Megan Hart - Switch

few last times. The scent of him fills me. The couch

beneath me dips again as he leans to put his hand on

the arm behind my head.

Crouching over me, his hand stil on his penis, his face is lit

by the television's moving shadows but I have no trouble

looking straight into his eyes. His jizz is going cold on my

skin and I'm afraid to move in case it drips off me onto the

cushions.

He leans to kiss me with an open mouth, but no tongue.

It's sweet and unexpected. I taste the salt of his sweat on

his upper lip.

He puls his shirt up from the floor and wipes me clean,

which is also unexpected and leaves me uncertain how to

react. He scrubs at the wetness on my bra with his sleeve,

but it's too late. I can wash it, but there wil always be a

stain.

stain.

"You are so beautiful," Austin says when he kisses me

again.

It's the first time he says it and this time, though later I

won't, I believe him.

My fingers had gone stiff from gripping the pen. I hadn't

thought about that night in a long time. Other memories

had crowded it out. Worse memories, actualy, that had

made me forget there'd once been a time when I'd been

young and in love.

"Discipline," I said aloud. I wasn't smoking, but the taste and scent of tobacco smoke filed my senses anyway.

What the hel was going on?

I gave in to the need to let my legs buckle under me then. I

let myself fal onto my couch, where I curled into a bal and

puled the knitted afghan over my head. Through the holes

the stark wals of my apartment glared at me until I closed

my eyes.

I'm no prude. When other kids were watching Aladdin,

my mom was working third shift and leaving me alone in

my mom was working third shift and leaving me alone in

the house from ten-thirty at night until eight in the morning.

She thought I was asleep when she left, and it was true I

was in bed. I never told her how anxious I was when she

left, or how hard it was for me to sleep knowing I was

alone in the house al night. I'd creep downstairs and

console myself with hours of cable television. I saw a lot of

things I probably shouldn't have, but it also taught me a lot.

Even so, these notes. The commands. What had seemed

fairly innocuous at the start couldn't be confused for

anything innocent now.

The lists had been specific. Detailed. And now, explicit.

What sort of woman wanted someone to tel her how to

live her day? What sort of woman needed someone else to

tel her to be beautiful, to be strong? What sort of woman

craved the commands of someone else dictating her life?

I put my hand between my legs, on the damp cotton of my

panties, and felt my clit pulse.

What sort of woman?

I thought I knew.

I thought I knew.

Chapter 13

Here's a funny story made humorous by time, since it

wasn't funny when it happened. I was nineteen when my

mom had Arthur, which means that when she got pregnant,

I was eighteen. A senior in high school and screwing my

brains out with Mr. Popular Jock.

My mom had always been up front about sex and

protecting myself. Too up front, in my opinion, since my

sex life was the second-to-last topic of discussion I ever

wanted to share with her, the last being hers. Austin wasn't

the first boy I'd fooled around with. He wasn't even the

first boy I'd slept with, though the previous few times I'd

had sex had been so unremarkable and meaningless I

mostly forgot it had ever happened. I'd been on the pil for

a couple years already, but I made him use condoms, too.

There's nothing quite like being an ilegitimate child to

make a girl fear pregnancy. There was no way I was going

to end up the way my mother had.

Stil, when a condom broke I wasn't too worried. At least,

not until my period was late. Not even a warning cramp to

announce its pending arrival. I counted the days and when

we'd had sex—easy enough to do because it was pretty

we'd had sex—easy enough to do because it was pretty

much every time we were together, which by that point

was almost every day.

I didn't tel Austin what I suspected. I didn't tel anyone. I

went to the drugstore on the far end of town and bought

the first pregnancy test I could find. I came home and

drank a quart of water before I went to sleep so when I

got up I'd have plenty of pee to use for that first morning

urination. I read the instructions four times. I peed on the

little stick and watched with my guts cramping from fear,

not PMS, for the lines to show up. One or two? Safe or

caught?

One line.

I hadn't been raised a regular churchgoer, but I got on my

knees there in front of the toilet and I sent a prayer of

thanks so fervent I was sure any God who'd listen would

forgive me for my past sins. Then I wrapped the test in a

handful of toilet paper the way I usualy wrapped my

tampons and shoved it to the bottom of the garbage can.

I got home from school to an empty house, my mom at

work as usual. And, as usual, I was already flying through

my homework and my chores so I could spend the rest of

my homework and my chores so I could spend the rest of

the time with Austin until she got home. When I went into

the bathroom to clean it, my heart stopped. Literaly. The

world grayed out in that two seconds before it started to

beat again, and I clutched the sink to keep from faling.

There on the counter was a pregnancy test. The same

brand I'd used that morning. Only this one had two lines in

the little window. A positive result.

This time when I got on my knees it wasn't to pray. I put

my head in my shaking hands and concentrated on

drawing in breath after breath. I could smel the bleachy

cleanser I'd meant to use on the shower wals, which never

wanted to come clean from the soap scum no matter how

hard I scrubbed. I could feel my breath whistling through

my fingers.

