the back of the bus—I still didn’t know what to call it—was getting more intense. A lot more intense.
Now, instead of just letting his head droop on my shoulder, he’d kind of scrunch up against me with his hands clasped in front of him, almost like paws. I never stopped being surprised by how calm he got when we were sitting like that, how all his tics and twitches disappeared.
On the morning when he first brushed against my chest—when, for the first time, the tips of his knuckles just lightly grazed the side of my breast—he pretended he’d had a spasm.
He said, “I’m sorry, Maisie. Sometimes it’s like, I don’t know, my hands do what they want without asking me .”
“That’s okay,” I said. I knew what it was like to feel as if your body were leading you in a direction you weren’t sure you wanted to follow. The truth was, I’d liked him touching me. It had felt really good. I knew it was sort of retarded. I mean, lots of kids my age had sex—on TV, and in my school—and here I was going nuts about some guy pretending not to know he was ever so lightly touching one of my boobs. Still, that first time, each of Shakes’s knuckles felt like separate electric shocks running down through my whole body. We were still pretending it was an accident, that we didn’t know what we were doing.
The second time, he let his hand linger and slightly rotated his wrist so that now it wasn’t his knuckles but rather the base of his palm touching my breast. It still could have been accidental.
I guess it was right on the edge between accidental and on purpose. That light touch, that brief contact—who knew? And yet that touch, if it was a touch, felt as if it were magically rearranging the molecules, the flow of atoms and particles between his hand and my skin.
Pretty soon, there was no way of even pretending that it was accidental. We were kissing and making out for real, and Shakes was touching my breasts. All that time that he and I were making out in the back of the bus, Shakes must have been under pressure from the other guys because he was still sitting with me and not with them.
I kept trying to imagine what that was like for Shakes, being caught between the guys and me. Later I would realize I hadn’t known him as well as I’d thought. But for the moment I really believed that I understood him because we’d grown up together, and then because we took those bus rides together, his head pressed against mine. I must have imagined that personal thoughts were flowing back and forth from one of us to the other. But we didn’t know each other at all. I couldn’t haveimagined what it was like to live inside his body.
It was hard for all of us, figuring out all the weird new stuff our bodies were doing. But it must have been harder for Shakes, since his body wasn’t like anyone else’s—or anyway, like no one else we knew. His body had always done what it wanted, regardless of what he might have liked. And now he had to get used to it telling him to do even more things he wasn’t sure he wanted to do.
For example, touching me. Probably, it would have been easier for him not to. Chris and Kevin wouldn’t have resented him, they wouldn’t have been so amazed that a kid they’d grown up with—me!—was now a girl who preferred messed-up, twitchy Shakes over perfect, healthy them. I couldn’t explain it, myself. Not that they asked. No one could talk about it.
Anyway, Shakes and I thought—or at least I thought—that we were safe. After that one time we got caught, we never slipped up. By the time one other kid got on the bus, Shakes and I were sitting bolt upright, and as far from each other as the narrow seat would allow. We were so silent, we sat so straight, we could have been at church.
What we did on that bus was our secret. A secretthat, I guess, we shared with Big Maureen, who must have seen us in her rearview mirror. But, as everyone knew, Maureen was a widow with five kids. She
Now, instead of just letting his head droop on my shoulder, he’d kind of scrunch up against me with his hands clasped in front of him, almost like paws. I never stopped being surprised by how calm he got when we were sitting like that, how all his tics and twitches disappeared.
On the morning when he first brushed against my chest—when, for the first time, the tips of his knuckles just lightly grazed the side of my breast—he pretended he’d had a spasm.
He said, “I’m sorry, Maisie. Sometimes it’s like, I don’t know, my hands do what they want without asking me .”
“That’s okay,” I said. I knew what it was like to feel as if your body were leading you in a direction you weren’t sure you wanted to follow. The truth was, I’d liked him touching me. It had felt really good. I knew it was sort of retarded. I mean, lots of kids my age had sex—on TV, and in my school—and here I was going nuts about some guy pretending not to know he was ever so lightly touching one of my boobs. Still, that first time, each of Shakes’s knuckles felt like separate electric shocks running down through my whole body. We were still pretending it was an accident, that we didn’t know what we were doing.
The second time, he let his hand linger and slightly rotated his wrist so that now it wasn’t his knuckles but rather the base of his palm touching my breast. It still could have been accidental.
I guess it was right on the edge between accidental and on purpose. That light touch, that brief contact—who knew? And yet that touch, if it was a touch, felt as if it were magically rearranging the molecules, the flow of atoms and particles between his hand and my skin.
Pretty soon, there was no way of even pretending that it was accidental. We were kissing and making out for real, and Shakes was touching my breasts. All that time that he and I were making out in the back of the bus, Shakes must have been under pressure from the other guys because he was still sitting with me and not with them.
I kept trying to imagine what that was like for Shakes, being caught between the guys and me. Later I would realize I hadn’t known him as well as I’d thought. But for the moment I really believed that I understood him because we’d grown up together, and then because we took those bus rides together, his head pressed against mine. I must have imagined that personal thoughts were flowing back and forth from one of us to the other. But we didn’t know each other at all. I couldn’t haveimagined what it was like to live inside his body.
It was hard for all of us, figuring out all the weird new stuff our bodies were doing. But it must have been harder for Shakes, since his body wasn’t like anyone else’s—or anyway, like no one else we knew. His body had always done what it wanted, regardless of what he might have liked. And now he had to get used to it telling him to do even more things he wasn’t sure he wanted to do.
For example, touching me. Probably, it would have been easier for him not to. Chris and Kevin wouldn’t have resented him, they wouldn’t have been so amazed that a kid they’d grown up with—me!—was now a girl who preferred messed-up, twitchy Shakes over perfect, healthy them. I couldn’t explain it, myself. Not that they asked. No one could talk about it.
Anyway, Shakes and I thought—or at least I thought—that we were safe. After that one time we got caught, we never slipped up. By the time one other kid got on the bus, Shakes and I were sitting bolt upright, and as far from each other as the narrow seat would allow. We were so silent, we sat so straight, we could have been at church.
What we did on that bus was our secret. A secretthat, I guess, we shared with Big Maureen, who must have seen us in her rearview mirror. But, as everyone knew, Maureen was a widow with five kids. She
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