Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

Ephraim doesn’t have an orgasm, he stops after a couple of minutes, says he isn’t feeling it. Shifts his weight off her. The first thing she feels is relief. The second is fear. No male teenager ever passes up the chance for intercourse, according to her mom, who last year gave her A Talk that included, thank God, no anatomical details but did feature warnings about the sex-enslaved minds of boys. Yet here is Ephraim, sixteen going on seventeen, passing up a chance. Or stopping mid-chance. “Did I, like, do something wrong?” she says quietly. “Unh-unh. I’m just way tired.” He yawns, as though to prove it. Pushes back his blond-streaked hair. “We’re doing two-a-days for soccer. Hand me my hat?” She loves this hat, which makes him look like a gorgeous detective. But her own clothes: Black wool leggings. Red tube skirt. White glitter-paste long sleeve. Purple loop scarf. A pathetic outfit; no wonder he stopped. “Want me to drop you at Ash’s?” “Yeah, thanks.” She waits for him to say something about the next time, make a plan, allude to their future together, even just You coming to our game Friday? They get to Ash’s and he hasn’t. She says, “So…” “See you, September girl,” he says, and kisses, more like bites, her mouth. In Ash’s bathroom she drops the purple scarf in the trash and covers it with a handful of smushed toilet paper.