Cover

BLAME it on the Pleasure Family. Blame it on the Vietnam War. Blame it on a lot of things. But don’t blame it on Justine. She was just a weak, scared girl; a lost, violent girl. A lot of things, she was. Was.

Or don’t blame it on anything. Call it inevitable, call it the doomed fate of love. Call it karmic, fucked up, the dance of the wolves. Live it, love it, call it life. Call it Led Zeppelin. Yeah, yeah. Really, I don’t really, really don’t fucking care.

I was born with a fever, but it seemed to subside for sixteen years. High school, I was a good girl. I was pretty, I smiled, I fit in fine. And then as I turned sixteen and stopped smiling, the fever returned, though my skin stayed pale and sure, showing no sign of the heat inside me. 102 degrees, it returned for no reason. It returned around the time I met Justine, but blame it on her bad influence and you’d be all wrong.

I come out into the kitchen, have my little chat with the cop. Unsmiling, I get to him. I’m sure of it. All the teen girls on this hick island have flipped-back Farrah Fawcett hair, willing-to-please eyes shadowed in baby blue. Me, in my little shredded dress and desecrated eyes. I don’t shock him, but I’m not what he hoped for. He writes something in his pad.

Teenage Girl. Angst-Ridden. Badly Dyed Hair.

The cop, thirty or so, with a mustache and the dullest eyes, doesn’t ask about Justine. He asks what time I expect my mother back.

“Is that relevant to the case?”

“Relevant? That’s a big word for a little girl.”

Suddenly, I’m nauseous. I’m reeling. I’m realizing all the things I don’t have words for. The world for him a pad of dates, names, serial numbers, license plates. He’d need a soundtrack for his report, a rush of images: her legs alone, her legs kicking backwards, the slit of her skirt ripping as she ran, her legs like wishbones.

Some more notes in his pad now; I imagine them.

Single-Parent Family. Headed by Father. That Crazy Diehard Hippie.

And get this: the cop is checking me out. I thought the sight of me might disgust him, but I should have known. Just because I’m soft-skinned and sixteen, they get this sick, weak look. Speed kicking in, not making me mellow, lazy, hazy, and high. Making me violent and blue, restless and aware of all the things I’ve got to do. All the things I’ve got to do.

“Touch my forehead,” I tell him.

He does this, with little hesitation.

“You’re hot.”

“Yeah, I seem to be coming down with a bit of a fever.”

“Maybe you should lie down and we can talk in your room.”