“It feels good,” she said. He wasn’t convinced. But it didn’t matter. As soon as he felt her relax around his cock, he pushed in deeper. She moaned. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see her agony. He moved, and kept on thrusting, pooling sweat in the twin dimples on his lower spine. He was about to ask her again if she was okay when spasms overtook him. He grunted and twitched with the strongest orgasm he’d ever known. At the last minute, he remembered to pull out and came in violent spurts that struck her face and his face, her neck and his neck, her breasts, his chest. She squealed.

“Oh shit! I should’ve . . .” he panted, catching his breath as he collapsed on the bed next to her. “Oh God, I hope I didn’t . . . I hope you’re not . . . Oh, fuck!”

She shushed him and kissed him and held his head as he melted into sleep.

While he slept, she played with herself and came five times, her fingers covered in a glaze of both their juices by the time she was done. She watched it dry and coat her fingers like candle-wax. Then she woke him for round two.

The next morning there was a red envelope wedged in the crack of her locker door. It was addressed to “The Sick Rose” in cursive writing and sealed with red wax, like an old-timey valentine. She took it to the ladies’ room and peeled it open in the privacy of her stall, while a trio of AP English girls put on eyeliner and debated the Jewy hotness of actor Adam Brody.

Inside the red envelope was a piece of college-ruled notebook paper, transparent in its cheapness. On it, in familiar chicken scratches, was a hastily copied poem:

O Rose thou art sick

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Wm. Blake

She felt a little heartsick; the poem sounded so old and so bitter. Yet, her heart swelled with pride that she’d provoked such a jealous response from Mr. Z. She resisted the urge to run off and find Arik so they could giggle over the fact that Mr. Z had him pegged as an “invisible worm.” It would probably send him galloping to Mr. Z’s office, contrite and begging for forgiveness like the approval-hungry boy that he was.

After school, she saw Mr. Z walking to his car, solemnly gripping a thick biography of Stanislavsky and a cup of Yoplait. He backed the Nissan out of his parking spot with a hasty screech, almost running over a teacher talking on her cellphone. Waving an insincere apology, he sped away, his exhaust fumes toxic and black.

When Rosemary got home, the Camry was missing.