“And your parents will be understanding,” Sam said.
“I don’t know what they’ll be, Sam! But I’m not going to just let you — let you go to jail.” I wadded my napkin and threw it at the pizza box angrily. We’d so narrowly avoided being pulled apart — it seemed appalling to think that after everything else, an entirely man-made, unscientific event might be what finally separated us. And there was Sam, looking guilty, as if he believed that he’d been responsible for my supposed death. “No matter how bad my parents are, that’s worse.”
Sam looked at me. “Do you trust them?”
“Sam, they’re not going to try to kill me,” I snapped.
I stopped and put my hands over my nose and mouth, my breath coming out in a rush.
Sam’s face didn’t change. The napkin he had been very carefully ripping apart stilled in his hands.
I covered my whole face now. I couldn’t stand to look at him. “I’m sorry, Sam,” I said. “I’m sorry.” The thought of his face, unchanging, gaze steady and lupine — I felt tears trying to tease themselves out of my eyes.
I heard the floor creak as he stood up. I pulled my hands away from my face. “Please don’t go,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I got you a present,” Sam said. “I forgot it in the car. I’m going to go get it.” He touched the top of my head as he went quietly out, shutting the door.
So I was still feeling like the most terrible person in the world when he gave me the dress. He was sitting on his knees in front of me like a penitent, watching my face carefully as I pulled it out. For some reason I thought, at first, that it would be skimpy underwear, and I felt relieved and disappointed, somehow, when it was a pretty summer dress instead. I couldn’t seem to sort out my emotions lately.
I flattened the top out with my hand, smoothing the fabric, looking at the fine straps. It was a dress for a hot, carefree summer, which felt like a long time from now. I looked up at Sam and saw that he was biting the inside of his lip, watching my reaction.
“You’re the nicest boy ever,” I told him, feeling undeserving and terrible. “You didn’t have to get me anything. I like thinking about you thinking about me when I’m not around.” I reached out and put my hand on his cheek. He turned his face and kissed my palm; his lips inside my hand made something inside me squeeze. My voice was a little lower when I said, “Should I go try it on now?”
In the bathroom, it took me several long minutes how to work out putting it on, though there was nothing complicated about it. I was unused to wearing dresses, and I felt like I had nothing on. I stood on the edge of the tub to look in the mirror, trying to imagine what had made Sam look at this dress and say Get that for Grace. Was it because he thought I would like it? Because he thought it was sexy? Because he wanted to get me something and this happened to be the first thing? I wasn’t sure why it made a difference whether he had asked a salesgirl what his girlfriend would like versus found it hanging on a hanger and imagined my body in it.
In the mirror, I thought I looked like a college girl, confident, pretty. Sure of what would show off her body to its best advantage. I smoothed the front of the dress; the skirt tickled and teased my legs. I could just see the curve of my br**sts. Suddenly it seemed very urgent to go back to the room so that Sam could see me. It seemed very urgent to make him look at me and touch me.
But when I made it back to the room and slid in the doorway, I was abruptly self-conscious. Sam was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed with his eyes closed, listening to the music, far away from this room, but he opened his eyes when I shut the door behind me. I made a face, twisted my hands behind my back.
“What do you think?” I asked.
He scrambled to his feet.
“Oh,” he said.
I said, “The only thing is that I couldn’t do the tie in the back myself.”
Sam took a breath and stepped to me. I could feel my heart pounding, though I couldn’t understand why it was. He picked up the ties where they attached to the side of the dress and put his arms behind me. But instead of tying them, he dropped the ties and pressed his hands up against my back, his hands hot through the thin cotton of the dress. It felt like there was nothing between his fingertips and my skin. His face rested on my neck. I could hear him breathing; each breath sounded measured, restrained.
I whispered, “You like it, then?”
Then, all of a sudden, we were kissing. It felt like such a long time since we’d kissed like this, like it was deadly serious — for a second, all I thought was, I just ate pizza, until I realized that Sam had, too. Sam slid his hands around to rest on my hips, wrinkling the fabric, erasing my doubt, his fingers tight with wanting. Just that, just the heat of his palms through the dress, holding my hips, was enough to make my insides twist fiercely. I was wound so tightly it hurt. A little sigh escaped from me.
“I can stop,” he said, “if you’re not ready.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
So, kneeling on the bed, we kept kissing, and he kept touching, careful, like he had never touched me before. It was like he couldn’t remember what shape I’d had before, and he was rediscovering it. He felt where my shoulder blades pressed against the fabric of the dress. Skimmed his palm along my shoulders. His fingers traced along the swell of my breast at the edge of the dress.
I closed my eyes. There were other things in the world that demanded our attention, but right now, all I could think of were my thighs and Sam’s hands running up them under my skirt, pushing the fabric up like summer clouds around me. When I opened my eyes, my hands pressed on top of Sam’s hands, there were a hundred shadows beneath us. Every one of them was Sam or me, but it was impossible to tell which was which.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
COLE
This new concoction felt like poison.
Sometime after midnight, I stepped outside. It was black as death on the other side of the back door, but I listened to make certain I was alone. My stomach was tight with hunger, a sensation at once painful and productive. Concrete proof that I was working. The fasting had made me jittery and watchful, a cruel sort of high. I lay my notebook with the details of my experiments on the step so that Sam would know where I’d gone if I didn’t come back. The woods hissed at me. They didn’t sleep even if everyone else did.
I rested the needle against the inside of my wrist and closed my eyes.