"Fifteen is very young. Wouldn't you rather be eighteen? Or eighty-one?"
"I don't know." Her questions seemed like traps to him, nonsense delivered with such puzzling fervor, that he wished he had the answers she wanted. "I'm having a hard enough time dealing with fifteen, I suppose."
"Oh well," she shrugged, "I was just wondering." She sat up and studied him earnestly. "Have you ever had sex, Nicholas?"
"Yes," he said, his voice sharp and tight. If this was the acid of memory he felt rising in him, he preferred forgetfulness.
"I mean," the look in her eyes made him think she understood the volumes behind his one clipped syllable, "not forced? I should have asked have you ever made love?"
"No."
"You're not afraid to, are you?"
"We can't. Not here."
"Why not? We're crazy. We can do anything we want, and who's to blame us?" Her eyes no longer laughed at him as she drew him closer and taught him to kiss in a way that left him breathless. "It's almost like death if you do it right."
"Kissing?" His voice embarrassed him by cracking on the word.
"No, sex. Petit mort, they call it. Little death. That's why I'm not afraid of it. Death, I mean."
"I don't understand."
"I'll try to show you. But it doesn't always happen. Not with me, anyway. It requires a special magic. We might have it, we might not."
They didn't find it that time, the first, or any of the other times when they escaped the confines of Edgewater to seek the edge of the world. He learned much later that, for all her boldly aggressive passion and pretended knowledge, that first time had been hers as well, not forced. Before Edgewater there had been another place for her, a place with locks not so easily breached, a place where the screams of an eight year old girl -- "emotionally disturbed" she confided in Nicholas, "It's the polite term for crazy" -- were dismissed as tantrums and no one cared to learn their cause. She remembered only the sound of the man's key grating in the lock, the smell of him, Vitalis and old cigarettes, the smothering weight of him, and the pain.
Yet, Doreen had still believed there could be magic. She read to Nicholas about it from books with well-thumbed pages where the hero's eyes smoldered and his experienced touch set passion's blaze in the damsel's most secret places.
Though Nicholas listened attentively and was willing to learn, he found himself as confused by what was said on those pages as what was left unsaid. The hero, always the suave, tender expert, knew what to do and when to do it. While Nicholas, the fumbling, not-quite innocent, had known only mechanics and obedience and to do what he was told or suffer the consequences and to feel the bitter shame that his debasement brought unwanted pleasure along with the pain. He had never known magic, only conclusion and release.
"Slow down. It's not a race," whispered the ever-patient Doreen. "There's supposed to be a certain grace to it once you get the rhythm. You have to learn control. Romance, think romance."
But how could she expect grace from a fifteen year old? How could he achieve control when every hormone in his body screamed against it? How could he think romance when he had the instincts of a rutting animal?
"It's all right. It will take time. To surrender to the magic, you have to get over the past. Who was it that forced you? Who were you with?"
He couldn't tell her. He shouldn't remember. He refused to remember. It was a memory that only came in nightmares. My father. My sister. She'd hate him if she knew. Doreen would feel only disgust and loathing if he told. And he couldn't bear it, for the sad thing was he loved her.
"Love?" Her laugh was like crystal shattering when he made the mistake of saying the word. "You're hallucinating. It happens when you're crazy."
In the end, her patience failed her. She must have despaired of finding her little death with him and escaped to find the real death she may have wanted all along. The winter had closed in on Edgewater, snow and wind buffeting the woods and fields around that gothic bastion, whipping Lake Michigan into icy fury, locking them in more effectively than any bars or keys. And Doreen chafed against her restraints and went a little bit madder. "Danger. It's danger that we need, just a taste, just