Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A.

 

Chapter Seven.

Sometimes I think guys aren't so bright. Oh, they're smart enough when it comes to physics and engineering and cars and stuff like that, but they don't know a whole lot about people. I'd only known Steve a couple of years, but I knew him well enough to know that when he's pissed, it's best just to leave him alone. Travis had known Steve a lot longer, but he hadn't learned that yet.

After we arrived back at the cabin Travis broke the silence, "Aw, shit, man, it's just a little relaxation, y'know?"

Steve turned on him, and said quietly and tersely that Travis was an idiot. "I don't care what the fuck you want to do, Travis, but I don't want to go back to Brand in a hurry."

"I haven't had a drink in four years," Travis mumbled.

"So get some stuff, and bring it back here! Jesus. A fuckin' bar!" Steve hit the table with a resounding thwack and stormed out of the front door of the cabin.

Everyone lapsed back into silence. I unpacked the stuff from the supermarket and tried to figure out where the pots and pans were. There was a single bottled-gas hotplate. I set some stuff in a pot and tried to cook up a kind of chicken stew kind of thing. Cee assisted me, wordlessly. After the vegetables were all chopped up and the chicken was browned and everything was in the pot I went out onto the porch while it was simmering. Steve was nowhere to be seen.

After a few minutes Cee came outside and sat next to me. Neither of us said anything for a minute or two, but I could sense he wanted to tell me something.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Travis was an asshole," Cee said quietly.

"Yeah, so what else is new?"

"I didn't want to go in, y'know?"

"Yeah"

"There were only two people in there. So we kind of stuck out. I mean, I guess I stuck out, anyway. Travis ordered some drinks, and I think the guy was gonna card him, but he let it go. So he and Leon drank a few, and nobody said anything much. I sat over the other side of the place. Travis ain't exactly my idea of a good time. Then, after a few drinks, Travis decides he's gonna buddy up to the guy at the bar. He hadn't been asking any questions or anything, but Travis volunteers some story about how he's just in town to visit his cousin, and the guy behind the bar looks at me and says 'He a cousin, too?' It got kind of awkward for a moment. Then Leon decides to go pee, and as soon as he left Travis comes over to me and says 'Hey,' ... " He stopped.

"Hey?"

"Hey pussy." Cee looked away. "Hey Pussy, let me cut your dick off. That's what you want, isn't it?" He shook his head and looked back at me. "Real dumb. I didn't wanna hear any more, so I walked over to the bar, and Travis followed me over, and it was kind of headed for a scene, y'know?"

"So what happened?"

"Leon came back, and we went to a liquor store for more booze, and then... then we left."

There was definitely more to the story than this, but I could see that Cee wasn't going to tell me anything more. At least not right then. But the three of them must have been very conspicuous. Steve was right. Travis was an idiot. I hoped that the bartender hadn't talked to the police or anything.

Something about Cee's story sparked a flash of memory in my head, of Pangianis's dick coming toward me that first time in the showers at Brand. I thought I knew what might have happened to Cee. I reached out and touched his hand, and smiled gently. He flinched at my touch, and couldn't look me in the eye. I resolved to ask Leon for his version of events some time soon.

Eventually Cee reached over to me and took my hand back, and held it in his. I looked over at him.

"Can I ask you something real personal, Em?" he asked.

"Okay."

"You never told me how -- why -- you know, how come you changed." When I didn't say anything for a moment he obviously thought he'd hurt me or something, but the truth was I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry," he continued, "I didn't mean to pry --"

"-- It's okay," I said. "You're not prying." I turned my head for a moment and looked out at the valley below the cabin. "I, umm, it's just, it's kind of complicated to explain, Cee."

"I bet."

"Basically, it started off being Blaha's idea, you know?"

"Uh huh... so does that mean it wasn't always his idea?"

"No, it was always him. It's just..."

"You started to like it, huh?"

I thought about that for a moment. "Well, Steve started to like it, and I like Steve..."

"Just be sure it's what you want, girl," Cee said. "He's a nice guy. Hell, I wish he went my way, you know? But -- you know I want you to be happy."

"I know you do," I said, and I hugged him, tightly. I had grown very close to Cee while we had been at Brand. After Steve he was probably the only real friend I had.

Steve walked onto the porch. He didn't say where he'd been, or whether he'd overheard our conversation, and I didn't ask. We all went inside, and I served up dinner.

It wasn't great, but it was edible. There was hardly any conversation, though. We should have all been incredibly happy to be free from Brand, but instead the events of the afternoon clouded the meal. I was nervous because Travis kept leering at me, and when I bent over to serve him the food I could see him looking down my cleavage. Creepy drunk, I thought. Steve glowered at everyone all through dinner, and Leon just ate and ate right through the three servings I gave him.

As he pushed his plate away Steve finally spoke. "Travis, I'm gonna give you the Malibu, okay? Leon and I are gonna go into town tonight and get another car."

Travis looked kind of puzzled. "Whaddawe need another car?" he said, his voice still a little fuzzy from the alcohol.

"We're gonna split up. Me and Em are gonna head south. You can keep the Malibu and do whatever you want. It's clean, it's not stolen or anything, so as long as none of the other guys from Brand got the plates or anything you'll be fine with it."

"I thought we were, you know, like partners or something," Travis said. He was clearly surprised at Steve's change of plan.

"Yeah, well, I can't take the chance you're gonna do something like this afternoon again," Steve said. "Tonight Leon and I will get a local car and drop Cary at the bus station, and then Em and me'll be moving on."

"Shit, man, this ain't what we planned," Travis whined.

"Yeah. Well, I don't have to give you the car, Travis. Be thankful for small mercies."

Cee and I cleaned the table. Steve came over to the sink with me and said quietly "I'm gonna have to go out soon, but it won't be for long. But I just can't have Cary and Travis together too much anymore, okay? I know Cary's your friend, but there's just too much tension. It's time to cut Travis loose, too. That okay with you?"

I nodded. I was kind of surprised to be consulted, since Steve had planned the whole escape and I was going to go along with whatever he thought. But I was pleased he at least told me what he was thinking. We were a partnership. Him and me. A couple.

The guys went and sat out on the porch. I could hear Travis complaining some more for a short while, but not much of what Steve was saying.

I looked around the room, which was in pretty bad shape. Apart from the detritus from dinner, the guys had strewn magazines, clothes, a few beer cans and even some playing cards around the room in the short time we'd been there. On the table near the door were Travis's gun and some ammunition, and on the arm of the couch was the large knife Steve had taped to his leg earlier in the day.

As we cleaned up, Cee said "Well, I guess it's goodbye for us, girl."

"Yeah, I guess," I said. I didn't flinch when he called me 'girl'. I guess I was starting to think of myself that way.

Cee went over to the table and scribbled on some paper that Steve had been drawing on earlier. When he came back, I could see it was an address and phone number.

"Em, these are some good people I know in Memphis. You get in any trouble, you head down there and you tell them Cary Philips sent you, and they'll take care of you," he said.

"What about you?" I asked. "Are you going to go there?"

"No, honey, that's where I grew up. There's too many old memories there for me. I've got a friend out in San Francisco I'm gonna look up. I think someone like me can get a little lost in San Francisco, what do you think?"

Leon and Steve came into the room to fetch their jackets, and Cee and I hugged and said our farewells. Both of us started to cry, and Steve and Leon looked at one another and shrugged. Eventually Steve stepped in to separate us. "I'll be back in about a half hour, okay," he said.

Then Steve, Leon and Cee were in the car and driving into town. I waved from the porch as I watched Cee waving sadly back at me from the back seat of the car.

That left Travis and me. I went back inside to finish cleaning up, and he followed me. In fact, he kept following me around as I cleaned up. At first I was just pissed with him, and I thrust a washcloth into his hand and said, "The pots aren't done yet."

"'S women's work," Travis grunted, thrusting it back at me. I ignored him, or tried to, and began to scrub the pot myself. I had left the heat up a little too long, and there was quite a bit of food cooked hard in the base of the pot.

Travis was standing behind me, just watching me, which was making me uneasy. "You could do something to help," I said. "Is lighting a fire men's work?"

"I'm just fine," Travis said, and just stood watching me while I worked. Eventually, after about another five minutes, he went and got the Wild Turkey bottle he had been drinking from earlier in the day.

"You sure are a good looking chick," Travis said. I didn't acknowledge that I'd heard him, but I knew he was looking me over just from the way my skin was crawling.

