You jumped into the lake and while you were horsing around I broke into your truck and stole your crocodile skin cowboy boots.
Out of sight, I lay on your back seat and imagined myself just another of those girls I’d watched you pumping away at on late summer evenings, doors open, legs flailing, pale flesh in the dash-light.
So undignified.
You always bring them down to the lake. You’ll have to change someday. You’ll have to grow up and see where you’ve gone wrong.
I coveted the boots from the moment I saw you wearing them, striding up and down Echo Square, peacocking outside Banana Republic for the teen Mall Rats. You’re too old for them now and they laughed about you behind their hands. But it was enough for me. I was undone, broken under your feet again. Just like High School. At least this time I could have the boots, even if I’d never have the legs, the thighs, that backside and everything else.
I roll onto my front, the boots clasped to my chest and breathe in deeply. The upholstery isn’t as musty as I expected. No stains, no worn patches. A pair of balled-up socks in the footwell. I know you get it detailed regular. It’s not a working truck. I wonder when you last did a day’s work.
And this isn’t the weather for cowboy boots. The sweat on your ankles, sucking at your toes, clinging, clutching as you pulled them off, throwing them onto the back seat carelessly, whooping all the way down to the lake to grapple with girls eager to be grappled by something tall and handsome.
But cracked, hardened reptilian plates are nothing like your skin. Their glisten and shine in the overbearing sun is nothing like your pastel-pink cheeks. They’re much more my style: lurking just beneath the surface, for all appearances as harmless as driftwood, still and silent. So still you never noticed me in class, never noticed me in the lunch hall, never noticed me at the back of the party, watching you make out with the Prom Queen. Never noticed me on the ridge above the lake at gone midnight, watching your truck rock and listening to you grunt and her groan.
With no line of sight on you from the backseat, I retreat to my spot under the treeline with the boots in my clutches. My fingers for your toes, I push my hands deep into the damp warmth of them. You’ll have to drive home in your socks and I think that might be illegal.
Hey, wouldn’t it be a hoot if I came down from my lookout and offered you my trainers? You’d never know.
But that would mean talking. We don’t talk. We spoke once–just the once–back in High School. You called me a freak in front of your girl, but it was all front. Talking to you again would ruin this, though. It feels like you knowing I was here would be about the worst thing in the world.
I try to slide my feet in, but the boots are too small. Who would have thought you’d have such dainty feet? I can’t force my foot through the ankle of the boot, it gets stuck and it takes me five minutes to yank the thing off again, on my back, legs in the air, grunting and groaning.
I content myself with holding them against me, feeling the cooling hardness of dead reptile against my skin. Laying on my back, I stand them up on my stomach, the muddied heels leaving prints on my chest. I imagine you in them, slowly crushing the life out of me, ribs cracking like breadsticks under your weight as you look down into my eyes and smile.
Isn’t this what you wanted?
Down by the lake, you splash onto the jetty, beaching like a merman, hauling yourself up, back muscles tensing, arms locking. Some strawberry blonde dream makes to push you back in, but you grab at her foot and haul her towards you. She pushes you away, laughing and jumps back in as you slap at her thighs.
It does nothing for me, all this wet flesh and skin blushing under the sun. It’s a song to which I don’t know the words. Even the cling of your boxers and the way it shows off every inch of your junk flicks no switches. The lights stay dulled.
Still, when you fix on the blonde as a likely target, I want her dead.
I visualise her slipping from the jetty and cracking her skull, reddening her perfect blonde hair as she falls below, no one fishing her out until she surfaces days later, blue and bloated, lips stripped away by catfish, wide eyes pried out by crabs. Touch her then, why don’t you? Touch her then, if flesh is all you want.
You lead her back to where you’re parked but you flinch and she instinctively steps away.
“Who’s been in my damn truck?”
The blonde shrugs, not understanding, but you start yelling.
People are looking at you and a couple of guys walk over to ask what the trouble is. Jarheads, with short-cropped hair. The blonde looks like she wants out, doesn’t want anything to do with your clean upholstery, the clinging wetness of your boxers, or your dainty little feet.
The Jarheads step in, and then… oh bless your heart, but you forgot yourself.
You start shoving and I guess they’re just trying to help but maybe they’re also looking for an excuse to start some shit and you shove and you’re still just a kid (we’re both still just kids) and these guys are big, beer-drinking, game-watching, rifle-shooting guys.
They don’t beat on you much. Just knock you down, and, honestly, it’s a thrill to see you unmanned, bloodied. I like you helpless, it should remind you how helpless you really are in all this.
On the ridge, I’ve laid still too long, tense and teetering. The sweat is prickling my thighs, the grass rubbing red. But I have to wait for you to be done with the lake, to drive home alone, barefoot, bruised. Tonight I will sneak down to the shore, scoop bloodstained sand into your boots and hold them close as you wonder about the lingering scent of me on your backseat.
