Guardian Angel

Copyright ©2015 2021 by Elder Road LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted via e-mail to ElderRoadBooks@outlook.com.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and highly improbable.

Second Edition

ISBN 978-1-939275-29-5

Designed by Nathan Everett
ElderRoadBooks@outlook.com

Part I: Jessica

1
Heaven

Indiana might not be Heaven, but she lived right next door.

“YOU’D BETTER NOT be smoking up there,” Betts warned from the stalls below me.

“Jesus! Isn’t there anyplace I can go and be alone?”

“You swore! You took the name of the Lord in vain. I’m telling Mom and you’ll get sent to your room for the next twenty years.”

“Good! Tell her. Then you won’t be able to bug me anymore.” Betts stormed out of the barn. I’m sure she’d told Mom she was going to go take care of the horses just to spy on me. She never even let them in the barn. If Dad knew how she really treated her precious Arabians, he’d sell them. And I’d get blamed for not cleaning out the stall. Nine years old and I was no more than an f-ing stableboy for my sister. At least I liked the horses.

I saw the light come through the barn door when it opened and just knew it wasn’t over yet.

“All right. I’m coming down. I wish you’d just leave me alone,” I complained.

“You don’t have to come down, Brian. I’ll come up.” That voice was heaven. Jessica Barnes, my next-door neighbor. Everything my sister wasn’t, Jessica was. She was nice and kind. She talked to me and played with me. She never told me what to do. Well, not exactly. Somehow, I always ended up doing whatever she wanted, but I didn’t mind. And it’s not like she was my best friend like Geoff or anything but she’d been a special friend for as long as I could remember. She was two years ahead of me in school and got along with her brother Drew about as well as I got along with Betts. He was less than a year younger than her. Mom called them Irish twins.

“Hi, Jessica. Sorry. Betts was in here making a racket.”

“I heard. She’s such a bitch.” I giggled. I’d never dare call Betts a bitch.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Wish she’d just leave me alone. Did she see you come in here?”

“I waited till I heard the door slam and then ran over. I could hear her yelling at you in the back yard.”

“That’s probably why the horses are back in the woods. They don’t like her either.” We laughed quietly. I could just imagine what would happen if Betts or Drew found Jessica and me in the hayloft. I’d get teased for the rest of my life. I liked when Jessica and I got to spend time together, though, and I didn’t want to send her away. I wished she was my sister and Betts and Drew lived together.

Jessica wore a blue dress. She often wore dresses. Betts and I usually wore jeans or Carhartt work pants around the barn. Grandpa always told me I was FBI—Farm Boy Indiana. I learned to drive the John Deere sitting on his lap. I still couldn’t reach the pedals if I sat on the seat, but he let me drive it to the field standing up. You didn’t really need the brake pedals. The gas was a lever on the side of the column and if you shut the gas supply down, the tractor came to a stop. You had to use the clutch, though, or it would stall. Grandpa was really old and leased most of his land to Mr. Baron, but I plowed a whole furrow this summer. I couldn’t see over the engine, but all I had to do was watch the front wheel and keep it in the furrow next to me.

Fourth grade, the smallest kid in class, and not likely to grow much, the doctor says. It started back when Dad insulated the house when I was four. I was being really helpful until I couldn’t breathe anymore and they had to take me to the hospital. I guess it was fortunate because they discovered a growth on my pituitary gland. It was treated and shrank but I’m not growing much. Maybe someday I’ll be more than a pudgy little kid.

Anyway, back to Jessica’s dress. She had dresses she wore to school and dresses she wore to play. In the summer, she had shorts and pedal-pushers, but otherwise, she mostly wore dresses. Her school dresses were pretty. Her play dresses had mostly been pretty school dresses the year before. They were always a little tight and short and kind of faded from washing and… well, dirt. Just because she wore a dress didn’t mean that she didn’t get right out and play in the dirt with the rest of us. This dress had been a school dress last year, but Jessica had grown and it only came about halfway to her knees.

“How come you always wear dresses?” I asked. I realized I’d been staring at her legs and it kind of made me shiver.

“Where’d you get that shirt?” she asked in return. That was a sore spot.

“It’s one your brother wore a couple years ago,” I growled.

“Right. A hand-me-down. Don’t get mad, Brian. Nobody’s got money to go out and buy a lot of new clothes every time one of us grows. You wear hand-me-downs from Drew. I wear hand-me-downs from my cousin. I get a couple new dresses in the fall for school, but mostly I wear her old dresses. Betts hands her clothes over to your cousins. It just happens we don’t have any other boys in our family, so you get Drew’s. My cousin lives in town and she wears dresses. Therefore, I wear dresses. I don’t care. I guess now that I’ve worn them for so long, I’d probably choose one unless it was summer. Even then it’s sometimes cooler to wear a dress.”

“Wow. I never thought about that.”

“How’s school?”

“Boring. I got a book about chemistry from the library, though, and that’s pretty cool. I’m getting a chemistry set for my birthday.”

“You sound awfully sure of that.”

“Well, Mom always asks me what I want and that’s usually what I get. I circled it in the catalog and showed her. I know there’s a Sears package that came a couple days ago.”

“Cool. How are kids treating you?”

“You know,” I said. “I just try not to get anybody mad at me.”

“Has Drew tried anything?”

“Um…”

“He did, didn’t he, that rat bastard.”

“It was just kind of teasing.”

“Try to stay away from him. He’s really going with the wrong crowd. Those Kowalski brothers are no good.”

“I try.”

“I gotta go. I’ll watch for you when you come here. Maybe we’ll talk again soon.”

“Sure.”

School was worse than what I let on. The Kowalski brothers were in Drew’s fifth grade class a year ahead of me but we all knew it was because they flunked a year and got held back. Maybe two. I’d heard Mr. Boyd complaining about them to Mrs. Fites. Mr. Boyd came into our class to teach math for an hour in the afternoons while Mrs. Fites taught English in his classroom. I liked Mr. Boyd. He didn’t mind me standing near him during recess. Not like I was right next to him. I was just, like always in his line of sight when we were out after lunch. I still got knocked down a lot. It was always something like a long football pass that I was in the way of.

I saw one coming on Thursday. There was no way I could get out of the way. Andy Kaminski was headed my way and one of the Kowalskis—I could never tell them apart—had the ball and kept waving him toward me. I turned to run, but there were some third graders shooting marbles like right beside me and if I took off, Andy would run right over them. It was bad enough that he was going to cream me. Those kids didn’t need to be in the way. I just closed my eyes and tightened up, waiting for the inevitable.

I heard the hit. I didn’t feel it. I heard the ‘oompf’ and a body hit the ground. I opened my eyes. Andy was lying on the ground crying. Bill Fisher had the ball and was running toward the Kowalskis. Both of them. He plowed through them, knocking them both on their asses. Drew was the only other one between Bill and the line on the ground that marked the end zone. He got out of the way.

“You guys should watch where you’re throwing the ball,” Bill laughed. “You threw an interception. And you could have hurt some little kids who weren’t even on the field.” His voice got a lot lower. “Don’t ever do that again.”

He flipped the ball behind his back toward the Kowalskis. I looked up and Mr. Boyd had his back turned and was talking to Jessica and a bunch of the sixth grade girls who had been in his class last year. The bell rang and everyone filed inside. You didn’t usually see sixth graders on this side of the playground. Andy was still crying, but no one paid any attention to him.

I got my chemistry set. I opened my new Trapper Keeper with the vinyl cover and Velcro closing with the neat clean white paper where I’d keep track of all my experiments. That was another birthday present. So was the underwear.

I read the directions in the chemistry set and did my first experiment on the kitchen table. “Scientific experiment number one, October 5, 1981” I wrote in the binder. I spilled some ferrous oxide. I tried to wipe it up with a wet cloth and it stained the Formica tabletop. It looked like the end of my science career. Dad looked at the mess and suggested that I should move my laboratory to the attic with my train set. He was funny. He emphasized the second syllable of laBORatory. But he got me a card table and we moved the chemistry set to the attic.

After my run-in with the insulation, Dad sheet-rocked the attic to seal it in. As a result, I had a great play space up there where I had all the pieces of my HO train laid out and was making a real mountain range out of papier-mâché. Sometimes Geoff and John Hopkins came over and we played with the train together. The only problem was that the attic wasn’t actually heated. It was cold up there in the winter. Early October wasn’t so bad, but I knew I wouldn’t be doing many scientific experiments come December. Betts complained that I had a whole playroom to myself and she just got her bedroom. Mom pointed out that I was only using half the attic and she could have the other half. She came up with a bunch of Barbie dolls once while I was up there, but when she realized she had to stay on her side of the attic and I wasn’t going to talk to her, she stomped down stairs. Of course, she also closed the stairway. It was one of those pull-down things. Eventually, I got pretty good at pushing it down and unfolding the stairs without killing myself.