"How'd that happen, anyway?" he continued, swigging from the bottle. When I didn't answer, he went on. "You bein' a chick and all, I mean... they sure are a good set of titties you got. Ain't no way you can still be a boy. How'd that happen?"

"Shut up, Travis," I said finally, after he'd continued on to talk about what a cute ass I had, and how hot I looked in the tight jeans I was wearing. "If Steve heard you talking like this he'd whup you good."

"Yeah, well, the thing is," Travis said, walking over to me and putting his hand on my ass, "Steve's not here right now, is he?"

I froze the minute I felt Travis's hand on me, but then I reached around to slap it away.

"Oh, you're a feisty one, too. I like that," Travis said, moving his hand to my shoulder, to turn me around. I shivered. I had never felt so cold inside. Travis looked me over, and his eyes fixed on my breasts, which were hugged closely by the blue top I was wearing. "Damn, but you are a good looking bitch."

"You're drunk, Travis," I said, pulling away from his grasp.

"Yep. I reckon I am." Travis said.

"What's going to happen when I tell Steve about this?" I said.

"Oh, you ain't gonna tell Steve about this," Travis said, putting down the bottle and grasping both my arms. "You're gonna be worried about what he'll think about you putting out for me." He twisted one of my arms behind my back, and then grasped the other and drew it behind me, too. He could hold both my hands in one of his, I discovered, but mostly he held them separately, twisting each arm viciously.

"What? Let me go! You're fucking crazy!" I screamed at him.

"Steve and I been friends for years," Travis continued. "Way before you arrived. I'm gonna tell him you came onto me, and he's gonna believe it." He began to twist my arms, and force me to walk toward the other room. I flailed with my legs as much as I could, and tried to kick him between the legs, but he twisted my arm further behind my back until I couldn't stand it any more. "Oh, yeah, he'll believe me," he said, as though he was trying to convince himself.

"Or maybe I won't tell him anything, if you don't," he added. As I twisted my head around to see him to try to aim another kick I could see something positively evil in his eyes.

He took my wrists in one hand, and started playing with my left breast with his free hand. It was awful. Completely unerotic. There was nothing in Travis's touch that could excite me, in fact he made me feel stony cold inside, and hard in my belly, almost exactly the opposite of how I felt whenever Steve caressed me. In years since then, I've read books where some people have said that some women get some kind of erotic kick out of rape, and those kind of books make me angry. There was always an erotic element whenever Steve took control in our lovemaking and got forceful and kind animalistic, but that was *so* different than what I felt with Travis. It gives me the shivers just thinking about Travis again now.

He drove me into the other room, where the bed was. He looked at the bed, and then at me, and at the clothes I was wearing. "Hmmm, this is gonna make for some problems," he said. I was still struggling, and now I started screaming for Steve. For anyone.

"No one's gonna hear," Travis said. "So you can stop screaming. Personally, I kind of like a girl who struggles." He pushed me until I was facing the bed, with him behind me, grasping my hands. I felt his free hand go to the button on the front of my jeans, and then begin to unzip them. I struggled and screamed more and more, but the grip Travis had on my hands made it hard. He pushed both my arms upward, which forced me to bend down over the bed.

I hated being so weak, so small. He was so much stronger, and there didn't seem to be anything else I could do. I kept trying to kick him, or stand on his feet, but he was able to dodge me easily, and increase the pressure on my arms. Eventually I felt him get the zipper on my jeans all the way down, and then I felt his hand reaching inside. He was having trouble, because the jeans were very tight, and I was struggling as much as I could, and while he had me bent over like that he couldn't get very far into them. My cock was tucked back in my panties, so tightly that there was no apparent bulge in my crotch, and Travis was reaching inside but he couldn't reach down far enough to feel it from inside the jeans. Whatever he did feel around my pubic hair seemed to convince him I was a girl.

"I knew it," he grunted, as he tried to pull my jeans further down. "You are a girl. No way could Steve be a fag." His hand was only a fraction of an inch from finding out he was wrong. "What I don't get is how they made you a girl," he mumbled drunkenly as he continued to struggle with the jeans, trying to get them down over my hips.

At that moment I got one of my arms free, and I lashed out with my hand toward his face. I could only manage a kind of backhand slap, but it startled him enough that he let go of me entirely, and I spun around and hit him, hard, on the side of the head. He staggered drunkenly and then hit back at me, catching me hard in the shoulder and spinning me right down onto the bed. I was too weak to hurt him with my punches, I realized, but I was beyond being rational and I continued flailing with my arms and legs as much as I could. I was screaming, screaming harder than I ever had in my life. Travis got hold of one of my arms again, and then punched me, hard, in the belly.

All the wind went out of me, and I lay on the bed, gasping.

"That fucking hurt, bitch," he said to me, as he tried to pull my jeans down again. I was still stunned from the blow, and he was having more success. He rolled me over onto my belly and kept pulling them, until finally they were off completely.

I heard him unzip his own pants as I lay there, still gasping. Summoning what little self-control I had left, I made one last attempt to kick out at him, and I caught him directly in the leg, just missing his crotch. Not enough to stop him, but enough to slow him down. He grunted, then rolled me back over. I began flailing again, my breath partially restored, and he got only a little way toward removing my panties before he was forced to try to control me. He pinned my legs by sitting on them, and then tried to take both my hands in one of his again. My breath returned and I resumed screaming, pleading, sobbing, and just hoping that someone would make this stop.

He had just succeeded in getting both my hands in one of his, and was trying to remove my panties again, when I heard the loudest sound I have ever heard in my life, and felt wetness all over my face and legs and back and wherever my skin was bare, and then Travis slumped on top of me.

I was still struggling, and as soon as Travis went limp I managed to throw him to one side.

There was a loud thump as he hit the floor, and I looked up to see Steve standing in the doorway, with Travis's gun in his hand. He came over to me, and held me tightly. I was still screaming, and shaking, and nothing could make me stop. Leon came into the room with the Wild Turkey and made me take a few swigs from the bottle, and the burning from the liquor, or maybe just the interruption to swallow, let me stop screaming. Then I realized that Travis had been drinking from that bottle, and I started sobbing uncontrollably.

Steve told me later that it took them more than two hours to calm me. Eventually he figured out I wouldn't drink from the bottle again, and Leon got a glass and they poured the whiskey into me, and gradually I calmed down to the point where I was only shaking. It was only around then that I noticed I was totally covered in blood, and even in bits of flesh.

You ever seen a guy get shot in real life? Up close, I mean? It's not like the movies. I mean, I didn't really see Travis get shot, but I saw what happened afterward. The bullet went right through him, and out the other side, and it took a huge chunk out of him where it left his body, and bits of that chunk went all over me, and the bed, and the walls, and, well, everything. It's not like a bullet makes some nice neat hole or anything.

Steve had been hugging me to try to calm me, and he was covered in blood, too. Then I realized we were both wearing the new clothes we had bought that day, and they were ruined, and that made me cry even more. Go figure. You'd think I'd have felt some relief or something, from being rescued, but that didn't happen for days.

While Steve was taking care of me, taking me into the main room and laying me on the couch and trying to sooth me, Leon took Travis's body outside. Steve told me later that Leon buried Travis in a shallow grave near the shed out back. Then Leon went to work cleaning up the mess in the other room, and Steve helped undress me and wash us both down.

 

***

 

 

Chapter Eight.

Eventually I guess I just got too drunk to stay awake. I have vague memories of Steve dressing me again, and being carried out to a car, but that was about it until I woke up next morning, stretched out in the back seat of the Malibu. Steve was driving; Leon was in the passenger seat. Dawn was just breaking through the trees at the side of the highway we were on. My head hurt. Actually, lots of parts of me hurt. It took me a few moments to figure out what was what, and then I remembered Travis, and that explained why I hurt. I must have groaned or something, because Leon turned around to look at me.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I nodded.

"What?" said Steve, who had his eyes on the road. He couldn't see me in the rear-view mirror while I was laying down.

"I'm fine," I said. "Uh, thank you." Then I immediately knew that was a lie, and I sat up quickly, rolled down the window, and retched out the contents of my stomach, mostly over the side of the car.

