That Night Read Free

swagger. He had a Tom Selleck mustache, a deep voice, wore sunglasses, and chewed gum, snapping it between his teeth. You could tell he was a cop even when he was in casual clothes by the clipped way he spoke, using short words and acronyms. And you could also tell his job was really important to him—he sent his uniform out to be dry-cleaned, kept his shoes polished, and his police cruiser was always clean.
    Sometimes I got the feeling he was kind of lonely—he spent a lot of time sitting by himself, reading a book in the kitchen or watching the news. I don’t think he dated much, and the few times he had a girlfriend they didn’t seem to last long. We all felt bad that Shauna didn’t have a mother and we knew it bothered her too, the way she would talk to our moms when she was at our house, polite and sweet, helping clean up after dinner, like she wanted them to like her.
    Most of us kids were kind of scared of McKinney, but it wasn’t like that for me. I just felt sad for him, though I was never really sure why. Whenever I thought about him, it was always that one image that held fast, him sitting in the kitchen for hours, the newspaper or a book in front of him, a cup of coffee, and the way he’d look up and out the window like he was wishing he was out there in his car, on patrol. Like he was wishing he was anywhere but in that house.
    *   *   *
    When we got to high school, I was getting tired of the way Shauna was constantly trying to play the rest of us against each other, saying one of us had talked about the other, leaving someone out of an invite, or making mean comments about our clothes and hair, then adding, “Just kidding!” The next day she’d tell you that you were her best friend and give you one of her favorite items of clothing, jewelry, or a CD she made just for you, which would make the others jealous. It felt like every week there was a flare-up and someone was upset. I was also getting tired of not being able to wear what I wanted—jeans and T-shirts, not skirts and blouses, which Shauna had decided should be our uniform.
    When we were in ninth grade I mentioned to Shauna one day that I liked a boy named Jason Leroy. She told me she’d help. She threw a birthday party at her house and invited a few boys. Her dad was working and her grandma was supposed to be supervising, but she vanished into the TV room with a glass of something and a vague “Have fun, kids.” Before the party, Shauna told me she heard Jason liked me but he was into “real women.” She said I had to give him a blow job, and if I didn’t, I was a chicken—they’d all done it. I was nervous at the party, but Jason kept smiling at me and asked me to go into one of the bedrooms. After we were necking for a while, he hinted that he wanted a blow job. When I balked, he said Shauna had promised him I’d do it and that’s why he was there with his friends. If I didn’t go through with it, he’d tell everyone he had a threesome with Shauna and me.
    After the party, when I told Shauna what he’d said, and what he’d made me do, she was furious. She called Jason and said if he told anyone what had happened, she’d tell everyone at school that he had a small penis. We never heard a word more from him, but later that night Shauna started giggling and admitted that none of them had ever given a blow job to a boy—I was the first one.
    I was really angry that Shauna’s lies had set me up, but I tried to let it go because she’d stuck up for me. Part of me even relished my role as the now sexually advanced member of the group. A month later, though, Shauna developed a crush on Brody, a boy in my woodworking class. We’d often stay late to work on a project, and one day she walked by when we were laughing about something. I wasn’t into Brody, not like that, but it didn’t matter. After school, all the girls acted like I didn’t exist. So I asked Shauna what was wrong.
    “You were flirting with Brody.”
    “I was