Blue Moon

by Luanne Rice

  “He used to go out with Lisa Larrabee, and she is the biggest slut. Just like …” Emma’s eyes flicked to Belinda. “Aunt Nora. I know you don’t believe me about her.”

  “Well, how do you know she’s a slut?”

  “Two ways. I can see with my own eyes, and I heard our mothers talking.”

  “Mom said that? About her sister?” Belinda couldn’t believe it. Her mother was so loyal, sometimes so annoyingly devoted to her family, she would never say anything bad about any of them. “I’m sorry, but she would never rag on Aunt Nora like that.”

  “You poor baby,” Emma said, touching Belinda’s ear. “If it’s the truth, it’s not a putdown, no matter what. You know how you can tell a slut?”

  Belinda waited for one of Emma’s wicked punch lines.

  “Sluts are sad,” Emma said. “They think there’s only one way to get people to love them. You know that purple eyeshadow Lisa wears? And the big dangly earrings and the bleached-blond hair? You have to think of it as a costume. It’s exactly like a clown suit. When you see a clown, you laugh just because it’s a clown, whether you think it’s funny or not. When you see a slut, you fuck her just because she’s a slut, whether you really like her or not.”

  “Just because Aunt Nora bleaches her hair does not mean she’s a slut.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. But have you ever seen her happy? No, because she’s not. She is incredibly sad. Just like Lisa, if you think about it. They both sleep around.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sleep around’?” Belinda asked, concentrating on a thick blade of grass. She had already shredded it into four pieces, and now she was shredding those four into eight. Talking with Emma about sluts and sleeping around felt more delicious than talking about Todd.

  “I mean going to bed with more than one guy. One after the other. Whoever wants you, you do it with him.”

  “Like you actually sleep,” Belinda said, thinking of how weird it was to use such little-kid words—’sleep’ and ‘bed’—to describe something as exotic as sex.

  “Why do they say ‘going to bed’?” Belinda screwed up one of the grass shreds, tearing it unevenly. She threw out all the pieces and began fringing a new blade.

  “It’s just a bullshit way of saying you go someplace alone together, take off all your clothes, and play with each other’s body. Some prude probably thought it up.”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  “Maybe.”

  Belinda’s head jerked up. “You have?”

  Emma shrugged, a little smirk on her lips. She pulled a lipstick out of her pocket, swished on some glittery red, and handed the tube to Belinda. Belinda’s hand closed around it; her palm felt sweaty. “I have never slept around,” Emma said.

  “What about the other?”

  “No. But I’ve had the chance. I don’t want to.”

  Belinda wondered who Emma had had the chance with. You heard so much about boys being sex-starved, always ready to take advantage of you, but that had not been Belinda’s experience. She could lie awake for hours at night, stiff as a board with the tension of desiring Todd, and before him Paul, and before him Jeremy; she’d feel it so powerfully that she was sure the next day that, sensing her love, he would pull her into the coatroom and cover her face with kisses.

  But nothing would ever happen. The boys would hardly even look at her. Sometimes she would get a message, like the one she had just gotten from Todd, delivered by one of her friends or her brother or her cousin, that someone liked her. Wanted to go out with her. Big deal. Even when she said yes, like she had with Paul, the message came back, “I can’t go out with you. Now I like Colleen.”

  “Did Todd really tell you he wants to ask me out?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else did he say?”

  Emma started to take off her dark glasses again, stick out her lower lip, rearrange her hair. “He said …”

  “Okay, never mind,” Belinda said, laughing.

  “Would you want his grubby hands all over your beautiful bod?”

  “Beautiful? Hah.” Now Belinda could never go out with Todd, knowing how Emma felt about him.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Bel, you’re one of the only girls in school with tits.”

  Belinda had, in fact, noticed. She blushed.

  “Of course, I’m one of the others,” Emma went on. “Small tits do not run in our family. Just look at our mothers. God, I hope I look more like your mother when I’m old than mine.”

  “Your mother’s so nice,” Belinda said.

  “She’s a cow. An entire herd. She let herself go. But let’s get back to the subject.”

