Then I realized the cabin was on the other side of a rickety bridge over a deep crevasse at the middle point of the seven-mile loop we run for cross-country; my school is on the other side of the hills. When the bomb exploded, Fee and I started running, and as we got deeper and deeper into the bush, the cabin was the only place I could think to go.
Once, about a year ago, while I was out on a solo run, I stopped to pee behind this shed we’re in now. I checked the little cabin, and the old Airstream trailer next door, and couldn’t see anyone around. No vehicles in the gravel patch driveway. No kids playing in the scruffy yard. I pulled my shorts down and squatted, then out of nowhere this huge black pit bull comes steaming straight for me, snarling and snapping and growling and barking like he was gonna murder me while I peed. He made it to spitting distance before the rusty chain attached to the frame of the Airstream yanked him back.
On the rocky path through the hills heading back to the school, I thought about that poor dog and the fucked things that must’ve happened to make him so vicious. I thought about that pit bull tonight too, as we got closer to the cabin. I looked for him as I dragged Fee across the rickety bridge, and listened for him as we pushed through the brush toward the clearing. But we heard nothing.
Fee and I didn’t love the idea of waking up our gardener’s cousin, basically a stranger, to ask him to help us, so you can imagine we were relieved when we saw the light from a television glowing in his little living room.
Moving closer to the cabin, I caught this horrible stench and at first I thought oh no the pit bull, then realized what I was smelling was me—wicked BO mingling with the copper-pot smell of my blood. It was like I was bleeding out, so much blood was running down my legs and pooling into my sneakers under my gown. My period arrived at some point tonight between the welcome mocktails and the explosion, maybe proving the existence of God after all, and that She has a gnarly sense of humor.
As we inched toward the cabin, I worried about the shifts in the wind and the satanic dog catching scent of my moon. If that beast started barking, the neighbors might come out and see us, or the police on our trail might hear.
The screen door to Javier’s cabin was open, but we couldn’t see anyone moving around inside. As we got closer, we could hear voices coming from the television. When you’re a regular person, you don’t expect to see yourself on TV, and even as I write this it still feels unreal.
It took a sec to grasp that the voices Fee and I could hear were our own. We stood on the porch of the cabin, peering in the screen door, watching ourselves in a montage of pics from tonight of our daddies in their white tuxes holding us close in our pretty white gowns, posed against a waterfall backdrop. Romantic, and twisted because Daddy. Then they cut to me in full-freckled close-up, footage from the interviews they’d done with us weeks ago at the orientation session for the ball. I was talking about the growing popularity of chastity events in America and what a great opportunity the ceremony was for father/daughter bonding. Just gonna say that listening to myself in that clip, I totally get why the Hive stings me about affecting a British accent when I’m trying to sound smart. “I think the American Virtue Ball experience is going to change my life,” I said.
Not a lie. Yet, what a fraud.
We kept watching as Jinny Hutsall’s face filled the screen, long fingers brushing satin hair away from her doll-blue eyes, explaining how Reverend Jagger Jonze and the AVB have changed the way she sees herself as a woman. I have reason to believe that. She’s all, like, “The American Virtue Ball has armed me with the courage to be brave at a time when our country needs heroes most.” Then she licks her lips like a porn star and goes, “My father thinks I’m worth waiting for. Yours does too.”
The anchor on the TV interrupted the video with breaking news. An eyewitness claimed to have seen us get into a blue Honda