And now, of course, she was sixteen. But she was still a girl, and Mason was not a boy. He was seven years older than Starlyn, and Cole knew most people would say it wasn’t right for a man to touch a girl like that, even if she let him. Even if she begged him. And the idea of this particular man and girl together was somehow particularly shocking. Her perfect face, his disfigured one. Her perfect skin, his snakeheads and skulls. Her shining blond hair, his shaved scalp. Her whiteness under his grease-monkey hands.
But she must have liked that, Cole thought. The eye-patch scar, the crusty palms and black nails. You’d think a girl would be turned off by those things—
And what about her boyfriend in Louisville?
Mason didn’t have a girlfriend, as far as Cole knew, and people were always teasing him about still being single. Everyone knew that, before his conversion, he’d sown his share of wild oats and, as he confessed, had not always been respectful of ladies.
“Maybe that’s why the Lord put all that on hold for me. When the time’s right, I expect he’ll introduce me to the one meant for me. I know the next step for me is to take a wife, but I’m leaving it all in his hands.” Meanwhile he lived with his mother. Lucinda Boyle, who’d raised Mason all on her own, was still in her forties but might as well have been an old woman. She was one of those people who, a year after getting over the flu, had developed symptoms of parkinsonism. She almost never left the house.
Cole wondered what was going to happen next. Did Mason believe that, even though she was so young, Starlyn was the one God intended for him? And did that mean they’d be getting married one day? But if that was the case, he thought, they wouldn’t have to keep their love a secret. Whatever the story was, he knew he shouldn’t be spending so much time thinking about it. It was none of his business. His mother used to say when it came to people’s love lives you should always look the other way. And: Never be the kind of boy who talks about what he did with a girl. Nice boys don’t kiss and tell.
Here the taste of cherry burst on Cole’s tongue, and he remembered: passing the cough drop from mouth to mouth—like kissing and not kissing and more than kissing all at the same time. And afterward, strangely enough, they’d gone on as before. Not girlfriend and boyfriend, not even friends, just ordinary classmates again—as if the accidental collision in the closet had never occurred. But he hadn’t talked about it. He’d never told anyone what he’d done in the dark with Jade.
Jade Korsky. Whose hair was like a poodle’s if poodles had been red. Who always had to sit in the front because she was both nearsighted and incapable of holding on to a pair of glasses for more than a week. First girl he ever kissed—and he’d forgotten all about her. How sad was that?
That had been sixth grade. In seventh grade, a boy named Royce had told him about an eighth-grader named Sage, a tall girl with hair like licorice twists and a faceful of piercings. A nympho, Royce said, and when Cole asked him what that meant he’d laughed and said, “It means you don’t got to pay her or nothing, dude. You just hook up and get your rocks off.” But Cole would have been terrified of hooking up with a girl he didn’t even know. Until Royce told him, he had no idea, either, what a chicken head was. He could not see how any girl could become famous for that. Enough boys had confirmed what Royce had said about Sage for Cole to think it could be true, but he could not imagine ever finding out for himself.
And now he could not imagine himself in Mason’s place. He could not imagine himself touching Starlyn the way he’d seen Mason touching her—like he owned her. But lately all that—kissing, touching, having sex (whatever that was really like)—had begun to take up more and more space in Cole’s head. It was another one of his “ideas” (he didn’t know what else to call them): you could never grow up, let alone be a hero, without the help of a girl. And say it didn’t happen. Say you