Then you brought your other hand up and undid the buckle.
“Hey.” I straightened up, but you held on.
“Dear little Jo,” you said. Your voice was low and soft, and you frowned at my zipper in great concentration. Suddenly you seemed less drunk.
All that scrutiny, not to mention your hands so close, had the predictable effect. More than the predictable effect: I felt like I’d been plugged into a socket. Trying to hide it was futile, and anyhow you were splayed halfway out of your seat, and you weren’t trying to hide anything, either.
You undid me. I gasped at your touch, and I think I must have swayed or lurched, because you brought your thigh in hard against mine to steady me.
The truth, the whole truth, Kurl: After the first five seconds I didn’t much care why you were doing it. Your hands were callused. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but there was a kind of rough pressure that seemed somehow to spread from your hands and build up everywhere under my skin, as though my whole body was scraping against itself from the inside like sandpaper. My breath came fast and I felt scratchiness in my throat, too, as though words were lodged there and would either choke me or come pouring out into the street. I was pinned between pain and the perfect, stunning opposite of pain. I held on to your shoulder with one hand and your head with the other, and I could feel my own pulse in my fingertips as though I was transferring my hectic heartbeat directly into your ear, your hair, your spine.
I heard a high, whiny little moan and realized it was me. I didn’t recognize the sound, didn’t recognize my own voice. For a second I thought to myself, about myself, Who is this? Who could this person possibly be? and at the discovery of this entirely new person, I could feel myself smiling, utterly delighted, right in the middle of everything.
You weren’t looking at me, Kurl. I hadn’t noticed it until that exact moment—in my defense I was somewhat distracted. I guess I assumed you were focused on what your hands were doing, and you were, of course. But you were also avoiding my eyes, a fact that became clearer to me when you glanced up and caught me smiling, and in response you raised one hand up, to my face, and pressed it gently over my eyes.
“Don’t watch this,” you said. “Don’t look at me.”
I pulled away from you. I turned aside and—clumsy, trying to go fast—zipped my fly and buckled my belt and tucked in my shirt. My hands felt like somebody else’s hands.
You reached out and jammed your finger through one of my belt loops, catching me and twisting me back around to face you. “Wait, wait,” you were saying, attempting to hold me there and free your other foot to get out of the car. “Jo, Jo, wait a sec, hang on.”
But I was shivering, going numb. The whole time, Kurl—for those two or three minutes, or however long it was, not long—I had been so wholly right there, suspended there between your two hands like a creature hardly human. I have never been so present in and aware of my own body as in those few minutes. I was right there—but you didn’t want me there. You wanted to do what you were doing in private, without me there to witness you. Or perhaps you wanted neither of us to be there. You wanted it not to be happening at all.
Either way, by that point I was entirely in agreement with you. I was so ashamed of myself! I wrenched my hips away, and you yelped—I’m afraid I may have sprained your finger trapped in my belt loop. If you found it damaged this morning, then I apologize, and you should be aware that that one injury wasn’t a result of your earlier fight. I left you in the passenger seat and I sprinted off down your street, kept jogging back the way I’d driven until I got to the plaza at the corner, where I flagged a taxi.
It’s possible you don’t remember anything. Trust me, I have considered the possibility that the wiser course of action would be for me to say nothing. But I reminded myself I began this correspondence with you on the principle of honesty.
You undid me. That’s all I’m trying to report in this letter. You undid me, Kurl, in more ways than one.
Yours truly,
Jo
Monday, November 2
Dear Kurl,
I know better than to read anything into an expression on your face, after Paisley Park. But your utter refusal to look at me at all, when we passed each other in the hall this morning—the lightning-fast cutting away of your glance and the hastening of your step, your face with your eye a little less swollen but a darker purple now, that nasty scab on your lip—was worse than any so-called withering look you could have shot me. I couldn’t breathe. My ribs shrank into my lungs. Tears came, of course, and I had to scurry to Math and hide my face in my textbook until I regained my composure.
