Chapter 2

The Rascal was the inside hang-out, as opposed to the drive-in. There one paraded while waiting for a parking spot, for all the kids to see the latest couples.

I got there earlier than we agreed, since I walked and didn't want to hurt her by being late. My mom needed the car, and the pier was too far to walk to get my dad's truck. I left early and was looking at the paper when Tammy surprised me and said "Tom Jones', if you're looking for a movie for us to go to."

Two surprises: she was here, and she said a movie to go to. What was wrong with my world? She wasn't going to run at the moment someone else smiled at her. Somehow I knew it with certainty, and now I wasn't sure if I deserved it, because of my thoughts and actions when I got home this morning. As these thoughts flashed to my mind, I started to get up to help her sit. She just placed a hand on my shoulder and sat down next to me.

I got a shy, uncertain smile and a totally different Tammy than last night. Widgeons, jeans, and a flashy sweater. Bright was the look, and the eyes had a glow. She took my hand on the table, gave it a squeeze. "What are we going to have for lunch?"

Folding the paper and sitting there in shock: she was holding my other hand. It was on the table, in the open for goodness' sakes. No girl other than my little sister had ever done that. I stammered a second and mumbled something like the burger was good with the cheese fries. This got me a strange look as she smiled at my discomfort, and asked if I needed water to get my tongue to work. A definite glint in her eyes now. All through lunch, she and I ate and didn't talk much, while my mind and heart debated if I was getting set up for yet another letdown.

As we finished eating, we talked of little things at first, and then into thoughts on school and what was going on in general. Suddenly, she looked at her watch, and said "Oops, we'll have to wait for the evening show. It's to late to get to the theater for the matinee." she asked if I wanted to go for a drive while we waited.

"I'd like to, but I don't have a car."

"You don't need to drive. I have mine here."

Right... first, guy teens with licenses don't want to be seen with the girl driving. Second, her car was so well known from her brother's rumored exploits, that everyone would notice who was in as the passenger. (Later Tammy was to point out that for all the girls rumored to have lost it in the car, her brother Rick would have needed to have at least three dates a night for four hundred days a year since he got his license. Yet he had been going steady with Diane Baker, who was a senior and in some of my classes, since he was in the eighth grade. Another myth of my youth destroyed and left in ashes.) The legend was due more to her other brother, James, and his friends. She said they would do anyone, anytime, anywhere. Irony abounds here, as James never drove the car, and was a divinity graduate. (He now is a television evangelist who found more money than God in his calling, but it kept him from the draft. The damage was that his younger brother, Rick, had been painted by this brush much of his high school life)

Reality had set in with the offer. My family, while comfortable, was not able to provide cars for all. Food on the table and a college education for his kids was what my dad thought was important while he dug and fought his way across Europe, on his only trip to a foreign country. To hear him talk, there was more digging and cold than fighting. Maybe the car would be available on Friday and Saturday night, but then only if I had a date. With a silent resigned acceptance, I opened the driver's door to let her in, and walked around the car, to find her sitting on the passenger side. With a shy smile, she handed me the keys, and sat back with a laugh, saying, "Why would I want to drive when you can?"

Stunned, I went around the car again and got in the driver's side. Before I started the car, I looked at her, and she simply said, "Rick said it was okay for you to drive." Funnier and funnier, thoughts went through my mind. How did Rick in California know I was driving his car?

All she said was, "Let's drive toward the James River and walk along the trail." It seems she was obsessed with water, but when you live on a peninsula it is a bit hard to avoid.

She just said that she had gotten up early in the morning when the phone rang, and it was Rick. While they talked, he told her that I could drive the car, if she trusted me enough to ride with me.

What she neglected to tell me, until much later, was when Rick called that morning (they had always talked while growing up, and she had felt lost without him to tell her troubles to) at the sound of his voice, she just let it out. He had exploded when he heard what she had started to do the previous night. Starting to lecture and cry with her and asked why finally she came to her senses.

She admitted she hadn't, and I had pulled her out.

He told her to get her ass out of bed and get it over to Diane's house and talk to her. He was calling her now, and she would call him when they were done talking, and he would fly home if Diane felt he needed to.

Diane was crying when she got there, and just hugged her, and she just blurted out the whole story again.

Diane started laughing toward the end, and told her. "You say all the guys want to get you undressed and grab you, and here you talked to a guy till three in the morning, in the car, naked, and he held your hand, stroked your shoulders and neck. Then blushed when your blanket fell (I thought she hadn't noticed) and you say you never can find a guy that doesn't want just sex."

In her defense Tammy correctly said, "I did. I just didn't have the chance."

Diane laughed even harder, and then told Tammy, how she had met Rick.

It was the second day after she moved into town. She had been at the beach swimming, and a wave had washed her top off while she was in the water. All the guys around her had laughed at her and stared. She had been an early developer, well endowed for her age, though bordering on the small side now.

Rick had been playing nearby, and had frantically started looking for her top when he saw the look of embarrassment mixed with shock on her face. As she tried to get into deeper water to hide and gather her thoughts, a string of boys had blocked her way, and she had started quietly crying. This only seemed to encourage the boys.

Rick, seeing this, had run and grabbed his shirt and towel, and held the towel in front her after giving her his shirt. When one of the bigger boys knocked the towel from his hands (it turned out to be James), a fight broke out, with Rick getting the worst of it. Meanwhile, she had slipped away in his shirt, watching this daring young knight who had come to her defense.

This explained something that Tammy had always wondered. Why all of a sudden her brothers had stopped getting along and got where they wouldn't even speak to each other.