Danielle 13

                                                                    Show Me Yours


He kissed her.

I set aside a disheveled pile of swimwear, the new season's stock.  It was only half a box, but I had taken half an hour to sort through that much.  And that was no good.  I needed to get more work done.  Lisa—my manager—hadn't said anything.  Perhaps she had not noticed, but she treated me with more lenience than she should most of the time.  If I were her, I wouldn't let myself get away with so much.  But, after all…he had kissed her.

I finished unpacking the box and carried summer-wear by the armload onto the sales floor.  I hung them slowly, more slowly than I should have been working.  I hung a bikini, but in the blue flower pattern I saw her pressed against the wall, her hips spreading over the white stones, his hips sinking into her softer hips….  I wedged a stack of tank tops into a wall mounted shelf, and I winced when I heard her shirt stretching against the course wall.  Her hair hid her face.  His eyes were closed, and his face was tender.

I fumbled with a pair of shorts and dropped them, and I shook my head as I picked them up.

We are suited to the floor, my dear,
Though I never thought to find you here—
And you just like me, all alone—I see
You'd rather keep apart,
A frigid wall between our hearts.

Two more hours of this.  I folded my arms behind the counter and stared through gaps in the clothing racks out into the mall's weekday afternoon emptiness.  Work was work, and I liked Lisa as a boss, but I just did not feel right about my job that afternoon.  I wondered…did she know that Vincent was an only child?  I wondered, and I stared into the white linoleum chasm beyond the storefront.

It was so strange…but I felt like I wanted to talk to Danielle.  I wanted to have her all to myself, privately, so that I could ask her what had happened.  She would tell me the truth.  Danielle was always such a sweet, sweet girl…which is partly why what she had done confused me so very much.  Why would such a sweet girl like her go out of her way to deliberately hurt me?

Did she even know that he hates Mozart?

Not a week ago she showered with her underwear on, and now she was…in the hallway, in front of people—in front of me….  It has only been a little while, hasn't it?  I didn't miss anything in between, did I?  No, I would have seen!  Then where was I?  Was it right in front of me and I just refused to see?  Why didn't Melissa tell me?

Dani must have told her…so why would she deliberately withhold it from me?  I've always been nice to Mel—I've been more than nice to Dani…such a sweet girl, but….

A girl dressed in purple stopped to finger a shirt in the storefront.  She riffled through the rack, but shortly left without coming inside.  Shame—there was a pink blouse near the register that would have looked adorable on her with her hair teased out a little bit.

I huffed and shifted my weight impatiently behind the counter.  I picked up a stack of promotional punch cards and moved them to the other side of the register so that people could see them more easily.  I looked at my workspace: lip gloss, accessory buttons, a cup full of pens—not for customers to buy, but for me to use and for customers to sign checks or fill out punch card forms.  There were too many pens—five pens—I only needed two, three to make it more aesthetic, so I pulled two of the pens out of the cup and stashed them in a drawer beneath the counter.  The drawer was cluttered with scraps of paper and old sticky notes…I didn't like the punch cards on the other side of the register anymore; there were too many things on the left side now.  I had to move them back.

My eyes flickered from one side of the store to the other.  The storefront was still quiet, still empty.  Nobody shops at this time in the afternoon.  I didn't need to be here; the store never did any business on weekday afternoons.  I felt stupid just standing there, just hiding my face and scurrying away—being here is stupid!  I don't even know why I work here; the clothes are so cheap and awful and I hate them!  I wish Lisa would come out here and tell me to do something.  I was just being worthless, being paid to stand and do nothing!  She should just fire me and do it herself, stupid whore—

"Doing alright, Charlotte?"

Lisa peeked her head out from the back room, and I unclenched my fingers from the edge of the counter.  The flesh was white under my fingernails.  Lisa had a sweet way of smiling, a young face with glad eyes, and she wore her straw-brown hair in a ponytail.  It was smooth and straight, and she could have done so much more with that hair…curl it, add highlights….  She could definitely pull off bangs.  She was only just out of college, barely older than me, but perhaps her position—that she was my boss—made her seem more mature.  She wasn't, really.

