Chapter 7

It hurt to be around Gloria, but the problem with not being around her was that that hurt too.

I was miserable all day long. I wasn't hungry, and when I did eat something, I couldn't taste it. I yelled at Suzy, when she came in to ask if she could borrow one of my Forgotten Realms books, which I had been collecting for years. That got my mom on the rampage, because Suzy cried when I yelled at her. My dad had been napping on the couch, and he woke up and wanted to know what was wrong. He told everybody to pipe down, but, of course, everybody stayed mad, so it was tense all day.

That night I hung out in Mrs. Abernathy's bushes again. It was chilly, and I hadn't worn a jacket, but, like an idiot I stayed there a long time. Gloria's lights were on, and I saw her shadow moving around behind the curtains a couple of times, but nothing else happened.

I didn't go over Sunday either. There were only two weeks of school left, which meant just one for Seniors, and it was agonizing. Nobody cared what happened any more. You had either qualified for graduation by then, or knew you hadn't. There weren't very many of those, and practically nobody wanted to be there, including the teachers. All I could think about was that faceless man, running his hands over Gloria's breasts. For some reason I pictured them on the floor, in front of the couch, where my most vivid memory of her lying naked was. A couple of times that week I peeked in through the gate, to see if anybody was in the hot tub, but it was always empty.

Then, suddenly, it was graduation day, and my mother was frantic. She ironed my gown, for pity's sake! It had warmed up, and I wanted to wear shorts under the gown, but she wouldn't hear of it. She made me put on a shirt and tie, even.

Then there was the interminable wait, as we got lined up. The girls were all chattering like magpies, and all the guys had goofy grins on their faces. School was finally going to be over. In an hour, they could flip the bird to the building, and any teachers they happened to see, and laugh like crazy.

Finally the band started droning out the march, and two teachers, frowning like they were on the front lines of battle, stood at the front of the line, letting one of us go each time the approved ten seconds had passed between walkers. There were a hundred and nine of us, and it seemed like the faculty was determined to make this stretch out as long as humanly possible.

Finally, it was my turn.

We had to walk down an aisle, between rows of chairs on the gym floor, where all the people sit who, for some insane reason, want to come to a High School graduation. There were way more than 218 parents there. The bleachers on the sides of the gym were packed too. I met my partner from the other side, and we started down the central aisle, towards our assigned seats.

I glanced to one side, for no apparent reason, and almost stopped in my tracks.

Gloria Wilson was standing there, at the end of a row, grinning like she was insane, and looking right at me.

I took a long step to catch up with Roger Dalton, who was looking around to see what had happened to me. I caught up with him as we came even with Gloria. I could have reached out and touched her. She looked startled, and brought up a camera she had in her hand. The flash went off right in my eyes, and blinded me. I stumbled past her, and Jennifer Sprague grabbed my sleeve as I almost passed my row.

"You're not supposed to get drunk until tonight," she whispered, grinning at me.

Everybody was grinning, and all I wanted to do was sit down and cry.

We were all supposed to sit down at the same time, when the music stopped. It was about then that I realized I hadn't looked to see who was sitting by Gloria. What if the guy had brought her... or she had brought the guy? I turned around to look, just as every other Senior in school sat down. Jennifer tugged at my sleeve again.

"Get a grip, Bobby," she hissed.

I couldn't find her, so I sat.

People made speeches, which I paid no attention to at all. Mrs. Finch, the assistant principal got up to talk about how proud everybody was that, of the hundred and nine of us, eighty-one were going on to college some place, and six were joining the military. Eight were going to a technical school of some kind, and eight didn't know what they were going to do. That got a laugh. Then she got all emotional, and said that this year, six students had decided to get involved in selflessly making the world a better place. It was a record, and they were so proud of the six students who had decided to join Americorps. Those names she read off, and told us all to stand.

We hadn't practiced this, and hadn't known it was going to happen. Not only that, I hadn't gotten an acceptance letter, so when my name was read off, I almost missed it. Jennifer hissed at me and poked me, and I stood up, looking around stupidly. There was lots of applause, of course. She called us young heroes, and said we were the pride of Clinton High.

She finished, and Mr. Bigelow got up and harrumphed about how he had power vested in him, and pronounced us graduated and all that, and, one by one, we walked across the stand that had been erected under the home team basket. When we did that, they said what college, or technical school, or branch of the service each one was going to. The eight slackers just got "undecided" behind their names. And, of course, the whole crowd was reminded of the six of us who were going to Americorps.

Finally it was over, and people milled around like cattle waiting to be fed. For all that everybody had said they couldn't wait to be shut of the school, they all seemed suddenly loathe to leave it. I looked for Gloria, to see if there was a man with her, but my parents intercepted me. They were grinning like idiots too.

"I'm sorry, Bobby," said my mother, hugging me. "The acceptance letter came, and I meant to say something to you about it, but then I cleaned up for the party, and put it someplace, and forgot about it."

The party she was talking about was my graduation party. My Grandmother, two aunts, three cousins and an uncle were all there to see me graduate, and we were going to have punch and cookies afterwards.

It turned out that Americorps had notified the school of who was accepted, which was how they knew. I had thought it was just a mistake or something. Now, as I realized that I really was going off to some city somewhere, for a whole year, it seemed like I had been given a get-out-of-jail-free card. I could leave Gloria Wilson, and her fucking boyfriend behind, and start a new life.

My parents whisked me off, and I never got to see who was with her.