Consent. I’ve been thinking all day about the rules of consent, about how a person can’t give consent to anything sexual if they are incapacitated by alcohol or drugs. Where does Saturday night fall on the consent spectrum for you, Kurl?
At lunch I found Bron and Shayna in their usual dining spot by the kiln in the art room. Neither of them is even taking an art class this year, but they like the vibe, and apparently Rhoda—they use Ms. Deane’s first name, Rhoda—doesn’t mind if they hang out in her room. You should check it out sometime, Kurl. With all those windows, it’s one of the brightest rooms in the school.
Anyhow. Bron was eating rice-and-broccoli salad from a Tupperware container, and Shayna was eating a bag of potato chips and poking her thumb into a lump of clay on the art table.
I dragged a third stool from the neighboring table, sat down, and took my sandwich out of my backpack. “If a girl is drunk,” I said, “and she initiates sex with a sober boy, what should the boy do?”
Bron swallowed her mouthful. “What happened?”
I had to apologize for the overdramatic opener. “I mean a straight boy,” I said. “This is a hypothetical scenario.”
Bron and Shayna exchanged a look, and then Bron frowned and put down her fork. “If the boy is Kurl, tell him it’s disgusting.”
“It’s not Kurl!” I said.
“He’s not even technically a boy anymore; he’s eighteen,” Bron said. “Tell him he should be setting an example.”
“It’s not Kurl.” My face was red, I knew. “Why would you assume it’s Kurl?”
“Because you don’t know any other boys,” Shayna said.
“I do so,” I lied, and then realized the lie was unconvincing and tried another one: “I overheard people talking in Math class, all right?”
“It’s a gray area, legally speaking, if she initiates and she’s clearly saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ the whole time,” Bron said. “But think about it. Would you want to have sex with someone who probably won’t remember it? Who can probably barely feel it, even?”
“Anyone who’d want that, you’d have to seriously question his motives,” Shayna said.
“Would you rather go over to a friend’s house and hang out and have a great time together,” Bron said, “or go break into his house when he’s not home and hang out there all by yourself?”
“Or go break in when he’s sleeping”—a giggle bubbled under Shayna’s voice—“and, like, prop him up on the sofa, so you can pretend you’re hanging out.”
“Okay, I get it,” I said.
“And the next day you say to him, ‘Wasn’t that awesome?’” Bron said.
“And your friend is like, ‘What are you even talking about?’” Shayna said.
I snapped the lid on my sandwich container and put it back in my bag.
“Where are you going?” Bron said.
“Come on, Jojo, don’t be like that,” Shayna said.
“It’s okay. I just remembered I’m supposed to talk to Ms. Khang.” More lies, but they hadn’t offered me the reassurance I’d been seeking. On the contrary, I felt guiltier than ever. It was you I needed to talk to, Kurl, but I looked for you everywhere and didn’t find you. I think you must have left school at noon and not come back.
Yours truly,
Jo
Tuesday, November 3
Dear Kurl,
/> In English this afternoon, for the first time since the start of term except when you hurt your back that time, there was no letter waiting for me from you. I hadn’t realized you’d never missed a single letter before this, until Ms. Khang crouched beside my desk and asked me if I thought you were okay.
“Adam seemed pretty tuned out in class this morning,” she said. “Stared out the window and just shook his head when I tried to speak to him. Given the bruising on his face, I was worried.”
Oh, Kurl, if this is a case of me having written too much, then I gladly, enthusiastically, wholeheartedly take it back. Burn my letter about the other night. Let’s agree that I never wrote it. Let’s agree that I never told you anything, that you don’t remember anything, that there isn’t anything. Honestly, you know me well enough by now to know how I can exaggerate. You know I can make drama from dryer lint.
Just, please, write me back. Write anything, I don’t mind—write fake letters, write grocery lists, write Blah blah blah, over and over, to fill the page. Write Little Jerkoff Little Jerkoff Little Jerkoff.
