Chapter 1

Finding the men’s room in the Maple Hills Shopping Mall was no more than a puzzle. It was getting there, through the holiday shoppers who, like my mother and sister, still hadn’t finished their holiday shopping on December 23, 2003, that was the real challenge. The first time I passed the hallway that contained the men’s room, I found myself too far to the inside of the mass of humanity that was circling the mall like a road rally at a roundabout. Instead, I used the next circuit to gradually move to the outside, from which I was finally able to launch myself into the deceleration lane that led to my goal. I had apparently discovered the only place in the mall that was wholly devoid of life. I stepped up to the farthest left of the three urinals and was standing there, taking care of the business that had summoned me, when I heard the door bang open.

Etiquette required that I continue staring at the wall in front of me, although etiquette also required that this new visitor use the right-hand urinal rather than the one in the center. Apparently he hadn’t heard that. I could sense him stepping up next to me, leaving us separated only by the shoulder-to-knee metal divider.

“Ho-ho-ho,” I heard a chuckle, “so what are you wishing for this Christmas, young man?”

I glanced over. He was obviously the mall’s Santa, on a break from posing for pictures with tiny tots with their eyes all aglow.

“Santa,” I acknowledged him with a grin as I returned my eyes to the front. I had no idea his red suit had a zipper in the front.

“Well?” his booming voice reverberated inside the tiled room. “There must be something you want!”

“Can’t think of anything,” I was still grinning. Apparently the guy really enjoyed this role. Although probably they’d fire his ass if one of the customers caught him smoking in the men’s room and complaining about some little girl who’d just gotten a little too excited all over his nice suit. I finished up and walked over to the sinks to wash my hands.

“So you’ve got everything you want in life already?” he asked, still with the loud voice. “Everything’s perfect?”

“Well, no,” I said. “All right, you know what I’d like, Santa? Instead of just starting high school, what I’d really like is to be finishing it.”

That way, I thought to myself as I looked in the mirror and tried to smooth my hair over to the side a little, I could avoid all the assholes, the bullies, the jocks, the bitches, the sniping, the teasing, the gossiping, the backstabbing - instead of three and half more years of this crap, I’d be just about finished.

John Marshall High School was not my idea of a good time. There was a core of jocks (male and female), cheerleaders, and the generally cool; orbiting planets for band members, newspaper and yearbook types, comics, theatre freaks, and druggies, who were at least connected; and then there were people like me, whose orbits occasionally brought them uncomfortably close to the solar system but who generally preferred to stay out among the asteroid fields. I was currently on one of my forays to the center, where I seemed to have been appointed the target-of-the-month by the freshman and sophomore football players and their tart-tongued girlfriends. The juniors and seniors, thank God, thought me so far beneath them as to not even be worthy of attention.

It didn’t help, actually, having an older brother who was one of those seniors, bound for Auburn University next year on a football scholarship. The gym coach was constantly expecting me to show even a fraction of my brother’s athletic ability; the teachers were constantly expecting me to be as much a goof-off as he was; and the girls, even in my own grade, were constantly comparing his six-foot-two, 220-pound frame to mine. At five-foot-seven and 140 pounds, I was constantly disappointing them.

“That’s a pretty tall order, young man,” Santa laughed as he joined me at the sinks. “So basically you just want to skip all this annoying adolescence and go straight on into adulthood, huh?”

Was Santa Claus mocking me? I looked at him in the mirror, but he still wore the same jolly expression, even on his break.

“I was more mature at six than most of the guys in my high school will be when they’re thirty-six,” I said.

“Maybe so,” he laughed again as I dried my hands and pulled open the door. “Have a Merry Christmas, young man!”

“Yeah, you too,” I mumbled as I let the door close behind me.

I made my way back to where I was supposed to meet Mom and Jeanne, noticing along the way that Santa Claus was already back at his station, making yet another kid smile as he bounced her on his knee. Probably knew some sort of mall shortcut.

My pissy mood evaporated as soon as I saw them standing there, two women for whom the Christmas season seemed to have been designed. They were comparing what they bought, Mom a present for a new family at our church with a newborn baby, and Jeanne a couple of presents for two new girls in her circle of friends in the eighth grade.

“All set, Patrick?” Mom asked. “Sure you don’t want to get anything while we’re here? You have presents for everybody?”

“I think so,” I said, pretending to go over the list again. “Dad,” - that would be a set of offset screwdrivers - “you,” - a bathrobe I’d actually picked out last summer - “Dave,” - a copy of the new Madden Football game - “and Jill” - a pair of earrings for my fashion-conscious seventh-grade sister. “All done.”

“Jerk,” Jeanne smiled at me.

“Oh, and Jeanne,” I said. “I must have gotten a present for Jeanne. Still, too late now, huh?”

“Jerk,” Jeanne smiled again.

I’d spent the most time picking that one out, a sweater that perfectly complemented her green eyes. I would tell her that, two mornings from now, and she would ask how anything could complement eyes hidden behind glasses as thick as hers, and I’d kid her that her boyfriends would notice, and she’d ask which boyfriend, the older college-age one or the younger high school one. Then we’d both laugh. Neither Jeanne nor I were ever going to be among the school’s beautiful people. Unlike Dave, for instance, the jock of jocks, who seemed to have a different girl every week, or Jill, who was already revelling in the attention she was attracting from high school guys, to the point where she wouldn’t even consider dating an eighth-grader, let alone a guy from her own grade.

Jeanne and I were different.

Jeanne would start dating when she found a boy smart enough to look beneath the shy exterior. And maybe when she got a different pair of glasses; it wasn’t so much that they were thick as that the frame did nothing to hide that fact. And, in truth, she could use a little bit more developing, just like I could. Just like I got compared to Dave, she got compared to Jill, about an inch and a cup size to Jeanne’s detriment. She was constantly getting teased about her “little” sister, and the stuff I heard when she wasn’t around was even cattier. But I loved my sister, and I knew that, even if she kept the same glasses and the same bust, someday she’d find a guy who thought as highly of her as I did.

I would start dating when I found a girl like Jeanne.

“So what are you doing tonight?” Jeanne turned around from the front seat of Mom’s car to ask me.

“Why?” I narrowed my eyes.

“Cammie’s coming over,” she shrugged. “I just thought-”

“I’m busy,” I said.

“Oh, stop it,” she laughed. “Cammie’s nice.”

I held up my hands.

“I never said she wasn’t,” I protested. “But I don’t know, chubby little metal-mouth Cammie Rowe and me? Can you see that?”

“I think you two would be a very cute couple,” Mom piped in from her seat.

“Don’t you have driving to do?” I pointed ahead for her. “Stop signs, lights, all that?”

“She’s not chubby any more,” Jeanne protested. “And she gets her braces off next summer.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But she seems so, I dunno, desperate.”

“She likes you,” Jeanne objected. “God knows why!”

“So what are you doing tonight?” I asked her after a suitable pause.

Jeanne smiled. I couldn’t fool her.

“We’re gonna listen to some tunes and then walk around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights,” she said. “You wanna join us?”

“Wouldn’t that make either you or me the third wheel?” I asked.

“Yeah, one of us,” she admitted with a smile. “But you know how much I like helping you out.”

“Helping me out?” I raised my eyebrows. “You mean helping Cammie out.”

“Next fall, Cammie’s gonna have to beat the guys off with a stick,” Jeanne pointed out. “She doesn’t need my help.”

It was true. I left them alone for the music portion of the evening, but allowed myself to be coaxed outside for the walk. Once there, Cammie’s gloved hand had shyly made its way into mine as we strolled beside Jeanne and listened to her commentary on which of our neighbors had committed serious Christmas decorating errors and which had gotten it right.

When we were back in the house, after Cammie had discarded the scarf and wool hat she’d been wearing, I was struck by the suddenly clear vision of how pretty she was, in fact, going to be next year. If I waited until next fall, I’d never even be able to get close enough to get hit with that stick.

So later that evening, while Jeanne was making hot chocolate for the three of us in the kitchen, I sat with next to her on the couch and made inane small talk. What was I doing for Christmas? Nothing special. What was she doing for Christmas? She was leaving tomorrow with her family for Rhode Island, where her grandparents lived.

Finally, as I heard Jeanne unplug the electric teapot to pour the water into the mugs, I tentatively leaned in for my first kiss.

“Finally,” Cammie agreed in a whisper as she pressed her mouth against mine, her soft lips self-consciously pressing out to make sure that I couldn’t feel her braces with my own lips.

“Chocolate’s done,” Jeanne announced from the kitchen, giving us a full five seconds to disengage before she bustled in with the three mugs.

“So?” she asked. “True love yet?”

I blushed, while Jeanne and Cammie burst into giggles.

Later that evening, while Jeanne made a big production of washing out the mugs in the kitchen and carefully drying them, Cammie and I shared two more kisses, and agreed that it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if we ran into each other when she returned from Michigan in the New Year.

“So, did you and Cammie have a nice time last night?” Mom asked innocently at breakfast.

“Yeah,” I grunted. “Sure.”

“And did you have a nice time with Cammie after she went home?” Jeanne whispered when Mom was out of earshot.

“What are you talking about?” I could feel myself blushing.

“Squeak, squeak, squeak,” she whispered.

I felt my cheeks burning as I tried to find something -anything- in my cereal bowl that was worthy of intensive study.

“Don’t worry,” Jeanne said, “she did it, too.”

I looked up in astonishment.

“How do you know?” I whispered.

“She called me last night,” Jeanne smiled.

I was finally able to close my mouth.

“And, um, she didn’t tell you that sort of, um, in confidence?” I asked.

“And, um, she asked me, um, to tell you,” Jeanne concluded with a big grin.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, one of Mom’s bugaboos. Dave helped by staying out of the way, while Jeanne and I, and to a lesser extent Jill, dusted the cabinets, vacuumed the floors, and cleaned the kitchen counters. When Santa Claus came to the Sterling house tonight, he was going to find it spotless.

