Categories > Original > Mystery > The Allure of Virginity
The Video
When I noticed Eddie’s bedroom window open, I climbed up the drainpipe at the back of the house and jumped into his bedroom. The bedroom was dark as usual. This time Eddie had turned on a small lamp near his bed. But the light was weak. I initially thought Eddie would emerge from this darkness, but after looking around for a while I noticed the room was empty. The laptop sat on the bed, cycling through pornographic images—this time, not only were there pornographic images but also pornographic video files. The sound was turned off obviously because Eddie didn’t want his dad to hear from downstairs. If Eddie wasn’t in his room now he was probably downstairs with his dad. I wondered whether I should wait for Eddie to come up to his room or whether I should go downstairs to find him. If I went downstairs, how would his father react if he saw me? He’d wonder how I got into the house without going through the front door. Perhaps he’d think I was a thief.
After sitting on Eddie’s bed for ten minutes looking at the pornography, I got tired and walked out to the corridor. As I arrived at the top of the stairs, I heard noise from the back of the house. The TV was turned on, spewing out all sorts of vibrant sounds. I then heard the croaky voice of an old man. It came from downstairs.
“Eddie, you have to go to bed now! It’s past your bedtime.”
“But I don’t want to,” said Eddie.
Eddie’s father’s voice was firm. “You’ve got to be in bed before ten. That’s the rule.”
“When the movie finishes.”
Eddie probably forgot about his meeting with me. I couldn’t go downstairs because I didn’t want his dad seeing me. I could climb out Eddie’s bedroom window and go home, where I could get some sleep, but I felt too awake to sleep. I walked back to Eddie’s bedroom. Along the corridor I noticed pictures up on the wall; one was a family picture with Eddie, his mum, and his dad. The presence of the mother meant that the family picture must have been taken before the accident, the one that killed Eddie’s mum. In the picture, Eddie’s father looked a lot more handsome than he does now. It was as if the car accident made him older and fatter. He looked like a middle-aged man in the picture but today most people would classify him as elderly. The fire from the car accident might have wrinkled his skin.
From the top of the stairs I could see the bottom-story hallway that lead to the front door. What was interesting was how neat the bottom story was compared to the top story. The bottom story of the house contained clean carpets and walls without stains. In contrast, the top story had clothes strewn everywhere along with sporting equipment like cricket bats.
I walked back into Eddie’s bedroom, thinking about the prospect of just climbing out the window and going home.
I heard screaming from downstairs. Eddie’s father was shouting something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying because his words were almost completely drowned out by Eddie’s screams. It was a loud, shocking scream that turned from high-pitched to low-pitch when Eddie started to loudly cry. I took a few steps down the stairs until I could peek into the dining room at the back where the television was. I couldn’t see anything but I heard Eddie’s crying grow louder and louder. Footsteps too seemed to grow louder and louder. Eddie was running towards the stairs.
I ran back up the stairs and into Eddie’s bedroom. Behind me I could hear the little boy’s quick steps as he climbed up the stairs. The bedroom was dark. The only light came from the laptop that cycled through pornographic videos. The room was messy as well, which allowed me to find a position at the corner of the room to hide. I buried myself under a pile of clothes, stuffed animals, books, and magazines. The pages on the magazines and books rustled as I moved them, but luckily the rustling noises died down as soon as Eddie entered the bedroom and jumped on the bed. His loud weeping noise was suddenly silenced when he buried his face into a pillow. He laid his arms and legs out on the bed as if he were a starfish, not clenching them or stiffening them, just letting them go. Although muffled by the pillow, he still made sobbing and sniffing noise. He tilted his head up sometimes for air and the noises increased in volume for a while, but it seemed as if he didn’t want to hear himself crying because he quickly stuffed his face into the pillow again when he couldn’t hold back another round of tears. At times the noise coming from the pillow sounded like a whimpering cat.
My decision to hide was instinctual. I came here to meet Eddie but I didn’t expect to arrive just after a family conflict had occurred. I felt awkward as I looked at Eddie lying on his bed. I looked more carefully at the boy and noticed bright red lashes on the back of his legs, near his buttocks. I didn’t know what to do. I clearly didn’t want to embarrass Eddie by letting him know that I saw him cry. For as long as he and I had known each other Eddie has done a good job of projecting to me a reasonably strong image of himself. I felt something within me—a strong sense of pity.
