“Sweet Water” by Ashley Murray
--page 2

         Years ago I had Geometry in this classroom. My desk was the third one back, fourth row. Strange I sat there once doodling in my notebook, half-listening to my teacher, filtering the fragments of his voice. Recording only the important-sounding information between the small blue lines of my paper.
         Outside looking in, it’s impossible not to wonder what it would be like to go back. How I would see things now that I know what I know. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that’s not the point.
         I’m not interested in reliving the past or in the adolescent body that goes with it. Really, more than anything, I think it’s the sheer lack of knowledge that I crave. A complete and total unawareness.
         To go back there and somehow make that girl appreciate the gift of not knowing. Because looking through this window makes me truly see just how much she is no longer alive.
         And maybe she never was. At least not in the way that I picture her now as I stand on my tiptoes and peek into the room. As I listen to the locusts making their slow, crazed music, and remember that the first time I saw Ray I was standing right outside of it.
         In high school, I was a girl people love to hate. Tall and leggy, curves that came in mostly all the right places. Blonde hair that fell just above my hips, ironed flat and parted straight down the middle. I took it for granted that people envied me, but not on purpose. I never saw the separation. Never recognized beauty as a privilege.
         I couldn’t put a name to it then, but now I see how they looked at me. With the type of respect that borders contempt, the kind that falls halfway between devotion and hatred.
         But Ray.
         Ray was something different. Something unexpected.
         I read somewhere once that when something big in your life is about to happen--good or bad--the chemicals in your brain know it before you do. They shift a little and all the senses are heightened. The moment becomes exceptionally sharp.
         I have no idea how much of this is true but I do remember that the first time I saw Ray a bell was ringing. That the boy behind him was wearing white tennis shoes and a turquoise t-shirt with a hole under the neckline. That the hall smelled like burnt French fries and Lysol.
         I was late for class and didn’t care. Propped up against a locker talking to my friend Janie when he strutted past us, not once glancing in my direction.
         The boy walked like he owned the world.Ray McNamera, Janie had said, reading my mind. Came over from Houston. Heard his dad got a job out in the oil fields.
         Oh, I think I said as I watched him. From where I was standing, West Texas just didn’t get any better than that.
         It was a week before I worked up the courage to talk to him because I’d never had to chase anyone before. It wasn’t something I was used to. Before, they’d always come to me.
         But after that first hello, everything else was easy because Ray is the type of man who cares more about winning the prize than what it actually is. I guess when I think about it, he only started to want me once he realized others did.
         From that point on though, whatever it was, whatever you’d call it, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We kissed in his car, at the drive-in movie theater. Behind the bleachers at the Friday night game. I was seventeen and still a virgin.
         One night he took me out to the cotton fields. We sat on wooden fence posts and watched the cows making shadows, inking themselves against the sky while the sun swam its way under the grass. We drank cheap beer from styrofoam cups and smoked a joint. We ate moon pies and held hands.
         And when I was good and high, he took me out under a tree and we fucked. I expected some pain but didn’t anticipate the slope of his face or the way his eyes spun back in his head when he came.
         After, all he said was, I knew you’d taste like this.
         Like what? I think I asked.
         He ran a finger down my spine.
         Untouched.
         I laughed.
         That’s not a taste.
         He nodded his head.
         Yeah, it is.
         And then he rolled over and yawned. Put both hands behind his head and closed his eyes.
         You won’t ever taste like that again.
         Hundreds of locusts were out that night. It was savage the way they screamed--it sounded hysterical, almost as if they were caged.
         As if they were trapped in the trees.

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