Mad Hope Read Free Page A

She found she could not stop staring into their tiny, shiny maws, flapping their metal wings back and forth, squeezing to feel the built-in resistance. What it did – playing with small things – was make you feel like a god.
    â€˜Ready, Freddy?’
    â€˜Not Freddy,’ Brianna mumbled, hunched over under the chains.
    â€˜I’m letting go.’
    â€˜â€™Kay.’
    It was always super slow, the initial unwinding, then there was a moment where the momentum took over, and, voila!, you were out of it, free, listing lazily in the other direction. Brianna looked like she might puke.
    â€˜Again,’ she said.
    Alana began to twist, but then she noticed something at the periphery. A flash of red near the fence, rounding the corner. She turned her head quickly to make sure.
    â€˜Don’t stop twisting, ’Lana.’
    â€˜Rocket-pod time, Brianna. One small step for man, a giant step for girls like you.’ Alana grabbed Brianna under the arms so she had no choice but to cling like an orangutan.
    â€˜I need you to stay here, in the pod, and be on lookout duty.’ Alana had secured her inside the bars of the small dome. Brianna was sitting with her knees drawn up, face blanched. ‘Don’t be scared. Maybe one day you’ll be an astronaut. You could be that, you know. You could be anything in the world.’
    â€˜Not an armadillo,’ said Brianna, and Alana knew she was off the hook.
    â€˜See you later, armadillo.’
    Jordan was right there, near the swings, fiddling with an unlit cigarette, waiting for her. He looked good, better than before, away from the street, away from the others. She had forgotten how tall he was, how his hazel eyes darted and understood.
    â€˜Can we go somewhere to talk?’ he said, and Alana was amazed. She showed him how to scale the aluminum siding that bordered the car lot and they wandered amidst the cars, thumping them insolently with their open hands. On the border between the car lot and the parking lot someone had planted some overgrown shrubbery and two spindly trees and dragged a small picnic table into the patchy shade. When they sat down, the picnic table rocked over the uneven ground like a tugboat. They kissed. Jordan pushed his hand under Alana’s shirt, and she let him. He kissed her neck behind her ear, and slid his fingers under her thin bra. Alana felt worried. How to reciprocate? Under his shirt was flat and uninteresting. He pushed her hand downwards. She unzipped.
    They kissed and kissed, slackening their jaws, using tongues. Then Jordan bent her head so she could see exactly what he had below. She kneeled on the ground in front of him. There was a Mars bar wrapper under the picnic table, and some pine needles, which was peculiar, since there were no pines nearby. Jordan took off his jacket, then draped it over Alana’s head and shoulders and his poked-out penis. It was the beginnings of a puppet show. His T-shirt was bunched up under his arms. Above Jordan’s belt were two long muscular indents, as if he were made of smooth clay and someone had picked him up carefully by his hip bones. The indents ran on either side of a trail of small black downy hairs. But Alana could not see where the hair led; the trail was obscured by white boxers that puffed out of the fly of his jeans like Kleenex. She touched one of the indents with her fingers and her heart began to beat between her legs. The skin was so soft and tight! Jordan made a sound, and Alana understood. She put her lips around his penis, then worked them down so that her mouth was full. She did this several times – up and down, trying not to let her teeth get in the way. Jordan placed his hand on her head and made another sound that was almost a word. Jordan’s whole body shook. Alana gagged, then swallowed.
    Then it was over, and the thing itself – the lovely indents, her migratory heart and the almost-word – was gone, shoved down into