Steve pulled over to the verge and I continued throwing up, heaving up everything until I thought I would cough up my actual stomach. I felt wretched. Steve and Leon watched me, and thoughtfully left me pretty much to myself. Leon had a flask of water that he let me wash my mouth out with when he thought I'd finished up. I swished a mouthful around and spat it out, and then Leon used the remainder to try to wash off the mess I'd made on the outside of the car. Steve half-carried me back to the car and we hit the road again.

Leon had his hand on the back of his seat, near Steve's shoulder, and he reached over to rub my leg reassuringly from time to time. I tilted my head so I could see out the window. The sky was that funny color, almost green, that only happens for a few minutes after the dawn, when the yellow near the horizon meets the blue above that's still speckled with a couple of stars. The occasional tree branch overhanging the highway flashed by.

The guys had found a blanket to throw over me, and the heater seemed like it was on in the car, but I still felt cold inside, the way I'd felt cold when Travis had touched me. I lay there for an hour, maybe, watching the sky turn blue and the trees vanish from view as we hit the plains again, and I thought of Travis, and of the blood, and then of Maria, and that horrible night years ago. I kept shaking. I couldn't help myself. Leon kept trying to reassure me, but there was nothing I could do to stop shaking. "Man, I think she needs a Doctor or somethin'," he said to Steve.

We stopped at a gas station, and I got out of the car to stretch, still wrapping the blanket around me even though the day was quickly getting warmer. When Leon had finished filling the car and Steve had washed the rest of the vomit off it and paid for the gas I lay huddled in the back seat with the blanket and tried to sleep. Mostly I listened to the radio, and to Leon complaining about the "perfectly good stolen car" he'd had to abandon last night a few miles from Davenport because they'd taken the Malibu after Travis's death..

By the time it was near lunch we pulled off the highway and into a small place that didn't seem to have a name identifying it. There was a kind of bar and grill sort of place at the far end of town, and we stopped there to get something to eat.

Inside it was dark, so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but I was glad to see the place was almost deserted. Steve had dressed me in the blue floral skirt last night, and the purple top with the low neck, and even though I had the denim jacket on over that I felt kind of naked. I'd never worn a skirt in public before. I think if I hadn't been feeling kind of numb from everything that had happened I would have been even more self-conscious.

We sat down in a booth and a waitress in her late twenties with real big hair took her time walking over to us. I had never seen hair that big on a woman in real life -- they just don't wear it like that up North -- and so I guess I stared for a moment or two too long. "You 'kay, sugar?" she asked, looking at me strangely.

"Um, maybe you got some aspirin or something?" Leon said. "She's just got a headache."

"I'll see what I can find out back," the waitress said cheerfully, and left us with the menus.

"We're not in Kansas any more, Toto," I said. "Or are we, Steve?"

"Alabama."

"Your sister, man, you sure she's gonna be cool?" Leon asked Steve.

"She has been so far," Steve said. "She came through with the money and the car, didn't she?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess, you know, maybe I've been inside too long," Leon said.

"Amen to that," Steve said, as the waitress came back.

"I'm not really s'posed to give you these, sugar, so don't you be telling no-one," the waitress said as she handed me some aspirin and put some water on the table for each of us. "But y'all not from 'round here, I can see."

"'S right, Ma'am," Steve said.

"Thank you," I said softly as I took the aspirin from her. I was suddenly conscious of my voice. I knew I looked like a girl, but did I sound like a girl? I hadn't worried about that, yesterday, but then I hadn't worried about a lot of things.

"So where y'all from?" the waitress asked Steve.

"Well, I grew up in Jackson, Ma'am, but Emma and Leon here are both from up North. First time in the South for both of 'em."

"Well, I hope you're showin' them the finer points of our fair state," she said, warming to Steve. He *was* cute, even if he was at least five years younger than she was, and he'd disarmed her with a smile very quickly. She took our orders and fairly swished off.

"Why'd you use our real names, man?" Leon was asking quietly.

"She's not gonna remember," Steve said. "Leon, one thing you gotta know about things down here, people are real polite to one another. They pick up real quick on you if you act surly or unfriendly, and they remember that. You can be a genuine sumbitch, but so long as you say 'please' and 'thank you' and 'ma'am' and 'sir' a lot, things go a lot smoother. This ain't Chicago, thank the Lord."

"Yeah, but --"

"Look, it's not like you're Jesse James or anything," Steve said. "If there was anything in the papers about us escaping, it would have been up North, not here. You ever seen a newspaper in these kinds of towns? Real estate news, and stuff about the local school, and maybe how many arrests for drunkenness the cops made last week. That's it. I don't think we're famous enough to make television, do you?"

Leon appeared to relax, since everything Steve was saying made sense.

"As far as I can see," Steve continued, "if we didn't use our real names, at least our first names, we'd prob'ly get ourselves in trouble by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Just relax, and enjoy the meal."

Leon and Steve discussed the car, and what they would do with it when we got to Oxford, where his sister was living while she was studying at the University. There was still the possibility that one of the other guys from Brand would blab about the color and model if they were caught, so keeping it wasn't risk free. On the other hand it had been purchased legally in Steve's sister's name and it was worth a lot of money. Selling it was risky, but so was just dumping it. If they dumped it in Oxford, Steve figured, someone would eventually notice it, and maybe, even though the escape was three states away, people would put two and two together. Something in his reasoning didn't work for me after the way he'd just told us we should use our real names, but I wasn't thinking real clearly that day and I didn't pick up on it. Leon figured we should keep it until we worked out where we were headed after Oxford.

The food arrived, and I ate what I could, which wasn't very much. It did make me feel a bit better, I thought. The waitress flirted with Steve, and he flirted just a little with her. If I had been feeling more alert I might have been jealous.

Leon had ordered a huge amount of food, but when I didn't want to finish the rest of mine he ate that, too. "You still eat like a bird, Em," he said, as he always did when he watched me eat.

I was still feeling cold and shivering slightly. The aspirins didn't seem to do much to change that. And my skin felt kind of clammy. As I watched Leon and Steve eat I realized I needed to pee, as well.

"'Scuse me guys," I said as I stood up. To my amazement Steve stood up briefly as I did, and lifted Leon's arm to get him up too. I stopped. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"A gentleman should always rise when a lady sits or rises," Steve said.

Leon looked at him like he was crazy, but -- through the fog that still enveloped my brain -- I had to smile. A lady, huh?

It was just as well that he had reminded me, I thought, or I probably would have gone to the men's room. As it was I felt pretty awkward opening the door to the ladies, but inside it was no big deal. Just two stalls. I went in to the closest one, raised my skirt and sat down.

As I raised my skirt I became aware of a lot of creases in the material at the back. I had crushed it when I had sat down. It was fairly thin cotton, so the creases would probably fall out soon enough, but I realized that I would have to remember to smooth my skirt under me as I sat down each time, the way girls did. It had been so long since I'd seen a girl; there were probably a thousand things I didn't know like that. I hoped I didn't screw up too badly.

I finished peeing and adjusted my skirt and left the stall. Opposite were a washbasin and a mirror. I studied myself carefully. I sure did look like shit. I realized I didn't have a purse, or anything, either. No brush, no lipstick, no nothing. There probably wasn't a woman alive in this part of the world who would come in here without her purse, I thought. I was going to have to do something about that. I tried to untangle my hair with my fingers, and hoped that when Steve had packed the car last night he'd remembered my barrettes and comb.

As I walked back to the table I could see the waitress flirting with Steve again. Oh well. As I got to the table the guys stood again, only this time more like we were planning on leaving.

"How's your headache, sugar?" the waitress asked me.

"Ah, okay, a little better, I guess," I said. I remembered Steve's speech about politeness. "Thank you." I paused for a moment, and then thought about the hair and makeup situation. "Say, ma'am, um... I don't want to bother you, but I lost my purse last night, and I need to get some stuff, you know. Is there anywhere in town I could get, you know..."

Evidently my inarticulateness sent the wrong message, because she looked at the boys, and then at me, and then she steered me over to the counter at the far side of the room and retrieved her bag from beneath it. "I can help you out for the moment," she said.

I was about to refuse, thinking she was going to try passing me off an old lipstick or something, when she reached in and rustled around for a moment, then pushed a small, soft object into my hand surreptitiously so the guys couldn't see it. I looked down, and -- of course -- it was a Tampax. I almost laughed, but luckily in my dazed state I wasn't in much of a mood for that. I thanked her, profusely, and put it in the pocket of my jacket and smiled.