My day got even a little bit better late in the afternoon when we got our report cards. At dinner that evening, our traditional Christmas Eve roast, Mom made a big deal about my across-the-board A-pluses. My father grunted his approval, but he was far more interested in re-running the film of the state championship football game two weekends ago that Marshall had come within a field goal of winning thanks to my brother’s 300 yards passing. While he and Dave did so, the rest of us would be spending Christmas Eve decorating the tree, and then attending the 10:00 service at the church.

“I don’t know,” Mom teased me by cupping her hand to her ear after Dad and Dave left the dinner table. “I think I hear UVA calling.”

“Mom,” I reddened.

My Uncle Ted, married to Mom’s sister Helen, was a tenured professor of history at the University of Virginia, and he described it in such glowing terms that even though it couldn’t possibly all be true, I’d never lost my dream of going there one day. And Mom was right, these grades wouldn’t hurt. The odd part was that I hadn’t given a lot of conscious thought to them last semester. Instead, once my teachers had gotten past the me-as-Dave’s-brother thing, they’d turned out to be a pretty good bunch. My English teacher in particular, Mrs. Palmer, was amazing. She had led these discussions of Charles Dickens that even had some of the druggies participating. So to the extent I got good grades, it was because I’d actually enjoyed doing the work.

“Calling all geeks, calling all geeks,” Jill interrupted my reverie. I stuck my tongue out at her. She was capable of being a good student herself, and she’d actually done well last semester: three B’s, an A-minus, and an A. Jeanne had just missed straight A’s with a single B-plus. Dave? Well, it was a good thing it was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one. Still, he wasn’t in any danger of not being able to play when he got there.

I went to bed that evening just before midnight, with the lights of the tree still illuminating the stairs leading up from the living room. I just lay there for a while, my hands behind my head, thinking that maybe I’d been a little hasty the day before in the men’s room at the mall. I mean, if Cammie Rowe was going to be around, if the teachers were actually bringing this kind of work out of me, then high school might not be that bad.

I woke up at three, with a desperate need to visit the bathroom. I had no sooner gotten out of bed than I tripped on something lying on the floor. Swearing quietly, I pulled myself up and quietly walked down the hallway to the bathroom I shared with Dave. I sleepily drained my dick and washed my hands in the bathroom sink. Then, with just the barest of glances at my reflection in the mirror over the sink, I flipped off the light.

I flipped it right back on again and stared at the mirror. I had no idea who I was looking at.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It was me; those were my blue eyes, that was my sandy hair. But whose ripped pecs were those? Whose muscled arms were those? And, just as a matter of general information, whose six-foot-three inch body was that?

I stayed there for another five minutes, raising my arm to make sure that the mirror was reflecting properly, and then touching my face, my arms, and my chest to see if they would disappear. I was fully awake now, and I eventually forced myself back into the hallway, still lit with a faint glow from the tree downstairs. I flipped on the light in my room, hoping that somewhere inside was a clue to my startling transformation.

If there was, it certainly wasn’t going to be easy to find it. My room was a pigsty. What I had tripped on when I’d gotten up was a pile of clothes that easily topped the mattress on the bed. Other than that, I appeared to have gotten extremely lucky not to have tripped on the baseball between the bed and the door, not to mention the pens that littered the floor, lying among a set of notebooks.

I made my way over to my desk, uncluttered with anything that looked like schoolwork, and pulled out the chair. I sat down and looked around. There were clues everywhere now. It’s just that I had no idea what they meant. There were all sorts of newspaper clippings pasted to the mirror that hung above my desk. According to the headlines, the Marshall High School baseball team appeared to have had a phenomenal year.

On the shelf directly below the mirror was a picture of a Marshall High baseball team, with the two guys in front, who looked like Jim Perkins and Carl Wascinsky, holding up a large trophy. They were two sophomore jerks who were also on the football team, and who’d been among my tormenters this past week. I was in the picture as well, in my new body. I was standing in the back with an arrogant grin on my face, holding up a much smaller trophy.

That trophy, I suddenly realized, was also sitting on the shelf. A baseball player perched atop it, and according to the inscription on the plaque, it had been awarded to “Patrick Sterling, MVP - State AAA Tournament, 2006.”

I stared at it in disbelief. It was 2006? What had happened to 2004 and 2005? Had I been asleep? Well, no, apparently I’d been playing baseball. I fired up the computer sitting on the desk; fortunately it was the one thing in the room, along with the bed and the desk itself, that didn’t appear to have changed. I opened the internet browser, and discovered that my home page was now a pornography site. All of my bookmarks, in fact, were porno sites. I finally had to type in the URL for Google to get something that looked familiar.

From there, I found out that it was, in fact, 2006. George Bush was still President, we were still at war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden was still the world’s bête noire. Nothing new there. I “googled” myself, finding all of the articles in the local newspaper about the baseball team, among them articles that discussed the terrific recruiting war between Auburn and Alabama for my services, which appeared to include a 95 mile per hour fastball and a devastating changeup. And the Yankees and the Red Sox were interested as well, since baseball prospects could get drafted straight out of high school. Wow. No wonder I looked arrogant.

And then I found the brief article that broke my heart, dated June 26, 2005.

Sarah Anne Sterling, Community Activist

Sarah Anne Sterling died this past Tuesday of cancer at Mercy Hospital. She was 40. Mrs. Sterling was a noted community activist. Among her causes was the successful 1999 fight to establish what is now known as Lemmon’s Park, built on a site that the city had been touting for development as a chemical processing plant. She was a member of the Vestry of the St. James Episcopal Church, and had served as the Vestry’s Senior Warden in 2002-2003.

Survivors include her husband, Bob Sterling, and her children, David, Patrick, Jeanne, and Jill, all of Parker’s Falls.

I shut down the computer and cried myself to sleep. What in God’s name was going on?

Chapter 2

I opened my eyes very slowly, thinking -hoping- that perhaps I’d just had a very bad dream last night, a dream in which my mind, but not my body, had skipped three years of high school. Even with them half open, though, I knew that it had all been real. The room was just as messy as it had been when I’d stumbled over the pile of dirty clothing. The newspaper articles about my baseball prowess were still attached to the mirror above my desk. And, I knew deep inside, my mother was still dead.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, telling myself that it’s not like I could have done anything to help her. And I’m sure I said goodbye to her; somebody must have been operating this body for the last three years and he couldn’t possibly have been that big a jerk not to have said goodbye to Mom before she died. It just wasn’t me. I’d apparently gone through all of the stages of grieving already, and now I was going to have to do it again.

I looked over at the clock: 9:24. It was, I suddenly remembered, Christmas morning. I needed to at least show up. I found a relatively clean pair of jeans on the floor, and a nice-looking flannel shirt hanging in my closet that appeared to have never been worn. I pocketed the pile of stuff on my bedside table -a wallet, a pocketknife, a couple of quarters, and a set of keys- and with a last look in the mirror (so far, this body was the only good thing about this whole nightmare) I headed downstairs.

I paused at the doorway to the living room, comparing the scene to the one I had left the night before. The furniture was completely unchanged. Same couch, same chairs, same lamps, same rug. The only thing that had changed was one of the pictures on the far wall. Mom had hung a painting of the church we attended, a 150-year-old building nestled among the oaks and maples that deserved the description it was always given - quaint. The new picture was a photograph; from my vantage in the doorway it appeared to be two people on a beach.

The Christmas tree was in the same place as always, although it didn’t seem as “happy” as it usually did. It took me a minute to figure out why; no tinsel. Mom was always a big tinsel person, and I’d spent last night gleefully, but tastefully, helping her put it on the tree.

The three - three? - girls sitting around the living room didn’t look all that happy either. The closest to me was Jeanne, sitting on the couch in a pair of jeans and a sweater as she neatly sliced the tape on the back of a wrapped present with a thumbnail. I smiled as I recognized the sweater I’d bought for her, the one I’d intended to give her this morning. Back when this morning was still in 2003. I choked up a little, thinking that I’d never now know whether I had told her how well I thought it was going to go with her eyes.

It was a little tighter than I thought it would be, meaning that I’d screwed up the size, or, more likely, that she’d finally undergone that growth spurt she’d been wishing for. Well, good for her. She was cutting her hair a little shorter, too, in a way that framed her face much better, and adding a few highlights to her brown hair. She was actually a very attractive young woman now, even if she did still have the same thick lenses in the same unattractive glasses.

Sitting at the other end of the couch was Jill, and my God, what a fox she’d become. If this was 2006, she would still only be 15 years old. Fifteen going on twenty-five, it looked like. Her lustrous blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing her perfect cheekbones and her lively blue eyes. Her somewhat over-mascaraed lively blue eyes, to my way of thinking. She was dressed in a bathrobe that had fallen open as she propped her long, tanned legs on the coffee table to paint her toenails with a bottle of polish the color of blood.

I had no idea who the third girl was. She was sitting in one of the wing chairs, her legs stretched open in front of her on an ottoman. She looked to be about 24 or 25. I always had a hard time guessing women’s ages, though, so she could be anywhere from 20 to 30. She looked to be about five months pregnant, although again, she could be anywhere from four to six months as far as I knew. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, either, with dirty blonde hair that hung down to her almost exposed breasts. She was wearing a short, nearly nonexistent nightie that did little to hide much of anything, particularly with her legs splayed out like that. Dave’s wife, maybe? He’d never been the smartest guy when it came to protection, but this girl looked a little older than the standard-issue coed he would have run into at Auburn.

Jill suddenly realized I was standing there, and broke into a grin.

“Hey, bro,” she said, “thanks for the gift card. Victoria’s Secret. Be nice to buy something there myself.”

“For a change,” Jeanne muttered as she looked up, too. “Yeah, thanks.”

Evidently, I’d bought her the same thing, although with somewhat less success. She picked it up off the coffee table along with a small pile of other gifts that she’d finished unwrapping.

“How come I didn’t get one?” the pregnant blonde pouted.

“Maybe because you don’t have any secrets,” Jill sniped at her, casting a disdainful look at her exposed panties.

“Jill,” the blonde warned her, “do you want me to tell your father we’re not getting along again?”

“No, stepmother dear,” Jill’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’m so sorry.”

