"Why didn't you call?" her voice rasps a scratchy, muffled cry over the receiver and I hear her biting her nails. Normally, she would be filing them into long, talon-like points, but now she bites them down to the nail bed. About a month ago, when we first met, she told me she took up smoking to stop the biting. "Why the fuck didn't you call? I waited for days. I cried over you. I've never cried over boys, though. Thank the Goddess."

I imagine her throwing herself around her filthy room, running her hands over the matted faux fur of her red butterfly chair cover, pulling the avocado green telephone around the room with her (the old-fashioned rotary type with an extra-long cord). She could be painting right now, but she hasn't had the energy or motivation to even lift the blank canvas she bought several months ago. I imagine her sitting down - over the phone, the springs of her mattress squeak and make their metallic jangling sound, less audible than it used to be when we first started having these long phone conversations. She's basically stopped eating again. "Restricting" was her cleaned-up term for it.

"You're supposed to call me up the day after we fight, and you're supposed to say you're sorry and then come see me so we can have make-up sex. I've told you this before. When is your mother driving you out here again? We need to have another sleepover, y'know? I hate being seventeen and not owning a fuckin' car. I need some goddamn freedom." And I hear the clink-flick of her Bettie Page Zippo and then the long, smooth phone line buzz of exhalation, and it's like she's blowing on the back of my ear the way that makes my nipples erect. "Ha. You're so turned on right now. You're totally touching your clit."

"Come to me this weekend with roses and ring my doorbell with tears in your eyes. I really want it, y'know? I mean, I gave Ryan what he wanted for that ounce of weed, but I want to be with you, darling. I want to grab your tits and pull your hair," her voice drops to a whisper for the last sentence, and I know she's making that 'come hither' motion with her tongue, the way it beckons like an index finger, running along the point of her upper lip and catching on her front teeth. "The darkest roses you can find. You know what I love." I hear the slam of the receiver.

I am silent. Like she commands. I've learned my lesson.





Everyone had always wanted Amy. The sound of her name whispered into the ears of revelers at parties was like an early spring breeze against the bare skin of the back of their necks. Jarring. The older boys - the ones who bought us beer and cheap vodka - wanted to fuck her. Jeremy, one of the more boisterous older boys, would occasionally whisper in my ear that a girl was old enough to fuck if she was sixteen or carried a purse. It would be at this moment that he would point the neck of his bottle in the direction of the raven-haired beauty. The boys our age lived to see her tits, and they would see them, quite frequently after she had too many shots. Jeremy and I would elbow each other in the ribs when the other needed to take a look. Usually, we would pull the hoods of our sweatshirts over our heads and carefully look out beyond them, trying to take a discreet look. There wasn't really a point; we could've stared obviously if we wanted to. There was something we both liked about having a tradition dealing with our observation of Amy.

Amy. She was like the wild flash of the switchblade. Her lips were like red roses wilted in the vase, a week later, neglected after the apology was given and the make-up sex degenerated into a mess of tangled, sweaty sheets. Lipstick, probably. The fishnets she wore underneath her short skirts never hid those splotchy anemic bruises that bloomed like the blossoms of belladonna in July. Her long black hair would shine blue as she climbed on tables and danced under the swinging lights in her shiny platform shoes. She showed a tiny glimpse of her creamy, pale stomach each time she moved her arms. Her hipbones jutted out sharply just above the waist of her low-rise skirt, like a rose's thorns.

My friends and I would sit in our selected corner at each of Ryan's brother's parties and pass the pipe around and watch her every move. The way she spoke with her hands as she babbled on to anyone that offered her a drink. The way she fidgeted with her lace hem and the zipper on her shirt.

Sometimes, I would watch her reflection in the window by our corner of Ryan's living room. When she left my sight, I studied my own reflected image hovering near hers, delighting in how much deeper my eyes appeared and how full my lips seemed reflected in the glass. All my weekends revolved around watching her image next to my own and waiting for the strap of her tank top to drop down, so that I might see a flash of her bare shoulder while my friends laughed in the corner.

