THE OLD MILL

J lives at the top of French Hill Road and I live at the bottom. When he comes for me I can hear him coming. If I’m holding a cup of coffee when he gets in his car and starts it, my coffee cup will shudder in my hand. But when that happens I need only set it down, the cup, onto a table or near the sink. I put on my jacket and put my hands in the pockets.

One of us asks the other, You hungry or anything? and the other says, No.

J complains about my makeup on his face, but I keep wearing it. Without it I look too much like myself.

When it’s warm we party in a field, a ring of cars and trucks around a fire, and when it’s cold we party in Stu’s basement because no one else has a basement and Stu’s dad doesn’t give a fuck.

This your girl? Stu’s dad asks J, jerking his thumb. Later I hear Stu’s dad tell Stu that I look like a nice normal dick-loving girl.

When we don’t feel like the field or Stu’s basement, we party on the river by the old mill. We have to walk through the woods and down a steep hill to get there. No one likes the old mill anymore because it’s slippery getting down and it’s cold and once Stu fell in and got sucked under by the water. But J and I still like it, and we go there together.

Stu has an old dog, Old Bruno. Stu likes to smoke a joint and blow the smoke into Old Bruno’s face. The dog’s face used to be brown but now it’s white. He doesn’t have much hair left on his tail, so when it wags it’s a whip. Stu hates getting whipped, and starts yelling and shoving the dog until the tail is tucked away and still.

I fucking hate Stu, that motherfucker.

Tonight J and I are going to the old mill. At the Kum & Go, we get a bottle of champagne and some cigarettes. Christy is working the register. She likes J, and keeps looking at him.

For a while Stu was calling me in the middle of the night, leaving four or five messages in a row. I never picked up. He’d talk about when we were little kids together. I’d wake up and hear him on the machine and think he was in the house, in my room.

The old mill used to be dark red, but now it’s sprayed with vulgar stuff in bright colors. People broke the windows with rocks. The wheel fell apart a long time ago, busted into pieces and drifted downriver.

Stu brings one of his dad’s guns to the field and sets up cans on rocks to shoot at. He drains his beers fast because he needs the cans. It gets dark, and he comes over to the fire. He wants to show me the gun, but I don’t want to look at it. I keep shaking and turning my head until he puts it against my cheek. Then I don’t move at all.