Chapter 15

None of the teachers in the ninth grade had ever given "pop" quizzes. In the ninth grade, they told you what they were going to teach you, and they told you when you would be tested on it. Then they taught you, and then they tested you. That apparently changed somewhere between ninth and twelfth grades. Now you were supposed to be much better at absorbing the material, so that a sudden, off-the-cuff quiz, like the one Mr. Carruthers handed out in my Astronomy class on Monday morning, would be greeted with a smile. Like the one on Cammie Rowe's face.

The expression on my face was no doubt one of shock. I numbly took the test questions from Mr. Carruthers as he circled the room, and bent my head to the task of answering them with a vague sense of impending doom. Fortunately, most of them were multiple choice. The remaining few were short essays. Which helped only a little. Because as much as I thought I understood the retrograde motion of Venus, I soon discovered that my understanding was lacking. It was certainly lacking the answer to question number six. Damn. It looked like I was going to be digging myself out of a hole in this class. The only saving grace was Mr. Carruthers's announcement that this test, and the others that would be "popping up" during the semester, would count for no more than ten percent of our final grade. Our lab notebooks would be another forty percent, and our final project a full fifty percent. So it wouldn't be a very deep hole. Just a hole.

On Monday afternoon, I walked into the locker room to get ready for baseball practice just in time to hear Andy Lebo proclaim that all bitches were the same, so it was just a case of finding the one with the best tits and the tightest cunt. I glared at him and he smirked at me. At that point, I was already ashamed that I hadn't even tried to tell Jill about what had happened last Saturday in the weight room, when I'd found her very scared friend Marcia with Andy and Jesse. Andy's little monologue made it that much worse, and I made up my mind to sit down with my little sister that evening.

Oh, I had had plenty of excuses. She hadn't been around much on Sunday, and in any event I'd spent the day in a state of euphoria, elated that Tanya and I had finally reached a meeting of the minds on this "friends with benefits" thing. Monday had been pretty much taken up with the rush of planning for my birthday, which involved Jeanne coming into my room every five minutes to ask, did I like burgers (yes), what kind of cake did I like (chocolate), did I want presents (no), was there anyone else I wanted to ask (no). I spent Tuesday in a state of horrified shock, followed by my birthday party and three nights of cramming for a test that left me completely exhausted. Except for the party I'd thrown on Saturday night.

God, I really was an asshole. Because even if all of those were legitimate excuses, and they weren't, I had spent Sunday playing games on my computer and outlining my Civil War paper for Mr. Anson's history class. The one that wasn't due for two weeks.

So as I drove home after practice on Monday, I went over in my mind what I was going to say to Jill, and tried to anticipate her defensive responses. So I'd seen her friend Marcia in the locker room with her boyfriend and another guy? So what? Was there an innocent explanation? Probably not. Was I prepared to tell my sister my explanation? I guess. Would she believe me? Probably not. On the other hand, hadn't she talked to Marcia about it?

I knocked on her door after dinner and she waved me in.

"What?" she said impatiently.

"Did, uh, Andy tell you I'd seen him in the weight room last Saturday?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Why should I care? I know about his stupid weights."

"He was with Jesse and, uh, your friend Marcia."

"What friend Marcia?" she asked.

"Marcia Burns?"

"Oh, God, she was my friend, like, last year," Jill scoffed. "I mean, she still hangs around with us, but she's such a little Miss Priss. Like so totally the opposite of Liane."

"Okay. Anyway, she was in the weight room last Saturday with Jesse and Andy."

"If that ugly little slut thinks she can steal my boyfriend," Jill started to lecture me.

"I'm not sure she was there, you know, completely voluntarily," I interrupted her.

"Yeah, right," Jill's voice dripped with sarcasm. "She's been trying to worm her way closer in since school started in September."

"Jill, I'm just saying —"

"I know what you're saying. You are trying to break me and Andy up. I knew it. Go to hell, big brother."

I retreated to my room, remarkably unsuccessful in my quest to, well, break up Jill and Andy. Although I really saw it more as making sure that Jill had all the information she needed. To break up with Andy.

Baseball practice got more and more intense as the week went on. We would have our first scrimmage on Monday, and Coach told me I should expect to pitch no more than five innings. I wouldn't pitch at all in Thursday's scrimmage, so that I would be fresh for the season opener on the 26th. He made it clear that as the team's number one pitcher, I was going to be expected to contribute almost fifty percent of the team's pitching during the coming year. He was pleasantly surprised with Cary Roberts' development, and thought he'd probably by the number two. During the weeks that we needed more than that, he implied, we were going to be in trouble.

I was pretty much done with the in-school tryouts. If anyone wanted to see me, they could just come to a game. So Tommy and I were lifting together on Mondays and Fridays after lunch, and we lifted by ourselves on Wednesdays, since his only free period corresponded with my Astronomy lab.

