If there’s one thing teenage boys are good at, it’s getting teenage girls in dark corners, and making those dark corners seem romantic and mystical. It’s a skill that we both lose as we grow older. The boys lose touch with their own imagination and the girls lose the desire to believe lies and half-truths. 

These days, I like my husband out in the open, expansive like a mountain peak, with the sun shining on his face, squinting his eyes and curling his lips upward. But when I was 15, within a few minutes of meeting Levi Heart, he had me in one of those dark corners. And within a few hours, we were together outside of a burning building. 

I’m getting ahead of myself.

I first met Levi Heart at a house party. His band, The Marauders, had their debut performance out in the garage. They played messy indie rock paired with sensitive lyrics about love, or the lack of love, and I wasn’t the only one transfixed during their set. Levi Heart sang like he didn’t seem to care whether anyone paid attention or not, so of course we all did. His whisper-to-a-scream vocalizations created a stir in me, shaking up a space inside that I didn’t know existed.

There was no shortage of girls hanging around the makeshift stage after the band was done, but it was me he approached. Possibly because I was the only one to not giggle and scatter away when he made eye contact.

“I’m Levi Heart,” he said.

“I know,” I replied, “I’m Becka Bowman.”

He grinned, “I know.”

“You do?”

“I like your hair,” he said, not answering my question.

“Thank you,” I said. I had washed it the night before and the curls were in a rare state, springy and resplendent.

He reached over to a nearby keg and filled two cups up, handing one to me. 

“I could write a song about it.”

“You wouldn’t.” 

“I could and I would. Just give me some time.”

He smiled and I smiled back. I gulped at my beer and in that moment, I knew I was done for. I was boy-crazy and had yet to determine standards regarding who was worthy of my time and attention. I gave it to anybody who gave me theirs first, it was just that simple. The basic element of attention was romantic and emboldening to me. I didn’t require much else.

“Okay,” I said. “Do it.”

He looked around. “Write a song? Now?”

“You said you could.”

“I also said give me some time.”

“How much do you need?”

He grabbed my hand. “How much will you give me?” Before I could answer, my best friend Lily appeared beside me, tugging at my arm, breaking the contact between Levi and me.

“This party blows,” Lily said. “A bunch of us are going up to Cherry Hill.”

I groaned. “I don’t want to go to Cherry Hill. It’s so gross there.”

“It’s so gross here,” Lily said, grimacing. 

“It’s not so bad,” I said, looking over at Levi, who was watching us. 

“Yeah,” he said. “If Lily wants to cut out of here, I’m happy to be your companion for the rest of the night.”

“Me?” I asked. “I mean, you?”

I looked at Lily and she rolled her eyes. “Levi Heart, at it again.”

“Yeah, me. And you,” Levi said, ignoring Lily.

I looked at Lily, who just rolled her eyes again. “Ok,” I said.

 “Ok,” she said, dragging out each syllable. “But don’t believe a word that boy tells you, Becka B.” She danced off into the haze of the party.

I knew that Levi Heart wasn’t my forever love, but I didn’t care. In addition to being boy-crazy, I also considered myself a free spirit. I was looking for a relationship like I was looking for a pair of wet socks. What I wanted, more than anything, was experiences, stories to tell my grandchildren someday. Levi Heart was my ticket to the promised land.

We spent the better part of the next hour clumsily making out. Levi had a way of diving into my face, kissing me like he was searching for seashells. I kissed him back like I was the seashell, and he was the first to ever find me. When things began to fizzle out for the night, Levi pulled away and looked me in the eye. “Hey, so, you want to get out of here?”

I nodded my head.

 

As we climbed into his dad’s pickup truck, I asked Levi if he already had his license. He shrugged and buckled his seat belt, gesturing at me to do the same. 

“Learner’s permit,” he said, as he turned onto the road. We headed downtown and ten minutes later arrived at Samson’s Donut Shop. It was almost ten o’clock at night, but there was a line of people out the door. Levi and I found our place at the end of it, directly under the neon sign that boasted “Open 24 hours” and “Hot donuts, made fresh each order.”

Samson’s was a community landmark, a place of gathering, for all reasons and all occasions. Families came here for birthdays and funerals. Couples came here for first dates and last dates. In addition to never closing, Samson’s was located at the center of town, the coffee was damn good, and the ever-changing donut menu was the perpetual talk of the town.

