Sociopaths In Love by Andersen Prunty Read Free Book Online Page A

pile of furniture. A tower of flame quickly
ascended and the girls backed away. Everything was damp. The
rainwater hissed and the smoke was intense.
    "Guess maybe we didn't need the paper," Dawn
said.
    The fire was so hot they were able to sit on
the stumps arranged around the original fire pit. Erica spread
several sheets of the paper on the stumps before they sat down.
    "Good call," Dawn said.
    "Thanks."
    From somewhere within all her black, Dawn
produced a joint and handed it to Erica.
    "I like your makeup," Dawn said.
    "Thanks. I like yours too."
    "Can I kiss you?"
    Erica thought about it. She'd never kissed a
girl before. The thought excited her. It excited her, possibly,
because she'd never done it before.
    "Okay," she said. Walt had told her not to
say no. Told her he would not be possessive or jealous and,
besides, he'd probably never know about it.
    Dawn moved in close and Erica felt like she
stepped into a room. Or maybe like the room stepped into her. Dawn
put a small, moist hand on either side of Erica's face. Erica was
shaking. The fire towered behind them and Dawn pressed more heat
into her face. Their lips touched and a shiver of excitement ran
through Erica. She thought of home. Of coming home. Some imaginary
home. Not the one she had left but some place filled with clean
linens and sunlight. Dawn pressed her tongue into Erica's mouth and
she tasted beer, smoke, and some essence she couldn't describe.
Their lips and tongues worked against each other, they went deeper
into each other, their small breasts pressed together.
    Dawn quit and backed up a step.
    "I should stop," she said.
    Erica didn't want her to stop. She took a
second to find her voice and said, "That was nice."
    "You've never kissed a girl before, have
you?"
    "No."
    "Now you have."
    "I liked it."
    "Maybe we'll do it again."
    They sat down on the stumps. The fire's
smoke had died down and the orange flame looked more sharply
focused.
    "Go ahead and light up," Dawn said.
    Erica had forgotten about the joint.
    She put it in her mouth, lit it, and passed
it to Dawn before exhaling and coughing. The joint went back and
forth, both of the girls silent, the crackling fire drowning out
all the other noises of the country night. When the joint got too
small to hold, Dawn flicked it toward the fire where it landed
considerably short.
    "What do you know about Walt?" Erica
said.
    "He's good looking."
    "What else? I don't know anything about
him."
    "Join the club."
    "So nobody knows much about him?"
    "None of us know much about any other one of
us."
    "Except we can all do whatever we want."
    "So you know about that."
    "It's one of the only things Walt's told
me."
    "It's like we're all reinvented and nobody
wants to talk about where they came from."
    "But isn't that what people talk about?
Their pasts? What made them who they are? Crazy shit they did or
saw?"
    Dawn was quiet for a moment, pulling out her
cigarettes and handing one to Erica. "Most people," she said.
    "Back in the barn, all Walt and Blake talked
about were people they'd known and things they'd done. Although
. . . I can't remember anything specifically."
    "Because they just make shit up. They've
never told me this specifically but I've been able to put it
together. One of them will say something and then they just riff
off each other. I think it's all fiction. I don't know how closely
you listened. I just tune most of it out now, but it usually just
ends up with them talking gibberish. Literally. Like not even the
words are important. So what do you think about what you've seen
here so far?"
    Erica didn't really think she'd seen much
except for the barn.
    "I'm not sure," she said.
"If you're talking about what's in the barn back there, I feel like
I should ask you how you feel about it. I imagine you're at least partially
responsible for some of it."
    "Maybe. But it would be too hard to explain.
And I think it would be too hard for you to understand."
    Erica felt like the other girl was