Mari

MARI IS STANDING in the gymnasium entrance, just outside the door. Before she opens the door, Tinka gives her an approving look: they’ve spent the whole evening getting ready, and judging by Tinka’s expression, their efforts have paid off. They’ve been planning their outfits for weeks, imagining combinations that would be glamorous enough to make the girls on the student council jealous and to provoke flummoxed looks from the boys.

“See what I mean?” Tinka whispered. “The point is to look glamorous but casual. Like we haven’t gone to any special trouble.”

“Yes,” Mari said.

Tinka smiled. “Now all we have to do is dazzle them,” she said.

Tinka’s tools for bedazzling are a fuzzy pink sweater and a short denim skirt. She paid fifteen euros for the stockings. They’re made of smooth, spidery stitches, and Tinka’s legs have never looked better. They show off her high heels, which are impossible to walk in, let alone dance in. But blistered toes are a small price to pay for being admired by dozens of boys.

Mari looks at herself in the mirror, and she likes what she sees. She’s wearing a black skirt — exactly the right one, Tinka picked it out — and her hair is arranged in waves around her face. Tinka did her hair, too, and made up her eyes. Mari can admit it now: she is pretty. Tinka has made her pretty.

“You’re Cinderella,” Tinka says, winding her arm around Mari’s waist.

Mari knows that. She’s Tinka’s Cinderella project. She’s clay in Tinka’s hands, molded into beauty. This is the night when Cinderella will step into the ballroom, the moment when a nobody becomes a fairy-tale creature of beauty, when every head turns with sighs of sheer delight and no one can take their eyes off her.

Mari looks at Tinka in the mirror, and for the first time she sees something in Tinka’s eyes that makes her uneasy. Is Tinka jealous? She didn’t want Mari to be the prettiest — Mari knows that wasn’t what she planned. They stand side by side in front of the mirror and Mari is afraid she might be prettier than Tinka.

Tinka’s smile grows vague. She tries to keep it taut.

“Maybe I won’t put on these red shoes,” Mari suggests.

They’ve chosen perfect dancing shoes for Mari, irresistible, red Cinderella shoes, but now she feels like they might be too much. They’re still in the box; she’s still wearing her usual winter shoes.

Tinka finds her smile again. “Don’t be silly. Of course you should put them on.”

“They’ll make me taller than you.”

“So what? That doesn’t matter.”

Tinka is smiling. Mari has her permission to be beautiful today, the most beautiful of all. For today, at least.

AS MARI STEPS into the ballroom, she only has to glance in Kanerva’s direction to know it’s working. It’s working just like it was supposed to. She looks at Tinka beside her to share her excitement, but Tinka has that look again, the one that might be jealousy, or sadness, or both at the same time.

Tinka pulls Mari onto the dance floor as the lesson begins. Mari turns her head to look at Kanerva. Kanerva looks back, stares. Joy shoots through her.

The dance instructor goes over the steps for more than an hour. Tinka follows his instructions with her mouth in a tight line, focused, a trace of annoyance in her eyes. Mari can’t concentrate. She keeps turning her head, and Kanerva is always watching her, watching her the whole time.

The lesson ends and Mari sees Kanerva walking off the dance floor. He leans against the wall and watches them.

“He’s staring at us,” Tinka whispers, leaning toward her. “Look at him stare.”

Mari smiles, doesn’t dare to look, looks anyway, for a long time now, smiling. This is what it’s like to be an adult, she thinks.

Mari looks at Tinka, unable to hide her happiness. Tinka’s smile is stuck, her cheeks tight. She looks tense. Mari doesn’t care about that now.

“Wanna dance?” Mari asks.

“Stupid,” Tinka answers bluntly. “We can’t dance together anymore. We have to wait for someone to come and ask us.”

“Oh,” Mari says.

Tinka looks away. Maybe the Cinderella game has gone too far. Maybe Mari really is prettier than Tinka. Or maybe Tinka wants Kanerva for herself.

Then Tinka turns back to her and says abruptly, “I guess we might as well.”

They dance together until halfway through the song.

Mari sees Kanerva approaching out of the corner of her eye.

Julian.