"It's okay, honey, I need them aspirin myself every time, too. There's nowhere here in town I'd recommend," she said. "But Decatur down the road a ways is a good sized town. You can find the other things you need there."

I thanked her again, and then Steve and Leon and I left, me feeling very strange indeed. I didn't need the damned Tampax, but even when I was out of my head and with ratty hair people definitely thought I was a girl. No problems there. Tampax!

"What was that all about?" Steve asked as we walked over to the car. I could see the waitress watching us through the window, and I put my arm around him briefly as we walked.

"Nothing really," I said. "Just girls' stuff." As I got in the car, in the back seat this time, I thought to myself it was all going to be girls' stuff from now on.

***

We did stop, briefly, in Decatur, and I picked up some mascara and a pale brownish-pink lipstick and some apple-scented shampoo and a hairbrush from a drugstore, as well as a little red plastic change purse with daisies on it that just seemed too silly to pass up. I was still feeling pretty weird, and shivering occasionally, but I managed to get to the register without passing out or anything. Back in the car I gave Steve back most of his change except a couple of quarters and dimes that I put in the change purse.

On the outskirts of Decatur we got more gas, and I went to the ladies room again while Steve made some phone calls and Leon bought some whiskey and some beer from the store next to the gas station. In the ladies room, which wasn't very well lit, I tried the mascara, which wasn't too hard to figure out, and then the lipstick, and managed to get it on my lips without going over the edges without too much trouble. I brushed my hair out enough to get out most of the tangles, and thought I'd work on it some more while we were on the road. When I got back to the car Steve looked at me a little weird, like he was trying to figure out what was different, and then he smiled and told me I looked much better.

As we got back on the road the boys cracked open a beer each. I was going to settle for a coke, but Leon thought I should add some whiskey to it. "Hair of the dog," he laughed. The more Coke I drank the more whiskey he added, and I got pretty toasted on just that one can by the time we made it into Mississippi.

It would probably have been a good idea to be sober when I first met Steve's sister. You know, like meeting your boyfriend's family is always a big deal, right? I hadn't thought about it until then. Anyway, we pulled into a funny looking old place which had a sign out front saying it was a "Sporting Goods Store and Cafe" on the side road through Abbeville, a small town a few miles North of Oxford. As soon as Steve turned the engine off a blonde woman maybe 19 years old came barreling out of the front door, and as Steve opened the car door and straightened up she flung herself upon him.

"Oh! This is great! Oh!" She kept saying, as Leon and I got out of the car and stood, kind of bemused. "Stevie, Stevie, Oh!" She pulled away from him, and looked him up and down before hugging him again. "Oh, you got so *big*."

Eventually they separated again, and Steve turned to me, a huge smile on his face. "Em, Leon, I want you to meet my sister Julia." I could see he was really happy, maybe the happiest I'd seen him.

Julia was gorgeous. Really. She was like one of those blonde goddesses you only ever saw in television commercials, with lightly tanned skin and enormously long legs and a smile that lit up her face. There wasn't a whole lot of family resemblance, except maybe for coloring and something about both of them around the eyes. Julia was tall, too. I figured at least five-ten, maybe taller. She towered over me.

"Em? Emma, is it?" She said as she came over to take my hand, and then she turned to Leon and took his, too. I could see Leon was kind of dumbstruck by this vision from one of his wet dreams, because he could barely get a word out. Julia, on the other hand, couldn't stop talking.

We went into the 'Sporting Goods Store and Cafe', which turned out to be a pretty standard general store, only with a little eating area -- 12 stools along a counter -- out the back. We were the only people there except for a guy in his fifties at the general store register and a woman near the same age behind the counter of the cafe. Julia introduced all of us. They were Jesse and Evelyn, and somehow Julia had become friendly with them since she'd started studying.

Julia and Steve sat on two stools at the end of the counter, and me next to Steve, with Leon next to me. Evelyn poured us all some coffee and -- without asking -- served us all a piece of cobbler. Then she seemed to deliberately make herself scarce while Steve and Julia talked.

Julia started off by talking about their parents, who of course knew Steve had escaped from Brand but didn't know Julia was meeting him. It seemed that neither she nor Steve had much love for their father, who I knew had pretty much abandoned Steve when he had been charged. It was the last in a long line of juvenile offences for Steve, but it had been while the family had all been away with his father on business. Their father evidently thought that the shame the case had bought him with his clients had cost him money, and that had been worth more to him than his son.

I didn't get all that from the conversation, of course. I had heard a lot of it from Steve over the time we'd been together, and of course I believed him, but it was interesting to hear what a low opinion of her father Julia had as well.

Actually I didn't get too much of the conversation at all. As I mentioned earlier, I was kind of toasted from the whiskey, so the coffee was welcome, but I was also feeling kind of strange, the way I had ever since I had awoken that morning, like everything was a little distant. I picked at the piece of cobbler, but I couldn't really eat much, so I gave it to Leon, who as expected demolished it in seconds.

"Thanks for everything, sis. I really mean it," Steve said. "I don't want you to get into trouble for all this, so we... well, we'll move on from here, at least in a day or so."

"Don't be silly," said Julia. "I've got everything completely organized."

"Yeah, but the police will probably be looking for me to come visit you sometime --"

"Which is why we're meeting here first, silly. Don't worry, the police already visited me, and I said I hadn't spoken to you in years. Nobody knows our family up here in Oxford, Stevie. Don't worry about anything."

Julia and Steve probably talked non-stop for at least an hour and a half, and all the time I felt weirder and weirder. She told Steve, quietly, that Jesse and Evelyn didn't know the family, so as far as they were concerned he -- in fact all of us -- were perfectly clean and free.

They kept on talking, and Julia brought us into the conversation as well, talking about how she'd organized with friends to put us up in an apartment near hers. The apartment belonged to a professor who was on sabbatical. She had told her Mom and Dad that her car had been in an accident and needed repairs, which wasn't true, but they had given her an additional thousand dollars which she would give to Steve later that night. She had a friend -- "a sort of boyfriend, he's cool" -- who was a printmaker and knew a lot about art and printing and stuff, and he had a little business on the side doing fake ID's for the freshmen, and she could probably get us something from him.

She was right. She had thought of just about everything. I was impressed. Julia was gorgeous, and she was smart and organized, too. I wondered how many boys' hearts she'd broken since she'd arrived at Ole Miss, as they called it.

The shadows were lengthening outside, and I was feeling very strange and lightheaded and cold to my core when Julia finally asked a question we all should have seen coming. "Okay," she said. "I know how you and Leon got to be friends, Steve, but how in heck did you meet Emma in a place like that?"

I don't know what was said after that, because my body chose that moment to make all my decisions for me, and I passed out and slid off the stool to the floor with a loud thump.

 

***

 

 

Chapter Nine.

I woke up on a single bed somewhere. I was laying on top of the crisp white sheets. The smell in the room reminded me a little bit of the smell of the infirmary at Brand, but there was also a heavy scent of a flower coming through the open window across the room. It was still light, but only just. My head hurt, and my body hurt, and I remembered the whiskey and then thought to myself that I'd been really stupid to let Leon give me that much. Before last night I'd never had a drink in my life.

Then I remembered the conversation that had been going on just before I passed out. Oh! I turned to roll over and put my face in the pillow, but I must have groaned or something because a moment later I heard someone come into the room and a male voice I didn't know, an old man's voice, said "You're awake." It wasn't a question, more of a statement.

I rolled back and saw a short, almost bald man in his sixties, in a suit, looking down at me. "Yes," I said. I realized I was still fully clothed, even though I was still not sure a cotton skirt qualified as fully clothed.

"I'm Doctor Bagley," he said, in a slow southern way. "You gave your friends quite a fright I'm afraid."

I tried to sit up, but he firmly put his hand on my shoulder to restrain me. "You just lie there for a moment and tell me a few things. First thing, are you pregnant?"

"What?" I responded without thinking.

"It's a reasonable question. A girl your age, travelling with two older boys. A girl who faints. Are you?"

"No. No." I wondered what to say next. Obviously he hadn't examined me.

"Don't mean to cause you offence. But I had to ask. In the circumstances," he said. "So when was your last period?"

"What?" I said again without thinking.

"When did you menstruate?"

"Listen, Doctor," I began, wondering how to explain any of my situation to him.

"Has it been in the last two weeks?" he asked.

"Yes," I said on the spur of the moment.