  “What subject?” Belinda asked, shredding grass again. She knew exactly what subject, but the whole thing was making her feel hot in the face and funny between the legs.

  “The subject of bodies. Do you want Todd’s grubby hands on yours?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then whose hands do you want?”

  “Whose do you want?”

  “Keanu Reeves’s,” Emma said. She lay on her back, one arm under her head, and arched her spine. “Oh, Keanu baby.”

  “I mean someone real.”

  “He’s real,” Emma replied. “I can have him whenever I want him.”

  “Oh, right. He just flies in from Hollywood?”

  “No,” Emma said. “But if I feel like it, I can think of him when I masturbate.”

  Belinda had never heard someone her own age say that word. Her mouth felt too dry to talk.

  “Don’t you ever?” Emma asked, raising herself up on one elbow.

  Belinda shrugged.

  “Don’t you know how?”

  Belinda shrugged again.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Come on. No one’s home at my house. I’ll show you.”

  Emma’s garage felt cool after their long bike ride. The girls parked their bikes, and Emma used her key to let them into the kitchen. She poured them glasses of lemonade. Belinda was glad to have something to drink, because she didn’t know what to say. She felt as though she were on a train heading for somewhere scary, somewhere she knew she shouldn’t go. The train kept stopping at safe stations, places with familiar faces on the platform, but she didn’t get off. She felt too thrilled to be on the train.

  They went upstairs. Emma, for once, was as quiet as Belinda. She poked her head into her parents’ room, then Sean’s.

  “They’re all out,” Emma said, as if she were surprised by this. She closed her bedroom door. Belinda stood in the middle of the room, pretending to be interested in Emma’s bookshelf. Usually she’d just flop on the bed without being asked, but now she felt too nervous.

  “Let’s put on some makeup,” Emma said. She stood in front of her mirror, applying brown eyeliner to her lower lid. Belinda stood beside her, brushing on mascara.

  “First of all, you have to make yourself feel sexy,” Emma said. She dipped her pinky into a pot of red lip gloss and smeared it on her lips.

  Belinda tried to listen to her, but all she could think about was what they were going to do. Her mother had explained masturbation to her, and Belinda had read about it in the blue book her mother had given her: A Doctor Talks to Nine-to Twelve-Year-Olds.

  She had tried it a couple of times, but nothing had happened. It had embarrassed her, touching her own bottom. Because no matter what the diagrams showed, no matter how the books explained about the “clitoris” and “vulva” and “labia majora,” it was all the same to Belinda. Her bottom.

  Emma was getting undressed, so Belinda did, too. Naturally, Emma had on a filmy pink bra, straight out of Victoria’s Secret or somewhere. Also some kind of string underpants.

  “Those are nice,” Belinda said. “Mine look like rejects from a gym suit.” She stood there in her plain white bra and plain white panties that Emma had seen a million times. But it had never counted before. Just last week they had given each other fake tattoos. Josie had been sitting right there, at Em
ma’s dressing table, drawing all over Emma’s Schoolbook with a lipstick. That’s when Belinda had kicked Josie out, causing the war to erupt.

  “They’re very refugee,” Emma said, laughing. “Okay, you sit at that end of the bed. There. I’ll take this end.”

  “Then what?”

  Emma giggled. “God, I really do have to teach you, don’t I? You take off your undies, you lie back, and you touch yourself.” Belinda watched her strip off her bra and panties. Emma’s breasts were round and pale, compared with the rest of her tan body. Her nipples, which were sort of brownish, stuck way out, like flower buds. Only Belinda had never seen a pinkish-brown flower. She took off her own underwear, embarrassed but slightly proud that her breasts were bigger than Emma’s.

  They sat at opposite ends of the bed, nude.

  “You know the spot, right?” Emma asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  Emma looked skeptical. “It’s very specific. You have to know how to find it.” She spread her own legs, revealing a dark, moist crack. “Here.”

  Belinda pretended to see what Emma was pointing at.

  “You didn’t see, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay.” Emma pushed Belinda onto her back. Instinctively, Belinda let her legs fall apart. Emma took the middle finger of Belinda’s right hand and placed it on a particular spot on the front part of Belinda’s bottom. “That little bump. You rub it.”

