Teeth by Hannah Moskowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

wouldn’t really mean anything. Nothing would change. It’s not as if my life needs her.
    There’s something freeing about it, and no amount of thinking can change the fact that I’m sitting here, my hand on her waist, her hand in my hair, with the unfleeting thought that I want her to swallow me.
    And it’s so warm.
    We kiss for a few more minutes—hours, in kissing-time—butI don’t get bored. I could keep doing this until we fall asleep. But she pulls away, rests her forehead against mine, and says, “Very good.”
    Man, she’s a good kisser for a hermit. I say, “You must read a lot of books,” and she laughs.
    “Just the right ones. I special-order them!”
    God, I wasn’t supposed to get caught in this trap, she fucking warned me, and now all I’m thinking is that I want to bring her outside, somewhere farther than the bottom of her house or the marketplace. I want to take her off this island and run away with her to Argentina.
    Christ, I’m so easy. A girl kisses me, and all of a sudden I’m making plans to elope with her or some shit. I need to cool down.
    While I’m taking even breaths in and out, she says, “So far this is nice,” in a voice like she’s making the decision for both of us. Which is fine with me.
    So I say, “Thank you.”
    “Do you have a lot of experience with girls?”
    “You sound like you’re writing a report.”
    “I’d never read about sucking the bottom lip like that.”
    “Yeah, one of my . . . My ex-girlfriend taught me that.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Did you like it?”
    “I didn’t mind it.”
    “Well. Thanks.”
    I look around her room, at the stacks of books on the floor. Most of them are old ones I haven’t read. The only classics I’ve read are the ones for school. I feel like I should ask her how Jane Eyre ends, because I never finished it.
    “You like books?” she asks. Kind of gently.
    I nod. I can’t look at her right now, for some reason. I’m scared she’s going to ask me what my favorite is, or like she won’t believe me, so I say, “Roald Dahl.” I say, even though she doesn’t ask, because I can feel the question sitting between us anyway, because I feel like I have to prove myself. “I like Roald Dahl. Um. I read them to my brother.” Not true, but it’s easier than explaining that I like kids’ books more than adult books, or reality.
    “ The Witches ,” Diana says, with a nod.
    “ Fantastic Mr. Fox .”
    She stretches out on her stomach and puts her feet in the air, her ankles twisted together. I remember flopping like that when I was a kid. It makes her boobs look amazing. She says, “I like how his books pretend to be about something for the first third, then switch gears completely.”
    “The real plot doesn’t show up until the middle, yeah. And usually the real characters.”
    “And everything before that is completely dropped.” She smiles and rolls onto her back. She’s basking in this conversation. “It’s like a little story of its own that’s never finished.”
    “Only Roald Dahl could get away with that shit. I mean, they let him write The Magic Finger .” I take her copy of Runaway Bunny off the bookshelf. “I like that you have this in here.”
    “Picture books are my favorites.”
    I am so warm. “This is a war metaphor, my mom told me.” I look at all the illustrations, the rabbits with their soulless eyes. “Like, sending your kid off to war.”
    “It’s about sending them off anywhere, really.”
    I don’t know how she got so close to me. Her lips are right against my cheek, all of a sudden, and I turn and kiss her because I don’t know what she’s going to say next, but for a second, I can feel all her thoughts about books, all these possibilities, hovering between her lips and my cheek. And I want to taste them.
    Like sandalwood and dust.
    She pulls away faster this time, but she smiles at me more.
    “We’ll do this again,” she says. “But my mother will be recovering from her crying jag