"What the fuck was that?" I asked my reflection aloud. "Jesus." My makeupless face, my simple white hippie dress, my bare feet with the chipping polish. I felt strange and dizzy, my eyes jumping around the room for something to wear. I hadn't even unpacked everything yet.
I thought about Leon's clothes…California cool. Baggy, sexy. I opened one of my suitcases and disgustedly rifled through, throwing one article of clothing after another onto the hardwood floor. I had nothing but tee-shirts and jeans, and little gingham blouses with capped sleeves with bows on them, sundry sundresses to hide 'the body.'
My jeans were okay, all guys' jeans, loose and faded. They might pass for something cool, with the right shirt…a tight shirt…Leon liked The Body. I wished all my tee-shirts weren't huge, stained, threadbare, brandless.
I kept digging even though I knew there was nothing. There was nothing that wouldn't make me immediately identifiable as the spoiled rich white kid I was. I sighed and put on my favorite pair of jeans—faded almost white, with a rip on the ass, frayed at the waistline and around the ankles. They'd been Jackson's. They hung off my hips, leaving the black lace waistband of my panties completely exposed. It was kind of sexy, I thought, the way my flat belly was so pale against the inky lace.
But a shirt, dammit. Where would I get a tight shirt? And then suddenly I had an idea…
My mother was a rail. A shapeless sapling of a woman who'd never had to count a calorie in her life. 'The Body' had come from my father's side of things. She'd probably kill me, but I tried not to think about it as I slipped into a black bra and ran topless down the stairs to the room she shared every summer with my father.
Lingerie drawer…She had so much lingerie it was obscene. I was careful…Didn't want her to know I'd been in there. I could not believe what I was seeing as I dug…thongs, string bikinis, silk and lace of every shape and color, a party back of flavored condoms…My god. I was traumatized for life.
The little white tanktop, simple, shaped like a man's, stretched over my breasts and clung to the slim contour of my ribcage. I had good arms, too. I looked at the mirror, the way the muscles moved when I ran my hands through my hair. From dancing…From before The Body. But I felt sexy for the first time in three years as I looked at myself. I took my hair out of the ponytail and it fell loose around my shoulders in bouncy dark curls. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Adidas sneakers. Sparkly white eyeshadow and black mascara, a dark mauve lipstick. The black bra was fully visible through the white tank and I liked it. I was trembling as I looked at the girl in the mirror. I had thought she was gone. I had thought Jackson had killed her, made a good, law-abiding ninny of her. But there she was, staring back at me from the mirror, as bad as ever, as hungry…Hungry to fight, to fuck…It was dangerous and I knew it. As an afterthought I grabbed one of the condoms from my mother's drawer and shoved it in my back pocket…Just in case I couldn't say no next time.
Leon growled low in his throat and pulled me to him as soon as I came into view. He bit my throat gently and a cold shiver darted through my body…Mmmmm. What was he doing to me? I had never felt so out of control of my own body, so completely AWOL.
"About that beer," I said, clearing my throat a little, and he laughed into my neck.
"All right, all right," he said, sheepish. "Let's go."
We walked and I was so nervous…With each step I took I grew less and less confident I'd made the right choice in coming with him. We didn't speak. It was less than a city block away, and I could hear their house all the way down the street, thumping with loud rap music, street rods lining the curb, raucous laughter. I could see people flailing around, jumping, dancing…Hell yeah. I was gonna have fun tonight if it killed me.
There was no one on the lawn; everyone was inside. Walked in and saw that there were about a hundred people in the house, all of them young, all of them beautiful. A big, mean-looking man stood near the doorway chatting with a blonde I recognized from the bar. I scanned the man's body perfunctorily, his muscles, his clothes, his tattoos. Leon roped an arm possessively around my waist and I smiled up at him reassuringly, as if to say, I'm yours tonight. Don't worry.
The other man looked at Leon and smiled, shaking his head.
"What you got there?" he asked, raking his eyes over my body with ill-disguised lust and leaving me feeling weak and breathless. He smelled heavily of alcohol. Ugly scars lined one arm from the wrist to the bicep, almost like rope burn, as if he'd been lashed or cut, or…
"Got this girl," Leon said, hugging me to him, and I smiled nervously at the other guy. "Her name's…Wait," he said, suddenly cracking up. "What the hell is your name, anyway?"
"Izzie," I said. "Isabel Adams."
"I got Izzie," Leon said.
"What a body," the guy with the scars said, and Leon shoved him gently.
"This is Vince," he said. "Vince, Izzie. Izzie, Vince." The blonde girl from the bar eyed me with a false hardness, like she was tough shit, but really I think she knew who my parents were and didn't want them telling her parents she'd been at this party.
"This," Vince said, putting his arms around the blonde and squeezing two rough handfuls of her ass, "Is Deanna. And we're gonna get to know each other tonight, aren't we." She nodded and let him kiss her.
People were dancing, drinking, smoking weed, standing on tables, making out, moshing around the living room, and they were all dressed like Leon and I were.
"Where the hell did all these people come from?" Leon mused. "I don't know any of them."
"Me either," Vince said, smiling. "I think the Big Dawg invited them all. Made fliers or something." The girl stood on tiptoes and whispered something in his ear, and he laughed and smiled. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Yeah. Leon, have fun, man. I'll be in my room if you need me." Leon smiled, and turned to gauge my reaction as Vince hauled the girl up and threw her over his shoulder. She shrieked, laughing, as he carried her up the stairs.