"Good, then we can rule that out, I think," he said, clearly glad to be past that line of questioning, although I am sure I was gladder. "If you don't mind, can I examine you?"

"What?" I said again. I was going to have to come up with some different responses.

"Can you take off your jacket and top?" he asked.

Oh, that! That I could manage. "Sure, I think so," I said. "But I'll need to sit up to do it."

He helped me sit up, and then took my jacket from me as I got it off. I peeled up the pale blue top I was wearing, over my head, until I was clad only in my underwear and skirt. I was still shivering, but it wasn't from cold. Part of it was from still feeling strange, but mostly it was from being nearly naked in front of a strange man, even if he was a Doctor.

"Where did those bruises come from?" he asked. I looked down, and I could see that my arms were badly bruised where Travis had held them, and that my shoulder was an ugly black and yellow color where he had hit me. It was a good thing I had worn the jacket all day, I thought to myself.

I didn't respond to his question at all because I couldn't think of what to say. As soon as I thought about Travis I started to shake. Dr. Bagley seemed to notice, and although I got the feeling he was about to press me for an answer he thought better of it and shook his head. He had me sit on the side of the bed, and then he approached me with a stethoscope. He listened to me breath, then he took my pulse. "Well that's better'n it was an hour ago," he said. Eventually he told me I could put my top back on, and then he took blood pressure readings. He looked in my ears, then in my eyes with a small light, and then had me do some exercises with my eyes following his fingers and stuff like that.

Without saying anything to me, he went to the door and opened it, and in a moment Steve and Julia entered. "Has she had any... any surprises today?" Dr. Bagley asked them, as though he wasn't sure he was going to get a straight answer. "Apart from drinking, I mean."

"Uh..." Steve looked at me, then at Julia, then at the Doctor and back at me. "Uh, she was, uh... attacked by someone last night." Julia looked startled, but the Doctor just nodded. "Uh... Leon and me, we got him off her, but he hit her a few times, I think."

"Indeed he did, young man. That's not something I approve of, although there's some in these parts will say a woman sometimes asks for it."

"She wasn't asking for it," Steve said. "Trust me, I saw her."

"Is the man who did this... What happened to him?" the Doctor asked.

"I'd rather not say, sir," Steve said awkwardly.

"It was not you, now?"

"No!" I interrupted, trying to stand up. "No!" I lost my balance and Steve sprang forward and caught me and laid me back on the bed. "No!" I said once more as firmly as I could. I reached out for Steve and he sat on the bed next to me and put his hand on my arm.

"Well, I think her reaction answers that question for us, young man. Is this man that attacked her likely to be a threat to her in the future?" Dr. Bagley asked.

"I think I can fairly say there's no chance of that, sir," Steve said. "Leon and me, well... besides, sir, it was almost a thousand miles from here."

Julia came to stand at the side of the bed, too, and began to stroke my forehead gently and arrange my hair on the pillow. It felt nice.

"I think, nevertheless, that in these cases the police should be notified. And I think a proper pelvic exam in these cases --"

"No," I said again, though not as forcefully. I tried to sit up to look Dr. Bagley in the eye, but Steve held me back and instead the Doctor came over to look at me more closely.

"No, I don't want the police. Steve and Leon taught him a lesson," I said to Dr. Bagley. "Thank you," I said to Steve. I turned back to the Doctor. "I feel kind of strange, but I'd really just as soon forget this, if you don't mind. Nothing... nothing really happened. Steve stopped him before he had a chance to..."

The Doctor looked at Steve, and then back at me, and then back at Steve again.

"Nevertheless, she's still in some state of shock. Giving her hard liquor was very dangerous in those circumstances."

"I'm sorry about that, sir. We were just trying to, you know, calm her."

"There are other ways to do that, which I trust y'all will observe in the future. Young man, you seem to have been quite gallant, and I'm sorry about my earlier question to you. But I must insist that if you are going to take it upon yourself to rescue these... distressed damsels, that y'all do the right think and get them to a doctor before you head for the nearest liquor store."

'Distressed damsels'. I reminded Julia of that phrase a few days later and we had a good chuckle. Seriously, parts of the South have a real charm, and their own compensations, but there are some very old-fashioned things about life there -- or at least there were twenty years ago.

Steve and Julia managed to get me out of Dr.Bagley's surgery without any further examinations. Julia didn't know that I had a better reason to avoid a pelvic exam than the usual aversion, I thought, but I was grateful that she was so supportive. Dr. Bagley knew Julia, and seemed to trust her more than Steve, and he made her promise to take care of me for the next few days. Because of that I found myself travelling to Oxford in Julia's little English sports car, while Steve and Leon followed behind.

We stopped at the apartment that Julia had organized, and at her request I stayed in Julia's car while the guys unloaded what few possessions we had into the building. I wasn't feeling physically as bad as I had been earlier. Dr. Bagley had given me a shot (in the butt, but he hadn't seemed to notice anything unusual) and some tablets, and although they made me feel kind of distanced from the world I wasn't any worse than I had been earlier.

The apartment was in the attic of an old, once grand timber home that had a huge tree in the yard that gave off the same heavy scent I had noticed outside at Dr. Bagley's. "It's Magnolia," Steve said when I asked him about it as he came to kiss me goodnight. He went to kiss me the way we normally would, but there was something wrong with me -- I don't know exactly how to describe the feeling, but somehow I was kind of turned off by him. I loved him, I was sure of that. I just didn't want a guy being intimate with me right now. Not even Steve.

It upset me. I think maybe it upset me more than it upset Steve. We kissed, but it wasn't good. I turned away and Julia helped me back into her car.

Julia and I drove to her place, and she helped me up the stairs. Her roommate was stretched out on the couch when I came in, and she stood up as soon as she saw Julia had someone with her. She was a tall girl, taller even than Julia, and I felt like I was in the presence of giants. She wore no makeup, and had her black hair cut short in a mannish kind of cut that wasn't very common back in those days in the South. It showed off the elegant planes of her cheekbones. She smiled broadly and reached out to shake my hand, just like a guy would.

"Emma, Priscilla Arsenault." Julia said. Pris, this is Emma... Y'know, I don't know your second name."

"Boyle," I said after a moment's hesitation. I had actually discussed that name with Dr. Blaha, years ago, when he kept referring to be my old surname. I told Dr. Blaha that I didn't want anything to do with my father's name, and that I'd start using my mother's maiden name whenever I left Brand. That was a silly thing to have told him, I guess, since if he wanted to find me it would make it easier, but I really didn't want to use the surname I'd been born with, ever again. It was kind of ironic in the circumstances, using my mother's name, since I couldn't use my male Christian name any more either.

Julia told Pris, who hated her own Christian name and hissed at Julia whenever Julia called her "Priscilla," that I was her brother's friend -- I noted that she didn't say "girlfriend" -- and that some bozo had tried to rape me the previous night and so I was going to stay with her for a day or so.

"Good idea," Pris said. "Keep away from men for a while. Emma, I try to stay away from them as much as possible."

"First thing's first," Julia said, in one of those tones I'd already recognized meant she was ready to organize things. "A shower, I think."

Mmmm. That sounded good to me. "Thanks. It's been a long drive, and..."

"You don't have to tell me about feeling dirty after a guy has touched you," Pris said. "C'mon, I'll get you a towel."

"I'll take care of her, Pris," Julia said, in a friendly tone but one that indicated she was firm on the matter.

Julia steered me to the bathroom. "Okay," she said, closing the door. "I'll get you a robe, and some underwear. You're what, a six?"

"Eight," I said. I was pleased I knew the sizes so well.

"Okay. Well, there's some shampoo on the window ledge there, and --"

"Rats. I bought some shampoo today, but I left all my things with Steve and Leon."

"It's okay, we'll get them tomorrow." She left, and I began undressing. I pulled off my jacket and then the top and the skirt, and hung them on the end of the towel rack. I was still in my bra and panties when Julia came back in without knocking, carrying a robe and a pair of panties. I turned, startled, and she stopped, and stared at me.

"Steve said..." she began, and then petered out. "You're..."

"Steve *told* you?!" I practically shrieked.

"Well, he told me... but you're not, I mean, you're real..." She was blushing. "I expected, you know, I'm sorry..."

"What did Steve tell you, exactly?" I asked, my heart sinking. How could Steve betray me to someone? Even if she was his sister? I felt like I wanted to dissolve into the floor.

