Chapter 3

Life doesn’t stop just because it’s inconvenient. I hated shopping, unless it was for something cool, you know. Clothes were definitely not on my cool list, but most of my pants were starting to look like waders. My shirts, the good ones that don’t stretch, were getting kind of tight, too. It wasn’t like I was hulking out or anything, I was just growing and I needed new clothes, but Stacy would be the one to take me shopping.

My mom is really petite, which is half the reason she could get away with being so crazy. The other half was mostly attitude. But she’s short, that’s what I mean, and I was already three or four inches taller than her. My dad wasn’t overly tall for being a man, but I guess my genes hadn’t gotten the memo. I just hoped I didn’t end up like six-foot-seven or something, because I hated basketball.

“You’re going like that?” I blinked at my mom.

She wore a short denim skirt with a belt made of plastic daisies barely holding it up. A pink sweater, Angora probably, that hugged her smallish breasts like fuzzy paint, and matching pink Skechers on her feet.

“What’s wrong with this?” she wondered, and that’s when I noticed she’d really gone for the teeny-bopper look.

Her lips were too pink, but the rest of her face looked clean and freshly scrubbed. She looked cute and totally innocent, and like she’d just stepped out of the seventh grade. It was one thing when she went for the sexy, high school slut look. I could almost handle that and knowing how much my mom loved sex, it made a lot of sense. But this was scary. Like it was more real or something, you know?

“You look like you’re twelve!” I said, not realizing that’s exactly what Mom wanted to hear until the words were out.

“Aw, Matty! Thank you!” She positively beamed, posing with her fingers covering her smile and twisting on her hips. She even managed to blush, just a little, and I wondered if she practiced in front of a mirror or something. I wouldn’t have put it past her.

Fourteen would have been closer to the truth, but I’d wanted to make a point. Stupidly, as it turned out, and there was no way I could convince my mom to change into something else. Not after I’d just paid her such an awesome compliment.

“I think I need a new purse though,” she said, making it sound like I was her co-conspirator or something. “Like one of those cute ones, you know? The kind that look like puppies?”

“Huh?”

“They have kittens too,” she sorta explained. “Do you think that would be better? But the puppy ones are so totally cute!”

I had a vague idea of what she was talking about. I’d seen a few of the younger girls carrying pet purses around the neighborhood, but no self-respecting high school girl would go near something like that. Exactly how young did my mom want to be? Like I said, this was getting scary.

Fortunately, Mom seemed to come to her senses. Maybe it was the look on my face that clued her, I’m not sure.

“Nah,” she sighed. “That would probably be too much, huh? I need something though. Are you ready to go?”

“You’re going to drive like that?” I asked, half-smiling. I could just imagine some cop dropping his donut when he saw us go past with Mom behind the wheel.

“I’ll be so happy when you get your license, Matty. Just think, you can give me rides all the time!”

“I take driver’s ed next semester,” I reminded her, being a bit excited about it myself. “So are you going to change or what?”

For a second, I thought I had her over a barrel. I mean, if there was one thing my mom feared, it was being caught out. She’d never said anything about it specifically, but I’d seen her fret over her clothes and make-up before going out. She’d change a half-dozen times, trying different combinations just to make sure that nobody would doubt she was a teenage girl. The idea that a cop might demand to see her license and probably laugh when he discovered the truth ... No, she’d never risk that. Not in a million years.

If she wanted to take me shopping, she’d have to be my mom!

“I guess we’ll just have to take the bus,” she decided with a shrug. “Come on! We can sit in the back.”

“But...” So much for having her over a barrel.

We had to wait fifteen minutes for the bus.

“Remember,” she said, clutching my arm and whispering. “I’m your cousin if anybody asks and don’t forget to act like it. Make sure you call me Stacy, too.”

“You don’t have to whisper,” I said, letting my annoyance show. “There’s nobody here but us, Stacy.”

I stressed her name, real sarcastic-like, but all that got me was her fingernails digging into my arm.

“Ow!”

“Kitty’s got claws,” she said, sounding exactly like some of the girls I went to school with.

Mom let me go with a smile, but I got the message. Sorta. Well, not really. I mean, what was I supposed to do? She was my mom! I could either play along and pray that I didn’t end up crazy as loon, or I could refuse, and being my mom, she could make life miserable for the next three years. Trying to get her some help occurred to me as well, but that road always ended up with her in the loony bin, or maybe even in jail, and me living with my dad. Not an option.

