Never Too Young Right?

Her skin spreads soft and fine and pink across her cheek with the exception of the area down by her chin where the fine skin is interrupted by an irritating patch of blemishes. Scraped knees hid beneath her clothes and her lips rest parted, eyes focused without a blink, on the glowing screen in front of her. The screen reflects faultlessly back into her blue eyes.

If you looked at that reflection you would see her words laid over his. As she reads them her back straightens and her chest pushes out and a smile stretches across her face.

“U know if u ever feel like you’re gonna let it go, that you just can’t wait any longer and it’s wrong just call me.” His words appear as simple black text.

“Ok, thank you. I have to go to bed.”

“K, bye.”

“Bye”

“Don’t forget”

“What” She sits up and inches to the edge of her seat.

“UR beautiful” She slumps back again and sighs.

“Thank you.” She is ashamed at the awkwardness of it.

“Sleep well Red, I hope I see you in my dreams.”

“Me too.”

“lol, you’re sweat. Now get to bed. Tell me about what you wore tomorrow.”

As she closes the window and steps up from her chair Lolita’s lags shake a little. She shuts herself in her bedroom and ignores her mother’s voice at the door as she searches her closet.

“Ok, good night Lolita,” Her mother whispers in one last effort as Lolita pulls one pair of cotton underwear after another out of her dresser and throws them on the floor, pink, white, yellow, all rejected, blue flowers and stripes, end up next to them crumpled and over and done. Her drawer is emptied and she peels off her clothing. It’s all gone and she is standing in front of the bathroom mirror in her skin. She stares hard and long.

“Who are you? What is this thing?”

As she enters the cafeteria Lolita walks directly to the table where the same people sit each day and eat their cookies and a slice for a buck. A few girls brusquely greet her as she sits down with her brown paper bag lunch.

“Hey.” She says the three girls that sit around her continue their conversation.

“Marina, what happened on Halloween?” A girl with energetic brown hair says.

“Nothing really. I dunno.”

” We waited for you.”

“I dunno, I met Chris up on the train tracks” Snickers and smiles pass back and forth as chocolate is licked off of finger tips.

“Chris Lind?” Lolita says.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” Another girl who chews bubble gum and didn’t buy anything for lunch asks. Lolita sits silently.

“Nothing really.” Marina says

“Oh come on! That isn’t true.” The girl with brown hair interrupts.

Marina pushes out her chair and leaves the table.

“They must have been making out.” Pink globs of gum smack between her teeth.

“They were, down on the play ground”

“Really? What happened?” Lolita asks.

“Oh man, it’s hilarious.” The bouncy brown girl demonstrates. She makes a crude gesture with her fingers and starts signing. “I wanna lick-lick-lick-lick you from your head to your toes.” Lolita giggles a little and their other companion screams with laughter.

“What! Oh my god.” A pink bubble pops.

“Who’s that? What’s that song?” Lolita reddens as she asks.

“Oh come on you know it.” The brown girl says.

“That’s awesome.” The other girl says

Her mother’s bedroom is spotless almost sterile. Instead of magazine articles, CD inserts, and rows and rows of pictures of her friends from back before she moved covering the walls her mom has just a few simple paintings and framed photographs of family. She walks straight across the room and opens the bottom drawer of the dresser. There amongst mounds of silk slips and tights is a smaller stack of lace, satin, and silk, simple colors without patterns. Black, ivory, soft pink, nude. Lolita dips her hands into the pile of panties and rummages through them. Her face grows hot. She picks through and takes a black lacy pair from the bottom with the tag still on them.

Lolita stares at her reflection, the tag torn off, crumpled, and discarded on the floor, the elastic loose around her thighs and the waist band almost over her belly button. The black lace turns her pale skin dead. Even with the waist rolled they hang off her body. She peels them off and throws them under her bed.

There is a party with family and friends and not a single person her own age. She wears a yellow beach dress, cut low in the back and painted with big maroon lilies. She remembers wearing this when her brother told her if she got any skinnier he would kill her. She feels sexy in it. Her mother’s boyfriend grills chicken on the deck, humming and snapping his fingers to the music that empties out of their living room. When he comes in with a platter full of steaming wings and drummies that let off a smell of garlic and chili he grabs her mother by the waist and presses his body into hers. Lolita can see them reflected in the glass of the door from where she sits on the couch sipping her ginger ale

People trickle in with familiar faces and elusive names. The lovers pull apart and smile at their guests, exchanging hand sakes and back pats all around. He picks her out and smiles at her when he comes in the back door.

“Hi Red.

“Hi” She shreds the label on the ginger beer bottle as they talk.

“Long time no see.” She laughs forcibly at this. Her chest is tight and her face hot, yet she composes her body, imitates the way her mother looked in the door just a few minutes ago.