Back home, my mother tore the place apart to find my acceptance letter. It stated that I had been accepted into the Vista program, and was to report to training the day after my eighteenth birthday, which was a month away. It was a one year commitment, with the option to extend that.

Because it was only a month until my birthday, and because some of my relatives lived six or seven hours away, they had brought my birthday presents with them too. My mood improved a little as the cash built up, and I got some pretty cool stuff. I wouldn't be going off to Americorps broke, which was something I had worried about. All together I got over five hundred dollars.

It was five in the evening before everybody finally left. I wasn't feeling quite so surly any more. I knew I was jealous, and didn't like that. It felt awful. But she HAD come to my graduation. There was no doubt in my mind that it was me she came for. As far as I knew, she didn't know anybody else in my graduating class. And, according to the tenth Scout law, I had to be brave. Courtesy was required as well... at least a simple "Thanks for coming."

So, while my mother collapsed, and my dad got into a bottle Scotch that my uncle brought him, I slipped out and went over to Gloria's.

It was probably habit that made me open the door, after I knocked, and step into the kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table, eating something from a bowl, and reading a magazine. She was wearing jeans and a white button down shirt that was too big for her. She looked up and smiled.

"Hi," she said. "I was hoping you'd come over."

She sounded so completely normal that it made my heart hurt.

"I haven't gotten to see a lot of you lately," she said.

"Yeah," I said, my voice tight. The urge to cry was back. She was so beautiful, sitting there. "I guess I've been kind of busy."

"You're still upset," she said.

She could read me like a book.

"Thanks for coming to my graduation," I said, to change the subject.

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," she said.

"We had a party at my house," I said inanely. "A bunch of my relatives were there. They gave me money."

"Oh!" she said, sitting up straighter. "That reminds me. I have a graduation present for you too."

She got up as I said "You don't have to..." and just waved at me as she left the room. She came back with an envelope in her hand.

"I was going to slip it to you at your graduation, but I didn't think it would be a good idea to hand it to you while your parents were standing there," she said.

"You stayed?" I asked. I thought she and her boyfriend had left right away.

"Well sure." She looked at me oddly. "I wanted to give you a hug too, but then I would have wanted to kiss you, and that would have caused a scandal."

My brain jerked around in my skull for a second or two. Why would she want to kiss me any more?

She handed me the envelope.

"Go ahead," she said, acting excited. "Open it."

I was still a little off kilter when I looked inside. There were a number of bills. My eyes popped as I saw the face of one of them. Benjamin Franklin. I leafed through the others. There were ten of them. My knees felt weak.

"That's not for any good deeds you did for me," she said firmly. "That's just a graduation present."

"Shit, Gloria, there's a thousand DOLLARS in here!" I gasped.

"I know, silly." She grinned.

"That's more than everything else I got combined, including my birthday presents!" I said weakly.

"Oh yes," she said, as if it didn't matter, or as if she'd forgotten. "Your birthday is coming up sometime soon." Her eyebrows wrinkled. "When is that? July, or something?"

I got wary. Gloria Wilson was a sharp woman. She'd baked me a pie for my birthday when I turned seventeen, and she was the kind of woman who remembers dates like that.

"June," I said. "Thank you. I feel like this is too much."

"Nonsense," she said. "It's my gift to you. I don't want you going off to save the world and have to eat Ramen noodles or something." She perked up. "I have pie. You want some?"

She'd already turned around to get it, and I looked over at the calendar on the wall. It was still on May, and I went and pulled that page up. My birthday had a star drawn in the middle of the square. I turned around to find her standing there, with a plate in one hand, and a fork in the other, a quizzical look on her face.

Busted.

"I was just seeing what day of the week I leave," I said, lamely. "I report for training the day after my birthday."

She looked stricken.

"Ohhh!" she moaned. "That soon?" Her shoulders dropped. "I was hoping maybe it would be later in the summer before you had to leave."

My brain was screaming at me. She was acting so completely normal... like she always had... like nothing had changed... I couldn't get my mind wrapped around it. I knew what I had seen, but she acted like she still liked me. I felt something trying to break out of my body, and felt control flowing out of my very skin. Suddenly tears were running down my face.

"Bobby? Baby, what's wrong?"

She put the pie on the table, and dropped the fork with a clang. Then she was right in front of me, her hands on my cheeks, her thumbs wiping the tears away.

"Bobby, sweetheart," she said in a voice that made my nuts want to tie in knots. "Please tell me why you're hurting,"

I felt like an idiot. My knees wobbled, and I got the sobs, where you can keep from bawling, but not if you try to say anything. If you say something, a sob bursts out and makes it impossible to understand you. But I had to say something, because it was all bottled up inside me and I was going to explode if I didn't.

So I spilled my guts. I told her how I'd seen the note, and how I'd been in Mrs. Abernathy's bushes when the guy brought her home, and how I'd seen him stick his tongue down her throat, and squeeze her ass, and fondle her breasts, and how it about killed me. Then I spent a full minute trying to apologize for spying on her, and said it was none of my business who she fell in love with, and how she didn't owe me anything anyway.

And then, words came out of my mouth that I didn't mean to say.

"... but I love you so much, and it hurt so bad, I thought I'd just freaking DIE, and..." I stopped. I stopped sobbing too. My brain was, in that moment, as crystal clear as it's ever been in my life. I had just told Gloria Wilson that I loved her. I hadn't meant to say that. What that really means is that I didn't INTEND to say that, and that's because I had never REALIZED that, until that moment of pain and panic when I expected her to snarl and throw me out for spying on her.

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