The line moved quickly, like it always did, and we soon placed our order: chocolate icing with peanut butter-filling and two glazed topped with Fruity Pebbles for him. We got coffees and took them with us to sit at a table in the corner, near the front door. The mugs of coffee housed spirals of steam. As we waited for our donuts, I was suddenly feeling shy, out in the open with this boy I barely knew. 

I let my mind drift, combing over the way he’d taken his left hand and brushed it up and down the line of my torso, from the tip of my shoulder and under my arm to my ribcage, then down to my hipbone, where he’d stopped. Thinking about that under the florescent lights of the donut shop jarred my senses. I involuntarily squinted. I felt my desire flare up inside of me, like a tickle on the bottom of my feet that I couldn’t get to.

My mom always told me that wishes were their own kind of magic. A magic accessible to anyone, no tools necessary, not even candles on a birthday cake. She said if you just focused your mind hard enough, and believed in your wish enough, it would come true. I wished to be transported back to that dark corner, where things were easy. Where the one beer I’d drank had granted me a little more looseness and freedom than I usually granted myself. Where I was the carefree girl who didn’t care what boys, especially Levi Heart, thought of her. 

I wished hard, but nothing about our surroundings changed. I felt stuck, the way my sweaty palms stuck to the vinyl material when I pressed them palm down into the seat cushion.

The overhead radio was playing some Top 40s pop song, and Levi sang along for a couple lines, something about how somebody was taking the singer’s love for granted.

I watched him as he ran his fingers through his hair, stopping at the nape of his neck to scratch an itch. “Why’d you want to take me to get donuts, anyway?” I asked.

He ran a finger around the rim of his coffee mug. “They’re good donuts.”

“But you didn’t have to take me, if all you wanted was donuts.”

Now he smirked, and I watched it spread over his whole entire face, like nail polish remover soaking into a cotton ball. “Maybe donuts wasn’t all I wanted.”

I felt myself start to blush, my mind flickering once again back to our bodies, in that dark corner. The warm spot in the pit of my stomach grew and I felt a shiver of electricity rumble down my spine. It was my own desire, something I’d never felt before so explicitly, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it, wasn’t sure what to say in response to Levi. 

Before I could say anything, though, Mr. Milton walked into the shop.

Mr. Milton was the town crazy man. If that seems insensitive, maybe it is, but there was no other way to put it. He even referred to himself that way, from time to time. Mr. Milton was in his 70s and he lived alone in a little house by the river. 

For Mr. Milton to walk into Samson’s Donuts late at night was not unusual. What made his entrance into Samson’s that night peculiar was that he held a lit torch in his left hand. The kind of torches one might carry into a dark cave, or arrange in a semicircle for a tiki-themed party. Not something needed in a donut shop.

“Holy shit,” Levi whispered. He was facing the door and saw Mr. Milton first.

“What?” I asked, at a normal volume. Levi shushed me and pointed over my shoulder.

I turned around right when Mr. Milton started talking. 

“Somebody stole my pig!” He kept shouting, about his pig and about his garden hose, and something about his fencing. His face was red and his hands were in constant motion.

I was just a girl, barely a freshman in high school, with temporary stars in her eyes, and I definitely didn’t know much about mental illnesses. I didn’t think about the possibility that Mr. Milton might be suffering from schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, or PTSD, or maybe all three. All I thought in that moment was that Mr. Milton was plumb crazy and had lost his ever-loving mind. But, in a way, I was almost happy for his appearance. My own uncomfortable and unfamiliar wants and needs were no longer the center of my attention.

Many of the customers started to sneak out of the side door, but because of where Levi and I were seated, right by the front door with Mr. Milton right in front of us, we were afforded no such luxury. We looked at each other across the table, as Mr. Milton continued with his list of grievances. He spoke about his wife and how she had run off with a Mr. Tom Walker, and if Mr. Milton were to ever meet this Mr. Tom Walker in the streets, he would surely slice his neck open and watch him bleed out. Employees behind the front counter shouted at the remaining gawking customers to leave, and the cooks in the kitchen scrambled to turn off grills and fryers. I saw our donuts, shiny and grand on a tray in the quality assurance window, ready to be delivered.

When Mr. Milton made a few steps to his right, closer to the front counter and further away from us, Levi jerked his head to the right, attempting to signal to me that it was time to make a move. My eyes widened.

“Stand up,” Levi whispered. “Let’s go.”

But right when I did that, Mr. Milton spun around and locked his eyes on me. I froze, while Levi jumped up to stand beside me. 

