Caleb's Growing Up Summer
Copyright© 2015 by Levi Charon
Chapter 8
In some ways, Caleb was the same country boy that got off the rickety school bus at the beginning of summer, but in many ways, he was quite a different person.
Perhaps his classmates were more aware of the difference than he was. For starters, he looked different. He'd gained at least twenty pounds, erasing the gaunt, cadaverous look they were used to seeing (if they saw him at all). He wore nice clothes like Levi's and polo shirts instead of bib overalls, loafers instead of hightop shoes. His hair was trimmed.
But that was just on the outside. What his classmates and teachers saw emanating from within was unmistakable if difficult to pin down or articulate. There was a new confidence within him that they'd never seen before; tentative, perhaps, but it was there. He seemed to walk a little taller. His eyes weren't permanently fixed on the floor in front of him. When he spoke, he looked you in the eye, and he didn't mumble like he used to.
His grammar was much improved. He still made mistakes and Annie still corrected them, but it had become a game between them, eliciting laughter rather than frustration or resentment.
The night he spent in Annie's bed was never repeated, but a boy doesn't experience something like that without seeing the world from a profoundly different perspective. He was no longer innocent in that way. The girls in his ninth grade class didn't seem so distant, so unattainable as they did in the eighth grade. There was no real mystery there. He'd seen and experienced a woman's body. It was a very private thing, a thing he'd never brag about, but it was something he owned, something that could never be taken away from him. The loss of his virginity had been thing of beauty, not a thing to be ashamed of.
They moved to Bill's house right after the wedding. Caleb had a nice room of his own, much larger than the one at Annie's house. School was ten blocks away, far enough to justify riding his bike. On days when the weather was really crappy, Bill would drop him off on his way to the office. Annie had to leave pretty early in the morning to drive to Maywood High.