Chapter One

Blame it on the Pleasure Family. Blame it on the Vietnam War. Blame it on a lot of things. But don't blame it on Justine. She was just a weak, scared girl; a lost, violent girl. A lot of things, she was. Was.

Or don't blame it on anything. Call it inevitable, call it the doomed fate of love. Call it karmic, fucked up, the dance of the wolves. Live it, love it, call it life. Call it Led Zeppelin. Yeah, yeah. Really, I don't really, really don't fucking care.

* * *

I was born with a fever, but it seemed to subside for sixteen years. High school, I was a good girl. I was pretty, I smiled, I fit in fine. And then as I turned sixteen and stopped smiling, the fever returned, though my skin stayed pale and sure, showing no sign of the heat inside me. 102 degrees, it returned for no reason. It returned around the time I met Justine, but blame it on her bad influence and you'd be all wrong.

I come out into the kitchen, have my little chat with the cop. Unsmiling, I get to him. I'm sure of it. All the teen girls on this hick island have flipped-back Farrah Fawcett hair, willing-to-please eyes shadowed in baby blue. Me, in my little shredded dress and desecrated eyes. I don't shock him, but I'm not what he hoped for. He writes something in his pad.

Teenage Girl. Angst-Ridden. Badly Dyed Hair.

The cop, thirty or so, with a mustache and the dullest eyes, doesn't ask about Justine. He asks what time I expect my mother back.

"Is that relevant to the case?"

"Relevant? That's a big word for a little girl."

Suddenly, I'm nauseous. I'm reeling. I'm realizing all the things I don't have words for. The world for him a pad of dates, names, serial numbers, license plates. He'd need a soundtrack for his report, a rush of images: her legs alone, her legs kicking backwards, the slit of her skirt ripping as she ran, her legs like wishbones.

Some more notes in his pad now; I imagine them.

Single-Parent Family. Headed by Father. That Crazy Diehard Hippie.

And get this: the cop is checking me out. I thought the sight of me might disgust him, but I should have known. just because I'm soft-skinned and sixteen, they get this sick, weak look. Speed kicking in, not making me mellow, lazy, hazy, and high. Making me violent and blue, restless and aware of all the things I've got to do. All the things I've got to do.

"Touch my forehead," I tell him.

He does this, with little hesitation.

"You're hot."

"Yeah, I seem to be coming down with a bit of a fever."

"Maybe you should lie down and we can talk in your room."

"This whole thing has been very disturbing for me."

"I'm sure it has been," he says. "Disturbing, that's a good word."

He stands up. Moves toward me.

"I have a fever," I tell him. "You'd better stay away."

I head for my bedroom, and hear him walking away past the marijuana plants that line my father's shelves.

He's left my house and gone to jerk off, I bet. Jerk off in the front seat of his cruiser. I'm in my bedroom and he's imagining me here. A little girlyworld of Maybelline and heartthrobs Scotch-taped above pink pillows. Really, it's a bare room of white walls and Justine's books and skirts scattered all over the floor.

I try to sleep, but sleep's not easy when you're on speed. I guess the cop never left because now he's knocking on my door. I ask him to leave; I tell him I'm too hot to talk. Fuck. He says we must, but I won't. Just laughing at the thought of him banging down the bedroom door of a teenage girl. He imagines it pink and soft. He has no idea.

In The Bushes With The Burnout Boys

I guess all this shit started when I was in the bush. I loved the bush. Behind our school, it was like some tangled, rising creature, hands reaching skyward; a thousand savage, skinny fingers. Evergreens and Scotch pines twisting with blackberry bushes and dead oaks. Mornings before school, I used to head into it with my stupid Swiss Army knife. Hack and chop a path leading into a clearing. And at lunch hour, I'd bring the burnout boys in.

I'm not making this up: the burnout boys all had one-syllable names: Bryce, Bruce, Dean, and Dale. They were only a bit wayward, but they thought they were real rebels. Bragging as they brought out their plastic baggies of mushrooms and weed.

May: the bush was rainsoaked; we were whacked around as we went in. I lifted branches back, holding them so the burnouts could enter. We sat on the ground, in a dry place, hidden from the concrete slab of our school. Here, the mountains faded from view. The blue sky went white.

It began to rain again, the pale, common May rain. I sat down on the dirt, lay back with my hair on a broad, mossy rock. The air smelled great at this moment -- it smelled like rot and rain and Christmas.

Bryce drove his red pickup truck to the bush and opened the front door. Twelve o'clock: the Power Hour. Burnouts loved the Power Hour. Heaven. For them. They know every word. They sang along, pretending guitars were in their hands. They sang the Lemon Song to me.

Squeeze me baby so the juice runs down my leg.

My father used to say his generation fucked up in a lot of ways, but at least they invented rock and roll…

Excerpted from The Torn Skirt © Copyright 2002 by Rebecca Godfrey. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.