The same circle of people in the same positions in the corner every weekend, crowded together for warmth, sitting Indian-style on the stained mauve carpet in Ryan's brother's house. We'd bitch to each other, because that's what teenagers do when they're drunk and bored. There were long diatribes starting with "Well, mother's boyfriend was being a dick so..." then brief silences as the pipe made its way around the circle. I sat and stared through the window, waiting for the first signs of spring to show through the darkness and snow. I waited for the cleansing March rain. I wanted that mythical Spring to free me from brooding hibernation.

I watched her reflected image thrash-dance to "Zero" and prayed her tiny vinyl skirt would inch higher and higher up her thighs, my eyes transfixed on a visible sliver of the wide band that held her stockings up.

I closed my eyes for a minute and took the pipe from John. As my lids split open, she touched her fingertips to my shoulder and grabbed the pipe and lighter from my hands. She winked when she exhaled, and left a red smudge of lipstick behind. I wanted nothing more than to taste the waxy sweetness she must have left for me.

From just behind me, her voice came musical like the concentric circle waves of a pebble dropped in clear water. "Come with me," those smoky petal lips invited, and this was the first command I took from her. She gripped my wrist and pulled me into the hall and up the carpeted stairs into the master bedroom.

"I watched you watch me in the window," she said, and she pressed me against the door with one hand while untying the wide black ribbon in her hair with the other. The wood against my neck felt warm and throbbed with the bass from downstairs. I felt like I was going to slide down the door until I landed in a heap on the carpet; my knees locked to save me. She tied the ribbon around my right wrist. She lifted my head to look up into her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I - " and there was a cracking sound, a biting sting and then warm exquisite pain along my left cheek. Her eyes met mine again, and she flashed that wild switchblade grin at me.

"I like your shoes," I finally said.

Another slap.

"Don't speak," she murmured.

I felt awkward; my clammy hands stuck to the painted wood as I watched her kneel down on one knee to slide the shiny black straps out of her buckles. Mere inches away, my toes twitched anxiously in my sneakers. Slowly, she pulled on the laces, tearing them from the eyelets. She pulled my feet from my Chuck Taylors. Then, she guided my feet into her own discarded shoes. I wobbled in my awkward stance and braced myself against the door. Satisfied, she stood up and looked me in the eye again, bringing my hands up to rest on her hips. She felt so tiny, so fragile - far from the strong, curvaceous girl I was imagining when my fingertips wandered beneath my sheets as I lay awake in bed at night.

"I've been watching you all winter," she said. Her lips were on mine.



Six days later, that Friday, she called for the first time. She got my number from John. "I think you should spend the night this Saturday" she whispers into my ear through the phone. I could feel her Cheshire grin heavy on my shoulder, despite the thirty-mile barrier between us. "Just tell your mother you're sleeping over a girl friend's house. She'll be delighted that you're actually making friends that aren't boys."

She had this way of wrapping people around her finger. I was just another silk ribbon to her.

"Be over at six," she demands, and I heard the click of the receiver on her end of the line.



Amy's shoes were made to lick. Her favorites were the candy apple red patent leather strappy sandals, shiny enough to tell whether she was wearing panties that day. Each scratch and scuff was carefully painted over with perfectly matched paint the moment the imperfection was discovered. The bright red was a delightful sight from my hands and knees, the shiny plastic groping and caressing her ankles. I envied those shoes.

Her toenails were always carefully trimmed and painted glossy black, and her fishnets never strayed between her toes. I could imagine the high heel melting into the platform like the gentle, perfectly crafted curve from her breasts to her hips from my vantage point. Of course, on most occasions, my eyes were not to trespass above her ankles. It didn't matter. She would tie that black ribbon in my hair or around my neck and I would be Hers.

She rarely kissed me after the first two weeks; she never wanted her lipstick smudged. Food never passed her lips, and she drank bottled water with a straw. Once, when I was given permission to divert my attention from her toes, I noticed two ribs showing cleanly through her skin. I stopped mid-kiss and ran my fingers over them. I could feel two others on the way. I imagined my fingers were separated from them by just a few cells. My own stomach ached.



