Free After Nothing by Rachel Mackie Page A

congealing.
    I spoke out in desperation one night. It was a couple of weeks after Kane had first come over. She was watching television; I was sitting at the dining table prodding limp broccoli with my fork.
    ‘What did you think of Kane, Mom?’
    She looked over at me, and then looked back at the television.
    I hated her in that moment. I went straight up to my room, and slammed the door as hard as I could behind me. No sound came back at me. Didn’t I know the house was dead? Well, I was alive, and I was going to make sure my mother knew it.
     
    I played music loudly. I talked on the phone loudly. Once, I cooked dinner before she got to it. But she still made her own.
    Maybe I should have cut the television aerial. Instead I hit upon the idea that the best way for me to get something from her was to put together a list of questions about herself, and just make her answer them.
    Where did you go to school? I wrote down.
    Did you have a favorite teacher?
    What was your favorite subject?
    What did you do after you left school?
    How did you and Dad meet?
    What was your first house like?
    Was I a good baby?
    I got as far as asking her ‘Did you have a favorite teacher?’ before she turned the volume up on the television and pretended I was no longer there.

9
     
    Kane and I had a fight with colored markers one day. It was stupid, but it was also so much fun. I started it with a blue line of permanent marker down his arm. We were upstairs at his place. Wayne was out at his new girlfriend’s, and Kane was watching a game of football. I was bored and he was concentrating on the game. I had my pencil case out and a whole lot of books because I was behind on all my homework, and I thought I’d get some done while he was watching the game. Problem was, it was a Friday night, and I really wasn’t in the mood for homework. Also, Kane was wearing this white t-shirt and the sleeves were pulling tight over his biceps, and I couldn’t stop looking at them.
    I’d never physically initiated sex between us. Obviously I’d told him straight up in the past that I wanted to have sex, but I never made the first move physically. See, the thing was, I didn’t actually like sex that much. I mean, I liked being that close to Kane, and I liked him wanting me that much, and everything around it like the kissing and touching, I liked all of that, but depending on how into it I was, sometimes the sex itself didn’t feel good – or it just straight out hurt.
    What I’m getting at was it was a big deal for me to initiate it. Physically. Now, having looked at his biceps a lot, and the flex of his muscles as he changed position on the couch, I began studying the broadness of his shoulders, and how his t-shirt fit firmly across his chest. Apart from when Kane really went to work kissing and touching me, I don’t know that I’d ever really been turned on before. And now just looking at him was doing it for me.
    I placed a hand on his forearm and then slid it up to where the sleeve of his t-shirt drew tight around his arm. He didn’t respond.
    I went to kiss him but he looked around me, saying, ‘Nat, I’m watching this.’
    I sat back on the couch beside him. Hurt flared, and with it the feeling of rejection. And frustration. I uncapped a marker from my pencil case and drew a thick blue line down his arm.
    ‘What did you do that for?’ said Kane, frowning as he looked from his arm to me. He was expecting words. Instead, I quickly drew a blue line from the top of his cheekbone down to the edge of his jaw.
    Kane grabbed my hand, and forced me back on the couch and the marker from my hand. He held it threateningly near my face.
    ‘Say you’re sorry.’
    ‘No.’
    The marker came closer to my cheek. ‘Baby, you better apologize.’
    ‘I’m not sorry. You were ignoring me.’
    ‘So, you want this?’ he said drawing a line down my cheek so lightly that it tickled.
    I began squirming and laughing and trying to protest all at the same