This choice: Deal with this issue yourself • Go Back...Chapter #43Fast Talk at Westside High by: Seuzz   In point of fact, you could easily get through the rest of the year without ... "you know." You've gone through most of high school without it.
But it was one of the nicer discoveries when you woke in that store room, to find that Eric Murphy gets quite a lot of "you know" and gets it in all kinds of degrees and extents from all kinds of girls, and he has a knack for getting it from them.
So let Fairfax run his dumb experiment. You were looking forward to running it in reverse, by doing a lot of "you know" and watching to see if news of all that "you know" bubbled back up to the cheerleader circle.
But you can't get all that "you know" if Melanie Saxon is running around promising to chop the tits off any girl who lets you fondle them. Which isn't specifically what Spencer told you she is promising to do, but which is pretty much her style.
* * * * *
Padilla and Gerard have nothing for you but sympathy, and when you're tired of that -- which is about ten seconds later -- you scramble up to make a long, hustling circuit of the school.
You could use the exercise anyway, as it's a chilly morning and the wind cuts even though you're wearing track pants and a long-sleeve t-shirt. On the back side of the school you pause long enough to watch some PE classes warming up on the practice fields. Eric has hung out with a couple of the girls on the soccer squad, which is jogging around the far perimeter of one of the fields now, and you idly wonder if Melanie could really intimidate someone like Anita Nuevo or Dominique Hughes. She probably wouldn't even try, because even though Mel is psycho, Anita or Dominique could probably just beat her up.
Hell, Anita or Dominique could probably beat you up.
You cock your head thoughtfully as the line of girls makes a turn at the far corner of the field and starts trundling back in your direction.
So there wouldn't be any trouble, you're sure, if you tried getting it on with Anita or Dominique, because there's no way they'd worry about Mel even if they heard about what she's promising to do.
And what's with this "if" you could get it on with them? You could totally get it on with either Anita or --
Alright, Eric might tell himself that, and he might even believe it, but you're pretty sure it wouldn't fly. Best case scenario, those two girls would just laugh if you pitched anything at them.
But Kelly Rinaldi would probably listen. Barbara Powell, too. They're not all hard and compact like the other two. They're more the tall-and-slim type, and they sway invitingly, and like to smile and laugh, which sets you off to smiling now as you imagine yourself with your arms wrapped around either one of them to keep them from swaying. They're just about the right height for kissing, too.
You whip off your cap and scratch deeply at your scalp, for these fantasies are making you break out in a light, itchy sweat. You should totally find out what classes they got, go talk to them, find out what parties they're gonna hang out at this Friday.
Full of these dreams, you break into a jog that takes you around the school, and so distracted are you that you jog around it a couple of times before you stop and look around and see that you're back at the theater wing and that Tim and Christian have moved on. You spend the rest of the period squatting on the grass, firing off texts in every direction, asking if anyone knows Barbara Powell's or Kelly Rinaldi's class schedules.
* * * * *
Actually, you know two of Kelly's classes, because she shares them with Will Prescott. (Not that you've ever said anything to Kelly in either of them.) Eric Harlen's reply comes too late for you to catch Barbara in her second period AP Constitutional Law class (rufkm? you text Eric back) but you detour on your way to third so you can corner her in Mr. Muniz's Statistics class.
She's sitting on the far side of the room with a bunch of soccer and track people: Fred Hildown, Catherine Muskov, Samantha Carpenter, and -- yep! -- Anita. She's caught up in whatever they're talking about, with the kind of look on her face like she's about to jump in at any moment, and she's twisting and untwisting her elbow-length blonde hair into loose braids. None of them pay the slightest attention as you saunter up and slide into a desk next to Barbara -- until you speak, when Barbara does a double take and crinkles her forehead at you.
"Hey," you say, and deep down under Eric's casual calm, you're astonished at how little he cares about barging in on a girl he's never even talked to. "I didn't know you played soccer."
She stares back. Then she say, "Uh, yeah."
"Yeah, I saw you out practicing first period." To Anita: "You guys are gonna win statewide, right?"
