Chapter 8

I managed to sneak in a Val kiss before the cramps ran me out the door. Who ever was running the program had rearranged my closet. Then I remembered.

I couldn’t use the portal where it was, hung out in the middle of space ... so to speak, so ... they moved it ... to my closet. Where my 16 year old sister found me coming out and tattled.

“Mom! He’s hiding out in the closet! He smells like sex!” She ... Grace... The rail stuck her tongue out and gave me the raspberry.

If you have a reasonable relationship with your sibs ... I’ll be willing to trade. Just saying.

“Grace! He’s 18 years old ... of course he’s having sex,” Mom said.

“So...” started Grace, “When I’m 18, I can have sex?”

From the radio ham shack in the basement, boomed Daddy. “No, Grace. You can have sex when you’re forty ... or married.”

“Yeah, Grace,” my older brother, Charles spouted, “Forty or married. Lots of luck on the married part.” He chuckled over his swift repartee. Charles is a comedian in his own mind.

Charles ... mister three hundred pounds and every bit of it fat, wouldn’t get married until he was thirty five, so he had a lot to say.

Grace did manage to find a blind pig and married just after Beauty School.

The only sibling in my family who actually made a name for herself was Marianne ... the youngest ... She always said, “Well ... I could see where you all went wrong.”

“Grace ... I wasn’t hiding in my closet. I was dressing.”

I have no idea how women think ... there isn’t a lick of sense in a single one of them. They are contrary ... centered ... as in, the world is centered around them ... they have abusive personalities ... to siblings ... and no matter what you say to them ... they take it wrong.

And they say the same about us ... we’re both right.

Even though I was 18, for my sins, I was still in high school ... still, I wondered how soon could I go back to Crossroads. Late at night, I pursued my previous habit ... I read.

I read ... but I hadn’t REALLY read the Rules for Heroes ... not really.

“Three WEEKS?” “No Sooner?”

You give a kid unlimited sex for a couple of weeks and I can guarantee ... he’s not going to stop. I needed a girlfriend.

Not a girl friend ... I had plenty of those. A girlfriend in the full meaning. The meaning described by an older woman ... Sex and conversation. Sex and dates. Dinner and a movie ... and sex. Hay rides ... and sex. Amusement Parks ... and sex. Drives in the country ... and sex.

The problem ... the high school girls all knew me.

“David is a nice guy ... he listens.”

“David is a good guy ... he keeps his hands to himself.”

And then there are the friends of Grace ... the 9 and 10th graders ... poisoned by sister.

To which, mom said, “I told you to be nice to your sisters.”