On Tuesday, I learned to my surprise that I was also a pretty good hitter. We started taking batting practice, and when I took my turn, I was spraying balls all over the place. Including a couple of foul balls right back off of Jesse Traskers' catching mask. Which is actually very difficult to do if you're trying to do it on purpose. My hitting didn't surprise anybody else, though. When I suggested to Cary that my hitting was an unexpected dividend, he told me that most right fielders are expected to hit the ball pretty well, to make up for their not having to field all that much.

"But I'm a pitcher," I pointed out.

"And a right fielder on the days you don't pitch," he said. "At least that's what everybody's been telling me."

On the way home that evening, I stopped by the library to check out the Baseball for Dummies book again. With the chapter on "Fielding the Outfield" under my belt and my good old friend muscle memory, shagging fungoes on Thursday afternoon actually went pretty well.

The rest of the week was spent studying for my government test on Friday, working on the history paper that was due next week, and learning that my benefits friend had out of town relatives coming in for the weekend. Out of town relatives that unfortunately included a cousin who was going to be Tanya's responsibility. Since the Sabbath extended from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, we agreed that the three of us — Tanya, her cousin, and me — would go to a movie on Saturday evening. A late movie, actually, since Daylight Savings Time had kicked in last Sunday and sundown was now an hour later every evening. Damn the United States government.

On the other hand, three cheers for the United States government. It was the very orderliness of that government, the carefully prescribed system of checks and balances, that so perfectly suited the student who was willing to memorize every page of his text book and his notes. I walked out of that test on Friday morning serenely confident that my A-plus in Government was in no danger at all.

It was seven-thirty on Friday evening when I heard a knock on the door. That was the second knock, actually, after I finally realized that nobody else was going to be answering the door. I looked around, annoyed, because I knew it wasn't going to be for me. The sun had already set. And it wasn't like there weren't plenty of other people around to answer it. Dave was downstairs in his basement apartment, although the chances of its being for him were admittedly small. But Jill and Jeanne were both upstairs. Of course, Jill usually got summoned by horn.

I yelled out, "yeah, I'm coming," and threw down the Sports Illustrated I'd been reading. I ambled over to the door and yanked it open to find an absolutely ravishing blonde.

I was about to smile and ask if I could help her when her eyes widened and she threw her arms around my neck.

"Trip," she murmured between kisses on my cheek and neck. "Thank you so, so much."

"Uh, sure," I muttered. "Come in?"

She walked like she'd been here before and threw her coat onto a chair. She sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her.

"Well, first off, how have you been?" she asked.

"Okay," I said, sitting where I was told. I was being very cautious. The slightest sign of fear or doubt could chase her away just as quickly as she'd come. "And you?"

"Oh, fine, you know how hard it is to adjust to someplace new."

Tell me about it, lady.

"Tell me about it," I suggested.

"No, I want to catch up with you first," she said. "Baseball season started yet?"
I managed to converse for another five minutes without getting even the smallest clue as to this woman's identity. She was my age or a little older, blonde, as I'd said, with blue eyes visible through a stylish pair of glasses. Even better, she had a stunningly curvy body that she was showing off in a knitted sweater and a pair of jeans that she'd obviously been sewn into. I went through my mnemonic for girlfriends again, but I'd actually dated relatively few blondes. And I for damn sure would have remembered a picture of this one.

I was saved, briefly, by the honk of a horn. Jill came thundering down the stairs and stopped in the doorway to the living room to look in. She furrowed her brow, clearly waiting for an introduction.

"Jill," I started very slowly, "this is —"

"Liane!" Jill yelped. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you as a blonde."

"You like it?" Liane said, flicking it out. "Your brother here hasn't said a thing."

"Yeah, um..." I stammered. Hair coloring, shit. Plus she hadn't been wearing glasses in the yearbook photo.

"Men," Jill dismissed me. "It looks nice."

"Thanks. Got a date?"

"Yeah. Andy Lebo, remember him?"

"Andy Lebo?" Liane's voice turned icy. "The asshole who almost raped my sister?"

She whipped around to look back at me.

"How can you let your sister date somebody like that?" she was nearly screaming.

"I don't tell her who to date," I protested.

"Wait a minute," Jill said. "What do you mean raped your sister?"

"How could you not tell her about it?" Liane screamed at me.

"I did tell her about," I protested.

"You tell me," Jill suddenly grew quiet and sat down across from Liane.

The horn sounded again. I got up and opened the door.

"Just wait a minute!" I yelled out to the waiting Andy Lebo.

His window rolled down.

"Tell the bitch to hurry up!" he yelled back.

I cocked my head at him, challenging him to say that again.

"Look, man," he yelled, "just tell your sister I'm here."

I closed the door and went back to the living room. Jill's face was white. Both women looked at me. Jill took a few deep breaths and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Her face assumed a steely sort of expression that I'd never seen before.

"All right, I'm breaking up with him," Jill finally said. "Happy now?"

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A Stitch in Time

Marsh Alien

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