Eddie got up from his bed. The crying had stopped. He wiped his eyes a few more times, turned around, and walked out the bedroom door. Since I knew the top story so well now I could tell where the little boy was heading by listening to his footsteps. Based on the intensity of the footsteps I could predict Eddie’s location. He was heading for the bathroom. I heard the clanging of plastic against plastic—the toilet seat had been pushed up. As expected I heard the trickling of liquid. Eddie was urinating.
I got out from my hiding position and ran to the bedroom window, eager to escape. After the window was opened I put my legs outside first. It was freezing cold outside. I had to firmly plant my feet on a flat set of bricks jutting out from the wall underneath the window. After that I had to grab with my hands the drainpipe. It took me longer than usual to get just my feet out the window. I was cold and nervous. If I slipped, it was a two-story fall to the concrete pavement below, about a seven-meter fall.
“Keith.”
I looked back inside the bedroom and noticed that Eddie was at the bedroom door, looking at me as I stood with the bottom half of my body outside the house and the top half of my body inside Eddie’s room.
“I forgot you were coming,” said Eddie, who I noticed now had no t-shirt on. “Aren’t you going to come in?”
I suddenly realized that Eddie thought that I was entering his bedroom, not leaving it. I climbed back inside the room again. I suddenly realized now why Eddie was shirtless. He hopped on the exercise bike and started pedaling.
“I was just about to exercise,” said Eddie. “I’ll only be five or ten minutes. You can look at my pornos.”
“You wanted to show me something?”
Eddie hopped off the bike. I had jogged his memory. He went to a corner of his room and pulled out a CD. I caught the CD as he casually threw it at me. When I sat on Eddie’s bed I saw his pillow. My fingers pressed on the pillow, feeling its dampness.
“Your pillow’s wet,” I said.
Eddie was back on the exercise bike now, pedaling. “It’s sweat. I’ve been exercising.”
“What happened to your leg?”
Eddie stepped off the bike. The back of his leg was red. It looked a little like he is limping towards his bed as he walked to me. The first thing he did was switch off the porn on the laptop.
“I used to always look at porno,” said Eddie. “After a while…when you think about how much porno you’ve seen…feels like a waste of time, you know?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“So now I only look at porno if I exercise. Makes me feel like I’m doing something good when I look at porno.”
“Sort of like the carrot and the stick.”
“What?”
“You know? To make a rabbit run all the time, you dangle a carrot in front of it. The porn’s like the carrot.”
Eddie thought about this for a while. “I guess.” He paused. “Do you have your own exercise bike?”
“Yeah, but it’s not in my room. It’s in the living room, so when I exercise my mum and dad see me. I don’t use the bike much.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s embarrassing to exercise in front of my parents.”
He sat down on the bed, took the CD out from my hand, and put it in the laptop.
“What happened to your leg?” I pointed.
He ignored me and kept tapping buttons on the laptop. I brought my hands forward and touched the skin above his knees. There was a bright red gash. Most of it was bright pink but parts of it were actually bleeding. His skin was sticky and moist. The region must have been sensitive because he looked at me as I touched his leg. It was a depressing stare, but he didn’t flinch when I touched him, nor did he resist. I moved my palm on his legs. The blood underneath his skin was so hot. It felt like the heat on Eddie’s legs was sizzling my hands, which had been almost frozen by the night air outside.
Eddie spoke. “My dad hit me.”
“How long has this happened?”
“A long time.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Eddie looked down on my hand on his leg. “I told my mum.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
He shook his head.
Eddie pressed more keys on the laptop and brought up the video player software. I took my hands away from Eddie’s legs and repositioned myself on the bed so I could clearly see the screen. The surroundings were so dark that it felt like I was waiting for a movie to start at the cinemas.
Eddie was right when he said the video wasn’t pornographic. It was slightly fuzzy and blocky every now and then, as most compressed digital videos were. The resolution, however, was good enough for me to see key details, such as facial features. The video showed a group of young women. They did nothing but stand. The room in which they stood looked very dark. The women were visible because flaming sticks were attached to the walls. Since there were no light bulbs or any other modern lighting, the light on the women’s faces was uneven. The light on the women’s faces looked like waves on the surface of the ocean.
The women in the video just stood. Their eyes generally looked towards the camera but not every woman’s eyes were directly focused on the camera. Some eyes seemed to be looking to the left of the camera; some to the right. On average, however, the eyes tended towards the camera. The women were all dressed in black bra and black underwear. Their hair seemed unkempt. They all looked cheerless, as if they were extremely bored.