"Yep," I smiled brightly.  "Getting bored back there?" I asked.

"Ugh, you know it," she sighed, jamming on hand atop her skinny hip.  She stepped completely out of the back office and glanced toward the front of the store, turning her lip up at the emptiness.

"Man, this place is deeeeeead…" she moaned playfully.

I giggled at the face she made.  "I don't mind," I remarked.  "It's not bad to have a little break every now and again."

"Yeah, well…" Lisa muttered, slipping back into the office.  I could clearly make out several disheveled stacks of orders rolling off the edge of her desk.  Popping out to chat with me had been her break for the hour.

She turned back to me and said slyly, "I wouldn't be offended, though, if you cut out on your shift a little early today.  I don't think anybody's going to miss you," she winked.

No one is going to miss me…?

"Don't worry about it," I waved her off.  "I don't have practice in the mornings anymore, so I can stay the whole time."

"Suit yourself," she shrugged.  She pushed gently on the door to close it, but it did not latch properly and made a fumbling click.

Click-clock, tick-tock
Five and twenty, an hour to go.
What thoughts may bloom before an hour?
And deviled dreams a reaper'd sown?



"Welcome home—to mine, that is," I greeted Danielle with a sweep of my arm.  Admittedly, it was goofy, but I was in high spirits.  The good humor just seemed to seep through on its own.

Danielle had pulled into the driveway behind my car, and I met her by the driver's door before she got out.  Shameful as it was, I simply could not resist another opportunity to see her getting out of a car, not after I had seen it last week.  Perhaps that's a bit of the sadist in me: it isn't as if she enjoys getting in and out, that much is pretty clear.  She really doesn't fit in her seat all that well, but that, after all, is the delicious part.  Danielle is by no means too fat to get out of a car—she's about three hundred pounds too thin for difficulties like that—but she is just heavy enough that her belly bunches up over her thighs when she is seated.  Not to mention that her breasts—god be praised!—are big enough to actually get in the way of properly using a steering wheel.  All told, these little factors combine to allow me the perfectly appropriate opportunity of helping her to exit her vehicle.

I held out my hand to Danielle, which she accepted with a grateful smile.  For a fleeting second, I felt her weight drag me downward as she swung first one leg and then the other onto the grey concrete.  Her shapely legs flexed enticingly as she stood.

"You're quite the gentleman," she chided with a flutter of eyelashes.

"Don't give me too much credit," I smiled as she shut the car door.  "I still have plenty of time to be rude today."

Of course, I would avoid rudeness at all costs.  I unlocked the front door while Danielle sniffed pleasantly at some leafy pink flowers popping up waist high to either side of the walkway.  The late spring breeze was gentle, though it managed to jostle a handful of bees winging about the flowerbed for nectar.  Danielle did not seem to mind them as she mused about the garden's sweet aroma.  There was something oddly comforting in her tolerance where most girls would recoil from the imagined, stinging peril.  Yet Danielle, bent at the soft waist with her sloping nose dipped low to whiff the sugar-leaden petals, seemed at home; it was fitting, somehow.

After a moment, she lifted her head and caught me staring.  She smiled, but I was still a little embarrassed.  "Come in," I said, and opened the door.

The first thing that should be known about the thing is that my house is white.  The white walls are spackled with texture, casting little shadows that blend into a sort of white-noise for the eyes but which make a sunny spot all the brighter on the surrounding wall.  But all the paint is white.  Of paintings there are a few, but these prints are small, covering empty spaces around corners, catching the light from table lamps so that the small bulbs have something to do.  My home is hardly austere, but it is very tall, very open, and full of light from tall windows that seem to blend in and out from the walls themselves.  The white walls spear upward to the second floor where a high, inaccessible window casts white light onto wooden stairs.  The walls disappear as the same stairs dip into the dark den below—dark now, but fire-lit in winter.  Yes, there is wooden furniture, stained in warm tones; there are maple-finished end tables stationed in corners, a wall-length bookshelf packed with time and love-faded spines aligned in a rainbow of muted colors, and a low coffee table of an antiqued finish, roughed about its corners and bordered with a scalloped molding, but the flakes of paint on the table are of a brushy, ivory white.

