Boy Toy

Houghton Mifflin Company

Boston 2007

Copyright © 2007 by Barry Lyga LLC

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

The text of this book is set in ITC Legacy Serif.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lyga, Barry.
Boy toy / by Barry Lyga.
p. cm.
Summary: After five years of fighting his way past flickers of memory about the teacher who molested him and the incident that brought the crime to light, eighteen- year-old Josh gets help in coping with his molester's release from prison when he finally tells his best friend the whole truth.
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-72393-5 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-618-72393-5 (hardcover)
[1. Sexual abuse victims—Fiction. 2. Emotional problems—Fiction. 3. Baseball- Fiction. 4. Psychotherapy—Fiction. 5. Memory—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L97967Boy 2007
[Fic]—dc22

2006039840

Printed in the United States of America
TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to Terry Davis,
for showing me that it was possible.

1. The Black Plague was transmitted by fleas that were carried throughout Europe by rats.

2. If you first paralyze it, you can cut open a frog and watch its lungs continue to inflate and deflate.

3. There are seven forms of the verb
to be: am, being, been, is, was, were,
and
are.

4. In order to divide fractions, you invert the divisor to arrive at the reciprocal, which is then multiplied by the dividend. (Mixed fractions must first be converted to improper fractions.)

5. In Salem, the witches weren't burned at the stake—they were pressed to death under big rocks ... or hanged.

6. Islam was founded in the year 610. It is the third of three world religions worshiping the same God.

7. Each point on a "coordinate plane" (created by the joining of an x-axis and a y-axis) can be described by an ordered pair of numbers.

8. "Monotheism" is a belief system centered on a single deity, while "polytheism" subscribes to belief in multiple deities.

9. The area of a circle can be determined by using the formula π
²
, where r is the radius of the circle.

10. How to please a woman.

"Lucky thirteen," my dad said when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, and my mom shot down his lame attempt at humor with a disgusted "Oh, Bill!"

But honestly, that's not the important part. Not at all.

The ending began and the beginning ended and the whole mess just got fucked up beyond belief at the party at Rachel Madison's house a few days later. A few days after

"Lucky thirteen"/"Oh, Bill!"

The party turned out to be little more than an excuse for Rachel and Michelle Jurgens and Zik Lorenz and me—the Four Musketeers—to hang out in Rachel's basement. Music videos on the TV and sodas and chips and some sort of hot potato casserole that Rachel announced she had made on her own. And three kids sitting around awkwardly trying to be coy with each other. Three kids and me.

It was like watching the mating rituals of retarded birds, clumsily stepping the wrong patterns around each other over and over again. I sat to one side on a brittle office chair and tried not to be bored.

"Something wrong?" Rachel asked at one point, kneeling down next to the chair. My mind flickered for a moment

—dark room and then a light—

and I adjusted my position in the chair.

"No. Why?"

She gestured to Michelle and Zik, who sat on the floor, leaning against the sofa. They were giggling at the TV, sharing a bowl of chips, their greasy fingers slipping against one another. "Well, you're just sitting over here by yourself..."

"You're here now."

Her face lit up. "Can I sit with you?"

"Well, I guess..." I looked doubtfully at the old chair, which had no room for a second party.

Rachel didn't wait; she planted herself on my lap. The chair squealed. My mind flickered again—

—was—was—was—

and I said, "This isn't a good idea, Rache."

"It can hold us."

She was my size, in a loose sleeveless top and a skirt worn low on her frame. Too skinny, to tell the truth; her skirt was tight enough to emphasize the lack of hips, low enough to expose her concave belly. Her hair was dirty blond and cut short, her face shining, sprayed with an even blast of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Luminous blue eyes. She twisted and put her arms around me. Flicker again

—Was that what you wanted?—

and then Rachel saying, "Is this OK? I need to steady myself."

The chair creaked again, louder, as if to say, "Hey! I really mean it!"

"I don't think this is a good idea, Rachel."

"Come on."

"I'm just worried about the chair."

She wiggled on my lap. I wasn't worried about the chair.

I couldn't let this continue. I struggled to move her off me, our bodies chafing against each other. Her butt slipped and ground against my pelvis in a way that was almost pleasant, almost painful.

"Please"—and I managed to move her off me without dumping her onto the floor.

She fixed me with a glare and a pout at the same time. Rachel Madison was the first girl I noticed when I started noticing girls in fifth grade. Back then, she was a skinny little tomboy with no breasts and the best on-base percentage in Little League that season at .425.

By seventh grade, she'd grown out of the cute tomboy phase, though not much had happened in the chest department. Like so many girls, she emphasized the positive, though, with tight jeans and skirts designed to show off the legs and ass toned over months of beating the throw to first. Up top, she favored the loose blouses and shirts that hinted that maybe,
maybe,
something was starting to sprout under there.