"That's the plan," she says. Fred and Catherine leave off talking long enough to squint at you.
"Yeah, I played soccer in middle school. Hey, did you go to Wheeler Middle School?" Barbara and Anita both shake their heads warily. "Yeah, I don't remember you from there. That's where I went, played for them. I was a forward." Actually, he was a defender, and it pissed him off that the coach wouldn't put him up at the front where could score goals.
Fred jumps in. "You don't play anymore?"
"I got into basketball. But, you know." You mime making a free throw. "Steve Patterson said I'd have to bring a stepladder if I wanted to join the squad." Actually, Patterson told Eric to go fuck himself with a stepladder. "But what are you doing this Friday?" you ask Barbara.
Her eyes go a little wide, and she darts a glance at her friends. "We don't have a game, if that's what you're asking."
"No, I mean parties. That was a great one you had last Friday," you tell Catherine. She covers her grin and looks away.
"But are you gonna be out at the Warehouse?" you ask Barbara. "Or, I think someone told me Olivia Byrne was going to be doing something at her place." No such rumor has reached you, in fact, but Olivia seems like Barbara's kind of hostess.
"I wasn't making plans yet," Barbara stutters.
"What about Maggie's party?" Fred says, and Barbara shoots him a dirty look. He grins back at her. "I thought you were all about hanging out at her place this Friday."
"I was just talking about it." Barbara starts looking a little flushed.
"Softball Maggie?" you ask. That would be Maggie Crenshaw, of the girls' softball team. "Cool. Is it a bring your own thing? I always bring my own, you know."
"Maggie doesn't like party crashers," says Anita.
"I'm going." Fred grins at you. "You can come with me."
"Awesome." You put out your fist for a bump, and pound it a couple of different ways when he stretches out his own fist. "I'll get her address, show up there around ten?"
"Bring a twelve-pack of whatever you brought to my place," says Catherine.
"Will do." You sweep off your cap, scratch your scalp, resettle it. "Catch you guys around Friday." You hear them break into gales of laughter as you saunter out.
* * * * * Well so what if they're laughing. They're laughing at Barbara, not you. And who cares if she's probably pissed off at the way you got yourself invited out there. You know where she's going to be, you're going to be there too, and there'll be lots of time to talk her into liking you. Almost every girl you've ever gotten in your arms has been one who got all flushed and stuttery, like Barbara, before you calmed them down and closed in.
Except Melanie. Eric hadn't paid that much attention to her, actually, until that day she invited him out to her house and into her back yard. She was just another band girl -- playing the glockenspiel, of all things -- and though she had a nice face and figure, it had barely dawned on him that she might be available for deep smooching before she was telling him he should try out her hammock. And it was her idea to climb into it with him, and she touched him first, and she was the one who guided his hand down to the warm spot between her legs.
All the time they were hanging out, he really liked being the one who had to run to keep up, instead of being the one who tugged and teased the other along. And on the afternoon of their third date, when she pulled him into her bedroom and yanked her t-shirt and shorts off, and pushed him onto her bed and stretched her long, hard, white body over his, dangling her breasts in his face, it was the culmination of five years of fantasies, even if the fantasies hadn't concerned her specifically ...
But you shouldn't be thinking about Melanie, you should be thinking about Barbara, and so you are thinking about her when you drop into your desk in third-period Biology. Tim looks down his nose at you. "Why you so late?"
"Stopped in another room to talk to someone."
"Barbara or Kelly?"
"Barbara. She invited me to a party on Friday. Maggie Crenshaw's. You're invited too, if you want."
"Who am I going with?"
"Ask around. You can find someone."
Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Carl Dortbruch looking over at you. "Yo, the fuck you lookin' at?" you demand. His expression darkens, and he hunches inside his desk. "Yeah, I'm'a come over there, make you suck me off," you taunt him as he turns away. "Faggot," you mutter, and slouch in your own desk.
You've no idea why Eric and Tim have hated and bullied "Dorkbutt" since middle school, but it comes as naturally as the erection you nurse while thinking of Melanie when you should be thinking about Barbara.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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