"I hate the meds my mum has me on," she murmured through the plastic pressed against my ear. The receiver was starting to hurt, because I was holding it so tightly. "They keep me from going crazy, but they keep me from having orgasms. They make my memory awful. They make me feel dull and dreamless. I just feel like I should burn my bridges. I'm so tired and jaded. I basically hate everyone lately. I just want to make my art as fucked up and weird and crazy as I am; I want to swallow the critics alive. I'm going to stop taking my pills." She paused, obviously lighting her third cigarette during this twenty-minute conversation, and exhaled deeply. "So, is seven okay?"



Amy. Where she went, I would follow. What she commanded, I would do. There was no other girl I loved like her. She would flash that grin of hers behind those glossy red lips and I would fall to my knees, kissing a trail from her ankles to her thighs. Her hands would run through my hair and caress my face, but these days her nails were chewed and ragged. They usually caught on her fishnets. Her fingers were tiny now, and her rings would slide off and land clattering to the hardwood floor.

I wanted to feed her linguine with clam sauce. I wanted her to eat strawberries with chocolate. I wanted to see her cute stomach bulge a little over the skirt barely hanging onto her hips. I didn't want her fishnets to fall down her thighs.

I imagined her at school, smoking cigarettes under the bleachers during lunch while her body raped and pillaged her organs for protein. But I loved her dearly, and if she wanted me to stay quiet while kissing and nibbling at her thighs, then I wouldn't speak. When we lay sprawled out in bed, I spent hours just wondering how to touch her. I feared she would shatter like a cold, porcelain doll.



"I went up to 500 Calories today," she mutters past her cigarette into the receiver. "I wanted to cry, but you know I don't do that," and I don't actually believe her this time, because I can hear her trying to swallow the lump in her throat. She's not used to swallowing anything. "But I don't want to throw up anymore. I have scars on my knuckles. Should I stop doing it?"

She'd never asked me for permission to do anything before. Really, this sort of thing was not my choice. I know she can hear me make a faint choking noise - she can hear me crying. The black ribbon was feeling tight around my neck as I swallowed.

She's 5'8" and her weight is in the double digits, and I ask myself, okay, is this really a big deal? She can take care of herself. She can make her own choices. She won't let me have control over her anyway. Come on, think hard: is this really something to be so wrecked over?

Yes.

I had only intended upon answering my own questions. I shouldn't be so careless.

"You're so fucking unsupportive, you know that? You don't give a shit about my needs. Fuck you. You don't care at all. I hate you. Never call here again. Don't fucking call me."



Amy. Her eyes were like shallow muddy puddles these days. Her skin felt like new paper, and more belladonna bloomed beneath it. Her hair was the matte black of asphalt and her fingernails were gnawed deep into the nail bed. Her lips like the deepest red roses, hung upside-down to dry.

My car was in the shop. I wheedled, filched and scrounged up enough money for a cab. She had taught me how to get what I wanted from boys a long time ago. It wasn't raining like it would be in the cinematic version of our relationship. Life has no flair for dramatic touches. A fine mist hung in the air like spider webs. Spring was nearly here. I wanted to rip off my dress and bathe in the pouring March rain beneath the oak trees.

I walked up her long driveway I had traveled up many times before, this time more sure of my footing in my platform heels. Each step was careful; one foot in front of the other; one long, straight line to the red front door. I watched each foot as it came down to the ground, making sure each step was exactly the same length. I remembered what she commanded of me - this grand display of desire for her forgiveness. Maybe she would forgive me this time. My eyes only rose from my feet when I reached the doorstep and saw the dozen roses I had brought a week ago, when she asked me to ring her doorbell with tears in my eyes. They hadn't moved. Seven days after our last fight, the petals were cracked and turning into a faint red dust.

I took the ribbon from my hair and tied it around the bouquet as best I could. I took off my shoes and walked barefoot down the driveway.

As I sat in the backseat of the cab, I listened to the murmur of the engine and imagined her opening that door. I wondered how many ribs I'd be able to see, how many scuffs I could count on her shoes.