“When you’re older, some guy’s gonna be thanking me for this. Every girl’s got to learn some time, you’d better start acting like one.”

“You’d like that,” Max says. Her arms are tightly crossed across her chest, but she can feel his eyes on her. The way he looks at her, it’s like his eyes cut right through what she’s wearing.

“It’s true. Your mom does it too. It’s about the only thing she’s good for.”

It does smell like cowshit out here — like manure and dead leaves and standing water. The car isn’t even on the road any more — it’s half-in and half-out of some muddy ditch behind a stand of overgrown brush and broken pallets, dug in at a sick angle so Max can feel her body sagging forward and her hair falling against her neck. If they end up having to dig the shitty Camaro out and push it back onto the asphalt inch by inch it’ll be exactly what Billy deserves.

Max yanks on the door handle, but Billy grabs her first, and she freezes. She’s fast, but if she makes a run for it — Billy’s faster. He’ll hurt her. He’ll knock her to the ground.

“Where do you think you’re going? You wanna go check on your little boyfriends, is that it?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Max spits. “Maybe you ought to think about getting a girlfriend.”

“What did you just say to me? You know I can lay any woman I want. I’m doing you a big favor here, Max.”

His hand jerks upward like he’ll hit her, but then starts to tug up the hem of her shirt, sliding up the ticklish skin of her stomach on a direct path toward her blue cotton bra — Max jerks back in her seat, grimacing. “Don’t!”

“When are you going to start wearing a real bra? Not like you need one.”

“They’re still growing,” Max says. She can’t let him know this stuff hurts her or he’ll keep doing it, like jabbing somebody right in a bruise.

“Somebody’s got to teach you to start acting like a girl, Max.”

(The first time Billy had caught her undressing, it had seemed like an accident, and the way he looked at her had been completely scornful that she felt too stupid to even complain. She’d never told anyone. Why would I look at you? You look like a little boy. It doesn’t seem so accidental any more, and the way he looks at her is different now too. At the new house in Hawkins there’s no lock on the bathroom door.)

If things were different, then it wouldn’t matter how good-looking he is — it wouldn’t matter that he’s so nasty to her. His hands are big and veiny, like a grown man’s, and he can cover her whole breast with just the palms of them — it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel like anything, but when his thumb rubs over the point of her nipple it sends a shock of sensation down to the parting of her legs. Max opens her mouth, but nothing will come out.

“Now what do you want to say to me?”

“I’m sorry, all right? I hate it here too, I hate Neil, I hate this school, I want to go home! I’m sorry!”

Billy’s eyes narrow. In this light, they look painfully blue. “That’s right. Now show me how sorry you are.”

He’s not her brother. He’s not her friend. He’s practically a stranger. Up close Billy smells like cigarettes and Drakkar Noir, and she can feel the heat of his body spilling out against the leather upholstery, his anger and then whatever this is, whatever makes him do this to her.

He places her hand between his legs, there on the fat bulge of his erection — Max hates feeling the body heat radiating through the denim, she hates knowing how often Billy is just walking around out there not wearing underwear.

“Come on, take it out,” Billy says to her.

Maybe he likes making her do this because her hands make his dick look bigger — Max doesn’t have much reference material to compare it to but it’s already big enough to bother her, thick enough to make her cheeks ache just looking at it. It has veins on it, and the thick head of it is already shiny-slick with cum. She has to sling herself over the steering column to get to his lap, bracing her arms against his thighs — his belly rises and falls against her cheek, and she can feel his hand there between her shoulder blades, resting on the hook of her bra.

“Put your mouth on it, Max. Just like I showed you. Or do I need to show you again?” He gives her a little downward shove against his lap and just once Max thinks about biting him right on the dick.

“Don’t push me,” Max says, but he must not hear her. She circles his dick with her hands, and tries to make her mouth wetter.

He’s right, he could have any girl in Hawkins if he wanted. Even mom looks at him sometimes like she can’t help staring, like she hates herself for it. Max hates her for it too. It wouldn’t hurt so much if he weren’t good-looking, if anybody who knew wouldn’t think he was doing her a favor. Billy’s doing her a favor. He’s teaching her.

Something flickers down in the pit of her, something like disgust. Max takes him in her mouth.

She knows how to do what he likes by now, or just about — she keeps her lips wet, and her tongue meets with the soft skin of the head of his dick, steering clear of the too-sensitive spot right at the tip that makes him swear and pull her hair. Opening her mouth wide for him makes her jaw ache, and each wet slide brings her closer to choking.

