Forever for a Year(79)

It was there. Right at the top. Right at the goddamn top. “Midnight Dog,” it said his name was. I could feel this wild black rat eating my insides one big bite at a time. I opened the messages and … aw, crap … crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap … I can’t look at this.

No kid should have to look at this. Ever.

There was sex talk and pictures—pictures of my mom! of my mom!—and I just threw it on the ground and almost stepped on it. To smash it. To make it all go away. But I just stumbled back. I was so weak. I couldn’t stand. My head was so fuzzy. I looked down and moved fast, back to my room. I ran into the doorjamb because I couldn’t look up and then I slammed my door and locked it even though I was home alone.

I flung myself face-first onto my bed and screamed into the pillow. Screamed so loud I thought I’d put a hole in it. Aw, man, what was I supposed to do now? Aw, aw, aw, this hurt so much I wanted to take the whole world in my hands and squeeze it into nothingness so no one would feel this helpless and horrible ever again.





69

Carolina goes to a motel

Trevor acted weird on Saturday. He was so happy with me during sex and after and then he was different. That’s what happens in movies. Girls finally have sex with their boyfriends and then the boys become jerks. But Trevor wasn’t that way. He couldn’t be. He was my Prince Charming. He couldn’t be a jerk from the movies.

He didn’t ask if we were hanging out Saturday night all day, which he always does, so finally around two p.m., I asked if he was mad at me. He texted:





TREVOR


You are my soul mate and I would die for you.

That was intense, even more intense than we usually get. So I asked:





ME


Are you okay?





TREVOR


I’m going to walk over to your house and then just want to walk around and we can eat and do anything and go anywhere but let’s be by

ourselves, k?

I said okay even though it was really scary.

*

But when Trevor knocked on my door, he looked amazing and so in love with me I thought I could float off the ground. Trevor didn’t want to come into the house to say hi to my dad, so I yelled good-bye and he took my hand and we started walking.

We didn’t talk much at first. It was cold. Really cold, but neither of us wore gloves or hats. It was snowing for the first time all season. It was very pretty but also like we were not in real life. Like the snow was in our minds.

As we walked, Trevor would squeeze my hand whenever he looked at me, which was like him saying he loved me without words, which made me realize how happy I was that we had sex. Because you read all these stories about a girl’s first time with a boy she doesn’t care about or who doesn’t care about her, but Trevor and I were the most-in-love first love ever. If something happened between us and we broke up—nothing would, but just if—then I’d still be happy he was my first.

Eventually, Trevor started talking and he seemed like he just needed to talk so I listened. Girls did this lots, but I’d never seen a boy need to just talk. To, you know, vent. But he was saying how the world is filled with craziness and that if you don’t see how crazy it is, you’ll be swept whichever way the craziness tells you to go, and if you do realize how crazy it is, you’ll be so sad that none of it makes sense and you won’t know how you can live.

He was being so deep and interesting and it was something I had never seen in him. I liked it. I did. I had worried he was boring. That’s not true. I guess I started to think we had talked about everything we could ever talk about and WE had become boring. But now I realized there was so much more inside both of us and that we could go on forever finding out what was there.

But it was also sort of scary. I was afraid he couldn’t keep breathing and walking and talking at the same time. Like he would just fall down and pass out at any second because all the ideas that were inside him were sucking his life away.

So I stopped him, and I hugged him, and I said, “I love you more than ever,” and it felt different to say it today. Like not only that I meant it, but that I meant it in a way that I understood for the first time. I think Trevor could tell because he stopped talking and hugged me back and we held each other a long, long time and it felt perfect.

Then he got hard and we started kissing and we decided we could go to the golf course, which was closed because it was winter, but would have trees we could hide in. So we got there and he took off his jacket and I lay on it and took off my pants and he pulled down his and we had sex even though we didn’t have a condom. I was sore, but it felt better than yesterday. I just loved him so much and, today, our bodies felt like they loved each other as much as our hearts.

“Don’t go inside me,” I said, and he nodded and then, as if me saying it sped him up, he pulled out and went on my stomach. It was gross but it was better than getting pregnant.

*

We were both freezing now so we walked to Roth’s Diner and ordered hot chocolate, french fries, and soup. We sat next to each other in the booth instead of across, and I didn’t notice anyone else in the restaurant even though it was filled with old people for the early bird dinners.

After Roth’s, we walked to the movies and watched a horror movie that made me sick to my stomach. So I closed my eyes and went to sleep. After the movie was over, Trevor said, “Want to go to a hotel?”