It's Just a Jump to the Left Read Free Page B

apparition.
    “How ya doin’, kiddo?”
    Leta would look up from her magazine. “Good,” she’d say.
    “Whatcha reading there?”
    “TeenBeat.”
    “I thought you liked those, whatchamacallit, those Nancy Drew books?”
    “Yeah. In fourth grade.”
    “Ah, gotcha. Well, turn on a light. Reading in the dark is bad for your eyes.”
    And then he’d be gone again and Leta would be left with the impression that they’d never really had a conversation at all.
    Back in her room, Leta dropped the needle on the
Rocky Horror
soundtrack. As Tim Curry sang, “Don’t Dream It, Be It,” Leta powdered her face to a chalky finish and drew wire-thin eyebrows
     above her own with a Maybelline pencil that used to be her mom’s. She sighed as she came to her hair. It was all wrong—lank
     and brown, not short and punkish-red like Columbia’s. On the other side of the wall, Stevie moaned and shouted random words—“Robot!
     Fire! Adjust! Car!”—while her mother cooed to him, but her voice still sounded angry underneath.
    “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Leta murmured to no one. Her mother called for her, and Leta blared the soundtrack, singing
     ferociously this time, twirling around her room till she felt dizzy and sick and the glittery surface of her ceiling seemed
     to move like an alien thing waiting to eat her.
    TOUCH-A, TOUCH-A, TOUCH ME
    The next afternoon, Agnes was waiting for Leta at her locker. They hadn’t spoken in a while, and Leta found she was elated
     to see her friend.
    Agnes waved her over. “We need to talk. Can you ditch gym?”
    “What if I get in trouble?”
    “Go to the nurse. Say you got your period and your mom is coming to pick you up. Then meet me in the girls’ bathroom on the
     first floor. Here, wrap my sweater around your waist like you’re covering up a stain on your pants.”
    It took some doing, but Leta managed to convince the school nurse—who really did not want to know too much information about
     Leta’s periods—to give her a pass. Then Leta met Agnes in the girls’ bathroom. Agnes stuck her head under every stall to make
     sure they were alone.
    “What is it?” Leta asked.
    “Promise not to tell anybody?”
    “Promise.”
    “Double promise,” Agnes insisted.
    “Okay, I double promise!”
    They sank to the floor with their heads under the sinks.
    “I let Roger finger me,” Agnes said.
    Leta’s stomach made a small flip, and her head felt light and dizzy and full of white noise, as if she’d finally taken that
     first plunge on the roller coaster ride. “You
what
?”
    “I let him put his finger in my—”
    “I know what fingering is, Aggie. Jesus,” Leta interrupted. Her heart beat against her ribs. “Did it hurt?”
    “Sort of. You get used to it pretty quick, though, and then it’s not so bad.”
    “Not so bad, or good?”
    Leta could practically feel Agnes’s shrug. The doors swung open. A small girl came in, glancing nervously from Agnes to Leta
     and back.
    “Go ahead,” Agnes growled, and the girl raced into a stall. In a second, they could hear her peeing in fits and starts like
     she wasn’t sure she should be.
    Agnes lowered her voice to an excited whisper. “He said he really, really likes me, that he could maybe fall in love with
     me.”
    “Wow,” Leta said, matching the urgent quiet of Agnes’s tone. “Did y’all do anything else?” She wanted to know. She didn’t
     want to know.
    “Not yet,” Agnes giggled, and Leta felt the words like two quick gunshots. “We have to get you a boyfriend, Leta.”
    Leta zipped her hoodie up over her mouth. “I’m working on it,” she said, her voice sweatshirt-muffled.
    The bathroom rumbled with flushing, and the girl came out of the stall with her head down. She rushed for the bathroom door,
     not even stopping to wash her hands.
    “Gross,” Agnes said. “Seventh graders. What can you do?”
    WILD AND UNTAMED THING
    Wednesday afternoons Leta spent at the Popcorn Players Community