Eleanor felt something funny in her throat. It burned so she swallowed it. The burn remained.

“The church isn’t your own mother.”

“No, it isn’t. And I won’t minimize your pain by pretending the church’s distrust of me compares at all to your pregnant, terrified seventeen-year-old mother making a desperate wish that her problems would magically disappear and the dream she lost would be hers again. But I will say that it doesn’t matter anymore if your mother wanted you at the time or not. Nor does it matter if this church wants me here or not. We’re here, you and I. We’re not going away. We’re here, if for no other reason than God wants us here, and He gets the final say.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I want you here.”

Søren picked up one of Father Gregory’s books again.

“That does make me feel better.”

“Thank you … Søren.” She still couldn’t believe she was calling a priest by his first name, no “Father” attached.

“Good night.”

She turned and started to walk away from the office.

“Thirty minutes,” Søren called out, and Eleanor allowed herself to give free rein to the ear-to-ear grin she’d been holding back for the past hour.

The second she entered her kitchen, Eleanor picked up the phone. She had to stretch the cord all the way to the fridge so she could read off the office number to Sacred Heart.

Søren answered on the first ring.

“I’m home safe,” she said.

“Good.”

“Thanks for talking to me tonight.”

“I enjoyed our conversation, Eleanor.”

She smiled at the phone. Usually she hated being called Eleanor. Why did it sound so right coming from him? Eleanor … sounded so classy the way he said it, so adult.

“Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Of course,” Søren answered, and she heard the sound of books dropping into boxes.

“Are you dangerous, too?”

She held her breath waiting for his answer.

“Yes.”

“Thought so,” she said. Søren said no more.

“Good night, Søren. See you Sunday.”

“Try to avoid doing anything to prove I’m right about you being dangerous between now and Sunday, please.”

Eleanor would have laughed, but she knew he wasn’t joking. She wasn’t joking either, when she answered.

“No promises.”

7

Eleanor

FRIDAY NIGHT CAME AND ELEANOR STAKED OUT THE bathroom. Ever since meeting Søren she’d thought about him nonstop. She woke to him, fell asleep to him, wrote his name on scraps of paper and whispered it under her breath when no one was listening. Tonight she had to deal with these feelings. Thankfully her mom had already gone to bed.

Elle cleaned the bathtub and pulled out two candles from her secret stash. They lived so close to the railroad tracks that the entire house shook when the train rumbled by. Her mother had banned candles after one near miss during Thanksgiving. Thank God turkeys weren’t flammable. Unfortunately, the tablecloth was. At least the firemen had been nice to her. But the next train tonight wasn’t due for an hour, so Elle lit the candles as she filled the bathtub with hot water. Once it was full and steaming, she stripped naked and sank into the bathwater. She needed her alone time in the water tonight. Over the past year her body had turned on her. Almost overnight she had developed br**sts that felt huge to her and the spread of her hips made her feel fat most of the time. And she could have lived her entire life very happily without pubic hair. Floating in the bathtub made her feel weightless and buoyant. The water surrounded her body and cradled it like strong arms. Something about sinking into the water always turned her on. Being naked in the bath made her hyperaware of every inch of her body—what it did, what it could feel.

Elle lay back in the water and let it hold her up. The heat penetrated her skin, tickled her sensitive ni**les and lapped between her legs. She let her mind wander to a thousand erotic fantasies. She’d love to take a bath with Søren. Maybe then it wouldn’t be bathwater licking her br**sts or slipping through the folds between her legs.

She opened her eyes and picked up the nearest candle. Sitting up in the water, she lifted her left arm into the flickering light. Holding the candle steady in her hand she tilted it and let the wax drip onto the inside of her wrist. Søren had told her to find a new way to hurt herself. Candle wax seemed to work. It hurt, it stung but it never scarred. The wax hit her flesh and she winced as the heat seared the delicate skin that covered her veins. Another dollop of melted wax fell onto her forearm. She’d be sixteen this month. In honor of her impending birthday she adorned herself with sixteen wax burns from her wrist to her inner elbow. With each burn she felt herself growing more and more aroused. The fire and the light and the heat seemed to come as much from within her as without. She breathed through the pain, conquering it, mastering it. Taking the pain made her feel stronger, powerful even.

After the final burn, she dipped her arm into the bathtub and rinsed off the solidified candle wax. She stared at her skin, now raw and bright red from the burns. Lying back in the water, she slipped her right hand between her legs and found the tight knot of her clitoris. Clitoris. She loved that word. She’d been reading a magazine in the doctor’s office waiting room the first time she’d discovered it. It wasn’t a word she heard often or ever got to say out loud. Nobody used real words at school when talking about sex except during those embarrassing girls-only lectures in gym class. Even then it was menstruation and uteruses. No one ever talked about the clitoris, which seemed crazy to her. It was the most amazing thing. When hers got swollen like this she could rub it between her fingers and these incredible feelings would wash all over her. She couldn’t believe her own body could make her feel this good. Every time she touched herself she became aware of an emptiness inside her, a hollowness in her hips. That hollowness ached to be opened up, explored and filled.