Unfortunately, she also discovered that I’d burned a spot in the floorboards. That led to the fact that I was lighting matches in the attic to heat my chemicals. She could have told on me and I’d probably have been banned from using my chemistry set anymore. But instead, she blackmailed me.

“You get to clean out the stalls for the rest of October.”

“Like hell.”

“Don’t swear. If you don’t clean out the stalls every day, I’ll tell Mom you almost burned the house down playing with matches in the attic. And don’t you dare smoke in the barn.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Who do you think Mom will believe, runt.”

Shit! Specifically, horse-shit. I mucked out the stalls every night in October. It was getting cold out, too, and the horses were usually standing at the door to get into their stalls while I was trying to haul out their shit. I kinda liked the horses—well, at least Silk. Rika could be a bitch like my sister. Of course, she was the one Betts showed. Silk was just company in the stable and if I didn’t brush her, I don’t think anyone would. I swear; Rika shoved me aside just like my sister would when she came into the barn. I went to the loft and just threw hay down at her. Stupid horse. I guess it wasn’t her fault. I plopped down in the loft and folded my arms. It was a cinch Betts wouldn’t come to the barn since she had a slave mucking the stalls for her. If she could find a way to make me do morning chores, too, she would.

“Brian?” Heaven was calling.

“Up here,” I answered.

Jessica climbed up the ladder and plopped down on a bale next to me. She was wearing that same blue dress she had on the last time we were up here. Maybe it was shorter.

“I just had to get out of the house!” she said. “Drew is going on and on about some plot to destroy him and his friends and thinks I’m responsible. Can you believe it? Besides, Mom has decided it’s too cold in the house and has turned the furnace up to about ninety. It might be a little cold out here, but it’s such a relief from in there.”

“Wow! I thought I had it bad,” I laughed. “I just have a…” I looked over the side of the loft to make sure we were alone. “…bitch of a sister to deal with.” I giggled at using the word. I’d always wanted to say that.

“How’d she get you to do all the stable work at night?”

I explained about the burn in the floor of the attic.

“You do have to be careful with that stuff, you know,” Jessica laughed. “Promise you won’t burn anything else, okay?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

“Um… Brian?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever played doctor?”

“No. How do you play?”

“Well, like say I was sick and you had to take care of me. What would you do?”

“Oh. I guess I’d have you stick out your tongue and say ahh.” She did. I laughed and looked in her mouth.

“Have you been smoking?” I asked. “I smell Sen Sens.”

“Don’t tell. Okay?”

“Of course not. Did you really?”

“Sometimes. Mostly, I just like Sen Sens. But that shows you are a good doctor. You investigated and discovered what was wrong. Now what else should I do, doctor?”

What else do doctors do? Oh yeah. Listen to a heartbeat.

“I guess I should listen to your heart. I need one of those… what do they call them?”

“A stethoscope?”

“Yeah. I need a stethoscope.”

“We don’t have one. You’ll just have to pretend. Put one hand on my heart and the other to your ear. That will be your stethoscope.”

I started to put my left hand on her chest, but it was at the wrong angle, so I put that hand on my ear and the other on her chest. It was kind of cool, just pretending.

“Your heart sounds, good,” I said officially.

“Really? How could you tell? My… um… other doctor always makes me unbutton my dress so he can put his stethoscope on my bare skin. It’s always cold, too.”

“Um… should I do that? I mean, put my… uh…”

“You should be official and tell me to unbutton my dress so you can examine me.”

Wow. Just wow. I never even thought about this before. But if we were going to play this game, I guess I should do it right.

“Young lady, you will need to unbutton your dress so I can listen to your heart. Now just lie down right here.”

I was surprised that she did what I said and didn’t just pretend. Not only that, but that blue dress buttoned all the way down the front and she didn’t just unbutton the top, she unbuttoned the whole thing. And opened it up. And all she had under it was panties.

“You can examine me now, doctor,” she said. I took a deep breath and looked at my hand. She nodded at me. I touched her. I really tried to focus on where her heart was. I could actually feel it thudding in her chest.

Jessica’s chest was pretty much like mine, but it was a little softer around her nipples. I kind of lightly pressed against her, feeling the differences in where it was soft and just boney like mine. I finally touched the colored part of her chest with the little bump in the middle. She shifted a little.

“They’ve been a little sore and tender lately, doctor. I think they are swelling. Will I be okay?”

“Oh. Uh… Sure. We could treat them with radiation to keep the swelling down, but I think it’s just a little infection and a drug should do the trick.”

“Oh. You don’t think they’ll get too swollen?”

“No, I’m sure not. I’d suggest you just ice them to keep the swelling down.”

“You guys are in so much trouble,” Drew laughed from the ladder. “Just wait till I tell. Jessica and Brian in the hayloft.” With that he was gone.

“You little shit!” Jessica yelled after him. “He does not have the same parents I do. He is not my brother. He can’t be. Sorry, Brian. I’ll talk to you later.” She buttoned her dress and stopped just before her head disappeared below the loft floor. “Brian, you won’t tell, will you?” Tell someone? You’ve got to be kidding! I shook my head ‘no’ and she was gone.

I got up and headed for the ladder, too. The whole experience left me a little uncomfortable. I had tingling feelings all over my body and I didn’t know what they meant. I guess that’s just what happens when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t. I wish there was someone I could ask about girls. Doug, in my class, told a bunch of guys that his sister told him whenever he was ready to learn about girls, she’d show him. My sister would call the cops if I asked her a question. Well, crap!

We got an early cold snap and by the end of October, there was snow on the ground. At least my indentured servitude came to an end. But now it was too cold to go to the barn and too cold to go to the attic. There was really no place I could escape to.

On the school bus, Drew shoved me into a seat and snarled at me.

“Brian and Jessica, sitting in a barn.”

I had no idea what he thought he’d rhyme with that, but I was mad enough to go after him. Just as I was standing up, Jimmy Sutton spoke up.

“Hey Drew. What flavor soap does your mom use when you spread nasty rumors about your sister?”

Drew farted. I think it was only a fart, but he sure looked uncomfortable when he went to the back of the bus. All of a sudden, I had a new seatmate. Jimmy was one of the tough sixth graders that us little kids were kinda scared of. He was from Kentucky.

“So, Brain, do you really do chemistry experiments in your attic?” he asked me. There were two new things here. First, when did Jimmy Sutton learn about my chemistry experiments or become interested in them or in me? Second, when did people start calling me ‘Brain?’

“Um… yeah. I got a cool chemistry set for my birthday.”

“So can you make nitroglycerin?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to look it up and see if I’ve got the right chemicals for the formula. What is it?”

“It makes stuff explode. I just thought maybe you could make some fireworks for us.”

“Hmm. I’ll look up the formula and see if I can make fireworks. That would be pretty cool.”

“Yeah. Well, look. You see Bill Fisher or me or Sammy D around, don’t sweat it. We got your back. Jessica says. But if you could make some stuff blow up, it would be cool.”

2
Fairy Loops

IN SPITE OF the fact that Jessica and I never got back to the hayloft, I made it through the rest of my school year with few incidents. It seemed like anytime Drew or the Kowalskis or Andy or even any of the bigger kids in my grade (which was all of them) started heading my way, they’d look over their shoulder and see one of the sixth graders nearby and suddenly find something else to do. I felt sort of safe at school for the first time since I started.

Camp was a big thing that summer. Betts was sent to horse camp with Rika. That was great as far as I was concerned, but when I found out Jessica was going to a modeling camp, I was really worried. That meant that I’d spend my summer hiding from Drew. I couldn’t even get to my friends the Hopkins without going past Drew’s house. We managed it a few times, playing war in their yard and sometimes if there were enough people, we’d play ball in their field. My field had too many horse-apples in it.

I got pretty good at going to the barn like I was going to take care of Silk and then heading on out to the woods and circling around behind the Barnes’ to get to the Hopkins’ place. Sometimes I even rode Silk and let her graze in their field. She was a good old girl. I just rode her bareback. The saddle was too heavy for me to handle. I’d only seen Drew twice and I’d avoided him on those occasions. Then came the day that he showed up for our game of war. I tried to stay close to my buddies, but Drew kept popping up nearby.

I knew when I shot him and he didn’t fall down that I was in trouble. Nobody else was nearby.

“Hey, you’re dead.”

“Wrong. You’re dead, faggot.”

“You’re supposed to fall when you get shot.”

“Now you get to fall, you little runt.” Drew was all over me. He tackled me and sat on me. “You’ve been avoiding me all year, you little cock. I’m the sixth grader now and your goon squad is all going to junior high, so let me tell you what to expect this year.” He didn’t tell me anything. He threw an elbow into my ribs and then kneed me in the gut. When he finally left me, I crawled back through the woods and home. I just went into the barn and cried while I brushed Silk. I hated him. I hated my life. I wouldn’t even be riding the bus with the junior high schoolers. I was dead meat.

