My hands have never been clean. 

 

Well, clean in the sense that they’ve scrubbed the tiles of the bathroom floor with mold removal, and washed the dirt off my dog’s coat, and put away dry dishes. Clean in the sense that I’ve pressed bottled soap to the cracks of my palms and let hot water rinse the suds off. Clean in the sense that I’ve jumped to the bottom of the pool and felt the rough cement on my fingertips. Clean when I stepped out of the house and felt snow grace the back of my right hand, where a thin scar showed itself in the bleak sun.

 

It snowed in early 2020; I was fifteen. It was probably January or February, I can’t remember. School had let out before the day was officially over, and I was with my friend of seven years at the time, walking on the road. We didn’t talk much, or if we did, that part has faded. The road to his house was a long way off, the bus had stopped at the top and we had to walk in our inadequately-dressed-for-the-weather clothes. 

 

His apartment was in a row of two story complexes stacked on top and mirroring each other. Green doors and window shutters, old wooden stairs that lead to the housing above. We kicked our shoes off at the threshold and clambered inside, excited about this newfound weather. Snow was an unexpected thing, which you wouldn’t expect living in the mountains where everyone anticipates and declares crazy heavy snow every year. My friend’s mom was home, in the same boat as us. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a bun away from her face and her glasses were streaked from where she had wiped them off. 

 

“How was school?” She called to us after I had said hello to her, a hello that was as easy as saying hello to my own mother. 

 

“Fine,” My friend replied, because school is only ever just ‘fine’ when you’re fifteen. I agreed with him and we headed to his room, where we hunkered down. I peeled my flannel off, exposing my forearms to the cool light of his desk lamp. Goosebumps prickled under the hair that grew there, the hair I refused to shave even when I got called a werewolf in first grade. The highest compliment. Posters of world maps and stickers of funny troll characters he had made himself plastered themselves to his white walls. His own art hung in some corners, flapping from the fan that turned on the ground. A sparse shelf that consisted of half-read books of Roman demigods and a clown that terrorized children laid on their sides, their covers creased and bent and well loved. The room of someone growing up. I knew it well; I could recognize the scent of the specific type of essential oils he sprayed if I was blind folded. My hands, always clean then, touched the stuffed animal on his chair and held it in my arms. Practically falling apart, the teddy bear was a sight to behold, but a sight nonetheless. 

 

The snow picked up later that night. Thick, white flurries dumped from the sky in buckets, and I told my friend I had to attend to plans we were both aware of. I wanted to see my oldest sister who had an apartment south of here. She was working late, and so I asked her long-time boyfriend, someone I practically considered family, to pick me up. He had known me and my other sister since we were kids, for nearly five years at this point. We bonded over music and video games, and he was like an older brother I never had. 

 

He was taller than me. He wore cargo shorts and graphic tees, the kind of look you’d see on a brother. He only drove stick shift. He was twenty-three. I was fifteen. 

 

I guess I contradicted myself in the first sentence. It’s not like my hands have never been clean, but it feels like it. They haven’t been clean since I was a freshman in high school. That’s a long while. A long while to go with hands that shake and fingers that scrub at dirt that never quite gets out. A long while to go with nine-inch nails in my palms while I diligently whittle away at my high school level homework, the pencil never fitting how it should. That’s a long while to go with hands that struggle to pull the oversized hoodie over my chest and the big pants I need a belt for over my hips. 

 

He was twenty-three. I was fifteen. My sister came home after dark, took a shower, and went to bed. By then, it was already too late. Looking back on it, we both saw signs, proclaimed we could’ve stopped it, but we couldn’t really.

 

He told me he was interested in the games I was into, liked the music I liked, and that made me ecstatic, because what’s a better level of human connection than understanding? The couch was spacious, the TV was large, and yet he was still too close. The blanket I draped over myself wasn’t enough. He waited until she was asleep.

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It wasn’t anything at first, at least I thought so, but the more it happened, the more suffocating he got, the more I realized something was wrong. It became increasingly apparent through the texts we shared.

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You’re okay with me doing this?

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Yeah, I replied, I’m touch-starved anyway, sorry if it seems like I’m coming off weird.

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You’re not touch-starved or weird. You’re fifteen.

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Don’t tell anyone about this. Especially your sister.

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My hands have never been clean. Of course, they’re clean in the way that I’ve jumped into my Granna’s creek to catch crawdads in the late July sun; clean in the way I’ve dug out watermelon seeds to get to the sweet fruit. Clean in the way I’ve sprayed my siblings with a water hose that we were supposed to wash the deck off with. 

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But they’ve never been clean when I touched you. 

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I almost can’t bring myself to do it, sometimes. I’m sorry for the way my fingers tremble when they grace your skin and my lips press to yours and I’m sorry for the way I can’t look you in the eye when we’re alone together. I promise it’s not your fault, nor mine, even when a little piece of me might still believe it is. I remember us laughing together because I was shaking when your hands found my body for the first time, and I didn’t realize it then, but I know the reaction was not entirely from nerves. You might’ve known that too. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, did not want the worst part of me to win, and so I laid my head on your chest and listened to your heartbeat. I didn’t want you to focus on mine. 

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My hands have never been clean when I touched you. I have not done it often, in fear of the dirt and blood sticking to your flesh. The shower water that glistens in the coils of your hair is not enough to swirl this mess down the drain. You reassure me, and love me, and understand me more than any other living being on this planet, yet a part of me cannot be a part of you. It’s a terrifying thought. A pit opens in my stomach, threatening to swallow me whole if I even consider the idea. I want more than anything for my hand to feel natural grasped in yours. 

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I feel that pit now, writing this. It’s writhing and massive and horrible, a beast that cannot be tamed. My body is not my own. I am a sailor in a dark sea, the ocean swirling and crashing, waiting for my boat to topple over and be crushed beneath the waves. You hold me, despite knowing this, despite being aware of the monster trapped behind the bones of my ribcage. Your touch is tender. It’s soft with me, soft enough to keep the creature at bay. 

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You hold me in your arms, and I know my hands will never be clean when I touch you. But I’d at least like to try.