Part 1

Allison Bryant had got home physically, but her mind was still selling real estate as she fitted her key in the door. The new couple looked interested in the Westerall house. There would be a nice commission if they took it.

Her daughter, Shannon was coming towards her carrying two cans of soft drinks. "Oh, hi mom," she said. "I didn't expect you home." She headed up the stairs. If she hadn't expected her home, why did she have two cans? And they were one Coke and one root beer. Shannon had some weird tastes, but she wouldn't drink both at the same time.

Allison followed her up the stairs. "Getting it?" Shannon asked.

"I think the modem is plugged in," came a boy's voice from her room. "Try it, and I'll stay here."

There was a boy lying on Shannon's bed! "What are you doing? And who are you?"

"Oh, hi, Mrs. Bryant. I'm Steve Anderson. We're trying to get Shannon's new computer set up." Why she asked who he was, Steve couldn't tell. He'd met her and Shannon's dad on his first time taking Shannon out. Damn near gave him a third degree, too.

Oh, Steven, Allison thought. He looked different lying down with his arms stretched out. Well, it could have been worse. Shannon wasn't on the bed with him. Still Allison wasn't happy seeing a boy in her daughter's bedroom, much less her daughter's bed.

Shannon sat down at her new computer. "What should I type?"

"Don't use the keyboard," Steve said. "Use the mouse. It should say something like 'Internet Explorer' or 'AOL' on one of those boxes."

"It has both." Shannon thought that Steve should give her step-by-step directions. All these choices were more than she wanted. And couldn't her mom go do something else? Steve would set her up next.

Allison was frustrated. These kids were ignoring her, ignoring that she could see what they were doing. Well, what they were doing seemed to be getting a computer up and running. Still, did they have to be doing it in a bedroom, for God's sake?

Steve was uncomfortable. He'd said that he would set up Shannon's mom on AOL, too. But he had to deal with one computer at a time. And hiding the phone jack under the head of Shannon's bed was idiotic. Still, setting up the computer was his business -- rearranging her bedroom was not. And he hadn't had his root beer yet, and Shannon shouldn't have opened her Coke right over the computer keyboard. Still, he wasn't going to nag her in front of her mom. "Click on the Explorer." He wanted to be at the computer when he set up AOL.

"Did that."

"Let me look at the screen." Steve got up from the bed to see the Explorer log-in. "Okay, click the top-right X. We don't want to use it, we wanted to know that the modem connection worked." He turned to Shannon's mom, who seemed to be waiting for him to go to work on her installation. "I'll take a while here. Then I'll do yours. Your office, right?" Shannon got up, and he sat down at the keyboard.

Allison knew when she had been dismissed. She just wasn't about to be dismissed from her daughter's bedroom in her own house by a teenage boy. "Look," she said, "do you have to do this here?"

"Mom," asked Shannon, "where do you expect me to set up my new computer? Where do I have any space if not here?"

Steve could see a fight brewing, and he didn't want to be in the middle of it. Shannon was right, and her mom was being unreasonable -- as Shannon often told him she was. Still, if he was part of the argument, even an audience for it, then her mom would remember it when they wanted to extend a curfew or have another privilege. "Where is your AOL disk?" he asked Shannon to distract her.

She handed it to him, and he went to work. He'd already chosen a password for her, "stVlvSshN." It didn't matter that her mom knew her password, he'd tell her to change it anyway. Still, he didn't want her mom seeing that message. Seeing it in the middle of a fight would be worse.

"Now, you want screen names for each of your parents, too?" he asked. He turned to her mom. "If you get an account with AOL, you get multiple screen names. Shannon asked me to set each one of you up with a screen name. All your identity online is that screen name. Each one has its own password. I'll give you 'SHANMOM' and your husband 'SHANDAD.' Change those passwords. Nobody should know yours, and I certainly don't want to. I'll set up the accounts from this machine, and then we'll go install AOL on your machine. I understand that your husband can get AOL from work."

"I think he already has an account from the hospital."

