Matty
You met her by chance through a friend, a kid you knew at the public school who was a couple years older than you. He said he knew how to get some good smoke; medical-grade shit.
"Get those little rich kids high," he said, referring to your classmates.
"They're not really rich," you told him, but it didn't really matter. They're different from the rest of the kids you knew, different from you. So one day in August there was a festival and you and your friend took a little walk into the woods right when it started to get dark, when the crickets and the frogs made a sound almost as suffocating as the humid summer air and you walked until the music of some crappy bluegrass band from Blacksburg had faded, replaced by that suffocating orchestra. You always loved that sound, the vastness of it, the way it could swallow you whole.
She came towards you on the path from the opposite direction with a tall black kid named Kevin, whom you assumed to be the connection your friend had told you about. But Kevin just stood there as your friend started to talk to the woman, who introduced herself as Rae and looked at you a little too hard before saying, "hey, you're Gabe Hurt's little brother, right? You look like him."
You didn't have to answer, but you did. You said, "people don't really say that. I mean that we look alike."
She invited all of you to her place, an apartment above a bar on main street and you didn't want to leave. Not ever. It was cool and it smelled good and some part of you wanted to lay down in her bed and go to sleep until the weather turned cold. You sat there like a tag-along, watching her dig through her cabinets for gallon zip-lock bags. You felt the weight of the money in your pocket and couldn't wait to get rid of it. She dropped a bag containing a little more than an ounce on the table in front of you and then laughed a little bit at your shock and amazement. She called you "kid" and still does. Then you all got high and from that moment you were in love with her. Sometimes you wonder if she knows--if she knows volumes of things that you don't, that you may never know. You think it's safe to assume she does.
You started seeing her once a week to pick up bags from her, sometimes more often depending on the demand. You made a lot of money from the public school kids and some from the White Chapel kids and you gave Rae her cut and she never once called you by your name. You started to look forward to your weekly visit to her little apartment and the more you went the more nervous you got to be around her, afraid she would see your feelings and worse, make fun of you for having them, laugh and dismiss them as the insignificant fancies of a teenage boy. She would never consider them to be of the epic, historical importance that they truly were.
Once, a few months after you met her, you went into her apartment without her permission. Without even her knowledge. You knew she was working at the hospital, that she wouldn't be home for hours, but you knocked anyway and somehow you felt by the way the door rattled in the frame when your knuckles rapped against it, that it was unlocked. You opened it and it was like the first time a girl ever undressed for you. It was the same rush, and you said "hello?" to the empty apartment, listening hard. You opened her fridge, her kitchen cabinets. You studied the labels of jars and cans as if they were healing tonics from across the world or at least gourmet, sophisticated foods you had never heard of. You fingered through her DVDs, memorizing every title and storing it away as some vital piece of information about her that helped to make up a more complete picture. You stared at her bookshelf for what felt like hours.
When you pushed open her bedroom door you started to get hard and you felt ashamed and yet you didn't leave. You even pictured her in your mind, a nightmare image, coming in and realizing in horror that she had left the door unlocked, you pictured her frozen in the doorway with maybe a bag of groceries in her hand that she would no doubt drop exactly one second before charging at you and ordering you to get the fuck out.
Still you didn't leave.
You looked through her closet, ran your hands over every piece of clothing hanging there, you smelled some of it. You looked at all of her shoes, what seemed like dozens of pairs all piled in the corner along with high heels you could never imagine her wearing or having a reason to wear. Then you came to her dresser and saw the very top drawer open and you knew that it was her underwear drawer and the warm, pulsing feeling in your crotch became almost too much to bear and you wanted to reach into the drawer so badly, just to touch with one finger, maybe two. But you didn't do it. You didn't dare even reach.
And then you heard a noise from downstairs, a noise that had absolutely nothing to do with you and you ran. You ran even though it hurt like hell and you nearly fell to your death from the steps and you kept running until you were in the safe, cool shade of the woods far off the path where you could fall on your face in the earth and breathe it all in and forget the smells, all that smells that you had just stolen so effectively, so carefully and yet only by luck. Only because her door had been left unlocked. You unzipped your pants and started to jerk off but all you could picture was that sight of her coming in, the sight that bag of groceries dropping to the floor even though that bag of groceries didn't even exist and never will and the more you imagined the worse it became, the more clumsy and useless your hands became and you couldn't think of her without fear anymore so you got up and went to the creek and you knelt and doused yourself like a sudden fire that must not spread and you doused and doused with that freezing cold water and then it was all gone and you felt so relieved, like some holy rite had been performed and something evil had been forced out at least for the moment.
Even then you resented her for it, you felt she owed you, that you weren't responsible nor would you ever be for whatever actions that may come from these feelings, these feelings she gave you, forced down your throat like a horrible drug. You couldn't be blamed for what you did, for what you might do, for what may happen when your self-control finally collapses. It hasn't yet, thank God. But it will. And when it does, it will still be her fault.
