Robert Valentine knew when he cornered me on the playground when we were eight. He was a creep even then—pale, fish belly skin. Yellow eyes. His nose was running, and there was a snot bubble in his right nostril. He said we were going to play cops and robbers, and since he was the cop, he leaned me against the fence so he could frisk me. His little fingers were beneath my clothes instantly, but he didn’t feel the parts my mother hand warned me to protect. He pressed his hand to my sternum instead. He searched for the steady lub-dub, the persistent thump of my heart, but he found nothing because there was nothing there to find.
He stopped. Took a deep breath, tried again. He searched my entire torso, even my belly button. Then he turned me around and pressed his ear to my chest. He listened, straining against the other playground sounds, and I giggled, trying to diffuse the situation. I said, “You’re weird, Robert Valentine.”
He looked up at me, his chaffed lips parted. He said, “You’re dead, Corina Stanley.”
“Maybe,” I said, giggling again. I didn’t want to make too much of it because I didn’t want him to tell anyone else. So, I kissed him even though his nose ran. I kissed his eye lids, his nose, his chin. I kissed each cheek. I kissed him like my mother kissed my dad. I kissed him so he would keep my secret, but he ran from me. He ran screaming to the edge of the playground, and then he stood there alone, facing the parking lot. I don’t know what scared him more—my absent heart or my kisses—but he never told.
L. Michelle Nichols’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fractured Lit, Juked, PANK, Permafrost, Southwest Review, storySouth, and swamp pink. She lives in rural West Texas.
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