Secondhand World by Katherine Min

Author:Katherine Min [Min, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307490636
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

The next morning as we were checking out of the motel, two Utah state troopers picked us up and took us to a juvenile detention center in a small town outside Salt Lake.

Locked Up

At the detention center, they went through our things. Any-. thing sharp or potentially threatening was confiscated, including Rachel's skull ring, my ballpoint pen, and Hero's belt. We had smoked the last of our pot in Colorado the day before, and the worst things they found were a roach clip and a packet of Trojans. Hero was sent to the boys’ ward, and Rachel and I were placed in separate but adjacent cells in the girls’.

No one wanted to tell us anything, not the bored woman who took our stuff, not the fat guard who locked and unlocked our cells. I called my mother and our conversation was terse. She said they were sending us plane tickets home the next day and we were to stay right there until they arrived. As if we had a choice.

My cell was cement-block gray, with room for a narrow cot and a toilet. Someone had written CARLY LOVES SAMinside a heart on the wall above my bed. How long it had been there was impossible to determine, and if Carly still loved Sam, ditto. I was scared, but honestly a little relieved to be delivered into the hands of the authorities. After what had happened the night before, I didn't know what things would have been like between Rachel, Hero, and me. Had the rules changed, or had it just been a onetime experience? I knew what we had done was not normal, was in fact considered by most of society to be sick and wrong, but I also knew that, in the moment, it had felt loving, warm, and generous. I didn't know how to face them, though, after that—my boyfriend and my best friend merging into one person. Every look, every word had to be reexamined in light of this new development. Was Rachel gay? Was I? Did Hero really want Rachel? Is that what all the tension had been about? It would make perfect sense to me—Rachel with her large breasts and straight fall of hair, her big eyes that were now brown, now green, speckled with yellow light. Against Hero's skin, my own body seemed sallow, a sickly color next to his pale, pearly translucence. Rachel and Hero were perfect together. They shared the same sulky confidence, moving boldly in the world, moving largely, as though striding across a doll's landscape.

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