She panicked.
Her friends expected her to be at the party in an hour. An hour to learn how to use a tampon.
She locked herself in the bathroom and grabbed her Mother's box of OB Super Absorbent. Not even an applicator. How she moaned against the violation of Satin's Cotton Little Finger, until at last success.
Now comes the horror of the bathing suit. She had always been a thin child until puberty's first flutterings that 6th grade year. Now she was all fleshy breasts, pudgy hips and bright blue stretch marks. She sighed at her reflection in the full-length mirror. I'm 12 but I look like grandma.
15 minutes until the party, one neighborhood away. She asks her mother for a ride.
"Take the bus."
She has never taken the bus before. It's a confusion of large, loud vehicles and a scatagory of numbers. Where does this number bus go? How about that one? She takes a gander and stands waits at the one on the corner, oblivious as to where it's going except that it's a bus and mother said take it.
The bus drives in the opposite direction from the party and stops at a hill. You wait nervously, so old in your shoes, but really just a little 12-year old, as the bus driver gets out to urinate on the side of the road. He is annoyed to realize he still has a passenger when he re-enters the bus.
"Where you going?"
She timidly offers her friend's address. "Girl, you on the wrong bus." He offers some directions. She remembers them, the way she would a new word she had to learn how to spell, and manages to get on the bus. She gets off two blocks early when she recognizes her friend's street. Just in case. She arrives at the party 30 minutes late.
Party friend's mother answers the door, harried looking. She wordlessly points at the open cellar door, which beckons like a dark gaping maw. You can hear music playing. Garbage. You can touch me if you want to.
Without fail, they're all there. Including Best Friend, dagger in heart, mistress of the dark night of the soul. And she's all over him, twittering about, giggling, shrieking, pinching, tugging with naked desire, like a hummingbird in heat. You see Him...smiling the smile that slices between your legs like a knife under the covers at night. But, behind it, you can see the faint tremble.
"Spin the bottle!" jokes Jennifer, the ugly fat one who can make jokes like that because everyone knows it can never happen with her. You hate her so much right now it's impossible to feel sorry for her.
How did it happen?
You catch your breath now. You've passed the youths on the basketball court, made it past their judgement, their eyes and the mutual disgust that could flow between. As you walk back towards the house and the rotting corpse inside that you have yet to decide what to do with. It hits you.
Here. I'm here.
The house is a mere row away. You stare in disbelief at the pink chipping paint. You wonder who lives there now. Who cares, it doesn't matter. Funny how an event freezes all other time before and after that point in a person's mind.
That is where it happened. It doesn't matter why or how. It happened. It happened there. It happened.
Your eyes glaze over. Red seeps in at the edges, like the blood had suddenly leaked out from the sleepless vessels.
It happened.
