The nature of such thoughts began to morph from innocent recollection to imagined scenarios. In the more dull days and slipping slow ticks of time achingly flowing, my mind catches a fever of her image burning more marks on my memory. One day I may think of her, waiting in the shadows I pass. Stepping out, and falling in time with my strides. I could almost feel her grasp cool and tight and her lips warm and soft. Feel her catch me in her arms dragging me back. She could be dragging me straight to hell for all I cared because it just felt lovelier than that. And then, after a few imaginings like that and I was thinking of her kissing me.

When that fleeting thought of teeth and lip crossed through then doubled back, I got a hard feeling settling in my chest. It was odd to admit that I liked it, and when I admitted that then the thoughts became more frequent and much more vivid.

In my dreams, at night, all alone it was the worst. These dreams frighten me awake with a cool sweat formed from the not just the heat. As my own little private joke I call Ashley, before I knew her proper name, my night terror. In thinking that it made me smile grimly each time, made my senses leave so I can fall into an uneasy sleep again. Again and again, my night terror smiles behind the black of my tight shut eyes. I can feel her, a weighted warmth, smooth limbs that come inching through the fibers of the bed. An effect and cause makes a blush bloom across my skin beneath the down of my comforter. The base of my neck, cheeks and scalp and rolling along my back and breasts…legs and hips…It makes my mind cloud over yet the sharpness of her, what her touch must be like and her taste and her scent, slides into my focus.

A couple weeks go by, agonizing, until I learn her name and in doing so I begin to call out in my slumber…“Ashley.”

So count the first sin against me, Lust.

What we had in our school was called The Train. Information passed along The Train at a speed almost like lightening. Something could happen at eleven p.m. on Saturday night and by eleven o’ five p.m. Saturday night everyone in The Train would know about it.