Member-only story
i don’t even know her name
The first time I met her she was chasing a boy up a mountain, barefoot, with a ripped tanktop showing the sort of b-cup bra that doesn’t scream “sex” so much as “my mom still shops with me.” She was wild-eyed and tangled-hair, sixteen years old, with a bloody knee and the scent of the everclear she’d pounded like water on a hot day coming from her laugh, her pores. The boy was blonde, blue eyed, with a wide smile and a bandana. The five year age difference didn’t stop her persistent pursuit of his affection. He was the type of boy who kept tally marks of his sexual conquests next to his bed. In that moment, she was the kind of girl who didn’t mind.
Later on, a year or two, I’d recognize that boy’s face in Cosmopolitan Magazine, as I read from my claw foot tub in the soon-to-be-condemned apartment I’d rented north of Minneapolis. He was South Dakota’s “Hottest Hottie.” My brain registered that this was likely the same as getting 50th place out of 50. I was the kind of girl who didn’t mind.
I saw her again. Again barefoot. A year older. Not necessarily a year wiser. She was wandering outside a frat house party in Wisconsin, beer can in her hand. The boy on her arm was named Dante or Dominic or something exotic that began with a D and she told me, sincerely, that she’d had the best night of her life but she couldn’t remember it, wasn’t sure what had happened. Her friends had…