“This is strange,” I said.
“Have a look at that girl at the back.” Eddie pointed to the monitor. “Isn’t that Ella?”
I squinted and looked more closely, surprised that Ella’s name had been mentioned. It was a little hard to make out her face but there was something about her that looked odd.
“That girl at the back has brown or maybe black hair,” I said. “Ella’s got blonde hair.”
“It still looks like Ella,” said Eddie.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
A few seconds later, the video stopped.
“Is that it?” I asked. “What else is on the CD?”
“Just porno,” he said, letting the video player play the next file on the playlist.
The next video had two young naked teenage boys having anal sex on a sofa. I immediately felt uncomfortable. I expected Eddie to turn the video off to end this discomfort but he kept it running and stared passively at the screen for about ten seconds. Keeping the video running, he then looked at me and pushed the laptop away.
“What time is it?” Eddie asked.
I looked at my watch. “It’s about half past one. We’ve got school tomorrow, so I’d better be getting back home.”
“It’s raining outside.” Eddie pointed to the bedroom window.
The rain was banging against the roof and the window, but for some reason I hadn’t notice until Eddie mentioned it. The rain hit against the bedroom window so fiercely that everything outside looked blurry. Now that I was conscious of the rain I began to sense the coldness leaking in through the windows and through the walls. When Eddie turned the laptop off a major source of light in the bedroom was cut off. Light from the moon and the streetlights outside intercepted the rainwater swishing on the window, resulting in a soft moving kaleidoscope of orange and white light within the room.
“If you’re going out, I have a raincoat in the closet,” said Eddie, his voice low. “Or if you want, you can sleep here tonight.”
“Where will I sleep?”
“You can sleep on the floor…on my clothes.”
“Do you have a spare mattress?”
Eddie shook his head. “If you want, you can sleep with me.”
Eddie’s blanket was thick and warm, and tonight was a very cold night. I was feeling tired. I had to get up at about seven o’clock tomorrow morning, so even if I fell asleep straight away the most sleep I’d get was about five-point-five hours, much less than the eight hours of sleep doctors recommend.
I was hesitant at first but decided to get into bed with Eddie. The bed was about one meter in width and two-point-five meters in length. He only had one pillow, which he used, so I had to grab a thick jumper from the ground, fold it up, and use it as a makeshift pillow. It wasn’t comfortable since the jumper had metal buttons in it. Since the bed was only one meter in width my body accidentally brushed up against Eddie’s body quite a bit initially, but every time our skins made contact I’d shy away.
After about five minutes of tossing and turning there was a period of silence as both Eddie and I managed to get ourselves comfortable enough in his bed. Eddie faced me. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I kept staring at the bedroom window. The rain never let up. I still felt cold, so I tried to crawl up into a ball. My makeshift pillow was not at all comfortable. A metal button kept stabbing on my cheek. I tried turning the jumper around but there were buttons on the other side. Eddie must have heard me trying to adjust my makeshift pillow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Your jumper. It’s got buttons. It hurts my face.”
“You can use my pillow with me.”
Eddie’s pillow was two feet in length and one foot in width. Both our heads could fit but there was only about ten centimeters of space between us. I pushed Eddie’s jumper off the bed and let it drop to the carpet. Since I had to move my head towards Eddie I also had to move the rest of my body towards him if I didn’t want my body to curve too much. Instead of crawling towards Eddie I rolled towards him so that instead of looking away from Eddie initially, after I had finished rolling, I was now facing him. Our bodies made contact. I couldn’t move away now because then I’d get no pillow. Eddie’s small hands stroked my waist, moved underneath my t-shirt and went up towards my chest.
“You’re cold,” he whispered.
“I’ve been outside.”
Since his face was so close to mine I could hear him loud and clear even as he whispered. When the words came out a gush of hot air came out with it. His breath was warm but tasted fresh.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, as I assumed he was doing. We both had school tomorrow.
As I lied in Eddie’s bed that night I kept looking at the window. The rain still continued to come down. When I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, I thought about Eddie. I really liked that boy. But something else also stole my thoughts that night. I kept thinking about the video he showed me on the laptop, the video of those women, those girls. What were they doing? Why were they just standing there? Was that Ella in the video?
I wanted to talk to Eddie about Ella, but when I whispered I received no response.
