Winona came alive a bit more once I let slip that my parents were going away on a road trip, and that Irish Navajo could leave behind its mouldy, crumbling apartment for a place where the central heating didn’t depend on happenstance.

  “Are we going to play hide-and-seek again?” she asked, having already gobbled up her hot dog. Some of the ketchup splattered onto me in her rush to eat. She could be deadly when she was hungry.

  “Weren’t you the grand champion?” I murmured, dabbing away the ketchup that had landed on my cheek. “Remember? We had an impromptu tournament during my birthday party.”

  Everyone from my class had been there, and it meant the world to me. I was never the most popular kid in school, but for that day I felt like a king. I could even remember what was printed on the cake — Bart Simpson mooning with the words Eat My Shorts written in the Simpsons font.

  The girls weren’t amused, but the rest of us eight-year-old boys found it riveting. We had to clutch our sides so they wouldn’t split from laughter.

  “World champion,” Winona corrected me. “I outlasted everyone in our class until your dad gave up looking for me because he was on the verge of ripping his hair out.”

  “There wasn’t much hair back then to hold onto,” I said. “Where were you hiding again? I forgot.”

  Winona speared what little fries remained on her plate, then pushed it aside. She’d devoured her meal already, while I’d barely touched mine. I wasn’t sure what was slowing me down. Maybe I was still reeling from the love you Felicity had dropped on me earlier.

  “The fridge freezer,” she said — then shook her head. “The fridge freezer in the garage.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s it! You turned the power off before you went in.”

  “Uh-huh. I wasn’t going to freeze to death just to win a super-special trophy.”

  “But you did let all the ice cream my mother had stocked melt away,” I pointed out. “You were only saved from a scolding because your home pulled up.”

  She fluttered her eyes in deep satisfaction. “And I scampered away scot-free. Wasn’t going to let the white woman give me an earful.”

  When I said Winona’s home, I really meant it. Her parents arrived to collect her in the Volkswagen Transporter they all lived in. It wasn’t an RV, or even one of those smaller camper vans that were all the rage now — it really was just a modified Transporter.

  How they managed to live in it together, I had no idea. Winona always said it was a Native thing — living on the land, or living on the road. The latter had come after the white man decided they needed new homes, and Native people were forced to flee from their own.

  Now it felt like things were reversing. Natives like Winona were settling into more respectable houses, while white families were embracing van life.

  “I think that clever timing on your parents’ part is where my dad’s obsession with RVs began,” I said. “Now he’s finally made it a reality through crosswords.”

  “Not sure it’s much of a vacation if he has to listen to—” Winona started, but then the cafeteria doors opened and the biggest playboy on campus stepped inside.

  Benjamin.

  Like Felicity, he was immediately swarmed. A whole campus harem followed him everywhere — except inside his dorm, where the door was heavily padlocked.

  He didn’t like the word harem, though. He preferred muses. Harem sounded too denigrating for the women who trailed him, all hoping to become the next inspiration for one of his cartoon characters.

  Winona was already lost to a whirlpool of emotions. She stared over my shoulder, her eyes muddled, a thin thread of saliva forming at the corner of her lips. I blew gently at a strand of her curtailed hair.

  “You can’t act like that if you want to win his heart,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s had enough of the crazy art-hoe aesthetic already,” I replied, motioning toward the legions of fine art students clustered around him. Some of the girls had even brought flowers and gifts for Benjamin to wear.

  “You mean crazy like doing the homework of a girl who doesn’t know you crazy?” she shot back.

  “What I’m saying is, you need to stand out from your competition.”

  “Doing what?”

  That was when I really took in what Winona was wearing. She was dressed like Winona — but none of it would get a red-blooded man riled up. Oversized trousers. Big Dr Martens platform boots. A crisp white dress shirt under a dark vest.

  She rarely wore makeup beyond a little concealer to hide the dark circles under her eyes. We’d had one too many late-night concerts recently as Irish Navajo. If her hair were cut short, I honestly thought she might’ve been mistaken for a man.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  It had happened before. Not just with drunken idiots at concerts, but while moving between classes. Her hair had been bob-length back then — but plenty of men wore it that way too. It had hurt her. Sometimes I wondered if that was why she’d become so insistent on letting it grow down the curve of her back.

  “Show him a little leg,” I said. “That’ll keep him off balance.”

  “I’m wearing trousers, Nathan.”

  “Not leg-leg,” I clarified. “You’re going to have to dig in and spruce up your sex appeal.”

  She eyed me curiously. “Aren’t I pretty enough?”

  “You are, but—”

  “You think I’m pretty?”

  I froze, then nodded. “Yes. I do. But that’s not the point. Pretty and sexy are two different things to men.”

  I gestured toward the art-hoe posse, and Winona’s expression twisted into a mix of deep-seated jealousy and astonishment at just how well they dressed. Yellow-coloured sweaters, sapphire dungarees, faces adorned with pink and orange blemishes — sweet and beautiful, yes, but not sexy.

  “See what I mean?” I smiled. “You could fall in line like the rest of them, or Benjamin could discover something new. Something that might lure him away from the art-hoe phase.”

  Winona took a breath, then nodded. She seemed to understand what I was trying to say.

  “What would you want me to do?”

