Chapter 2

EARLY MARCH – MAR 2

Ah, the first track meet of the season. It was still a bit cool outside, but it wasn't so cold that we couldn't hold the meet outdoors. We needed to move around a little more between events to stay loose, but that wasn't a big deal. I was done with my events for the afternoon, having just finished the 200. I finished third in that event and in the 110 hurdles, second in the 4 X 200 relay, and first in the shot put. I was feeling pretty good with my results, all in all. Four events were probably the most anyone on the team would have in any given meet, and it may not be the same four events every time; the coach was going to change it up a little for the first couple of meets until he got us where he thought it would help the team the most. I was a lock for the shot put and the 110 hurdles. Coach would give me a look at the 300 meter hurdles and the 100 meter dash at the next meet before deciding what my final two events for the rest of the season would be.

Now I was relaxing, lying on my back in the grass with my head resting on my duffel, listening to Slipknot's 'Surfacing' pumping through my ear buds and flooding my veins with even more adrenaline, even though I was done for the day.

"What's up with Danica and Cassie?"

I barely heard Jeff's voice over the thumping bass and dirty guitar. I cracked one eye open and pulled a bud from my ear.

"What did you say?"

Jeff was sitting beside me with his legs stretched straight in front of him, leaning forward and holding onto his feet. He had only the 3200 meter left, his longest and probably his best event. He'd already placed second in the 1600 earlier, and I had to admit that I was pretty impressed that he could not only turn right around an hour later and run another 3200 meters, but also likely finish in the top three. Jeff could run forever and not get tired.

"Danica and Cassie?" He flicked his head towards the bleachers. I looked that direction and saw Cassie sitting at the end of the second row of old metal bleachers, with Danica standing on the track in front of her, one foot up on the first bleacher while leaning over to stretch her leg. She still had the 4 x 400 relay left. Danica was saying something and Cassie was laughing, and they looked ... very comfortable with each other.

"What do you mean? They're just talking." I wondered if Jeff knew that they were secretly girlfriends, or if he was just speculating.

"Talking, yeah," he said, more to himself than me. He kept watching them. "They talk just about every time Danica has a break. Cassie traveled across town to watch this meet, and I thought she was here to see all of us, but she hasn't even glanced in our direction."

I knew that Cassie and Danica wanted to keep their relationship under wraps, so this conversation was making me uncomfortable.

"They're just friends, I guess," I said, trying to act casual and uninterested.

Jeff turned his head to the side and watched me for a few seconds. "Just friends? Kind of the way those two girls you have stashed away in Arizona are 'just friends'?"

I laughed and acted like his question was pretty stupid. "How the hell should I know what kind of friends Cassie and Danica are? What they do on their own time isn't any of my business any more than it's yours."

If Jeff caught my rebuke, he didn't let it stop him. "Whatever. I think it'd be a little more your business than it is mine, since you're..." His voice trailed off, and he fidgeted uncomfortably. He moved out of that stretch and into another.

"What? Since I'm what?" I knew what he was going to say, but I had to ask just to keep up the charade.

"Well, since you're, you know, boning Cassie."

I laughed again. "Boning Cassie? Damn, Jeff, you can be such a dork. No wonder you can't get laid. What makes you think I'm boning Cassie?"

"Well, I know you guys go out."

"That doesn't mean we're getting it on!"

"Yeah, but I can just tell."

"You're full of shit, Barker. You're not that intuitive. Why do you think there really is something between me and Cassie?"

Jeff sighed. "Cassie kind of accidently let it slip a couple of weeks ago. She told me not to say anything to you, because she said that you guys hadn't talked about whether you were, you know, openly involved with each other that way."

"So you said something to me anyway." I didn't really care if anyone knew what Cassie and I were doing, but it wasn't going to be ME who told anyone. That was just a whole lot of problem waiting to happen.

"Well, I didn't mean to. I was thinking about Danica and Cassie, and wasn't thinking before I shot my big mouth off."

"So you think that because I'm having sex with Cassie, I should know everything else about her life? We're just friends, not boyfriend-girlfriend."

"Yeah, but both of your girlfriends are, like, shagging each other, you start banging Cassie, then Danica starts hanging around with Cassie and flirting with you ... I don't know, just seems ... interesting."

