the kitchen. Dee, behind me, says something I can’t understand. I don’t stop. We walk past my friends from Pells, who look at me and say nothing. We walk up the stairs, which are sticky with beer and maybe puke, and the girl leads me to a room that I know as Jim’s from having been in there countless times when I was younger.
Jim’s room, I say, and laugh because I think this is suddenly funny.
The girl doesn’t know what she’s doing. She opens the door and sees no one’s inside and turns on the light. I see it is the same as the last time I was in here: basketball posters everywhere, clothes on the floor, a slanted ceiling, an unmade and sheetless bed. A ratty comforter slinking toward the floor on one side. Flat naked pillows. The girl turns the light off again and shuts the door and leads me toward the bed. I hit my head so hard on the slanted ceiling that I see stars and Oh my God! the girl says, but I’m OK, I’m fine.
Sit down, she says, and I sit on the mattress, shoving the comforter off entirely.
In the dark I imagine she is Lindsay Harper. I think of Lindsay’s face and touch this girl on the cheek and ear.
We kiss. For a long time we kiss. I lie down and then she lies down and we kiss some more. I take her clothes off. She is smaller than Lindsay and thinner. She has none of Lindsay’s firmness. She feels breakable, her bones are showing. I take my clothes off. She has gotten sleepy or afraid. She stops moving. I keep moving. I cover her. I hover over her.
Do you know my name, she says quietly.
And I know it, it’s Jenny, but for some reason I say No, no, what is it?
And she says, Jennifer! and tries to make it sound like a joke, like a playful thing, but in her voice I hear that she is filled with self-doubt and regret.
I do it anyway. We do it. She is still and quiet as a stone. I don’t finish. I stop before I finish.
The two of us lie on our backs next to each other. My head is pounding. The dark ceiling is moving slowly. I can see all the walls of Jim’s room in the dark now because my eyes have adjusted. Most of the posters are basketball stars from the ’70s to the present. Walt Frazier. Shaq, huge arms outstretched, mouth open. LeBron. Michael Jordan in his heyday, flying winglessly toward the basket for a slam dunk. Once Jim and Dee and I made a vow in this room to make it to the NBA together. We were eight or nine. Already I cared more about baseball but I wanted to fit in. Afterward I walked home to my mother’s house.
I think maybe Jenny is crying. I don’t want to find out. I want to cry too but I don’t allow it. I want to put my hand on her hand and I want to cry. We lie on Jim O’Leary’s bed silent and still. Until it becomes impossible to move, until I feel I am a statue, heavy and concrete.
•
There’s a loud pounding on the door and Jenny clutches the comforter to herself and I try to do the same before the door flies open and lets in the light from the hallway.
Peters is there with Matt Barnaby.
What the hell, says Peters.
Get out! I say, but he says You gotta come downstairs, dude. Trevor’s plowed and starting shit.
Shut the door! I say. Jenny has covered herself completely with the comforter and is pretending she does not exist, but her little feet are sticking out below it.
Who is that, says Matt Barnaby, laughing, just before Peters pulls the door shut.
Who was that, I hear him say again from the hallway.
We put our clothes back on and still we haven’t spoken. She pulls the elastic out of her hair and piles it on top of her head again and ties it up tightly. Then she goes out ahead of me without a word.
When I walk out the boys are looking at me with raised eyebrows.
Where’s Trevor, I say. I’m still drunk and I clutch the banister as we go down the stairs.
Trevor’s out front, five inches from the face of someone much bigger than he is, and swaying.
This your boy? somebody says, and I nod sorrowfully because I wish he weren’t.
Better get