Forbidden by Abbie Williams

her youngest sibling? The golf cart hit a huge bump in the gravel, sending them about a foot off the vinyl seat, and Evelyn laughed hysterically, calling out, “Sorry!”
    The next moment she was slowing to a crawl, and on the lefthand side of the road a house appeared, with a gravel driveway curving out in welcome. The sprawling two-story structure was sided in a cheerful yellow, with a heavy-duty porch that wound all around the outside. The woods opened up enough for a large yard, where an enormous swing set, two blue picnic tables and a shed shared the space with a garden and around eight millon flowers. Evelyn came to a head-snapping halt, apologized again before hopping deftly out and unloading Bryce’s bag, but Bryce remained where she was, simply taking it all in through wide eyes.
    What a beautiful place , she thought, caught off guard. So green and quiet and lovely. Lilacs were blooming in an explosion of pale purple all along the far edge of the porch. A wooden swing was positioned just beneath the bushes, so that the person sitting in it would be bathed all over with the fragrance. It was a home that radiated happiness, she thought. No one who planted so many purple petunias could be unkind.
    â€œNo one’s home,” Evelyn told her as they entered a screen door which had been unlocked. A fat orange cat lay on its back in the square of sunlight coming through the door, and it didn’t so much as stir when they walked past. “You can shower and get ready upstairs. Mom cleaned out the guest room for you, and there’s a little bathroom right off of it, too.”
    Bryce was treated to a quick tour through the living room (dominated by a massive stone fireplace), the kitchen (gleaming and polished), the dining room (graced by a table that could have seated 20) before following her cousin up a flight of stairs to a long, wood-floored hallway. The second door on the right was “her” room, a small, square space occupied by a white bed with tall posts, a round pink rug, and two tall, narrow bookshelves. An actual bouquet of roses in a glass vase was placed on the bedside table…real roses, not the tight, scentless blooms sold wrapped in cellophane at gas stations, but luscious-smelling, open-faced, candy-pink roses, which filled the room with their perfume.
    â€œThank you, Evelyn,” Bryce told her young cousin, and the girl’s face flushed with pleasure as she set the duffle on the floor.
    â€œI’ll see you later,” Evelyn told her, turning to go. Then, to Bryce’s surprise, she peeked back in the room. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and Bryce smiled back.
    Me, too , she thought, for whatever inexplicable reason. Like a good buzz, she let the feeling ride without understanding exactly why. Me, too .
    ***
    The first thing she did was smoke, as soon as Evelyn was out of sight on the golf cart. She sat on the swing beneath the lilacs and marveled at the sheer insanity of her life: here she was, a total stranger to these people, being welcomed into their house like a good friend. The bus ride from Oklahoma seemed like a bad dream in the vicinity of a million lilac blossoms, under a cloudless sky in Minnesota, thousands of miles from the dusty shithole of Middleton. Bryce blew smoke at the blueness above her, letting some of the tension leak from her shoulders, letting her mind drift sleepily.
    She had thought of him about every two minutes since Saturday night, and here he was again in her head as she pushed a gentle rhythm with one bare foot against the porch floorboards. Granted it was only two days since it had happened, and she was as likely to see him again as she was to get her long-gone virginity back, but somehow it didn’t feel over. Maybe she was just sleep-deprived. Or insane. Insanity was probably more likely… but oh God, his eyes …they were burning in her memory, and his lips, the dimples in his just-slightly