Sixteen

A bad person can give good advice. Consider the source is a good maximum to follow, but you have to also consider the information. When Hateful Hattie, my wicked stepmother advised me that meeting men through personal ads might be dangerous, I should have considered more the information and considered less the source. I thought she was just being her hateful self and that being a married lady, she did not understand the facts of modern dating. What am I supposed to do to meet men? I can’t exactly go into a bar and pick someone up like she did my dad. Even if I got a fake ID and could get into a bar, I’m not the kind of girl guys pick up. Men go for the Skinny Minnies, or else for the girls with the double D boobs. The guys at church are a bunch of wimpy geeks, and the guys at my school think I’m part of the furniture. So this personal ad seemed perfect.

I didn’t place a personal ad, but I did answer one. The girl he wanted was just so me, and I am not the answer to most men’s dreams; so seeing myself so precisely described as the desired object of someone’s affections was more than I could ignore. Maybe the guy had seen me in the mall and was too shy to make a pass, overcome by my beauty or my vivacious personality. Well, okay, most people wouldn’t exactly call me a beauty. What they say is, “You have such a pretty face,” and “You have such an outgoing personality.” What they don’t say is, “You’d be a pretty girl if you could shed a few pounds—or better, a lot of pounds. I guess I’m a little beyond Rubenesque, but it’s not like I’m a candidate for a side show fat lady. I couldn’t do ads for Victoria’s Secret. So what?

So anyway, there was this personal ad in the Weekly Planet under guys looking for gals. “Eighteen year old college freshman looking for an outgoing, pretty girl with some meat on her bones,” the ad said. I answered with a letter to the mailbox, got a reply, exchanged email addresses, chatted every night for two weeks by email, staying off the phone to keep under Hattie’s radar, even exchanged photographs, and now we wanted to see each other. I hadn’t told any lies either. I could have told him I was eighteen and a senior, but since he didn’t say in his ad that age was an issue, I didn’t think sixteen was too young to date a college guy.

That he wanted to still meet me after seeing my photo was encouraging, and I was feeling really excited and a little nervous when we agreed to meet at the mall Saturday for lunch. I couldn’t wait to be seen walking around the mall with Brad. If he was half as good looking as his photos, I was going to be the envy of every girl who saw us, and it being a rainy Saturday, there should be plenty of girls hanging out who would notice us, not just the geeks and nerds, either. Even the cheerleaders and rich bitches go shopping on Saturday, and I could hardly wait for the school to start talking about Gloria’s eye candy!

So I yell to Horrible Hattie that I’m headed for the mall when I guess she notices that I’m dressed more like I’m going to church than to the mall—blue silk drawstring pants with matching long overblouse, new shoes with two inch soles that make me look taller, which is supposed to make me look thinner. Usually I would have worn jeans, sneakers, and a baggy tee shirt. Or maybe it wasn’t the way I dressed; maybe I just seemed happy instead of depressed for once. Anyway, for whatever reason, she starts giving me the third degree about where was I going, who would I be with, when would I be back. I don’t know why it’s any of her business. She’s not my mother. But my dad just lets her get away with anything, and I’m really hopeless about being able to come up with good lies when I need them. So I told the truth: I was going to have lunch with my friend Brad—Brad Smith. Lots of people are named Smith. What’s he supposed to do, give a fake name to keep people from being suspicious? No, he wasn’t someone from school or church. I’ve known him a couple of weeks, and I finally had to confess that I had answered a personal ad and had never seen Brad in person.

Hattie finally agreed that the mall was probably a safe place to meet a guy as long as I didn’t leave the mall with him, and that I had probably made the right decision rather than giving him our address and having him know where we live in case he turned out to be a psycho, but it’s not like he couldn’t have looked up our address in the phone book, duh! After many promises, I got out of the house, and Hattie even let me drive the car because she had questioned me so long that I would be late if I took the bus. But she insisted that I be home by six—six on a Saturday night, for god’s sake! She’s just not used to my having a boyfriend. I mean, I hate to confess, but I have never in my life had a real date with a guy. So Hattie thinks it is perfectly normal for a sixteen year old girl to spend Saturday night with her boring, aged dad and his thirty year old trophy wife, or worse yet, she thinks my little half brat is my responsibility and that she and Dad should be able to trot merrily out for the night while I sit home like some unwed mother. I have to admit that I do appreciate it that they pay me to sit home when I am going to be home anyway, and the brat’s a brat, but he is kinda fun sometimes. But tonight I didn’t see any reason at all for being home at six. If Brad turned out to be the boyfriend I was dreaming of, I would take my chances with whatever punishment I got for not keeping such a ridiculous curfew, or better yet, I’d phone home after Dad’s golf game and talk to him; that usually gets me what I want. Being home at six meant that I couldn’t go to a club or even to a movie at the mall if Brad and I clicked, and I was pretty sure we were gonna click.

