Damned

Sprawled on the hotel carpet amid cold food and Goran, I remember seething.

It was my thirteenth birthday.

I remember the television cameras cutting to show my dad, seated in the audience, beaming with a proud smile to show off his new dental implants.

Even now, dead and in Hell, way-totally ready to get busted for accepting a collect call from Canada, I ask Emily, "In second or third grade..." I ask, "did you play the French-kissing Game?"

Emily says, "Is that how you died?"

No, I tell her, but that game is all I remember.

And, yes, I might be forgetful or in denial or five years older than my mother would like me to be, but as I stare across the landscape of Hawaiian shirts and fake-flower leis, some of those loud shirts and silk flowers still splashed with food-poisoning vomit, the face I see receding into the distance of Hell is that of my brother, Goran. In contrast to the garish tropical cruise apparel, Goran wears a pink jumpsuit, bright pink, with some sort of multidigit number stitched across one side of his chest.

On the phone, her voice still in my earpiece, Emily says, "What's the French-kissing Game?"

And then Goran, he of the kissable, lusciously full lips and bright pink jumpsuit, he's vanished in the crowd.

XIX.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please don't get the impression that I've always boasted a brilliant intellect. On the contrary, I've made more than my share of mistakes, not the least of which was my misconceived idea of what constituted French-kissing.

It was some Miss Whorey Von Whoreski girls at my school who taught me the French-kissing Game. At my boarding school in Switzerland, where I almost froze to death but only lost all the skin off" my hands instead, a bunch of these same snotty girls always spent time together, three of them, but they were all way-total Trollopy McTrollops and Slutty Vandersluts and Harley O'Harlots who spoke English and French in the same flat accent as the Global Positioning System of my dad's Jaguar. They walked on the outside edge of their feet, each step slightly crossing in front of the last, to prove they'd taken too many years of ballet. These three girls were always together, usually cutting themselves or helping one another vomit; within the insular sphere of the boarding school, they were infamous.

I was in my room one day, reading Jane Austen, when these three knocked on the door and asked to enter.

And no, I may display occasional antisocial tendencies brought about by years of witnessing my parents pander to the film-going public, but I'm not so rude that I would tell three classmates to beat it. No, I politely set aside Persuasion and invited these three Miss Tarty Tartnicks to enter, and bade them sit a moment on my austere-yet-comfortable single bed.

Upon entering, the first of them asked, "Do you know the French-kissing Game?"

The second asked, "Where's your bathrobe?"

The third said, "Do you promise not to tell?"

Of course I feigned curiosity. In all honesty I was not intrigued, but at their request I presented said bathrobe and watched as one of the Miss Slutty O'Slutskis withdrew the white terry-cloth belt from the robe's belt loops. Another of the Whorey Vanderwhores requested I lie back until I was prone on the bed, gazing up at the distant ceiling. The third Miss Harlot MacHarlot threaded the terry-cloth belt behind my neck and tied the two ends across my tender throat.

More out of politeness and an innate courtesy than any actual interest, I asked if these preparations were part of the game. The French-kissing Game. We were, all of us present in my small room, wearing the same school uniform of dark skorts and long-sleeved cardigan sweaters, kiltie tassel loafers, and white ankle socks. We were all either eleven or twelve years of age. The particular day was, I believe, a Tuesday.

"Just wait," said one Skanky Von Skankenberg.

"It feels... si bon," said another Miss Vixey Vandervixen.

The third said, "We won't hurt you; we promise."

Mine has always been an open, vulnerable nature. Where the motives and agendas of others come into play, I am perhaps too trusting. To suspect three of my own schoolmates struck me as a tad unseemly, so I merely consigned myself to their instruction as these girls arrayed themselves around me on the bed. A girl sat at each of my shoulders. The third girl gently lifted the eyeglasses from my face, folded them shut, and held them as she seated herself on the bed near my feet. The two flanking me each took one end of the cloth belt which was knotted loosely about my neck. The third instructed them to pull.