Chapter 28

Tuesday in school, Denise came over before the bell rang for the start of the first class that we both had together, and just started talking to me. She didn't seem to care too much that everyone was looking at the two of us speaking together. She didn't talk about what we had done the night before, but she did mention that she had already told her mother that she was going to be studying over at a friend's house on Wednesday. Karen was in this class with us also. I looked over at her, while Denise was talking, and I gave her a smile.

"Why are you looking at her when I'm the one talking to you?"

"Because she's my friend too, and I want her to know I'm not upset with her." I said this loud enough that Karen could hear it too.

"I'm still mad at her, and I don't want to ever talk to her again."

"Then, don't. I don't care. That doesn't mean I have to be mad at her too."

"You should be. Maybe you don't care what she said about us, but I do. Because of her, now people believe a lot of lies about me."

"Maybe I do care, but being mad isn't going to make it any better. I don't believe in carrying grudges like that."

After hearing me say that, Denise decided to go over to her desk and sit down. This was apparently the ending of her brief foray into rebellious behavior in public. I could see that this exchange had left her upset with me, again. She didn't try to speak with me anymore for the rest of the day. Karen did wave to me at lunch, but she didn't come over to sit with me.

After school, I walked over to Clara's house to find out if she had gotten home yet. It was only about three fifteen when I got there, and Mr. Townsend had come home already. I saw his car sitting in their driveway. Not wanting to have to deal with him, in case he was mad at me, I didn't go up to her door and knock. I went home instead, and then called over there.

Mrs. Townsend answered the phone, and I asked her if Clara had gotten home all right. She seemed like she didn't want to talk to me at first, but then she told me that Clara was home, and in her room resting. I could hear Mr. Townsend yelling at someone in the background. He was really yelling loud.

"Larry, I think it would be better if you waited until tomorrow, or even Thursday, before you try contacting Clara. We're in the middle of a family emergency right now, and it would just be better if you allow us some time to get everything resolved. Clara is fine. She should be back in school by next Monday." I thanked her and asked her to let Clara know that I had called and was thinking about her.

I found Kate sitting in her room, being glum about her life in general, and my mother's unreasonable rules in particular. She had called over to speak with Clara too, and had been told pretty much the same thing that I had been told. I went into my room and started doing my homework. The phone rang about five minutes after I got started studying, and I could hear Kate scrambling to get to answer it before I did.

"Larry, it's for you. Some girl." I got up and took the receiver out of her hand.

"Hello?"

Hi Larry. Do you know who this is?" I didn't recognize the voice.

"No."

"I'll give you a hint, I'm in your English and Spanish classes. Can you guess now?"

"No. Can you give me a better hint?"

"I'm a friend of Karen Gless. In fact, we're best friends now."

"Mandy Rice?"

"You got it, and with only one guess. Are you surprised that I'm calling you?"

"A little bit. Did Karen ask you to call me for her?"

"No. She doesn't even know I'm doing it. I don't want you to say anything to her, or to anyone else either. I was calling to ask you some questions about things that Karen told me about. Things you did to her. She said you aren't going to tell people anything about what you've done."

"I'm not, so you've wasted your call." I was getting ready to hang up. Mandy wasn't really a girl that anyone got along with that well. She was a teacher's pet, always doing things to get in good with the teachers. If she really was Karen's new best friend, then Karen was in a lot of trouble, socially speaking.

"I don't want to ask you about Karen, Larry. I want you to tell me if something someone told me is true or not. Somebody told me that some girls let boys put their things in their mouth, and suck them. I want to know if you've heard of that, or if he was making it up. Do girls really do that?"

"Sure, I've heard of it. French people do it all the time. It's called sucking off, or blow jobs. There's a fancy French name for it, but I don't remember what it is. I think it's mostly done overseas though."

"You never had a girl do it to you?"

"No, but I talked to a girl once that said she did it."

"Is it true that a boy has to put his thing in a girl's vagina for her to get pregnant?"

"That's true, or he can put his cum in her some other way I guess. She needs to have his sperm in her to fertilize her eggs in her ovaries. Didn't you pay any attention to Health class? It was on the test and everything."

"I was sick on some of those days. Why did you lick Karen down there?"

"I told you I won't answer those kinds of questions. Are you done?"

"No. Would you tell anybody if I let you do that to me? Lick me down there?"

"I wouldn't tell anyone because there would be nothing to tell. I don't want to do that to you."

"Why not? What's wrong with me?"

"I didn't say anything was wrong with you. I don't like you that way, that's all. It isn't something you just do to anyone, like dancing or shaking hands."

"Well, if you change your mind, let me know. Don't tell Karen I called you. I'll see you in school tomorrow."

I hung up the phone, went back to my room, and to my unfinished homework. Right before five, I got another phone call.

This one was from Denise. The first part of our conversation was all about why I had acted like that in front of everyone in class. I had to listen as she ticked off the names of every person who were watching the two of us. Denise said I had embarrassed her in front of all of them. When she got all done with everything about that, I told her that I wasn't the one who had picked a fight over Karen, she was. That led to about five minutes of her telling me that she was entitled to better treatment than Karen was, because she wasn't going around telling everybody what we had done together.

"Look, that's a good point, but it doesn't mean I can't smile or say hello to Karen if I want to. I already said that I could see how you might still be mad at her. Why else do you think I should treat you better than Karen?"

"You know why, last night."

"I did that with her too."

"I did it twice with you."

"I'll have to see if Karen wants to catch up with you." She hung up on me. I went back into my room again.

My mother had gotten home right after I got back in my room, after Denise's first phone call. When the phone rang again, my mother answered it.

