“THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU!”

“Please stop, I can’t-oh no. Oh God, no.”

His pores turned deep black, and then begin growing into nubs; shapes; long, reaching appendages. The first of the tendrils began to form around his neck and arms, stretching hungrily out and twitching with anxiousness and rage.

“Get away,” he gurgled in a voice only slightly his own. “Get away. It knows who you are, and it won’t stop…” And then his voice became garbled, because out of his mouth grew a mass of slippery, wriggling black tentacles, whipping fiercely. I watched as his legs formed huge, backward-facing spindles, like those of a dog or a goat. For a second there was still the silhouette of a man, hanging in the air, and then it was the creature, this horrible Blacklight from the future, my hideous reflection.

It made a noise, sort of like metal being crushed in a scrapyard, and took its first careful step toward me.

CHAPTER TEN

IS THERE ANYTHING more satisfying than taking a shower in the bathroom of the girl who you just had a whole lot of noisy sex with? Unfamiliar showers are a pet peeve of mine, so this moment of bliss is less common. I never know how to operate the shower, what knobs to turn where, and what buttons to push this way or that. The water pressure always sucks, the floor feels strange and slippery, and, of course, there’s the pressing ethical question of whether or not you’re allowed to pee on the floor. The shower is one of those private, personal spaces that, through constant daily routine and observant familiarity, you know as your own. Cleaning yourself in someone else’s shower is like being the Jewish friend who was brought along to Sunday mass. This morning, however, was different. Walk in, turn on the water, and do my thing.

Midway through washing my hair, the curtain gets pulled back and I jump. It’s probably Renée, right, but it could be Andrew or Aunt Marie-no glasses means constant paranoia (think Velma from Scooby-Doo). Fortunately it is Renée, naked and giving me a smile that I’m pretty sure is reserved just for my lanky ass. Without a word, our bodies mesh together, her breasts slippery against my chest, her lips hot and full and pillowy. As if on cue, everything besides Renée Tomas is gone. Nothing could make me happier than her and here and this.

After we, ahem, wash up for a while, our arms curl around each other and just stand there in the steam, her head cradled under my chin.

“Hey, you,” she says.

“Mmm.”

“So, last night…That was your first time, I take it.”

“Mmm.”

She giggles and runs her index finger back and forth along my skin. God in heaven, yes. “Is that an affirming or denying mumble?”

“Affirming.”

“Right.”

After some silence, I have to ask Stupid Guy Question Number One. “How’d you know?”

She makes a noise in her throat that means that she was expecting this. “There was just that little amount of…unfamiliarity with the procedure, I guess. Don’t worry. You’re a bit of a natural in the first place, and I had fun teaching you new things in the second.” She chuckles. “Corrupting you is kickass.”

And Number Two, of course: “How was I?”

“Good,” she says. “Really good. For your first time, stellar.”

“Really?”

“You just learned as you went along, y’know, placement and such. You were drunk, too…but man. You’re just on the ball when it comes to the little things.”

“Hrm?”

“You were good to my ears. Things like that.”

“Just…reciprocating.”

“You’ll be reciprocating a whole lot if I get my say from now on.”

We take some more silence, occasionally rocking back and forth in each other’s arms. I feel her head twitch, and she stares straight up at me with a reluctant, miserable look.

“Anyone told you about my folks yet?”

The question catches me off guard, and I can’t be clever. “Yeah. I heard about it at school.”

She nods. “I figured.” A pause, then: “It’s okay, you know. We can talk about it, or not, but I just want you to know it’s okay if we do. It’s not forbidden.”

“Okay.”

She keeps her eyes locked into mine. “I don’t sleep with a lot of boys.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“I mean, I have slept with some boys,” she says way too fast. “And some girls. And some of them were for fun, but most of them were only if I really, really cared about them.”

All this is doing is making me think about my girlfriend with other guys, which is the most uncomfortable thing I can imagine, and girls, which is embarrassingly much less so. The venom stirs, mumbling low in its throat. She can feel the change in my body too and holds me out at arm’s length.

“Look, this has a point.”

“What’s that?”

She puts her hand under my chin and guides my eyes to hers.

“That I know last night was a little sudden,” she whispers, and then laughs. “And a little drunken, yeah. But I want you to know…that this isn’t just…I’m not…”

The venom retreats like a wounded animal, and my heart feels like it’s going to burst. I lean forward and kiss her. It’s a Dawson’s Creek kiss, an interrupting kiss that lets the other person know that you understand what they’re going to say before you do. Her response is frantic; her hand finds the back of my head and presses. We kiss as if I’m going off to war.

When we come up for air, she looks at me hard. “I’m going to be a bitch now.”

“How so?”

“Are you in love with me, Locke?”

“Oh, you fucking bitch.”

“I’m serious.”

No matter what I answer, I’ll think it’s the wrong thing. Either I take the clingy, emotional path or the totally superficial path. So I go with what I feel. Which is something I rarely do, seeing as going with what I feel usually results in me standing over someone, cackling and sobbing in the same breath, while they rethink why they were fucking with me in the first place. This time, I feel something random and unprovoked and strange and utterly fantastic lying in the depths of my heart. The Great Truth, the Engine of Survival, the Fifth Element.

“Yeah,” I whisper, “I’m pretty sure I am, Renée.”

She looks at me for a bit more and then says, “Yeah, me too.”

We grab each other tight, fearless.

Renée has made it readily apparent that she’s not so adept in the cooking department, and I can make a mean batch of cream-cheese scrambled eggs (hey, you have a little brother, you learn to cook some fabulous platters that Mom wouldn’t tolerate if she was around). But as I come through the hallway into the glaring daylight of the kitchen, I realize that I’m in trouble.

Because Andrew’s sitting there reading the funnies. The thin newspaper is bunched in his clenched-white hands. He looks like a big, mean, stupid, and thoroughly pissed-off gorilla who likes the Wu-Tang Clan. He looks like someone who’s just found the guy who fucks his sister in their kitchen.

I freeze and let cold wash over me and come to rest in the pit of my stomach. A voice in the back of my mind reminds me of something I heard on the Discovery Channel: If a bear attacks, make yourself as big and loud as possible to chase it off. But before I can lift my arms and yell, “GO! AWAY!” Andrew takes a sip of his orange juice and mumbles, “Sid-down, Vinetti.”

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

This is really, REALLY not the time.

Say “make me”! That’d be awesome! Just try it. “Make me, Andrew.” It’d be like you’re in a Robert Rodriguez movie!

I sit slowly, clasping my hands in front of me and regulating my breathing. The venom crouches calmly on its haunches, preparing to launch if necessary. There’s a good chance I’m going to bleed furiously at the end of the conversation, and I have to be ready for that. In the meantime, I can just pray that Renée stays in her room-or is wearing headphones.