Especially when he holds my hands down. With his weight on top of me, I could feel every stone and twig through the thin floor of the tent.  I crawled away from him.  Naked.  I tried to open the door of the tent, but the zipper was stuck.  He reached toward my leg as I struggled with the zipper – his palm was sweaty when it cupped my bare ankle and pulled me toward him.

When he pried my thighs apart with his knees, I started to cry.

I guess he must have noticed, because he started swearing and turned me over on my stomach.  I tried to struggle, and finally he said, "I’ll only stop if it hurts. Does it?"

"Yes!" I hissed at him.  The pain was just too much.

So he pushed my head down instead.  

Can you 
believe that?
  
I remember it so well.  
Every detail impressed upon my memory like flowers trapped between the pages of a book.
Preserved.

In tenth grade, I was in love.  Or at least, I thought I was.  I was seeing this Arab guy.  We got along well, we teased each other a lot.  I used to laugh at him because he cracked his toes, and I couldn’t figure out how he did it.  So he showed me how to crack his and let me do it for him.  But we had fun.

I don’t blame him for what happened.  It was all my fault to tell you the truth.  When we came back from summer vacation that year, we had dinner together for the first time in months.  It was so awkward.  A large bowl of cookies ‘n’ creme melted slowly under our desperate smiles and tortured silence, as we realized we had nothing to say to each other.  Right then I knew it was over.
A few days later, I told him it wasn’t working.  I knew he felt the same way, I just wanted to say it first. The air was kitten-soft and damp the evening I told him it wasn’t working, fending off those same words from his lips.  He agreed that we should split up, and we parted friends.  The next few weeks were hard though – he started flirting around with a girl I knew.  It hurt to see them together, even though they tried to be discrete and spare my feelings.  I saw them one day by accident – it stabbed me to see him kissing her outside of math class. They scuttled into their classrooms when they spied me.  But I was just being selfish.  I didn’t have a right to be jealous, I didn’t own the kid.  I was the one that ended things, after all.

But in November, our class was going on a camping trip.  It took us less than an hour to arrive.  My best friend was dating his best friend, and all four of us went. I was so excited because I thought we could just spend some time together. 
It was one of those places where there were full-fledged bathroom facilities, shower and all.  So close you could hear the toilets flushing all night.  When the chaperones went to bed, the guys broke out a case of beer – Budweiser.  There was a little cabin a few hundred yards away.  The broken glass of the cabin window glinted coyly in the moonlight.  We tried to get into it through there, but that didn't work.  So we stayed out on the porch and drank.  It was the first time I ever drank alcohol.  I had a beer.  Maybe a little more.  I couldn’t even claim I was drunk, not really.  Anyway, even if I was a little tipsy, that’s no excuse.