Read Online Reprisal by Mitchell Smith - Free Book Online

Cozzens.
    "A choice out of nowhere," Greg had said. He was eating a cheeseburger, which was what he always had for lunch. "Why Cozzens?" It was hot, the library's tarred roof--the students called it Tar Beach--radiating heat from the summer afternoon.
    "Read Guard of Honor. He's an adult and he writes about men who are adults."
    "Cather writes about adults."
    "She writes about girls and boys. Mainly girls. ..."
    Lying on her side was definitely better. Something was happening. ... One night, Rebecca, across the room, had wakened when Charis was masturbating, had wakened and must have thought she was sick. She'd said, "Charis ...? Charis, are you okay?"
    And Charis had said, "I'm masturbating, Rebecca. I'm fine."
    Rebecca hadn't said anything after that. Probably embarrassed. Just lay there in the dark and listened. At the time, Charis had been using a hard rubber dildo called the Black Bomber, and it was big enough to hurt her. It hit something inside, which she'd felt before, and hurt her.
    Rebecca had said nothing for a few days about that middle-of-the-night thing--then she'd said something to Charis about supposing that doing that, playing with yourself, was healthy. Just another experience, and she supposed Charis knew a lot about sex ... had really been out in the world, not just a kid going to a college her mother taught at, for God's sake. From that, Charis knew that Rebecca had had no relationship yet. No serious fucking, for sure.
    Just a dreamer. Just hopeful dreaming. ...
    "Oh, I've been out in the world," Charis had said. "If you know the access codes and want to take the time, I think you can still find me on the Net."
    Rebecca, sitting at her desk doing her first-year Spanish--a hard course--had said, "Find you?"
    "Still see me on the Net, Becky.--I'm the six-year-old with the cock in her mouth."
    Rebecca had stared as if Charis had just grown another head that didn't look like her at all.
    "--See me doing that, and some other things. You'd be surprised."
    Rebecca had looked surprised.
    "I was there and in some magazine pictures, too. I was in Daddy's Daughter. I was in that one twice with just my white socks on--once with my father, Royce William Langenberg, and the next time with Philip and some other man. That time, I was eight."
    Rebecca had bowed her head, said, "Oh, Charis ..." looked down at her Spanish book and started to cry.
    She was a baby; that's all she was. She'd been crying for her father, too.
    Crying at night. ... Charis closed her eyes, drew her knees up and worked harder, pressing, turning her fist back and forth. Her vagina ached. She was hurt, and made a sound. Then she straightened her legs under the sheet and arched her back and came at last. ... It was such a relief. Such a relief, it was worth the trouble.
    The sheets smelled of her and sweat. Charis got up, changed the bed ... then put on her robe and went down the hall to the showers.
    When she came back, she dressed in jeans and a maroon T-shirt, her windbreaker and her running shoes. She packed an overnight bag, left a note for Rebecca--Gone down to Boston, back tomorrow--and left. It would be a long nighttime drive upstate.
    ... The Volkswagen's worn top was down for the first of morning air, blowing summer into the car. There were too many trees too close over the road for dawn to come quickly; it was easing in through the birches and oaks, so Charis drove gradually into daylight.
    She'd stopped twice--at a strip liquor store for the pint of vodka, hundred-proof ... then at Burleigh, at an all-night place, for gas and two chickenburgers--then had driven on up to Longford. ... There was no summer traffic on the roads, so far upstate and inland. Nothing to bring in tourists, unless they liked blue-necks' trash trailers in roadside clearings, and some tacky farms.--She'd been careful, never stopped at Longford the other times she'd come up here. Never asked anyone for directions, so she'd gotten lost twice the first time up, and once