I sighed and laid my head back. "If you want to know what's going on with Danica and Cassie, you'll have to ask them."

Jeff glanced back towards the girls. "Nuh-uh. I'm not stupid."

"I sometimes wonder."

We'd been friends a long time, Jeff and I, and we could get away with saying that kind of stuff to each other. Jeff jumped up and bounced on the balls of his feet, shaking his muscles loose. I figured he was done talking, so I pushed the ear bud back in my ear. Maybe I could pretend he wasn't there.

"You know what I can't figure out?

I sighed and pulled the bud from my ear. "What can't you figure out, Jeff?"

"Why three smoking-hot babes, maybe four, are even remotely interested in getting horizontal with your sorry ass," he smirked at me. "I mean, what the hell kind of shit you blackmailing them with?"

I rolled my eyes and went back to pretending that he wasn't even there. It's great to have friends.

EARLY MARCH – MAR 2

"yaaAAHHhhh..."

"Did you just yawn in my ear?" I laughed into the phone receiver.

Mia giggled. "Sorry. It was a really long day."

She'd called me for our weekly chat, and I'd spent most of the time telling her about my track meet and about Jeff being suspicious of Danica and Cassie, and even me to a lesser extent. The fact that I monopolized the conversation was fine, though. She sometimes did most of the talking, and I don't think either of us minded too much.

"Why was your day so long?"

"Coach worked us hard at practice, for one." Mia was on the softball team, and while she wasn't starting varsity, she was starting JV and playing late innings on varsity, usually as a pinch-hitter or runner. "Then we had a really long dinner with the Chos."

I perked up. "Joseph-and-Mary-from-the-ski-resort Cho; Joseph-who-knocked-up-your-sister Cho?"

"Yep," Mia said, in confirmation to my question. "After a lot of really long phone conversations between Joseph and Ana, they agreed to start dating and see what comes of it."

During our Christmas trip to the ski resort outside of Flagstaff, Ana, Mia's innocent sister, who was a year older than ME, decided to lose her virginity. She wanted to lose it to me, and almost succeeded when she convinced Mia to let her play around with the three of us one night, just so that she could learn about boys and sex in a safe environment. It was supposed to be a little experimenting; not going all the way, but her feelings for me went a lot deeper than Mia assumed, so Mia quickly stopped it, except that Ana didn't take it so well. Joseph was the college-aged brother of a girl Ana met at the resort, and he was obviously sweet on her. Needless to say, she decided to prove to her sister ... well, I'm not sure WHAT she was trying to prove. What happened is that Ana proceeded to lose her virginity, having sex ONE TIME, and got pregnant. Shelly had put both girls on birth control pills the previous spring, even though Ana wasn't sexually active at the time, but it seems Ana hadn't taken her pills for months.

A part of me still felt some measure of responsibility for getting Ana all hormonally worked up in the first place, but like Mom later told me, Ana was 17 and knew exactly what the risks were.

"Do they really like each other that much?" I asked my girlfriend.

"He's totally head-over-heels for her. I mean, you can see it in everything he says and the way he looks at her. She's harder to read, but I think she's still kind of in disbelief that she's pregnant."

"Um, isn't there physical evidence?" I asked, with a chuckle.

"Not so much. She's too early to show, and she's not had much morning sickness or anything like that. Anyway, his parents wanted to meet my family, so they drove over from eastern Arizona yesterday. They met with Mom and Dad last night, and we all had dinner tonight. They seem nice, and they weren't all bent out of shape about things. That said, the four 'rents aren't cutting Ana and Joseph any slack. When Joseph finishes the winter quarter at his school in New Mexico, he'll move here and get a job. They'll date, and if things are working out, they'll think about getting married. Mom and Dad really want Ana to finish high school, but school beyond that for her—or even more college for him—is not guaranteed."

"Wow." I considered myself pretty lucky that the unprotected sex I had with Shay last summer didn't end this way. She hadn't been on the pill then. "So you had dinner with the Chos."

"Yeah, Sam even went."

"Sam?" I was surprised. Mia's big brother was an asshole to just about everyone, and much to his parents' consternation, he was driving a wedge between himself and his family.

