Chapter 6: Michael

Chapter Cast:

Carrie Minberg, Female, 16
- Narrator, high school sophomore
- Beige, freckled skin, 5'5, 145lbs, curly back-length dyed-blue hair
Camila, Female, 16
- High school junior
- Light-olive skin, 5'7, 150lbs, shoulder-length black hair with dyed-pink streaks
Michael, Male, 16
- High school sophomore
- Dark brown skin, 6'0, 155lbs, short very curly black hair

Hiding my relationship with Cam from my parents became a full-time job for me. I lied often about where I was going, though they knew Cam and I were close friends. I didn't want them putting the pieces together.

At some point that summer, my mother asked me about boyfriends. I lied, said I kinda like a boy but so far, we were just friends. They were classic homophobes, at least Dad was. Mom never said much on the subject, so I always assumed Dad's opinion was her opinion. They were Southern Baptists, fundamentalists with no grey between black and white. If they'd have known the truth about me and Camila, I honestly don't know what they'd have done. It wouldn't have been pleasant.

Camila and I clicked perfectly. Her confidence rubbed off on me, made me feel strong again, and it wasn't just the sex with her. It was small things. The way she looked at me when I answered her questions, the way she held me when I was feeling down, or cramping, or any of a million other things that caused my mood to swing low.

Mostly, she was a rock. Other than her mom's illness, she never showed signs that the world might break her. It is from Camila's firm but gentle handle on life that I found my own pace.

Odd, really, that she was in control of her life, her emotions, was always one to take charge, make decisions, lead when I was lost. Odd because our sex life became just the opposite.

She liked to be guided, lead, told how to do things. At first, she led me, but as I started to get comfortable between her legs, and all over her wonderful body, she began to let me take charge. She'd wait until I made it clear what I wanted. She made me tell her what I desired from her.

It wasn't roleplay or even the typical sub/dom scenarios that I've learned more about in the years since. No, it was just that she loved to let that go when we made love, that she wanted me to feel the power that came from moving her body, sending her hands to my tits, letting her know when I wanted to cum.

And it worked really well. It was a perfect fit, and exactly what I needed as I turned sixteen that summer. She was edgy, a bit 'butch' I guess, when she was in public, or even when it was just us doing something together. But in bed, oh, in bed she was a soft girl, carefree, pliant, ready to be submissive to my every desire.

I came to know her body intimately, tasted every inch of her, often. And she learned mine, even places I didn't know would feel pleasure at her touch. The two of us made two halves of a whole when we were together, and it wasn't just me believing in fairy tales again.

One evening by the neighborhood pool, just before it closed for the night, we lay side by side, not daring to hold hands but close enough to let our shoulders touch. We looked up at the orange and pink clouds slowly building over us. We talked of marriage, knowing it would never be legally recognized. But we talked about spending our lives together, having children, growing old and dying.

Camila saw life in a different way than I did, and I suppose that's how I learned so early to empathize and try to understand other viewpoints. My morose undertones had been pushed down during the months with her, but they still surfaced regularly enough for Cam to call me 'Moody Mary' from time to time. Sometimes, it was my period. Sometimes, just me being me.

She never saw the glass half empty. She saw possibilities where I often dwelled on consequences. I'd been burned, scarred in some ways, by Brown, by Henri, and it was many years, and many relationships later, before I understood just how deeply I'd taken those scars into how I reacted to other people.

Camila's mother's illness turned for the better a few weeks before school, and she made remarkable progress in a clinical trial of a new treatment.

We were snuggled on her couch when Camila told me the news. She didn't look as happy as she should have. My heart sank at what she wasn't telling me. "Cam ... what is it?"

"Mom got into the second part of the trial, they want her to go in two weeks."

"That's great! What ... why isn't that great?"

"It's in Boston."

"So she'll fly up, you'll visit her sometimes. Don't worry, Cam, it will be ok."

"No ... it's not like that. We're moving to Boston ... in two weeks..."

I couldn't speak, felt numb, like my favorite thing in the world had just been stolen from me. Ripped to shreds. Painfully put down before my eyes. I whispered plaintively, "oh ... no ... no, please Cam ... no..."