"Maybe so. Shannon told me to set each of you up with your own account. He doesn't have a computer here?"

"Not one connected to the Internet." Allison was angry enough at this boy invading Shannon's room; she certainly wasn't going to invite him into hers. "I think he likes it that way."

"That's fine." In the first place, the man worked with computers, big ones; he couldn't be so ignorant that he couldn't set up AOL. In the second, while this was an easy way to impress Shannon, Steve didn't want to do any work which wouldn't gain him anything. In the third, the obvious reason that a man with Internet access at work might want one at home -- downloading porn -- wasn't one he was about to suggest to the man's wife and daughter. He didn't want Shannon even suspecting that he, Steve, was aware of the possibility. For that matter, her dad might not have any interest in that sort of stuff. "If you want me in your office, I'll install AOL on your computer. You could probably do it yourself." She couldn't be as computer-ignorant as Shannon, but -- then -- maybe it ran in the genes.

Allison thought it weird that he would think nothing of being in Shannon's bedroom -- Shannon's bed -- and then ask politely whether she wanted him in her office. But that seemed the only way to get him out of the bedroom. Anyway, she did want an AOL connection. "That would be nice."

"Let me drink some of this." Steve moved to the center of the room before he popped the tab on his root beer. "You don't want pop anywhere near a keyboard." He hoped Shannon would take that hint. "You're already set up -- 'bryant-dash-a at AOL dot com.' It's all lowercase letters -- small letters. That's how screen names work. But you can't access from your own computer until AOL is installed there." Steve had told Shannon this several times. He suspected it had flown in one ear and out the other, and repeating it to her mom was one way to repeat it without expressing how deep he felt Shannon's ignorance was. Deep, and a little weird; Shannon got good grades in school, better -- if anything -- than his own; you'd think she could get this stuff which was so simple.

Steve installed AOL on Shannon's mom's computer, finished his root beer -- he'd left the can on the hall floor, and took his leave. He'd expected a kiss from Shannon. Hell, he'd deserved one; but he knew he wasn't going to get it with her mom watching. For that matter, her mom seemed in a bad mood.

When he'd walked his bike to the sidewalk and pedaled away, Shannon turned to her mom. "He did me a favor -- did you one for that matter. You didn't have to treat him like dirt."

"I come home to find a strange boy in your bedroom, and you criticize how I act?"

"You knew I was getting a new computer. You wrote the check." Shannon had savings from her job, but the money was in her mother's account. Money in Shannon's hands tended to be spent very quickly. "Did you really expect me to set it up myself?"

"I come home to find a strange boy lying in your bed."

"Steve isn't strange. Well, he's strange in some ways -- he could set up a computer, after all. But we've been going together for months now. You've met him before. And he was plugging in the cord for the modem. Do you think he should have been lying on the floor? There isn't space. You have a bedroom and an office; when you want to entertain your friends, you can do it in the living room or the dining room. I have one room. This is my office, my living room. It's the only room which is mine. When I told you that I was going to put you and dad on AOL, you said it was generous of me. Then you object to my being on AOL."

It had been generous of Shannon. Allison might worry about her daughter's spendthrift ways, but you couldn't deny that she was generous. And it was the only place that she could set up her computer; they'd even discussed where it would go. Still, she was seventeen, a high-school senior. Didn't she have any consciousness of appearances? For that matter, Steve -- he'd called himself Steven -- Steven was a senior, too. Did he think that he should be lying on a girl's bed in the presence of her mother? And lying on her bed when her mother wasn't home was worse. She never doubted that Shannon petted; she came home from a two-hour date much less neatly dressed than she did from a full day in school. But she wanted limits. She figured that she and Wayne had taught their daughter limits, but what they taught and what Shannon learned were two entirely different things.

Steve had invited Ken over. He'd visited less this last year than he had before, but he was one of the kids his parents really liked. Several of the teachers liked Ken, too, which was something of a puzzle. The kids liked him because he was a joker, often in trouble. You'd think that the adults would hate him for that reason.

