On maybe our hundredth viewing of the leaked video, back home, icing our chests, Brit was like, “She looks just like you.”
And I was like, “No, she doesn’t,” even though the first time she showed me the clip, at the tattoo parlor, I did a double take.
I said, “Do you think I should reach out?”
Brit was like, “It’s not like you even know her.”
But I felt like I did. For a while, I made the drive out to the Burnses’ place every day, obsessive, obsessed, like a show I couldn’t quit. I sat in my car and watched Kate and Merrill live their lives until my windows fogged up and I couldn’t watch them anymore. They weren’t even interesting; they were boring, usually. They loved TV and sat in front of it for hours and hours on end, but they talked the whole time, chatted and laughed their way through entire movies, whole seasons of shows. I wondered if they ever really ended up watching anything at all. I did know them.
I stopped going over there after Merrill died, though. Kate looked so sad, so sad that I was tempted to run up the path and knock on the door and hug her and tell her, “I’m your family.” But I wasn’t and I couldn’t be, so I stopped going.
* * *
Bored of watching the clip on repeat, Brit went to the uni to scout out a new love interest while I read every article I could find about Kate, or Lady, or Liam Carson, or Willa Jordan. The whole world was covering it. Serious outlets, newspapers, gossip blogs, YouTubers, and every social media user had something to say. I was reading a Cosmo article that called my sister’s speech “empowering,” when Matt knocked on the door.
Matt, my boyfriend, he didn’t know about Kate or Merrill. He knew I was adopted and assumed I didn’t want to talk about it, so we didn’t. We spent most of our time kissing. He was an okay kisser.
When I answered the door, he was like, “Hey,” but I didn’t want to let him in. I was doing research. I was watching the video. I knew my sister’s speech by heart by now.
I was like, “Hey.”
“Can I come in?”
I must’ve hesitated because he was like, “Is something wrong?”
I let him in, and he kissed me.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Oh . . .” I waved my phone. “Nothing,” I said. But he must’ve caught a glimpse of my screen, which was open to the video of Kate and Liam Carson, and Matt was like, “Holy shit, are you watching porn? That’s so hot.”
“No,” I tried to say, but he was already kissing me, pushing me back, back toward the couch. He pushed me down onto the cushions and then reached for the hem of my shirt.
I let him lift it over my head. It was a new development for us, the undressing, and not long ago I would’ve crossed my arms, armor, whenever he tried to move things along. But with enough come on, Bells and just your shirts and why nots, I’d relented the week before, and now here I was, topless and shivering. The house was too big for it to ever be warm inside.
Matt took the state of my nipples to be a result of stimulation and not temperature, and I let him keep thinking that, because boys’ egos are fragile, and it’s important to let them think they’re in control, was what Brit always said.
Matt was like, “You want me,” and he unclasped my bra.
I nodded. My new tattoo ached.
“So let’s do it then.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make me spell it out, Bell.”
“Spell what out?”
You’re a plank, Bell, is what Brit always said, and I knew I was and I knew Matt wouldn’t wait around forever. I knew I should just get it over with. Brit was always saying, Just get it over with. And, It’s not a big deal. And, You’ll like it, it’s fun! But there was a reason it was called losing your virginity. I didn’t want to lose anything.
“You’re so beautiful,” Matt said. He was always saying that kind of shit. Boys think a compliment doubles as lube, but they’re wrong. Offer up an adjective, and girls’ll want to keep it forever. What if he doesn’t think I’m beautiful without makeup, without clothes, without virginity?
I was like, “Shut up.”
“You are,” he said. “Look at you.” He took out his phone and snapped a photo before I could cover myself. He smiled at his screen and turned it to show me.
“It’s blurry,” I said. “You can’t even see me.”
“So let me take a better one.”
“No!”
“Come on, babe. Pose for me.” He held his phone sideways and started shooting. I laughed and kept myself covered. He was like, “Work it, girl. Come on, if we’re not going to do it, at least give me something to work with at home.” And that made me smile. He was a good talker. Funny. Smart. I dropped my arms, lay back on the couch, and arched my back, and Matt was like, “Yes, babe. That’s so hot.”
And I felt it. I did. I felt like Kate, like Lady, my sister, in the video. I felt sexy, like her, like I could excite this man just by being. I unclasped my bra for the second time. “Switch it to video,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he said. His voice had a rattle to it, like something had been shaken loose. He reached for his crotch. I watched. He didn’t bother with his belt, just palmed the denim, camera still pointed at me.
“I want to make a video,” I said. I unbuckled his belt. His breathing was heavy and rasping. “Are you recording?” I said. He nodded. I dragged his jeans all the way down. He was hard. Then I took the phone from him and set it up, up high on a shelf, angled downward, just like Kate’s video, and then I said to Matt, “I want you to touch yourself.”
“What?” His face was red, and there was a line of sweat over his lip.
“I want you to touch yourself while you watch me.”
He reached for himself.
“Keep going,” I said. I ran a finger across my chest, down my stomach, fingered my waistband.
He wheezed.
I smiled. I recited, “You know, maybe, maybe, if people thought that guys like you did things like this, then there wouldn’t be so much stigma around it—”
“What are you talking about?”
I went on, “Maybe then, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Maybe then it would be more socially acceptable, and if it were more socially acceptable, then maybe it would be made legal in this country, and then maybe it would be made legal in the world, and then maybe—”
He came.
I took the phone and shut off the recording. The video was under two minutes long.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was fast. I’m not usually—”
I was like, “It’s fine,” and sent the video to myself. He zipped his fly. Then I said, “Brit’ll probably be home soon.” I wanted him gone. I said, “You should—”
“Yeah,” he said. “I should.” He laughed, and I wished he wouldn’t. Wished I could say Shut up shut up shut up. Had his laugh always sounded so chipmunk? He looked smaller. He looked like a boy. I could suddenly imagine him as a kid, could imagine him crying for his mother in the night. I felt powerful.
He was like, “Are you okay?”
I ushered him to the door and said, “Are you?”
“That was . . . ,” he said.
“I’ll see you, Matt.”
I closed the door and dressed myself and felt a pain in my chest. I’d forgotten about my tattoo—the little BH, black with a shadow of irritated red. It was itchy and raised like it had been embroidered. There were little droplets of dried blood at its edges. Matt hadn’t noticed it.
I pressed the flesh and winced. Pus seeped from around each letter. My body was rejecting its new brand. It was saying, You are not a Hobbes.
I watched the video, my video, of Matt touching himself while he watched me recite Kate’s speech. I really did look just like her. My sister. My real sister. I took Meg’s car and drove, a drive I’d driven so many times, to the place that could’ve been home.