"He's not nearly as much of a jerk as he was last year." Mia's voice sounded hopefully optimistic. She and Sam had been really close growing up, even though he was four years older than her. They were close enough that he'd developed a decidedly un-brotherly crush on Mia, and when she didn't return his affection, he decided to lash out at me, as if I was the reason he couldn't have the relationship that he wanted with Mia.

Talking about Sam always made me uncomfortable. Why? Because I had a secret; something I knew that no one else did, something that probably explained the transformation from Sam, Mia's loving big brother, to Sam, the asshole.

Sam was using steroids.

I found out on the ski trip, when he and I were forced to share a room. The pills obviously weren't marked with the word 'STEROIDS' in big block letters, but the fact that they were in someone else's pill bottle was a pretty big sign. He'd probably go postal if he found out that I knew, and do anything and everything to stop me before I ratted him out.

But I hadn't ratted him out yet, and I didn't have a clear reason why not. I knew the longer he was on them, the worse it would be for him, both health-wise and if he was caught. His parents had a right to know, didn't they? I should at least tell Mia, right? I knew if those three—not to mention my mom— would be pretty disappointed in me if they found out that I was keeping this secret. Still, there was this feeling deep in my gut that I needed to be the one to confront Sam, face to face. I didn't know why I felt that way, but I did.

So, when Mia sounded so hopeful about Sam, I swallowed the guilt I had for keeping this pretty important piece of information from her. It gave me heartburn.

"Hey, I have to go," Mia said.

"Yeah, me too."

"Be sure to call Shay."

"I will." I always talked to one right after the other.

"Love you, Big Papi."

I smiled at Mia's term of affection. She started calling me Big Papi last summer, when I belted a HUGE homerun during the annual Greenwall family softball game, and she liked the nickname so much that she kept using it. I didn't mind.

I echoed her expression of love, disconnected the call, and dialed Shay. She seemed chipper, anxious to hear how my meet went and tell me about hers.

"I'm officially our team's long jumper now," she said.

"With those short legs?" I teased her. She was only a couple of inches over five feet.

"Ha, ha," she said, and I could picture her sticking her tongue out at me. "My legs are like SPRINGS, Bucko. I jumped twice as far as the next girl on the team."

I laughed. "Twice as far?"

"Well, maybe more like half a foot, but still, I'm the clear choice."

"Are you still doing the distance runs?"

"Yep."

We talked a little bit more and I was about ready to hang up, when she suddenly changed topics.

"Can I tell you why I'm staying on the volleyball team?"

Mia had already explained it to me in a chat a while back, but if Shay wanted to talk about it, I wasn't going to stop her.

"Why?"

"First off, I'm good. I was a freshman battling for a starting spot last year."

"OK."

"I'm almost certain that I will be the starting libero next year, especially since Tabitha and Aimee are out of the picture."

"I think I remember Mia saying something about that. What happened?"

"The coach caught wind of some of the things the senior captains required of girls in order to get their vote, so he decided to do away with that 'tradition'. The coaches now have the only say on who makes the rotation."

"Hmm, I wonder how they caught wind of Tabitha's and Aimee's little games. Inquiring minds want to know."

Shay laughed. "Hey, don't look at me. I didn't say anything. I don't know where they heard things, but I got called into the coaches' office where I was assured that things would be different next year. I think it was not just Tabbie and Aimee, but all the previous seniors, too." I could almost hear her shrug. "What can I say? I've never been one to give up on something, doubly so in this case, because I don't want Tabby, Aimee, Guy, or Alan to think that they've won."

I was quiet as I absorbed what she was saying. She made sense; and if there was anyone I knew who could bounce back from what she went through, it would be Shay.

"Well, then, I'm proud of you for tackling it again." I paused for a second. "So, speaking of Guy and Alan..."

"Nothing new, really. Guy's knee has him out of his college's tennis season, but even if it didn't, he was suspended because of the whole drug issue."

The guys who raped Shay had the nerve to confront us one afternoon while we were Christmas shopping and 'ask' to get it on with both Shay AND Mia. They were stoned, and needless to say, it ended in a fight that WE won. Mia and I beat Guy up pretty good. I was the one who trashed his knee. Alan wasn't so lucky. Shay had a brief moment of insanity and basically kicked his balls into oblivion. We weren't completely unscathed, but those two pricks got the worst of it.