Just, please, don’t fail English class on my account. I couldn’t handle being responsible for that.
Yours truly,
Jo
Thursday, November 5
Dear Little Jo,
Your bike is parked at the racks on the north side of the school. I taped the key for the new lock under the seat for you. I meant to do this a while ago but it took me forever to figure out where Cherry Valley actually is. Do you know it isn’t officially called Cherry Valley at all? Officially it’s just a part of the Mississippi River Gorge. They only call it Cherry Valley because girls supposedly lose their virginity if they go there. Am I the only person who doesn’t get these jokes? I mean I don’t think I am. I think everybody just calls it Cherry Valley without realizing it isn’t the real name.
Sylvan was the one who told me, in the end. He thought it was hilarious when I borrowed his phone to look up Cherry Valley on the map and couldn’t find it.
This is just a quick note. I wanted to get Nelly back to you ages ago but I’m doing it now at least.
Sincerely,
AK
Friday, November 6
Dear Kurl,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Kurl, I can only imagine what it must have taken to recover my bike from that horrible cesspit of a creek. What I like most about having Nelly back: These mornings that aren’t quite frosty but smell like frost, when I put on my woolen gloves with the extra mitten-flap to pull over the fingertips and my faded red silk paisley scarf with the fringe that flaps behind me like a flag when I coast downhill. If I time it correctly, for part of my ride I can join the fleet of commuters heading downtown to work—those dedicated cyclists who don’t quit merely because the temperature has begun to plummet. I love the briefcases strapped to the racks, the saddlebags with umbrellas sticking out. I love those little ankle clips holding the trouser cuffs safe from the chain. The chorus of bells, the arm signals, the “on your left,” the censorious glares at cars that cut too close on right turns.
Cycling is one of those experiences that, for me, points to life beyond high school. I may have to park Nelly a few blocks away and walk onto school property, so as not to lure the bike bashers back for a repeat performance, but at least I am regularly reminded again that freedom is waiting, less than three short years away.
That’s all I’m going to write for today. I’ve decided I need to impose austerity measures upon myself so as not to drive you away entirely. It wouldn’t be fair to Bron and Shayna, for one thing. They’ve grown almost as fond of you as I have, Kurl.
Yours truly,
Jo
Thursday, November 12
Dear Kurl,
No letter from you again today. Shayna and Bron have been asking after you all week—whom did you fight with this time, why are you so grumpy to them in Math class, when are you coming over to cook for us again—and I confess, I snapped at them the last time they asked. “As if I’d know,” I said. “It has never been me Kurl talks to.”
Which, sadly, is the truth. I’ve been reading back over some of your letters and realizing how little you’ve actually shared, how careful you’ve always been to keep yourself to yourself.
I suspect this is the way you conduct yourself on all fronts, Kurl. Take football, for instance, the way you quit the team so abruptly. By keeping utterly silent about your reasons, you made certain that if you wanted to slip away, nobody could reel you back, because there was nothing to grab onto.
But in any case I wouldn’t want to “reel you back”! Even though writing letters to me evolved beyond the minimum requirements for Ms. Khang’s class, I’d never want you to keep writing them purely out of a sense of obligation. That would be awful. That would be worse than this silence.
Yours truly,
Jo
Tuesday, November 17
Dear Kurl,
Ms. Khang now has me writing letters to Abigail Cuttler. Do you know Abigail Cuttler? I am not allowed to call her Abby, for starters. I’ve always gone by Abigail, and frankly, I prefer it, she explained in her first letter to me. Abigail’s original pen pal, Emily Visser, disappeared after her mother was transferred to Germany three weeks ago.
All of this to say that I’m writing to you today on my own time, and I’m doing it in my own defense: I don’t believe it’s quite fair of you to be angry with me for having my backpack ripped off my shoulder by the butcherboys in the hall this afternoon. In fact, it seems to me you were engaged in a bit of victim blaming.
