The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,94
her grandmother’s door. “If my grandmother hears you, she’ll come out and call me a little schlampe.” She picks up her knife again.
“Every time you skip, that’s what you’re doing?”
She laughs again. “Mmm. Not every single time. Sometimes we do it, and sometimes we just go out to Dairy Queen and he buys me a Mr. Misty.” She moves her eyebrows up and down. “Either way, I come out a winner.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where do you do it?”
I hear her talking as if I am not really in the room with her, just watching her on television. Mostly in Ed’s van, she says. And no, not with Ed in it. Once in her bedroom, her grandmother sleeping in the next room. “We were very quiet,” she says, giving me a knowing look, even though we both know I don’t know anything. I imagine them lying together under Deena’s pink sheets, Deena with a finger pressed against her lips like a librarian. The needle is in my chest now, turning slowly.
“Don’t look at me like that, Evelyn.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think I’m a terrible person.”
“I don’t.” This is a lie. You’re not supposed to have sex before you’re married. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”
She takes her pumpkin off the table and cradles it in her arms, making quick, short jabs into its skin. “What’s so weird about it?”
“Because. Because, for one, you’re only fourteen.”
“And?”
“And you could get pregnant.”
“I’m on the pill.” She glances up at me. “Travis and I went to the clinic together, for your information. You know, sometimes you act like you think I’m stupid, Evelyn.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.” Another lie. “But you could get a disease. You could get AIDS.”
She snorts once, hard and fast. “We’re not homosexuals, Evelyn. I’m sure.”
But I’ve heard stories. Patty Pollo said her cousin had a friend who went down to Fort Lauderdale for spring break and met a man who was so nice to her she couldn’t believe it. She was a virgin, but she had sex with him because she knew she loved him right away. When she woke up the next morning he was gone, but he had taken her red lipstick and written on the bathroom mirror WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF AIDS.
I remind Deena of this story. She laughs again.
“Do you really think Travis is going to do that to me?” Her half-moon eyebrows stay raised, amused. “We’re very careful. Don’t worry. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
I frown, watching her carve. This doesn’t seem exactly fair. “What’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
I stare at her, annoyed.
“I can’t really explain it,” she says. “It’s one of those things that you can’t explain.”
“Try.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Did it hurt?”
She shakes her head. “Not as much as everyone makes it out to. Getting my ears pierced hurt more. I think they just tell you that to scare you.” She wags the knife in her hand like she is Groucho Marx holding a cigar. “I know I’m hooked.”
Her pumpkin is already amazing. The mouth she has cut is wrinkled and menacing, baring fangs instead of teeth, small, swirling lines spiraling beneath it to look like a beard. I tried to make lines swirl out of the circle-shaped mouth on my pumpkin, but all the cuts ran together, and now it’s just one big hole, too big to be any reasonable facial feature.
She looks up at me. “What else do you want to know?”
“How long does it take?”
She laughs again. Everything is funny now, apparently. “A little longer every time.” She picks up her pumpkin. “It’s like this, Evelyn. I’ll show you.” She holds the pumpkin in front of her, pushing its grinning mouth against her neck and chin. “Oh, Travis,” she whispers, rolling her eyes back, shutting them. “Your head is so…orange and round…and your stem! Oh, your stem! Oh Travis!” She arches her back, holding the pumpkin close to her throat.
I look away. “You’re a weirdo, Deena.”
She smiles and puts the pumpkin down. “You’re the one who asked.”
When we are both finished, she gets candles from her grandmother’s nativity scene, packed away in a box in the closet. With the lights out and a lit candle behind its eyes, Deena’s jack-o’-lantern looks like a real person. The eyes she made are wide, asymmetrical, curvy lines radiating outward so they look like seeing suns. Mine is not as good as hers, but still, the candle helps. The jagged triangles turn into shining eyes above a smirking mouth.