"Oh," I said, in response to Guy's predicament. I had expected to feel a little more euphoria, but I felt sad instead. Not for Guy—I didn't give a shit about him—but just because of everything—the rape, the fight, the fact that this would always be something Shay would have to deal with, everything. "What about Alan?"

"Nothing new there, either. After the doctors said he was probably sterile, he pretty much just disappeared. He didn't go back to school with Guy this semester, and no one's seen him around here. Rumor has it he went into an institution somewhere, like a rehab, mental hospital, or something, but that's just people talking, you know?"

"Yeah. What about you, Shay?"

"What about me?"

"How are you about the whole thing, now that a couple of months have passed?"

It was her turn to pause as she collected her thoughts. "I'm ... OK."

"Just OK?"

"Well, I don't think about it most of the time. It doesn't even cross my mind. But sometimes..." she took a deep breath, "Sometimes, when I'm alone, like at night, all these images come back to me, and I know they're from the party. If I'm awake, I usually get up and climb in bed with Mom and Dad. If I'm asleep, I usually wake up sweating with my heart pounding. Then I get up and climb in bed with Mom and Dad."

I sort of smiled, but not really. This was serious stuff. "It's good that you feel like you can go to them now."

"Yeah ... of course, the first time I burst in on them having sex was pretty awkward."

I laughed. "You didn't."

"How was I supposed to know my parents were as frisky as Mia's, or your mom, for that matter?"

"Did it squick you out?"

"Hell, no!" she laughed. "I mean, I think my dad's good-looking, and Mom's pretty hot, so ... Did it squick you out to see your mom having sex?"

"Of course not, but it's hardly the same. I'm usually the one she's having sex WITH."

Shay laughed. "True. I wasn't thinking about that, though. I was thinking about when you saw her with Mia's parents."

"I think I was too much in shock."

"Oh, and if I remember correctly, you were horny, too."

I blushed. She remembered correctly.

Her voice dropped low. "As I remember, standing outside the mountain house that night, I sucked you... , "A muffled voice somewhere on Shay's end interrupted her. "Uh, Mom just walked by and she says I have to hang up now unless I plan to charge you by the minute."

EARLY MARCH – MAR 4

"What are you talking about? Joe Johnson is a stud!"

I took another bite of my burger—nothing like school cafeteria meat—and watched as Nate Bullock, one of a group of a dozen kids who hung around with us from time to time, tried to defend the qualities of his favorite NBA player. Nate was a HUGE NBA basketball fan, and especially the Atlanta Hawks. He could spout off just about every statistic of relevance for the team and its players as far back as Dominique Wilkins.

Jeff shrugged his shoulders. "I'm just saying that I think any team with Joe Johnson as its best player is destined for mediocrity." Jeff was a sports fan, too, but he liked all sports and didn't really care that strongly about this topic. He just loved to goad people. I'd been the victim of Jeff's antics too many times to count. Jeff was a good guy and my best guy friend, but he could be a jerk sometimes. I say that in the nicest way possible.

Nate was incredulous at Jeff's slander, so he launched into a recitation of Johnson's glowing credentials. I glanced at Cassie, who was sitting between me and Nate, and she rolled her eyes at me. Fuzz, who was sitting next to Jeff across the table from us, elbowed Jeff in the side.

"Thanks a lot, Dude," Fuzz muttered under his breath. "Now he won't shut up."

"We only have like two more minutes of lunch, so it won't matter," Jeff responded. "Besides, you can't put a price on this level of entertainment."

Nate stopped mid-sentence when he noticed no one was really listening. "Fuck you, Barker," he said, glaring at Jeff. "Sorry, Cassie."

Cassie shrugged off his swearing. She'd heard worse. Hell, she'd SAID worse.

"You guys are arguing the wrong thing," she said. "If the Hawks want to contend, they need the bigs—Horford, Smith, and Williams—to each play at least 78 games now that they've matured. They've also got to find a better point guard option than Mike Bibby. As good as he is, Johnson can't be everything. Jordan and Magic are about the only two players who were good enough to be that everything, and even they needed help to win."