"He said -- you know, when I asked how he had met you, and you passed out?"

I nodded.

"He told me that you were at Brand because you were a boy."

A tear escaped from my right eye, followed by another from my left. Was I some kind of freak if everyone knew about me?

"But you're not -- I mean, those are real, right?" Julia was looking at my breasts. Then she looked down at my crotch again. "You sure don't look like a boy."

"Is that why you followed me in here? To find out?" I asked.

"Well, you know, I didn't believe you could be. You sure didn't look like a boy with your clothes on."

"Julia, I think I should leave," I said, reaching for my skirt again.

"No. No. I'm sorry. It's just... why would Steve say that?"

"I don't know," I said. "Did he say anything else about us?"

"Us?" She repeated. "You mean, you and him?"

"That's what I mean." My tears were flowing more freely now.

"Oh, god," she said. "I should have figured *that* out."

She hung the robe and panties on a hook on the door, and opened it as though she was going to leave.

"Listen, Emma?"

"Yes?" I said.

"It's okay with me. Honestly. I wouldn't have asked you to stay if it wasn't. I'm just stupid sometimes. And Steve probably didn't want to tell me about the two of you yet."

"But he's your brother, and I... I'm..." I began to sob, and Julia came over to me and put her arms around me. I only came up to her shoulders, but it felt nice. I cried, and cried, and she rubbed my back, and eventually I relaxed.

"It's okay. Let it out," she said. She rubbed my back for a few minutes more as I cried, and then stepped away from me for a moment to turn the shower on. Then she turned back to me, and reached behind me to undo my bra. My breasts sprung free. They were a little marked from the lines of the bra since I'd had it on so long.

"You're very beautiful, did you know that?" she said softly. "I can see why Steve would think so."

I sniffled. I didn't feel beautiful. Steve had made me feel beautiful, but now I felt like... like a freak.

"Do you want to take those off --" she indicated my panties -- "or do you want me to help with that too?"

I turned away from her, as I would have from Steve, and stepped out of my panties, then stepped into the shower with my back to Julia.

"You take a good long time and scrub yourself clean," Julia said.

I didn't hear her leave, but I gradually realized I was in the bathroom alone.

I washed my hair, and soaped myself more thoroughly than I ever had before. I wanted to wash the past few days off me. I would have liked to have washed years away, but soap and water only does so much. My tears got lost in the rest of the water, and I stood directly under the shower fitting with the water hitting the top of my head and sending my hair straight down, over my face and shoulders and breasts.

Eventually I felt the water begin to run a little cold. My hands were all pruned up. Pris came to the door of the bathroom just as I turned off the water. "Emma, are you okay in there, honey?"

"I'm fine, thank you," I called back.

I toweled myself softly and slowly, and then put on the panties Julia had provided, which were a little large but not too much so. I tucked myself back in them, and reflected that if I was a boy I wasn't much of one these days.

I reached for the robe, which was a plain white toweling one with pink piping on the collar and sleeves. It was too large, and reached right to the tops of my feet, but it felt good and once I tied it with the belt it seemed like it wouldn't come adrift too easily. Then I tried wrapping my hair in the towel and throwing it back up over my head, the way I had seen women on television do it. It took a few tries, but eventually I figured out how to wrap it over my forehead and twist my hair in it so it stayed put.

Tentatively I went back to the living room.

Julia made me up a bed on the couch while Pris made me some tea. I'd never drunk tea before. Mom and Dad had been coffee drinkers, and at Brand I'd stuck to coffee for some reason. I liked tea, I decided. Pris couldn't believe I'd never had it before. "Where *are* you from?" she asked jokingly.

Julia hugged me again as she sat down on the bed next to me. "I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing, Emma."

I tried to make light of the situation, but I was still a little out of it, even if I did feel *so* much better for having cried. I don't know if I was too coherent, but pretty soon we were talking about other things. Mostly about Oxford, and the life of a single college girl. "Meat City," Pris called it, referring to the emphasis the University of Mississippi put on its football team. She and Julia were not especially impressed with most of the boys on the team. "Is there any one of them hasn't asked you out yet, Jules?" Pris asked.

Pris was not the kind of girl who got asked out a lot, it seemed. At least not by boys she deemed worthy. "I have this problem," she said. "I'm only interested in guys who are taller than I am, and at least as smart. The basketball team is taller, but, you know..." she shrugged and raised her hands in frustration. "Jocks." She laughed heartily.

We talked for about two hours. Pris made a chicken salad, which I picked at a little bit, and then the three of us watched television. I hadn't seen much television while I was at Brand, because I had been in isolation for so long and I would rather listen to Steve play guitar than watch most of it, but it was nice to lay on the bed that Julia had made, with Pris on one side of me, and Julia on the other. They told me the next day that I fell asleep on Julia's shoulder, but I don't remember anything beyond watching a movie with Jill Clayburgh and Peter Falk in it and crying again.

I woke up to hear Pris in the kitchen, singing softly to herself as she made some coffee. I discovered that at some time in the previous night she or Julia -- I was guessing it was Julia -- had given me a nightgown to wear. "Hey, Emma, how you doin' this morning?" she said cheerily.

I thought for a moment, and realized that I felt a little better. I had stopped shaking at some stage yesterday, and I didn't have the hangover from the whiskey anymore. I said as much to Pris, and she poured me coffee, and we sat at the table and talked a while about trivia. At one point in the conversation I found myself thinking that she was such an easy person to talk to, but that talking with her was such a different experience than I'd had with all the guys at Brand.

Julia, it seemed, had left the house already. Pris wasn't sure where she had gone, only that she'd be back before ten. "I have a class then." she said, "and we didn't want to leave you on your own."

Sure enough, at about 9.30 Julia came back, with Steve. I was so happy to see him I think I was a little rude to Julia and Pris. He hugged me, but there was something wrong, something different in the hug. Maybe he was feeling awkward after the way we had kissed, or maybe it was me, still uncomfortable with being intimate with a guy since Travis...

Pris went off to class, and Julia and Steve and I sat at the table. Julia had organized for Steve to get ID and other essentials today, so it wasn't long before he had to leave again, with the address she had given him and a few hundred dollars in cash. As he left he kissed me, but again it felt... I felt somehow empty afterward. I didn't know why.

Then Julia and I sat at the table and had the discussion we might have had the night before if I had been more together. I started at the very beginning. The real beginning, with the fact that I was innocent. I don't know if she believed that or not, but I hoped she did, and I continued. I didn't know how much her brother had told her about life at Brand, but it turned out to be not very much, because she was aghast at learning about Pangianis. When I began to tell her about my trips to the infirmary, and then solitary, and Dr. Blaha, she reached across the table, and took my hand. I could see she was upset for me. I wasn't sure whether to tell her that Steve had fought it out with Pangianis, and done a lot of time in solitary too, but eventually that came out as well.

"Why did they make you into a girl?" She asked.

I shrugged. "Some new therapy, I think. They were convinced I was aggressive, and a sex fiend or something."

"I'm sure it's illegal," she said.

"I think when you're a minor that they can do anything they like," I said.

"How... How do you feel about it?" Julia asked.

"At first... At first I hated it. Sometimes there are moments when I still do." I paused and thought of the past year with Steve. "But then there are some things that weren't so bad, you know? Like, do you like the way your body feels?"

"I haven't thought too much about it," Julia said.

"I -- you know, I would have been embarrassed to admit this even a few months ago -- but once the doctor talked about giving me a mastectomy, and I just, you know...?" I trailed off, and Julia nodded. "It gave me the creeps, really," I continued.

"So you like being a girl." It was a statement.

"I think so. I'm not sure I know very much about it, really..."

"Well, you do it pretty well," Julia said.

"I think that's just the way I look... You know, I still don't know how I didn't just freeze up that time in Davenport buying clothes. I don't really know anything about being a girl -- in the real world, you know? If I hadn't been... so out of it yesterday... I'm still waiting, you know, for reality to come up and bite me and tell me that this is all just impossible."

"Would you want to go back to being a boy?"

"I... I don't know." I realized with a start that it was true. I didn't know. I had been outraged with Dr. Blaha for so long, but then there was Steve... And the way I looked now... I shook my head. "I don't even know if that's possible."

There was an awkward pause, and I tried to get back to the story. "Anyway. Then they finally let me out of solitary, and then I guess it was just a matter of time before Steve found out."

