I remember crying when I rode my bike home from his house.  I was 16 or about to be.  He was twice my age.  I don’t why he picked me.  The first time it was summer, lazy light shining in.  It was an old house: he was  renovating and there was nothing upstairs–some drywall, a bed he shared with his wife, a mattress on the floor.  Now, I am struck by how wishy washy he was, standing in front of the room with his Scooby-Doo haircut and nerdy glasses, the goofy grin.  I still see him: his baggy khaki pants, always adjusting his junk.  He had two little girls.  I think Emily was ten, dark and foreign.  Jennifer looked like him, big doe eyes, watery pools.  I wanted to smack her when I babysat on Saturday nights.  They loved me and I don’t know why.  I don’t know what I thought.  His wife’s name was Rene.  She was an artist with long flowing skirts, always carrying a book, fading into the shadows.  I really don’t remember what I called him.  It couldn’t have been John, but Mr. Jackson was unthinkable.

I don’t know if I was pretty; I wanted to be.  In the yearbook I am always standing next to him –or him next to me.

I was 16–or about to be. We “petted” for a long time–in front of my parents’ house after babysitting, in the car in the park–once a cop came tap tap tapping on the car window.   We petted and petted and petted: his voice so persistent–I love you, I love you, this can’t be wrong.  His hand worming its way down my half-opened pants: it’s alright, it’s alright, I love, I love, I love.  I don’t know what his wife thought when he drove off for an hour, disappearing into the Saturday dark.

There were rumors about him and another girl, a redhead on the newspaper staff.  The room behind his classroom, where pictures appeared out of nowhere, a blur of black and white, distorted faces hidden from view, coming into focus. One of them was me.

The first time we did it, I remember thinking it was nothing. I was nothing, already gone.  I don’t remember where we were, maybe the old Coral Court motel down on Route 66 where people went when  they didn’t want to be seen, driving into a yellow-and-glass-bricked indoor garage attached to the room for an hour, maybe quicker.  Ugly worn carpet, yellowing too.  I must have waited in the car while he went into the office for the key, thinking nothing.

She came home from work unexpectedly one weekday after school.  We were upstairs in the bed on the floor; dusty and gray.  I hid in the upstairs bathroom.  I don’t know what he told her, something soothing–or not–the summer sun tiny sparkles of light in the gray.

I imagined this and more, pedaling my bike home, legs pumping hard into my future.