Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

The upshot of all this talking was me getting pretty much in love with Emmy. She was beautiful and like a grown person. In the daytime we didn’t let on. Hanging out with her and Maggot, I tried to be normal, but sometimes said things to impress her. Like how the other foster boys thought my cartoons were good. And the football hero Fast Forward that was my friend. She just said something polite, but Maggot chimed in on how awesome this guy was. I’d forgotten Maggot knew him from that time they came to the farm. This got Emmy interested to the extent of saying she’d like to meet this famous Fast Forward. So we played it cool, and I wondered if the other was real or just some after-hours game she was playing. But then she would let me sit on the couch with her while she was reading, and under the blanket her feet would touch my feet. She’d look up from her book and smile at me and, oh man. Utterly wrecked. Back in the summer she’d announced the one time about us getting married, which was kid shit. Like somebody giving you Monopoly money and saying “Here, go buy a house.” But now all I had to do was think of Emmy, her face or her toothpaste smell, and it would give me these waking-up feelings as regards the guy downstairs. Not kid shit. At night we’d be talking and I’d get obsessed on kissing her, even though not having the nerve. It was her finally that did it. She asked if I wanted to go to second base, which of course I did, except for not knowing exactly where that base ...