Daphne lived with her sister and her mother in that big, whitewashed house. But the big house wasn’t theirs.  They actually only rented a third of it: two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen for $700 a month. They didn’t have a phone there for a long time either. One night just before seventh grade, while Daphne’s dad was out at the bar, they all packed up and ran away. They lived in a shelter for a summer, then with her Mom’s sister.  When her dad showed up at their granmamma’s waving around his hunting rifle, their grandmother didn’t hesitate in telling him where they were staying. Like clockwork after that, every payday he showed up drunk at their house, making threats again, screaming things on the lawn for all the town to hear.

“A proper wife spreads her legs for her man every once in a while, Sara Jane! Even your goddamned sister knows that,” he yelled from the lawn. That’s when they moved a few towns over, into the big white house. She never mentioned much about any of that though. 

By sophomore year, I joined the track team just to spend more time with her. One day while everyone was stretching, she pulled me into the gym storage closet. It was dark and crowded floor to ceiling with faded gym mats and extra football padding. It was usually unlocked. We called it “the hummer closet” because it was where all the popular girls took their boyfriends for blowjobs during study hall. Everyone called those girls hummers -- they were the first ones that knew that humming makes it better. The closet smelled like molding foam gym mats and hormone-saturated adolescents. 

She leaned close and my heart fluttered, I thought she might try to kiss me. Instead, she whispered to me excitedly.

"I did it," she said. She had a big grin on her face.

"Did what?" I asked.

"IT. It it." she said. My stomach dropped to my sneakers. We talked about sex all the time, but I never thought she would seek it out. She saw my face fall.

"What? Aren’t you happy for me?” She rolled her eyes. “I'm so glad that’s over with!" I’d thought I would be able to tell somehow, that she’d have a glow or something. But she was there in the hummer closet, in her track sweats and a big t-shirt, with her long hair pulled back into a ponytail.  She was looking no more a glowing, satisfied, mature woman than she was a few days ago.

”I just, yeah, well, I sort of thought I would be first,” I said.  And in my head I realized I wasn’t sure if I meant I would be the first to have sex with someone, or the first someone to have sex with her. “I mean, you’re just so... good." 

We wrote letters sometimes. Mine were honest and pitiful accounts of what she meant to me and all the things we could do if she visited. Hers were about her classes and days and friends, with only vague proclamations of friendship to reassure me. She always signed her letters “I love you, Daphne.” I clung to that desperately. Late at night I would pull the letters out of their envelopes just to stare at that last line.

Something at school wasn’t right. After a year of it I left, moved to Brooklyn to figure out what I needed to do, figure out what was wrong with me, who I was.

Sometimes when I had a day off from work I would drive upstate. I would show up at her house when I was feeling lost or lonely. One night I got there and she was alone. She was angry at me for showing up and after a few tense words she led me to the front door just off of the kitchen.

"Can I have a kiss goodnight?" I said. I don’t know what I was thinking, we had never kissed and I didn’t think she would budge on the matter. She was already annoyed and I was trying to push buttons. I might have been trying to make a joke. She got really serious. 

"Why do you always do this?" she said. We went back and forth, playing word games with each other.

"Do what?"

"This."

"This what?"

I was standing in the doorway, my hand still on the knob, she was standing in front of the sink. She looked to her right and smiled. A light bulb went off over her head, I could almost see it. She grabbed an eight-inch knife out of the dish drainer, looked me in the eyes and touched the blade. I felt my groin give a little kick. My throat made a noise, that “ungh” sound of being unexpectedly and deeply fucked. I didn't mean to make that noise. I didn't expect that noise. I surprised myself.

She smiled slowly and said, "Are you scared?"

I moved to the center of the kitchen.

"Can you put the knife down?" I asked, I was getting nervous.

"Why, don't you trust me?"