"You were pretty lucky they put you with Steve," Julia remarked.

"I think they knew they might have problems if they put me with anyone else," I said. "like maybe a riot. Steve is -- was -- pretty respected at Brand."

"And when Steve found out, you started to...?"Julia hesitated.

"Sleep together? Yes. He was the first person -- I don't know if I should tell you this, you're his sister -- he was the first person who really cared about me, you know?"

"I think so."

We talked for a while longer about how difficult it was to disguise the changes to my body while I was at Brand, and how my new "assets" had been an integral part of Steve's breakout plan.

"I must admit that seeing you, and hearing this, explains a lot, Emma," Julia said. "When Steve first sent me a message saying that he needed money and a car and all that, I didn't understand, because I knew Steve only had a year to go before he would get out. But he told me this morning it was because of you. I didn't understand, fully, what he meant, then. I think I do now."

"I worry that he's made things very difficult for himself," I said.

"Well, yes. And no. Yes, if he gets caught it will probably mean an extension of his sentence, he says. But he hated it at Brand, and he felt that he would always have a stigma hanging over him even after he got out if he stayed. Then he killed Travis --"

"-- You know about that?"

"He told me this morning. I kind of worked it out listening to his conversation with Dr. Bagley yesterday, but not all of it. In normal circumstances I doubt any court would convict him, considering what Travis was doing. But that would mean explaining you, and your relationship to Steve. And our parents... Let's just say our family life is far from perfect, Emma. In many ways Steve is better off trying to start a new life, as a new person."

"Can you do that?"

"He seems to think so. That's why he's off seeing some people today. Pete -- my boyfriend -- is going to do him a fake ID. I don't know what he's planning to do about social security number so he can work, but Pete seems to think there's a way around all that."

It was after noon by the time I had finished telling Julia about everything that had happened since I entered Brand, and she had told me a little about their family. I already knew some of that from Steve, but I knew that some reciprocal listening would be appreciated and I was feeling more comfortable with Julia the more she confided in me.

Julia and Steve's father was a prominent businessman in Mississippi. Most of his money came from his own father, but that didn't stop him from being one of those hard-hearted sons-of-bitches who thought everyone who wasn't rich had only themselves to blame. He was a hard man, who cared a great deal about reputation, and he abandoned Steve when Steve was charged. He still lavished money on Julia, but he was constantly trying to introduce her to the sons of businessmen he was doing deals with -- or worse, the businessmen themselves.

According to Steve, Mrs. Hammond was an alcoholic before he went into Brand, and Julia told me that her drinking hadn't diminished at all in the years since. "Of course," she added, "that might be because Daddy's gone got himself a real-live Barbie Doll, which Momma pretends not to know about."

Julia had been very close to Steve as a child, and in their early teen years, before Steve went to Brand, they had become even closer as the full horror of their parents' marriage sunk in. Julia told me she would do anything at all for Steve, and I believed her.

When she noticed the time she put on her 'organized' tone of voice again and told me we were going shopping together. "I warn you," she said. "Oxford is not exactly the fashion capital of Mississippi. But we have to get you some more clothes. You sure aren't going to fit into most of mine, or Pris's."

But first I had to get dressed. Julia had gone over to the apartment Steve and Leon were staying in and retrieved the few clothes I had. Since the blue top had been ruined (and buried) when Travis was killed, the only clean top I had left was the halter-top. "Pretty daring," said Julia. I felt kind of self-conscious in it, and said so, but I didn't have a whole lot of choices, really. She ironed the skirt I had been wearing yesterday, and I wore that as well. Then she showed me how to style my hair without having to wet it first, using a curling wand to put some ringlets down the front of my otherwise only mildly wavy hair. She stepped back to consider the results.

"Sometime today we are gonna get you a hairstyle, too," she said. "You have beautiful hair, Emma, but am I right in thinking that hairstyles were not a big item where you were?"

"Uh... does it look that bad?"

"No, honey, but it's a bit flower-child, you know? Things have moved on since the sixties."

We drove through town slowly. I still wasn't used to seeing so many people, or to being outside without a fence around me. And I still wasn't used to wearing a skirt. After I got into the car Julia told me I had to learn to get in differently next time, otherwise I was going to give a lot of guys a look at the tops of my legs or worse. She made me do it again until I got it right by sitting down and then turning in the seat to face forward. Then I had to remember to untwist the skirt from underneath me, so I didn't crease it again.

Oxford didn't have a mall back then. The town had that old-style "village square" kind of feel people pine for these days. We parked on the street in the square, and Julia led me through a selection of stores she deemed worthy, starting with the town's only department store.

Wow, Julia could stop those guys in their tracks. She was far too classy-looking for them to even think about cat calls or whistles or anything as crass as that, but there was no denying that every time we came out of a store onto the street that every male within eyeshot locked onto her. She was gorgeous, and she knew it and wasn't embarrassed by it the way some more insecure women are. I was amazed to look at the expressions on the faces of the guys we passed, though.

Being out with Julia was good for me. I was too young for most of the guys to be interested in me anyway, but next to Julia I might as well have been invisible. Which was good, since it stopped me being self-conscious about the way I was dressed.

"Anything that takes your fancy, honey" Julia said to me when I asked her what we were going to buy. "Daddy lets me use his card any time I want. He gets worried that maybe I'm not 'keeping up appearances', as he puts it, if I haven't been shopping for clothes at least once every month. He's not going to know whether they're for you or for me. And besides, I may buy something for myself anyway. We'll see."

We shopped, and we shopped. Well, as much as you can shop in Oxford. I was impressed by Julia's attitude to the whole thing. She would walk into a shop and somehow know exactly where to find a perfect skirt or blouse right away. At first I thought it must be because she shopped there a lot, but nobody seemed to recognize her, so I wasn't sure about that.

We bought a few things for me. I was kind of embarrassed to have Julia come into the change room with me at first, but she didn't seem to think anything of it, and gradually I got used to it. It was good having her assistance, because she knew much more about women's clothing than me and was able to recognize whether it was a bad cut instead of the wrong size.

We had a late lunch in a little cafe just off the square. I had noticed the day before that southern food seemed to have all sorts of weird names I'd never come across before, but Julia just ordered salads for both of us, which made my confusion about what a hush puppy was moot.

Over lunch Julia talked some more about her childhood with Steve, and about how much she had missed having her brother around while she finished school. Steve had been a rebellious kid, Julia said, and her parents hadn't known how to deal with that. They thought that giving him money, or fancy stuff like a trailbike, would settle him down, but, well -- and here Julia spread her arms in a gesture of bewilderment -- they didn't see that Steve was pissed with them, and with the world, and that he wasn't going to settle down and become a businessman like his father. Steve, Julia confessed to me, had always wanted to be a professional musician. In Junior High, before he went into Brand, he had formed a band with some friends. "They were pretty good," she said "for a bunch of fourteen year olds."

We finished lunch and Julia took me across to Dauvergne's, the beauty parlor. I was nervous as all hell. I'd never been inside a beauty parlor in my life, but as a kid I had walked past the one on Halsted Street near our apartment and smelt all the smells coming from it, and seen those big hair dryers, like astronauts' helmets. It all seemed very arcane and not entirely pleasant.

Julia didn't seem to notice my hesitation as she guided me gently through the front door.

A woman in her mid-twenties approached us and smiled. "Hello, Julia, back so soon? A special occasion, perhaps?"

"No, Helen," Julia answered. "I want you to meet my cousin, Emma Jane," she said, indicating me. 'Emma *Jane*', I thought. Heck, why not. I hadn't even thought of a second name.

"Pleased to meet you, Emma," Helen said. "Are you visiting, or are you planning on stayin' here in Oxford?"

I wondered how she knew I wasn't from around here. I hadn't opened my mouth yet. Surely it wasn't that obvious I was a stranger to these parts.

"Emma's visiting for a while, Helen. Though she may stay. Her parents passed away recently." Julia sure was slick with the explanations, I thought.

Helen was very solicitous after hearing that my folks were dead. It was almost true, I thought. Mom was dead. Dad was in prison and I wished he was dead. Julia had an uncanny knack for describing things the way they should have been rather than the way they were.

Helen took me over to a chair and introduced me to Marie, the stylist who would cut my hair. The three of them conferred on appropriate styles, ignoring me completely. I was going to protest, when I realized that having Julia take care of this aspect of my appearance was probably a good idea. After all, she'd had years of experience as a girl, and I'd had... well, I wasn't sure whether my experience in Brand counted as boy or girl experience.