Stepmother? Whoa. This was my stepmother? I leaned back against the door jamb as I processed this information. Dad had remarried? And since she was five months pregnant, and Mom had died 18 months ago, he sure hadn’t waited very long, the son of a bitch.

Jeanne had finished gathering her stuff, and moved toward the doorway I was standing in. She stopped suddenly, and eyed me with suspicion.

“I thought you hated that shirt,” she said.

“No, why would you think that?” I asked.

“‘Cause I’ve never seen you wear it before,” she answered me, as if I’d done something wrong by not wearing it, and was doing something equally wrong now by having put it on.

“No, it’s great,” I assured her. “Matches my eyes, don’t you think?”

“Of course I think it matches your eyes,” she nearly took my head off. “That’s why I bought it for you last year.”

Without even the hint of a smile, she pushed past me and stomped up the stairs to her room.

“We saved your presents,” Jill said, pointing to a pile of gifts sitting on the couch between her and the seat Jeanne had occupied. I sat down in the space Jeanne had warmed for me.

“Where are Dave and Dad?” I asked as I glanced at the card on the first gift, from Jill.

“Your father, uh, didn’t get enough sleep last night,” my stepmother giggled as Jill rolled her eyebrows. “He’ll be down soon. Dave had to go in to open up the Seven-Eleven because his manager called in sick.”

Jill’s gift proved to be a very nice-looking cellular phone.

“This is awfully expensive, Jill,” I said, “but thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she favored me with a well-practiced, but nonetheless glowing, smile. “And I actually got it free, sort of. It comes with instructions for transferring all your numbers from your old phone on it.”

“Sort of free?” I asked.

“Well,” she giggled, “he did get to take me to dinner.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Oh, fuck you,” she grinned and threw a pillow at me. “Who are you to talk?”

Who was I? That was turning out to be a very good question.

“Anyway, thank you,” I said, leaning across the couch to kiss her on the cheek and sitting back with another gift in my hands, one from “Dad and Mom (Tiffany).” Tiffany. That figured.

It was an empty picture frame, with a gold inset inscribed “Marshall High School - 2006 State Champions.”

“It’s for that picture you have in your room,” Tiffany bubbled. “We can hang it on the wall now. Your father picked it out.”

For me or for him? I couldn’t help but think.

“Thank you,” I smiled at Tiffany.

“Where’s my kiss?” she pouted.

I stood up and walked over to her chair. She planted her feet on the ground and pushed herself up a little, and I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. She threw her arms around my neck, and I was only barely able to brace my arms against the arms of the chair to keep her from dragging me down on top of her.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“I wish this was our baby,” she whispered into my ear.

She let go, and I turned and tripped over the ottoman, somersaulting onto the rug. “Our” baby? How could “we” have a baby? Oh my God, I was doing my stepmother. Not only had I managed to misplace my virginity in the last three years, but I’d apparently buried my self-respect along with it. Oh my fucking God.

“Are you okay?” Jill asked when I hadn’t gotten up after a minute or two on the ground.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, pushing myself onto my elbows. “I just hit my head.”

“Didn’t hurt the golden arm, did we?” she arched her eyebrows, her voice taking on the slightest mocking quality.

“Which one is that?” I asked in all innocence.

She just clucked her tongue in disgust and returned to her nails. I returned to the couch, and opened a hastily-wrapped magazine from Dave, with a card telling me I’d be receiving Sports Illustrated for the next year.

“That’s very nice,” I said absently as I replaced it on the coffee table.

“It’s a big sacrifice for Dave,” Tiffany assured me.

I looked over at her. A subscription?

“He doesn’t make that much at the Seven-Eleven,” she seemed eager to press his case, “and it’s hard for him to even think about sports after his injury.”

“Oh, yeah,” I agreed. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, uh, Tiffany. Thanks for reminding me.”

“Tiff,” she said quietly.

Jill was rolling her eyes again.

“Tiff,” I acknowledged.

The final gift I unwrapped was from Jeanne, a wool winter hat, mostly blue, with little white baseballs in it. It was just so - so Jeanne. I imagine I was grinning stupidly as I put it on.

“What do you think?” I asked Jill and Tiffany.

“Yeah, the girls’ll flock to that,” Jill said.

“You know, I just can’t understand knitting,” Tiffany was shaking her head.

“Jeanne knitted this?” I asked. “Herself?”

“You don’t think anybody would sell those, do you?” Jill apparently found it hard to make comments that didn’t include sarcasm.

“Jill,” Tiffany used her stepmother warning voice again before turning back to me. “She did work on it for most of the last two months.”

“Well, I like it,” I said. “Hey, it comes with a matching scarf.”

I put that on, too.

Dad wandered in just then, dressed in a bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy slippers that had obvious been a gift from Tiffany at some point. My father was 45 years old now, and he wasn’t a fuzzy slipper kind of guy.

“You look like a dork,” he muttered on his way past me as he leaned over to give Tiffany, the son of a bitch’s pregnant wife, a long kiss on the lips. As they were kissing, she looked over to make sure that Jill was still intent on her painting, and then gave me a big wink.

Oh my fucking God.

“I need some coffee,” Dad grunted as pushed himself off the chair. “Where’s Dave?”

“Seven-Eleven,” Tiffany said. “Manager’s sick.”

“Assistant manager at a fuckin’ Seven-Eleven,” Dad shook his head as he made his way into the kitchen. “You want some coffee, Trick?”

Jill and Tiffany both looked over at me. I was Trick?

“Uh, yeah, sure Dad, thanks,” I yelled back.

He came back with the coffee, and Jill and I watched him and Tiffany open up their gifts. Mine was apparently a gift card to a steakhouse. Had I gotten everybody a gift card? I must have shopped for a whole fifteen minutes one day. Dad grunted his thanks while Tiffany called me over for another kiss, this one blessedly uneventful.

My mother had loved Christmas, and I found myself unwilling to let go of what little holiday spirit we had going by heading back to my room. So I grabbed the copy of Sports Illustrated that came with the subscription acknowledgement and started to flip through it. Jill had finished painting and was now in the drying stage. Dad and Tiffany were sitting on the floor, murmuring to each other. Dad put his hand and then his ear on Tiffany’s stomach while she cooed about feeling the baby kicking.

“So can you take me to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth’s now?” came a voice from my left. We all looked up to see Jeanne in the doorway, looking eagerly at Dad for an answer to her question.

“Hey, sorry, doll,” Dad shook his head. “I gotta spend the afternoon changing the timing belt in my car, and Tiffy’s car is still in the shop from hittin’ the deer.”

“The deer hit me,” Tiffany protested with a sulk.

“Yeah,” Dad chuckled, “but he hit you smack dab in the middle of the hood, and it’s gonna be another week ‘til they get in all the parts. Christmas, you know.”

“But you said you’d take me,” Jeanne protested, clearly struggling to keep a stiff lip.

“Nothin’ I can do about the timing belt that quickly,” Dad told her, still sitting on his butt on the floor. “You know, if you hadn’t failed the driver’s test twice, I’da bought you your own car by now.”

He returned his focus to his wife, Jill returned hers to her toes, and I watched Jeanne as her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She turned and started to walk slowly back upstairs. I suddenly remembered the keys in my pocket and pulled them out. One was labeled as a Subaru key, so it might very well be that I owned a car.

“Hey, J,” I shouted after her, “I can give you a ride.”

I looked up the stairs, to where Jeanne’s butt was about to vanish into the ceiling. The butt slowly turned in place, and the girl ascending turned into a girl descending. Still not a happy girl, though.

“Why?” she said when she reached the third step, the first step at which she was able to finally look at me.

“I dunno,” I shrugged my shoulders. “To say ‘thanks’ for the hat and scarf?”

She blinked at me a few times. Apparently, she hadn’t noticed I was wearing them before now. That was probably because she hadn’t even given me so much as a glance when she came back downstairs to ask Dad about the ride.

“Um, okay,” she agreed. “When can we leave?”

“Whenever,” I held out my hands. “My plans for the day were kind of gonna start and stop with laundry.”

“Yeah, I could use some laundry, too,” Dad chimed in. “What about it, Tiffy?”

“I still got a couple of clean pairs of panties,” Tiffy adopted a sullen expression. “And it’s Christmas. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Dad grunted his assent.

“Let’s go now,” I said, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get out of this house. “Grab my coat, wouldja?”

That last line was a sudden inspiration, and it would solve one of the three immediate problems I had, namely, which coat was mine? Unfortunately, that was the most minor of the three. The other two, how you got to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth’s, and how you drove a car, were going to be a little more problematic.

As it turned out, though, they were easily solved by the same method. As we walked out of the house -me wearing a very nice leather bomber jacket, along with the scarf and hat- I followed Jeanne toward a fancy silver Impresza. She began to walk toward the passenger side when I was re-inspired.

“Hey,” I said, tossing her the keys. “You drive.”

“Me?” her eyes widened as she caught them. “Drive your car?”

“Can’t pass the test if you don’t practice,” I grinned. “You got a permit, right?”

She crossed over to the driver’s side and adjusted the seat while I took the other seat.

“I’m nervous,” she said. “I hate sticks. That’s why I failed the second test. I got so nervous driving Tiffany’s car.”

Shit! A manual transmission. Another good reason for me not to be driving.

“Well, just talk yourself through it,” I suggested. Talk us both through it, in fact.

“All right,” she started reciting a litany. “I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and shit!”

We jerked back about a foot and a half and stalled.

I looked over and she was literally shaking.

“Can you please drive?” her voice quivered as she stared down at her lap.

“No,” I said, touching her on the arm. She looked at me with a mixture of embarrassment and anger and suspicion playing across her face.

“You remember when we were at Grandpa and Grandma’s that one time,” I asked her, “when I was, like twelve, and you were eleven? And we were learning how to fish?”

She blushed and looked back at her lap.

“Do you remember when you got that worm hooked to your finger?” I continued.

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Me, too,” I chuckled. “And after I got you two lovers apart” -that merited a small giggle from the driver’s seat- “I gave it back to you, told you how to do it one more time, and then stepped away. Remember that?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, looking forward now instead of down.

“And when I came back, you’d baited that little sucker all by yourself,” I said. “And you ended up catching a big one, too, I think.”

