Soul Catcher by Katia Lief Page B

building, in a classroom across from Silvera’s office. Pieces of green paper, one for every activity, were taped onto the blackboard. Already seven people had signed up for Drug Group! Gwen’s was the first name; she’d promised to enroll the minute I told her John was joining too. I felt left out, having to choose a different activity for myself. I read the sheets over and over, and couldn’t decide.
    ‘How about Stained Glass? Louise is teaching it,’ Patrick said.
    ‘Nan. I still can’t throw a pot on the wheel.’
    ‘How about — ‘Patrick was saying, when Silvera barged in. He walked back and forth, studying the green sheets, then stopped to write something on one of them.
    ‘There you go,’ he said. His face didn’t budge; he just looked at me for a moment, then made a bee-line back to his office across the hall.
    Patrick read the sheet Silvera had just signed, and laughed.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Come look.’
    I went up to the blackboard and saw my name scribbled under Eddie’s.
    ‘I mean, I haven’t even —’
    ‘Go ask him why.’
    ‘He’s just trying to humiliate me!’
    ‘Go ask him.’
    ‘I will.’
    I walked across the hall and rapped on the open door. Silvera was sitting in his rocking chair. A big smile forced his cheeks out and his face looked even fatter than usual.
    ‘Why did you sign me up for that activity?’
    ‘What activity?’
    ‘Sex Group.’
    Silvera shrugged. ‘Why not?’
    So, I found myself in Sex Group, angry at Silvera, and unwilling to contribute to the group in any way. The group leader was Ted, one of my dorm parents, and that made it even worse. Was I supposed to reveal my feelings about carnal knowledge, and my personal experiences (of which I had none) to a group of kids I hardly knew, and also to a man who saw me walking around in my nightgown with pimple medicine dotted on my face? My reticence was interpreted by the six-member group as hostility. I was only fifteen, but everyone assumed Patrick and I had slepttogether. When they badgered me into talking to them, during the fourth session, I came right out and told them I was a virgin.
    ‘Bullshit!’ Eddie said.
    Because Eddie was Patrick’s roommate, everyone believed him.
    ‘I am!’ I told them.
    Ted crooked an eyebrow. He was small and chubby and cute, with curly brown hair and a frizzy beard. He reminded me of a koala bear. ‘Why don’t you tell us how you feel about that?’
    ‘That would make her eligible to marry royalty,’ said Rawlene, the tiny Be Here Butterfly.
    ‘Yes,’ Ted said gently, ‘I suppose it would. But what we want to know here is how she feels about her virginity.’
    I admitted that, despite peer pressure, I felt just fine about my innocence. Again, I was not believed.
    I gave Gwen detailed reports of Sex Group. She thought that anyone who would sign up for one had to be too hung-up to believe sex or sexlessness could be that simple for someone else. She told me that in Drug Group, everyone had enough experience to know the lingo and they got into exciting, slang-ridden debates. I imagined Gwen often led them.
    As the days passed, Patrick became noticeably happier. He said that Drug Group had been a good idea, that it was helping him. He would roll up his sleeves and show me his fading tracks. There were thousands of them, or at least that was how it seemed to me. Standing under the lamp at the end of the Boys Dorm fence, we counted. There were thirty-seven tracks on one arm, twenty-four on the other, thirteen behind one knee and nineteen behind the other. That made ninety-three. But Patrick said we might as well round it off to a hundred: he’d stuck needles under his fingernails a few times, too. One hundred ups! (One hundred downs!) We watched the red pinpricks blend gradually into his skin. One night — I don’t know what tookhold of me — I knelt down and kissed the insides of both his arms. He whispered, ‘It’s beautiful, you’re poetry,’ and lifted me up and hugged