Girl Code (4 page)

“Tabitha, you know I can’t miss any of his games,” my mother said irritably, like I was so wrong for even suggesting it.

I wanted to say, “can’t, or won’t?” but I didn’t. Instead, I asked, “How am I supposed to get there?”

Mom shrugged. “You can take the train. You’re old enough.”

“She’s a fourteen-year-old freshman in high school with no real experience in the city,” Leo said, looking at my mom with a dumbfounded expression, as if that should and would change my mom’s mind.

I don’t know why he thought he had a part in our family conversation, but his words were a thought that had indeed crossed my mind.

Mom gave him a harsh look, and for a second, I thought she was going to tell him to mind his own business, but she turned away from Leo and spoke to me. “I’ll give you money to get back and forth. Maybe someone can go with you if you’re afraid to go alone, or maybe you can re-apply another year.”

I wished I could say that I was surprised by her reaction, but I wasn’t. Leo stood in the doorway with his mouth hanging open, looking from her to me. I didn’t want him to open his big mouth again, so I shrugged and pushed him back toward the dining room.

“It’s fine,” I said to her. “I can go alone.”

“What the hell was that?” Leo asked a little too loudly after I pushed him into his seat. He had seen some of my parents’ indifference to me over the months, but nothing as blatant as that.

“Can we just get started on this paper?” I asked, ignoring his question. It was humiliating enough that my mother clearly preferred my brother over me. I didn’t feel the need to discuss it with Leo of all people.

As I unloaded my backpack, I felt Leo’s eyes on me, but I didn’t want to meet them. I didn’t want to share my sadness with him.

“Tabitha,” he started in a quiet voice.

I ignored him and began talking about our project. After a moment, he got the hint and together, we got started on our assignment. We didn’t talk about what happened between my mom and me. After a while, he even went back to terrorizing me until I was hitting him with my English book.

Later that night as I lay in bed listening to music, I thought about the fact that my mom was going to be okay with letting her fourteen-year-old daughter go into the city alone. If she were okay with that, surely she wouldn’t care about me going to a party. Then again, if Tack told her he didn’t want me to go, she would have agreed with him just because he was her perfect baby boy, but Tack wasn’t going to be there, and I had promised him I wouldn’t go.

But I lied to my brother, and after that, I was more determined than ever to go to that party.

My vision was hazy and my body felt heavy and numb in some places. I stumbled on the stairs, my feet missing step after step, but with his arms around me, he kept me from falling and kept me moving until we stumbled into the hallway on the second floor. The passage was dark and I could barely make out the shapes of doors on either side of me, but we continued walking straight until we reached a door at the very end of the hall. He pushed it open and soft light bathed the doorway. His hand on my back guided me inside the bedroom and the door closed behind us.

A small voice in the back of my head, locked away in the distance, screamed a warning, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. It was too far, and the voice sounded garbled and faded. It grew a little louder as strong hands landed gently on my shoulders and began to turn me, but I still couldn’t hear what it was saying.

When I had turned one-hundred and eighty degrees, Rico held my face in his hands and leaned forward. I knew instantly that he was going to kiss me. It was going to be my first kiss; Rico was going to give me my first kiss. I had imagined my first kiss with Tom Cruise, Bon Jovi, and a boy that I saw at the mall once in a while, but never with Rico. Not that he wasn’t attractive, because he was. Tall and lean, with dark hair and dark eyes and skin the color of coffee with cream in it, he was a good-looking guy, but I never had the desire to kiss him before, and I didn’t have the desire to kiss him then, either.

The mind thinks of funny things when it’s inebriated. Leo’s face came to mind just before Rico’s lips touched mine. I could see his face inches from mine in my bedroom that night he came over to tutor me. He had said his heart was beating fast and I never found out why. I wondered if he was about to kiss me that night. Maybe Leo was about to kiss me and Tack screwed it up, but that didn’t make sense. Leo liked Leslie, I was sure of it, and I wasn’t like Leslie. I wasn’t as pretty as she was, and where she was always down for a party or a get-together, I was the stay-at-home-like-a-dork kind of girl. There was no way he wanted to kiss me.

But…maybe a part of me wished he had…

Rico’s mouth pressed against mine as one hand pressed lightly on the back of my head. His tongue, slippery and serpent-like, slithered across my closed lips, seeking entrance until I opened up to let him in. He moaned as his tongue slid into my mouth, and his kiss almost immediately turned hard and ferocious. It was my first kiss, I didn’t know how to kiss and he was kissing me as if I’d had years of practice. I didn’t know what to do with my mouth, my tongue, my hands, or anything. I always thought my first kiss would be soft and sweet and meaningful, but this was animalistic, and not in a sexy way. Rico was going to suck my face off.

The backs of my knees hit the bed and it was only then that I realized he had been pushing me backward as he kissed me. He kept pushing as I was falling back and he was falling with me, until I was caught in a compromising position on the bed with Rico on top of me. That voice in the back of my head was getting louder as he began to kiss my neck. As his hands began to wander over my body, the voice became clearer. When his fingers squeezed at my breasts, I understood the voice and could hear it as if someone was speaking in my ear.

Get up! Don’t let this happen!

“Stop,” I said suddenly to Rico and put my hands on his shoulders in an effort to push him away.

“You don’t want me to stop,” he said breathlessly as his hands continued to wander down to the hem of the skirt I was wearing. “I’m so glad you wore a skirt. You have pretty sexy legs for a big girl.”