  “Ditch the black vest,” I murmured. “For now. Too masculine.”

  She paused, and I felt she mightn’t go through with it. I thought she might throw her vest at me instead, decrying me as some patron of perverted masculine energy, and with it would come the end of both Irish Navajo and our friendship.

  But she didn’t.

  Slowly, she unclasped all three of the dark buttons around her chest and slid the vest off.

  “And now?”

  “You have to show him the goods,” I explained. “A little bit of chest goes a long way in securing a man’s undying passion.”

  She tsked. Then she tsked again. It would drive me crazy hearing anyone else tsk, but with Winona I could stay by her side as she did so.

  “I’m beginning to feel like marinated corn-on-the-cob, Nathan,” she said. That was another one of her wondrous Arizonian sayings I liked to hear.

  “All dating is marinating yourself up for the opposite sex,” I countered. “Life would be one big grey party if we didn’t.”

  She stood still. I thought she even looked downtrodden, reducing herself to a slab of meat so a man could take interest in her. But then her shoulders loosened, and suddenly Winona was all for sexing herself up.

  “How many of them should I unbutton?” she said, pointing to the small grey buttons underneath her neck. “I don’t want to get a reputation on campus, you know.”

  “You mean you don’t want the honour of being the only sex-crazed Native girl on campus?”

  “No.” Then she moved in to me. “I can’t believe I actually want to be known as just the Native girl now.”

  I averted my gaze, and I looked down. She really did have huge tits. Maybe all tits looked big to men from this point of view.

  “Two. I can’t have my Winona being derided as a slattern behind her back by art-hoes.”

  She snorted. “I don’t care what some Frida Kahlo wannabes think of me, anyway.”

  She tugged her hands through the linen, letting the first two buttons come apart. Then her hands hovered over a third, and suddenly Winona was taking that apart too.

  “Impressive.” I muttered. “You really aren’t going to leave anything to his imagination.”

  The faint crease of her chest came through, and suddenly I was staring — ogling, rather. I looked away in embarrassment.

  “Now what?”

  “Now you just go over and seduce him,” I explained, my eyes peeking through the small gap in my fingers. “It shouldn’t be so hard. Just tell him what he wants to hear.”

  “I…” Winona stumbled over her words. “Wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “Just say what he wants to hear,” I repeated. “You’ve watched movies, haven’t you? That’s how it works in the movies.”

  Winona gave a nervous smile. I wasn’t much good at the how to seduce a man part, because, well, not often does a woman try to seduce me.

  “Maybe show him some leg-leg too,” I grumbled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here, cheering you on.”

  Winona looked over at the art-hoe posse once more. Benjamin was sitting at a table near the centre, and the women were cloistered around him like a Roman testudo formation.

  When two of the girls broke away for a bathroom break, Winona felt now was the time to make her move.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, winking at me.

  “I will.” I really did mean it.

  Once she’d taken a few footsteps away from me, I sauntered my chair around to see how she got on, hoping it didn’t turn out to be an absolute crash course in seduction.

  It started well enough, aside from the few ferocious glares that Winona received from the art-hoes. Ooh. I’d been on the receiving end of a few disdainful looks myself, but that was icy coming from a bunch of girls who prided themselves on their values of inclusivity and fairness.

  Winona did a faint bow like any leading lady from a fantasy novella would do, but Benjamin hardly took notice of her. She wouldn’t be denied, even if a few of the vipers coiled around her lover’s heart started to grunt and make strange chuffing sounds that warned her to stay clear.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  She planted herself on the table, the sudden shake of which finally got Benjamin to snap out of his self-induced artisan coma. He looked at her, a bit confused — not helped by the fact that Winona started to roll her right trouser seam up to give him a glimpse of her smooth, sharply defined legs, pressing a finger to her lips as she tried nibbling on it erotically.

  She really did have nice legs, actually. I’m not sure what her secret was. She didn’t do any sort of exercise that I knew of, aside from running around the stage when we performed together. Maybe that was all you needed in life.

  The fangs came out, though I could only make out a few words here and there as the talons of the art-hoe posse dug deep into Winona’s skin. They were not at all wholesome. I wanted to get up and wrap my arms around her and protect my special Winona, but suddenly she was off the table and heading back in my direction.

  Then suddenly Benjamin was breaking away from the art-hoe posse, and he was following after her — catching up with her, and all of a sudden taking an interest in this strange Navajo girl who’s harboured an affection for him his whole life.

  The early wisps of tears in Winona’s eyes began to dissipate, and her frown suddenly turned upwards. She started to laugh at Benjamin and his self-deprecating jokes, and she was in good spirits. Back to her old Winona self — the one who smiled widely and laughed and giggled as she made her way through this academic world of ours.

  And I realised I hated it. Hated that it had all happened because of Benjamin Renzetti.

  She nodded at him once more, then turned on her heel to walk back to me. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

  “It wasn’t a total bust then, I take it?”

  “Not at all!” Her enthusiasm was ecstatic. “Benjamin wants me to model for him!”

  “Okay…” I mumbled out. “You mean for one of his cartoons?”

  “No!” She was really, really enthusiastic. “For figure drawing!”

  “You mean, in person?”

  “Yes! He wants me to model for him naked!”