I didn’t go outside for the next week. I went to the attic instead.

The problem with the attic in the winter was that it was too cold to stay in for long. In the summer, it’s hotter than hell. One afternoon it had to be a hundred degrees up there and I just started mixing chemicals randomly. Nothing blew up, but I hit some combination that stunk to high heaven. And it was one of those ‘heavier than air’ things that went right down the stairs. In a few minutes, Mom had me taking everything out to the garage and opened all the doors and windows—most of which were already open as it was July. She had two big box fans and a little rotating one in the kitchen trying to air the house out.

Next day, Dad said they’d found a science camp they thought I’d be interested in. Sunday I was on a bus.

I was pretty smart, but that doesn’t make me a child prodigy or something. In Indiana, they wouldn’t know what to do with a prodigy anyway. I was already in the ‘smart kids’ class in school. But the summer at camp opened my eyes to the possibilities. I learned the difference between physical science and life science, for example. Physical science included most of the things that I was interested in like physics and chemistry. Life science included biology and botany. I’m not saying that wasn’t interesting. Especially when my lab partner explained it to me.

Angela Kimes was my lab partner. Science camp encouraged partnering with people who had different interests. Angela was one of about a dozen girls who were at camp with the thirty or so boys. The camp administrators made it clear that there was to be no prejudice based on sex, race, size, or even intelligence. Angela was about twice my size and a girl. She was the first black kid I ever met. Opposites in everything, except we were both really smart and—I have to confess—pretty proud of it. She was cool. We conducted experiments in the chemistry lab, recorded measurements in physics, collected leaves for botany, and charted the growth of sea monkeys in biology. We ate at the same table and walked to convo together in the morning.

Science camp wasn’t all science, and we even met to go swimming. She taught me the rudiments of playing tennis. I could barely get the ball over the net, but she kept no prejudice rule even for tennis. Angela was about the same age as me, regardless of what our size suggested. By a fluke, our birthdays being just thirty-five days apart, she was going into sixth grade as I was going into fifth. She was so good at everything and so smart that I forgot entirely that she was a girl. She was mostly interested in life science as I was mostly interested in physical science. We got each other through the rough spots.

“All life is based on male and female parts,” she said, explaining life science to me. “Until you get down to simple life-forms, like amoebas and stuff, all of the life sciences have a dual sex format.”

“Yeah. Well, in physical science there’s positive and negative,” I answered. “That’s about the same.”

“Right. If you take two hydrogen atoms and combine them with an oxygen atom, which is male and which is female? You don’t come out with baby hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It’s completely different.”

“Like there’s a male and female flower,” I laughed.

“There’s a male part, the stamen, and a female part, the pistil and carpel. The carpel produces the egg and the stamen produces the pollen or sperm. Just like you have a cock and balls that produce semen and sperm and I have a vagina and ovaries that produce eggs. You do know about sperm and eggs, don’t you?”

“Um… of course,” I lied. Chickens laid eggs. What’s that got to do with those other things? I started getting uncomfortable and squirmy. Angela looked at me like I’d just grown another head. Maybe I had. I tried looking at myself. No luck.

“I thought you country kids were all about farm animals and breeding and stuff,” she huffed.

“We plant corn and sometimes wheat. We don’t have cattle or pigs or anything.”

“Well, there you have it. Corn. You’ve got the male tassel that provides the sperm or pollen and the female silk that provides the carpel or egg. When the corn gets fertilized, you get little corn seeds that will grow into healthy adults if you plant them.”

“Male and female corn?”

“Then you get into the animal kingdom,” Angela continued. She was on a roll and we sat down on a log facing each other near the pond. We’d been walking around the campground after dinner and I hadn’t paid much attention to where we were. Nobody else was around. “Male and female created He them. That’s in the Bible. Corn has silk. I have a pussy.” I nearly fell off the log when Angela swung her leg over and pulled her shorts down. Then she turned to face me. “See? This is my pussy. I have a hole here that is like the corn silk. It conducts the sperm to the egg so it can be fertilized. Pull your pants down.” I was staring at her—well at her crotch. She was holding her—what’d she say?—pussy open and pointing out the hole where sperm went. I just pulled my pants down and faced her. Hell, if she was showing me hers, I’d show her mine. I was embarrassed because my cock was getting stiff. It did that sometimes when I was thinking about Jessica. “Thank God, it’s little. I’ve heard stories about them being big and hurting. That doesn’t look so bad,” she said. “So, you’ve got a cock. Under it is the balls. Your sperm gets made there and shoots up out of your cock. If your cock is in my pussy, the sperm hits my uterus and if there is an egg there, it gets fertilized and nine months later a baby pops out. It works the same way as corn.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” I asked.

“My mom and I have been talking about this stuff since I was practically a baby. She says everything in the world can be explained through male and female or yin and yang as the Japanese say. She’s a nurse. I’m going to be a doctor. Mom says so.”

None of the rest of science camp was anywhere near that interesting. Every time I thought about it, I started getting stiff. Somehow, I couldn’t help substituting Jessica in my mind for Angela. I mean, Angela was nice and I liked her, but Jessica was… well she was just Heaven.

When school started that fall, all I could think of was that I was going to get beaten to a pulp by Drew and his gang every day.

I hung out at the house until I could see the bus coming and then ran to the road just in time to get on after Drew had. I could see him ahead of me as we went down the aisle and saw his elbow come up to jab me in the gut. Then all of a sudden, a big guy blocked the path between Drew and me. He shoved me into the seat against another big guy. I recognized both of them. Carl Fisher and Doug Swift.

“Hey Brain,” Doug said when I almost sat on him. Carl slid into the narrow seat on the other side pinning me between the two. When did these guys get so big? They were both in my class, but last year they were nowhere near as big as this. My life was shit. Now I was going to get beat up in class as well as on the playground.

“I understand you might be able to help us with science this year,” Carl said. “I don’t mean like doing our homework or anything. But maybe you could help with things that we might not understand when Mr. Boyd says them.” I nodded absently.

“We figure if we sit with you on the bus, maybe you could explain things. Unless you want to sit with your buddy Drew,” Doug said.

“Uh no. That’s not a problem.”

“We aren’t a problem either,” Carl explained. “You know my brother Bill? He said my year would be a whole lot better if nothing bad ever happened to you. He told me to tell you Jessica said. Understand?” I did understand. Carl and Doug had just become my new best friends and I’d do my best to make sure they understood science.

The thing was that Carl and Doug turned out to be really good friends and not just bodyguards. I was still close to a foot shorter than they were and I didn’t weigh half as much, but we laughed and told jokes and studied. We all did pretty well that year.

“You’ve got to think of it in terms of science,” I said.

“Huh?” Carl asked. I laughed. It was the end of the first week of school and he’d just been talking about how Brenda got to him. Brenda was an early bloomer. That’s what Mom said. She had huge bumps on her chest and was wearing a bra. Carl was as fascinated with the straps of the contraption as he was with what it contained. He sat behind her all through the day watching for tell-tale signs of the straps moving beneath Brenda’s blouse. I’d watched a bit, myself, but he’d actually reached out with the eraser end of his pencil and traced the strap on her back during class. She’d turned around at one point and looked at him with big surprised eyes. She didn’t tell him to stop, though. I suppose she was relieved. If we still used inkpots resting in those holes in the old desks, Carl was the type who’d be dipping her pig-tails in it.

“Whoa, man. How does Carl getting hot looking at Brenda have anything to do with science?” Doug asked.

“It’s something I learned at science camp last summer. It’s a male-female thing.” I proceeded to tell them about stamens and carpels and penis and vagina, just like Angela had taught me. Well… I didn’t exactly mention us pulling our pants down.

“Are you serious?” Carl asked. “They taught you that in science camp? I’m going next summer.”

Doug pondered it all.

“I think it’s time I ask my sister to show me how it all works like she said she would,” he finally said. Neither of us believed for a minute that she would.

My overall relationship with girls changed, too. As if I’d ever had a ‘relationship’ with the girls in my class other than to be avoided. This year, I got adopted. Carl and Doug benefited from it, too. Here I am, both the oldest and smallest kid in my class—even Cassie Clinton, the shortest girl in our class, had grown a couple inches this year and was taller than me—and girls started treating me like I was a doll. None of the girls in my class still played with dolls, so I guess they decided to use me as a substitute.

“Bri-an,” Whitney called, stretching my name out. She batted her eyelashes at me like some movie star. “Come sit with us.” The girls at the table all giggled. It was lunch and I had a full tray. It’s not like I didn’t eat enough to grow. I ate everything I could get my hands on. My lunch tray was loaded. I think even the lunchroom ladies thought that if they fed me a little more, I’d grow bigger.

“Um… I told Carl and Doug I’d sit with them,” I said motioning over my shoulder where they were filling their trays. The truth was that when I went anyplace where there were a lot of other kids, they stuck to me like glue. I had to thank Jessica next time I saw her. I’d just turned eleven and I was still alive. But we didn’t go to the same school anymore so it seemed like I never saw her.

