12

“The word Virgin comes from the same root as Virile. There is little evidence to suggest such historically-significant women as Joan of Arc, Mary of Nazareth, and Queen Elizabeth, often referred to as virgins, were actually virgins in the modern sense. Rather, the term was more likely interchangeable with the male version of the word: virile, with which the term virgin shares a root. Read this way, the term virgin likely referred to the self-sustaining nature of these women’s sexualities. A virgin, in this respect, refers to a woman whose sexuality is not claimed by a husband. Rather, she is her own guardian, her own master, and her own hero.”

Lexie listened as Duane read aloud, her eyes crossing as she tried to follow along in her own book.

Duane uncapped his green highlighter and struck it across the page, perfect lines glowing in the library light.

“Okay,” Duane said. “So if we apply this to the reading, are the ‘unwomen’ virgins or … prostitutes, I guess?”

Lexie drew a crescent moon with her yellow highlighter, and added heavy eyebrows and a frown with her pen.

“Lexie?” Duane said. “Hello?”

“I dunno.”

“I doubt Professor Spencer will find that a compelling thesis statement.”

Lexie sighed and rubbed her head. She looked forward to a future where she could deal with life without having to be burdened by five-page papers, if she made it that far.

“They sound like the same thing to me,” she answered.

“How so?”

She sighed and rolled her head back, the ache burning behind her eyes indicating a need for sleep, food, or alcohol. “I don’t know. But who’s more virile than a prostitute? If the original virgin meant an unmarried woman in control of her sexuality, then a whore is the most virginal virgin who ever did virgin.”

Duane cocked an eyebrow.

“The virgin/whore dichotomy isn’t a dichotomy,” Lexie continued. “They’re both. They’re the same.”

Duane rested his head on his hand.

“Right?” she asked, suddenly unsure.

“I mean … sure. Yeah. We could make a paper out of that, easy.”

“Awesome,” Lexie said, slamming her book shut and tossing it into her backpack. “Can we talk about it … later, then? Tomorrow?”

Lexie cracked her knuckles and neck, wanting fresh air to purge the old-book smell from her nose.

“You want to get dinner?” Duane asked. “They’re serving bacon cheeseburgers in Butler tonight.”

Lexie’s stomach gurgled.

“Whoa,” Duane laughed. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

Duane’s smile was gentle, and she knew he cared, but a splinter of doubt shadowed his gaze, as though he needed the company more than he was letting on.

“Sure.”

 

After long minutes of nothing but their footsteps and a few scattered voices from corners of campus, Lexie spoke.

“How are you doing, by the way?”

Duane cleared his throat and made a face, but a thread of tension ran under his lightness, like it was all a cover for a trigger.

“All right, I guess.”

Lexie waited a few more silent paces.

“I mean—nightmares. Which is expected. And, you know, flashbacks or whatever.”

Lexie nodded and gave him a sympathetic smile.

“It’s just weird, because the Rare that attacked us was so … sentient. So smart. I would’ve expected an animal to be more impersonal, but it wasn’t. And the fact that they haven’t gotten it … I know it sounds stupid, but it just makes me feel like I’ve been targeted. Like he’ll come back to finish the job.”

She, Lexie thought, though she didn’t correct him.

Duane shuddered. “We’re all screwed, I suppose. Any word on the wolf that killed Bree?”

“Plural,” Lexie sighed. “It was a pack.”

“They run in packs?” Duane asked, blanching. “That means … there are more of them.”

Lexie nodded.

“How many?”

“Too many,” Lexie said. Duane’s gaze shifted furtively across the quad as they walked. He was still so scared. Moreso than she was, more than she could even really understand. She felt cruel for not understanding, for not telling him everything right that moment, but the coming clean would surely destroy the tiny thread that held him together. “They don’t know where they’re from or why she was in the woods in the first place, but I have a feeling it’s because of Rory.”

“Rory Blackwell? No way. That guy’s like a giant Golden Retriever. He’d never hurt anyone.”

Lexie shrugged. “She was alone in the woods for a reason, and I can’t imagine a girl ever doing that by choice.”

“Uh … you used to hang out in the woods alone all the time.”

Lexie wanted to counter, but Duane was right. She managed a small laugh.

He smiled in return, but it didn’t last. “I was always one of the stronger guys, you know. I mean, I’m not huge, but I can run, I can jump, I can throw things. It just feels so terrible to be so weak, you know?”

Lexie couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, Duane. I know. I’m a girl. It sucks.”

“But I mean, to feel so vulnerable … ”

Lexie scoffed. “Duane, that is like every woman’s daily situation.”

“Yeah, but,” Duane continued, “it’s not like you’re constantly scared a monster’s going to jump out from behind a tree and eviscerate you.”

Lexie stopped walking to reassess the boy she was just starting to consider a friend. The boy who had four teenage sisters. The boy who survived Renee’s jaws and Blythe’s orders because he was one of the good guys.

“Dude, did you know that when I enrolled at Milton, I got a little pamphlet with all my forms that told me not to drink and to travel in groups so I don’t get raped? It told me to be ‘conscious’ of my dress and to be careful about being ‘overly flirtatious.’ Apparently they send it to all the female students. Did you get anything like that?”

“How Not To Get Raped pamphlets?” Duane chuckled.

“How about How Not To Be A Rapist pamphlets? Did it tell you not to drink so you wouldn’t accidentally rape someone? Or to travel in groups so your friends can stop you from raping someone?”

“No, of course not,” Duane laughed.

“Of course not.”

“Okay, okay, okay, I get it.”

