Girls in Trouble by Caroline Leavitt Page A

touched hers. His breath was warm, smoky from cigarettes. She inhaled at the place where his neck touched his shoulders. “You smell so good,” she said.
    “Stay,” he said, and slid a hand along the front of her shirt. He shut his eyes, shivering.
    “Be right back,” he said, and then he ran upstairs, and when he came back, he had a pink satin sheet in his arms and a small bottle. He unfurled the sheet, spreading it on the floor so the folds rippled with light. “Mike gave it to my mother for her birthday,” he said. He lowered her down so that when she looked up she saw a painting of a deer on the wall, another small silver cross, a Jesus looking down at her. Then he took the bottle and opened it and she smelled his scent. He daubed the tip of the bottle along her shoulder. “Now you smell like me,” he said, and when she smiled, he told her she could take the bottle home. She could always wear it. “I will,” she promised.
    He undid her blouse a button at a time, gazing at her in admiration. “I have never seen anything like you in my life.”
    He kissed her stomach, her knees, knobby as teacups, her feet, her hair. She had never had a real boyfriend before. She wasn’t quite sure what to do, where to put her hands, her legs, her mouth. “Wait,” she said. He stopped what he was doing. He looked cool, unconcerned, but even lying beside him, she could feel how his skin radiated heat. And then he kissed her neck, her face, her fingers, and then she forgot to stay his hands, to protest. Instead, she shut her eyes. She arched her back, and moved toward him. She memorized the slope of his neck, the downy hairs on his arms. “Is this all right?” he whispered, and she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know what anything was supposed to feel like, how it was supposed to fit, or if she was any good at it, and it suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world that she was. “Wait—” he whispered. “Are you on the pill?” When she shook her head, he reached over her to his night table and fumbled in a drawer. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit—” and then she pulled him back to the bed, back to her. She kissed his mouth, his neck, the slope of his shoulder, wanting to put every part of him right inside of her. “It’llbe all right,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “It’ll be all right—” And he moved closer toward her, and all she heard was the rasp of his breathing.
    They were both slick with sweat. And when he pushed himself inside of her, she felt the strangest shock of recognition, as if this moment were something she had been trying to remember, and suddenly, here it was. And when he cried out, her eyes flew open. She watched his face, the pulse beating behind his lids, and when he slid from her, she felt a sadness so overpowering, she could have cried.
Come back
, she wanted to say.
    Her body felt as if he had marked her somehow. She sat up, resting on her elbows. Now even his room looked different to her. Colors were brighter, the air had a heavier feel to it. “Sara?” he said. She rolled toward him and as soon as her belly touched his again, she shivered. She would have inhaled him if she could. “You okay?” he asked. She looked up, rolling to her other side, her face away from him. There was a starry stain of blood on the pink sheet and she touched it gingerly. “Oh God! Your mother’s sheet—” she said. “She’ll kill me. She’ll kill us.”
    He leaned over to her, brushing her hair from her face, taking her hand from the sheet. He threw one end of the sheet over the stain so you couldn’t see it. “Sara?” he said, and it was as if he had a sheen about him, like a kind of suntan oil, glossy and inviting. She sat up. She smoothed the sheet, she tried to fix the pillows. Her mind raced, thinking about the paper she had to do, the way her grades were slipping, and then Danny pulled her back down beside him. “You don’t have to do anything. Just be