At the instant when he takes the first step toward her, he’s not Kanerva anymore, not her teacher. He’s Julian. Nailuj. Julian, and everything that matters is contained in him. She’s known all evening that this will happen, that it will happen just like this: Julian walking a few steps, not looking at her at first, looking at something else, like he doesn’t care. But then he turns. And neither of them can hide what they know or push it away anymore. This time and this place and nothing else, just these two people, two orbits intersecting. They step toward each other, as inevitable as stars approaching each other in a predetermined trajectory. Mari doesn’t see Tinka anymore. It may be that Tinka says something, but Mari doesn’t hear her. Later she may be ashamed of this moment, her own brash boldness, her certainty of her right to take her place here in the glow of Julian’s gaze. But she’s not ashamed now. She’s not afraid. Julian’s gaze draws a clear boundary around her.

Julian steps in front of her, leans forward a little, and takes hold of her. It’s an invitation to dance. Maybe to the other people present it looks like an ordinary gesture. But it is anything but that. As Julian takes hold of Mari, she steps outside her ability to control her own destiny. She knows this: once she steps onto Julian’s territory she will live in Julian. It will be her only home, her place in the world.

She feels the weight of his hand against her back, curved around her ribcage. Her fingers are placed between his fingers, and nothing has ever felt more real than his touch. Their shared gaze is like a chasm that she’s falling into. It’s a chasm of terror, and wonderment, and she sees that they share this knowledge, how this can be so new and yet so utterly familiar.

Julian leans closer and Mari feels his breath on her face. Its warm, damp current is such an intimate sign of his closeness that her knees tremble and she feels herself getting wet. A hot, shivering flood moves through her body and curls up in a ball, warm, waiting, somewhere near her womb.

Julian smiles a little. She hasn’t noticed the music that they’re dancing to, she hasn’t even noticed the movement of her own feet, but now he leans even closer to her face and whispers the words of the song in her ear.

Mari smiles. She wants to kiss him right here.

And it’s as if he’s read her thoughts. He breathes against her ear — she can’t tell if he’s just breathing or if he’s kissing her earlobe — and then he whispers impatiently, in a soft voice, thick with passion, “Should we go someplace quieter, maybe have a chat?”

Mari nods. A strange feeling surges through her, a mixture of shock at the question, unbounded joy, and paralyzing fear at the inevitability of the thing.

Julian takes a step back, looks around him for the first time to make sure no one is watching. Mari, too, lets her gaze wander over the crowd of people. She remembers Tinka. She sees her standing next to the wall near the table of food. Tinka is looking at her. There’s that sadness in her eyes again, Mari can see it. And she sees something else: is it worry? How could she be worried now, when the thing that Mari has prepared for is happening?

She decides not to care. She decides that Tinka doesn’t need her right now.

Julian touches her lightly on the back and leads her toward the door. No one takes any notice of them. They step over the threshold of the gymnasium door, walk out as if it were a harmless matter, this leaving, and no one realizes what their stepping over the threshold means. They’re stepping into a shared space, away from the time that other people occupy, into a world that opens up within this one, an unknown expanse. This is their space, the shared wilderness of their skin, where a tongue will linger in the hollow of a navel, search for a resting place along the curve of a pelvic bone. Where the hollow of an eye will find its place against the rise of the cheekbone of the other’s face, fit perfectly into it like a piece of an ancient jigsaw puzzle.

The foyer outside the gym is dark. Julian takes hold of her without hesitating. They walk through the dim passageway to the double doors. She is thinking two thoughts. First, she thinks that the gym door separates two different worlds of scent. The smell of the gym foyer is a mix of lemon-scented cleaning solution and the blunt odour of worn rubber exercise equipment. As the door opens, the smell of the foyer dissolves into a gentler aroma, always the smell of coffee, even in the evening, and the safe, electric dust smell of AV equipment. Her second thought: Julian’s hand is warm. The warmth of his hand pushes her other thoughts away; the fact of the warmth of his hand wraps around her like a halo and holds her tenderly inside it.

In the dim passageway, Mari feels a slight doubt for the first time. It’s just a hint, a thin thread hindering her steps and pulling her back toward the safe lights and cheerful voices of Tinka and the gym. Julian’s hand is just as warm against her skin. But still.

No — the decision’s already been made. No one is watching them here, no one can stop them. This is what she’s been waiting for, preparing for. Now it’s happening.

The hallway is lined on one side with darkened classrooms, their doors open. They walk hand in hand toward Julian’s classroom, as if by agreement. Everything in the room is as it is in the daytime; the darkness simply softens the shapes of the objects. Yet nothing is as it usually is. They come to a stop at the windows opposite, in the shadow of a large split-leaf philodendron. Its friendly, dark-green leaves caress Mari’s shoulder blades as Julian steps closer to her. He reaches toward her and, as if continuing the journey he began earlier, strokes the line of Mari’s cheek with the back of his hand. She feels her heart beat faster. She looks for a sign of doubt in his eyes, but sees only expectant tenderness.

