Scarlett’s Fingers

My sister Scarlett and I sat in silence in the tall grass, watching our bobbers float motionlessly on the glass-still water. I don’t think they’d drifted an inch in the past hour. There was no breeze. It wasn’t too hot, though, because of the clouds.

I rolled a joint, and we passed that back and forth till it was gone, and then we just sat and listened to the birds chirping in the trees. After a while, I realized the leaves weren’t rustling, which I thought was strange. Usually when you’re around trees, you can hear the leaves rustling.

Our worms had been underwater for quite a long while. I wondered if they were still alive down there. Poor things. From their point of view, I guess we were pretty evil, impaling them on big barbed hooks like we did, and casting them into the bass-infested waters.

I kind of hoped no fish would bite. I was pleasantly stoned, and I’d gotten accustomed to the stillness. A hooked fish would make a commotion, and I didn’t want to deal with that. On top of which, a fish would be wet and slimy, whereas I was nice and dry. So, I imagined I had telepathy, and I beamed a warning to all the fishes about the dangers lurking in our dangling worms. This seemed to work, because neither Scarlett nor I got so much as a nibble all afternoon. Anyway, I was hungry for beef.

Out of the blue, Scarlett broke the silence. “Are you a virgin?”

This was an odd question for many reasons. First of all, I believe it’s generally not usual for eighteen-year-old brothers and sisters to converse about their sex lives. But even if I’m wrong about this, and it is usual for siblings to speak freely of their sexual exploits, this was certainly not the case in our family. Our family would talk about politics, science, philosophy, and whatever else have you. But if there’s one thing we didn’t discuss, it was sex. Not once, ever. Our Scandinavian ancestors had given up Protestantism several generations earlier, but the ethos still lingered in certain respects.

Also, this was an unusual question because of Scarlett herself. She was a perfectly asexual being, I’d always believed. Not because she was ugly or defective or anything. In fact, she’s strikingly beautiful. It’s just that she’d always seemed too pure and ethereal to give any thought to fleshy matters. She’d never shown the slightest interest in boys, not the ones at school, nor even celebrities. There were no posters of sullen actors or effeminate boy bands hanging from her walls. She hated sappy love songs. She’d never been on a real date, as far as I knew. Earlier that spring, she did attend our senior prom, but her “date” was her gay friend Ben—who’s very, very gay, indeed—and her nerdy friend Fiona tagged along and made it a sexless trio.

So, that’s why I was so surprised when Scarlett all of a sudden asked me if I was virgin, for no reason that was readily apparent.

I didn’t especially want to answer this question. So, I squinted harder at my bobber and pretended I was so absorbed in my fishing I hadn’t heard her. But that didn’t work. She just asked again.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Kind of.”

“What do you mean ‘kind of?’ You’re either a virgin or you’re not, right?”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

“How is it complicated?”

“How ’bout them Packers?”

“Did you fuck Renee Tracy?”

I was a bit taken aback hearing my sister use the word “fuck” in a sexual context. It made me frown. “Why are you asking me this?”

“I just want to know. Why are you being such a prude?”

“I’m not a prude.”

“So, did you fuck Renee?”

“No, we did not have intercourse.”

“Does that mean you did other stuff with her?”

“Yeah, we did stuff.”

“Sexual stuff, I mean?”

“We made out a few times. That’s about it.”

“Did she give you a blow job?”

“Jesus, Scarlett. How do you even know about blow jobs?”

“Why would I not know about blow jobs? I didn’t grow up in a convent.”

“Well, she didn’t give me a blow job. I wish she would have, but alas…”

“What about Edith Orbeck? I heard you fondled her boobs at the homecoming dance.”

“I didn’t fondle her boobs. We were dancing, and she wanted to sneak behind the stage curtains. It was 100% her idea. So, we went back there, and we were kissing. My hands were around her waist, and she slid one of them up and put it on her boob.”

“Well, that’s fondling.”

“But not in a bad way.”

“She didn’t say it was bad.”

“She told you?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. Why do girls talk about that stuff?”

“I don’t know. We just do. She said you also fondled her butt.”

“Yeah, that part was my idea. Unfortunately, it was as far as I ever got with her.”

“What about Jenny Li? Did you fuck her?”

“Are you going to interrogate me about every girl in school?”

“I just want to know how you’re ‘kind of’ a virgin.”

“Well, it’s a tawdry tale. And I don’t want to dirty your ears.”

“My ears are pretty dirty already. I’m not as innocent as you think.”

“Well, fine, OK, I’ll tell you. But I can’t name any names. I’ll just say there was an older woman involved. A married woman.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I know it’s bad. I feel like a douche about the whole thing, quite honestly. But I couldn’t help myself. Y’know? It’s always been a fantasy of mine to be seduced by a predatory older woman. A cougar. And she’s so sexy. So, yeah.”

“Was it Mrs. Stone?”

“Jesus! There aren’t any rumors going around, are there?”

“I don’t think so. I just guessed.”

“How could you possibly…?”

“Well, one day, I saw you coming out of her classroom, and she was sitting inside at her desk, and the way she was looking at you as you walked out the door… It made me think ‘hmmm.’ But then I forgot about it until just now, when you said about an older woman. And she is sexy. I can see how you’d want to commit adultery with her.”

“She’s fucking gorgeous. That face. It’s like something out of a painting. And then she’s got those great big floppy titties with the freckles all over her chest. Mmmm.”

“Isn’t her husband a policeman?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I can picture how it happened. You were working on the yearbook staff, in that little closet in the back of her classroom with the computers. It was getting close to the printer’s deadline, and you were working late nights finishing up the layouts. Mrs. Stone stayed to offer her expert advice. And it was just you and her alone in that little closet…”

“Well, yeah, that’s kind of right. I first got to know her through working on the yearbook staff. Except the flirting started almost from the moment we met. We had instant chemistry.”

“Did you bend her over that big oak desk?”

“Sadly, nothing really naughty ever happened in the classroom. Too dangerous. Even late at night, there may be janitors lurking about, or the occasional stray student or faculty member.”

“So, I guess she’d take you to one of those sleazy motels on the highway?