A True Story

This happened a few years ago, back when I still lived with my parents in the suburbs.

I had just come home from my second year of college. Readjusting to life in the 'burbs was strange after all the time I'd spent in the city, and it didn't help that I'd left my girlfriend behind when I moved back in with my parents. Our relationship was still pretty young, and it was unclear to both of us whether we would be able to make the whole long distance thing work. We soon got our answer.

She sent me a text one evening around 11:30, asking me if it would be alright for her to spend a night at my parent's house. My response was an enthusiastic yes. She said that she could only stop here for one night, because she'd agreed to pick up her friend from a summer camp where she'd been working the following day. It just so happened that her Mapquest route took her straight through my area. I stayed up all night waiting for her to arrive, excitement and fear intermingling in my stomach. I wasn't used to entertaining women in that house, so I guess you could say I was out of my element.

It was a long drive. Her car pulled into the driveway just after dawn. Neither of us had slept, so we went directly to my childhood bedroom (still embarrassingly adorned with posters of all the stupid things I cared about in high school) and we lied down together. We spent the whole day napping in each other's arms, awakening periodically to fool around for an hour or two before falling asleep again. We talked, we laughed, and we made plans to see each other again as soon as possible. It was perfect. Or rather, it would have been, if it had taken place anywhere other than my parents' house. Their walls are a little thinner than I would like, and we were constantly being subjected to the sounds of other people's footsteps. I would have preferred a little more privacy. Still, it was one hell of a good day.

She drove off again the next morning, just as she'd said she would. After she left, I felt lonelier than ever, but at the same time I could hardly contain my euphoria. I couldn't believe she'd driven all that way, just to see me. She didn't care that I lived with my parents in the suburbs. She didn't care about the dumb posters on my walls. She cared about me. All things considered, I couldn't have been happier. Of course, that was before I saw the hand prints.

A few days later I was still floating on air. I was hanging out with a female friend of mine, once again in my childhood bedroom. I'd been talking her ear off about my new relationship, unable to shut up about how excited I was, and how badly I wanted to see my girlfriend again. Wrapped up in my memories, I almost didn't notice when an unusual expression suddenly crossed my friend's face. Her gaze had become fixated on something across the room from us. She looked at me with a mischievous smile.

"Oh my god," she said. "Did you have sex with her up against the window?"

I laughed, more than a little confused. The strange specificity of the question had caught me off guard.

"Uh... no," I said. "Why?"

"Because there are hand prints on it."

I frowned, and turned to face the window. And she was right. There they were, somewhat faded, but impossible to ignore as soon as you'd noticed them. Two large hand prints smudged on the windowpane, about a foot apart, hidden right in plain sight. I wondered how I could have possibly overlooked them. For one crazy moment, I tried to convince myself that maybe we did have sex against the window, and I'd just forgotten about it. But that was impossible.

I couldn't take my eyes off those hand prints. Ten long fingers. Two broad palms.

"First of all," I said, "those are way too big to be her hands."

I took a closer look.

"And they're on the wrong side of the glass."

I don't live with my parents anymore.