“They can sit here, too,” Brenda said. “As long as they don’t do anything gross. Sit between Whitney and me.”

I had a new shirt on. It was one of two that I got for school and they were cool. Button-down oxfords. I was wearing the dark blue one with clean, if not new, jeans. I squeezed between the two girls and they didn’t give me any extra room. Carl and Doug sat at the ends of the table with Brenda, Whitney, and me on one side and Rhiannon, Samantha, and Liz on the other. These were the coolest and smartest girls in our class and just being at the same table put Carl and Doug on their best behavior—not to mention the fact that we were all in awe of Brenda’s… development. I’d no more than wedged between the two and started to shovel food in my mouth when Whitney grabbed the little hanger loop on the back of my shirt. I never figured out why they put those things on shirts like this. When I dressed for gym, I just hung the shirt on a hook; I never used the little loop.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I asked. I tried to turn toward Whitney, but Brenda put her hands on my shoulders and made me sit facing the table. Shit! I knew getting invited to sit at their table wasn’t a good thing. Carl and Doug would be fine at protecting me from Drew, but they’d be helpless against five girls.

“I’m taking your fairy loop,” Whitney said. I heard two snips and she brought a pair of little scissors and the strip of cloth in front of her.

“You cut my clothes!” I complained.

“I took your fairy loop. Now you have to do whatever I say. This will be fun!”

“For who?”

“Look around the table, Brain. I think you’ll have fun. Now do you have any more shirts like this one? I mean with a fairy loop?”

“Yeah. I got two new shirts. Mom will kill me.”

“Trust me. She’ll never notice. Who gets the next loop?” I figured Brenda was going to jump at it since she held me for my first snipping. I glanced at her and she was talking to Carl and he was nodding. Hmm. Across the table Rhiannon raised her hand.

“Me? I want my own fairy.”

“Okay. Next time you sit between Rhiannon and me and she’ll take your other virgin shirt loop.”

“Whitney!” All the girls at the table blushed. I figured there must be something going on here that I didn’t know about. Other than talking to Jessica in the barn and then to Angela this summer, I’d never really talked to a girl. I mean they were okay, but none of them were really into science. They all had girl-stuff to talk about. And all five of these girls were always together. Talk about scary. Nobody was ever going to have a conversation with just one of them.

Still, I sat there and finished eating my lunch as they chattered around me about movie stars and musicians and how cool they were. Whitney was pressed right up against me and every once in a while, she’d put an arm around me and dangle my loop in front of my face. Fairy loop? Did she think I was gay? And she was, like, the biggest girl in our class. I mean tall, not like she was fat or anything. I started to scoot away from her a little because I was getting antsy feelings, but Brenda scooted back against me as she was talking to Carl and kept me pinned up against Whitney. I glanced across the room and saw Drew and the Kowalskis looking at us. I’d take Whitney.

I didn’t wear the other oxford shirt until Monday the next week. In the intervening time, Samantha and Liz each sat next to me once, pinning me against Whitney. I noticed, though that Brenda had taken up a position on the other side of the table and was always next to Carl. I wore the yellow oxford on Monday and Rhiannon sat down next to me. Whitney draped her arm across my shoulders while I felt Rhiannon snip my fairy loop. I looked at the three girls across the table from me and shrugged my shoulders.

“Sorry. I only have two of these shirts,” I said.

Brenda surprised me when she held up a white loop. She looked at Carl and he blushed. We were in fifth grade and Carl was nearly six feet tall already. He had sandy hair and freckles and when he blushed, his whole face went red.

“When did you get that?” I asked.

“He wore it to church Sunday. I got it in Sunday School.”

We all had a laugh, but none of us guys really had any idea what the girls would order us to do. Doug didn’t have an oxford shirt, or at least never wore it. It couldn’t mean anything like boyfriend/girlfriend because two girls had my loops. Besides, what would we do as boyfriend and girlfriend? We were eleven years old.

Well, maybe it meant something different to Carl and Brenda. He carried her books back to class. I was afraid I’d lost a bodyguard, but I had five girls to replace him. Shoot, this was better protection than big guys anyway.

The next week I started to get a notion of what would be required for this extra level of protection. I was explaining faults and volcanoes we were studying in science. We were sitting outside after lunch. After they figured everything was okay, with me surrounded by five girls, Carl and Doug ran off to join the football game. Whenever the game got close to the trees where we were sitting, Mr. Boyd called the guys back out into the open field.

“Sit back this way,” Whitney directed as I explained the Ring of Fire. I edged around with my back to Whitney, not paying attention to the fact she was playing with my hair. That was something that had changed. In spite of Betts complaining that I took too long in the bathroom and it should be her bathroom so she could get ready for school, I took a shower every day now. Betts was a freshman and her bus came earlier than mine, but if I let her go first, there’d be no hot water left for mine. It only took me five minutes to shower and she could damn well wait for me. She sure wasn’t willing to get up five minutes earlier so she could beat me to it.

So, anyway, my hair was always clean. Mom had let me grow it out, so I was no longer in a buzz cut like I’d been for the first four years of school.

“What are you doing, Whitney?” I asked as she pulled my hair up and rubbed something into it.

“Styling your hair,” she said. “We got this new gel and we want to know how it works.”

“Why not try it on your hair?” I asked, shrugging away from her.

“Experiment on these lovely locks?” she asked. “Hold still. You’ll look like a rock star.”

Mr. Graves, our history teacher, wasn’t amused. In fifth grade we stayed in the same classroom but different teachers came in for different subjects. History was first after lunch recess.

“Brian? Is there something wrong with your hair?” he asked. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about.

“No sir. We were just fooling around at recess.”

“Please comb it in an appropriate fashion. If you have a hit single sometime in the next five or ten years, you can go back to styling your hair. In this class you will keep it neat. And please polish your shoes before school tomorrow. That would be a better use for what is in your hair.” I ran my hand through my hair for the first time. Crap! It was sticking up all over. What was I going to do?

Whitney held up a comb for me and I quickly parted my hair and combed it to the side. When I handed it back to her, it was all full of goop. She giggled. I glanced down at my shoes. Graves’ class was like being in the army. I’d been told twice to go home and polish my shoes after school. I wasn’t sure he’d ever said that to anyone else. But I sure hadn’t brushed them off when we came in from outside. I rubbed them against the back of my pants leg to take the dust off and then ran my hand over my hair and rubbed the goop on my shoes. It did make them shiny.

“You didn’t know your hair was standing up all over your head in spikes?” Doug laughed.

“No! If you were any kind of friends, you’d tell me about that sort of stuff.”

“Are you kidding? With Whitney and Rhiannon beside you? Stop in the boys’ room after recess and look at yourself from now on. At least then Brenda won’t cut me off.”

“Cut you off of what?”

“Hey. I’m up to bat and headed for first base this weekend. You should come to church. Our Sunday School class doesn’t even have a teacher. We’re Unitarians. We just sit in the basement of the church and do whatever we want.”

“What’s up to bat mean? And headed for first base?”

“My brother Bill told me all about it. If a girl lets you hold her hand, then you’re up to bat. If you kiss her, that’s first base.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Bill said he’d tell me when I was old enough. But I think I’m going to kiss Brenda Sunday at church.”

“Geez. From a Bra Strap Watcher to a kisser. What’s next?”

“Bra Strap Feeler,” Doug put in. “And I know the rest of the bases.”

Carl and I were all over him. The more he told us, the more antsy I got and couldn’t sit still. I kept thinking about Jessica. Crap! You just can’t talk about some things with other guys.

3
A Kiss is Just…

SOMEHOW, we all survived fifth grade. There was a party at Brenda’s house at the end of the school year. It was the first time I’d ever been invited to a party. Well, she invited most everybody in our homeroom, but still… It was like being somebody. Rhiannon and Whitney stayed close by me through the entire party and I got up to bat with both of them. I never got to first, though.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” I said as Jessica stuck her head above the floor of the hayloft. I was escaping up there from Betts. I had enough of chemistry in the attic for a while. Betts had girlfriends in the house and I was told in no uncertain terms to get my pervy butt away from them. It was going to be a long night. I might just stay up here. Jessica hauled herself up and all of a sudden, I felt like I was ten feet tall. She came to see me!

“You survived fifth and next year you’ll be kings.”

“Yeah. It was cool. I’ve got friends.”

“Good. I was worried about you. You know, of course, that after sixth grade, you’ll be back at the bottom of the heap again. It will be like first grade. At least it was for me. With junior and senior high in the same building, you’ll be looking up at everyone. I thought I’d never make it through seventh grade. Your sister was no help. As a freshman, she could only bully the junior highs. At least next year the rat bastard Drew will be at the bottom. See how he likes polishing some senior’s shoes.”

“They make you do that?”

