Identity

She withdraws from her name, wondering why, as a child, she wrote it on everything she owned - black magic marker on a backpack, silver paint pen on a leather jacket, the image etched into her flesh by a man named Shaker. There aren't statues of cats, at least, posed and lined up on wooden shelves hanging on the wall. She never would have gone that far.

She forgot how it started. Maybe a joke or a boyfriend's observation about the shape of her eyes? It wasn't long after she heard the name in the hallways that she began painting her eyes thick and black, and started wearing stockings that left red crisscross patterns on her knees.

Then the nights came when her mother was gone, and her stepfather played solitaire next to a row of beer cans at the kitchen table, and she sat behind the locked door of her walk-in closest, taping pictures to the wall that had been drawn by boys with steady hands. Sometimes she would stand under the bare bulb, lick her finger, and smudge the lines until fine bits of gray paper peeled up, just to ease the time away.

She liked the name mixed with liquor in the mouths of sweaty boys, but even more when they screamed it through thin gaping lips. Naked, except for their tight black jeans and studded belts, they cursed her name until they forgot it, all of them.

It seemed fitting, she thought one day, while painting her eyes beneath the glow of a bare bulb in the dressing room, that the DJ should call out the name whispered in love so many times but soon forgotten.

Wasted on Her

Two pair of hairy legs hang out the back of the escort. My heart drops, floating on the contents of a forty ounce. Jenny isn't here.

I toss my bag onto the seat behind their heads and crawl in. Jeremy rolls to his side, exposing a welcoming nook. "Where's Jenny?" I ask. He gathers my hair in one hand and pulls the bundle tightly, seeking a bare bit of neck to rest his cheek. "She's with Mosh Boy."

"Look what I found in her pack," Adam says, unzipping her pack. The front flap opens, and a new copy of Mein Kampf tumbles out. His eyes stare us down until Jeremy boots it out of the car, its contents too filthy to touch.

I want to shred the image of her in Mosh Boy's arms, eyes open in fascination, hanging onto his hate the way she used to suck Whitman's free verse from my mouth. Jeremy's bones feel sharper. I try to sit up but he pulls me closer, digging his fingers into the soft flesh under my halter. "Let it be us tonight. Not her, too. She doesn't deserve this."

She does deserve this, lodges in my throat, but it's all or nothing with Jeremy. Tonight would be nothing.

Adam's mom left the hall light on for us. He waves us to his room before disappearing up the stairs to let her know we made it home.

I want to talk about Jenny but Jeremy will tell me to let her go. He's never had anyone worth hanging on to, except Adam, and me. A wheeze escapes him as he sleeps. At seventeen, the nonfilter cigarettes are already turning his sweetness black. I untie the laces, tug the boots off his feet, and toss an army blanket over his thin frame. "Not us. Not tonight," I say to Jeremy, cupping his calf in my hand before turning to Adam.

The backyard limbs stretch and sway, beholding the moon's gaze. Arms reach out to me, drawing me down to the ground. Lips parted, he searches my face for those tears that were sure to come. Adam always knows.

He never minds the dampness on his back. I slide on top of him.

"Is this jealousy?" I ask, running my fingers through the crevices between his ribs. What I want is in his shirt pocket.

"No, just concern. She's not like us. She wants the thrill of being defiant. We are defiant."

Tugging his bottom lip open with my thumb, I lean over and blow the smoke into his mouth.

"It's all about what you need, whom you need, and knowing where to find it," he chokes out. "She's still searching for all of them."