“He wasn’t that big,” she demurred.

“I think you’re missing the point,” I said gently. “First of all, I want to say ‘thank you.’”

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I love this hat and this scarf and I can’t believe you made them for me.”

“You do?” she asked, finally looking at me again.

“I do,” I nodded. “Second of all, I bet Dad watches you like a hawk when you’re driving his car, and Tiffany probably gets worried about you scratching up her paint or burning up her clutch.”

She nodded.

“Or being attacked by a deer,” I added as an afterthought, producing the first genuine laughter I had heard in the Sterling household all day.

“So I’m just gonna sleep here,” I said, putting the seat back, slouching down in it, and closing my eyes. “Take me for a ride, Jeeves.”

We stalled again on the way out, and once getting into first gear at the end of the driveway. After that, though, it was a piece of cake. I kept my left eye closed the whole way, in case she looked over, but the right was open, scanning the scenery. At a minimum I was going to learn how to get to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth’s.

As Jeanne smoothly pulled into the driveway, I learned that they hadn’t moved. Whether I could find my way there again, or home for that matter, was another question.

“You should come in,” Jeanne turned to me with a look of delighted triumph when she set the brake and turned the car off.

“Why wouldn’t I come in?” I asked.

“When was the last time you were here?” she countered.

“I honestly can’t remember,” I said, honestly not remembering.

“Well, you certainly didn’t come last Christmas,” she said. “I was the only one who bothered. I don’t think you’ve been here at all, in fact, since Mom died.”

“Really?” I asked. That seemed unlikely. I had always loved visiting Mom’s family; they were so, I don’t know, exuberant about life.

“Hell, you practically spent all day last Christmas over at Sheila’s,” she sneered, drawing out the name “Sheila” so that it sounded like I’d spent the day with a slug. “Where was her husband, anyway? I mean, it was Christmas.”

“I dunno,” I said. I’d also been doing it with a married woman named Sheila? Who the hell was I? “So, inside?”

We walked up to the door, Jeanne growing more and more excited with each step she took. Finally, bouncing up and down, she rang the doorbell.

“Aunt Ruth!” she screamed as the door was opened.

“Jeanne!” Aunt Ruth, Mom’s older sister, was just as enthusiastic as her niece. She stepped forward and the two embraced. Finally, Jeanne let go and turned to me.

“And is this your boyfriend, dear?” Aunt Ruth asked before Jeanne could speak. “I’m Ruth Parkinson.”

She held out her hand. My Aunt Ruth, who’d nursed me through mononucleosis in the eighth grade, was offering me a handshake. God, what a pitiful asshole I’d become.

Chapter 3

Jeanne was at least as mortified as I was that my aunt apparently had no idea who I was.

“Aunt Ruth,” she murmured, “it’s Trick.”

“Trick?” Aunt Ruth asked.

“Patrick?” Jeanne tried again. “My, uh, brother?”

“Oh my gosh,” Aunt Ruth snatched back her hand like she might not even be sure whether I deserved a handshake. “Oh, Patrick, I’m so sorry.”

She put her hands on my cheeks and looked into my face.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “Of course it’s Patrick. And I saw you just last year. I just didn’t realize how much you’d grown.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t come over more,” I mumbled.

“Well, I certainly hope we see you more now,” she said. “Now give me a big hug.”

I leaned down -Aunt Ruth was only about five-foot-five- and got almost as enthusiastic a hug as my sister had.

“Well, come on,” she let go and turned around, linking one arm in mine and one in Jeanne’s. “Everyone’s going to be so excited to see you both.”

We stepped into a simple foyer, made fancy by the roping that hung on the staircase, decorated here and there with elegant red globes. There were voices coming from the right.

“Eeeehhhh,” I recognized the voice of my Uncle Bill imitating a buzzer. “Next, please.”

“I thought it was perfect,” Aunt Helen protested.

“Perfectly flat,” her husband, Uncle Ted, chimed in.

“It’s not too late to ruin the gravy,” Aunt Helen warned him.

“Perfectly wonderful,” Uncle Ted corrected himself. “But now it’s my turn. Maestro? Excuse me, maestress? Maestrix?”

The tinkle of Aunt Ruth’s piano drowned him out and filled the house, and Uncle Ted’s baritone followed close behind.

“O ni-ight dee-viiiiiine. O-o niiiiiight, when Christ was booooorn. O niiiiight, dee-VIIIIINE -”

“No, it’s hideous,” another woman protested as the piano went silent. “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“Philistines!” Uncle Ted roared through the laughter.

By that point, Aunt Ruth had put our coats in the hall closet and escorted us into the living room, where a group of five adults was gathered around the piano, all five of them laughing helplessly. The living room was even more splendidly festive than the hallway. There were candles in all the windows, and a block-shaped pine-scented candle burning inside a wreath on the coffee table. The angel atop the Christmas tree was almost touching the nine-foot ceiling, while the tree itself held globes of silver, red, and gold; and ornaments of every shape and description, ranging from an elegant glass crèche to a homemade lime-colored clay wreath inscribed “Love, Jeanne” that had been given a place of prominence right in the middle. And tinsel. This was my mother’s family. Strands of tinsel were draped on all the branches, making the whole tree shimmer in the reflected light of hundreds of tiny white bulbs.

I looked over to see a tear running down Jeanne’s cheek, which she quickly brushed away before the singers realized we were among them.

“Uh-oh, cops,” Uncle Ted grinned as he finally caught sight of us. “Cool it everyone.”

“Jeanne!” Aunt Helen raised a glass of punch from the piano in a toast to my sister.

“And Patrick,” Aunt Ruth added quickly, eager to save everyone else from making the faux pas of not recognizing their nephew.

“Patrick!” Aunt Helen’s eyes twinkled. She pushed herself off the piano -she’d probably consumed a little more than a moderate amount of the punch, her own special Christmas recipe that I’d never been allowed to try- and walked over to me. “Give us a kiss.”

She winked at Jeanne and stuck her cheek out at me. Helen was Mom’s younger sister, probably still a year or two shy of forty, and she’d always been the adventurous one. And the flirtatious one. It was usually Ruth who got the cheek kisses; Helen always liked a nice firm smack on the lips, a source of unending embarrassment to the 14-year-old me who she’d fooled into giving her one that last time she visited us. Or the last time I remembered her visiting us, at least.

Like the others, she was dressed in what I thought of as church clothes - skirts and sweaters for the women; pressed slacks, button-down shirts for the men. I felt very out of place in my jeans and flannel shirt. Jeanne, I was only noticing now, had changed out of her jeans into a pair of black slacks and a very pretty plum-colored blouse.

I delivered the commanded kiss at the same instant that she turned her head. Our lips met briefly, and I hastily pulled back.

“He’s gotten taller, hasn’t he?” Aunt Helen asked Jeanne with a merry giggle.

“A little,” Jeanne smiled back at her. “More support for his swelled head.”

Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, and Jeanne collected a hug and a kiss from her other aunt as well. Uncles Ted and Bill came over with handshakes for me and kisses for Jeanne, and then Aunt Ruth turned to her other guests, a handsome couple in their late twenties or early thirties.

“Jeff and Sheila Jenkins,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my niece and nephew, Jeanne and Patrick Sterling.”

Jeff rose to offer his hand, while Sheila stayed seated at the piano bench, from which she offered us a half-hearted wave. She looked a little nauseous, to tell the truth, and Uncle Ted hustled back to her side to ask if she was all right.

“A little too much punch, maybe,” she said weakly. “Could I just have a glass of water?”

My aunts raced toward the kitchen for some water as the men gathered solicitously around the stricken woman. She was incredibly attractive; her church clothes included a sweater that seemed to have expelled all of the air that might have fit between it and her skin.

“I thought you said she moved,” Jeanne stepped toward me and hissed into my ear.

I suddenly wasn’t feeling that good myself, and the next glass of water was for me. After a time, though, both Sheila and I recovered. She seemed intent on ignoring me for the rest of the afternoon, or at least ignoring whatever relationship we had had. For my part, I was as blissfully ignorant as everyone else in the room of the details of that relationship. Only Jeanne apparently knew that there had been one, and she treated Shelia with an initial coolness that I’d never seen in her before.

After a while, even that thawed. Jeanne could no more ignore the spirit of Christmas than she could stop breathing, and soon she was standing behind Sheila, her hand on Sheila’s shoulder, taking her own turn at the show-stopping chorus of “O Holy Night.” After I had a turn, standing well in back of Sheila, Jeanne was awarded first prize, and allowed to select any ornament she wanted from the tree.

“How ‘bout that wreath?” Uncle Bill joked, pointing at Jeanne’s youthful gift.

“You touch that wreath, Bill Parkinson,” Aunt Ruth’s eyes flashed, “and you’ll lose something very dear to you.”

“Very dear to you,” he suggested with a flick of his eyebrows.

“I can get another one,” Aunt Ruth quickly retorted.

“I could make a better one,” Jeanne offered.

The room exploded into laughter.

“A better wreath, I meant,” Jeanne turned a brilliant crimson. “It’s a little, uh, lumpy.”

“You touch that wreath, Jeanne Sterling,” Aunt Ruth turned on her, “and you’ll get no pie for dessert.”

“She gets no pie and I get disfigured?” Bill asked.

“I know which punishments work on which offenders,” Aunt Ruth smirked. “Now which one would you like, dear?”

Jeanne had to examine each and every ornament on the tree, and finally plucked a hand-painted wooden Santa Claus off a branch in the back.

She held it out to Aunt Ruth with great delight, and Aunt Ruth, with equal delight, pulled open a drawer in one of her tables and extracted a box in which the ornament fit perfectly.

“You knew!” Jeanne seemed awed.

“I bought it for you,” Aunt Ruth smiled at her. “Still, I’m surprised you won it this early. I was figuring you’d win charades once everybody else got a little tipsy.”

As it turned out, I won the charades, even though I had earlier been pronounced old enough to finally sample the punch and was probably a little tipsy myself. In a similar vein, both Jeanne and I were pronounced old enough to be able to dispense with “Aunt” and “Uncle,” which Helen argued made her feel old.