I had never thought of my own home as intimidating until the moment I saw Danielle's eyes dart all around.  Perhaps intimidating is not the right word: the entrance—the entire house, really—is certainly not too large, but if I were a guest, I would see tricks of the light that I had not noticed myself for years, a sort of disastrous visibility of everything that made the building seem so very present, almost as though you couldn't escape it if you tried.  I felt a queer urge to apologize, but, hopefully, an apology would not have made any sense to Danielle if I had offered her one.

"It's nice," she said without being prompted.  I nodded.  It was not quite what I had expected, but I am not entirely sure what reaction I had expected in the first place.

My room was upstairs, but I had no interest in going there.  It was not a room designed for company, certainly not for company like Danielle.  The most sociable thing in it was my bed, and I entertained no thoughts of taking Danielle there any time soon.

As if she had been listening in on my thoughts, giggling to herself about my misgivings, Danielle peered up the staircase and asked, "Is your room up there?"

And so it seemed I had no choice.  "Yeah," I answered, leading the way and beckoning her up the stairs after me.  The polished wooden railing felt cold under my hand.

The door to my room was already open, the same as every door on the upper floor: my room, the guest room, a bathroom, and my parents' bedroom.  I put my back against the wall outside my room and let Danielle precede me inside.  My room is actually divided into two: the hall opens into a sitting area with a chair and a television and a desk, but a second, smaller room was created by building a wall only halfway across the room, cleaving off a square space where I kept my bed.  A single window in that smaller room cast afternoon light onto my black comforter, warming the mattress cozily; a long casement window halfway up the wall lit the main room and faced the door so that the first view Danielle had of my bedroom was of blue sky and clouds.

Danielle stepped gingerly into the room after I flipped on the overhead light, taking a moment to realize that she was not, in fact, walking into open sky.

"So, what do you think?" I asked.  Seeing Danielle off her guard even for that brief moment gave me a guilty sense of command.

"My god, Vince, why didn't you tell me!" she said.

"What?  What is it?" I looked around franticly, mortified that I might have left something embarrassing out in the open, my sense of command at once discharged.

Danielle bounded right past me without answering and took a flying leap onto my bed.  She landed face down with her arms spread wide amid clamorous squeaking as the bed shrieked from the unexpected, heavy impact.  I gaped after her, utterly dumbfounded.  Without warning, she spun onto her back and sprang up, glee popping out of her face.

"Vince!" she gasped once more.  "You have a queen sized bed!"

I blinked.  "Umm…yeah?"

"Why do you have a queen sized bed?" she demanded.

"I…don't know?" I said, still standing in the doorway.  "I like to spread out when I sleep, I guess."

Danielle gaped at me.  "But…it's so big!" she marveled and flopped down on her back.

I walked into the small room with her and sat on the edge of my freshly disheveled bed.

When I sat, Danielle lifted her head.  "I mean, it's wonderful," she said, "but I don't even have a queen, and I'm a girl!"

"Hey!" I mocked indignation.  "Excuse me for not having a dinky twin mattress!"

Danielle sat up and shook her head.  "No, it isn't fair.  These beds are made for two people," she insisted.

"That doesn't have to be true," I said, but Danielle would have none of it.

"Yes it does!" she cried.  Before I could protest, she pulled down on my shoulders, and I let myself topple onto my back beside her.  We were both on our backs now, our legs dangling over the edge of the mattress and our eyes level.

"See?" she said, patting the extra expanse of mattress behind our heads.  Her voice was warm and gentle.  "We don't even fill the whole thing."