Looking around the salon, I just hoped they weren't going to make me look too... Southern. That big hair stuff still had me freaked. The three other customers in there were all older than me, and all in various stages of getting a "big do." I was relieved when I heard Julia say "no perming." I didn't exactly know what a perm was, but I was sure I probably wouldn't like it. "She isn't going to be able to take care of a perm." Julia continued. "And anyway I think her hair has enough of a natural wave in it."

"I've still got a little more shopping to do, honey," Julia said to me. "I'll be back later to pick you up, and then perhaps we can look at some new shoes for you."

As Julia left I caught one or two fragments of her conversation with Marie. She made a comment like "Her momma never did teach her how to look proper." I was embarrassed. Even though it was true, it was misleading.

Marie came back over after Julia left and began to run her fingers through my hair. "You sure have nice healthy hair, sugar," she said to me. "Y'all understand what we were just discussin'?"

"Not really," I admitted.

"This the first time you ever bin in a salon?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Is it that obvious?"

"It's okay, sugar, we're gonna take real good care of you. You'd be surprised how many girls from some of the towns near here only get to a salon once a year or so. Then there's them like Julia, who can't get enough of our place." She smiled. Then she went on to describe what she was going to do with my hair. She got about halfway through and I must have looked concerned, because she stopped and said "Is there somethin' wrong?"

"My boyfriend..." I began.

"Yes, sugar?"

"He likes my hair long," I said.

"Oh, don't you worry about that," Marie said. " I ain't gonna take anythin' much off the length. I'm just gonna give it some shape and trim up the ends."

I was led over to the shampoo basin, even though I'd only washed my hair the previous night, and Helen massaged my scalp while she cleaned and conditioned my hair. Then I was led back to the chair and Marie went to work cutting it while it was still wet. She trimmed the front and a little on the sides, and I could see that she was giving me bangs. She trimmed small amounts from various parts of my head and commenced a kind of twenty questions thing while she was cutting, asking where I was from, what I was doing in school, what I was going to do, did I have any family besides Julia.

I was pretty nervous answering most of those questions, since I hadn't quite caught all that Julia had said to her before she left, and anyway some of them were just plain hard. I told her I was from Indiana, which wasn't true but was close enough to fit my accent. But I didn't know what to say about school. I think she took my inarticulate response to that question as disinterest, though. "I was never any good at school either, honey," she said.

The family question was pretty easy, really. "No-one left," I said. "All dead, except for my cousins" That was true enough again, as true as it needed to be.

"No sisters, huh?" Marie asked.

"No, how'd you guess?" I asked. She shrugged, then took to drying my hair off with a round stiff brush and a large hand-held hair dryer. That pretty much took care of any remaining conversational possibilities.

When she had finished I was pretty amazed. I don't want to sound big-headed or anything, but Marie had really done a good job. My hair looked full, and silky, and it framed my face and made me look -- well, cuter. There was still enough guy left in me to know what a cute girl looked like, and even though I have never much liked my hair color or complexion much I had to admit that I looked as good as any red-haired girl I'd ever seen before. I smiled.

"I'm glad you like it, sugar."

Marie showed me how to blow-dry it myself without damaging my hair. Because Julia still wasn't back and she didn't have any other clients, she spent some time showing me a few other things I could do with it, like put it up in a twist behind my head, and then how to brush it without tearing at it and taking the curl out of it or frizzing it. "Your hair has a very beautiful natural wave, Emma," she said. "Most girls spend a fortune to get hair like that."

Finally Julia returned and settled up the account. I said goodbye to Marie and Helen, who both admonished me to come back and have myself attended to more often than once a year. Then Julia and I went a few doors down to a shoe store, and we both tried on about ten pairs each. I couldn't believe how demanding Julia was, sending the sales assistant back and forth searching for different colors and never quite seeming satisfied. Nonetheless we left with five pairs, three for me and two for her. I got a pair of black slingbacks with a small heel, some white strappy sandals with a two inch heel that I thought was more than I could deal with and some dark green pumps with a small bow on the front and a three inch heel that I thought were going to kill me for sure.

As we drove home I realized that I was exhausted just from the shopping. Julia and I dumped all the parcels on the floor near the coffee table and I made some tea for both of us while she went to the bathroom.

"Julia," I said when she had sat back down on the couch and I had passed her tea to her, "Thank you so much for everything today."

"It's nothin', Emma," she said. "It's not really my money, you know. I'm just glad to see you looking happier. I'm truly sorry about last night --"

"-- You don't need to apologize again, Julia," I said. "I mean, he's your brother, you've every right to be worried about who he's involved with."

"Well, I am still sorry, honey. After all that's happened to you these past few days..."

I was still for a moment, remembering Travis suddenly. Julia must have seen my thoughts on my face, because she immediately tried to change the subject and cheer me up. She talked about the nightlife in Oxford, such as it was, and how best to avoid the "meat markets" that the football players inhabited.

"I'm way underage, Julia," I said. I don't think I'll be hanging out in too many bars, anyway."

"Shoot, Emma, there's ways around that for a girl pretty as you," she said.

"Emma Jane," I corrected her, and we both laughed.

"I ain't legal either, but my I.D. says I am," Julia continued. "Heck, girl, this is a college town. The bars'd go bust quicker than a minute if the students couldn't drink."

Pris came in soon after that, and I was required to model everything we'd bought that day. It wasn't until I started taking everything out of its wrapping and bags that I understood just how much money Julia must have spent on me that day. "God, Julia, this is just too much!" I said.

"You want to be careful how you say 'God' in these parts," Pris warned me. "The only thing more important than religion round here is football."

The last bag I found was one I didn't remember seeing at all. Inside was something wrapped in tissue paper. "This must be yours," I said to Julia, offering it to her.

"No, honey, it's yours. It's sort of a present for my brother, really." I opened the parcel and discovered some lingerie. Apart from two very pretty lace bras and matching panties, there was an all-in-one thing that had little shoestring straps and a catch in the crotch. It was made of beautiful dark green lace except for a small panel at the bottom to allow for the fastenings.

I looked up at Julia, unsure of how exactly I was supposed to wear this.

"It's called a teddy," Julia said. You can wear it under a dress, like that green one we bought today, or you can wear it when you and Steve are alone."

"Grrr," said Pris, teasingly. "I can guarantee you'll get a response from anyone in that."

I dressed in a dark green wrap dress that went well with the teddy and that Julia told me was just right with my hair.

Around seven Steve came in with Leon. As soon as he saw me he did a kind of double take, then did it again for laughs. I went over and kissed him, and he hugged me. It felt better. Still not exactly right, but better than it had been that morning, when there had been something really wrong.

I'm sure it was some kind of pre-planned thing, that Pris and Julia and Leon all went off together to get takeout for dinner. That left Steve and me alone in the apartment. He hugged me again. He must have noticed something himself. "Em, Em," he whispered in my ear. "It's okay."

I separated from him and looked at him. "Steve..."

"Yes"

"Steve, do you... do you still..." I didn't know exactly what I was searching for, but everything just felt so hollow.

"Do I still what, Em?" he said gently.

"You still want me, after all that's happened?"

"Oh, Em!" He hugged me to him more tightly. "Shhhh."

"It's just, you know, Travis, and everything," I began to sob again. "I just feel so, dirty, you know?"

"Em, my love." There, he said it again. In spite of everything that had happened, I still loved him more than I could say. "Em, you have nothing to feel dirty about. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

I stopped crying and stepped back from him and undid the tie that held the front of my dress closed.

"You still like me?"

He reached out and touched his hand to my face and ran his fingers down to the top of the teddy where it sat just above my nipples. "Em, you're the most beautiful woman I know...." I could see desire in his eyes as his fingers traced the top of the teddy. His voice was soft and soothing and his touch was making me tingle. "You have no idea how beautiful, do you?"

"I want you inside me, Steve."

Within about twenty seconds he had me naked and straddled over a chair. There was a brief moment when I was slightly freaked, remembering Travis and the events of a few nights earlier, but Steve was nibbling on my neck as he bent over me, and nuzzling my ear and telling me how much he'd missed me, and how beautiful my ass was. As he came into me I forgot all about Travis, at least for the moment, and after the initial pain I began to enjoy the way he filled me so completely again.

 

(continued) 

 

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