Dinner was served just after three, a turkey that had been butchered at a local farm only two days earlier, and that Bill butchered again with his electric carving knife. It was still wonderful, though, just like stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and Ruth’s exquisite gravy. Later, when Jeanne was busy washing dishes in the kitchen and Bill had dragged Ted and Jeff out to the garage to see his new toy, I found myself sitting at the table with Sheila.

“So how have you been?” she asked quietly.

“A little sick,” I admitted. “Not quite myself lately.”

“I’ve been thinking of you,” she said. While she was thinking, she’d apparently kicked off one of her heels. I could feel a stockinged foot begin to trace a course up my leg. “My husband never found out who it was, you know. Only that I was cheating on him.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed. Her foot had reached my crotch, and I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t exploding into my pants.

“Therapy was so boring,” she said, taking another sip of the wine we’d shared during dinner as she began rubbing the ball of her foot up and down the ridge in my jeans created by my swollen dick. “And I guess I sort of promised not to do it again. But still...”

She gave me a look that could almost be described as predatory.

Just then, Helen popped back in from the kitchen, gaily humming “Deck the Halls.”

“You drove out the men?” she asked us. Sheila had yanked her foot out of my lap as if it were on fire, and she lifted her glass for another drink.

“They went to check out Bill’s car,” I answered Helen, happy for a change of subject.

“His car,” Helen nodded knowingly. “So that’s where he keeps the annual Playboy magazine that Ruth gives him each Christmas.”

Helen sat back down at the table and picked up her own half-full wine glass.

“So,” she looked at me after a sip, “tell us what’s new?”

“New?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, everything was new.

“New girlfriend?” Helen teased me with a guileless wink at Sheila. “Any new scholarship offers?”

“No,” I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

“I’d still like to go to UVA,” I added. I wondered if I’d even submitted an application? Or whether, as an in-demand jock, I simply considered myself above applications.

Now it was Helen shaking her head.

“Well, you can ask Ted,” she said, “but apparently they’ve decided to toughen up academic standards for athletic scholarships, and I think they’re starting with the baseball recruits. Here he is. Honey, what was it you told me about baseball scholarships?”

“Pretty ruthless,” Ted said. “A two point seven five average and somewhere around a 1400 on the SAT combination.”

I nodded to myself. That didn’t sound that hard. The last report card I remembered, after the first semester of ninth grade, had straight A-pluses, which was like, what, a four-five? I had no idea what my average was at this point, of course, and no idea whether I’d even taken the SAT.

By now, though, everyone else had gathered around the table again, and judging by the look on Jeanne’s face, I wasn’t going to be attending UVA any time soon. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I tried to cover them up by knocking over my water glass.

“I’m sorry,” Jeanne said gently as we got settled into the car for the ride home. “You never mentioned UVA anymore, so I thought you’d given up on it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “That was fun, huh?”

“That was Christmas,” Jeanne sighed, nestling herself into the passenger seat like she was ready for a nap.

Oh shit. She was in the passenger seat. I was in the driver’s seat.

“So you wanna drive back?” I asked her as casually as I could.

“No,” she said sleepily. “I just wanna sit here and remember that feeling.”

She stretched like a cat, and I returned my attention to the car.

All right, I thought to myself, trying to replay the instructions Jeanne had recited, I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put it in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and - YESSS!

I pumped my hand as the car began backing down the driveway. Thank God for muscle memory; apparently I’d done this enough that my feet and hands could feel when it was time to shift and when it was time to let the clutch out. I’d done a good job memorizing the directions, too, and had no trouble navigating my way home.

Driving? That was another story altogether. Thank God for tryptophan, or whatever it is in turkey that puts you to sleep, because Jeanne would have been terrified of ever getting in any car again, let alone mine, if she had seen the two dogs we almost hit, the stop sign we ran through, the cute little family that had to jump back to the curb with expressions of horror on their cute little faces -yeah, like I’d really been that close to the stroller- and the general disregard I showed for the dotted and solid lines that had been painted down the middle of the road. Muscle memory is apparently of absolutely no use outside of that shifting thing. Once you’ve got the car going, that whole driving business apparently requires input from the brain. Mine was still 14 years old, the same age it had been yesterday when I went to sleep.

Finally, thank God for Christmas; on any other day of the year, the roads between our house and Aunt Ruth’s would have been filled with traffic, and even more pedestrians than the ones whose lives I’d nearly ended. With sweat dripping from my chin, I pulled into our driveway and jerked the car to a halt.

“Are we here already?” Jeanne asked, once again doing the cat stretch. “Thanks, Trick. Thanks for bringing me. You did have fun, didn’t you?”

“I did,” I nodded, a little taken aback at the surprise with which she’d laced that question. “After a while, I even forgot what a schlub I looked like.”

“Nobody noticed,” she smiled, still lost in nostalgic reverie. “Nobody ever notices anything like that over there. Speaking of which, that was Sheila, wasn’t it?”

Reverie over.

“Um,” I said, “I really thought she’d moved. I haven’t seen her in, like, forever. She seems to be happy with her husband, though.”

“Bullshit,” Jeanne said. “I saw the way she looked at you when she thought nobody else was looking. You be careful, Trick. The last thing you need is another paternity test.”

She looked at our house, the lights of the tree in the living room the only visible sign that we celebrated Christmas.

“Whaddya bet they’re in there having meatloaf for Christmas dinner?” she sighed.

She slammed the door and left me in the car to ponder my life. Another paternity test? I hoped to God I’d at least passed that one.

Chapter 4

In one sense, every day is the first day of the rest of your life. December 26, 2006, though, was a little bit more. Christmas was over, and I woke up to find myself in the same room, in the same body, and in the same life in which I’d found myself the day before. All of which were three years older than they were when I’d gone to bed on December 24.

My first thought as I woke up, stretched, and sat up in bed, was that if Mom were still alive, she’d reinstate spanking just to make sure my room never looked like this again. And I would have agreed with her; it was disgusting. So laundry was still high on my list of priorities. Since it was only seven o’clock, however, I figured I’d better wait a bit to start that project. Instead, I tiptoed down to the kitchen, where Dad and my older brother Dave were drinking coffee and reading the paper, Dad the sports section and Dave the business news.

“Morning,” I said cheerfully.

“Huh,” Dave grunted.

Dad just looked over at me.

“Say, Dave,” I tried again, pouring myself a cup of coffee, “thanks for the subscription.”

He nodded, still without so much as a glance at me.

“So wadda you doin’ today?” Dad asked me.

“I dunno,” I shrugged.

“You’re not gonna lift, are you?” his eyes narrowed. “You don’t need that shit at this point.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. Okay, no lifting.

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to strain the golden arm,” Dave muttered.

“I don’t remember your brother givin’ you shit when you were playin’,” Dad said pointedly.

“Yeah, I know,” Dave sighed and finally looked at me. “Sorry, little bro. Thanks for the gift card.”

“Sure,” I said.

God only knew which store I’d gotten him a gift card from.

“Actually,” I turned back to Dad, “I still need to do some laundry.”

“Tiff’ll be up soon,” Dad said. “Let her do it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want his clothes to end up all the same color,” Dave blurted out.

I watched Dad tense up, to the point where I could see the blood throbbing in his neck. Dave also realized he’d gone too far.

“Hey, sorry, Dad,” he said, pushing himself back from the table. “It’s been a tense week.”

“Things rough at the Seven-Eleven?” Dad growled. “I think the Wal-Mart’s hiring.”

Dave bit back his own snappy comeback, put his dishes in the sink and left. Dad watched him go, and then turned to me.

“I swear one day I’m just gonna chuck his ass outta here,” he said. He left for work himself a few minutes later, and Jeanne appeared a few minutes after that.

“Morning,” I said. I figured the third time might be the charm as she sleepily walked around the kitchen to get herself a bowl of cereal.

“What do you want?” she demanded. Apparently I was mistaken.

“Sorry,” I said, holding up my hand. What was it with this family?

“Look,” she paused with an open milk bottle in her hand. “Christmas was special. Nice, even. But you don’t have to pretend we’re friends any more.”

She said it with such savagery that the part of me that wanted to protest - to whine “we’re not friends any more?” - found itself without a voice. Instead, I simply asked if she thought that anyone would mind if I started a load of laundry.

She looked at me with a smirk.

“Queen Tiffy and Princess Jill?” she scoffed. “They could sleep through a fire. When did you get so domestic?”

“No underwear,” I said, putting a quick end to that discussion. “Do you know if the school’s open today?”

“I thought all you jocks had your own key to the weight room,” she spat.

“I meant the office,” I said quietly.

“Oh,” she said. “I dunno. I guess. Why?”

“I was, uh, thinkin’ about changing some classes,” I told her.

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“I dunno,” I shrugged. “I see Dave and I think, suppose I get hurt. You know, what would I do then? I mean, no offense to the guy, but that’s not really where I wanna see myself.”

“What is it with you?” Jeanne asked as she sat down at the table.

“What?” I asked.

“Are you high?” she asked.

I just laughed. She shook her head, and we settled down to eat in silence. From my standpoint, the less I said about anything at this point, the less trouble I could get into.

I did my laundry, and around ten o’clock, with Tiffany and Jill still dead to the world, I hiked the two miles between my house and the high school. The front door was open, although the office itself held the only signs of life. Fortunately, it hadn’t changed much. When you entered the office, you still came face-to-face with a counter, the first barrier between us, students, and them, the school’s administration. Behind the counter were two desks, one normally occupied by Mrs. Carter, the other by Mrs. Waters. Together, the story went, they ran the school, occasionally dragging Mr. Linwood out of his principal’s office to make announcements before they locked him back inside the office.

Today, though, there was only one young lady sitting at one of the desks, a Ms. Carter, if the sign on her desk was right. She was much nicer looking than either Mrs. Carter or Mrs. Waters had been, and if I lingered a few minutes at the counter before clearing my throat to attract her attention, well, who could blame me? Tall, slender, her auburn hair pulled back into a somewhat severe-looking bun, she sat there studying her computer screen with a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

“Did you want something, Mr. Sterling, or were you just going to stand there all and wait for someone to announce your visit?”