With all my soul, I wanted to say something witty.  I wanted to tease a little smile into bloom on her lips.  I would smile, too, as I said whatever I would say, and I would smile all the broader as her lips shyly opened, pink and soft with affection.  But this time there was nothing to say; she was already smiling, showing me a soft breath of happiness through moist, parted lips and eyes shimmering like the feeling of warm velvet brushed against my skin.  Her hair was all spread out, soft and flowing like harnessed water, draped over the black covers and vented with streaks of orange sunlight from the shaded window.  With her head tilted, facing me, her neck seemed so long, yet supple and tender.  I wanted to kiss her neck—no, not even a kiss: I wanted to touch it with my lips, feel the warmth of her skin.  I wanted to gently breathe beneath her jaw and stroke her hair, the kind of slow, tender embrace that is wholeheartedly given to another without an ounce of take.

Through all of this, I did not move my eyes, not a flutter; what was in my head was, for once, lying beside me.  I felt a quick wash of something cold in my blood, a chill on the back of my head where it joined to my spine.  My heart was picking up, and I felt the blood pounding inside my eyes.  The words clamored in my head, bashing themselves against the walls of my throat, demanding to get out.  If I said them, I knew I would regret it, but if I never did, I would hate myself.

"You're so beautiful," I said.  It was done!  It was a short phrase, something sweet and reverent, but only one other three-word sentiment was ever so charged and dangerous!  My breath caught—it was out, and I could not take it back!

Danielle's lips closed, and she lifted her head, making her hair flow uphill.  "Thank you," she said, and that was all.  Her hair shaded her eyes, and for a crucial second afterward, there was nothing that I could see.

In another moment, Danielle sat up.  "Didn't you want to watch a movie?" she asked.  She brushed her hair behind her ear; it was deliberate to show me that she was smiling, but I knew that the smile was disingenuous.

"Yeah," I said and stood up.  "We'll watch it in my basement—and I promise it won't break this time."

I turned on the light switch at the base of the stairs, but flipping on the overhead light in my den did not seem to do very much.  The room was finished and carpeted the same as everything else, but the ceiling was lower, much lower by comparison to the foyer, and the light from above did not have as much room to spread.  Accordingly, as soon as I had set up the DVD and the television screen glowed to life, I turned off the light and dropped onto a sofa on which Danielle was already waiting.  The cushions were overstuffed, and both of us sank into the padding, each in our own comfortable, body-form nest.  I intentionally avoided sitting right up against Danielle.  In the back of my mind, of course I wanted to touch her, and not so deep down I knew that it really might have been the right thing to do, but Danielle's ambiguous reception of my foolish, melodramatic compliment had left me skittish.  For all I knew, she did not want to be touched, and in a similarly foolish reaction, it somehow seemed better to leave her inwardly begging for affection than to potentially upset her.  Of course I couldn't be right—at least I hoped not—to believe the doing nothing to push her away would bring her closer to me by default, that just because inaction is the easiest and typically safest recourse should also mean it is the best option.  At that moment, however, I was too nervous, and just a little ashamed of my own romanticism, to do anything else.

The walls flickered with amber light when the movie began to play, and a few fingers of that light found their way into the cold fireplace, hoping charitably to warm it with their feeble glow.  It seemed almost as though the ghosts of forgotten embers had floated down from the chimney to rest at last in the pile of ashes from whence wind and flame had pulled them away when last winter's hearth had been alive with fire.  Sweet music soon chased away these somber thoughts, and the bright colors of late 19th century New York leapt from their canvass and into the bustling life of carriages and street cars on the screen.

"Just call on Dol-ly…if your eldest daughter needs a frieeeeend…"

I watched in silence.  It took a minute or two to recover from a paranoid clutch of nerves, fearful as I was that this movie might actually not work like I had promised it would.  Thankfully, no such bad luck, and we were both able to watch…in silence.