“Only if they don’t like you. I didn’t have to do anything like that. I don’t think you will, either.”

“If there’s a shoe to be licked, I’ll be the one hoping he didn’t step in dog-poop,” I said.

“You did good this year,” she said. “Did anyone give you shit?”

“I was always surrounded by Carl and Doug and the fabulous five.”

“How lucky can you get? Five pretty girls to pal around with?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t get to first base. I get so antsy when I’m with them sometimes that I have to just go to the bathroom and pee.” I laughed. I couldn’t believe I’d just told Jessica that. I hadn’t even told the guys.

“You mean nobody even kissed you?” Jessica asked. She sounded really surprised.

“Why would anybody kiss me? I’m just their dress-up doll.”

“Well yes, but they kiss their dolls. Believe me. I still do.”

“Really?”

“Do you know how to kiss?” she asked.

“How would I know that?” I asked.

“Okay. Well, this is just because we’re friends and you need to know this. So, no girl—well, mostly no girls—will start a kiss. If she’s holding your hand, she’s telling you that you could kiss her if you wanted. She just can’t say that. It would be so much easier if we could just tell a boy we like, ‘It’s okay to kiss me now.’ But no. Then we’d get called easy. It’s so unfair.”

“Have you ever been kissed, Jessica?”

“Yeah, sure.” I tried not to get pissed off. She said it like it was no big deal. Just the thought of someone else kissing her made my stomach hurt. Well, my stomach hurt anyway. That’s why I was in the barn. Betts had punched me because I saw her come out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. That was before the other girls came over. I mean I was just in the hall when she came out of the bathroom. She saw me and called me a pervert and slugged me in the stomach. The damned bitch. I can’t wait till she leaves home. “Look, I’ll show you.” My eyes got big.

“Really?”

“Yeah. So, we’re out on a date or something. Like at a party.”

“I was at Brenda’s party with Whitney and Rhiannon.”

“Were you holding hands with one of them?”

“Both. At different times.”

“Sorry I didn’t think about this before, but I’ve been kind of busy. So, you’re holding hands.” Jessica took my hand in hers. It was different than holding hands with Whitney or Rhiannon. There was a kind of tingle that went through my arm and right down my spine. This was good enough. We could just stay like this for a long, long time. “Holding hands is like the first step. A girl will let you put your arm around her and it doesn’t mean anything. But if she lets you hold her hand, that’s something. It’s more… intimate. It takes two, you know?”

All I could do was nod my head.

“I like holding your hand, Jessica. I like it a lot.”

“Yeah. It’s too bad you aren’t in the same grade as me. But we can still practice. So, if she’s holding your hand, like I’m holding yours, it probably means it will be okay to kiss her.”

“Probably? How do I know?”

“Well, sometimes a girl holds a guy’s hands just to keep them under control. If you’ve been trying to touch her, well she probably just wants to keep your hands away from anyplace else.” Jessica paused a second and looked into my eyes. “You wouldn’t do that would you, Brian? I mean touch a girl who didn’t want to be touched?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I have enough trouble with people touching me. Or punching me.”

“I didn’t think you would. It’s important to a girl to know that you won’t try to make her do something she really doesn’t want to. So. You’re holding her hand and it’s just the two of you. That’s important. Kissing the first time needs to be private. You don’t do it in front of your friends. Maybe that’s what didn’t work at the party. Were there always people around?” I nodded. “Well, if they really wanted to, they could have led you someplace where there wasn’t anyone. But maybe it just wasn’t right for then. So, if we’re alone or at least can’t be seen, and I’m holding your hand, then it’s okay to try a kiss.”

“You mean like we are right now?” I laughed, looking around at the hayloft.

“Well, yeah. Except I can’t really kiss you because you’re not in my grade. So, you’ll have to practice on your own. Use your arm. Just softly kiss it. If you get it wet or hurt it, it’s not right.” She demonstrated on her arm. I felt pretty silly, but having Jessica teach me was pretty exciting, too. “You’d probably start by just leaning over and kissing my cheek. And then if I looked straight at you, that would mean I’m ready for a little more. If I turned my head away, you’d stop.”

I tried kissing my arm again and looked to see if I’d slobbered. I guessed I’d only practice this after I washed from now on.

“That’s not going to work. I’m not saying it was bad but… we’ll have to try it.” Try it? Jessica took my hand again and looked into my eyes. I just leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She sighed and smiled at me. Well, those were the cues she told me about. I kissed her right on the lips. Kind of quickly so she wouldn’t have a chance to change her mind. “That was good. The next time you kiss her—maybe on your next date—it will be easier and she won’t pull away or anything.” I kissed her again. “I don’t think you’ll have any problem from there. Just make sure to keep your lips soft and don’t push too hard.”

Jessica stood up and headed for the ladder down from the hayloft. Then she turned around and gave me another quick kiss right on the lips. She giggled and headed down the ladder. I sat there until it was my bedtime.

I got to go to science camp for four weeks! Betts complained non-stop about how unfair it was since she could only go to horse camp for two weeks—in spite of the fact that it cost about ten times as much. This year I really got to focus on what I loved—chemistry. I started building a list of additional things I would need for my lab back home. I knew for a fact that my parents couldn’t afford what I wanted, but the camp had a catalog from Edmund Scientific and it had way more stuff than the Sears-Roebuck catalog my original set came from. They promised that we’d each get our own copy of the catalog to take home at the end of the summer.

I was really surprised when we were assigned partners from the botany lab, and who do you think I got but Angela. I was pretty happy about that. She was even more developed than she’d been the year before and I couldn’t believe she wasn’t wearing a bra to cover those huge breasts. She just wore a camp T-shirt like the rest of us. It was blue, so you couldn’t really see through it, but the bumps on the front of her shirt moved around like crazy and there were two points I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

Our ‘field assignment’ was to gather soil and water samples from various parts of the camp and test them. I would provide the data on the test and Angela was to provide the analysis that would show what crops were appropriate for that particular soil and water combination. Angela pointed out areas where she thought certain things would grow best and cataloged the various plants that grew around while I was gathering soil samples. I spilled my test kit twice because she moved and my eye tracked straight to her points.

“What’s with you, Brain?” Somehow the nickname had transferred to camp. I guess it was just too easy to miss. “You shake like a leaf when you measure out the chemical test.”

“I… uh… Gosh, Angela. I keep getting distracted by your, uh… breasts. They’re like, right there in front of me and it doesn’t look like you are wearing any underwear.”

“I hate clothes and underwear, especially,” she declared. “When I’m eighteen I’m going to become a naturist.”

“What’s that?”

“Some people call them nudists. They never wear clothes. Mom and I don’t wear clothes at home. They are so ridiculous. She says I have to wear underwear to school, though, or all the boys will hit on me. Are you hitting on me, Brain?”

“Angela, I’d never hit you. You’re just… distracting. That’s all.”

“Not hit me. Hit on me. It means you are trying to get in my panties. Except I’m not wearing any,” she laughed.

“But you already showed me what was in your panties last year. Really. It’s just seeing you like this makes me antsy and…”

“Hard?” Damn it! What a question to ask. I was doubled almost in half trying to hide the fact that my traitorous cock was tenting my shorts.

“Um… yeah.”

“I want to see. I’ll let you see mine. It’s different than last year. I got hair. And Bloody Mary comes to visit every month. You should be glad you don’t have to put up with that! Come on. No one’s around. Let’s see.” With that she pulled her T-shirt up over her breasts and pushed her shorts down to her ankles. There was no underwear.

When I’d seen Jessica a couple years ago while we played doctor, her breasts were just little swollen bumps on her chest and I’d pretended to listen to her heart by pushing my fingers down on them. They’d grown, but I hadn’t seen them uncovered again like Angela’s were in front of me. And she was right. There was hair growing between her legs. I had a little hair around the base of my cock, but it was mostly just below my waistband. Hers seemed to go right down between her legs.

“Come on! Let me see yours,” she panted. I pulled my shorts and jockeys down and my cock stuck straight out. “So cool,” she said. “Now I see how a guy can push it inside a girl to fertilize her. When I saw it last summer, I kept trying to figure out if I had to, like, suck it in. Now you could push it in. Does it spurt?”

“Huh?”

“When you rub it does stuff spurt out the end.”

“I… um… never…”

“Try. Look.” She reached between her legs and spread the hair apart. I just saw the little crack there last summer. The way she was sitting and holding herself, I could see a wet pink opening. My cock ached. “This is where the cock goes when it’s time to fertilize the egg,” she said, pointing at the opening. “But this is the part that is cool,” she continued, pointing at a bump above the opening. “This is the pleasure button. It has some Latin name like Clittus or something. When I rub it, it feels really good, but nothing comes out of it. Mom said that when a male gets excited, stuff comes pumping out of his penis. Are you excited?”