Like I said, I should have listened to Hardhearted Hattie. Maybe there is something in being older but wiser even if she wasn’t that much older. I got to the mall at ten to one, thanks to not having to use the bus; so I wasn’t surprised at first that there was no sign of Brad in the food court. We had agreed to try to get the table farthest from the escalator as it is usually the last one to be claimed. I was sure I would recognize him from his picture, but he said he would be wearing a long sleeved blue dress shirt with a yellow striped tie just to make sure he would stand out from the usual mall crowd of students in shorts and tee shirts.

I didn’t like sitting at a table all by myself; I’d look like a real looser. So I walked away from the food court down to a shop to waste ten minutes. When I walked back it was one; so I bought a coke and sat down at the table where Brad could spot me. Well, I have to say, by ten after one, I was getting royally pissed. I’d seen plenty of snobs from my school giving me the eye because I was all dressed up sitting alone at the food court. I figured I had been stood up, but I decided to give him five more minutes before I headed out of there. But then I thought that something could have happened and he would have no way to let me know. I hadn’t given Brad my cell phone number because Hattie pays the bills and all my calls are listed. I would have gotten a million questions if he had been calling me. But fortunately he had given me his number, and since the old snoop already knew about him, I had nothing to lose by making a call to see if anything had happened.

“Gloria, thank goodness you called,” he shouted as a way of answering. “I didn’t know what to do since you hadn’t given me your number. I had a car wreck this morning; my car is totaled and I’ve got a broken leg. They aren’t going to let me out of the hospital for at least a week, I guess. But I was so excited about finally seeing you. I know you said you were going to take the bus to the mall, and I’m all the way across town at Tampa General; so I told my dad about our meeting, and he says he will bring you down to the hospital if you don’t mind. He lives out that way and said he would be coming to see me anyway and wouldn’t mind bringing you along. And he’d take you home or back to the mall when you leave the hospital. So you could get to meet my dad the same time you meet me. How’s that sound? Please say you’ll come down. I’m feeling so disappointed and lonely and angry that our meeting got messed up. I showed Dad your picture, and told him to wear a blue shirt with a tie so that you can spot him. He thought that was pretty funny, but he agreed. So okay, you’ll come to see me? Please. Please. Dad’s already headed for the mall to look for you. You should spot him any minute now.”

Well, this was an interesting turn of events. I was so confused that I didn’t know what to say; so I told Brad I’d see him at the hospital just to get off the phone and think for a minute. I didn’t just hang up; I turned off the phone and threw it in my purse to take a few minutes to consider the possibilities. I had to think fast, and there was a slight chance that Hattie was going interrupt me with a call to see if I had made it to the mall without an accident or abduction. I would, of course, blurt out the current situation without having reached my own decision, and then I would have to listen to her opinion as to what I should do. I wouldn’t leave the phone off for long or she’d be calling the cops to locate me.

I wanted to show Brad off, not go spend my Saturday in some creepy hospital. I hadn’t even told anyone about him because no one would believe he was a really true boyfriend if I just started showing his photo around and telling people he’s my boyfriend. If he were not so good looking, I probably would have, but no one was going to believe a guy like him would care about a fat girl. So here I was, not yet a girlfriend, but with strong prospects. Well, what kind of a potential girlfriend won’t go see her boyfriend when he’s in the hospital with a broken leg? Lying in a hospital bed must be the pits. Having people you like come to visit might be better than watching daytime TV or reading books. And if he was going to be stuck in a hospital for a week, it would be a good time to look like the caring kind of woman a man would want. But I didn’t want to be a caring kind of woman just now. I just wanted to have a good looking guy to flaunt and to shut up the snots who think they are so hot because they date football players or basketball players. Brad was way better looking than any guy at King High School, and he was a college man besides. A girl couldn’t get a much better boyfriend than Brad Smith. And he’d be out of the hospital soon, and by then he’d be all mine! I could show him off later—later when he’d be madly in love with me.

But riding all the way across town with his dad would take half an hour or more, and that would really suck. What would I talk about for half an hour? What has Brad told his dad about us, anyway? Well, what I decided was that when the dad showed up I could explain that I have my own car after all, and I can drive myself to the hospital to see Brad. I didn’t see any reason to call Brad back to tell him. I was surprised that he was able to answer his cell phone in the hospital the first time, and I didn’t suppose I’d better make a habit of using it. I’d get there as expected; the mode of transportation should not matter to him as long a I got there to act the part of the faithful girlfriend I wanted to become.

