Hydroplane: Fictions by Susan Steinberg Read Free Book Online Page B

box and dragging me to her office and calling my mother and saying, Can you come up to school, saying, A boy teased her, then laughing at whatever it is my mother says and looking at meand laughing again, and my mother coming to get me from school, shaking her head, laughing, saying, Boys will be boys, trying to make me laugh on our walk past his house, past his mother stooped in her backyard garden, past the woods where I have rolled on the ground collecting dirt on my skin and hair, and my mother making faces to try to make me laugh, saying, Those dumb boys, and, I bet he likes you, and, I bet he's in love, patting me on the back, saying, Of course he's in love.
    The two friends trying to wake the hostess who is not waking despite their occasional tapping, despite a harder prodding, despite the swift kick I deliver to her knee as a way to help her friends, and the hostess waking from my second kick and looking at me, furious, her hair a mess in her face, the hostess about to rise and destroy me she is so furious that I, the most unwanted guest, have kicked her in the knee, but saying, when she sees her friends, What, and the friends saying, The cat, and the hostess sobering up despite what she has had to drink and screaming, I don't have to say like what, suffice it to say loudly.
    Rising from my bedroom floor, feeling perverted, uninvited, as if I have somehow fucked the hostess without her wanting to be fucked by me.
    Telling my mother on our walk home that this girl makes me play this game, What game, that she makes me suck in my lips and kiss, that she makes me feel up her tits, That lesbo, What do you mean, Or she will kick my legs black and blue, my mother looking like she is going to yell or cry and covering her mouth and saying, What else does she make you do, Nothing, and me saying, Don't tell her mother, and her saying, You are not to play with her again, and me saying, Don't tell anyone anything, and my mother callingher mother when we get home and telling her mother that her daughter is a sicko lesbo, and me never telling my mother how it's often me who initiates CB radio, bored out of my head, saying, Breaker breaker, into my fist, saying, What's your handle, over, always thinking of getting off, never telling my mother how the girl has girl tits but a face like a boy, how it feels like something dirty when I'm with her, how I squeeze shut my eyes and think of the new kid and make her touch me harder down there until she gets bored which she always does and so I never get off, never telling how good it feels, later, in my bedroom, alone, rocking against a pillow or a stuffed animal or the pile of dirty laundry on my bedroom floor with flashes of being felt up by her or of being felt up by the new kid or of the new kid feeling her up in the woods with me watching and getting off watching or of her feeling him, even with her mouth, even with his sugarwater spurting out the campfire, all of it the same, a many-headed faceless groping sucking thing serving just one purpose, nothing holy, nothing with love, all of it science, some odd protrusion against some odd protrusion, then a burst of sparks, then a hollowness after the sparks go out, sitting blind, a girl again, waiting alone for dinner.
    Calling the cops, despite the friends' attempts to disconnect the telephone, despite their screaming, Who are you even, as I say into the telephone to whoever answers when I call the cops, A cat was hurt, giving my address, despite the friends' attempts to get the telephone from my hand, despite the names they call me after I hang up, and I don't have to say what they scream or how they surround, the last guest not watching us but watching out the window for the cops.
    Not having to finish school that year before my mother moves me somewhere else, and walking around in the daytimes like I am old or like I am some kind of ghost or something, translucent, walkingpast houses, walking past his house and past his house and past his