Read Hydroplane: Fictions for Free Online Page B

face.
    The boy-looking girl showing me a note from the new kid that says, Meet me in the woods Friday, saying she is going to the woods by his house to show him her tits and that they will kiss with tongues and more and to tell her mother, if she doesn't get back until late on Friday and if her mother calls my house looking for her, that she is staying at school late for a club or some such, What club, Make one up.
    Running to the last guest, whose hand is on fire, from my place in the chair by the window and pulling him, by his thin wrist, back to the kitchen and plunging his hand to under the still-running faucet to put out the fire, and the hostess watching, clearly annoyed.
    The boy-looking girl sitting on her kitchen counter, mixing water and sugar in a paper cup and telling me to taste it, saying this is what it will taste like when she does what she does in the woods with the new kid on Friday, and tasting it and finding it tastes very confusing, not at all like sugar, not at all like water.
    The hostess giving a look as if to say, How dare you touch my guest, and the last guest giving an equally annoyed look as if wonderingwho I am, where I have come from, why I am plunging his thin hand into the cluttered sink of hardened wax and scorch in front of the other guests, none of whom I know, when he was clearly not on fire, clearly fine, both of us walking away from the sink, me following him, I'm sorry, It's okay, I thought you were on fire, I wasn't, I'm sorry, It's okay.
    Me and the boy-looking girl in the woods after school, her taking me to where she will meet the new kid on Friday, her starting a small campfire in a circle of rocks with twigs and balled up notebook paper and a box of matches, her showing me what she will do with the new kid, how she will lift up her shirt like this, how she will unbutton his pants like this, saying, Breaker breaker, into her fist, then flattening our bodies to the grass like cats, and rolling in the grass, our eyes squeezed shut, before stomping out the fire in the circle of rocks, before buttoning our pants, before walking home, her saying she will kick my legs black and blue if I ever tell anyone anything.
    The crossing guard's backyard garden where we once go for science to taste new lettuce and new carrots just pulled from the dirt and which still have dirt on them when we eat them and taste, to me, like mud, and everyone else, the teacher, the students, the crossing guard, proclaiming they are so sweet, the tiny carrots, the wrinkled lettuce leaves, just pulled from the garden, and the confusion when something is supposed to be sweet and I am supposed to know what sweet means, what it tastes like, but the something sweet does not taste sweet to me at all, but bad, like mud, like sugarwater, like the new kid is supposed to taste, and seeing this girl chewing on her carrot, and seeing the new kid chewing, and running into the house feeling sick, feeling like I am going to throw up, and throwing up on my shirt, on the crossing guard's waxedkitchen floor, the new kid coming in and seeing and calling for his mother who calls my mother.
    Standing near the bedroom door behind the last guest, waiting for the friends to come out, both of us waiting to get into the bedroom, him knocking on the door to get in there sooner, and me knocking on the door from behind him.
    The new kid's mother giving me a clean shirt to wear, giving me a place to sit in the quiet house, a place to wait for my mother to show, waiting even after the kids from class have left, the new kid waiting outside under a tree, and I can see him through the window, not wanting to come back inside until I leave.
    The friends, at last, coming out from the bedroom, looking worn, unbuttoned, giving the last guest dirty looks for knocking, for interrupting, as I quickly push him into the bedroom and enter the bedroom behind him and shut the door, despite his struggling, despite his confusion, and lock the door, and the other