Page 38 of Blade

Now she wondered if every kiss she’d ever heard about had been a lie. Was this what it really was? Tongues, saliva, beer, biting. And whatnow? Then a voice in her head said:Just let it happen. Learn.And anyway, it was over now, the first kiss. Like a fall on a jump. You had to get through shit like this to get past it, to the other side. And what would she give to not be so ignorant of so many things?

The kiss and the biting didn’t stop until the song ended, finally, and a new song began to play. Was thatMeat Loaf? Kayla would hate this so much.

It was enough, she thought.

“I think I need to find my friend.”

Wiry didn’t answer. He put his empty beer can down with one hand and reached inside her shirt with the other, searching for things that were barely there, then moving down. When he reached for the button of her jeans, she stopped observing the situation so passively.

Because she’d been an Orphan for nine months, with girls who weren’t ignorant. Girls who knew things and who talked about those things, constantly. About hand jobs and blow jobs and doggy style and reverse cowgirl. Jolene had demonstrated with a pretend man she made with two pillows, and Kayla rolled her eyes but then couldn’t help but laugh because watching Jolenefuck a pillowhad them all rolling on the floor in hysterics.

And, even though this knowledge was like someone telling you about the time they climbed Mount Everest—a story that leaves you totally ill equipped and unprepared to climb even a small boulder—she was able to weigh the likely outcomes and consequences of where this was going.

A new plan formed in her mind—it involved needing to pee, from all the beer, because who would want to put his hands in her jeans under those circumstances? And in her mind she was getting ready to push him away and tell him this. But in these last few moments while she’d been assessing and reflecting and making her plans of escape, shemust have been frozen, still, because Wiry stopped biting her neck and reaching into her open jeans.

“Are you okay?” he asked. And she realized that he thought she’d passed out and that had made him stop.

Without her having to run for the door or make excuses about Indy or peeing. He’d just ... stopped.

So she stayed still and quiet. An opossum playing dead. And Wiry shook her by the shoulders.

“Ana?”

And then. “What the fuck.”Annoyed.

And then. “Oh shit.”Scared.

And then the bony fingers slid out of her jeans, and Wiry moved away, off the beanbag. She heard metal on metal again, the back door opening.

Moments later, more voices came, so she sat up and hung her head in her hands like she was feeling sick. But she wasn’t. Not at all. Still, this plan had fallen into her lap, and she was committed now, like she’d just taken off for a jump. In the air, turning, turning.

Before she knew it, Jolene and Jean Jacket were there, in the back of the van.

“What did you do to her?” Jolene yelled, with Jean Jacket yelling too.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

“Nothing!” Wiry answered. “We were just making out ...”

Jolene sat down on the beanbag where Wiry had been. One hand was on Ana’s back. The other picked up the second empty beer.

“You gave her beer?”

“Yeah, man,” Wiry said. “Why not?”

“Asshole!” Jolene said. “Because she’s only thirteen!” Even though she’d offered Ana plenty of beer since the first week she arrived.

Collective gasps andoh shits from Jean Jacket and Wiry, and then Jolene grabbed her arm and helped her up.

“Girl, what did you do?” Her voice was lighter when she looked in Ana’s eyes and saw that she wasn’t dead and looked at her clothes and saw that they were intact. “Let’s get you out of here.”

When Ana was safely returned to the car, she in the back and Jolene in the front, Indy appeared from the other side of the gray pickup. She’d managed to ditch Wavy Hair, who climbed into the black van. It started up and peeled awaylike a bat out of hell, Ana thought—the Meat Loaf song still playing in her ears.

Indy got in beside her. “What happened?”

Jolene watched the van disappear through the maze of parked cars, leaving tracks in the weeds.

“They gave her beer, and she passed out!”