or she had stuck her too-large hand down his. She had writhed like an animal, she had squealed or made noises like a pig. In all of the stories, the crescendo of the action was that she had bitten him on the ear, nearly drawing blood, or in some versions actually drawing blood. Ryan had gotten scared of her and dropped her at her house. In one story, he had not even done that, just told her to get out of his own house, slamming the door in her face. She was disgusting. She was a whore. One boy speculated to me that Bunny must have a huge vagina, and he would like to see it, as he imagined it was the size of a cow’s vagina.
I texted her repeatedly, but she did not reply. I knew she had volleyball practice after school, and so I went to my shift at Rite Aid but asked Terrence if I could leave early, and since I rarely made such requests, he complied, and by seven p.m. I was knocking on the door to Bunny’s house desperately, pounding really, forgetting altogether that they had a doorbell, as though I were afraid to find her murdered inside.
When she swung open the door, I almost fell. She stared at me with some confusion, her face blank and pale, her lips almost white. Her hair was pulled back in a sweaty ponytail. She was still in her gym clothes, her kneepads pushed down around her ankles, and she didn’t say anything, just stepped back so I could come inside. I could see she had been watching TV, and spread out on the coffee table were Cheetos, cookies, what looked like part of a muffin, a can of AriZona iced tea. She had not been crying. She had been eating.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, and threw herself on the couch.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What, with Ryan?”
“Well, yes. And, I mean, everything! Bitch, do you want a hug?” I asked, standing there, not knowing whether I should sit down or where.
“No, thank you,” she said. Her eyes were glued to the TV.
I didn’t know what to do. Wasn’t I her friend? Didn’t I have the right to expect to be her confidant? I sat down on one of the pretty French armchairs. “Did you bite him?” I asked.
She shut her eyes.
“Bunny, what the fuck happened that night?”
“Whatever he said happened, apparently.” Her eyes were still closed. I heard the air-conditioning click on. I got up, stood over her on the couch.
“I am your friend,” I said. “I don’t care if you bit him! I’m not going to judge you! I just want you to let me in, and—” I must have been shouting at her, though I hadn’t meant to, because her eyes snapped open and she lunged at me, pushing me so that I fell awkwardly over their coffee table and then she was on top of me, sitting on my stomach, pinning my hands to the floor above my head.
“I don’t want to fight you,” she said, “but I really do not want to talk about this. I thought it was normal, okay? I read it in Cosmo.”
I could hardly breathe; she was so heavy on top of me. I gasped, nodded.
“I got carried away and I bit him on the ear, but I did not make him bleed, I just bit him too hard, okay?” She was shouting down into my face.
I nodded. Tried to take a deep breath so I could talk. “It is normal,” I said. “People do bite each other’s ears when they make out.”
She looked at me quizzically. “They do?”
I nodded. “I can’t breathe,” I said. “Could you?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, and clambered off me, grabbed the sad bottom half of the muffin, and began peeling its wrapper as she sat back on the couch. “All day long I’ve been cursing that fucking Cosmo article, like, why put something in there if it’s not true? I mean, some of that stuff always made me wonder, like about licking balls, do guys like that? Licking balls?”
“Some guys,” I said, sitting up.
“Or, like, they said to put an ice cube on a guy’s dick.”
“That sounds pretty terrible,” I said.
“That’s what I thought!” she cried. She finished the muffin and threw the limp, crumb-covered liner on the coffee table like it was a used tissue. “It’s all just fucking bullshit, you know? And he didn’t act weird that night!