The little boy was asleep. As he slept, his hands still touched my chest.
When I noticed Eddie’s bedroom window open, I climbed up the drainpipe at the back of the house and jumped into his bedroom. The bedroom was dark as usual. This time Eddie had turned on a small lamp near his bed. But the light was weak. I initially thought Eddie would emerge from this darkness, but after looking around for a while I noticed the room was empty. The laptop sat on the bed, cycling through pornographic images—this time, not only were there pornographic images but also pornographic video files. The sound was turned off obviously because Eddie didn’t want his dad to hear from downstairs. If Eddie wasn’t in his room now he was probably downstairs with his dad. I wondered whether I should wait for Eddie to come up to his room or whether I should go downstairs to find him. If I went downstairs, how would his father react if he saw me? He’d wonder how I got into the house without going through the front door. Perhaps he’d think I was a thief.
After sitting on Eddie’s bed for ten minutes looking at the pornography, I got tired and walked out to the corridor. As I arrived at the top of the stairs, I heard noise from the back of the house. The TV was turned on, spewing out all sorts of vibrant sounds. I then heard the croaky voice of an old man. It came from downstairs.
“Eddie, you have to go to bed now! It’s past your bedtime.”
“But I don’t want to,” said Eddie.
Eddie’s father’s voice was firm. “You’ve got to be in bed before ten. That’s the rule.”
“When the movie finishes.”
Eddie probably forgot about his meeting with me. I couldn’t go downstairs because I didn’t want his dad seeing me. I could climb out Eddie’s bedroom window and go home, where I could get some sleep, but I felt too awake to sleep. I walked back to Eddie’s bedroom. Along the corridor I noticed pictures up on the wall; one was a family picture with Eddie, his mum, and his dad. The presence of the mother meant that the family picture must have been taken before the accident, the one that killed Eddie’s mum. In the picture, Eddie’s father looked a lot more handsome than he does now. It was as if the car accident made him older and fatter. He looked like a middle-aged man in the picture but today most people would classify him as elderly. The fire from the car accident might have wrinkled his skin.
From the top of the stairs I could see the bottom-story hallway that lead to the front door. What was interesting was how neat the bottom story was compared to the top story. The bottom story of the house contained clean carpets and walls without stains. In contrast, the top story had clothes strewn everywhere along with sporting equipment like cricket bats.
I walked back into Eddie’s bedroom, thinking about the prospect of just climbing out the window and going home.
I heard screaming from downstairs. Eddie’s father was shouting something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying because his words were almost completely drowned out by Eddie’s screams. It was a loud, shocking scream that turned from high-pitched to low-pitch when Eddie started to loudly cry. I took a few steps down the stairs until I could peek into the dining room at the back where the television was. I couldn’t see anything but I heard Eddie’s crying grow louder and louder. Footsteps too seemed to grow louder and louder. Eddie was running towards the stairs.
I ran back up the stairs and into Eddie’s bedroom. Behind me I could hear the little boy’s quick steps as he climbed up the stairs. The bedroom was dark. The only light came from the laptop that cycled through pornographic videos. The room was messy as well, which allowed me to find a position at the corner of the room to hide. I buried myself under a pile of clothes, stuffed animals, books, and magazines. The pages on the magazines and books rustled as I moved them, but luckily the rustling noises died down as soon as Eddie entered the bedroom and jumped on the bed. His loud weeping noise was suddenly silenced when he buried his face into a pillow. He laid his arms and legs out on the bed as if he were a starfish, not clenching them or stiffening them, just letting them go. Although muffled by the pillow, he still made sobbing and sniffing noise. He tilted his head up sometimes for air and the noises increased in volume for a while, but it seemed as if he didn’t want to hear himself crying because he quickly stuffed his face into the pillow again when he couldn’t hold back another round of tears. At times the noise coming from the pillow sounded like a whimpering cat.
My decision to hide was instinctual. I came here to meet Eddie but I didn’t expect to arrive just after a family conflict had occurred. I felt awkward as I looked at Eddie lying on his bed. I looked more carefully at the boy and noticed bright red lashes on the back of his legs, near his buttocks. I didn’t know what to do. I clearly didn’t want to embarrass Eddie by letting him know that I saw him cry. For as long as he and I had known each other Eddie has done a good job of projecting to me a reasonably strong image of himself. I felt something within me—a strong sense of pity.
