I hear David stomping his feet, clearing the snow out of his boots on the mat outside my house and go to open the door. Mom’s making potatoes in the kitchen. He’s wearing a Seattle Seahawks sweater that is too baggy for him and there’s a trumpet in his left hand. I have put on a little makeup and realize it’s not right and before he looks up I have my face inside my shirt, and he laughs.

             “Look what I ‘borrowed’ from the school today.”
             “Can you play it?”

      We sat in the forest until a quarter till ten making noises we felt were semi-close to that of a moose in heat. My mouth and head hurt after a couple of blows. Maybe I was sprouting antlers.

      I always felt funny about sexiness. It was like this burden that you suddenly woke up with; you could either play it off as natural and submit to it, or just laugh when a boy tried to kiss you.

      Being sexy is like selling your mind out

            “What?”

      I did it again. We were staring at the moon in perfect silence, laying on our backs in the woods behind me and my mom’s house and a bit of the secret meeting I had been having in my head had leaked out. David was almost used to it by now, but sometimes it was so far out of context that I had to explain.

             “Woops, that was the old tinker again, hah”
             “I think we should move to a crater in the moon”
             “That’s a nice thought, but there’s no Bigfoot on the moon, man”
             “I’ll give you a Bigfoot, woman”

      He grabs my hips and throws me over his shoulder like my dad did once, and like Bigfoot will do one day, and rolls us down a hill. We’re toppling over each another again and again. As body parts are flailing and bumps and bruises are growing I grab his hand and laugh at how small my hand feels in it.


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