I got myself under control and onto my feet to stare again

at the test. Hadn't I left enough time for the results? Had it

turned positive after I'd thrown it away and gone my merry

way to school, secure in my un-knocked-up state?

Had I been pregnant al day and not known it?

Normaly I wouldn't touch the garbage without rubber

Normaly I wouldn't touch the garbage without rubber

gloves, but I dug through the layers of used tissues and Q-

tips without even a gag, though my stomach had risen in

my throat. I found the box I'd wrapped as carefuly as the

test, but before I could tear it open to reread the

instructions to see if it was possible a test could turn

positive later than the three minutes I'd given it. And I

found, stil wrapped tightly and hidden, the test I'd taken

that morning. Which meant, of course, the one on the sink

wasn't mine.

My thanks this time were louder and more fervent than

they'd been that morning, but shorter. Because if it wasn't

mine, that meant it was my mother's. I didn't want to think

about that.

Thinking of this now, I puled up in front of my mom's

house. The one she'd lived in with Leo and Arty for the

past three years, not one of the many in which she'd raised

me. A brick row home sandwiched between two others

and within a stone's throw of the railroad tracks, it wasn't

anything like my dad's house. Yet inside the good smels of

something baking tickled my nose instead of expensive

scented candles, and the hug I got from my mom felt

natural and not forced.

"Arty's upstairs getting ready," she said. "I told him he couldn't wear his Batman costume to the movies, but…

wel."

"I don't care if he wears his Batman costume."

My mom sighed and shook her head. "You're sure?"

Once upon a time I'd have been appaled at the thought,

but distance seemed to have melowed me. Or time,

maybe. I shrugged.

"What's it to me if the kid's happy?"

I couldn't decipher her look, which only lasted a second as

she turned to shout up the stairs. "Arty! Paige is here!"

"Where's Leo?" I'd always liked him, even if he did laugh

too loud at truly stupid television shows and wear offensive

novelty T-shirts.

Again with the look I couldn't interpret. "He's not home."

"Obviously." She didn't return my smile, but before I could ask her if something was wrong, Arty bounded down the

stairs. "Hey."

stairs. "Hey."

"Pow!" Arty leaped in front of me with his hands on his

hips. His brown eyes glinted from behind the mask.

Clearly he'd had no intention of listening to our mom. "I'm

Batman!"

"I see that. Are you ready to go, Batman?"

He launched himself into me, his arms and legs wrapping

around me. "Yay! Yes! Yay for Paige!"

"Good luck with him. Today was somebody's birthday at

school. He's had a lot of sugar."

"Oh, joy. Put a sweatshirt on, shorty. The movie theater

might be chily." I squeezed him back, tight. He smeled

like baby shampoo and candy. I could handle even a

sugar-infused Arty.

My mom tried to press a ten-dolar bil into my hand as

Arty struggled into his jacket, but I refused to take it.

"Mom, no."

"For popcorn."

"I said no." I'd been taler than her since seventh grade, but

"I said no." I'd been taler than her since seventh grade, but looking down at her now it seemed strange to be staring at

the top of her head. She'd starting graying early but had

always kept up the color. Now I saw half an inch of white

here and there along her part.

I noticed lines in the corners of her eyes, too, when she

looked up at me. My mom had never looked old to me, I

guess because she wasn't, but she looked tired. Her

eyeliner had smudged a little as though applied by an

unsteady hand, or as if she'd been rubbing her eyes. She

did that when she had a headache.

"You okay, Mom?"

"Fine, baby." She pressed the folded bil toward me again,

even though I jerked my hand away. "Take this."

"I said no. C'mon. It's my treat."

She frowned. I looked like my dad most every other time,

but now I saw myself in her face. "Paige. You can't tel me

that fancy apartment's not expensive."

"And I have a good job, remember? You don't have to

worry so much. Realy. I'm happy to take Arty to the

movies. I'm fine."

movies. I'm fine."

With a sigh she tucked the bil into the pocket of her jeans.

"As if you'd tel me otherwise?"

She had me there. I merely grinned and shrugged. She

shook her head and bent to help Arty slide his arms into

his sleeves. Considering how much Arty was bouncing up

and down it was no smal feat. I reached a hand to help

her and she stepped back with a strangely defeated sigh.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go!"

"Chil, little dude. Chil," I admonished with a hard look at my mom. "You sure you're okay?"

"Just tired, baby. Go have fun. I'l see you when you get

back. Not too late," she cautioned for Arty's benefit and

not mine. "School tomorrow."

Arty, stil bouncing, grabbed for my hand. "Let's

goooooooo!"

Like me, my little brother looked like the man who'd

fathered him. Personalitywise, though, he was almost

entirely my mother. Nonstop chatter from the backseat

entirely my mother. Nonstop chatter from the backseat

kept me entertained on the ten-minute drive to the mal.

Growing up, I'd had to go al the way to Palmyra to hit a

multiplex, but now Lebanon had its own stadium-seating

theater fancy enough to rival anything in Harrisburg. The

prices were cheaper, too, a reminder there were some

minor advantages to life in the town where I'd grown up.