Blue Moon (11 page)

She watched her sisters across the narrow channel, surrounded by their families. For once, Nora didn’t feel so different. Blue streamers popped overhead. A silver cascade. Purple starbursts. The grand finale: jewels of azure, gold, scarlet, and emerald scattering into the harbor. Josie spun around, her arms waving as if she were a baton twirler leading the parade, to make sure Cass was watching. Sean jostled T.J., pointing up; Nora loved how fireworks could make her teenage nephews lose their cool. She wished she could catch her sisters’ eyes, but Cass and Bonnie had their heads tilted back, watching for the last silvery streaks to fade away.

Now Nora saw Cass kiss Josie, then run with Bonnie back to work. Nora turned to Willis, to tell him she had to go, too, when she noticed his gaze. He was staring at her with the sweetest expression. Then he brushed her throat, his touch tender as a feather.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.

“I don’t,” said Nora, because she knew what was happening, and she let him kiss her.

A
unt Nora is a slut, you know.” Emma had said it the other night, when everyone was together watching the fireworks. Aunt Nora was across the channel, leaning against some stranger with her eyes closed. Belinda hadn’t even noticed her. She had her head back, watching colors exploding everywhere, when Emma put her mouth against her ear: “Aunt Nora is a slut, you know.”

Now Belinda sat under a beech tree, shredding grass while she waited for Emma to come out of summer school. It felt dangerous, illicit, to be on school grounds instead of at the beach on such a hot July day. Everything looked different from the way it did during the school year. The parking lot, usually full of teachers’ cars, was empty except for five or six spots. The rolling green lawn had dried in patches to scorched brown straw. All the folding chairs lay stacked on the sidewalk as the custodian waxed the auditorium floor. There weren’t any kids around.

When Emma had said that Aunt Nora was a slut, Belinda had laughed and said, “I know what you mean.” Actually, she had been totally shocked to hear it. She had always thought of Aunt Nora as the old-fashioned type—very tightlaced, like an old lady’s shoe. Not at all fun-loving like her mother and Aunt Bonnie. She never brought men to family gatherings; in fact, Belinda couldn’t remember ever seeing Nora with a man. She used to dye her hair blond, and she smoked cigarettes like a movie star. Maybe that was why Emma had called her a slut.

Belinda had the idea she had to act dumb in order for Emma to
like her. Emma had failed math and gotten a D in science, and Belinda had gotten straight A’s. But the fact was, Belinda felt dumb around Emma. Emma was beautiful, funny, and wicked, and she was always surprising Belinda. Her latest shocker was having her hair cut like a boy’s. Belinda couldn’t imagine doing it, but on Emma it looked great.

Here she came now, across the schoolyard. All the other summer-school kids hung around the bike rack, laughing and talking loud, as if it were recess. Emma took long strides, but she didn’t seem in a hurry. She wore a dark-yellow sundress and black sunglasses; she had gelled her spiky hair. Emma was thirteen, same as Belinda, but she seemed so much cooler.

“You look fabulous,” Emma said theatrically, bending under the low branches to join Belinda.

“Are you serious?” Belinda said. But she posed anyway, elbow crooked, hand behind her head, like Marilyn Monroe. Belinda wore torn Guess? jean shorts, a flimsy cotton peasant blouse she’d borrowed from her mother, and flip-flops.

“It’s knowing how to sit,” Emma said. “You’re lying under this gorgeous tree, very mysterious in the shade. All those juvenile delinquents are wondering what the smartest kid in school is doing hanging around outside summer school.”

“I’m not the smartest kid.”

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

Belinda didn’t say anything. She didn’t want Emma thinking of her that way: Belinda, the smartest kid.

“Don’t look now, but you-know-who is watching you.”

“He is?” Belinda peeked from under her bangs. She was smiling like a maniac in spite of herself. Todd Evans was talking to kids at the bike rack, but he was definitely looking their way.

“He wants you,” Emma said.

“He’s probably looking at you.”

“No. He told me. He wanted me to ask you if you’ll go out with him.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, but I’m not going to do it. He’s a jerk. You can do a lot better.”

Belinda felt flattered, but Emma didn’t know what she was talking about. Belinda had liked Todd since April. “What did he say?”

“He said …” Emma took off her sunglasses, raked some hair into her eyes, and let her lower lip protrude. She cleared her throat. “He said, ‘I wanta go out wit huh.’”