Dead silence. Where the hell did THAT come from? I had no idea she was so well versed in basketball in general, and the NBA in particular. We all just gawked at her. She just nibbled on the last of her sandwich, innocently smiling at us, but she frowned as the silence stretched.

"What?" she asked, a touch of irritation in her voice.

"I had no idea," I said, in reverence.

She giggled. "My brother was a step away from the NBA. Trust me when I say we watched a TON of basketball in my house." She looked around at the other guys. "close your mouth before you catch a fly, Jeff."

Jeff's jaw clamped shut just as the bell rang. "You are a goddess, Cassie. Years from now they will be writing mythology about you."

We all laughed and got up to dump our trays before heading to our afternoon classes. Fuzz caught me, Cassie, and Jeff before we split. "You guys wanna cruise around town in my car tomorrow evening? Got the stereo working. The speakers are killer."

Fuzz, while he was somewhat odd, was one of the nicest and most likable guys I knew. If anybody else had asked if we wanted to ride around in an old, beat-up 1989 Pontiac, we might have teased them or pretended we were busy. But you just couldn't do that to Fuzz. Besides, I really, REALLY wanted to hear Linkin Park coming from his speakers, because he wouldn't be lying about how good they were.

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"I will if I can finish my paper for World Civ," Jeff responded.

"You haven't finished it yet?" I asked.

"I got halfway done before Old Hag Teeter told me I had to change some things because my first one didn't meet the criteria. I think she just hates me."

"What about you, Cassie?" Fuzz asked, "You wanna come?"

"Sure, why not. I would love to spend time with my favorite guys listening to head-splitting, mind-numbing screamo rock."

"Do I detect sarcasm in your voice, Miss Jones?" I asked.

"No," she said, rolling her eyes, "Of course not."

We said our goodbyes and I headed toward my class. I was just about there, when I felt an arm slip through mine.

"Hey-a, Brody!"

I tensed at that voice and looked down. Kristin Franz was smiling up at me, her pale green eyes sparkling. I stopped dead in my tracks and almost pulled her off-balance. A couple of her cheerleader friends were walking right behind us and one actually ran into Kristin.

"What do you want, Kristin?"

I had mixed feelings about the curvy, perky senior cheerleader. She was almost solely responsible for making the first semester of my sophomore year one to remember; and I don't mean that kindly. She'd broken up with her HUGE football-playing boyfriend, and for some reason decided to target me as her next plaything. She flirted and flirted until she got me to a party at Cassie's house. Then after drinking and making out for the better part of two hours, she got me into a bedroom and tried to get me to fuck her. Now I know that this sounds odd from a guy who has been sexually involved with five women at the same time, one of which was his mother, but I had morals. I really didn't like Kristin, and I felt like sleeping with her would at best, diminish what I had with Mia and Shay, and at worst, destroy it. So I fought her off. To make a long story short, her ex-boyfriend found us in a compromising position and proceeded to punch me out while she screamed rape.

The plus side to the whole sordid mess is that it led to me having sex with Cassie for the first time the next morning. Next thing you know, Cassie is my best friend ... with benefits, of course.

Still, I wasn't overly enthusiastic at seeing Kristin hanging on me. She pouted at the tone in my voice.

"Come on, Brody; is that any way to talk to me after what we had last semester?"

I blinked twice. "What we--? Kristin, you turned on me and I got my ass kicked by the biggest..." I wanted to say 'dick', but Cassie had facilitated an uneasy truce between me and Mike "The Walking Dick" Vincent, and I didn't want to undermine that. " ... guy in the whole school."

She squeezed my arm and fluttered her eyelids at me. "Surely, you aren't still sore about that whole misunderstanding." She started walking her fingertips up my chest. "I mean, surely a guy as manly and sensitive as you wouldn't hold a grudge against ME."

What could I say? I kind of WAS holding a grudge, but I didn't want to sound mean. Why did she care what I thought, anyway? She had to be after something. When I didn't say anything, she went on.

"I was kind of hoping that maybe we could, you know, finish what we started."

The suggestion may have been veiled for eavesdropping ears, but it wasn't subtle to me. In spite of my feelings for the girl, my cock twitched in my pants. She was smoking hot, after all.

"Listen, Kristin, I have to get to class." If I avoided the question, maybe it would go away.