In Steve's room, Ken talked about beginning AP calc that week. Steve enjoyed the idea of taking calc; he'd need it for what he wanted to do. Actually enjoying the subject, the contents of the course? That seemed to go against the unofficial high-school code of conduct. "You're going to be busy, taking AP in both calc and physics," he pointed out. "Do you really want to run for student-council president?"

"It's too late to change my mind about that. I've been running for the last two years. Besides, the schools look at that when they are doing admittance."

"You could get in anywhere. You got an 800 on the junior math College Boards."

"Everybody applying to Chicago did something like that. Remember Jerry, president of the chess club our freshman year?"

"Yeah, and first board. I could see working at being first board; club president looks like more work, and less prestige, as you should know."

"I asked him that. The players respect first board; they don't much respect president, and non-players laugh at the entire club. Well, he told me that schools look at things like that. He'd been a good student with no extra-curricular activities. Mr. Babaian thought up the chess club to give him an office. First board wants to be president, you vote for him."

"You were first board by the end of that year. Why didn't you run for president?"

"I did. I just took my time. But, if president of the chess club will make the schools look at you, a major office will make them look closer. So I looked at the major offices."

"And you're running for the highest one."

"Class president is less prestige with more competition. Anyway, I supported people running for class offices in return for their promise of support for me later. They aren't all keeping their promises, but enough are. And the chess players and the jokers are supporting me. You should run for student council; it would look good on your record, too."

"No. I'm not even sure I can keep up in the chess club. I'll be working for Hauksbee in the drug store as much time as I can and he'll let me."

"And as much time as Shannon lets you free."

"Shannon knows I have to work. She ushers, too. She's an understanding girl. And didn't inherit that from her mom."

"Mom doesn't like dear daughter dating a dork?"

"It's not that." And Steve told him the whole story of his working on Shannon's computer. "And I can't understand it. This is my room. Now, my mom and dad like you; but they'd never say who I can have visit here. They haven't since I was a little kid."

"Yeah, but her mom is a married lady."

"So what? Most moms are."

Not all moms. His mom wasn't, which Steve knew. She'd never been, which he'd never told Steve. He kept few secrets from his closest friend, but that was one of them. "You won't talk about my reasons for running for council president?" he asked suddenly.

"No. What about Shannon's mom? What did you mean?"

"Well, she's a married lady. She has sex in her bed. That's what a bed means to her, what a bedroom means." Not that they had to be married to have sex, not that they always kept sex in the bedroom. He'd heard his mom too many times, seen her once on the couch with a visitor, not that he'd ever say any of that to Steve. "Wouldn't you have funny feelings about Shannon riding in the back seat with another boy? Perfectly innocent use of the back seat -- but you have another experience."

"Boy! Have you ever seen the back seat of a Honda? I don't get in the back seat with Shannon. I don't know if she's ever even sat there."

"But you get my point." If Ken had things he didn't share with Steve, Steve had things he didn't share with Ken. How far had they gone? Ken didn't know, and Steve didn't say. Unlike a lot of kids who'd tell you all about their conquests -- imaginary conquests, probably.

Steve had been known to refuse to say whether he'd ever kissed Shannon, which was ridiculous. The school had rules about "PDA," public displays of affection on school property. Some couples protested by ostentatiously kissing as soon as they were across the street and off school property. Steve and Shannon had soon tired of that game, but they'd played it for a few days in the spring.

"I'd rather have you on the Council than not," Ken said, reminded that some kids liked and/or respected Steve. "Still, it's your decision. You will campaign for me, though?"

"Sure. I've said so. Even though I still think this is one of your elaborate practical jokes."

"Would I do that to you?" Ken didn't bother to deny that he'd do that to the student body.

"Yup!" At which time, there was a knock on the door. It was time for supper.

Steve often bitched about his parents to Ken. Ken listened, that's what friends did. Still, he envied him his parents -- even his dad. There were two or three teachers who had been a great help to Ken, all of them male. His own dad was a programmer; Ken got -- aside from the checks which only his mom saw -- two weeks a year with him, even if those weeks were fun. Steve's mom was the closest thing to a mother figure in Ken's life.

