The Animators(44)

Finally I said, “Ew.”

“Want to see where he keeps his dirty stuff?” Teddy asked.

I didn’t. I really didn’t. Every fiber of my body was clamoring, even then, to run out that front door and pull Teddy with me. But I stayed. And I nodded.

Teddy went to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and opened the door. I followed him, heavy with the feeling somebody was watching me. I felt weird even entering my own parents’ bedroom, uneasy at the stack of Redbooks on my mother’s nightstand, the fifth of Jack Daniel’s my dad kept in the headboard meant for books.

My belly churned as I stepped inside and took it all in. Noticed a crack in the window, the sound of the mammoth air conditioner chugging, the red blanket jumbled on the bed with clothing and a few dirty dishes in the folds. The pale stains dripping from ceiling to carpet. The ashtrays scattered throughout, all full. My senses were sharp and bloated, afraid. I couldn’t explain it, would have felt stupid trying to, but I felt, all over, like my body was trying to take off without me.

There was a stack of magazines by the bed. I craned my neck to look. A lady in a bikini, bottom hiked high in the air. Barely Legal College Daze: Hot and Horny Coeds of the SEC!

The room stank. Mushrooms sprouting, bleach and rock salt. “What’s that smell?” I asked Teddy.

He turned. “That’s what splooge smells like.”

“What makes it smell like that?”

“I dunno.”

And for the first time since I had known him—which had been my whole life, or nearly—Teddy slipped, the light flattening behind the eyes, going pale below his hair. I had never seen a face collapse like that before. I might have called it sad, but even then, it seemed bigger than just being sad. It occurred to me that he brought me here because he couldn’t be alone with whatever was in this room. And it scared me. I didn’t want to know what Teddy knew.

I wanted to make a grab for his hand, what girls did when something scared them, but my sister’s voice tore through my head: “That’s so gay, Sharon.” I stepped closer to him instead, pressing my arm into his.

A big oak trunk, the kind my mom used to store quilts, sat at the bed’s foot. Teddy reached his hand underneath, pulled out a key. He slipped it into the lock and turned once, twice. It opened. More magazines. These were different, printed on rougher paper. There was one called Bananas; on the cover, a lady crouched, legs wide open, so wide you could see her privates, and in her—I didn’t even know what to call it, not the place you peed from, the other place—she had a banana stuck in there. On the next page, a man and a lady. The man’s mouth was on the lady’s breast. She had his thing, long and purple, in her hand. Her head was tilted back.

It was dirty, but it was exciting, too. It would have been better to have looked at it somewhere that wasn’t Teddy’s dad’s bedroom. I felt the beginnings of a heartbeat between my legs.

Teddy picked up another. Dangerous Girls. Sexxxy Girls Getting the Punishment They Deserve. The girl on the cover was in a bra and teeny skirt. She was tied up, wrists and legs roped together, a rag stuffed in her mouth. Blood trickled from her nose. She looked scared. It didn’t look like something that belonged on a magazine cover.

Whatever was beating between my legs slowed, then died. Teddy laid the magazine facedown on the floor.

He pulled out something in a moldy plastic baggie. “It’s weed,” he said. Produced a glass fish with a hole in its tail. “And this is his pipe.” He put the fish to his lips and demonstrated, pretending to draw from it. He gave it to me. I did the same.

There was one more package in the trunk.

Teddy looked down into his lap. “We should stop.”

“I wanna see,” I said.

And I didn’t. I really didn’t. But it was an impulse I couldn’t stop, the snake curled inside me. Even then, I could not stand a closed door.

He didn’t look up. I could see his front teeth worrying over his lip.

“You can’t tell anybody,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“I mean it, Sharon.” His voice went up a little. “Really this time.”

“I promise. I really do.”

He sighed. Drew up the bag. Handed it to me.

Inside were Polaroids, the kind that were already becoming old-fashioned. I held up the first one: a little girl. It took a moment to register what I was seeing.

She wasn’t wearing any clothes. She was on her side, splayed, like she was asleep. The flash made her body stark white; the rest of the shot fell into darkness. In the second picture, someone had turned her over. I could see how skinny she was—if not for the long hair, if not for the lack of penis, she might have been a boy. It must have been summer. There was a line of sun on her hip where her bathing suit had been. Something I would remember later, when the rest of this had fallen away. The sight of a tan line would send an ice-blue spark up my spine.

I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I knew it looked real. And it was on a Polaroid. The kind used for pictures of my family at Christmas and on birthdays and in the snow. Something fell and tore in my middle.

My fingers kept moving, flipping through the stack on their own. Another little girl asleep, sprawled on her back, arms and legs thrown out. There was a hand in this picture, coming from the photograph’s edge, reaching for the girl’s form. The terrible feeling in my stomach heated and stretched and I was suddenly afraid I was going to need the bathroom.