Chapter 1: Making New Friends

When I was growing up, we moved around a lot. My dad wasn’t in the military or anything like that; he was a college football coach. He spent over twenty years as an assistant at several colleges. He never achieved his goal of becoming a head coach, but he was satisfied with his career choice. If you follow college football, you know that coaches get fired all the time, and when a head coach loses his job, most of his assistants lose theirs as well. What that meant for us was a lot of moves. Between first grade and ninth grade, I attended four different schools in four different cities.

In 1978, Dad was hired by a coach who had been at the same college for ten years, so we were all hopeful that this would be a long-term situation. I was about to start my sophomore year of high school, and I hoped my new school would be where I would eventually graduate, and that this time we would stay long enough for me to make some real friends.

My parents rented a modest, two-bedroom home in a typical middle-class neighborhood. We rented because putting down roots wasn’t part of our lifestyle. Dad was optimistic, but experience had taught him that he could be job hunting again before long. My mom was a nurse, an occupation that made it easy for her to find a job in whatever place we ended up, and I had learned how to cope with relocating.

It was the middle of summer when we moved, which gave me time to scout out my new neighborhood before school started. One hot morning, I got on my bike and started exploring. I rode around for a while, then found some guys shooting hoops on a scruffy-looking court. I watched for a few minutes, then one of them threw the ball at me. At me, not to me. I knew a new-guy challenge when I saw it, so I dribbled it a couple times, then tried a shot from an impossible distance. I missed everything: rim, net, and backboard. It was the wrong kind of swish. After we had a good laugh, I introduced myself, and we started a 3v3 skins vs shirts game.

After the game, I was about to leave when a kid named Nick volunteered to show me around the neighborhood. Our first stop was my new high school. The name over the front entrance was ‘Ridgewood High,’ but Nick told me that because it was old and kind of rundown, “everybody calls it Roachwood.” Then Nick showed me where my bus stop would be, and we went to a couple of convenience stores where kids our age hung out. “Lots of good comics,” he said at the last one, “and tittie mags, but they don’t sell them to kids our age.”

It was getting hot, and I thought Nick’s tour was about done when he said, “We should see if the naughty girls are home.”

“The ... who?” I asked, not quite sure I had heard him right.

He grinned. “Lily and Rose. Their last name is Naughton. Some people started calling them the naughty girls a couple of years ago. I think it might have been one of their teachers who started it. She might have meant it as a joke, but it caught on. Now, they seem to be trying to live up to the name. Come on, you’re gonna meet them someday soon anyway.”

“What do you mean, they try to live up to it?”

“They’re kinda wild, getting in trouble in school, a little vandalism, there’s even rumors that Lily does ... sex things ... with guys for money, but I don’t believe that. They’re just...”

“Naughty,” I finished his thought.

“Yeah,” Nick smiled.

We rode over to Madison Ave., a street near my new home. “Ah, good,” Nick said as we neared one of the brick homes, “Lily’s home.”

I saw a girl who looked to be about my age sitting on the front steps. My first impression was that she was indeed a naughty girl. She was wearing very short shorts and her knees were up by her chest, which gave me a nice view of her smooth, tanned thighs and there was even a hint of bottom cheek poking out of her white panties. I tried not to stare, but she didn’t seem to mind, making no effort to move into a more ladylike pose.

“Hi, Lily,” Nick said.

“Hey Nick, who’s your friend?”

“This is John. His family just moved into Riverview.”

“Hi,” I said, trying very hard to maintain eye contact, even though it was difficult not to enjoy the show she was putting on, especially when she casually let her knees spread a little further apart. When I finally managed to concentrate on her face, I saw that she had a round face, black hair tied up in a short ponytail, and poorly cut bangs. She looked Asian to me, but I couldn’t be sure. The only Asians in my old school were a couple of Filipino kids, so my experience with that ethnic group in the 70’s was limited. She had an upturned nose, the kind that look cute on young girls but not so much when they grow up. She wasn’t someone who would stand out in a crowd, say in a mall on Saturday, but she was a girl I wouldn’t mind having as a girlfriend. She was, as we used to say, in my league.

“He’s gonna have to tough it out at Roachwood with the rest of us,” Nick said.

“Nick, shut up and let him talk,” Lily snapped. From the look on Nick’s face, I had the feeling that they weren’t exactly friendly. She asked me, “How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” I said.

“You’re a year older than I am,” Lily said. “I’m gonna be a freshman this year. I guess you’ll be a sophomore, like my sister. Rose, get out here,” she yelled without bothering to get up.

The front door opened, and the other ‘naughty’ girl came out. If Nick hadn’t already told me they were sisters, I wouldn’t have guessed it. Lily was short and round, and Rose was tall and slender. She had a triangular face, a narrow chin, wide-set brown eyes, and a high forehead. Her straight brunette hair was parted in the middle and hung down over her shoulders, a style that made me think of hippie, ‘summer of love’ girls. Like me, she wore glasses, magnifying the size of her pupils. I knew a nerd when I saw one, and Rose fit the profile. Takes one to know one.

“Hey, Rose. This is John,” Nick said before I got the chance to introduce myself. I was getting tired of him treating me like his little brother.

Lily took over. “He’s gonna be going to Roachwood. He’ll be a sophomore, like you.”

Rose smiled and said, “Does he talk?”

“I talk,” I told her, smiling back, “when I get the chance.”

Thankfully, Nick took the hint. “My mom is taking me to the dentist this afternoon, so I’d better go home and clean up. See you guys later.”

After he left, the three of us had a nice get-to-know-you conversation. When you move around as much as I had, and meet so many new people, you develop the ability to spot the good ones quickly. It didn’t take long for me to get a friendly vibe from the Naughton girls. They told me that their dad was a long-distance truck driver and was often away from home for days at a time. Their mother worked as a secretary for a real estate agency. They had an older brother who was in the Marines and was stationed in Korea. They seemed normal enough while we talked, with a few f-bombs thrown in, which I had learned was normal for girls their age. I wondered if the whole ‘naughty girl’ image might have been an exaggeration.

Lily, who seemed to be the most outgoing sister, asked me if I liked comics. “Depends on what kind. The ones I like, you probably wouldn’t care for.”

“Try us,” Rose said.

“You know, stuff like ‘Tales From the Crypt’ and ‘Weird Tales.’”

Lily laughed and looked at her sister, then at me. “We love that kind of shit. Our parents don’t like the gory stuff, so we try not to let them catch us reading them. Do you have a lot?”

“Don’t know what you mean by a lot, but ... maybe twenty or so.”

“Damn,” Lily whispered, as if we were sharing a secret. “Maybe we can have a look sometime?”

“Yeah, I could bring some over.”

We talked for another half hour or so, then I headed home. I had never talked that long with a girl before, much less two. I was looking forward to spending more time with them, but it didn’t happen right away.

The next few days were rainy, and after the first wet day, my parents saw a couple of damp spots in the ceiling over their bed and called our landlord. Since my parents had just started new jobs, I had to be there when the handyman arrived. The fix turned out to be a big deal that kept me at home for a couple of days while a crew worked on the roof.