Hell yes. What was I supposed to say? Everything was feeling tingly. It used to be that it just made me antsy and then I could feel the stiffness starting. But now, I was flushed and my heart was beating fast. I figured I must be scared someone would catch us. I tentatively rubbed at my penis while I watched her rubbing her pleasure button. In a minute, all I could see was that little opening that was designed for a penis to fit inside. I know this is strange, but even after the show and tell last summer, the only place I could imagine fitting into was a girl’s navel. I didn’t realize there was a hole there just waiting. It was all wet and I wondered if she peed herself, but she was leaning back with her eyes half closed and rubbing her pleasure button like crazy. When I rubbed my penis up and down it felt really good and I just fell into what was happening like falling into a deep pit and feeling like there was no bottom and all of a sudden stuff was shooting out the end of my penis.

I thought I’d peed at her.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to pee.”

“So cool!” she said. “That wasn’t pee. Look, it’s white. You shot your stuff that could make a girl pregnant. Oh boy! I had a little jolt, too.” She sat back and breathed deeply, her rich brown nipples rising and falling. I couldn’t figure out where to look. The big breasts or the little hole. “Next summer when I’m on the pill, we can try putting it in me and we’ll feel what it’s really like. We better put our clothes on and go back to the lab with our samples.”

I pulled up my pants and watched till the last moment as Angela’s vagina and breasts disappeared beneath her shorts and T-shirt. When we got back to the lab, we discovered we were one sample short and we had to run back out and quickly grab a sample of muck from beside the beaver dam.

I found out that night that I didn’t have to be actually looking at her to make the white stuff spurt. It was enough just to think about it and rub vigorously.

When I got home from science camp, the first thing my parents did was introduce me to Cary. Cary was a guy my mom worked with in the circulation department at the local newspaper. She was all happy that he came over for dinner the night I got back. All I wanted to do was talk about science camp and here we had a guest who obviously wasn’t interested in science.

“So, what do you think, Brian? Would you like to be a paper carrier?” What? I think I missed the whole conversation. Be a what?

“Huh?”

“The route for this neighborhood is open. Your mom thought you’d like the opportunity to earn some spending money.” Money. Chemistry stuff. Why didn’t he say so in the first place?

“Sure. I’d love to.”

“I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at five-thirty to show you the route. I’ll work with you for two days and you should know where the papers go. Then on Saturday, I’ll go with you to collect and make sure your book is up-to-date. From there on, it’s all yours.”

“Wow!”

Wait. Five-thirty? In the morning? Sure enough, Mom was pounding on my door at five and I was dressed just in time to meet Cary at the door.

“Breakfast when you get home,” Mom said as she shoved me out the door.

“We’ll use my car today, but when we get back, I want to look at your bike and make sure it’s ready for the road. Then tomorrow we’ll do the route on our bikes,” Cary said as we pulled out. “Roll each newspaper and snap a rubber band around it. I’ll point out the houses and you can run to the door.”

“Don’t we just put them in the box?” That’s how our paper always came. But we were at the end of the rural delivery route. Everything south of us was on to-the-door delivery. Crap! This is going to be a lot more work than I thought.

We finished the route in an hour and came back to look at my bike. Cary was pretty good about it and made sure the tires didn’t leak and had the right amount of air in them. He checked my brakes and the fit of my seat. He raised it an inch. It had been at the same place since I got the bike when I was eight. Hey! I was growing!

“Okay, tomorrow morning on bikes. That means we’ll have to band and bag the papers before we leave, so I’ll be waiting with the bundle at your door at five-fifteen.” He left. Earlier? I went in the house and Mom gave me a bowl of cereal and a grapefruit. I was dead. As soon as she left for work, I went back to bed.

That was short-lived. Betts was in charge. When she got up at eight, I had to get up. She said so. I still hadn’t gone to see my friends since camp, but she had a list of chores a mile long that I had to do. She was still pissed that I got to go to camp for four weeks and she only got to go to horse camp for two. Then she said she had to work with Rika so she’d be ready to show at the fair. I had to muck out the stalls. I was pretty sure it was her horses that pooped in them.

She never fixed lunch, so I grabbed a peanut butter and bologna sandwich and slipped out through the woods to go to Geoff’s. Mostly we just went out to the woods and hung out. Geoff was in my class and John was a year younger and surprisingly they always thought I was cool because I took them up to play with my HO gauge train in the attic sometimes. We were in the woods and kind of playing together, but it amounted to a lot of pretend that we were sailing around the world and just making up a story in our heads. But at least we were doing something besides chores.

The next morning, Mom still called me at five and told me to hurry because the paper bundle had already arrived. I threw on my clothes and dragged the bundle of newspapers inside to start rolling them and snapping rubber bands around them. Cary got there about ten minutes later and helped roll the last couple dozen. Then he showed me how to stack them neatly in my bag so I could grab them with the least difficulty. By five-forty-five we were off down the long gravel driveway and up Mosquito Road. It took more than an hour.

“All right, you’ve got to work on your speed or start earlier,” Cary said when we got back. “That last paper was delivered at seven o’clock. Our promise is that all papers will be delivered by six-thirty. I’ll give you this week and handle any complaints at the office, but next Monday everything is for real. You get a complaint; points get taken away. You earn points by having your collection book up-to-date every week, selling new subscriptions, and having customers call to compliment you. Every customer complaint takes a point away. Points earn you credits toward cool stuff we give away at the carrier meetings each month and you get scrip that you can actually spend at certain businesses in town. It’s an incentive to do your best every day. There are even trips to baseball games and a dude ranch that you can earn. You are going to be very successful if you work hard.” Then Cary was gone and Mom shoved toast and peanut butter at me and left for work.

It was only seven-fifteen, so I grabbed my sleeping bag from my room and headed for the barn. I slept until ten and then went in the house to eat a real breakfast. Wheaties, the breakfast of champions. Betts was already out on Rika, so I slipped back to the woods to spend the day alone. There was plenty of bologna, so I just took a couple sandwiches and my canteen with me and stayed out until I figured Mom and Dad were home from work.

There were only two more weeks till school started and one was the county fair, so at least the mornings I couldn’t avoid Betts were limited. At the fair I rode Silk in barrel races, pole turning, and rescue. And, of course, the required Western Pleasure class. All 4-H’ers with horses had to participate in that. When school started, Betts had to get up before I got back from delivering papers and Dad made sure she went out to do her chores first thing. The high school bus came an hour earlier than the elementary school bus, so I still had time to take a shower after she left and make my bus. It was going to be hell next year when we were both catching a bus at seven. Oh well.

Sixth grade was okay. Yeah. That’s it. I had two more new oxford shirts and Whitney got one loop the first day of school. I thought I’d grown some, but Whitney was even taller. I waited a couple weeks to wear my other new shirt. I wanted to know who was going to be hanging around. I wasn’t sure. Mom hadn’t noticed that I didn’t wear the other new shirt yet.

Rhiannon kind of grew up over the summer. Or out. All of a sudden, my buddy Doug had a girl hanging on him that he didn’t try very hard to shake. Liz was really hard to read and a little aloof unless she got to pick out an outfit for me to wear to school. All five girls got a kick out of that. The big deal was the way Carl’s and Brenda’s relationship ended. I mean, ka-BOOM!

It was Carl’s fault. Whitney told me so. It was always the guy’s fault. Especially since he bragged in gym class that he’d gotten to second base with Brenda. She found out. She used the lunchroom to make sure everyone knew they were through.

“You aren’t welcome at this table anymore,” she yelled at Carl. “You’re not my boyfriend.” Carl got up and took his tray to a different table, but Brenda wasn’t through. “And don’t you ever touch my bra straps again!” If there was ever a comment meant to scare every girl in the cafeteria away from him, that was it. I had to hand it to Carl, though. He was calm.

“No problem, babe,” he called back at her. “Thanks for being so willing.”

Oh, crap! My number one bodyguard and the leader of the girl-posse just destroyed each other in the cafeteria. This was not good.

Brenda pushed her way between Samantha and me and buried her face on my shoulder and cried. Samantha was my left-hand girl of the day. She and Liz and Rhiannon were rotating on that side with Whitney on my right. Rhiannon never really looked at me when she sat there because Doug sat at that end and she was focused on him. She usually made sure she had her leg plastered right up tight against mine, though. I had no idea what to do, so I just sat there with a girl crying on my shoulder and patted her back.

“Why did he have to tell everyone?” she whined. “Now they all think I’m a whore. And I didn’t… I didn’t. I’m never going to go out with a boy again!” Oh, Carl! All the boys in school just started hating you. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Brian?” she asked.

“Um… no.” Right answer. Whitney and Brenda sandwiched me so tightly I gave up trying to eat my lunch and just put an arm around each of them. I remembered what Jessica told me, though. Having your arm around a girl is nothing. It’s not near as intimate as holding hands.

