> with his fingertips, and I felt nothing. Just flesh on flesh.
Here, right here, is where Jeffrey Schwarz touched my breasts in
the backseat of his father’s Buick. We were down at the abandoned police
department, the one on the bad side of town, two miles north of the
school, where kids would come to drink and smoke and snort whatever
they could find that day. I guess the irony of the place pulled them there.
Jeffrey’s hands were freezing, and my skin prickled at his touch. The
windows of the car fogged up, and I wanted so badly to draw a heart onto
the pane. I didn’t. Eventually, those foggy windows attracted a group of
junior high boys to make kissy noises and moans outside the car. And so
we left.
And down there, by the creek, by that big tree—the one you can
find if you take a left at Fry’s Farm and go about a quarter of a mile—is
where Craig Thompson put his hand over my mouth and my insides felt
like they were being split open. I stared at the dirty water—the water we
were never allowed to swim in as kids—and let the sound of the stream fill
me instead of just him. Later, my legs were caked in mud, and mosquito
bites dotted my skin, and I itched to connect them with a pen, but didn’t.
Here—on this bed—is where I told Ian Reynolds about the lines
on my body, the lines on the map, and the hovering of fingertips. He
traced those lines—invisible after years of scrubbing—and asked what my
Father did for a living.
“He helped people all over the globe,” I said. “He was always
leaving, he always had more stories. More places to point out. New lines
to trace.”
I saw the permanent marker lines etched onto my legs. I saw the
years of turning myself into a map. All who had visited me. All who had
left.