I tried to pull away, but she held fast. Her expression changed then, becoming decidedly more serious. "You can go after you tell me you forgive me for what happened at the party, 'kay? Please, Brody? I'm sorry about the whole mess."

She sounded almost sincere, and I was ready to give her what she wanted, when a sweet, lilting voice floated down the hall.

"Bro-deee!"

We all turned to see Danica coming towards us. She bounced up to me, an oddity since demure Danica didn't bounce; she glided. She wrapped her arms around my neck and plastered her lips against mine. I was too shocked to respond. Sure, Danica and I were friends, and we had sex a couple of times, but it was about as platonic as sex can be. Her sudden show of public affection was so out of character for her that I was thrown for a loop. Add to that the fact that Kristin Franz was still pressed against my side, and I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Danica pulled back and I glanced around to make sure no teachers were present to see the PDA.

"Will you come over after track practice this afternoon?" Danica asked. "I have, um, some homework I need help with."

Kristin tugged on my arm, drawing my attention back to her. The look behind her pretty lashes made me want to run and hide. She looked hungry ... and territorial.

"See you around, 'kay, Brody?" she said, her voice low and husky.

"Uh, sure," I stammered.

She gave Danica a fake-y little smile, then she and her cronies stomped away. Kristin threw one calculating glare back in our direction before they turned the corner. I turned back to Danica.

"What was that all about? I mean, don't get me wrong; I really liked the kiss, but that was so ... unexpected."

She blushed and ducked her head. "I had to think of something when I saw Kristin corner you, and that was the best I could come up with. I hope it was OK."

"It was great, but, well, what made you think you had to do anything?"

"Cassie told me all about what happened with Kristin last semester, and she told me yesterday that she heard Kristin asking around about you. She said we should keep an eye on you so that, and these are her words, 'the stuck-up bitch doesn't sink her claws into him'."

I probably should have been perturbed that Cassie felt she needed to monitor me, and maybe it did irk me a little, but I had no reason to doubt that Cassie really was just looking out for me. I shrugged.

"Well, thanks. I definitely enjoyed it. But I'm thinking that it might have only made things worse."

EARLY MARCH – MAR 4

Cassie and I usually got together to have sex once a week. We could go multiple rounds if we had enough time, but it usually only happened once a week. She'd brought Danica into the mix twice, but she made sure to keep it separate from our one-on-one time. I didn't know how often Cassie and Danica got together for some loving without me, but I knew it was at least once a week, too. Sex two or three times a week for kids our age was unusual, wasn't it?

I was pretty sure that Cassie's parents figured she was having sex with me, or at least doing something more than just kissing and holding hands. That they probably thought I was her boyfriend didn't matter to me. We'd never come out and told ANYONE that we were a couple, but if people assumed we were from our public displays of affection, that just kept 'The Ruse' alive and well.

The 'Ruse'. Almost immediately into our relationship the previous fall, Cassie confided in me that she thought she was a lesbian and enlisted me in trying to find a like-minded girl. She was afraid of being "found out," and wanted my help so that she didn't make a mistake and try to hit on a straight girl. That would have had serious consequences. Even though homosexuality was becoming more and more accepted, there was still a stigma attached to it in some locations, and that was the case in our neck of the woods of Georgia. Teenagers can be pretty cruel; Cassie knew the teasing and bullying would be brutal if anyone found out. Not only that, but she was afraid that rumors of her sexual preferences would hurt her parents' standing in our community. Her parents were still quietly conservative and pretty well-connected, but that could change in a heartbeat if enough noise was made about things.

Cassie pretty much found Danica on her own; although it wasn't until Mia and I convinced her to, that she moved forward. Once Danica reciprocated Cassie's feelings, I figured that meant my sexual relationship with Cassie was over, but she surprised me by declaring herself bisexual, then surprised me again by bringing Danica into our playtime. That meant I had regular, socially-acceptable, sources of sex without the fear of romantic complications. I had Mia and Shay as love interests; Cassie and Danica had each other; and Cassie, Danica, and I could be friends with benefits, or in the case of me and Cassie, BEST friends. Thus, the 'Ruse' was born: a cover for Cassie's and Danica's clandestine relationship that was acceptable to all parties involved.