Steal the North: A Novel Read Online Free

matter at all whether I was a virgin or not (though she was proud I was) because the ceremony was bogus. What Mom did believe in, however, and she made this very clear, was in her sister’s being so cheered and comforted by my company this summer that she might finally carry a baby past the slippery first trimester. In other words: “Would you actually deny your dear aunt who loved and cared for you as an infant the chance to have a baby of her own?”
    “My old man was euphoric the first time I asked him to buy me condoms,” Connor said. “It proved his ‘artistic’ thirteen-year-old son wasn’t gay after all.”
    “The condoms were for you and Alyssa, no doubt.” I threw my blouse at him. I despised the way his ex-girlfriend looked at him. He said she offered almost every day at school (backstage in drama class) to show him her thong. I wasn’t allowed to wear thongs.
    “Oh, fuck. Don’t start that again. Take off your pants. No, slower.”
    I took off my pants quickly and threw them at him, as I had my shirt. He threw them both back at me a little too hard. Screw him. I walked to his window. I peeked out the curtains at the glittering water in his pool and tried not to cry. What if Mom’s sister had a miscarriage while I was there? Would my aunt blame me, especially if she found out I wasn’t a Christian, let alone a virgin? The closest I’d come to attending church had been last November, when I went to the giant Sikh parade in Yuba City with Harpreet’s family and saw the elaborate float with their holy book. I heard Connor sigh on his bed. Would Bethany be able to tell I wasn’t a virgin upon first glance? Connor bragged he knew I was a virgin when he first saw me. When he sighed again, I turned around. “I’d still be a virgin, you know,” I said, my voice shaking stupidly, “if it weren’t for you.”
    “If you want, Emmy, I can stop touching you.”
    “How could I go on?” I asked sarcastically. “Besides, you
don’t
touch me at school. You don’t even hold my hand.”
    “I thought you were different from all the spoiled bitches at school. No? Maybe you just dress differently. Or your mommy dresses you differently.”
    “Oh, I’m different. Not only have I never been to Disneyland, but I would
never
cut myself for you, like Alyssa.”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Don’t say that. I hate it when you say that to me.” I crawled onto his bed. “I’m sorry, Connor. Don’t get mean. Not today. I’m sorry.”
    He told me to take off my bra and my “good girl panties,” and then we had sex. He was a little cruel, refusing to take my hand, then covering my eyes as he entered me. But he held me longer afterward. I loved to watch TV in his bed after sex. We didn’t have cable at our apartment. We had a TV on which I’d watched PBS as a kid. On the other channels Mom and I watched Bill Clinton be elected, then reelected. We watched images of the Gulf War, the L.A. riots, the Oklahoma City bombing, Bosnia—but never silly sitcoms. We watched movies on our VCR, mostly heavy or artsy dramas, but occasionally Mom let me rent popular movies.
    “I’m going to miss you,” he said, but he sounded as if it were for good and he’d already resigned himself to it. “I’m going to miss how excited you get to watch the stupid fucking Disney Channel.”
    “We’ll stay together, right?” The panic I’d been trying to keep at bay about leaving him, leaving Sacramento, even leaving my mom rushed over me, and I began to sob. It irritated Connor worse than soccer moms and golfing dads when chicks cried after sex. I only cried the first time we did it, but it was more out of anger at myself and embarrassment at the blood on his high-thread-count sheets. “You’ll wait for me, Connor, won’t you? Please, Connor.” Mom had said never to beg and never to tell a guy you love him first. I didn’t love Connor, but I could have—it was right there—if only he loved me the tiniest. “You’ll wait?” He