Eddie got up from his bed. The crying had stopped. He wiped his eyes a few more times, turned around, and walked out the bedroom door. Since I knew the top story so well now I could tell where the little boy was heading by listening to his footsteps. Based on the intensity of the footsteps I could predict Eddie’s location. He was heading for the bathroom. I heard the clanging of plastic against plastic—the toilet seat had been pushed up. As expected I heard the trickling of liquid. Eddie was urinating.
I got out from my hiding position and ran to the bedroom window, eager to escape. After the window was opened I put my legs outside first. It was freezing cold outside. I had to firmly plant my feet on a flat set of bricks jutting out from the wall underneath the window. After that I had to grab with my hands the drainpipe. It took me longer than usual to get just my feet out the window. I was cold and nervous. If I slipped, it was a two-story fall to the concrete pavement below, about a seven-meter fall.
“Keith.”
I looked back inside the bedroom and noticed that Eddie was at the bedroom door, looking at me as I stood with the bottom half of my body outside the house and the top half of my body inside Eddie’s room.
“I forgot you were coming,” said Eddie, who I noticed now had no t-shirt on. “Aren’t you going to come in?”
I suddenly realized that Eddie thought that I was entering his bedroom, not leaving it. I climbed back inside the room again. I suddenly realized now why Eddie was shirtless. He hopped on the exercise bike and started pedaling.
“I was just about to exercise,” said Eddie. “I’ll only be five or ten minutes. You can look at my pornos.”
“You wanted to show me something?”
Eddie hopped off the bike. I had jogged his memory. He went to a corner of his room and pulled out a CD. I caught the CD as he casually threw it at me. When I sat on Eddie’s bed I saw his pillow. My fingers pressed on the pillow, feeling its dampness.
“Your pillow’s wet,” I said.
Eddie was back on the exercise bike now, pedaling. “It’s sweat. I’ve been exercising.”
“What happened to your leg?”
Eddie stepped off the bike. The back of his leg was red. It looked a little like he is limping towards his bed as he walked to me. The first thing he did was switch off the porn on the laptop.
“I used to always look at porno,” said Eddie. “After a while…when you think about how much porno you’ve seen…feels like a waste of time, you know?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“So now I only look at porno if I exercise. Makes me feel like I’m doing something good when I look at porno.”
“Sort of like the carrot and the stick.”
“What?”
“You know? To make a rabbit run all the time, you dangle a carrot in front of it. The porn’s like the carrot.”
Eddie thought about this for a while. “I guess.” He paused. “Do you have your own exercise bike?”
“Yeah, but it’s not in my room. It’s in the living room, so when I exercise my mum and dad see me. I don’t use the bike much.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s embarrassing to exercise in front of my parents.”
He sat down on the bed, took the CD out from my hand, and put it in the laptop.
“What happened to your leg?” I pointed.
He ignored me and kept tapping buttons on the laptop. I brought my hands forward and touched the skin above his knees. There was a bright red gash. Most of it was bright pink but parts of it were actually bleeding. His skin was sticky and moist. The region must have been sensitive because he looked at me as I touched his leg. It was a depressing stare, but he didn’t flinch when I touched him, nor did he resist. I moved my palm on his legs. The blood underneath his skin was so hot. It felt like the heat on Eddie’s legs was sizzling my hands, which had been almost frozen by the night air outside.
Eddie spoke. “My dad hit me.”
“How long has this happened?”
“A long time.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Eddie looked down on my hand on his leg. “I told my mum.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
He shook his head.
Eddie pressed more keys on the laptop and brought up the video player software. I took my hands away from Eddie’s legs and repositioned myself on the bed so I could clearly see the screen. The surroundings were so dark that it felt like I was waiting for a movie to start at the cinemas.
Eddie was right when he said the video wasn’t pornographic. It was slightly fuzzy and blocky every now and then, as most compressed digital videos were. The resolution, however, was good enough for me to see key details, such as facial features. The video showed a group of young women. They did nothing but stand. The room in which they stood looked very dark. The women were visible because flaming sticks were attached to the walls. Since there were no light bulbs or any other modern lighting, the light on the women’s faces was uneven. The light on the women’s faces looked like waves on the surface of the ocean.
The women in the video just stood. Their eyes generally looked towards the camera but not every woman’s eyes were directly focused on the camera. Some eyes seemed to be looking to the left of the camera; some to the right. On average, however, the eyes tended towards the camera. The women were all dressed in black bra and black underwear. Their hair seemed unkempt. They all looked cheerless, as if they were extremely bored.