"You want a beer?" Leon asked, and I nodded slowly.
"Sure."
"Cool. Are you hungry?"
"Starving," I said, and realized I had eaten nothing since we'd arrived in Mexico. I was starving.
"Okay. I'll get the beers. There's food in the kitchen, through that door." He pointed. "Get me a plate, too, and meet me back here."
I nodded, making my way through the jostling, sweating crowd to the door he'd designated.
The kitchen was giant, probably 10x20, and there was an 8-foot buffet piled high with food. And as I stepped inside, I could smell all of the food…I just wanted to get after it so bad. And then, over the rush of noise, over the heavy, heady din of the party, I could hear soft sobbing. There was no one in the kitchen, no one I could see, but the sound seemed to be coming from the refrigerator. Cautiously, I stepped over the beautiful, cobalt-blue tiling, around the mound of food, and couldn't believe what I saw huddled in the corner at my feet.
The girl heard the scuff of my shoes on the floor before her and lifted her black head, lifted those enormous black eyes, and glared up at me. The obvious pain on her features was instantaneously replaced by the hard, hateful mask I'd seen before.
"What the fuck are you doing here," she said, her throat raspy from choking back tears.
"L-Letty," I stuttered. "Do you live here?"
"Leave me the fuck alone," she said, her voice breaking on the last word as a wave of sobs broke through her steely façade and she cried freely. I wanted to leave, to just get the food and leave, but…if she was sick…if she had taken bad drugs. I wiped sweaty palms on my jeans and squatted before her, daring to rest my hands on her arms.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"No," she said, and the word came out tight and mewlish, and she kept crying. "I'm not okay. You fuckin' happy? I'm not okay. Now get out. Get the fuck away from me."
I piled some nachos on a plate and high-tailed it back to the party, back to Leon.
"What happened?" he asked, seeing my stricken expression.
"You know a girl named Letty?" I asked, and it was all I had to say. He thrust the beers at me and took off through the crowd toward the kitchen, disappearing and leaving me to shove my way slowly through the rocking, jumping, sweating bodies.
They were talking when I got there, in hushed tones, and she was crying.
"Why, though, man? What the fuck? I'm not enough?"
"Letty, you're perfect." She sobs in response. "They don't mean anything to him…None of them have ever meant anything."
"Well, it means something to me, godammit! Jesus. I miss Jesse. I miss Jesse so fucking much, Leon."
"Me too," he said, and embraced her. "It's all right, dawg-gy, come on. It's all right. Where is he? Upstairs?"
"Yeah, but don't start shit. It's so fucking embarrassing."
"He loves you, Letty," Leon said. "And everyone knows it. He's so stressed, right now, he just can't…" Leon shrugged, unable to explain. Who the hell were they talking about? Who was Jesse? And how did Leon know Letty? "Come on. Let's get you a beer." They saw me standing in the doorway, and I handed Letty one of the beers I'd been holding. "Good lookin' out, Izzie," Leon said softly, his arm around Letty now. "This is Letty."
"I know," I said, smiling slowly at her, almost shyly. I wanted her to like me. To think I was cool, standing there in my mom's undershirt and my ex's jeans, a virgin, a whitegirl to the core… "We met at the pool earlier, Leon."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah," Letty said, in her husky voice. "I was a bitch to her. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were Leon's girl."
"It's all right," I said. "I'm Izzie." I extended my hand. She smiled.
"I have a cousin named Izzie," she said. "Isabel?" I nodded. "Cool. I'm gonna leave y'all be now. I'm gonna go get fucked up." She disappeared into the crowd, her arms over her head, hips twisting smoothly. She had a black thong on and jeans that rode low on her hips, a tight red satin shirt with Oriental designs embroidered on it, and her hair was in a messy ponytail. Mia from the pool came breezing by and laid a kiss on Leon's cheek, and I laughed.
"Man," I said. "Saw her today too."
"That's Mia. She's a good kid."
"How do you know Letty?" I asked, trying not to sound jealous or nosy. "You too seem pretty close…"
"Yeah," he said. "I've known her for about six years now. Almost six years. She dates one of my best friends. And Mia…who just ran by…Is the same guy's little sister. And Vince is on the team, too."
"The team?" I asked. Seemed like a strange thing to say.
"The team…Nevermind. He lives here with us, that's all."
"Do all of you live here?"
"All of us?"
"Letty and Mia and Vince and this other guy?"
"Yeah," he said. And he looked at me with those cool green eyes, and I could feel my heart begin to pound again. His features weren't as fine and beautiful as Jackson's had been, but there was an irresistible heat…A dark passion about him that washed over me with a tide of my own long-absent passion. I put the food and the beer down on the table beside me without taking my eyes from his and reached up to him, holding his face in my hands. He pulled me to him and kissed me hard, bruising my lips, and I loved it. Loved the pain and the pleasure of it, loved the mixture of the two. I could feel the buckle of his belt against me, and something else just below…When I realized what it was, I felt a jolt of warmth between my legs, an awakening of something both foreign and intimately, impossibly familiar. He tore his mouth from mine and bit my earlobe gently, then released it and licked the skin of my throat just below it. Pressed his lips to my ear and spoke,
"You wanna go upstairs?"
I heard my own voice as if someone else had spoken, this newbie lust betraying me, overriding my command.
"Yes, I do."