"Larry, telephone."

"Hello?"

"Hi Larry, this is Denise again." I waited until I heard my mother hanging up the phone in the kitchen.

"Hi, Denise."

"I've decided not to be mad with you for saying that to me."

"Good."

"That's all you have to say, good?"

"What am I supposed to say? I'm happy that you aren't mad."

"You could say you were only kidding about Karen catching up." I stood there, the receiver in my hand, but held away from my ear, just in case. After a short time, Denise continued. "I know you didn't mean that anyway." I didn't say anything. This time, she didn't speak either.

"I need to get my homework done before dinner."

"I'm sorry I bothered you. I don't know why I keep trying to be nice to you. All you ever do is insult me, and make me feel bad about liking you."

"I guess we just want different things, Denise. I want to be friends with you, but you seem to always want to make me do only what you want me to do. I want to do what I like, not what you like for me. I can't help it if you feel bad and feel like I'm insulting you every time I choose to do that."

"I was hoping you'd want to be my boyfriend, Larry, not just friends."

"I'm not really ready for going steady. I'm just starting to like girls."

"I'm not going to keep trying to get you to like me, not if you aren't even willing to try to like me back the same way as I like you. I don't think I'm going to meet you at the library tomorrow like we said."

"Maybe that's a good thing. I'm sorry if I made you feel bad. I didn't want to do that. I do like you, but I don't want to only be able to have one friend. I guess I'll see you in school tomorrow then. Can you bring that last thing? The one you were holding for me?"

"I'm not bringing that to school. I'll probably just throw it away. You'll probably just go out and buy some more anyway."

"I'll see you in school, good bye."

Wednesday, Harriet came up to me, and told me that she had changed her mind, and didn't want me to take her to the Winter dance anymore. She said she was afraid everyone in school would think she was cheap if they saw her dancing with me. I didn't try to talk her out of it. I was mad about the money my mom had spent on the tickets, but that was the only reason why I even cared. Later, some people told me that Harriet was going around telling everyone that when she told me that she wouldn't go to the dance with me, I'd begged her to reconsider her decision. That made me mad. Not mad enough to say anything about it to her, but mad enough to not talk to her, if she ever approached me again.

I noticed that Mandy Rice was looking at me in Spanish class too. I wondered who it was that had tried to talk her into sucking their dick. I looked over right next to where she was sitting and noticed Tommy Lampkin sitting there. I bet that was who it was. If it was him, he was more than welcome to her. At least as far as I was concerned. I was thinking about Mandy and Tommy all during Spanish class. When Mrs. Nettles called my name to conjugate a verb, I didn't know what she wanted, because I hadn't been paying attenttion. I got a lot of horse laughs from all the other kids. I usually paid attention in that class, because I wasn't that good with foreign languages. Mrs. Nettles didn't give me too much grief over not listening.

I walked home Wednesday, thinking about how much things were changing around me. It was the pace of these changes, as well as the complexity of them, that I found most upsetting. Before, it seemed like almost everything had changed at a slow pace for me. I used to be frustrated by how much time had to pass before I could stay up later at night, or be able to go places without anyone to look after me. Everything had been so slow to change, my friends, the things I did for fun, even the relationship I had with my parents. I had experieced problems before, sometimes even serious ones, like that vandalism thing, but even those kinds of things weren't complicated problems. Another thing was that I didn't need to solve any of the serious ones by myself.

Now, it felt like everything was moving so fast, and all of the serious problems I was having were about things I couldn't go to my parents about. To make it worse, they all seemed to be related to my new main interest, girls. You would have to be pretty stupid not to understand that it was just going to keep getting more complicated if I kept adding new girls to the equation. There was also the fact that these relationships with different girls weren't surviving even one month. A week was probably more like it. If it was longer than that, there were times when either the girls were mad at me, or I was mad at them. Even though I seemed to be learning new things every day, it was coming with a big emotional price tag.

I no longer had a single guy friend that I could call up and ask to hang out with for an afternoon. Eileen and I hadn't spoken for a long time. Karen and I were in a lot of trouble together, and forced by our parents to not associate with each other. Clara had tried to kill herself, at least partly because of me. Denise was unhappy because I didn't want to stay with only her. Most of the other girls at school, the ones who might be interested in me, were afraid to show it because of my terrible reputation. All of this had happened since my birthday, only three month earlier. Harriet, Donna, Mandy and other girls were making it plain that, although they were interested, it wasn't worth it to them to brave the scorn of their friends to be seen with me.

In the middle of all this soul searching, my taking my social inventory, I realized that I was getting an erection. I had planned on going to Aunt Agnes' apartment with Denise on this Wednesday night, and now I had ruined that for myself by trying to be honest. I knew she wasn't going to throw that rubber away either. Some other boy was going to be screwing her with a rubber that I had spent my father's hard earned money on. Even that thought helped me to be horny.

I walked in my house just before three thirty. Kate was sitting in the living room with Clara. For some reason, as happy as I was to see her sitting there, it felt awkward with Kate there too. I think we all felt that. Kate and Clara had both been crying. I listened as Clara told me that her mother and father had finally decided to get a divorce. Clara was the cause of that decision. At least, that was how Clara described it to us. Her father had packed his clothes and moved out of the house Tuesday night.

After he had left, Mrs. Townsend had told Clara that she could come over and see Kate and me after school the next day. I felt bad for her, and so did Kate. We told her that her parents hadn't been getting along together long before this latest thing had come up. She already knew that. Still, we said it to try to get her to not blame herself. We didn't want her getting all upset and trying to kill herself again. Clara's mom must have had the same concern, that was why she sent her over to see us.