If I made any mistake at all, it was failing to see them approach. Between classes I’m usually as alert as any prey animal, head swiveling to scan the perimeter, ears twitching for predatory footfalls.
This time, alas, they managed to sneak up on me. I hardly had time to register anything but the pain of my arm being wrenched by the strap before you were there, snatching the bag back from Dowell and shoving it hard into my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize,” you said. “Jesus! What’s the matter with you?”
“Right. Sorry,” I said. Honestly, I didn’t mean to be so dense. I was still rubbing my sore arm, still not quite caught up on what was happening.
“It’s like you do it on purpose,” you said, and turned and stalked off.
Kurl, I know you weren’t angry with me specifically for having my backpack snatched. You were angry at having to rescue me from the butcherboys again. I understand how frustrating it must be to feel obliged to step in, especially when you’ve decided to distance yourself from me in general. And I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful for the help today, and for your rescue of Nelly, too, from Cherry Valley.
Do I do it on purpose, though? Do what, on purpose, exactly? You’re not going to write me back in answer to this question, so I’ll have to speculate on my own:
Drawing fire is how you described it once, in reference to my wardrobe. Remember that? You’d noticed that the outfits I put together with Mr. Ragman’s help are basically Walt Whitman costumes. You called me a walking target. And yes, you’re absolutely correct that these clothes draw fire from the butcherboys and contribute to a general impression of my eccentricity or cluelessness from which I undeniably suffer the consequences at school.
But “doing it on purpose”—if indeed I can map this accusation at least partially onto my wardrobe—isn’t merely about dressing like my poetic role model. Even more than that, it’s about continually reminding myself how short the present moment is, what a temporary torment I’m suffering at the hands of the butcherboys. These clothes of mine have lived longer than any of us, after all. The blazer you noticed in one of your letters is called Loaghtan tweed from the Isle of Man. It probably came to the US packed in some mill baron’s trunk on a steamer in the 1910s.
I do it on purpose, because I want to be mindful of the decades and centuries behind us of people making beautiful things designed to last.
I want to walk down the hallways of Lincoln High with one part of me in the eternal, the timeless, and the other part of me slipping so fast through the here and now that nobody can pin me down, not even the butcherboys.
Yours truly,
Jo
Monday, November 23, 5 p.m.
Dear Little Jo,
Speaking of Walt Whitman. It’s pretty ironic that Khang assigns me an alternate writing exercise instead of the letters I’m not writing, and what it ends up being is a Walt Whitman essay. I mean she assigned a poem of my choice but I ended up writing about “Song of Myself.”
I wasn’t even planning on writing the assignment at all. I’ve been working every day after school. We’re up there for a couple hours after dark every night trying to cram in extra roofs before it gets too cold. But then I came home the other night and just sat down and wrote the essay anyhow, all in one go.
So today Khang asks to speak to me after class. I’m thinking, Now what? Because she’s spoken to me a few times after class already: about my black eye and about not writing you letters and about the alternative assignment.
It turns out Khang is all worked up about this essay I wrote. She’s whispering almost. Standing on tiptoe to get closer to my ear, like it’s a secret and she’s worried people outside in the hall might overhear us.
Adam, I’m in complete shock, she says. She tells me my essay is insightful and elegantly worded. She says she hadn’t had the slightest idea that there was an intellectual and an artist hiding under all that brawn. I mean I’m quoting Khang’s words here. All that brawn. She wants to know where I got such a mature and nuanced appreciation for Whitman’s poetics.
I’m backed pretty much right up against the blackboard at this point. It’s like Khang is somebody’s poodle sniffing at my crotch and I’m trying to be polite about it, saying, Wow, ha, that’s a friendly dog you got there, but what I really want to do is kick it in the ribs. I mean this woman really doesn’t grasp the concept of personal space.
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