Free The Devil You Know by Jenn Farrell Page B

on the beach, but not the way you might envision, because it was at Lake Ontario in November. There was even a bit of snow on the ground. We kept everything on that we possibly could: mittens, coats, boots, everything. I imagine there must have been steam coming off us, because you could certainly see your breath that night. We just couldn’t wait any longer, and there was nowhere else for us to go. His parents were Christian, and they wouldn’t let us be in his room together with the door closed. My parents didn’t even know I had a boyfriend, not after the last one. And I think that’s all I’ll say about that.
    That was his first time, although I was already on the Pill, and once again, that’s that. As far as I’m concerned, that night on the beach with the cold and the moon and the frost on the rocks was my first time and it’s the time that really counts. I believe that if something goes haywire, a woman gets to erase that and start over. Just once.
    Some of these girls might seem too much alike. That can happen. Small towns, and small-town girls, can all start to seem the same after a while. The thing is, I wish every one of their stories could breathe into your ear like an Olivia Newton-John song on the car stereo on a warm summer afternoon. The kind of day where the air is the same temperature as your skin, and being naked feels like swimming. But that’s not how it’s going to go.
    III
    It was in my garage, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Okay, it’s still pretty bad, but there was a couch in there—it was like my own little rec room more than a garage. My parents let me hang out there, because the basement was where they had their bar set up, and the foosball table, plus the spare bedroom, and they needed that space for when they had their card buddies over—not a bunch of stoned teenagers. Which, fair enough, right? It was great when they had friends over on weekends, because they’d hole up down there and get loaded, and never bother us in the garage at all. We could do whatever we liked.
    So yeah, it was with a friend of mine, who I’d had a crush on forever, and we were just partying and sitting around one night, talking like we always did, and drawing giant mushrooms and flowers and wizards and stuff on the drywall with magic markers, and then we kissed and ended up on the couch. He was a great kisser, really sexy. Most high school guys didn’t kiss like that. He turned me on. We ended up going out for a few weeks, but it turned out to be a bad idea and sex ruined everything. Once we’d been boyfriend and girlfriend, we could never go back to the way things were before. We broke up and could barely look at each other or think of anything to say. I really missed him, because he was a great friend. Sometimes I’d look at his drawings on the drywall—he was a good artist too—and have a little cry about the fun we’d had and how I’d blown our friendship.
    These are the girls the big-city radio station makes slut jokes about. Girls grow up in this small town on a lake, and stay and have girls of their own. Sprinklers go titch-titch-titch on green lawns as girls crawl out of their bedroom windows. Ride in cars, up and down Main Street, sneak beers into the park, get finger-fucked behind the school. Every year, only the cars and the outfits are different. Generations of girls mocked on morning radio. Generations of boys in high-school halls daring each another to sniff their fingers.
    IV
    What? No, no way. I didn’t know you were going to ask me that. Honestly, it’s none of your goddamn business.
    What about the boys? What do they feel, want, need? Are they disappointed? Relieved? Might they be the same as the girls? Why don’t I ask them? I’m going to tell you something: I don’t care. They’ve been fucking things for a long time, inanimate objects of every shape, size, and description. A girl is