Something Right Behind Her by Claire Hollander Read Free Book Online Page B

about everything else? You seem a bit preoccupied, and I wanted to
make sure you were ok.”
    “Yeah.” I
sighed. I’m fine, just worn out, you know.”
    “I know,
sweetheart. You must be tired, but Andy? Can I ask you a question?” She peered
over at me, and kind of half-shut her eyes. My Mom isn’t the prying kind, but
she is perceptive. She’s a teacher at the after-school center in town, where
she works with kids who have learning disabilities, so she isn’t one of those
moms who has to read in books what teenagers are like.
    “Yeah, Mom?” It
took her a minute to compose herself, and then she let loose with her question.
Did she ever catch me off-guard!
    “Is there
something going on between you and Douglas? Are the two of you an item?” That
word “item” hung in the air like a poison gas. Item . Oh, God, I
thought, how much and how little she knows about me. It made my head spin.
“Because it is not that unusual, for people who are both feeling emotional or
who are grieving to get together, to feel thrown together.” She finished her
thought, and then sat there staring at me. As close as she was to the truth, I
felt like the actual truth could drown us both. I couldn’t fathom what the
words were for the actual truth - that, no, we were not an item, but we had
sex, and that was how I lost my virginity? Words like that didn’t exist for me.
    “No Mom,” I
said, and I threw my track bag to the floor. “That is the weirdest question you
could possibly ask me. Doug is like a brother to me, practically. Anyway, he
isn’t my type, and none of this has anything to do with him. I just couldn’t
stay over there this time. I hate all of that machinery. I hate the smell of
their house sometimes.” Crazily, as I spewed one lie after another, I started
to half-believe myself. Then, horribly, I started to cry. I don’t know what Mom
thought, but she kept kissing the top of my head in a way that made me want to
cry even more. After a while, I put my head down on my pillow and sniffled, and
Mom sat there, still perched on my bed, as she stroked my head. I was almost
asleep by the time she left my room. I thought how absurd it all was as I drifted
off to sleep. There I was, no longer a virgin, being tucked into bed by my Mom.
The worst was that I needed her, needed Mom’s kiss on the top of my head, like
a charm against my increasingly unsettling dreams.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE

 
    By some miracle,
or maybe simply exhaustion, I slept through the night dream-free. The next
morning, I tried out a strategy I think of as dress-normal-feel-normal. Jeans,
a light blue cotton sweater, no jewelry, Converse. Hair in a ponytail. Making
zero impression. I thought I had my act pretty much together until I met up
with Jill right before the history test. She was standing by the classroom
door, textbook open, doing her typical last-minute cramming. That’s when I
realized I had studied the wrong chapters.
    “I thought he
said sixteen and seventeen?” I said, peering at her book, but she just tapped
the printed assignment sheet with her polished red fingernail, and twirled her
hair, not taking her eyes off the page. It was irritating to find this stuff
out from Jill, of all people, who was a B student at best. Jill’s main goal in
life wasn’t exactly to excel academically, but to get our mutual friend, Tom,
to fall madly in love with her. This seemed unlikely, mainly because Jill
didn’t give the guy a chance to breathe, that and possibly the fact that she
was a head taller than him and probably outweighed Tom by thirty pounds.
    “I spent two hours reading this
shit,” Jill said. She seemed elated at the idea that she had actually studied,
even though it was probably the first homework quiz she was prepared for all
year. I ended up leaving three out of four of the essay questions blank. When I
went to hand my paper in, Mr. S stared at me. “Adrienne?” He whispered, “What
happened?” I shrugged. I didn’t know