She still hadn’t looked at me yet, although apparently I’d been wrong about the obliviousness.

“I, uh, I was thinking about changing my class schedule,” I stammered.

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at me.

“I’m not sure we could make it any easier for you,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Maybe we could just assign you a room and your teachers could rotate in and out. Then we could have your lunch delivered as well.”

She’d put a couple of air quotes around the word “teachers.” Did I not have real teachers this year?

“Trickster!”

A boyish-looking man came hustling out of the principal’s office, his hand extended. I eagerly grasped it, the first sign I’d seen yet that someone knew who I was and was happy to see me. Evidently the occupant of the principal’s office had changed as well. This would be Tony Peterson, according to the fake-wood sign at the entrance.

“How was your holiday, um, sir?” I asked.

“Excellent, Trickster, excellent,” he said. “And call me Pete. How about yours?”

“Fine, thank you, sir. Pete,” I said, finally pulling my hand loose.

“Excellent,” he smiled. “So what can we do for you?”

“Mr. Sterling thinks his courses next semester are too hard,” Ms. Carter said scornfully.

“Actually,” I said softly, “I don’t believe I said that, ma’am. I simply said I had some thoughts about changing my class schedule.”

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got,” ‘Pete’ said.

Ms. Carter had already pulled my schedule up and was holding it between her forefinger and thumb as if it would infect her. Pete snatched it from her hands, her message flying right over his head,

“First period,” he read, “Principles of Government with Mr. Kennedy. That looks good.”

Ms. Carter was shaking her head.

“Second period,” he continued. “The second half of Mr. Anson’s American History survey. Just between us, you might want to go to a few more classes this semester, Trick.”

Ms. Carter rolled her eyes.

“And fourth period,” he concluded, “English Self-study with Ms. Torianni.”

After a few seconds of silence, it became clear that he’d finished reading.

“That’s it?” I asked. “Three classes? All I have is three classes? What do I do in the afternoon?”

“Coach Torianni wanted that kept clear for scouts and practice,” Pete winked at me. “I played a little ball in high school myself, you know, Trick. I know how important it is to make a good impression and keep in shape.”

The phone rang just then, and Ms. Carter answered it and told Pete that it was Superintendent Frostman.

“Whoa, gotta take this,” Pete gave me another wink. “Don’t go away, Trick.”

He bounded into the other room and closed the door behind him, but Ms. Carter and I could both hear the “Merry Christmas, sir!”

“So what is it you’re unhappy with?” Ms. Carter turned her attention back to me.

I decided I needed to level with somebody, at least to a certain extent, and I’d concluded, based on nothing more than ninth-grade instinct, that Tony “Pete” Peterson might not be the best guy to start with. After all, he was a ballplayer, too, wink wink. I imagined him reacting the same way my father would have reacted if I’d told him I wanted a more challenging schedule.

“Can I ask you a question, ma’am?” I put as much sincerity into my voice as I could.

Ms. Carter blinked.

“Certainly,” she said.

“Can I come sit at the desk?” I asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

I slipped around the counter to take the chair beside her desk after I got her nod.

“What would I have to do to get a 2.75?” I asked.

“You’d have to get B-minuses,” she said, trying to figure out whether I was trying to trick her.

“No, I mean permanently,” I said.

“You mean for a high-school average?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting into the wispy bangs that had come loose from her bun.

“Exactly,” I smiled. “What would I have to get this semester?”

She hit some keys on her computer.

“You’d have to take five substantive courses,” she said, “and average a 4.6. Then you’d end up with a 2.749 which would get rounded up to a 2.75.”

I’m sure my face fell. If I got all A-pluses I could average only a 4.5.

“So it’s impossible,” I mumbled.

“Well, no,” she said. “Not impossible. But given your academic record I’d have to say it was extremely unlikely.”

“But I could do it?” I asked. “In theory?”

“If you took one honors course,” she said. “And got A-pluses in everything.”

She looked skeptical, and given what I’d learned up to this point -that it would take five A-pluses this semester just to get me close to a B-minus overall- she probably had good reason. But I saw an opening, and I wasn’t about to let it close.

“So, like, what could I take?” I asked.

She pushed a few more buttons and printed out a schedule for me. First and second period were the same; third period was Honors English, fourth period was “The Physics of Astronomy,” and fifth period was something called “People of the Book” a course labeled “REL 101.”

“And other than astronomy lab on Wednesday afternoons,” she said with a quiet seriousness, “this leaves all your afternoons free like Coach Torianni wanted.”

“Huh,” I looked at the paper. “Can I ask you another question?”

“Certainly, Mr. Sterling,” she smiled at me. “I’m enjoying today very much so far.”

“‘Cause you think they really coddle athletes around here, don’t you?” I asked.

She stared at me.

“Your mother thought that, too,” I said. “I remember her talking with my mother once, about my older brother, when I was still in ninth grade and hangin’ out here at the office waiting for a ride home. Any this English Self-study I have with Ms. Torianni -the coach’s wife?-” she was nodding - “is...?”

“Crap,” she said with the ghost of a smile.

“So I can take all these courses?” I held up the list.

“Why?”

I looked at the principal’s door, and then turned back to her.

“I would really like to go to the University of Virginia next year,” I said. “And I was told they require a 2.75 average and a 1400 on the SATs for a baseball scholarship.”

“You’re serious,” she looked at me, her eyes softening just a bit.

“I am,” I nodded.

“You’ll have to re-take the SATs, you know,” she said.

“I figured,” I nodded. “I guess I really didn’t put a lot of effort into them, huh?”

“You got a 790,” she said.

“On the reading?” I asked. I’d looked up the SAT scoring system when I got back home last night. Evidently there were now three of them: Reading, Math, and Critical Analysis. I was always better at reading. A 790 was pretty damn good.

“On all of them, Mr. Sterling,” she said. “A 790 on all three of them together.”

“Shit,” I blurted out.

“That pretty much describes it, Mr. Sterling,” she said.

I looked over to see a smile playing across her lips once again. I couldn’t help but smiling myself, and pretty soon we were both laughing out loud. Finally, we quieted down and she waited for me to continue.

“I’m dead serious about this, Ms. Carter,” I said. “I can take ‘em again on the 27th of next month, right?”

“I’ll sign you up, Mr. Sterling,” she said. “As for these classes, the only prerequisite for the three new courses here is Introductory Physics, and you took that last year.”

So I knew physics? Well, damn.

“So what’s this course?” I pointed at the “People of the Book.”

“The School Board wanted a religion class this year,” she frowned.

“Who teaches it?” I asked her.

“Mrs. Jenkins,” she said.

“Old Mrs. Jenk-?” I stopped myself.

“-kins,” she finished with another smile. “Yes, Old Mrs. Jenkins. This is her last year, and she insisted on being allowed to teach this course. She was afraid that it would become just another Christian education class if somebody else got hold of it. You haven’t had her for anything else, have you?”

She was frowning at her computer while I mumbled my answer.

“I’m sorry?” she asked.

“Sunday school,” I finally said. “I had her for Sunday School.”

“Perfect,” Ms. Carter smiled. “Now it won’t just be a class of evangelicals. You only have one problem left.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You have to get Mrs. Palmer’s permission to take Honors English,” she said, in a tone that suggested that that would require some sort of divine intervention.

“Mrs. Palmer likes me,” I protested. “I got an A-plus from her last, er, in ninth grade. Uh, first semester.”

Ms. Carter looked back at her computer as my voice trailed off.

“Yes, you did,” she nodded. “And then a B second semester. And then a C last year, after your initial incomplete. As I remember, you turned in your final paper two weeks late, and got a C on it. Normally, the incomplete would have been replaced with a C-minus, one grade lower than your paper, but she talked Mr. Linwood into giving you the C. So you may have used up all your good will with Mrs. Palmer.”

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “she’s on her winter cruise this week, and won’t be back until next Monday. You really think you can talk her into this?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” I said. “It’s worth a try though, huh?”

“For UVA?” she said. “Yes, it is. My father went there. He used to go on and on about it. I tell you what, why don’t we keep this our little secret until then?”

I gave her a quizzical look.

“If it doesn’t work,” she said. “You can take your current schedule and go on to the major league draft. We’ll be the only ones who ever know. Because if Mrs. Palmer says okay, Coach Torianni’s gonna hit the roof. And this one,” -she nodded toward the principal’s door- “will run right to him to tell him.”

“So if you can talk her into it,” she continued, “give me a call on Tuesday and I’ll have you all set to go when school starts on Wednesday.”

“That’s the only way?” I asked.

“I’m afraid all of the other honors classes have prerequisites that you don’t meet,” she shook her head.

“Even in the afternoon?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so, Patrick,” she said gently. “I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.”

“So!” boomed Pete from his office doorway. “What do we need to do to make your schedule better, Trickster?”

“You know,” I said, “I think that Ms. Carter and I have got it all figured out. Turns out we can’t make it any easier after all.”

Ms. Carter had the decency to blush as I stood up, and I thanked her and “Pete” and made my way out to the street.

My next stop was the public library, another two blocks past the high school. I was supposed to know physics and baseball, and the library had always been where I went for information. It was one of my favorite places, or at least it had been back in ninth grade. Two days or three years ago, depending on your point of view. I found myself hoping that it hadn’t changed too much. The lady who sat behind the circulation desk most of the time, Lynn Edwards, was probably my very first crush. She’d started work when I was between seventh grade and eighth grades, just after she graduated from college. She was just about my size then, maybe five-foot five inches tall. I was always afraid she’d catch me staring at her, although it never stopped me, particularly when she was wearing a sweater. And yet, as nice as she looked, her best feature was her beautiful smile; I loved to ask her for recommendations about books because it was so clear that she loved to answer me.

I was very pleased to find the place open. It was about as crowded as the school had been. There was one older lady by the new arrival shelf with a book in each hand, comparing the blurbs on the back of each to decide which one to check out. And there she was, sitting at the desk, just as beautiful as she’d been, well, two weeks ago. Wearing a sweater to ward off the winter chill.