Grilled chicken, shrimp, artichoke dip, olives, cheese, chips and guacamole drape the counter, but only for an instant before disappearing into the bellies of the hoards that now fill their kitchen. Everything is washed down with beer, tequila, chardonnay. The music gets louder and the lights come on as dark falls outside and cools the air. More people step out onto the deck to smoke and appreciate the breeze. The voice of her mother’s boyfriend echoes back into the kitchen.

“Gonna do the fireworks!”

Lolita gets off the couch to go stand at the door where she can look off the deck into the yard below. Everyone is crowded onto the deck, or on the edges of the yard. The boyfriend throws a rope up over a low hanging telephone line and strings up a paper lantern that cringles and swings in the breeze.

He comes up from behind out of the bathroom and stands in the doorway next to her. He holds a beer in his left hand and his right arm brushes against hers. She moves away and leans into the door frame.

Her mother’s boyfriend reaches for the lantern and lights a wick that extends out of the bottom of its fragile frame. It catches and hisses in the dark, all eyes are drawn to the light that burns at the end of the lawn. Bang!

He puts his right hand on her bare back as the lantern bangs out its song, green, red, and blue sparks flying as the lantern spins in wild, violent, circles. Bang! The boy friend lights a smaller rocket beneath the lantern and his hand brushes against her spine.

“You look beautiful tonight Red.” He whispers in her ear as he slips his hand further down her back, leaving a hot trail with the tips of his fingers. She can feel the tips brushing the waistband of her underwear and she tries to picture what they look like. Little blue flowers if she remembers correctly.

Wssshhhh, the sound of the lantern fizzles out and all that can be seen in the dark is a cloud of smoke that fritters away with the smell of sulfur.

“U were gorgeous tonight. Does anyone ever tell u that? I dreamed of u all week.”

“Thanks”

“I mean it. How come u weren’t born 10 years ago?”

“It sux”

“Well in four years, when you’re finally 18, if you’re still available I’ll be the first knocking down your door.” She sits slumped in her chair and sighs tiredly at every line that comes after her own. “Don’t forget what I told you. Never settle. If you’re ever going to settle call me. We’ll figure somethin out.”

“Chris Lind and I are dating.” Marina says the next day. “We’re probably going to do it next week or something. I mean, why wait. It’s not like I’m a virgin anymore.

What ever happened between you and Alex? Or did Ava really sweep him away from you?”

“Nothing happened really,” Lolita said.

“Oh, lame.”

That night she sent the email. “I don’t know what I am going to do. I might just give it up. I need to feel like I am doing something with myself. All my friends are, and there’s this guy that they keep telling me I should really get with but I don’t even know him. Not like I know you.” Her inbox sat empty.

Later, Lolita was stood amongst the boxes and bags of old clothing discarded because of too many bright colors, grinning animals, or unflattering cuts, and piles of photographs ripped from magazines like National Geographic and Seventeen that were all pushed into the center of her room. The day before she had stripped the floral wall paper and scrubbed at the glue until the skin on her hands was raw and dry. She went to the wall with a white rag and a bucket of red paint and stretched high onto her toe tips to dab the corner of the room with the paint, creating a erratic pattern of red splotches that gave the wall a violent texture. He walked in while she was painting.

“Hi Red.” Her heart sped up and made her face hot. “Looks like you’re hard at work.” He stared down at her red stained hands and splattered clothing.

“Uh, yeah. Let me go wash up.”

“Ok, so how you doing?”

“Fine, fine thanks. Help yourself to something to drink in the fridge.” Lolita rushed out of the room and down the basement where the cool air eased the tenseness in her chest. At the laundry room sink she stripped off her paint stained shorts. There were her blue flowered cotton underwear again, they came off to. Her mother’s laundry basket held no promising alternatives. Instead, she wrapped her bare hips in a long green sarong that hung to her ankles and split up the side.

“You know, I just can’t” he said to her after she had come upstairs.

“Why?”

“Because they’d never forgive me.”

“No one has to know but me and you.” Lolita said.

“It just doesn’t work that way Red.” Her face burned, she sat, shoulders wrapped in, attempting to pull the folds of her sarong over her bare legs. “Look me up in five years.” And then he left, only his cool beer remained on the table. Lolita picked it up, took a sip, and slammed it down. A mess of sticky foam and bubbles poured over the long neck of the bottle, and the red hand print of paint left behind, onto the clean surface of the table top.

Weeks later at the next get together he brings a tall woman in tow, with blond hair, flawlessly rounded breasts that popped out over the top of a black tank-top, and perfectly manicured nails. Lolita stands alone in the doorway as the sparks of a pink and orange lantern fills the darkness of the yard.