“He’s nice, Emma,” Belinda said, laughing but stung.

“He used to go out with Lisa Larrabee, and she is the biggest slut. Just like …” Emma’s eyes flicked to Belinda. “Aunt Nora. I know you don’t believe me about her.”

“Well, how do you know she’s a slut?”

“Two ways. I can see with my own eyes, and I heard our mothers talking.”

“Mom said that? About her sister?” Belinda couldn’t believe it. Her mother was so loyal, sometimes so annoyingly devoted to her family, she would never say anything bad about any of them. “I’m sorry, but she would never rag on Aunt Nora like that.”

“You poor baby,” Emma said, touching Belinda’s ear. “If it’s the truth, it’s not a putdown, no matter what. You know how you can tell a slut?”

Belinda waited for one of Emma’s wicked punch lines.

“Sluts are sad,” Emma said. “They think there’s only one way to get people to love them. You know that purple eyeshadow Lisa wears? And the big dangly earrings and the bleached-blond hair? You have to think of it as a costume. It’s exactly like a clown suit. When you see a clown, you laugh just because it’s a clown, whether you think it’s funny or not. When you see a slut, you fuck her just because she’s a slut, whether you really like her or not.”

“Just because Aunt Nora bleaches her hair does not mean she’s a slut.”

“Of course it doesn’t. But have you ever seen her happy? No, because she’s not. She is incredibly sad. Just like Lisa, if you think about it. They both sleep around.”

“What do you mean, ‘sleep around’?” Belinda asked, concentrating on a thick blade of grass. She had already shredded it into four pieces, and now she was shredding those four into eight. Talking with Emma about sluts and sleeping around felt more delicious than talking about Todd.

“I mean going to bed with more than one guy. One after the other. Whoever wants you, you do it with him.”

“Like you actually sleep,” Belinda said, thinking of how weird it was to use such little-kid words—’sleep’ and ‘bed’—to describe something as exotic as sex.

“Why do they say ‘going to bed’?” Belinda screwed up one of the grass shreds, tearing it unevenly. She threw out all the pieces and began fringing a new blade.

“It’s just a bullshit way of saying you go someplace alone together, take off all your clothes, and play with each other’s body. Some prude probably thought it up.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“Maybe.”

Belinda’s head jerked up. “You have?”

Emma shrugged, a little smirk on her lips. She pulled a lipstick out of her pocket, swished on some glittery red, and handed the tube to Belinda. Belinda’s hand closed around it; her palm felt sweaty. “I have never slept around,” Emma said.

“What about the other?”

“No. But I’ve had the chance. I don’t want to.”

Belinda wondered who Emma had had the chance with. You heard so much about boys being sex-starved, always ready to take advantage of you, but that had not been Belinda’s experience. She could lie awake for hours at night, stiff as a board with the tension of desiring Todd, and before him Paul, and before him Jeremy; she’d feel it so powerfully that she was sure the next day that, sensing her love, he would pull her into the coatroom and cover her face with kisses.

But nothing would ever happen. The boys would hardly even look at her. Sometimes she would get a message, like the one she had just gotten from Todd, delivered by one of her friends or her brother or her cousin, that someone liked her. Wanted to go out with her. Big deal. Even when she said yes, like she had with Paul, the message came back, “I can’t go out with you. Now I like Colleen.”

“Did Todd really tell you he wants to ask me out?”

“Yes.”

“What else did he say?”

Emma started to take off her dark glasses again, stick out her lower lip, rearrange her hair. “He said …”

“Okay, never mind,” Belinda said, laughing.

“Would you want his grubby hands all over your beautiful bod?”

“Beautiful? Hah.” Now Belinda could never go out with Todd, knowing how Emma felt about him.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Bel, you’re one of the only girls in school with tits.”

Belinda had, in fact, noticed. She blushed.

“Of course, I’m one of the others,” Emma went on. “Small tits do not run in our family. Just look at our mothers. God, I hope I look more like your mother when I’m old than mine.”

“Your mother’s so nice,” Belinda said.

“She’s a cow. An entire herd. She let herself go. But let’s get back to the subject.”

“What subject?” Belinda asked, shredding grass again. She knew exactly what subject, but the whole thing was making her feel hot in the face and funny between the legs.

“The subject of bodies. Do you want Todd’s grubby hands on yours?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then whose hands do you want?”