“Hi, Miss Edwards,” I approached her shyly. “I was looking for a book on-”

“Trick!” her face lit up with a smile as she saw me. Not the smile of a librarian who had a new book she was dying to recommend, but an odd sort of expectant smile that she emphasized by running the tip of her tongue across her upper lip.

She held up a finger to quiet me.

“Let me get rid of Mrs. Parsons first,” she whispered.

“Okay,” I said, “but really, I just wanted a book-”

“I know, Trick,” she interrupted me. “I remember the game. But not with Mrs. Parsons standing right over there. Why don’t you go look at the new Sports Illustrated?”

I actually picked up a Newsweek -did everybody think I only read SI?- and settled into one of the comfortable chairs in the library’s reading room. Miss Edwards stood up, smoothed her skirt with a wink at me, and approached the older lady.

“Why don’t you just take both of them, Mrs. Parsons?” she suggested.

“Oh, no, dear,” the woman protested, “I always end up being overdue, and then I have to pay the late fee, and I really can’t afford to-”

Miss Edwards had taken the books out of her hand and strode back to the circulation desk, leaving Mrs. Parsons in her wake making her futile protests to Miss Edwards’ back.

“There,” Miss Edwards said when she was seated again, “I wiped out all your late fees, and I’ve made sure that neither of these books is due until late February.”

“Well, thank you, dear,” Mrs. Parsons seemed more than a little taken aback by Miss Edwards’ forbearance.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Parsons,” Miss Edwards smiled at her.

“Well, you, too, dear,” Mrs. Parsons said. She slipped the books in her large bag and began to make her way slowly toward the front door. I watched her close the door behind her, and then turned back to see Miss Edwards looking directly at me, once again slowly licking her upper lip as she held up the index finger of her right hand. She looked at the door, and suddenly jumped to her feet and quickly covered the twenty feet between her desk and the door. With a quick look outside, she took the sign off the door that read “Open” and turned around to show me that she’d tucked its little chain into the front of her skirt. With a grin, she grabbed the little sign that hung by the side of the door, the one with the little clock on it that read “Out to Lunch. Will return at.” She glanced at the clock over the circulation desk, which read 11:45, and set the clock on the sign. She turned it around to show me she’d set it for 1:00.

Realization was slowly beginning to dawn on me; the “Open” sign hanging on the front of her skirt was too obvious even for me to miss. But the idea that Miss Edwards would be interested in me, a ninth-grader, was nearly too much to take. I watched in a haze as she hung the new sign in the window, and pulled the shade down behind it.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me in a husky voice as she went back to sit behind the desk, “you were asking me about a book, Mr. Sterling.”

She returned to the book she was reading when I came in.

Okay, I thought. Don’t panic. She said it’s a game. It’s a game with librarians and books. Well, of course, it’s a game with librarians and books, idiot, you’re in a frickin’ library.

I pushed myself out of the chair and walked over to her desk.

“Um,” I began far more suavely than I felt, “I wondered if you had any surveys of American history.”

She peered up at me over the top of her book

“I believe we have a few books on that subject, young man,” she said. “Follow me, please.”

She led me to an aisle containing one of those two-step stools that librarians use to get books off the top shelf.

“I think we might have something on the top shelf,” she grinned at me. I tentatively climbed the stool and she immediately reached for the zipper on my pants when I reached the top step.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. Lynn Edwards seemed to know her way around my cock like it came with its own road map, teasing me with her tongue and her teeth, gently tugging on the shaft with her fingers when her lips were busy with the head, and then burying her chin against my balls before she backed off with an explosive exhalation of air through her nose.

Unfortunately, it was my first blow job, and knowing that last week’s crush had magically become this week’s lover didn’t help. It ended quickly.

“Well, that was certainly a brief trip to the library,” she said with a little asperity as she finished swallowing my spunk.

Oh, shit, it ended way too quickly.

“Maybe you should take a look,” I said hastily.

“I should take a look?” she asked me, wrinkling her brow.

“For the book,” I said.

Apparently this hadn’t been part of the game before, but she took my hand and let me walk her up the little step stool. Based on, aah, previous experiments, I knew that it would take a little time for me to recover. And I kind of had the feeling that if we spent that time, oh, I don’t know, looking through the card catalogue, I might find myself an unwelcome library patron for the rest of my life.

I moved behind her and slowly rolled her skirt up over her ass. As a somewhat introverted ninth grader, my sexual experience to this point had included a full-semester health class and a few kisses with Cammie Rowe. Not much to go on. Oh, and while I was deleting most of the porn bookmarks from my computer before I’d gone to bed last night, I did sort of look at a few of them first. I probably knew just enough to get me in trouble; the potential for seriously disappointing Miss Edwards was clearly there.

Pulling her white panties tight into her crotch, which itself earned me a shiver and a moan, I began kissing my way around her two beautiful round cheeks. It soon became apparent, though, as she gripped the bookshelves for support, that the panties, and not my kisses, were responsible for most of the moaning she was doing. I was nothing if not adaptable; I pulled them down to her knees and replaced them with first my fingers, and then with my tongue, and then with both together.

“Oh, God, Trick,” she cried. “That’s so good, honey. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

I couldn’t believe I’d never done it before. What a selfish son of a bitch I must be. This was actually fun; not only that, it considerable shortened the time I needed to come back to life. In fifteen minutes, just after my finger had located something that made her scream “Oh, yes, my clit, do my clit,” she scrambled down the stepping stool and bent over in front of me.

This time I was determined to last. I thought about old Mrs. Jenkins, I thought about old Mrs. Carter, I thought about baseball (what little I knew about it); I thought about everything except the gorgeous ass on the gorgeous woman in front of me. I reached around to finger the clit I’d found before, sending her into a spasm of what I hoped was pleasure. She didn’t make me stop, so I kept right on, managing to get two more spasms from her before I had a spasm of my own.

Oh, shit. Well, too late now. Pulling herself off of me, she turned and threw her arms around me, driving her tongue halfway down my throat. I did my best to respond in kind, and it seemed to satisfy her.

“God, Trick,” she teased me after pulling back a bit. “Been doing some extra reading on your own, have you? Or just practicing with your other girlfriends?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t take care of the, uh, protection thing, you know.”

She laughed, a glorious peal of giggles.

“Yeah, right,” she said, giving my softening cock a squeeze. “The day Trick Sterling puts a rubber on is the day I let him do me in the ass.”

That was enough to make me twitch again, and she looked down in amazement.

“I - I can’t do it again, baby,” she looked at me suddenly, tears welling in her eyes. “You were just pounding me for so long. I’m - I’m sorry.”

“That was great,” I said.

“Say it,” she grinned up at me. I only now realize that I topped her by a good eight inches.

“Say what?” I asked.

“You know,” she went on in a teasing voice before dropping her voice to a parody of a man’s. “You were great, baby.”

“You were great, baby,” I agreed.

“You too, stud,” she said, giving me another long kiss before she finally disengaged.

“Shit,” she said, looking at her watch. “One-oh-five. Guess I better open up, huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “About those books, though?”

“What?” she laughed, straightening out her skirt as I pulled my pants back up. “You really want books?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Is that so odd?”

“Not three years ago,” she said, reaching up to pat me on the head. “Little Patrick Sterling was my favorite customer then. That was before he became big Patrick Sterling.”

She pulled her hand down to pat me on the crotch before she walked out to re-open the library.

“So what can I get for you?” she asked when she returned.

I walked out of the library with Physics for Dummies, American History for Dummies, and Baseball for Dummies. I explained the last one by telling her that I was going to be doing some coaching this year and needed to know how to reach the novice players I’d be working with. I would have checked out Sex for Dummies, too, if they’d had it, but I thought it would be even harder to explain that one than the baseball book.

I spent the next two days studying, in between cleaning up my room. One of the things I discovered was the paper I’d turned in to Mrs. Palmer after my junior year, in a course on Contemporary Drama. It was an essay on “Murder in the Cathedral,” by T. S. Eliot, and as I read it, I could see why I only got a C. I could have written this in ninth grade.

Apparently Mrs. Palmer had agreed. There it was, in black and white on the last page: “You could have written this in ninth grade, Patrick. It is at best average work for an eleventh grader; it is below average work for the eleventh grader I expected you to become.”

I sat down hard on my bed. Talking Mrs. Palmer into letting me into her class wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought. It wasn’t until late Thursday afternoon that I came up with a plan for that one.

I kept on reading and working throughout Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, keeping my door locked against the chance that Tiff would come calling for some of what Lynn Edwards had gotten. I still couldn’t imagine that I’d had sex with my father’s new wife, even when she wasn’t pregnant. The thought of doing it now almost made me gag. But apparently I was nothing if not a son of a bitch.

On Sunday morning I got up and started to get ready to go to church. I’d gone to church the week before, in my old life, and I was a bit surprised to find that I had nothing in my closet now that I could remotely call “church clothes.” I put on my best pair of jeans and a halfway decent corduroy shirt, and met Jeanne in the hallway as she was coming out of her room.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“About what?” she asked.

“This,” I pointed to the outfit. “For church.”

“You’re going to church?” she asked. “You haven’t been to church since Mom died.”

“Well, maybe I want to go again,” I said. I was stunned. I had three years of perfect attendance at Sunday School. Somewhere in my room there were three gold stars to prove it.

“No,” she shook her head, “not in that.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s disrespectful,” she said. “If you really want to go to church, buy something nice. God knows you can afford it. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

She stepped around me at the same time I heard a car pulling into the driveway. I walked back into my room and saw a well-used Corolla idling at the end of the front walk. Jeanne emerged from the house with a wave at the car and climbed into the passenger side as I tried to figure out who was driving. She looked very familiar. Oh, God. Cammie Rowe. It was Cammie Rowe, my first kiss. Jeanne said something to her and Cammie suddenly looked up to see me looking back down at her. I smiled and waved at her. She flipped me the bird and turned around to begin backing down the driveway.

Chapter 5

The woman who opened the door to my knock early in the afternoon on January 2 was clearly surprised to see me.

“Mister Sterling,” she said coldly, holding the door open two feet and no more. “What can I do for you?”