She cried, and I cried, and together we cried over what we would lose.

All the pains I'd manage to heal, all the isolation, the fears, the stress of just being me rushed back in and I fought for breath to control it. I had a panic attack, couldn't suck in air, stopped crying I was so freaked out. My head spun, swimming in thick and depressing chains that held back any good feelings. The paramedics that took me to the hospital got my breathing under control and by the time I arrived, there wasn't much more to do.

My Dad came quickly, sat concerned as he listened to the doctor describe what had happened, what to do now. He drove me home, mostly in silence. I'd never connected with him, and sometimes I felt like he wished I wasn't around. If I had anywhere else to go, I'd have already gone there. I wanted to go to Boston. I was dying inside, knowing my best friend and lover, the only person I trusted at all, the only person who knew me well, was being taken from me.

I called Camila when I got home, told her I was ok, just very sad. We cried again on the phone, her strong disposition broken nearly as wholly as my own.

I couldn't sleep that night, couldn't dare dream. I tried to rationalize, to make it not happen. I made Rube-Goldberg plots that would keep my Cam with me. Some of them I even believed might work.

But as all things seem to do, the truth of the situation came crashing into me after only a few minutes of sleep and enough minutes in time to realize that all my plans were full of shit.

I spent every minute I could with her until she left, and it was hard. The anticipation of loss is a hard feeling to push aside, and even when she came on my fingers, or I came on her face, it was always tinged with a deep sadness that often led both of us to tears.

It wasn't fair, wasn't right, but there was nothing two sixteen-year old girls could do to change things. Her mom left on a Friday, and by Monday morning, my one true friend in the world was taken too far from me to touch.

For two weeks, we talked every day. I knew I was running up the phone bill, and I didn't care, I didn't 'give two shits' when a few weeks later my Dad exploded at the charges. I'd gotten that expression from him, and I can't describe how much I enjoyed using it on him. It took the edge off my pain, and I found that arguing with my parents, especially my Dad, gave me an outlet for my emotions.

We argued a lot right up until the start of school. I'd kept my hair blue since I liked it and Cam loved it. He thought I had gone through a faze and should hate it by then, but he was wrong, and I told him so in colorful language that he threw right back at me. He never hit me, but he never held back his anger, his punishments. Usually, it involved grounding. But I had no one to see or do things with anymore, so he started taking away things that hurt me.

Like my phone.

Three days before school, he took my phone and had my line cut off. I pleaded with him, cried at his feet, threw earth-shaking tantrums like only a miserable sixteen-year old could. Nothing worked, and I lost my only private contact with the girl I loved.

School started and things only got worse. The first day of classes, a note in my locker told me, "Welcome Back, Loose Girl," signed by "the many, many dicks you've sucked." The telling of my one night with Brown had grown into that, and I felt myself beginning to seriously considering dropping out of school.

I started immediately plotting to get kicked out. I was fiercely determined to stop going, and I thought the best way was to to be expelled. There had been several kids dropped from school rosters just in the year I'd been there. One for fighting, another for drinking at school, two for drugs, another for bringing bullets and a lighter. And two were caught having sex in a lockerroom.

I naturally gravitated toward the latter, but the wrench in my plan was that the only person I wanted to have sex with was almost 2,000 miles away. My tongue was talented, but not that talented.

I thought about bomb threats and turning myself in. Two weeks into classes, I seriously considered stabbing Vickie Thompson for writing 'Loose Girl' in one of my textbooks. The threat passed, and instead, the next day I filled her book bag with used tampons and pads from the lockerroom. That didn't go well, but she never knew it was me. It was one of the few laughs I had in those days.

I couldn't bring myself to do anything worthy of expulsion. Without Cam, I had no balls. My bite had left me, the support I thought I needed to do strong things was lost, and I felt lost, weak, without guts on my own.

I started to really develop obsessions over some of my teachers. After all I'd lost, the closeness, the deep love, when Camila moved to Boston, I reverted, I suppose, to wanting the feelings I had for Henri. I wanted someone to pick me, to be with me, to protect me and keep me safe from myself.