“Stop,” I repeated and pushed at him again, but my attempts were feeble at best. My limbs still felt heavy and drunk after the shots Rico supplied me with through the night.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Rico groaned as his hands moved up my thighs and under my skirt. “You smell so sweet.”

“I don’t want to do this, Rico,” I said as his fingers moved over my panties. My heart pounded hard in my chest and my breathing became labored. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I knew that’s what was happening.

“Ssshhh,” he whispered against my lips. “You’re just nervous,” he said, attempting to sound gentle and comforting.

I felt temporary relief when he took his hand out of my skirt, but then the panic began again as his fingers began to work the buttons on my shirt. I used one hand and shoved at one of his. I succeeded in pushing him away, but he took a part of my shirt with him. Buttons flew, fabric was torn, and my cleavage and bra were exposed. Rico looked down in shock at the piece of shirt in his hand. My brain was sluggish, but the instinct to protect myself kicked in full force, and I brought my knee up hard between his legs. He howled in pain and rolled off of me, gripping at his balls.

“Fuck!” he yelled, rolling back and forth on the bed. His eyes were pinched shut and his face was bright red. “What did you do that for?”

I scrambled off of the bed and fell to the floor, but quickly pulled myself back up. I stumbled to the door, pulled it open and fled with Rico shouting my name from the bedroom behind me.

The party was in full swing, with music pounding from speakers, bodies dancing and doing other things, people laughing and yelling and I smelled pot in the air. I kept my head down and my shirt pulled together in my hands as I hurried through the crowd and outside into the snowy night. It was spring, it should not have been snowing, and I should not have had to walk home in it in the middle of the night, but Rico had promised Sandy’s cousin that he would get me home after the girls had to leave to make curfew, but now that wasn’t possible. I don’t know why the girls trusted him or why I even trusted him. I don’t know why I didn’t trust in my brother.

Tears leaked down my cheeks and I swiped them away with the backs of my hands. I was angry with Rico. I was angry with myself. I was angry with Tack for being right about Rico. I was angry with Leslie because she wasn’t there with me and because these things didn’t happen to her. I was angry, scared, felt violated and betrayed, and I was stuck walking three and a half miles home in a snowstorm without a coat.

And I was angry with my mom and dad because they let me walk out of the house at eight o’clock at night without any question or comment, and they were most likely not waiting up for me.

When a vehicle pulled up beside me as I walked, I didn’t look over. If it weren’t Rico, it could have been someone worse. It really wasn’t safe for a fourteen-year-old girl to be walking the streets after midnight, especially in this part of town. My heart raced and flashes of my dead body being found in some field raced through my head.

“Tabitha!” My head snapped up when I heard Leo’s voice. He was behind the wheel of his dad’s truck.

“What are you doing?” I cried out as he climbed out of the truck. “You don’t have your license!” I looked around frantically, expecting a police car to materialize out of the snow.

“What are you doing out here in the snow without a…” he stopped speaking as his eyes raked over me.

I had momentarily forgotten about my torn shirt and missing buttons. As I pulled the parts of my shirt together and crossed my arms to hold it in place, I imagined that my hair was probably a wreck and makeup was most likely smeared across my face.

“What are you doing driving?” I asked, choosing to look at the truck instead of meeting his eyes. I shivered. I had not felt the chill of the air until then. I guess I was in some state of shock.

“What happened?” Leo asked in a soft voice. I could feel his eyes on me, but I could not look at him.

“I asked a question first,” I said harshly.

“I borrowed my dad’s truck so I could come to the party,” he said quickly and then asked again, “What happened?”

“People already think your family is in the mob, and now you’re committing grand theft auto.” I looked down at the space between us.

“Tabitha,” he said my name delicately. I felt his finger under my chin and he gingerly raised my head so that my eyes met his ocean hued orbs. “What. Happened?”

I shivered again and my breath came out in a shudder.

“Since you’re driving—albeit illegally—can you give me a ride home?” I asked instead of answering his question.

When his fingers wiped moisture off of my cheeks, I was surprised. I didn’t even know tears were falling from my eyes.

Leo’s face hardened into a furious mask, but his tone was low and in control when he pulled open the passenger side door and quietly commanded me to get in. He wasn’t exactly a person I wanted to see after what I had just gone through, but I was still a little drunk, cold, tired, achy, and my insides churned at the thought of what almost happened to me. Besides, it was still dangerous for me to be out alone. After a moment of hesitation, I climbed into the truck. Leo climbed behind the driver’s seat a moment later. Belatedly, I wondered how well of a driver Leo was, especially in the snow. Maybe, I would have been better off walking.

Leo jerked the wheel to the left and did a U-turn on the street and began to speed back in the direction I had come from.

“Where are you going?” I asked in alarm.

“To take care of something,” he answered darkly. “I should have known you would be hard-headed and sneak out anyway, of course, you would,” Leo said, shaking his head and gripping the steering wheel. “Rico is a senior and all of the girls who don’t know any better think he’s the shit. Of course, you were going.”

I was a little thrown that he was able to figure me out like that. Leslie didn’t even believe that I was capable of doing something so dopey. I didn’t understand his anger and I didn’t appreciate his words.

“I don’t think he’s the shit,” I angrily objected. “I never did. I just liked him as a person.”

He rolled his eyes in response. Moments later, he pulled into a spot a short distance from Rico’s house. Involuntarily, I tensed up and fiercely gripped the door handle. I tried swallowing the large lump that had formed in my throat, but it remained steadfast.