"So, Ken," said Steve's dad, "Steve tells us you are running for president of the student council. Isn't that a major step? Shouldn't you have done something lesser beforehand?"

"Well, I am president of the chess club. Was president last year and the vee-pee the year before. But I think I've got a good chance at this. Besides, you have to understand what student council is."

"And what's that? It's the government of the school."

"Not quite. Look, school is a bunch of classes. It's more, but that is the center. Now, the principal is in charge; he's paid more than the teachers, and can give them orders. But he can't control how Mr. Babaian teaches physics. He doesn't know what goes on in the classroom day by day; he doesn't know enough physics, for that matter."

"So?"

"So, everything which is really important is out of the principal's control. All he can control is Mickey-Mouse stuff. And, as Steve will have told you, that means that the school is full of Mickey-Mouse rules. I'll bet the president of your company doesn't have a loudspeaker which he gets on a half dozen times a day to make announcements to the factory workers. So the teachers control what happens in class; the principal and his administration controls what they can -- making up rules for the most part. That doesn't leave much for the student council to decide. They mostly run the dances; that and they have great fun with parliamentary rules. I'll bet the average student-council member raises more points of order in a year than the entire US Congress."

"Your take on school government is interesting," Rachel Anderson said. "You don't intend to tie the council in knots just to prove your point do you?"

"Well..."

"Promise us you'll do the best job you can if you do get in."

"Oh, he'll get in," said Steve. He had great faith in Ken's scheming. Some of the schemes blew up, though the t-shirts they'd tried to turn into guncotton hadn't. He wouldn't take any bets against unintended consequences, but the direct results of one of his schemes was fairly certain to be what Ken intended. He wouldn't make the mistake of counting his votes wrong.

"I didn't hear his promise," said his mom.

"I promise. I'll be the best student-council president I can be."

"When you get older," said Steve's dad, "you might see the point to some of the rules which seem pointless now. I can remember Steve complaining about the PDA rule."

"Oh, I can see that one. Not that it limits me in any way. Before you can display affection, you have to have someone you feel affectionate about. And nobody is ever going to feel affection towards me."

"You aren't as hard to like as you think, Ken," Mrs. Anderson said. "Roger and I managed."

"You have a generous heart. With two kids of your own, you looked at the stray your son brought home with him and opened another ventricle of mother-love."

"Ken!" Mrs. Anderson looked as shocked at what he had said as he felt. He'd always had a problem evading the truth around her. He took a deep breath and settled down. Steve's next question was about chess, and he answered it well enough. He didn't reveal himself another time during the meal.

Shannon was a little surprised at the energy Steve put into Ken's campaign. She didn't put in any great effort, herself. For that matter, Ken didn't seem to put out any effort, either. He won on his reputation as a joker -- but also he got support from a surprising number of leaders in the sophomore and junior classes.

The important part of student government went on substantially unchanged. The dances were held on schedule. Steve took her to the first one. They danced the slow dances together, and sat out half the fast dances together. They parked on their way home.

Steve didn't really think that petting was something that Shannon owed him. As much as he wanted to bare her lovely breasts, he didn't want her to permit him because he had taken her to the first dance of their senior year. But still...

Shannon buttoned her blouse up again, before moving back into his arms. She really liked Steve, loved him, loved his kisses. But she felt so exposed in the seat of his mother's Honda.

"But this summer, you... we..." Steve said.

All summer they had ridden their bikes out in the mornings while their friends slept in. They'd both had jobs that interfered with their afternoons and evenings. He'd made deliveries for old man Hauksbee's drugstore; Shannon had ushered at the movie theater four evenings a week and sat for Mrs. Green on the other three. Mornings were their times together.

They had found a meadow on an abandoned farm where they could talk in absolute privacy; and, when they would stop talking, the privacy had been even more important. He had felt her breasts, and then seen her breasts, and then kissed her breasts.