As far as I could tell, Danielle really was genuinely watching the movie, which is more than I could say for myself.  It was just sort of playing in the background, a colorful tale of love and romantic naiveté that somehow seemed truly dead, flickering unconsciously from the screen, unaware that true romantic naiveté was not founded upon witty repartee and happily-ended misadventures.  Rather, it is locked in uncertainty, a soundtrack of silence, though with equally much dancing; graceful sidesteps and quick reversals of direction, where the precision of footwork was far more important than the beauty of the dance.  The dance must continue; the steps must go on and on until one dancer hits a wall.  Then, the hardest moment of all, is the uncertain stillness before the one who is still standing decides whether to keep up the lovely charade or to drop his own steps and lift his fallen partner out of the dust, leaving the both of them with no dances, no distant, lonely waltzes; they have nothing but a heavy silence that they must fill with their own forgotten voices.

My eyes focused again on the bright television, witnessing the plight of Ermengarde and Ambrose as the tiny woman stamped her feet and locked herself in her room to her uncle's dismay.  And as I finally felt myself becoming engrossed in the story, I felt something brush against my hand.  I glanced downward reflexively to see what it was, and my movement stimulated a sudden stiffening in Danielle's continence.  With practically an entire cushion separating us, somehow Danielle's hand had found its way next to mine.  Her eyes were fixed to the screen intently as though she were forbidden to look anywhere else.  Though her back seemed relaxed, sinking limply into the fluffy cushion, her neck was tight and rigid so that I could almost see the blood beating through her veins after each heartbeat.  With one leg crossed over the other, she was leaning—it seemed, almost too casually—on an outstretched hand whose fingers had brushed against mine.

Though her eyes were trained to the screen, it seemed that her fingers could see of their own accord.  They hovered ever so slightly above the cushion, but they were still curled and seemed falsely loose and relaxed.  I could see, though, a small tremor that ran through her slender bones from the strain of keeping her hand raised.  I watched—and she knew that I was watching—each of her delicate fingers trace a little semicircle in the air, flexing a little and then stretching outward a fraction of an inch like weak kitten pawing gingerly at the air.  They probed, fanning out slowly, slowly, in search of something that she knew was near but which she was too afraid to touch, recoiling fearfully like she expected the air to be hot.

Without meeting her eyes, I inched my fingers underneath hers, and her pinky found the side of my hand.  Timidly, she relaxed each fingertip onto my hand, one by one, then, in the span of a breath, she clasped my fingers and squeezed in way that made me imagine she was crying.  Her fingers were so soft.

I had no thoughts anymore; I only wanted to touch her, yet, in an unusual way, I wanted to prolong the dance a little longer.  I wanted to play out the romantic script I had written in my head; I wanted to be able to see myself slowly yet deliberately moving to embrace her…and more than anything, I wanted desperately for Danielle to play her part as well.

I inched a little closer to Danielle.  Danielle lifted her smooth legs onto the couch and folded them to the side, pushing herself closer to me.  A little me, a little her, all the while her hand clutching mine as though it would kill her to let me go.  So it went until our thighs touched.  I spread my fingers, and Danielle opened her hand with a quiet breath.  I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and presented her with my other hand to hold, linking us together across our bodies.  All of this without once meeting eyes, but as if to say "I feel where you are," Danielle nuzzled her head into my neck.  Her hair was soft where it brushed against my skin, and her shoulders, her hand…she was so warm.

"You're an impertinent fool.  If you behave, I'll promote you from fool to chief clerk!"

"Vince?" said a soft voice below my ear.

"Hmm?"

"You might as well know it now.  When I return there will be some changes around here.  You're going to have a mistress."

"I like being around you, Vince," Danielle said, pushing a little harder against my side.

Music once more began to play, a lively march: "It takes a woman, all powdered and pink…"

"Thank you for inviting me here today…"

"You're very welcome," I said.

The music played on; though, between us the air was quiet, serene.  "But please," she started to speak again as the song came to a close.  "…Don't say things like that to me anymore."

At first I said nothing.  You might be inclined to think that my response would be hard to conjure—what to say to something like that?  To a girl who shies away from honest compliments and profound words of admiration?

"Ok," I said, and it was only then that we looked at each other.

