Megan Hart - Switch

shower as a refuge from the shouting and the slamming

doors, shivering under spray that turned frigid long before I

was ready to get out.

I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest

I worked hard and sacrificed much to afford the smalest

unit and cheapest maintenance package in one of

Harrisburg's hottest new apartment buildings. Unlimited

hot water might be wasteful, and I didn't care. I took

advantage of it every chance I could.

By the time I came out dressed in a pair of stretched-out

fleece pants and a T-shirt that had been threadbare when I

stole it from Austin's drawer, I felt better. I fixed myself a

sandwich and a glass of cold milk, and I set it on the table.

The note was stil there.

It slid into my hands as though it had been made for my

fingers. The same black letters stroked this paper with the

same black ink, and this time, with nobody to see, I

brought it to my nose and breathed in deep.

Fresh, good ink smels like nothing else in the world. I

closed my eyes and breathed again. The paper stil had a

scent, faintly musky like cologne or perfume I didn't

recognize. I sat to study it. Bold, heavy strokes of the pen

carved the number on the front. No envelope, no name, no

postmark to show where or when it had been mailed. Not

even a fingerprint smudge to give me an idea of the size of

the hand that had written it. The elegant handwriting

showed no gender.

showed no gender.

Without an envelope and stamp it couldn't have come

through the mail, which meant someone had pushed it

through the slot. The wrong slot, again. They'd taken the

time to write the number on the front, but hadn't paid

attention to the number on my mailbox. It wasn't a note for

me, and I should not have read it. If I hadn't, everything

would have been different.

If only I'd done the right thing.

Chapter 12

You wil take your finest paper and your best ink.

You wil write down in explicit detail your most erotic

experience. It may be real or it may be fantasy, but you

are to write it without error in your best handwriting,

without blots or misspelings.

You wil return this essay to me by Thursday.

The note listed the same post-office box as before.

I blinked and read the note again as heat rose in my

cheeks. I closed it and put it aside. I shouldn't have read it.

It wasn't for me.

I opened it again, read over the words in that fluid,

beautiful hand that gave away nothing of its origin, and

something twisted inside me. Finest paper and best ink.

Already I could feel my fingers curving around the pen,

could imagine the words unscroling under the tip as I put

my secret thoughts onto paper. I even knew the paper I

would use. Creamy white, unlined, bordered in gold. It

was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so

was the perfect sheet to use for writing something so

intimate and explicit as had been demanded. I had only

two sheets.

I folded the card carefuly and slipped it back into the

envelope, closing it up as tenderly as I might pul the

blankets higher on a lover next to me in bed when I woke

to a chil. I pushed it away from me on the table, and

folded my hands while I stared at it. The mystery of who

was sending these notes, these lists, had been

overshadowed by the more intriguing enigma of why .

I got up from the table and puled a glass of water from the

tap, but even though I drank it back in a few quick gulps,

more the way a practiced drinker wil take whiskey than

water, it didn't cool the heat rising in my throat to my

cheeks. I turned, my back to the counter, and leaned. The

note sat on my table. Not accusing.

Inviting.

In a long, long list of sexual experiences, what would I

consider my most erotic? Not the first time I ever sucked a

guy off, or the first time I came from someone's else's

hand. Not the first time I ever fucked, either. Al of those

had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.

had been memorable. I'd had a lot of sex, a lot of it good.

Quite a bit bad. I had a long list of experiences I could

have written, but what was the one worthy of my finest

paper? My best ink?

I busied myself with cleaning my tidy kitchen but was

unable to put the list from my mind. The first few notes had

been simple, if enigmatic, instructions. Eat oatmeal. Work

out. Be beautiful. It had been something of a game, these

suggestions implanted in my brain and leading me toward

the choices I'd have probably made anyway even without

the suggestions. But this…this was different. What had

seemed harmless before had become slightly more sinister.

Also, a heluva lot sexier.

Late night.

The only light comes, flickering blue, from the TV in the

corner. The sound's turned down low because it's not so

important to hear what's being said as it is to see what's

going on. I've seen this movie before, a few times, in

pieces, but it's the first time I've ever seen it al at once.

He lifts his head from kissing me when it comes on, his

hands stiling on my bely where they'd been wandering

their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This their way up toward my breasts. "Hot," he murmurs. "This movie is hot."

I push his face back to mine and take his mouth to keep

his attention on me, not the TV screen. I open my mouth

and legs to him, puling him down on top of me. Puling him

close. My heart's open, too, though I haven't yet told him I

love him. Those are words for prom pictures and class

rings.

We don't have that, him and me. We have the backseat of

his car, we have the space beneath the bleachers after

school. We have the back row of the movie theater. We

have the basement in his parents' house and this couch.

But when I hear the song, the one my mom plays over and

over on those old mix tapes from her youth, I lift my head

from his kisses to see what's going on. I know why she

loved this song. She'd been a fan of Duran Duran in her

youth, complete with fedora hat and bleached-blond

streak in her hair, just like the bass player. John Taylor, the

same guy singing this song. Wel, not singing it. Chanting it,

sort of. I knew she loved this song because he sang it, but

until now, I hadn't known this was the movie it had come

from.

The woman on the screen bites her finger. The slide show

she's watching cycles through to another picture, but the

movie doesn't show what she's looking at. Only her. She

touches herself, her thighs opening, her head faling back in

ecstasy as she makes herself come.

He watches me watch. His hand presses flat on my chest,

over my heart. My breath had caught in my throat and I let

it seep out, slow and silent, not wanting him to know I'd

been holding it.

"Do you do that?"

I tear my gaze from the TV to look at him. "What?"

He jerks his chin toward the set. The movie's moved on to

something else, but I know what he meant. "That. Do

you?"

"Do I touch myself? Do I get myself off?" I hitch higher

against the arm of the battered couch his parents donated

to the basement. A cat had scratched it; a dog had lifted its

leg on it. We'd fucked about a thousand times on its faded

cushions, or maybe only ten.

He sits back. His shirt hangs open at his throat. I'd been

the one to undo the buttons. The waistband of his boxers