Their faces touch, and Mari closes her eyes and decides to take a step backward, cross this threshold without looking. She feels the roughness of Julian’s cheek, and as joy mingled with terror pounds in her belly, against her ribs, she thinks, This is a man, a grown man, and he wants me now more than anything else.

“Should we kiss?” he whispers hoarsely.

Their lips rest against each other for a moment. Mari lets go of all her thoughts and dissolves into him. Their tongues touch shyly, wonderingly. Julian tastes like a person. He tastes like hope and expectation; soft summer nights; a lake lying like a great, bright mirror reflecting a flutter of waterbirds flying above; a feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else; a happiness that is right nearby, almost already here. The warm feeling bound up in a knot in her lower abdomen, somewhere near her womb, begins to slowly open. It pours out its sap and she becomes quite wet, feels her clitoris throb in rhythm with her heartbeat. All of her thoughts drain away from consciousness, shift into her fingertips, and drip out of her, meaningless.

The kiss deepens and they become one breath, one sigh, one moist being, their boundaries melting into the gentle darkness of the classroom. She can feel him growing harder, and an overwhelming, triumphant joy streaks through her mind. She feels like a woman.

Without meaning to, out of pure reflex, her hands find their way between his legs, feel the incredible reaction aroused by the pressure of her body against his. He tilts his head back and gasps under her touch. She quickly looks at him — has she gone too far? — but he has closed his eyes and is holding on to her with both hands. Emboldened, she starts to rub him now, his penis already insistently hard inside his pants. Should she unzip them? Should she suck? Suddenly his penis is frightening. She doesn’t know how long she can suck it before he climaxes, lets loose that musky fluid. She doesn’t want it in her mouth.

He opens his eyes and slowly slips his hand under her shirt, feeling around the edges of her bra. He lifts the bra gently, revealing Mari’s smooth, small breasts and hard, tightened nipples. He pulls her shirt over her head, lets it drop to the floor. She feels a sudden shyness. She feels exposed and helpless. But Julian doesn’t notice her hesitation. His eyes are locked on her breasts, gazing at them as if enchanted, and she feels a vague embarrassment. He presses his right hand lightly against her left breast and strokes the rosy bud of her nipple with his palm. She tries to breathe. Her breath comes out in a broken, trembling mist.

Julian seems to interpret her sighs as excitement, because now he comes closer, right next to her so that she can feel his rock-hard penis against her stomach. He bends over and takes her nipple in his mouth. She looks on in horror as he sucks, not knowing how to enjoy it — it feels so coarse and strange and overdone. Maybe it’s not too late to back out, she thinks, glancing at the door as he sucks. But then he lifts his head higher, breathes hotly in her face and pushes his entire tongue in her mouth. There’s nothing I can do, she thinks. I have to stay here.

She remembers a swimming competition when she was eight years old. Her father had got it into his head that she should try competing and started taking her to swimming classes. The first competition was a shock to her. Suddenly everybody wanted to win: even the kids she knew were suddenly her opponents, glaring at her. Her father wanted her to win, watching the whole thing from the second row of the stands, a stopwatch in his hand. And Mari stood in a diving position at the edge of the pool before the starting signal and wondered if it was too late to back out. She could say she felt sick. She could pretend to feel faint. She could play dead, anything, just so she wouldn’t have to dive. But then, right before the starting signal, there was a dreadful stillness, a sweet indifference. None of this matters, she thought. Nothing at all matters. None of it makes any difference. And she saw herself jump into the cool cradle of water that awaited her like a liberating dream.

She remembers that moment now, and cool disinterest washes over her, a distant, pleasant feeling tied to the absolute insignificance of everything. It’s happening now. It doesn’t matter. She lets it happen. And with an almost sinking feeling of indifference, as if compelled by the dictates of passion, she unzips his pants, tugs on the waistband of his underwear, and frees his penis. She remembers the instructions the boy at the party gave her, goes over them in her mind before bending over and taking the warm, male-scented organ between her lips. The last thought she has before the jump, before she falls into this fleshy, hairy, moist, eternally elastic moment, is a feeble encouragement. You’re not supposed to think, she tells herself. Just let go and let it happen.