good person. Lusting after Caleb is wrong, so, so wrong. He belongs to someone else, so why can’t I stop this attraction? This obsession, really, and I’ve never been one to be obsessed over boys.
Not like Cadence, my roommate from the group home, who would primp in front of the mirror for nearly an hour. Dusting her face with powder and coating her lips with shellac, failing to realize nobody wants to kiss that shit. The sad thing was, the kinds of guys she dated would just lift her skirt and bend her over their back seat before sending her on her way. She was a tough girl — you learn to be tough quick in a group home — so I’d do her the favor of ignoring the sniffles coming from her bed late at night. The next weekend, she’d just repeat the whole thing over again. We all did what we could to survive.
I tried it one time. Sex. I just wanted to feel normal for once. I can’t even remember his name. Jason? Jerome? I met him at the mall. He was a rent-a-cop, had his own place and a quiet way about him that put me at ease. I demanded to be on top, and he didn’t mind. I didn’t take off my clothes, didn’t really let him touch me. After it was over I just left, never said anything to him and never talked to him again. I didn’t feel any more normal.
Crushing on someone else’s man is kinda normal, though, I guess. But I hate being in the same room with them. And I hate that I stay on purpose just to torture myself. But today it was too much. I had to bail.
I head off campus, leaving the path bordered by blue security lights, trying to clear my head and walk off some nervous energy. There’s this bubbling, vile poison inside me that wants to lash out at someone, anyone. At Caleb for making me want him, at Genna for being perfect enough to get him without even trying. Mostly at myself, though.
It’s dusk, but the city is oddly quiet. A dead man stands on the yellow lines in the middle of the street wearing a construction hat and a fluorescent orange vest. An older woman follows a young mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. The woman is barefoot and wears a hospital gown, untied in the back, but she’s unaffected by the cold. I zip my hoodie tighter around my neck and am careful not to make eye contact. The woman reminds me of Miss Sadie, watching over me for all those years. I haven’t
I need to focus on my mission and ignore the distractions. I look into Genna’s eyes, then down to her lips. They’re sticky and glossy, lacquered with some sort of product she applies regularly from a tube. I should kiss her, but Maia is sitting there, head down, pretending not to pay attention, yet hanging on our every word. I feel her attention.
Perhaps I’ll wait to kiss Genna during one of the rare times that her lip lacquer has worn down. Or maybe tonight, at the party we’re meant to attend.
Genna is still waiting for an answer to why my attention is so easily diverted. I spin a tale of trouble in one of my invented classes, repeating words I heard another student saying earlier in the corridor. She pats my leg comfortingly, telling me how she had that professor last year and knows how tough he is. She leaves her hand on my thigh and I zero in on that, on the sensation, her long fingers and delicate wrist. Free my mind to generate rude thoughts about where I’d like that hand to go, what I’d like it to do.
And if another vision seeps into my imagination, a darker hand with chipped black nail varnish instead of perfect pink, I don’t linger on it. I push it away immediately.
Maia stands up suddenly and I rear back, as if caught doing something wrong. She pulls on a hoodie and stomps out the door without a word. Genna just sighs and shakes her head, giving me a look and a shrug that say, What are you gonna do?
What indeed?
----
The cold wind bites into me, and I welcome it. I am not a good person. Lusting after Caleb is wrong, so, so wrong. He belongs to someone else, so why can’t I stop this attraction? This obsession, really, and I’ve never been one to be obsessed over boys.
Not like Cadence, my roommate from the group home, who would primp in front of the mirror for nearly an hour. Dusting her face with powder and coating her lips with shellac, failing to realize nobody wants to kiss that shit. The sad thing was, the kinds of guys she dated would just lift her skirt and bend her over their back seat before sending her on her way. She was a tough girl — you learn to be tough quick in a group home — so I’d do her the favor of ignoring the sniffles coming from her bed late at night. The next weekend, she’d just repeat the whole thing over again. We all did what we could to survive.
I tried it one time. Sex. I just wanted to feel normal for once. I can’t even remember his name. Jason? Jerome? I met him at the mall. He was a rent-a-cop, had his own place and a quiet way about him that put me at ease. I demanded to be on top, and he didn’t mind. I didn’t take off my clothes, didn’t really let him touch me. After it was over I just left, never said anything to him and never talked to him again. I didn’t feel any more normal.
Crushing on someone else’s man is kinda normal, though, I guess. But I hate being in the same room with them. And I hate that I stay on purpose just to torture myself. But today it was too much. I had to bail.
I head off campus, leaving the path bordered by blue security lights, trying to clear my head and walk off some nervous energy. There’s this bubbling, vile poison inside me that wants to lash out at someone, anyone. At Caleb for making me want him, at Genna for being perfect enough to get him without even trying. Mostly at myself, though.
It’s dusk, but the city is oddly quiet. A dead man stands on the yellow lines in the middle of the street wearing a construction hat and a fluorescent orange vest. An older woman follows a young mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. The woman is barefoot and wears a hospital gown, untied in the back, but she’s unaffected by the cold. I zip my hoodie tighter around my neck and am careful not to make eye contact. The woman reminds me of Miss Sadie, watching over me for all those years. I haven’t
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