“I’m screwed,” I muttered. Thankfully, Mom didn’t hear me as the bus rounded the corner.

“Oh! Here it comes!” she said, sounding ridiculously excited.

“It’s just the bus,” I pointed out, but I hadn’t checked out the situation from my mom’s point of view either.

“It’s our bus,” she said, grinning as she grabbed my hand. “This is gonna be so much fun, Matty!”

The good thing about riding a public bus is that the odds of running into anyone I knew was tiny. Teenagers didn’t ride the bus unless they were going to or from school, or really desperate. This was a Saturday morning and there wasn’t another kid in sight. I thought that would put a damper on Mom’s spirits, since she was all about doing whatever the other kids were doing, but she was all smiles. She waited until I’d slid a couple bucks into the meter machine and then dragged me all the way to the back of the bus. The driver was an older woman and she didn’t even look at us twice. None of the passengers did either, except for another old woman who offered Stacy a nostalgic smile.

I mean, she smiled at my mom, except now she was my cousin Stacy and I didn’t dare forget.

If she got busted, I’d probably be even more embarrassed than my mom. People would find out. Rumors would spread about her, about us, and even worse than that - Greg would know he’d fucked my mother, not my cousin. How long do you think he’d keep that secret, hot cheerleader girlfriend notwithstanding? A whole day? An hour? About two seconds, I figured. If I was lucky.

So yeah, I was seriously going to play along now that the full reality was hitting me in the face. And the worst part was that I wasn’t just with Stacy, I was actually part of her disguise now. I was helping her get away with ... whatever this turned out to be. I was learning as we went along and it always felt like I was trying to catch up with her, you know? Like Mom, I mean Stacy, was always just a step ahead of me.

But I had to draw a line somewhere, especially when she said, “This is our first date, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

She was still holding my hand as we sat close to each other. The last seat was big enough for six people, probably. It was a blue vinyl bench seat that stretched from one side of the bus to the other. We sat right in the middle with our legs stretching into the center aisle. The other passengers, and there were only a dozen of them, all sat near the middle and front. They were older, most of them. A younger woman wore a nurse’s uniform and a scruffy looking guy was sleeping, it looked like, but that’s it. We were alone in the back of the bus.

“I wish you weren’t my cousin,” Mom whispered, biting her bottom lip as her eyes searched mine. “Don’t you?”

“Uhhh...” My hand felt damp and clammy, but she didn’t seem to notice. Mom wouldn’t let me go either. When my hand went limp, she only squeezed my fingers that much harder.

“You’re really cute,” she sighed. “I bet you got a lot of girlfriends, huh?”

“What are you doing?” I whispered back. She put her free hand on my thigh and I jumped about six inches, I swear.

“Just talkin’ a little,” she replied. “It ain’t against the law to talk to me, ya know.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, weakly. “It might be,” I said. “Just, um ... Stop it!”

A few heads turned at my exclamation, but Stacy had slid her hand upward, pushing her fingers between my thighs. I felt the pressure against my crotch, but at least my dick wasn’t hard or anything. It probably should have been, but I was much too nervous for any weird, incestuous fantasies. I didn’t much like that stuff anyway! This was my mom!

“Shhh...” she shushed me, but her hand stayed right where it was. “You’re gonna get us kicked off.”

I grabbed her wrist. My heart was hammering, but with fear more than excitement. My mom might have been getting off on whatever she was doing, but I just wanted to get away from her. She must have realized it too. I mean, how could she not? I pulled her hand away from my lap and she didn’t fight me at all.

“You’re no fun,” she pouted, crossing her arms over tits.

A few seconds later she scooted away from me, all the way to the window and pointedly stared outside for the next ten minutes. All I could do was breathe a sigh of relief. I’d been worried about what I’d do if my mom ever really tried to do something. You know, like if she tried to have sex with me or something? Part of me, the bad part, would probably want to fuck her. In fact, I knew it did. What really scared me was that the good part of me wouldn’t be able to stop it from happening.

But I’d done it and I actually felt pretty good about myself for a change. I’d told Stacy no and who cares if she was pissed and pouting like a little girl? That got me thinking, since it was so quiet all of a sudden. What if my mom’s real problem wasn’t that she was some kind of nympho slut for high school guys, but that she was spoiled? Maybe she needed someone to say no once in awhile, maybe even spank her when she deserved it. Yeah, my mom needed a father, but then I thought about what Stacy might do to her daddy and ... I didn’t want to go there at all.