It’s the hour after school and she’s in her mother’s bedroom, watching game shows on the portable TV. She’s half laying on the double bed, with her back against the head board. Winter, and although the days are getting longer, at this hour the light outside her mother’s upstairs window is already as blue as the light of the television set. Outside the snow absorbs the dying light and glows purple in the dappled dusk. She’s hoping that her mom won’t come home after work, that instead she’ll be tempted and go for drinks to the legion, because the house is a mess and her brother won’t have time to clean up. She knows that downstairs the ashtrays overflow with Du Maurier and Players butts and that glasses sit half-empty on every crowded surface. They’re playing Black Sabbath on the stereo; that’s right, the first album with the black cover and purple lettering. They must be crazed on bennies, their card game keeps getting louder and someone is chasing someone else through the kitchen back into the living room; although, only in retrospect will she come to know this. She doesn’t know that it’s dope they’re smoking; she thinks the slightly damp smoke is from the Drum tobacco of Gordie’s rollies.

The toilet flushes in the bathroom right next her mom’s bedroom, and then he is in the room. Just like that. He’s her brother’s friend and her sister’s boyfriend or he was, or he will be. At this point in their shared lives her brother no longer takes her out to the bus to set traps, instead he parties with her older sister. She’s somewhere between traps and parties: that moment of endless sitcoms, hockey games at the Roland Michener Arena, and playing unsophisticated card games with her best friend: Crazy Eights, Gin Rummy, War and 21. He stands there in wide-flared [Levis]* and a black joe cocker shirt, and then he dives into the bed like he might be diving into the deep end of the Kinsmen Pool. He’s laughing and she’s laughing too as he screeches, “Let’s make a deal, Jac.” He’s tickling her and she’s laughing still, but then his hand reaches for the waist of her purple cords. He starts whispering faster, “C’mon, let’s make a deal, little sister.”

She can only tell him to get out of here, then yell for her brother who won’t hear over the sounds of Black Sabbath, and keep kicking but then he’s got her spoon style and she’s kicking backward without any effect. He doesn’t undo the snap or zipper, instead he mushes his hand down her pants and somehow beneath her underwear. Her laughter has turned to crying but he doesn’t seem to notice, but his words speed up, “Let’s make a deal, let’s make a deal” and his finger rubs at the lips of her vagina and then makes a single hook. Just as quickly, he leaps off the bed like he’s diving backwards and he’s back in the hallway and down the stairs.

Monty Hall is asking a contestant if she wants door number one, door number two, or door number three. She’d give anything to be a contestant on that show.

Originally published in White Wall Review 30 (2006)