Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Then he decided we should start cutting school, and I sneaked him back to the apartment while my mother was at work.

I had slept with two other boys, a few times each, so I knew something, but not that much.

The male anatomy was still an unfolding mystery to me.

From the get-go, my mother had said Brody was too old for me.

And when she found out I was cutting school, I did it too many times.

She banned him from our apartment and tried to get me to promise never to see him, which wasn't even the sort of thing she did.

Cutting school, she said, is the gateway to a lot of things I hate to have to think about.

In fact, she was right about that.

Brody hardly ever talked about his family.

His father drove a truck for the New York Post.

That was all I knew.

Brody's mother stayed home, so there was no sneaking off to his place.

He made fun of my mother.

Called her the mouse mother because she worked in a library.

They'd met a few times when he came over, and it had gone okay, normal, terse exchanges.

He told her his favorite kind of books to read were true crime books.

I like action and death, he said.

True crime is a very popular genre, I said.

Brody said I should just lie to her about seeing him.

So I did.