Chapter 2

The rain continued into the new year. When I wasn’t dismembering enemy soldiers with my friends, I spent much of the time reading in my bedroom, intermittently soaking wads of tissues as I satisfied my newly-rampant hormonal urges while thinking of girls at school, whom I had to lust after from a distance since I didn’t have the courage to actually talk to them.

Eventually the rain stopped and there was even some pallid winter sun. The day of reckoning seemed to have arrived. I took the metal detector out of its box and read the instructions. First I had to charge the battery overnight. That delayed things for another day.

The next day was bright and sunny, almost like Spring. Mum, Dad and Janey watched avidly as I took the metal detector out into our back garden. I donned the headphones, switched on the detector and started sweeping it across the garden in the fashion I’d seen on TV crime dramas. Almost immediately I heard it beeping to indicate it had detected something. I scrabbled away at the damp soil until I discovered the buried treasure – a rusty nail. I resumed the search and found a succession of nails, screws, a washer and other bits of metal which had no identifiable origins or purpose.

Eventually a tap on my shoulder interrupted my concentration. It was Dex. I hadn’t even realised he had come to visit, nor how long he had been waiting for me to acknowledge his existence. I took off the headphones so I could hear what he was saying.

“What are you doing, dude?” Dex asked.

“I’m trying out my Christmas present. This thing was Janey’s idea.”

My parents had gone indoors, probably unable to stand the excitement. Janey was still there however. She stuck out her tongue at me. “The perfect present for a dork,” she said. Yet Janey had hit the nail on the head: I’d been so completely engrossed that I hadn’t noticed how much time had passed or that my parents had gone back indoors.

“Have you found anything?” asked Dex.

“I think Noah’s Ark landed here. The wood rotted away leaving only these rusty nails,” I replied, showing him my less than impressive bounty.

A look of constipation crossed Dex’s face, a tell-tale symptom that he had had an idea, the same ‘tell’ that made him such a lousy poker player. “Hey, could you bring your metal detector round to my house? My mum lost her wedding ring in the garden and we haven’t been able to find it.”

“Sure, I’ll just let my parents know.”

It wasn’t quite that simple. Mum first had to give me a lecture on how expensive the metal detector had been, and how important it was for me to be careful not to break it.

In Dex’s garden, the treasure haul was pretty similar to my garden, rusty nails and screws etc. But then Dex’s mum suggested sweeping the lawn, since that was where she put out the rotary dryer to air her washing. I started from the middle of the lawn and spiralled out. Nearly halfway to the edge the detector started beeping. I dug away at the grass and there, embedded in the turf, was the missing ring.

Mrs Thomas, who was on the large side, grasped me in a breath-expelling bear hug and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she choked, tears streaming from her eyes. “This means so much to me and I thought I’d lost it forever.” Then she kissed my other cheek. By now I was getting red in the face, partly from embarrassment and partly because I couldn’t breathe.

Mrs Thomas relaxed her grip somewhat, and I was able to suck in a deep breath. Then, as I noticed her fresh, clean smell, lightly enhanced by a hint of floral-scented perfume, I realised she was a member of the opposite sex, and not just Dex’s asexual mother. My parents weren’t tactile types, so while I was pressed against Mrs Thomas’s huge, pillowy breasts, it struck me that they were the first female breasts that I could ever remember being in contact with. That sent my blood rushing somewhere I really didn’t want and, as my dick was trapped between us, from the smug expression on her face I’m pretty sure Mrs Thomas had felt me hardening. My face turned incandescent.

“Oh Jon, you’re such a nice boy,” she smiled. “You’re welcome here any time.” Then she kissed my forehead and released me, grabbing a tissue to dry her face.

“Dude,” whispered Dex. “You were just making out with my mum!”

“No I wasn’t,” I hissed back. “She was just showing her appreciation. You deserve some credit too for coming up with the idea.”

“Then why the red face?”

“Um, she was squeezing me rather tightly.”

“Okay,” he grinned. “But if you end up as my step dad, I’m never talking to you again.”

I punched Dex lightly on the arm then took my metal detector home to crow to my family. For the rest of the day, Janey sported a self-satisfied smirk.