Age of Consent by Marti Leimbach Read Free Book Online Page B

worry.”
    Even now, while he was driving, he moved his wide hand on her thigh, reaching higher, almost to where the money was. She held her breath and waited, waited for him to wrap his fingers around the wad of bills and then ask what in the hell was
that
in her pocket. Her head began to wag back and forth, as though saying
no, no, no
to a conversation that ran inside her mind. She better tell him, tell him now before he discovered for himself. She opened her mouth to speak but suddenly did not know what to say.
    She took a long breath. She willed her heart to slow, but it would not. Meanwhile, his hand moved down to her knee and then up again, climbing her leg one finger at a time as she stiffened under his touch. She waited, and hoped, and tried not to seem as though she was hiding something. She prepared an explanation, then gave up, deciding there was no explanation. He would tell her she was selfish. He would say she was a thief. She was about to confess the whole thing when he rolled his palm away, this time toward the inside seam of her jeans, just beneath her crotch. He could not feel the money there, or where he went next, so she said nothing.
    They drove a rural route, passing a farm on their right, an abandoned gas station attached to a miniature golf course, now closed down. She wondered if there were anywhere left in the world that didn’t look like this, haggard and worn, in need of repair. For years, the recession had caused her mother to worry she would lose her job. When the cupboard door broke, her mother had tacked it back up with the wrong hardware. When the dishwasher leaked, they began using the sink to wash dishes. Now, she had five hundred dollars, money out of the blue. If only she could get home without Craig finding out.
    He kept touching her, then looked over.
    “What’s the matter?” he said.
    “Nothing.”
    She felt like a bug next to him, even more so in her thin shirt and wooden Dr. Scholl’s sandals, blocky slabs without any heel, castoffs from her mother who said they made her toes ache. She tucked up, trying to hide the outline of the bills through the fraying cloth of her jeans, and rested her head on her knee, her face turned toward him. She hoped her expression portrayed fondness, not fear.
    “You know they’re still hassling me at work,” he said. “That asshole girl.” He was referring to a girl who had come into the station asking after Craig and telling everyone that she knew him. The girl was a high-school student with acne and frizzy hair. The program director had told her to stay away from the station, but she’d kept insisting that Craig was expecting her. “
I know Craig
.
We’re friends
,” Craig said now, imitating the girl’s light, high voice. “Friends, bullshit. But that big shit-eating pig of a program director makes a huge deal of it!”
    He had one hand spanning the wide circle of the steering wheel, and with the other he found her knee. He articulated his story with little prods from his fingers. Big-
poke
-shit-
poke
-eating-
poke
-pig. He pointed the Buick down the smaller road that led to her neighborhood, rolling the steering wheel with his thumb, all the while playing his other hand up and down her leg.
    “And I don’t know this girl!” he said, all innocence. “Anyway, she’s already sixteen!”
    Sixteen was legal, Bobbie knew. Just as she knew she was illegal.
    “And anyway, I wouldn’t cheat on you,” he said, then suddenly drew his attention to the radio. A song ended and he lurched forward and flicked the dial, turning it up so the sound boomed through the car. “Hang on, here comes a break!”
    He was obsessed with breaks, with all performance from disc jockeys. He listened only to the station he worked for, never changing it even if he hated the song. And when he liked a song, he’d crank up the volume so high she could feel the base thumping her chest. He’d make a fist and tap the air like he was playing the drums, his