"It's not the same, Steve," she said, wondering why he couldn't see that. It was one thing to be alone in the meadow, sharing all their thoughts, no one to see them but God; and then they shared some other things, too, things that she wouldn't have mentioned to another soul. "We were clean, then."

"After a five-mile bike ride? I showered before picking you up tonight."

"We were sweaty, but what we did was clean," she said. "Now we are just a couple of kids making out in a car. And anybody could come by. It's not the same. And I have to be home in fifteen minutes."

The last was inarguable. He kissed her with closed lips and with his hands off her covered breasts. "I love you," he said. "I don't understand you, but I love you." He started the car.

She loved him, too. She even understood him a little bit, sometimes. She had enjoyed their summer petting, and it didn't make sense to feel more exposed in the dark car than she had in the sunlit field. She just did. And, he did back off when she asked. Finally she said, "I love you, too. Just have a little patience with me."

He'd thought that the conversation was over. They were nearly to her house, having driven in silence. "Patience" didn't sound that bad to him; not good, but better than "never."

They kissed chastely at her door. Her parents might be watching.

As a matter of fact, her mother was. She was favorably impressed that Steven always walked Shannon to the door as Curt almost never had; she was happy that they hadn't made a spectacle of themselves for the neighbors. Still, Allison Bryant didn't think for one minute that this kiss represented the extent of the last hour's activities. "Did you have a nice time at the dance?" she asked. From the state of Shannon's hair and lipstick, she'd clearly had a nice time afterwards.

"It was great," Shannon said with a lack of enthusiasm even she could hear. "Actually, it was. It's just that neither Jones at the theater nor Hauksbee at the drugstore have much respect for their peons' social needs." Which was a constant annoyance, even if not one that she had thought about that night.

Steve stopped his mother's car at a gas station to fill the tank. His earnings, after current expenses, went into a savings account intended for college. The money in there was probably enough to buy a beater; he was tired of having to explain to his parents before every date just why he needed to use one of their cars. Kids who worked much less than he, younger kids, kids doing worse in school, kids who had been in trouble with the law for God's sake, drove their own cars to school every day.

Later, lying in bed, he thought that his having to ask for the car was typical of his life. Bill, a year ahead of him in school and Hauksbee's delivery boy two years ago, had worked in the store and been trusted with the cash register his senior year. With Bill gone, Hauksbee or Thompson handled the register. Steve was still just a delivery boy.

Steve got good grades, and had been sent to the principal's office only twice in the three previous years. Both times were with Ken, and the principal had little to say to him except "Stay away from Ken; he'll just lead you into trouble." Now Ken was president of Student Council, and Steve was nobody. Well, that was unfair; he'd helped Ken win, and Ken had wanted him to run for Council. Steve just hadn't wanted to put in the time. And Ken was even brighter than his grades showed; when Mr. Jenkins was teaching them the evils of sentence fragments, he'd handed one of Ken's themes back with the comment: "Laughed out loud; grade of F." Ken had written the whole thing in sentence fragments.

But still, Steve colored within the lines and got diddleysquat. Even Shannon (especially Shannon because Shannon was what mattered most) didn't want them to be "a couple of kids making out in a car." Well, what did she think they were? That was as good as saying that she would give him less than his classmates were getting, and some of those guys treated their girlfriends like shit.

To be fair, though, some of those girlfriends were shit. And some of the others were nice girls except for a terrible taste in guys. But not one of them was as nice as Shannon. That was the problem, really. It wasn't only that he wanted to touch some breasts; he wanted to touch Shannon's breasts.

To be honest, he wanted a lot more than that. He wanted to fuck her, but Shannon wasn't the sort of girl who would do that. Not now, at least, and it was too long to wait for any future in which she would. He could imagine it, though. And he did.

He would remove Shannon's bra and see those smooth breasts again; he would kiss them until she was panting, much more excited than she had ever been in the summer. Then he would strip her flowered panties down and see the heart-shaped hair again.