  Belinda couldn’t, not with Emma watching. “Okay,” Belinda said. “What else?”

  “Well, you lick your finger first, to make it slippery. You do that whenever it gets dry. Think of something that turns you on. Like Todd. Or Keanu Reeves. Or some sexy scene from a movie. And just keep touching that spot, light or hard, even with your fingernail, and keep your finger slippery, until you come.”

  Belinda wanted to ask what “come” meant, but Emma had already gone to the other end of the bed. Emma stretched, then lay on her back. Her eyes closed, her hand traveled down her body to the spot she had shown Belinda. Her hand stayed still, but her finger seemed to move. Belinda tried to locate the place Emma had told her to touch. Now, with Emma not watching, Belinda definitely found it.

  “Uh,” she gasped before she could help herself. She glanced over, to see if Emma was looking.

  Emma had one eye open, smiling, her finger still going. “Uh,” Emma said back, teasing. Then Emma licked her finger and turned her head away again. With her other hand she plucked at one breast, then the other.

  Just watching Emma while she touched herself made Belinda feel so hot and sexy, she didn’t know if she could stand it. She didn’t know if Emma would mind that she was watching, but Belinda couldn’t turn away. She licked her middle finger, and the salty taste made her even crazier. She played with the spot. There it was. There. There. She felt like she was in danger. She was standing on a cliff. The bottom was going to fall out. She was going to crash. She stopped.

  Something was happening to Emma. Emma’s back was arched and her thighs were shaking. “Oh,” Emma moaned. “Uh.” Her legs shook, her hips wiggled around, and she pinched her bark-brown nipple over and over.

  “Did you come?” Emma asked in a funny voice, without looking.

  “I don’t think so,” Belinda said.

  “Keep touching yourself,” Emma said, still lying back.

  Belinda licked her finger again. She reached down. The first touch, she felt a jolt. Her clitoris was sore. She started to pull her hand back, but Emma’s hand on her wrist stopped her.

  “Make it more slippery,” Emma said. She held out a pot of lip gloss and dipped Belinda’s finger in it. Now Emma was watching, but Belinda didn’t care. She rubbed the glossy pink goo into the hard little bump. She closed her eyes, to block out Emma.

  “Here’s a sure way,” Emma said. Belinda was going to open her eyes, but suddenly she felt something hot and wet on her left nipple.

  It was Emma’s mouth. Emma sucked and nibbled, flicking it with her tongue. Belinda watched, her own finger still going, she had to tell Emma to stop, but she couldn’t. Belinda was on fire between her legs and in her nipples. She wanted to slow down, even stop, because she wanted the feeling to go on forever.

  Forever. There. There. But it didn’t go on forever. Something wilder than Belinda had ever imagined swept over her, knocked her down, so that she saw stars behind her closed eyes and thought she might be blind when she opened them.

  She wasn’t blind. There was Emma, laughing, the first thing she saw.

  “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Emma asked.

  Josie sat on the front step with her mother. They were watching for her father’s truck. Tomorrow he’d be leaving on a fishing trip, so tonight he’d be home early for dinner. Josie and her mother were playing a game, counting all the blue cars that drove by. Every time you saw one, you had to say, “Blue car.”

  Josie leaned on her mother’s leg, watching the street. “Blue” was one of her favorite words. It was easy to say. Josie could say anything in front of her mother, and it didn’t matter if she made mistakes. The same with T.J. But some words she would say to her father or Belinda, and they’d frown or look everywhere except at her face, and Josie would know they thought she was stupid.

  “Blue car,” Josie said, squeezing her mother’s knee. Belinda and T.J. were somewhere with their friends; Josie wished her father would get home before they did. She had more fun playing with him when they weren’t around. He always paid lots of attention to her then.

  Her mother tapped Josie, so that she would look up. “Let’s start counting them,” her mother said. Josie held up four fingers on her left hand: she’d been counting all along. It made her laugh, and her mother gave her a big hug.

  Josie’s shoulder rested against her mother’s side, and suddenly she felt her mother talking. She looked at her mother’s face, to hear what she was saying.