Of course, despite my brave defiance when it comes to breaking my ridiculous curfew, or my confidence in being able to work my way around my dad, I am not so stupid as to take Hattie’s precious Honda all the way across Tampa without telling her where I was going to be. And there were lots of ways I could be discovered if I tried to go where I wasn’t supposed to be. If I got a ticket, or worse yet had an accident myself, I’d never be allowed to take the car again. Of course, riding down and back with Mr. Smith would be the easiest solution. The Honda would be at the mall where it was supposed to be. Nope, after al the warnings I’d got from Hattie about this meeting, even if Mr. Smith turned out to be an Episcopal bishop, I’d be grounded until I was thirty if she found out I got into his car. Calling Hattie to tell her what happened seemed best after all. I was pretty sure she would think it was even safer to visit someone in the hospital than to meet him in the mall. So far I hadn’t broken any rules, and I thought it was best to try to keep it that way for as long as I could. But before I could get my phone out of my purse, there was Mr. Smith looking down at me and asking, “Glorida?”

I was a little surprised that he spotted me before I noticed him, but then, I had been thinking hard and not observing my surroundings much. He was certainly dressed as Brad had asked—blue dress shirt, yellow striped tie. I guess he recognized me from my pictures, and also from where I was sitting. “You must be Brad’s father,” I said. Yuck, how could a good looking guy like Brad have such a creepy, yucky father. Thank goodness, thank Hattie even, that I had the car! Brad must look like his mother. I wondered why she wasn’t going to the hospital as well, and I wondered why Brad and I had never discussed his parents at all even though he knew just about everything about mine that I knew myself. Well, I didn’t think Brad’s dad was a bishop after all. I didn’t like his looks. I know I’m not supposed to judge a person by his looks—that’s practically my motto, in fact. But nope, I just did not like his looks. He made me feel uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just because he was an old guy. My friends’ dads don’t make me feel uncomfortable, and they’re mostly old guys.
Mr. Smith was balding and skinny. He was so skinny he looked like one of those starving people from Africa or something. He had not one single feature that resembled Brad’s unless it was the color of his hair, maybe. What was left of it was fine and thin, and a mixture of gray and some dark brown that might have once been the dark brown of Brad’s thick head of hair. Unlike Brad’s deep sparking brown eyes, Mr. Smith had pale, watery, light brown or hazel eyes. What’s more, Mr. Smith was really short for a grown man; he didn’t seem to be much taller than me, maybe five feet five inches, and Brad had given his own height as six foot two. I wondered if Mr. Smith were really Brad’s father. Had there ever been a paternity test?

I was feeling a little sick to my stomach looking at this guy, to tell the truth. I mean, you want your boyfriend to have a nice family, or at least I do. I know Brad is only a first boyfriend—well, not even a boyfriend yet—and I shouldn’t have been thinking about marriage and what ugly children we might have, but hey, a girl has a right to dreams even when she knows they are silly. So I tried to stop agonizing over my ugly unconceived children and be polite. “I am so sorry about Brad’s accident. He told me was going to be in the hospital for a week. I hope that doesn’t mess up his college work too much. I’ve heard that missing a week of college can really hurt your grades.”

“Well, I guess Brad will have to work out the college stuff, but he sent me to fetch you to the hospital; so let’s get a move on; we can chat on the way. Nice to meet you. You’re a fine looking lass, I must say.” Mr. Smith really did talk like that, and except for the way he talked, his choice of words, I mean, the one thing father and son had in common was the exact voice.

I told Mr. Smith that I had my own car and would drive myself to Tampa General. I didn’t tell him that I had to call my stepmom to get permission, as I figured I could do that as soon as he left, and I had no doubt that it would be okay with her. I expected him to say something like, “That’s great; see you there.” But no, he kept trying to talk me into going in his car, came up with dozens of reasons from logical ones such as not wasting gas to ridiculous ones about girls driving in cars alone. I was getting to like this guy less and less. He couldn’t take no for an answer. Was Brad going to be like this when we were a couple? Maybe Brad was already like this and I was just too infatuated to notice his bossy ways. The fact that he did not know what room Brad was in did not worry me at all; I had forgotten to ask the room number myself, but I figured it would be easy enough to get it from the desk when I got to the hospital.

Mr. Smith finally gave up on trying to convince me to ride with him, but he insisted on walking me to my car to see me safely on my way, as he put it. I still had to call Hattie, and I just wanted him to go away, but I didn’t know how to stop him from walking me out without being rude; so I figured I’d just have walk out with him and then drive a little bit and stop at the next corner gas station to give Hattie a call about leaving the mall. I really was feeling angry that she treated me like such a baby, having to know where I was every minute of my life. I was thinking that if it weren’t for having to get permission like some twelve year-old, I could already be driving to the hospital and be rid of Mr. Smith. I’m telling myself that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to talk to him when Brad was around. Maybe once I was where he expected me to be, he would stop being so pushy about it. Maybe he was afraid I was going to not show up and that would disappoint his precious son.