She sauntered over to the snacks, hips swinging in a pathetic attempt to be older than thirteen.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she announced suddenly.

Michelle jumped up and the two girls trooped off to the bathroom together, leaving Zik and me to switch the channel to ESPN, where the Red Sox were clobbering our dear Orioles.

Moments later, the girls returned. Instead of resuming her make-out position with Zik, though, Michelle clapped her hands together and said, "Hey, guys, want to play a game?"

In no time at all, we were all sitting cross-legged on the floor across from each other, an empty Coke bottle between us.

"Whoever gets the bottle pointed at them," Michelle said, as if giving a book report, "gets to go into the coat closet with the person across from them."

That meant Rachel for me, Zik for Michelle. Coincidence? Of course not.

"Are you sure this is how you play spin-the-bottle?" I had never played before, but it didn't seem to jibe with the lore gleaned from older kids over the years.

"This is how my sister plays," Michelle said, and all argument stopped. Michelle's sister, Dina, was drop-dead gorgeous, famous for having had a man offer to leave his wife for her when she was in eighth grade. At least, that was the rumor. No one doubted it, though.

Rachel spun the bottle, giving it a weak little twist that sent it in a quarter-turn before the top of it pointed at me like a compass needle pointing north.

"You and Josh go into the closet," Michelle squealed.

"It didn't go all the way around," I said. "The bottle has to spin all the way around at least once. Otherwise it doesn't count."

Rachel pouted again, but went ahead and spun the bottle once more. It landed perfectly and squarely on me. Again.

"See?" Michelle said, as if something had been proven. She heaved herself to her feet and threw open the closet door. "Get in there, you two!"

Rachel slid in quickly. "How long are we supposed to be in there?" I asked.

"Don't worry about it," Michelle said. "I'm keeping time."

As the closet door closed, it occurred to me that Michelle would do nothing of the sort. She'd be getting her hands greasy with Zik again.

The closet was nearly empty. A thin sketch of light from under the door made it so that we weren't in complete darkness, but

I couldn't really see anything at all, except for those weird dancing color spots that drift in front of your eyes when it's dark.

"Sit down," Rachel whispered. I sat.

I couldn't see her, but I could feel her just ahead of me, sitting cross-legged. I closed my eyes to a new darkness. Flicker

—turn on the lights if you want—

and then back to the present.

I opened my eyes. Spots whirled and spun. The dark went to semidarkness. I thought I could see something in the far distance. It shifted.

Rachel changed position, going up to her knees. I felt more than saw her lean toward me in the dark. A sudden giggle penetrated the closet from outside: Michelle.

"Sounds like they're having fun," Rachel said, her breath clouded, warm, against my face. She was practically on top of me. I almost jerked out a hand in self-defense, but I held back.

"I guess so."

"Don't you want to have fun?"

Flicker

—touch—

"I guess so."

She giggled like Michelle. "I've been practicing spinning that bottle all week."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

She leaned in even closer; her blouse brushed against my hand. Then her lips pressed to my cheek. They were slippery with too much lipstick. She fumbled for a minute, adjusting, and eventually found my lips. More slimy lip action.

"Don't you like me?" she whispered.

—touch—

—lick—

—OK—

—yes—

"Sure." I could feel her trembling
—vibrating—
over me, supporting herself on her hands, elbows locked. Belly pressed to my knee. Blouse drifting against my hand.

"Kiss me," she said, and kissed my lips again, this time probing with her tongue.

I opened my mouth and she sighed deep in her throat when our tongues touched. It sounded familiar. Universal. I closed my eyes again and pretended. Pretended I wasn't in a closet in the Madisons' basement, with Zik and Michelle intertwining their fingers ten feet away through a cheap fiberboard door. Pretended I wasn't sitting cross-legged across from a flat-chested girl with freckles and a too-slutty skirt that looked wrong on her but would have looked so right on someone else.

Instead, I moved forward with my body and my tongue. I heard a familiar grunt of approval. I reached out to touch her

—touch—

—yes—

and slid my hands down to the bare skin between the blouse and the skirt. I crushed my face to hers, let my hands move the way they wanted, the way they knew...

And the next thing I knew, Rachel slammed my chest with both fists. She was too small to hurt me, but she managed to push me away, breaking the hold I had on her, jerking my hands away. "No! No!"

She shoved me, kicked out with her feet, and then the door was flung open and Rachel dashed out of the closet, wailing, tugging at her blouse and skirt, running for the stairs.

Michelle and Zik were sprawled on the sofa, fooling around. They looked over at me, lipstick-smeared, as Rachel charged up the stairs. I heard an adult voice call out. Then another, and then a babble of them—her father, her mother, her brother, home from college.

And that was how one part of my life ended. And another began.