Page 65 of Creeping Beautiful

And then he lifted the netting on one side and we climbed down and sat in the dirt to watch them fly off.

But they didn’t fly far. They stayed close. And they lit up the forest all around us.

And that’s how we ended the most magical night of my life.

McKay didn’t say anything when I got home. He was sitting on the top step of the porch drinking a green bottle of beer.

Nate walked me all the way up to the bottom step and said, “Good night, Indie,” and then he turned and walked home.

I smiled at McKay as I pulled the screen door open. He was glaring at Nate’s back as he disappeared into the woods.

But he didn’t say a word.

The next morning, I got my period.

I woke up feeling sick and crampy and then saw the blood when I went to the bathroom. I knocked on McKay’s door, because Donovan had left to go back home the night before and Adam was still out on his delivery errand for the biological sample.

Not that I would’ve gone to either of them over McKay in a situation such as this.

McKay was not in his room so I went downstairs and found him in the kitchen.

I knew what a period was but there was nothing in this house to take care of my new problem. So I had to say, “McKay. Can you take me to town to buy some tampons?”

He was squinting at the newspaper when I said this and when he looked up, he had an expression on his face like I was speaking some foreign language he didn’t understand.

“What?”

“I got my period. I need to go to town. Can you take me?” I asked it softly. My mood was still perfect and calm from the night before. Not even my monthly curse could change that.

He hesitated for a moment. Not because he was gonna say no. There was no chance of that happening. Probably just to consider all the new things he would have to think about in regards to me, from this day on.

And then he said, “I’ll get my keys.”

In the drug store—this was not the same drug store as the river town, a different one that was closer to the mansion—McKay folded his arms across his chest and frowned at me in the feminine products aisle as I tried to make sense of all my options. The pharmacist, who was a woman in her forties, came out from behind the counter and helped me. She must’ve taken pity on McKay’s confused uneasiness because she grinned at him a lot. But maybe that was just because McKay was handsome.

When we got home, he left me alone for a little while as I figured everything out, and then, when I finally emerged from the upstairs bathroom that was reserved for me, he said, “Indie, we need to talk.”

But he didn’t want to talk in the kitchen. He took me outside to the pavilion with the mosquito netting and told me to take a seat on the bed swing. So I did. And he sat in the porch swing, and he talked. He talked so damn long he had to light the citronella candles.

He told me about love. And sex. And babies. And birth control. And how I needed to make sure Nate didn’t talk me into anything I didn’t want to do. And how yes was yes, and no was no, and maybe was also no. He said that part a lot. And that I could come to him with any sort of problem, no matter how personal it was.

He squirmed the entire time. And I already knew all this stuff. I have the goddamned internet on my phone, for fuck’s sake.

But I let him go on like that for hours. I watched him struggle. I thought it was damn cute the way he forced himself to be responsible for me and my new womanhood. And when that night was over and I tucked myself into bed, I loved him more than I had the day before.

Two weeks later he took me to the orthodontist and I came home with braces on my teeth.

And a part of me found that funny. And another part of me kinda knew that it was McKay trying to keep me a little girl just a little bit longer. Even though I knew that wasn’t really the reason I was getting braces. This appointment had been on his calendar for three months.

But that’s how I stole a deadly infectious disease wearing a hazmat suit, got caught, was taken prisoner, then let go and left adrift on a life raft in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, had my first kiss with my first love, became a woman, and stayed a kid all in the same two-week period.

No pun intended.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - DONOVAN

MIND CONTROL IN CHILDREN: A CASE STUDY OF COMPANY ASSASSINS

INTERVIEW WITH INDIE, AGE 15.5