Underneath

The night was good to her.

As she emerged from the warm amber porch light, Dean almost smiled. She looked flawless in the gloom, with just the starlight and the faint glow from the fingernail moon. And beautiful. So much so, he almost convinced himself that she was not marred at all, that the scars were latex makeup she wore as protection against the advances of undesirables.

But when she opened the door of his father’s Ford Capri, the dome light cast ragged shadows across her cheek, highlighting the peaks and ridges, dips and hollows. His smile faded, a brief shudder of revulsion rippling through him. He felt shame that he could be so narrow-minded and unfair. After all, she hadn’t asked for the scars, and he should be mature enough to look past them to what was most likely a very nice girl.

Christ, I sound like my mother, he thought and watched as Stephanie lowered herself into the seat, her denim skirt riding up just a little, enough to expose a portion of her thigh. To Dean’s horror, he felt a rush of excitement and hastily quelled it.

You’re being an asshole, he told himself, but it was not a revelation. He knew what he was being and how he was feeling. He’d become a display case, his shelves filled with all the traits he would have frowned upon had someone else displayed them. But it was different, and he realized it always was when you were an outsider looking in. In the car with Stephanie, he was helpless to stop his anger and disgust. It was just another event in his life engineered by someone other than himself, and that impotence made him want to scream, to shove this ugly, ruined girl from the car and drive until the gas ran out or he hit a wall, whichever happened first.

“Hi,” she said, and he offered her a weak smile. Her hair was shiny and clean, her eyes sparkling, and dark red lipstick made her lips scream for a long, wet kiss.

Dean wanted to be sick but figured instead to drive, seek distractions and end this night as soon as possible. He could live with the whispers, the speculation, and the gossip forever, but he needed to end the subject of them sooner rather than later.

“So where are we going?” she asked when he fired the engine and started the car.

He kept his eyes on the street. Dogs were fleeting shadows beneath streetlights; a plastic bag fluttered like a trapped dove on a rusted railing. A basketball smacked the pavement beyond a fenced-in court. Voices rose, their echoes fleeing. The breeze rustled the dark leaves, whispering to the moon.

Dean’s palms were oily on the wheel.

“The movies, I guess. That okay?”

In the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. “I guess.”

“We don’t have to if you have something else in mind.”

The smell of her filled the car, a scent of lavender and something else that filled his nostrils and sent a shiver through him that was, alarmingly, not unpleasant.

“Maybe we could go down to the pier.”

“What’s down there?”

“Nothing much, but I like it. It’s peaceful.”