“This is strange,” I said.
“Have a look at that girl at the back.” Eddie pointed to the monitor. “Isn’t that Ella?”
I squinted and looked more closely, surprised that Ella’s name had been mentioned. It was a little hard to make out her face but there was something about her that looked odd.
“That girl at the back has brown or maybe black hair,” I said. “Ella’s got blonde hair.”
“It still looks like Ella,” said Eddie.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
A few seconds later, the video stopped.
“Is that it?” I asked. “What else is on the CD?”
“Just porno,” he said, letting the video player play the next file on the playlist.
The next video had two young naked teenage boys having anal sex on a sofa. I immediately felt uncomfortable. I expected Eddie to turn the video off to end this discomfort but he kept it running and stared passively at the screen for about ten seconds. Keeping the video running, he then looked at me and pushed the laptop away.
“What time is it?” Eddie asked.
I looked at my watch. “It’s about half past one. We’ve got school tomorrow, so I’d better be getting back home.”
“It’s raining outside.” Eddie pointed to the bedroom window.
The rain was banging against the roof and the window, but for some reason I hadn’t notice until Eddie mentioned it. The rain hit against the bedroom window so fiercely that everything outside looked blurry. Now that I was conscious of the rain I began to sense the coldness leaking in through the windows and through the walls. When Eddie turned the laptop off a major source of light in the bedroom was cut off. Light from the moon and the streetlights outside intercepted the rainwater swishing on the window, resulting in a soft moving kaleidoscope of orange and white light within the room.
“If you’re going out, I have a raincoat in the closet,” said Eddie, his voice low. “Or if you want, you can sleep here tonight.”
“Where will I sleep?”
“You can sleep on the floor…on my clothes.”
“Do you have a spare mattress?”
Eddie shook his head. “If you want, you can sleep with me.”
Eddie’s blanket was thick and warm, and tonight was a very cold night. I was feeling tired. I had to get up at about seven o’clock tomorrow morning, so even if I fell asleep straight away the most sleep I’d get was about five-point-five hours, much less than the eight hours of sleep doctors recommend.
I was hesitant at first but decided to get into bed with Eddie. The bed was about one meter in width and two-point-five meters in length. He only had one pillow, which he used, so I had to grab a thick jumper from the ground, fold it up, and use it as a makeshift pillow. It wasn’t comfortable since the jumper had metal buttons in it. Since the bed was only one meter in width my body accidentally brushed up against Eddie’s body quite a bit initially, but every time our skins made contact I’d shy away.
After about five minutes of tossing and turning there was a period of silence as both Eddie and I managed to get ourselves comfortable enough in his bed. Eddie faced me. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I kept staring at the bedroom window. The rain never let up. I still felt cold, so I tried to crawl up into a ball. My makeshift pillow was not at all comfortable. A metal button kept stabbing on my cheek. I tried turning the jumper around but there were buttons on the other side. Eddie must have heard me trying to adjust my makeshift pillow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Your jumper. It’s got buttons. It hurts my face.”
“You can use my pillow with me.”
Eddie’s pillow was two feet in length and one foot in width. Both our heads could fit but there was only about ten centimeters of space between us. I pushed Eddie’s jumper off the bed and let it drop to the carpet. Since I had to move my head towards Eddie I also had to move the rest of my body towards him if I didn’t want my body to curve too much. Instead of crawling towards Eddie I rolled towards him so that instead of looking away from Eddie initially, after I had finished rolling, I was now facing him. Our bodies made contact. I couldn’t move away now because then I’d get no pillow. Eddie’s small hands stroked my waist, moved underneath my t-shirt and went up towards my chest.
“You’re cold,” he whispered.
“I’ve been outside.”
Since his face was so close to mine I could hear him loud and clear even as he whispered. When the words came out a gush of hot air came out with it. His breath was warm but tasted fresh.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, as I assumed he was doing. We both had school tomorrow.
As I lied in Eddie’s bed that night I kept looking at the window. The rain still continued to come down. When I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, I thought about Eddie. I really liked that boy. But something else also stole my thoughts that night. I kept thinking about the video he showed me on the laptop, the video of those women, those girls. What were they doing? Why were they just standing there? Was that Ella in the video?
I wanted to talk to Eddie about Ella, but when I whispered I received no response.
The little boy was asleep. As he slept, his hands still touched my chest.
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