So the two of us walked to Hattie’s car. I unlocked the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. And now comes the scary part, the part when Hattie was right. As soon as I put the key into the ignition, Mr. Smith stretched out his right hand and pushed me as hard as he could toward the passenger side of the car and tried to move his skinny ass behind the wheel. This was actually a pretty silly thing for him to try as I weigh as least twice as much as Mr. Smith, and he’s not exactly full of muscles. My head and shoulders went over to the passenger’s seat, but my right hip stayed firmly planted on the seat behind the wheel while my left hip stuck up far enough that anyone who might have walked by could have seen I was lying on my side. When I was toppled to my side, instead of righting myself and sitting up again, probably not because I am so smart, but because it was so much trouble to try to lift my weight from this awkward position, I straightened out my legs thinking, I suppose, to put my feet on the ground outside the car and get myself upright.

But Mr. Smith was still standing outside the car door and I did not stretch my legs out slowly or gently. It was more of a violent kick, actually, and my left foot encased in my fashionable two inch soled shoe contacted forcefully with Mr. Smith’s most vulnerable body part. With Mr. Smith no longer blocking the door, I was able to get myself out of the car to stand beside the open driver’s side door. It was only then that I noticed that while Mr. Smith lay curled in what is called a fetal position, screaming and cursing in a loud but now squeaky, high-pitched voice, he was holding an open pocket knife in his left hand. I am not sure it was really a pocket knife; it was open like one, but it looked more dangerous, and I think he had intended to use it on me; so it was about this time that I started screaming as well. I also stepped hard on his left wrist with my left foot, and when he let go of the knife I used my right foot to kick it away as hard as I could . But not being used to the fashionable shoes, I sent the knife flying with my toe as planned, but not as part of my plan, I kicked Mr. Smith’s fingers with the four inch heel. I guess the pain in his hand temporarily distracted him from the pain in his other parts, or maybe the other pain was going away. I’ve never had the nerve to ask my dad how long such an injury keeps a guy on the ground. But Mr. Smith stopped holding his knees under his chin and tried to put them to the pavement to get up. When he turned over, I put both feet firmly down on his left arm. He tried to grab me around my ankles to make me fall, I suppose. I mean, what could the guy have been thinking at this point? Did he really think he was going to get me into Hattie’s car and drive away with me?

Thanks goodness this was all happening on a Saturday afternoon, and not at night. People going in and out of the mall must have noticed our peculiar behavior and called the mall security guards. The guards were calling the city cops on their cell phones as they came running over to investigate. Mr. Smith was the one on the ground and the one doing all the yelling by this time. He was lying on the ground while I was standing on his arm; so the guards must have believed him when he starting telling them a story about how I had tried to hijack his car. I tried to tell the idiots that it was my car and it was me getting hijacked or kidnapped. They just handcuffed us both and waited for the city cops which didn’t take long.

I have a lot more respect for city cops these days. They pulled Mr. Smith over to one side and me to the other and started asking questions. The damned car registration was in the car glove compartment instead of in my purse, and Mr. Smith knew that it belonged to my stepmom and even knew her name. He swore that Hattie Campbell was his girlfriend and that I had tried to steal the car. But it didn’t take long for the cops to see that I had the same last name and the same address as Hattie, and what’s more, Mr. Smith was not Mr. Smith at all, but had three driver’s licenses from three different states issued to three different people, none of them Smith, none of them Florida, none of them valid.

Stupid me, after all the questions are answered, forms filled out, parents called, and Mr. Smith is hauled off to some jailhouse without even getting treatment for his broken fingers and broken whatever else, I start thinking maybe there really was a poor Brad lying in Tampa General with his broken leg, and does he know what an awful man his father is, and even better, maybe Mr. Smith wasn’t his dad. Probably he wasn’t. Was I going to lose Brad on the word of a creep who might just have been reading our email and listening to our phone conversation? Maybe Mr. Smith was just being mean when he kept telling me how stupid I was for thinking a man like Brad would want a girl like me. He said the photos were cut from a magazine ad for women’s perfume, and if I was any kind of a feminine female, I should have recognized the model. Hey, it’s hard to let go of such a dreamboat when you are sixteen and know that men don’t usually find you attractive. I called the hospitals anyway, and of course, there was no record of any Brad Smith. Funny enough there were no Smiths at all in any Tampa hospital that week.

I found out there is at least one advantage to being under the age of eighteen; the press does not reveal your name. The story was reported in all its lurid detail—sixteen year old girl answers personal ad from sex predator and is attacked at the local mall. They made me sound a little like a heroine for beating the crap out of the man who tried to attack me, but I was really, really thankful that no one at school or at church ever knew I was the dumb sixteen year old in the news who nearly got raped or murdered from answering a personal ad. And Hattie never once said “I told you so.” I like her a lot better these days.