I had four male teachers, all of which I looked at with hope and arousal. I was past the point of caring if anyone knew, and I went out of my way to be flirtatious any chance I got. Nothing overtly sexual, but I'd touch a hand, give a warm smile, get lost in their eyes.

It did nothing to gain me a lover, thankfully, because I'd have given in quickly had any of them opened that door. None of them did, and my fantasy world was known only to me. I masturbated a lot, thought about Camila, and even Henri at times, and I got off whenever I was feeling stressed or lonely, which was most of the time.

I suppose I had a Daddy complex, of sorts, my own father being so distant that I strongly desired some of those feelings of protection and innocent love from older men. I felt so cold to my father that I felt almost nothing when a car accident left him in critical condition. 'Nothing' in that I couldn't tell if I would be very sad if he died. I guessed I'd feel something, that my world would change again, but I couldn't find the emotional depth to feel for him what I had for Camila, or for Henri.

My dad didn't do well the first week, and my Mom began to subtly prepare for what was becoming obvious. She became strong, and for the first time in my life, I remember her becoming an organizer, a cheerleader, someone I actually admired for a change.

When it became clear my dad was going to die soon, I still felt nothing personal. I was sad, sure, I didn't want him to die. But a big part of me still felt the horrible distance between us that had always been there, the way it seemed he always avoided talking to me about anything other than my hair or his church. There was nothing there, and I suppose the sadness I felt came more from that than from my father's last days.

Mom took over everything and kept the two of us going. When I think back to that time, my father's death really was a good thing in the end. Selfishly, for me, I mean, and also for Mom. She'd always been the reserved, protected wife. Not held in chains, but perhaps in flexible bands. She never ventured beyond being a housewife, but when Dad was at that point, Mom found a reserve that I think even surprised her.

It mended a lot, going through that with her. She cried sometimes, the last week, but she got shit done, she kept us afloat, and she refused to allow me to become sullen. Or, more sullen than usual, at least. We started to talk to each other a bit.

When my dad died, she cried harder, and for a few days, she mourned him by drinking coffee alone and talking to herself. I didn't know what to do to help, but I found myself sometimes hugging her, sometimes whispering kind, soft words to her. It came so easily after what I'd experienced with Camila when her Mom was ill.

Don't mistake the warmth, the touches for anything sexual between my mother and me. My story isn't one including incest. It wasn't like that. Well, there was a cousin when I was older. I'll get to that later.

Mom and I were just a parent and child dealing with a tragedy together, and the bond we formed during that period has lasted us to this day.

Dad was gone, buried, and a couple of weeks went by before I went back to school. Everyone knew, and for a while, they left me alone. At lunch I often stared at the empty spot across from me where Camila had first come into my life. I missed her so much. I had barely talked to her in the previous few weeks. The family's resources were drained with her mother ill and out of work, and they couldn't afford the long-distance charges any more than my mother could.

We drifted apart as a result. We lost each other over those months. It still makes me cry to think about that. About what I lost with Camila. She taught me so much, made me feel so good about myself, that I ... I desperately wanted her back. Nothing replaced her. No one attracted me the way she did.

But a change in schools presented me a new opportunity to shift the way I saw the world.

After my father died, my Mom had to sell our house. When I heard her tell me that, I felt light and cheerful for the first time in weeks. We could move somewhere new, some new school for me to try again.

Her dad loaned her a bit of money to help us rent a smaller place, not a ton of equity available to us. It only took a few weeks and by the holiday break during winter, we moved into a small house beside a creek. It was out a ways from town, but the thing that mattered most was that I was in a new school district. Happy butterflies danced through me as I made a million plans to be 'cool' this time.

Needless to say, I suppose, I played with myself a lot over those weeks, imagining all the fantasy boys and girls that I'd get to meet, and maybe fuck.

A few days before I was to start classes, a letter for me arrived from a place called 'Natural Law Magnet School.' I opened it. I start to feel excited as I read the words.