Of course, in the end, it was not a hard answer at all.  Should I have refused?  Tried to convince her of my sincerity?  Protested my own right to adore her?  All of these are wrong, terribly wrong and terribly cruel.  To everything there is give and take, and if this is what I have to give to Danielle for now, so be it.  So be it.

"Thank you," she said with doubly potent meaning, and she opened her eyes to mine with a soft smile.

"O yes it takes a woman—a husky woman!—to bring you the sweet things in life!"

We held each other as the movie played on, but I was thinking about it even less than before.  Every moment I spent holding Danielle's hand was, well…thrilling.  The whole time I was laughing to myself in my head, and on the outside you can be sure I was smiling.  After a while, I felt Danielle's hand relax and, soon, it fell limp.  Her breath on my neck was warmer and slower, and I knew she had fallen asleep.  This presented me with a somewhat unique situation.  What ought I do with Danielle napping on my shoulder?  Oh, nothing like that obviously—but the situation seemed like there should be opportunities for, well…something!  I looked around, being careful not to disturb Danielle, but for some reason I felt a little nervous, like someone must be watching me now that I was alone with this soft, sleeping girl.  All the while, thoughts of what I could be doing kept flooding into my head, bullying each other for attention: squeeze her chubby thigh!  No, you idiot—that'll wake her up.  Rub her shoulder—put your hand under her shirt—smell her—squeeze her boobs—move your hands onto her belly, just pretend you're resting them there—

Clearly, the best of all alternatives was to stroke her hair.  I tried to lift my arm from around her shoulders but quickly discovered that my elbow was pinned to the back of the couch beneath her.  Wincing every second, I slowly, painstakingly shimmied my arm upward to a point where I could bend it enough to reach her hair.  I pulled my elbow free with a mental pop, but even through such deep padding, the sudden change jarred Danielle's head enough that she made a little spluttering noise in her sleep.  I held my breath and recoiled my hand instinctively, but without the support of my arm, Danielle's shoulders slumped and she began to tip forward.  I lunged out to keep her from falling, wrapping my arms around her middle, but at the same time Danielle's head seemed to catch itself.  She rolled it back onto my shoulder and, still mostly asleep, she straightened out her legs and boosted herself onto my lap, murmuring unintelligibly.

I held my breath and waited for her to wake up, but she remained still.  My eyes shifted back and forth, still paranoid that someone had seen this little incident, but as I played it over in my head, an irresistible little chuckled began to tickle at the back of my throat.

"Eh…heheh…heheheh…" I sniggered, savoring the moment.

Danielle's sleeping mind must have reacted favorably to my laughter because she nuzzled her nose against my collarbones and made a sort of "Mmmm…" cooing sound.  In a sort of jerky motion, her fingers latched onto my arms, which were still wrapped around her middle to keep her from falling, and hugged me tighter around herself, squeezing my hands against her belly.

Whoooa-ho-ho-ho.  Whoa.

Have you ever felt like the sun is trying to smile through your face?  My blood was hot, my hands were warm from Danielle's body, and I was smiling, smiling, smiling!  I could not breathe—not because I was overwhelmed but because I knew that if I did breathe I would squeal—yes, squeal with delight—squeal like a little child.  But there is nothing wrong with feeling happy—did you know?—there is nothing wrong with feeling comfortable, feeling contented.  It all feels warm and just a little bit heavy—but heavy in a good way, like a constant reminder that the feeling is there.

And at the same time, I heard music beginning to play.  It was time for the movie's romantic finale.  Before it was over, though, I wanted Danielle to be there to see it with me.  I loosened Danielle's grip on one of my arms and let our fingers intertwine.

And that is all
         That love's about…
And we'll recall
         When time runs out
How it on-ly…took…a mo-me-ent…
         To be loved
                   A whole life long.

I leaned down and gently kissed Danielle's forehead.  To my surprise, she lifted her chin and kissed my cheek in reciprocation.

"You were awake," I said.

"Maybe for a little while," she replied before placing her head back into my shoulder.

I smiled reproachfully.  "I went to all this trouble…and you're not even watching the movie."