“Yeah,” Billy breathes, “that’s it. That’s right, babe.”

No one would ever do this if they had the choice. The sounds Billy makes when he’s feeling good aren’t so different from the ones when he’s hurting, but if anyone told him that it’d go pretty badly for them. His breathing goes hard, like a heavy rasp, but the only sounds in Max’s ears are the sound of her own mouth moving around him.

Billy’s hand is on the back of her neck, forcing himself deeper into her mouth — himself, his erection, like every inch of him is a weapon cutting its way inside her. Her face is burning; tears prick at her eyes, and the salt-taste of skin fills her mouth. When she moves her tongue or hollows her cheeks Billy makes raw dirty sounds, there up above her, and she can feel him twitch and react. It’s like holding him in the palm of her hand, except she wishes she wasn’t holding him at all. At least it keeps him from doing anything worse.

“Come on,” Billy growls, “come on, you can do better than that.” He thrusts up into her mouth, and Max flattens down her tongue to take his cock deeper — the rough texture of her tongue makes too much friction against his skin and feeling him sheath himself deeper feels just like choking.

Billy fucks into her mouth, pushing her down into each sharp jolting thrust. Her mouth is filling with spit, until it feels like she’ll choke, but she can feel the blood-heat of him as the bitter-tasting cum wells up in fat pulses. This is how it is in all the dirty magazines Billy keeps behind his bed, not in the pictures but in the printed stories where Max traced every line with her fingertip, before Billy caught her — sluts swallowing big cocks and loving it. This is what girls do. Max tries hard to do what she read about in those magazines, and to take every pounding thrust like it’s a favor, even as she’s hissing sharp breaths through her running nose and trying not to cry.

When he hits the back of her throat she whimpers and grabs his leg, trying to pull back, but he won’t let her. “Do you ever do this for your little boyfriends?” Billy’s voice is broken and throaty, like he’s been crying, except he’s smug. “You should make sure they return the favor. One of these days I’m going to show you how a man eats pussy.”

It’s not a promise; it’s a threat. The thought of Billy down between her legs, touching her, kissing her — it makes her clamp her thighs together tighter and dig in with her elbows against his lap, bracing with her hands trying to save herself from each rough shove that drives up into her mouth. Billy doesn’t know anything about her, and he doesn’t know anything about her friends.

Once he’d told her to relax. It’s impossible to relax, but letting the fear rise up in her chest just makes it harder to breathe and her throat slips tighter. She can feel Billy groan, so maybe that’s the point: just another tight hole. He’s never even touched her there except through her panties but the prickle of building heat between her legs says she’s starting to get wet. Billy would like that if he knew, her getting wet just from servicing his dick. That’s a word he likes, like it’s the same thing as doing his laundry or putting oil in the Camaro.

“I’m going to come,” Billy warns her, and she tries to hold her breath for the inevitable — pressing down deep until she’s almost gagging, so the salt-flood of his load hits the back of her throat and not her tongue. When he does come, it’s in fat thick jets, spilling out into her until there’s nothing she can do but swallow him down.

It should feel good, making him come like that. Like she’s one of the girls from those magazines, like she’s sexy enough that somebody wants to do it with her. Like she’s somebody else and not his step-sister. When he finishes, Billy makes an awful haunted whimper like it hurts him, like he does sometimes when Neil’s had a chance to work him over, and Max can think, I did that. I did that to him. Her mouth and her tongue and her throat did that. It’s still enough to make her cry.

Max crumples against his lap afterward, and Billy strokes the hair back from her face where it’s sticking to her cheeks — Max coughs and swallows in tight convulsive jerks, like sobs. Her lower lip aches like it’s been split, but instead of blood there’s just the salt-glaze of what Billy’s left behind. He’s finished. They’re finished.

Billy sets her back upright in the passenger seat, and he rubs at her face with the bandana from his pocket, but it just feels like he’s moving it around. Her mouth is full of the taste of him, and looking into his face she feels the smarting tears still wet on her cheeks start to dry. Not scared any more. Angry.

“That wasn’t so bad, right?” Billy’s hand hovers around her face, like he’s about to tuck her hair back behind her ear. “You could be really pretty if you tried, Max. So next time, try.”

There’s blood in her mouth after all, where her inner lip must have knocked against her teeth when he was pushing into her. Blood and cum. Max looks in Billy’s eyes and says, “Sure.”