  “Here comes Sean.”

  “Oh,” Josie said, disappointed. Instead of her father, Sean was walking down the sidewalk.

  If Sean weren’t fat, he would look scary. Josie knew he was her cousin and that he would never hurt her, but he had four earrings in one ear and black polish on his fingernails. His jeans had the knees ripped out, like T.J.’s. He usually wore sunglasses, even in the house. But he had a friendly plumpness that made the other things seem silly.

  He came down the front walk. He said, “Hi, Josie. Hi, Aunt Cass,” but then he started talking too fast for Josie to understand.

  “T.J. is at the beach,” her mother said.

  Sean nodded. He was about to walk away, but suddenly he stopped short. Josie looked from him to her mother, who was standing up.

  “Can you watch her while I answer the phone?”

  “Okay,” Sean said.

  Josie watched the screen door slam shut behind her mother. She looked up at Sean. She felt a little afraid, but he was smiling. She smiled back. She looked at the living-room window and saw her mother standing there, watching Sean and Josie while she talked on the telephone.

  Sean said something and pointed down the street. Josie followed his gaze. About three driveways away, some kids had made a ramp, and they were flying off it on skateboards. Sean started walking toward them. Josie didn’t want to go, but she knew Sean was supposed to be watching her. She followed behind.

  The kids were big. Older than Josie, but not as old as Sean. Josie didn’t like them. She knew they would be mean if she had to talk to them. T.J. said they were jerks, babies. She looked down, watching for ants on the sidewalk.

  They stopped what they were doing to talk to Sean. They stood back, listening to what he was saying. Josie moved closer to him. She could see they thought he was cool. T.J. never talked to them, so they seemed surprised when Sean did.

  Sean wanted to try the ramp. He got on the skateboard. He looked too big and wobbly to stay on right, like a human Weeble.

  He pushed off with his foot, but before he even hit the ramp, he tipped forwar
d. He tried to get his balance. His arms flapped, and he fell. His sunglasses flew off and smashed on the sidewalk.

  He jumped up almost before he hit the ground. His face was red. The other kids were laughing. One of them swung his arms, imitating Sean falling. Josie couldn’t understand all the words, but she knew the kids were making fun of Sean. Someone kicked his sunglasses into the gutter.

  Then they started pointing at Josie.

  She stepped closer to her cousin, just behind his leg. She didn’t think they would hit her; she just didn’t want to see them saying mean things. They pointed at the sign in the street, laughing. Now Sean was laughing, too.

  Josie felt relieved, but still nervous. They weren’t making fun of her. They were laughing at the big yellow sign that said “Drive Slowly, Children Playing.” Josie laughed too. She didn’t think it was funny, but she liked fooling around with the big kids. The more she laughed, the more everyone else did.

  One of the girls leaned down so Josie could see her mouth. She had braces on her teeth and beautiful bead earrings. She was smiling; Josie watched her mouth, but the girl was making funny noises that Josie couldn’t understand. Josie kept smiling, but suddenly the noises gave her a bad feeling. She felt scared, like something terrible was going to happen.

  Then another girl leaned down. She had curly blond hair like Barbie. “Why are you laughing?” she asked.

  “At the sign,” Josie said.

  “It’s your sign,” the girl said.

  “No, it’s not,” Josie said. She didn’t understand. Suddenly she felt even more scared. She looked toward her house. She didn’t see her mother. The girl was laughing, but Josie knew it wasn’t happy laughing. All of a sudden she knew they were making fun of her.

  “It says ‘Drive Slow, Deaf Kid,’” the girl said. “That’s you.”

  Josie glanced wildly at Sean. He had a sorry look on his face; Josie knew the girl was telling the truth. Josie felt her lower lip pushing forward, and tears spilled out of her eyes.

  Sean pushed the girl, and she pushed him back. “Fat kid, fat kid,” the girl said.

  Josie started to walk, then run, toward her house. Sean caught up to her. She didn’t want to look at him. He touched her shoulder at first, then held it tight, to make her stop. She kept her head down; she didn’t want him to see her crying. But Sean crouched down low, so she had to look at him.