“Becka Bowman!” Mr. Milton shouted. “Your grandfather owes me 5k! And a wheelbarrow, to boot! Boy, I oughta just—”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying because Levi chose that moment to shove me towards the door. I pushed myself through it and half stumbled half ran the rest of the way outside, Levi right behind me, his arms stretched wide around and above me.

We reached the parking lot and turned around just in time to watch through the windows as Mr. Milton took his lit torch and flung it towards the kitchen. The torch landed directly in a fryer; the lit end was immediately submerged in hot grease. The result was a much bigger flame, the son outgrowing the father. A collective gasp issued from those of us still hanging about. 

“That’s no way to get your pig back, Mr. Milton,” someone in the crowd shouted, an attempt at humor that no one else had the audacity to acknowledge.

Then the police officers swooped in, under a cloud of radiating red and blue, with curious onlookers closely following. Levi and I went back to his truck and climbed inside, but he didn’t start the engine. We watched out the windshield, not saying a word, as the firetrucks and ambulances arrived.

The whole thing was over in less than half an hour. One firefighter went directly into Samson’s, gripping the nozzle of the attack hose, backed up by another firefighter who was helping him get the hose in. They used approximately 500 gallons of water, and the fire never even got a chance to spread far from the fryer it originated in. It never got in the ceiling, or out into the dining room.

I didn’t know those details at the time, of course. They came later, in the newspaper article that came out the next day. The fire was exceptional news in our small town, and good publicity for the fire department. In the article, the fire chief was quoted saying the fire at Samson’s was a “quick knock down,” going on to explain, “That’s what we call it when we put the fire out fast, before it spreads. Yeah, we knocked it down.” 

When my mother, the believer in wishes, heard about our involvement in the fire at Samson’s, she claimed that the universe had meant for me to be with him that night. 

“It was a ministration of the universe,” she said. “The universe is always looking out for you, Becka.”

Besides wishes, my mom was always talking about ministrations of the universe. That’s what she would say happened whenever she got a good parking spot, had enough cash to cover dinner out at the diner, or found a designer dress at Goodwill.

I never told her about how I had wished to be transported from Samson’s and I was afraid my wish had somehow caused Mr. Milton to barge into the shop with that lit torch. I didn’t tell her, because I didn’t feel the need to, seeing as how I felt I’d learned my lesson. Be careful what you wish for, as they say.

Levi and I never had a second date. We hung out plenty more times at plenty more house parties, finding ourselves in plenty more dark corners engaged in plenty more make-out sessions. But we never made it into anything more formal. We never discussed why, but for my part, I was worried. 

If a whole donut shop threatened to burn to the ground on our first date, what might happen on our second? Would the old coal mines on the west side suddenly collapse? Would a flash flood strike and wipe out Main Street? Would an earthquake come out of nowhere, rumbling and tumbling our homes to pieces? It didn’t matter that we weren’t even in an area where earthquakes occurred and it didn’t matter that the actual fire never got half a chance to burn Samson’s to the ground, my fears plagued me all the same. 

I guess you could say I was terrified of my own capacity for desire. I was not, as they say, living in my power. I didn’t even realize I had power. All I thought I had were wishes and cravings that might never be fulfilled, because I feared what ruckus and chaos might ensue.

I know now that this is not an uncommon experience for a woman.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to label my evening with Levi Heart a traumatic experience, I see now how formidable it was. I broke out in a cold sweat the first time my husband told me he loved me and I said it back. My heart beats faster anytime I find myself having to ask for something I deserve but am not getting: a raise at work, adequate time spent alone, extra mayo on my sandwich. And anytime I see a fire, no matter the setting, size, or shape, I think of my first kiss and how on fire it made my whole body feel, how it made me feel like doors were unlocking inside me and ribbon and lace were unfurling. The problem with doors and lace and ribbon, though, is a girl can get so easily lost in them. 

I’ve been going through old boxes. My husband and I are preparing to move across the country. In a ratty shoebox, I found a clipping of the article about the fire—twenty years ago today. I wonder what my mom would say about that. I ask her in my head, knowing she’ll hear me.

I woke up early this morning, before my husband, and before I started packing, I went to the local donut shop. It’s no Samson’s, but it’s good enough. I snuck into our bedroom and waved a donut under my sleeping husband’s nose. He groaned and stretched, begrudgingly waking up.

“I don’t even like Bavarian cream,” he said. “That’s for you. You didn’t have to wake me up if all you wanted was donuts.”

At that, I felt a grin spread over my face, like a cracked egg in a frying pan. I dropped the donut and slid my hands down his chest. I have gotten a lot better about not being scared of what I want.