Maybe it was the way he'd seen it, on their last free day before school opened. She had lain back on their two shirts while he picked her a bouquet of wild flowers. After handing her the flowers, Steve had knelt at her head and kissed her eyebrows. He kissed her nose where it was peeling ever so slightly, and then her chin. They'd tried for a meeting of tongues, but that is hard when one face is upside down from the other. He'd kissed her breasts, and she'd kissed his chest. He'd pressed on to lick her bellybutton. Then he had pushed down on her shorts. She hadn't objected. He'd had no idea why, but he'd accepted his luck. It had been that sort of day.

The shorts had moved down revealing a line of pale skin, then the panties which he'd pushed too, and then the hair. It had been an arrow pointing at him, not at all like the slight arc on his body. It had been fine, darker than her head, but he'd been able to see the pale skin through it.

"Oh Shannon," he'd said. He couldn't express his wonder. She'd raised her hips to let him push the shorts and panties down to her thighs. The hair was pointing towards him, and then it broadened. At the very end, hard to see from his position, it parted into two lobes. "That's where they get it," he'd said. The hair was a perfect heart shape.

She had pulled her panties back up. He noticed, when they had covered that revelation of beauty, that they were pretty, white with blue flowers and a line of lace at the top. Then she'd pulled up her shorts, too. The magic moment had ended.

Someday, she wouldn't stop him. He would remove her panties completely and kneel between her legs. Then her hands would replace his, guiding his cock into her and he would stroke and stroke inside her. At that point, he reached for the Kleenex. He wrapped it around the head of his cock and imagined his entrance into Shannon's body one more time. He erupted, and then stroked until it all had come out.

Satisfied, but somehow feeling dissatisfied, he slid into sleep.

The next week, Hauksbee began showing him how to operate the cash register. Kevin, a junior whom he knew slightly, started working one night a week on deliveries. It was how Steve had started. He got a fifteen-cents-an-hour raise, but still was making less per week than he had made in the summer.

His parents fought his idea of buying a car when he brought it up Sunday afternoon. "You need that money for college," his father said. A representative of a fertilizer company, he was getting ready to start a three-day road trip visiting dealers. "You don't need a car."

"What would I have done if I hadn't found a job?" he responded. "I'm tired of having to get down on my knees every time that I need a car. I want my own."

"That's quite an exaggeration. It's not your car; you have to expect to ask."

"That's just the point. The cars aren't my property. So I can't say that I will drive somewhere with my friends or tell Shannon that I can take her on a date. I have to tell them all that I will try; I will ask.

"I'm not going to break the law, speed, run away from home. I just want a car which I can decide to drive somewhere; which allows me to tell people that I will go there tomorrow or next week." It didn't work; talking to his parents almost never did.

He was still in a negative mood when Ken turned his way as they left AP Calculus the next day. "You know, we really need your input on the Harvest Ball," Ken said. The school had dances to records more Friday nights than not, but the fancier, rarer Saturday-night "Balls" were done by committees. Ken was responsible for getting those committees together and having the dances a success. It was the real work of the student council president.

The idea of Ken being responsible was funny on the face of it, but not funny enough to lighten his mood. "Not this time, Ken. I'll ask Shannon to the dance, but I don't have time to be on a committee." Ken was actually walking away from his next class; not having much time to argue, he switched lanes and hurried back.

Wednesday night, Roger Anderson muted the commercial. "Getting down on his knees," he said to his wife. "You ought to make him get down on his knees next time he asks."

Rachel had almost forgotten the exaggeration, but had been thinking about the incident. "I can see what Steve means about making plans. Still kids have very flexible positions on property and privacy. What's yours is theirs; what's theirs is private. He was rooting around in our closet just the other day for one of your ties."

"Well, he did ask after he found it."

"Still, would you dare go through his closet or drawers if he had forgotten to return it?" She wondered if she should mention the incident with their daughter when she was home from college.

"Nope." Roger said, and clicked "Ed" back up.

She was the one who clicked the ending commercials down. "Mallory is just as bad, maybe worse. Last summer, she was looking through my lingerie drawer for a half slip..."