“Whose do you want?”

“Keanu Reeves’s,” Emma said. She lay on her back, one arm under her head, and arched her spine. “Oh, Keanu baby.”

“I mean someone real.”

“He’s real,” Emma replied. “I can have him whenever I want him.”

“Oh, right. He just flies in from Hollywood?”

“No,” Emma said. “But if I feel like it, I can think of him when I masturbate.”

Belinda had never heard someone her own age say that word. Her mouth felt too dry to talk.

“Don’t you ever?” Emma asked, raising herself up on one elbow.

Belinda shrugged.

“Don’t you know how?”

Belinda shrugged again.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Come on. No one’s home at my house. I’ll show you.”

Emma’s garage felt cool after their long bike ride. The girls parked their bikes, and Emma used her key to let them into the kitchen. She poured them glasses of lemonade. Belinda was glad to have something to drink, because she didn’t know what to say. She felt as though she were on a train heading for somewhere scary, somewhere she knew she shouldn’t go. The train kept stopping at safe stations, places with familiar faces on the platform, but she didn’t get off. She felt too thrilled to be on the train.

They went upstairs. Emma, for once, was as quiet as Belinda. She poked her head into her parents’ room, then Sean’s.

“They’re all out,” Emma said, as if she were surprised by this. She closed her bedroom door. Belinda stood in the middle of the room, pretending to be interested in Emma’s bookshelf. Usually she’d just flop on the bed without being asked, but now she felt too nervous.

“Let’s put on some makeup,” Emma said. She stood in front of her mirror, applying brown eyeliner to her lower lid. Belinda stood beside her, brushing on mascara.

“First of all, you have to make yourself feel sexy,” Emma said. She dipped her pinky into a pot of red lip gloss and smeared it on her lips.

Belinda tried to listen to her, but all she could think about was what they were going to do. Her mother had explained masturbation to her, and Belinda had read about it in the blue book her mother had given her:
A Doctor Talks to Nine-to Twelve-Year-Olds.

She had tried it a couple of times, but nothing had happened. It had embarrassed her, touching her own bottom. Because no matter what the diagrams showed, no matter how the books explained about the “clitoris” and “vulva” and “labia majora,” it was all the same to Belinda. Her bottom.

Emma was getting undressed, so Belinda did, too. Naturally, Emma had on a filmy pink bra, straight out of Victoria’s Secret or somewhere. Also some kind of string underpants.

“Those are nice,” Belinda said. “Mine look like rejects from a
gym suit.” She stood there in her plain white bra and plain white panties that Emma had seen a million times. But it had never counted before. Just last week they had given each other fake tattoos. Josie had been sitting right there, at Emma’s dressing table, drawing all over Emma’s Schoolbook with a lipstick. That’s when Belinda had kicked Josie out, causing the war to erupt.

“They’re very refugee,” Emma said, laughing. “Okay, you sit at that end of the bed. There. I’ll take this end.”

“Then what?”

Emma giggled. “God, I really do have to teach you, don’t I? You take off your undies, you lie back, and you touch yourself.” Belinda watched her strip off her bra and panties. Emma’s breasts were round and pale, compared with the rest of her tan body. Her nipples, which were sort of brownish, stuck way out, like flower buds. Only Belinda had never seen a pinkish-brown flower. She took off her own underwear, embarrassed but slightly proud that her breasts were bigger than Emma’s.

They sat at opposite ends of the bed, nude.

“You know the spot, right?” Emma asked.

“Not exactly.”

Emma looked skeptical. “It’s very specific. You have to know how to find it.” She spread her own legs, revealing a dark, moist crack. “Here.”

Belinda pretended to see what Emma was pointing at.

“You didn’t see, did you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay.” Emma pushed Belinda onto her back. Instinctively, Belinda let her legs fall apart. Emma took the middle finger of Belinda’s right hand and placed it on a particular spot on the front part of Belinda’s bottom. “That little bump. You rub it.”

Belinda couldn’t, not with Emma watching. “Okay,” Belinda said. “What else?”

“Well, you lick your finger first, to make it slippery. You do that whenever it gets dry. Think of something that turns you on. Like Todd. Or Keanu Reeves. Or some sexy scene from a movie. And just keep touching that spot, light or hard, even with your fingernail, and keep your finger slippery, until you come.”