Chapter 6

Julie sat looking at Bobby after Barbara and Sammy left his hospital room. He looked so peaceful lying there.

She thought back to the call she'd gotten from Van Daddock about Bobby, before they'd met. He'd told her that Bobby was a dumb jock baseball player with an air headed girl friend in high school that Van wanted to fuck. He told her that Bobby would be easy to seduce for some fun sex for her, which would set his girl friend up for Van.

Van promised to make it worth her while with some coke and some grass as well, which clinched the deal for Julie, as she was relying on both drugs more all the time to get through the nights.

Now she sat here looking at this supposedly dumb jock that she'd set out to fuck and forget, and prayed he'd be all right.

It turned out that nothing Van said was true. He wasn't dumb. He was athletic but wasn't a jock. He loved his girlfriend, who from Bobby's description was no air head. And he wouldn't be seduced. He was the first boy she couldn't get into her bed that she'd wanted there.

But the biggest surprise to Julie had been how caring Bobby had been with her. He gently rebuffed her sexual advances, but still welcomed her as a friend. This was a completely new phenomenon for her. In her experience, males weren't friends. They were something to be controlled, and if they couldn't be controlled, they were to be avoided so they couldn't hurt you.

Instead of spurning her, to her amazement the first thing Bobby had thought to do was to find a boyfriend for her. He enlisted Sammy's help, and the two of them had set her up on a couple blind dates. They were with "un-cool" boys she would never have considered going out with before. They had been fun, but she'd ended them before they developed into anything. She did that in large part because Julie never let anyone come to her house to pick her up, lest they discover what her life was like away from school.

But Julie did not similarly end her friendship with Bobby. He was so different from other boys. No one dared call her a tramp at school if either Bobby or Sammy were around. Bobby seemed to be straightening out the worst of the jackals among the boys, and Sammy was working on the girls. With their support, and the fact that she was now occasionally dating "nice" boys, she actually began to hope that her reputation would begin to turn around.

When Sammy had called to tell her that Bobby had been hit by a car and was in the hospital, she'd been devastated. It forced her to admit her true feelings. Somewhere between her attempts to deceive and bed the boy, and learning that a male could be a friend, she'd fallen in love with him.