I got the whole story from Carl’s side later on. He felt miserable—not only for telling guys he got to second base with her, but for what he said in the lunchroom. “She didn’t have to say that to me,” he whined on the bus. “I was proud of being with her. I wanted everyone to know. I guess it’s okay if she talks about it, but not if I do.” All I could do was nod my head. I sure wasn’t going to say anything about what I’d ever done. I’d figured out unwritten rule number one. Never talk about what you and a girl did together. Whew!

The rest of sixth grade was mostly okay. I was really tired most of the time and often put my head down after I crammed my lunch. I’d sleep until one of the girls woke me up and said it was time for class. Something changed there, too. No one took the fairy loop from my second oxford shirt. It was pale blue, unlike the navy blue shirt Whitney first got or the tan one she got the first day we were back in school. Rhiannon got a yellow one last year. When I wore the new shirt, I kept expecting one of them to attack me and take it, but they just left it there. I guess the game was over. Still, I liked being surrounded by them at lunch and we sat in a cluster in class. Carl and Doug were in our cluster, too, but Doug was always beside Rhiannon and Carl sat as far away from Brenda as possible. Man. How awkward.

In sixth grade we passed classes but we stayed with the same group. When the bell rang, we had four minutes to all go from one class to the next, passing the kids from the other sixth grade classes as they switched to their next class. Six periods and study hall back in our home room. I knew we were considered to be the ‘smart class’ though I wasn’t sure how some of the guys got in there. It was a little cliquish, but I didn’t see any difference.

Oh. And Miss Sullivan. I fell in love with my English teacher. We had three periods, lunch, and two periods, then a fifteen-minute stretch recess, then two more periods, ending with study hall. Fifth period was English and I missed going out for recess most days after it. I wrote stories and poetry during recess. I had it bad. One night I dreamed she’d taken my fairy loop. That caused the posse to tease me something terrible. Never should have told them!

“Did you get to first base with Miss Sullivan today?” Whitney whispered when we got to our boring sixth period social studies class.

“Shh. Don’t be stupid,” I answered. “She’s a teacher.”

“Bet you’d like to kiss her though, wouldn’t you?” Brenda whispered from the other side.

“Poor Brian,” Samantha giggled. “In love and never been kissed.” I wasn’t about to tell her otherwise. I was still remembering what Brenda did to Carl. If Jessica did that to me, I’d never leave my room again. I couldn’t show my face to the world.

Not that I saw Jessica that much. She was in eighth grade and rode the high school bus. You’d think we lived in different worlds. Well, I guess we did. Sometimes I saw her waiting for the bus when I finished my paper route if I was running late. But she was always with Drew and Betts, the siblings from hell. We’d smile and wave but never said anything.

Sometimes I just thought up conversations I’d have with her and kiss her in my imagination.

4
Never Let a Dog Bite Twice

MY FIRST YEAR as a paper carrier, I won the carrier of the month award for January. I was the only carrier who didn’t get a complaint that month. We’d had a heavy snowfall and getting through it on my three-and-a-half-mile route was a pain. I abandoned my bike the morning the first big snow fell. There was no way I was going to pedal through this. I started walking and just kept trudging through the snow until I was back home. I was crying and had ice on my cheeks, but I finished the route. After school, I was surprised to find Mom home already. She took me to Shoppers’ Fair and got me a new parka and a ski mask, then we went to Sears and I got a genuine pair of Sorel boots. Just putting my feet in those things made them warm. I thanked Mom over and over, and in the morning, set out on my paper route with enough layers of clothing to stay warm.

I also kept earning the ‘scrip’ Cary talked about when he hired me. Each point was worth a dime in scrip. I got ten points every week by taking my collections into the office on Saturday afternoon. The paper was a six day a week paper. I was glad I didn’t have to deliver papers on Sunday like the City Trib carriers did. I collected seventy-five cents a week from my customers which was fifteen cents less than they’d pay at the newsstand. I got to keep twenty-five cents out of that. It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I had a customer that wasn’t home, but I trusted to pay me, I could pull his receipt and put fifty cents into the kitty from my earnings. The customer would always make it up the next week. As a result, my receipt book was always current and paid in full every Saturday afternoon. I got my ten points.

I also got a hundred points for a new subscriber. I found out I could sell subscriptions pretty well, and only about a quarter of the houses along my route were current subscribers. The combination of new subscribers, customer compliments, and clean receipt books meant that I was acquiring scrip rapidly. Johnson’s Railroad and Hobby was one of the stores that took newspaper scrip. In the past, I’d spent a lot of allowance getting my HO gauge train set up. But now that I was earning money, I had my eye on the microscope they had. I couldn’t use scrip to order chemicals at Edmund’s but I could get other scientific stuff.

I was getting close to the amount I’d need for that microscope and was on an almighty sales binge. I figured by the time school was out I would have contacted everyone who lived along my route and tried to get them to subscribe. Each week I was given five extra copies of the paper. They were for emergencies and promotion. I’d had a couple emergencies. Dropped a paper in a mud puddle and couldn’t deliver it—that sort of thing. But the only time I ever used one for promotion was sometimes I’d see Mr. Henderson out early in the morning on my way home and I’d ask him if he’d like a paper. It always made him smile and nod. He was really old and I think some of the other kids in the area didn’t treat him very nice. The first time I asked him, I think he thought I’d throw the paper at him. After that, though, we got along fine.

On Saturday morning when I did my collections, I started visiting new houses.

“Ma’am, I’d like to offer you a free week of home delivery of the News. I’d like you to see what fine service you get from me, receiving your newspaper here on your doorstep by six-thirty every morning. At the end of that week, I think you’ll want to continue this service at the regular rate of just seventy-five cents a week. That’s fifteen cents off the newsstand price.” I got four people to try the newspaper that week and the next Saturday three of them subscribed. Cary was impressed when I increased my order.

I kept increasing it every week. By May, I was leading all the other carriers in new subscribers and was in the running for carrier of the month again. More importantly, I had almost enough scrip and cash saved to buy that microscope.

I was riding my bike home after finishing my collections on Saturday and before I could even react, Drew and the Kowalskis came screaming past me and stiff-armed me. I went sailing right off the bike and into the roadside ditch. The bike landed partly on top and partly under me. About six inches of water was draining through the ditch. I couldn’t help it; I started crying. Damn those damn bastards. Damn them. Damn them!

I heard their tires skid on the gravel road and they spun back to look at me in the ditch.

“Aw. Poor Brian. He fell off his bike. Do you need training wheels, little Brian?” Drew taunted me.

“Damn you!” I yelled. It was all I could say. I hurt. My foot was caught in the chain of the bike.

“Look, it’s Cryin’ Brian,” a Kowalski said. I realized I didn’t even know their first names. Damn them.

“Hey guys. There’s money all over the road,” the other one said. Their attention left me still struggling and screaming in the ditch as they started picking up coins.

“That’s mine!” I screamed. “That’s my newspaper money. Stop it.”

“Finders keepers,” Drew yelled back.

“Losers weepers,” chorused the other two.

“You boys! Stop that. I’ll call the sheriff,” I heard old Mr. Henderson call from his porch. Drew made some rude noise and the three took off. By the time I managed to crawl out of the ditch, Mr. Henderson toddled out to the road. He had to be a hundred and was hard of hearing. I hoped he called the sheriff, but then I realized Mr. Henderson didn’t have a phone. I found my money pouch. Most of the coins had scattered and been retrieved by the thieves. The folding money was still in the pouch. I was still out several dollars. My receipt book was a mess, having landed on top of me in the water. I found a few more coins the guys hadn’t seen and then pushed my bike home, sniffling and waving Mr. Henderson away.

I threw my bike down at the back door and stomped into the house. Mom looked up from the kitchen sink and saw the state I was in. I was twelve years old. I shouldn’t be crying like this. I just wanted to run into the bathroom and wash.

Apparently, Mom thought the same thing and she made me take off my muddy shoes and clothes before sending me to the bathroom. When I shut the shower off, Mom called through the door.

“Do you have any cuts or scrapes that need to be tended to?”

“One. It’s on my elbow.” I put on my underwear and opened the bathroom door. Mom looked at my skinned elbow and got a pair of tweezers to pick out a couple of bits of gravel. Then she put Merthiolate on it and I danced around ouching and trying to blow on it.

“Get dressed and come to the kitchen,” Mom said. When she sounded like that, I knew there was no sense arguing. I was going to get grilled and then Mom would go see the Barnes and Kowalskis and then I’d get called a cry-baby and tattletale in school and they’d have to get even with me. I went to the kitchen and Mom handed me a cookie and a glass of milk. Cookie? I hadn’t even had lunch yet. This was serious.

“So, what happened?”

“I… uh… fell off my bike.”

“Just fell?”

“Um… a dog chased me.” I just lied to my mother. I just lied. I started crying again.

“What dog.”

“That big boxer up by Abrams.” I was in it now. I couldn’t unlie.

“I see. What else?” She wouldn’t let it be and I was leaking tears again.