“I came to ask a favor, Mrs. Palmer,” I said. I’d dressed nicely, in the same outfit I’d tried to wear to church before Jeanne shot it down. I figured if I’d dressed in church clothes - which I hadn’t managed to buy yet, anyway - Mrs. Palmer would have been a little suspicious. As it was, she gave me a long look, as if measuring me for a suit.

“Come in,” she sighed finally, after the inspection was finished. “May I offer you a drink?”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” I said.

She gestured to the couch, and took a seat opposite me.

“Ma’am, I’d like to take your English Honors class,” I began.

“Absolutely not,” she cut me off.

“Ma’am, I -”

“Mister Sterling,” she cut me off again. “Let me tell you a story. I had a very good student in my ninth grade English class. But he became involved in sports and unlike some of the athletes I’ve known -some of the student-athletes- his academic work started to slip.”

“Ma’am,” I started again.

She held up her hand and I shut up again.

“I monitored his progress throughout tenth grade,” she continued, “and it continued to slip. I decided to give him one more chance last year, out of respect for his mother, who’d become a dear friend of mine, and because I remembered what kind of student he’d been. Are you following me, Mister Sterling?”

I simply looked at her.

“He came to class less than half the time,” she was working herself into high dudgeon. “When he was there he sat in the back with his friends and smirked at me. He didn’t submit his final paper until two weeks after the school year ended.”

“A paper that was below what he was capable of doing, Mister Sterling,” she went on, nearly foaming at the mouth now. “Well below. And even then, Mister Sterling, even then, I went out on a limb for him and convinced the principal to give him a C as his final grade instead of the C-minus that the rules said he should have received. No, Mister Sterling, you are out of favors.”

“I understand that, ma’am,” I said, “but-”

“It is not something that admits of any buts, Mister Sterling,” she insisted.

“This is for you,” I said, opening the manila folder I’d brought with me and handing her its contents.

“What is it?” she asked skeptically.

“It’s the paper I should have turned in last spring,” I said.

She read the title and looked up at me.

“You wrote this paper last spring and turned in that other piece of -” she began.

“Crap,” I agreed. “No, ma’am.”

She looked even more surprised.

“You wrote this recently?” she asked.

“Last week, ma’am,” I nodded.

“Why?”

“To show you how serious I was about getting into your class, ma’am,” I said.

She gave me another long look and then turned her attention to the paper. She read the first paragraph or two before looking back at me.

“If you had come to class,” she said, “you would have known I don’t agree with your thesis about the role of the Fourth Tempter in Eliot’s play.”

“Actually, ma’am, I was in that class,” I said. The notebook I’d found in my pile had contained, among its few scribblings, a notation of Mrs. Parker’s views of that very thing.

“Then why this?” she held up the paper.

“You wouldn’t consider it a very persuasive paper, ma’am,” I suggested, “if you were already persuaded of its conclusion before you read it.”

She looked at me like I’d grown antennae, and slowly returned to the paper.

“So you’re suggesting that if I acquiesce in your request, I can expect this kind of work, rather than the crap you gave me last year?” she tossed the paper on her coffee table when she’d finished.

“I’m suggesting only that this is the kind of effort I’ll give you, ma’am,” I said. “What you’ll get is a different question entirely.”

She gave me a kind of half-smile, still turning it over in her mind.

“I have to point out that this is your fault, ma’am,” I said, really pressing my luck

Her eyes flashed at me, challenging me to explain that outrageous statement.

“Ma’am, if you’d let Mr. Linwood give me that C-minus,” I said, “there’d be no way I could pull my average up to a 2.75. But you gave me a C, and Ms. Carter in the office tells me that if I do well enough this spring, including in your class, I can get a 2.74 something that will get rounded up to a 2.75.”

She looked at me and gave me a crooked smile, which turned into a small chuckle after a few seconds.

“Hoist by my own petard, eh, Mister Sterling?” she said.

“So it would seem, ma’am,” I agreed.

“Of course, if you’d turned in this paper, you wouldn’t need to take my class,” she said, picking up the paper on the coffee table.

“Touché, ma’am,” I smiled. “Of course, I’m the one who’s going to have to pay for both of our mistakes by working my butt off, ma’am. All you have to do is let me in the class.”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “This 2.75 is important to you?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said. “It’s-”

She cut off my explanation with her hand.

“Allow me the fantasy of pretending that your love of learning has simply been reborn, Mister Sterling,” she said. “And I don’t need to point out how disappointed I will be if I don’t see the kind of effort you have promised me.”

“No, ma’am,” I smiled. “Thank you. May I use your phone, ma’am? I need to call Ms. Carter and let her know.”

“I’ll do it myself, Mister Sterling,” she said. And she did. Right then and there with me listening.

I got up early the next morning and found what I thought was most likely the kind of outfit I would wear to school. Jeanne didn’t say anything nasty about it at breakfast, so I was fairly confident as I followed her out the door to the bus stop.

“Where are you going?” she turned abruptly to confront me.

“To the bus stop?” I suggested.

“You have a car,” she pointed to the Subaru in the driveway. “You’re a senior. Why take the bus?”

“Do you want to practice driving?” I asked her.

“No,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I’d be too nervous pulling in there. Why aren’t you driving? Won’t Stephie be upset you’re not picking her up?”

She said “Stephie” in the same scornful tone she’d said “Sheila” on Christmas, so I jumped to the conclusion that Stephie was a girlfriend, probably the girlfriend if she expected a ride to school.

“She’ll just have to be disappointed,” I said nonchalantly. Picking Stephie up had three problems. The first, perhaps not insurmountable problem, was the actual act of driving. I hadn’t had the car out since Christmas Day, and wasn’t confident of my ability to navigate busy streets that would have crosswalks filled with children. The second, more difficult problem was that I had no idea where Stephie lived. And of course, the third problem: I had no idea who Stephie was. I didn’t remember a Stephie, or even a Stephanie, from ninth grade.

“So tell me,” I said as we reached the bus stop, “which of my girlfriends have you liked?”

“I liked Cammie,” she hissed.

“Cammie,” I nodded.

“Before you turned into an asshole with your little blow or go ultimatum,” she seethed.

“My what?” I asked.

“Oh, fuck you, Trick,” Jeanne spat. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

The bus’s arrival prevented any further discussion, so I found a seat by myself at the back. I wouldn’t really have broken up with Cammie Rowe because she wouldn’t give me a blowjob, would I?

“PaTRICK STERling,” came an annoying whine from the front of the bus after one of a series of stops to which I’d stopped paying attention. “The TRICKSTER!”

I vaguely recognized Bobby Bunt, a guy I’d been in ninth grade with. He’d never been particularly talented athletically, and he’d certainly hadn’t been nice to me back in ninth grade, so I was inclined to brush him off now. Of course, there was a chance that he was my best friend now.

“Dude,” I nodded as he eagerly sat down in front of me and turned around. I’d decided that “Dude” would be my answer to everyone, until I figured out who was who and what was what.

“So, good holiday, Trickster?” he asked.

“‘Sokay,” I nodded. “Yours?”

“Excellent, Trickster,” he nodded. “Excellent.”

We weren’t best friends. He was too eager. I’d be willing to bet he’d been cut from the varsity baseball team last year. Fortunately, he managed to chat on for another ten minutes with minimal contributions from me until we reached the school.

Fortunately, there were a number of students who couldn’t remember the combination to their lockers after the two-week holiday. None of them had my additional problem - no idea which locker was actually theirs. Fortunately, both of them turned out to be a non-issue. Ms. Carter was standing at the counter in the office with a big book opened in front of her, writing down locker numbers and combinations as a line of students filed past her. I waited my turn, I told her my name, and I got my slip of paper. I opened it up just outside the office: “137, 34-22-5; nicely done, Patrick.”

The printout that Ms. Carter had given me the week before let me know that I had Mr. Smithson for homeroom, and the absence of any explosion or even icy staring let me know that it wasn’t something I shared with the mysterious Stephie. I had become more and more apprehensive about meeting this girl. Who was I dating? What was she like? Did we have common interests? I was heartened by the fact that I had obviously been found attractive by Miss Edwards, and disheartened by my apparent rejection of Cammie Rowe.

Stephie wasn’t in my first period class. Mr. Kennedy’s government class apparently appealed to the athletes. I recognized most of the guys as athletes, greeting them with high fives, low fives, and forearm bumps as they were offered to me. I greeted every “Trickster” with a “Dude.” There was a smattering of girls in the class, as well, although they were a distinct minority. It was a fairly dull class; Mr. Kennedy was a fairly dull teacher. He passed out the textbooks, gave us our first assignment, and began lecturing on the separation of powers. I took careful notes, to the obvious surprise of the guys sitting around me.

Second period was a little more exciting. Mr. Anson greeted me with a sarcastic “Nice to see you, Mr. Sterling,” and then, no more than ten minutes into a quick review of last semester’s work, asked me with a smirk to explain the cause of the War of 1812.

“The nominal cause, sir, or the real cause?” I innocently blinked my eyes.

“I’m sorry?” he stopped his pacing of the front room to stare at me.

“Well, of course the nominal cause was the British impressing sailors off of American vessels,” I explained, parroting what I’d read in “American History for Dummies.” “But many scholars believe that the real causes were economic, of course, having to do with trade between a young America and two countries, France and Britain, that were still at war with each other. And then there’s the issue of territorial ambition. Many powerful Americans coveted Canada, which was -”

“Thank you, Mister Sterling,” he stopped me.

It ended up being a long time before he called on me again, and then only because I raised my hand to argue with him about the objections voiced by Abraham Lincoln to President Polk’s 1848 war against Mexico.

Stephie wasn’t in that class, though, nor was she in Mrs. Palmer’s class, the Honors English Seminar. I didn’t get any high fives, low fives, or forearm bumps in that class. What I got was an entire class of stunned looks, the kind that a luncheon of society matrons would give a bum who wandered into their midst from the street.

Mrs. Palmer smiled at me, though, and told me she had saved me a seat in the front row. I smiled back and thanked her. And took my seat.

That was a preview of A Stitch in Time. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «A Stitch in Time» to Cart