Sure you do, Lexie thought. They continued their walk to the dining hall in silence. It glowed like a lighthouse across the quad. Her fingers grazed the hilt of her knife, and she took comfort in the simple power of carrying a weapon in a space where most people did not. Even better was knowing, however slightly, how to use one. Duane was beautiful, smart, and fit. He could excel in nearly any setting, rising by sheer force of will and charm. But there was one place where his wits and composure failed him—indeed where they were impediments. And that was the place where Lexie survived. When she tugged at her ill-fitting clothes and cracked her wily knuckles, she remembered: in the mundane world, where Duane had once moved like a would-be hero, Lexie failed at five-paragraph papers and the myriad subtle cues of proper human female behavior. But in the woods, where Duane lost his innocence and very nearly his life, Lexie had fought and lived.

Their footsteps echoed against the faces of silent buildings.

“So … ” Duane said, in an awkward attempt to redirect the conversation. “You been … ”

Lexie quickened her pace, trying to deflect whatever he was about to ask, but Duane matched her steps and kept on. “I mean … are you seeing anyone?”

Lexie bit her lip, hoping the darkness would hide her reddening ears and cheeks. “Yeah,” she admitted finally. “I guess. But not anymore.”

“Is he a student?”

Lexie held air in her cheeks and released it like a broken balloon. “Ah … She was not.”

“Oh.” Duane’s eyebrows rose. “Huh. Cool.”

“Well, not really. It didn’t end well.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged.

“Are you like … fully lesbian?” He laughed and rubbed his stubbly jaw. His round, brown eyes caught Lexie’s and then dropped away, only to seek them out again. Lexie couldn’t help but laugh at the awkward phrase. She wondered what that might mean: ‘fully lesbian.’ Golf-playing? SUV-owning? Married and cat-breeding?

“I don’t know. I think so. Probably. Why?”

Duane’s face lost its usual composure. He struggled with expressions Lexie couldn’t place.

“Just. I’ve known you for a long time. It’s kind of surprising.”

“To me too, I guess.” Lexie wiggled her mouth.

“Though I guess in retrospect it makes sense. I mean, you are fairly … ”

“Fairly what?”

Duane shot her his movie star grin, and she had to tease him.

“Fairly what, buddy?” she goaded.

“You know … ” he chuckled and made an ambiguous gesture with his hands.

Lexie tipped her head and gave him a daring look. “You’re batting a thousand right now, bucko, so you may as well spill.”

Duane shrugged, laughing at his own loss of composure. “Like, woodsy. I mean, you never really dressed like a lot of the girls at Wolf Creek High. And you, like, hung out alone in the forest a lot.” He laughed nervously. “I’m going to shut up now.”

“Uh huh,” Lexie said with a grin.

They walked together in more thick silence.

“Woodsy, huh?”

Duane smiled. “Sooo … bacon cheeseburgers?”

 

Between gargantuan bites, Duane tried to get more details about the wolves that attacked Bree, but Lexie, regretfully, had none. None that she could share with a boy who thought Rares were animals and nothing more. The last thing Lexie needed was for Duane to start suspecting that the townspeople of Milton were other than human. If he even got an inkling that Renee was involved in his own attack, so many things would topple over.

Lexie shook the thought away and squeezed more mustard on her plate.

“Good call on these,” Lexie said, her mouth full of meat. “The Den never has good stuff. It’s all tempeh and mushroom bullshit.”

“I could go for a bit of that. Phi Kappa Phi is overloaded with bread and cheese. It’s killing me.”

“Maybe you and I could both benefit from time outside of our lives.”

Duane sighed and smiled. “That sounds terrific.”

Lexie shoved another hickory-smoked bite into her mouth. “Do your brothers feel like real brothers?”

“You mean the Phi Kappa Phi guys?”

Lexie shrugged and chased her burger with a glass of water. Her stomach gurgled with joy.

Duane shook his head and made a moue. “Not really. The frat experience is really deep for a lot of the guys, but I have a family already, and the two don’t feel like the same. Girls or not, my sisters will always be more to me than these guys will. PKP is like most frats I guess; it’s just a presumed family by proximity. I love a lot of the brothers, but they’re not, like, capital ‘B’ Brothers.” Duane took his own hearty bite. “What about you and the Pack?”

Lexie made a face. “Nah. I’m not really like them. I think we all want me to be, but I feel like a different species. I’m like the weird half-sibling from Dad’s secret family. None of them really know what to do with me. And I don’t know what I want done with myself.”

Duane nodded sagely and they finished their burgers in silence. “I do actually dig Rory, though. He’s been having a pretty hard time of it since the guys died.”

Lexie wiped her hands and stacked her empty plate. “Well, Bree too, right?”

Duane shrugged. “Yeah, of course. But I think he was more torn up about their breakup before she died.”

Lexie’s hand slipped. Dishes clattered. “Wait, what?”

“What?

Lexie gave him a hard look. “They broke up?”

He nodded. “Yeah, he broke up with Bree the week before she died.”

“Do you know why?”

“He wouldn’t say, but it sounded pretty dramatic. Lots of yelling and crying. I do know that his dad didn’t like her.”

“Governor Blackwell?”

“That’s the guy.”

Lexie cleaned her side of the table with a napkin and tried to think of a casual way to phrase her question. She gave up. “Do you think you could find anything else out?”

“What will I get in return?” Duane asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Ick.”

“Oh, stop. You’re the gross one,” Duane said. “How about being my research subject for Abnormal Psych?”

“I’m not even taking that class.”

“Better if you aren’t.”

“Will I have to wake up early?” Lexie asked.

“No.”

“Show up anywhere on a regular basis?”

“No.”

“Homework?”

“No.”

“Fine. Dig up some juicy dirt on Rory, and I’ll fill out all the surveys you want me to.” Lexie curled her hand into a fist and met Duane’s with a friendly bump.