“I lost some of my collection money and I ruined my bike.” I kept crying. It didn’t make any difference now. I lost most of what I earned and I’d have to give up my paper route. It was all just a waste. It was going to take up all my savings to make up what I lost from the collection and fix my bike.

It didn’t quite. We counted out my collections and I was twenty-two dollars short. I had to make up five dollars from my savings to pay for my papers, but that meant I didn’t earn anything this week either. Worst of all, I’d have to guard myself all the time. I couldn’t very well ask Carl or Doug to ride with me every Saturday.

On the other hand, Mom said she’d get my bike fixed. Only problem was that it would take until Tuesday which mean that I’d have to walk my route for two days. I did it in the winter. At least I didn’t have to worry about Drew or the Kowalskis getting up that early to attack me.

I got docked ten points for having a messy receipt book. Hell! It fell in the ditch with me! Mom had carefully wiped and ironed every page, but there were mud splatters all over some of the pages. Cary gave me new pages for the book and watched as I matched the number of receipts and dates on each page with the page I was throwing away. At least when I was done, I had a pristine receipt book again, but I just missed being carrier of the month. One of the guys with a subdivision route had really got wound up when he found out I was selling more subscriptions than he was.

Monday morning Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table when I got up at four-thirty. After I got my alarm clock, they never bothered me in the morning. I’d sometimes see Dad leave for work about the time I got back from my route. I pulled my bundle of papers onto the table and started rolling them and stuffing them in my bag. A disadvantage of getting so many new customers was that my bag was a lot heavier and was going to be a pain to carry without the bike. Dad casually grabbed a paper and after looking at the headlines, rolled it and snapped a rubber band around it.

“It seems that dogs are getting to be a problem around here,” Dad said. “Nobody keeps them in their yards and some of them are looking vicious. You know that black and tan mongrel that was up at Mosquito and Grover Boulevard? Saw it lying by the road yesterday on the way home. Must have chased a car and got caught under the bumper.”

“Wow. He wasn’t even a mean dog. He just barked a lot,” I said.

“Well, we want you to be safe from… dogs,” Mom said. My eyes got big as she pushed a squirt gun across the table to me. It was pretty good size and I could tell it had a powerful pump. What good was a squirt gun going to do? “This is filled with ammonia, so don’t spill it on yourself.”

“But, if a… dog… should attack you again, shoot this in his face,” Dad said. It was like they were using ‘dog’ as a secret code word and I was pretty sure they knew it wasn’t a dog that pushed me off my bike. “It’s not a toy and you don’t start anything with it, Brian. But if you get attacked again, squirt it in his face. He’ll wish he’d never come close to you.”

Of course, I wasn’t bothered by a dog of any kind all week. I was almost hoping I would be just so I could try it out, but nothing happened.

By the middle of June, I had enough saved to get my microscope. I was psyched! I started putting anything I could find on a slide and examining it, including my dwindling supply of chemicals. Okay, this is gross, but I examined my own pee and discovered it looked more like my ammonia sample from my squirt gun than it did plain water. Cool! I had an unending supply of ammonia. If I hit a ‘dog’ with that, he’d really get the message. I put some of the other stuff I shot out of my penis on the slide, too. Wow! I really needed to talk to Angela about this.

I was invited to the year-end party at Brenda’s again along with the whole posse. Brenda and Carl had quit feuding and even though they weren’t ‘going together’ they were talking to each other and Carl had been invited back to our table. During the first week of June, though, Cassie Clinton started joining us at our table. I’d grown another inch and was now four and a half feet tall. It looked to me like I was as tall as Cassie. She’d started as little as me and then in fifth grade put on a growth spurt that put her ahead of me. It looked like we were even again. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“Look! Brian is as tall as Cassie again,” Brenda announced. “Come on you two. Stand up back-to-back. Let’s see who wins.” Reluctantly Cassie and I stood back-to-back. I started getting that antsy feeling when she pressed her back against mine so we were standing straight. I’d learned to recognize it as the precursor to getting hard. Oh please! Not right now! Brenda put a book across our heads. “I knew it! The same. I think we have a new couple.”

I sat down next to Whitney like usual to try to hide my stiffie under the table. Brenda pushed Cassie onto the seat next to me and then made sure we were packed in tight by sliding in on the end of the bench next to her. Wait! Couple?

I felt a tug at the back of my shirt. Whitney had her hand back there and I realized she was holding my fairy loop. Brenda handed Cassie a pair of scissors and pointed her at me. She looked terrified. We were friends as much as I was friends with most of the people in our homeroom. But it wasn’t like we buddied around with each other. At least not until this week. I had a feeling Brenda was organizing everyone’s life again.

Cassie looked at me with her eyebrows up and questions just written all over her face. She glanced down at the scissors. I really felt sorry for her. I was pretty used to the girls making all my decisions for me and letting them dress me up. It didn’t seem like Whitney was upset as she was holding the loop waiting. I mean, Whitney and I weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. She was just my special buddy at lunch. Besides she was already ten inches taller than me and still growing. I smiled at Cassie and shrugged my shoulders a little to let her know it was okay. I turned a little toward Whitney so Cassie could reach my back. I felt the fabric let go as I heard the snip-snip and Cassie held up a pale blue fairy loop. Finally, I was able to eat my lunch, but we were packed in so tight now that Cassie’s bare arm kept brushing against my elbow and it made me shiver a little. I think it was accidental.

There was a new arrival in my bedroom, too. A book and a box of tissues. The book was titled Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers. It hit me all at once. Oh crap! My mom knows! What did I expect? She did the laundry. I shoved the book under my pillow to read later. At least it was hidden. I was so stupid. No one would call me ‘Brain’ after this. Then again, I wasn’t about to tell anyone.

I would have read the book that night, but it was already after eight-thirty and I had to be up at four-thirty. I started reading when I got home from my paper route and almost missed my bus. Holy cow! Combined with what I’d learned from Angela and Jessica, I was beginning to understand the whole sex thing. I thought about the book all day long at school. I carried my school bag in front of me whenever I wasn’t sitting down. That got noticed. Whitney asked me if I was okay because it looked like I had a stomachache.

That night, as I kept reading, I noticed that some pages were sticky. Pages I hadn’t got to yet. Yuck! Mom gave me some other guy’s book and his stuff was on the page. Well, that was enough for tonight. I’d hardly stopped for dinner, telling everybody I had homework. Then I turned my light back on and finished the book. I found a good use for the tissues.

Mom made bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning while I was in the shower after delivering papers. That was a surprise. Dad had already left for work and Betts’ bus had already gone. I shoveled the bacon into my mouth, moaning in pleasure. There’s nothin’ like bacon.

“Brian, please don’t be embarrassed by this, but your dad and I want you to know that if you have any questions about what you are reading, you can ask them. We won’t be judgmental and we’ll try to answer the questions as you pose them in a scientific manner that you can understand. Okay?”

“Um… sure, Mom.” Like I’m going to ask either my mom or dad what if feels like when a penis enters a vagina. Right. There was one thing, though. “Mom, this isn’t about what’s in the book exactly. I can understand it pretty well. But did you have to give me a used book? It’s a little gross.”

“Oh!” Mom really looked startled. “It never crossed my mind. Oh dear. It just didn’t seem to make sense to buy another copy. I’ll get a new one at the bookstore. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I finished it. No sense in buying one now.”

At lunch, Brenda was talking about her party Saturday and how we only had one more day of class and then we were officially in Junior High.

“Brian, you know where Cassie lives, don’t you?”

“Uh… sure. Just down Rocky Range Road by that airport, don’t you Cassie? Sometimes I ride through the woods behind the airport.”

“Yes. My dad is all into aviation and stuff. He built his own plane and landing strip.”

“Cool.”

“So, you’re okay with picking Cassie up to come to the party Saturday?” Both of us sat up straight. The past few days I’d gotten to know Cassie a little better, but I never thought about her being invited to the party. I knew she hadn’t gone last year. I looked at her and this time it was her turn to shrug. I nodded.

“Sure. It’s on the way. I know Mom won’t mind making the extra stop.”

“Good, and don’t forget to bring your swimming suits. The community built a pool this year and it’s opening Saturday.” All three guys groaned. I just knew we were thinking the same thing. With all the hot girls in our class in swimsuits, we were all going to be sitting down with towels on our laps all afternoon.

I glanced at Carl and Doug. Something clicked. Crap! The book wasn’t one of theirs. Mom didn’t want to “buy another copy.” It hadn’t belonged to another guy. It was my sister’s! Oh yuck! Crap! That thought will make a boner go away.

5
Not Really a Date

I DID MY COLLECTIONS as quickly and as early as I could on Saturday and we were in and out of the circulation office by one. I’d already packed my suit and a towel in my gym bag and we headed straight for Cassie’s house. Mom pulled up and I waited for Cassie to come out.

That was a preview of Guardian Angel. To read the rest purchase the book.

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