She laughed like a tinkling bell.  "We can always try again tomorrow," she said, laying her arm across my chest.  Her body followed.

Before I knew where we were, she was straddling me and I had my hands on her fluffy hips.  I gave a little nudge, pulling her wide body a little closer, a little closer…and as she smoothly descended, my hands descended onto the sides of her butt.  In just a moment I knew—like a moth flies to a flame, like a leopard tackles a gazelle—I knew that in but seconds it would be okay to squeeze.  I had to wait for the kiss, the light touch of her moist lips, already parted, floating closer with closing eyes.  When we kissed the walls seemed to vibrate and there was a busy rumbling like the rush of a crowd down a staircase.  She squeezed my lower lip.  She tasted sweet, just like before.  I could hear the excitement, like panting in the background, and I felt long, smooth hair brush against my legs.

My eyes popped open, but the panting continued, and the long, smooth hair was sitting on the floor with a cocked, inquisitive head, tongue lolling and wet.

"Oh!  Is this your dog?" Danielle asked.  She held out her hand, and Kali sniffed it obligingly before offered her head to pet.

"Yeah," I said, "but she was out ba—oh shit."

In an instant, the sound of Kali's heavy breathing was replaced with the rush of my own blood and the quickening thrum of my heart.  My eyes darted to the empty staircase, and even amid the sudden turmoil, I trained my ears to the floor above, listening like a startled rabbit for the soft tromping of footsteps on the hard kitchen floor.

Heaven help me, Mom is home.

She had to have heard the television already.  My eyes darted back to Danielle, but she and Kali were enjoying each other obliviously.  I knew I had to do something quickly.  I was in a dark den, watching a movie with a girl on my lap.  I immediately knew that I could not let Mom see Danielle.

I can't let Mom see me with Danielle.

But...wait…why not?  She feels so good on my lap.  I don't want her to move.  What was it again, the reason that I brought her over before either of my parents were home?

I can't let her see me—

We were here to watch a movie…I was beginning to feel very hot.  –with Danielle.  I must have known that Mom was going to come home before the movie was over…or did I know that?  I hadn't really thought about Mom.  Does it matter if she sees us together?  I'm in high school; I'm a boy; I've had dates over before.  Can't let her see—Mom would be understanding, after all.  She probably wouldn't even ask—us together—anything about it.  She'd probably just go upstairs and leave us alone—because can't—which is a reasonable thing to expect, right?  She might ask later—let—of course, but it won't be anything more than "what was that girl's name?" and "oh, do you know each other from school"—HIM—or something—see—like—tell HIM—that—about—

"Danielle!"

She spun away from Kali so quickly that my dog jumped backward.  I had uttered the most blood-curdling whisper she had ever heard.

"We should go.  Go now.  Somewhere else—now."

Danielle looked a little afraid as she climbed off my lap.  "Why?  What's wrong?"

I answered her while looking fearfully up the stairs, and I started to hear ascending footfalls.  "Can…can we go to your house?  I want to see your house, too.  Let's go there now!" I urged her.

"The movie's still playing—"

"Like you said, we can finish it tomorrow!" I said, standing.

"Who just came home, Vince?  I thought I heard a garage door opening."

I could not hear footsteps anymore, which meant Mom was in her bedroom changing out of her work clothes.  It was my only chance.

"Just my mom," I said with a note of urgency that I could not hide.  My face felt hot, and my blood was still very loud.

Danielle did not resist—or I did not notice whether she did—as I practically dragged her up the stairs and out of the house through the garage.  We both jumped into her car, me fighting the urge to look over my shoulder to see whether my mom had watched us out of a window, and without delay, Danielle drove away from the house she had visited for only two hours.

When I left, I had left the movie running.  There was still a lot of time left to it.  The characters still had to return home, and all of them—even Cornelius and Barnaby—had to resolve the problems they had left there, the devils and loneliness of their lives that they had tried to escape but which they had only managed to run around in a lovely circle.  I only hoped that as Danielle took me away from my home that it would be a straight road we were taking.