Sixteen

AT SIX-THIRTY SHARP, a bright red pickup truck came tearing down our driveway in a cloud of dust. Beth’s Dad bought her the 4x4 for her eighteenth birthday. “Boys love girls in trucks,” he’d said as he handed her the keys. We’d all laughed because she had to have the seat customized so she could reach the pedals and still see out the windshield. Beth barely topped five feet, but she loved that truck.

I stepped off the front porch and sauntered toward where she’d stopped, but I was still several feet away when her door opened and I saw her legs drop down below the door. I don’t think I’d ever seen Beth’s bare legs except maybe once when we all went swimming. She was strictly a blue jeans girl in high school. But these weren’t the chubby little legs I remembered from that outing. Nor was the svelte, stacked babe that stepped around the truck door the “Dumpling” of my childhood.

“Beth?” I said. I knew I shouldn’t gawk, but... “Wow!”

“So where’s this hot jock I’m supposed to be dating?” she asked, posing by the door.

“I’d say he’s still upstairs, but you’d make me go get him,” I said. “Wow, Dumpling!” I stopped myself. “I can’t really call you that anymore, can I?”

“Tony, you can call me the south end of a horse headed north if you want to. What I look like doesn’t change who I am.”

“I hope not!” I said. “But what you look like might give some guys a different idea.”

“Really, Pogo? What kind of ideas does it give you?” she swished herself over to where I’d stopped and put her hands behind my neck. It was still a bit of a reach.

“Oh! I don’t mean me, Dumpling! I just mean ... well ... shit ... what do I mean?”

“I think you mean you were about to get in the truck,” she growled.

“Yeah. Exactly.” We turned and headed for the truck and Beth caught hold of my arm and squeezed it. Then she stopped and spun me toward her. She squeezed my bicep a little more and then poked me in the stomach. I saw it coming and tensed my gut, so she didn’t sink in at all. She grabbed my shirttails and pulled it up to expose my stomach. Well, I have been working out for a while and Pilates does wonders for the abs.

“Jesus Christ, Pogo! You didn’t really go and become a jock, did you?”

“Well, I do play,” I said.

“Last time I heard, the only thing you played was racquetball.”

“Yeah. Imagine my surprise to find out it was a sport,” I chuckled. I pulled my shirt down and she pulled it back up to poke at my stomach again. Finally, she let the shirt fall back down.

“You got washboard abs from playing racquetball?”

“Well, not just. It was from all the training.”

“Training for what?”

“Intercollegiate National Championships and the National Singles Championships,” I said calmly. Well, hell. I was proud of it. This was the first real opportunity I’d had to brag about it.

“When?”

“I got back on Mothers’ Day.”

“Back?”

“From Chicago. Where the championships were played.”

“Did you win?”

“No. But I played.”

“No way.”

“I’ve got it on video. It’s on YouTube.” Beth grabbed my arm and marched me right back toward the house.

“I suppose there’s a Tony Ames Channel on YouTube now, right?” she snarled. I stopped and gasped. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

“Geez! I hope not. Where are we going?”

“You’re going to show me. Right now.”

I took her into the family room where Dad had downloaded my match against Karl onto our set-top box and I knew he’d shown it to a few other people who had come over. The TV was set to play it. Beth sat at the edge of the sofa watching the seven-point match.

“That’s the national champion I’m playing,” I filled her in. “His name’s Karl Higgendorfer and he’s a great guy.”

“You played him in the tournament?”

“No. I did actually win a couple of matches in the tournament. Karl challenged me to a match the day before the tournament began.”

“The national champion challenged you to a pre-tournament match-up.” She looked at me when the finished the video. “What else?”

“A lot of things have changed since last year,” I said. Before I could continue, though, she jumped up.

“Let’s go,” she commanded. She was dragging me out to the truck. “That bitch Ramona is going to be at this party and you had better have eyes for no one but me. Got it? I want every boy and every girl at the party to be pissed over what they missed out on. For both of us.”

“Don’t you want to, like ... entice someone?” I asked. Shit, I thought she’d be ready to prey on all the people who’d dissed her in high school.

“Oh yeah,” she smiled.

You’ve got to understand a bit about country parties. It’s not like going to somebody’s apartment in the city and getting drunk on cheap wine or worse rum where you’re confined to three rooms and a sofa. We party outside ... on a farm ... with woods, creeks, barns, sheds, bushes, and heavy implements. Donny had a volleyball net set up and by the time we got there, they were already picking up teams. Beth dragged me over and immediately declared that we were playing. Donny looked at her and his eyes got as big as saucers. He stammered.

“Yeah. Sure. You can be on my team.”

Stoney, apparently the team captain for the opposition, looked daggers at Donny. I don’t think he knew who either of us were. He pointed at me and said, “Yeah. You, over here.”

I was headed that way when Beth grabbed my arm.

“Lose the shirt, stud,” she said and proceeded to peel her own top off. She was wearing a bikini top under it and every male and most of the female eyes were riveted to it. Beth had lost a lot of weight the past year, but none of it came off her breasts. There was enough saliva being dripped on the ground to make it muddy. I stripped off my shirt and tensed my abs for Beth’s benefit, and that didn’t go unnoticed, either. We grinned at each other and took our places.

I’m not a great volleyball player. But I was in great shape. So, when other guys were sagging out and running for a beer, I was still returning serves and everyone discovered I had a wicked spike. My side lost, mostly because all the guys were so intent on Beth’s boobs they missed every shot. When we headed toward our shirts, guys were mobbing Beth. I noticed the aforementioned Ramona headed toward me.

Ramona was every geek’s nemesis. Cheerleader, beauty queen—or what passed for one in Nebraska—and a personality that was all about how she, and everyone else, looked. While neither Beth nor I were exactly geeks, we didn’t fit in for other reasons. Beth was valedictorian and I was an artist. ‘Nuf said. We were always fair game for Ramona’s self-glorifying barbs. Her graduation day remark had offended nearly everyone. “Well, of course she’s valedictorian. What else did she have to do?”