Chapter 15: Late-night Visitor

I woke up somewhere in the night to a light tapping on my window. I didn't know what it was at first, being half asleep, but the tapping continued and grew steadily louder.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-Tap-Tap.

"What?" I asked, though nobody could hear me. I had been dreaming of some nice slippery sex and was a little irritated at being woken.

Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap!

Finally it occurred to me that someone was there, tapping at my window. I sat up and stumbled over to see who it was, thumping my knee on the corner of the desk as I went.

I swiped the curtains open and looked down. There was a girl standing in my back yard beneath my window. She saw my face appear and began gesturing for me to open the window.

To my groggy, half-shut eyes it looked like Sheila.

I opened my window the four inches it would move and leaned down to whisper through the gap at the bottom.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I need to talk to you, Anthony," she said. "It's really important."

"What time is it?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's after three I guess. Can you come out?"

"I'm in my pajamas," I lied. Actually I was bare-assed naked. My semi-erect manhood was stretched out across the top of my desk. The glass of the desktop was cold.

"Please," she continued. "It's really important. It's about Sheila."

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Apparently it wasn't Sheila out there, but it was someone who knew her.

"I'll be right out," I said.

I tugged on a pair of old sweat pants and pulled a hoody over my head. Then I crept out the side door and went around toward my bedroom window. The night was chilly, and there was an eerie cloudscape partly obscuring the moon.

There beneath my window was Vanessa Unger, Sheila's mom.

"Sorry to drag you out of bed like this. I didn't want to phone."

"It's alright. What's going on?" I asked. I was suddenly worried.

"Can we go somewhere and talk?" Vanessa asked.

I led her to the love-swing in our back yard. It was a rickety old thing we'd had since I was a kid. The thing didn't even swing anymore, having sagged right down to the ground. It was more of a bench really. We sat down on it and Vanessa released a heavy sigh. Then there was silence.

"So what's going on with Sheila?" I asked.

"I don't know. She's been really moody lately. More so than usual and I was beginning to worry about her. She's had her ups and downs lately but I've never seen her like this before. The worst part about it all is that she won't even talk to me about it. Every time I try to talk to her, it turns into a fight. I'm going crazy! I thought you might have some ideas."

Okay, so I gathered it wasn't a total emergency. I relaxed a bit. It seemed like Vanessa simply needed someone to talk to.

"She told me she talked to you the other day, after me and her, you know, did it."

"Well it was mostly me doing the talking. She only said like two or three words the entire conversation."

"What did she say?" I asked.

"I asked her how the, um, sex was, with you, and she said 'It was nice, I guess.' I said, 'Just nice?' and she says, 'I didn't realize I had to answer to you about my sex life, ' and that was it. She didn't say anything else the whole time. I tried my best to reach out to her and to even just be a friend you know, but she was so cold it was almost scary."

"Well she hasn't been talking much to me either since then, if it's any consolation."

"No, that's not really a consolation at all. I thought you two were close friends."

"Well we are, I mean, at least I think we are. Ever since that day, Sheila's been acting strangely—really short with me, and she's usually very talkative."

"Yeah, I noticed that too. I thought it might have something to do with her dad, you know, since the anniversary of his death is coming up, but I don't know. She never talks about him. She never looks at his picture. I thought it might all be about her dad at first, but I didn't want to bring it up with her. Then I thought it might be drugs or booze or something, you know, or a combination of things perhaps. Kids act funny when they get into that stuff, but I couldn't find anything to suggest she was doing drugs, or drinking when I searched her room."

"You searched her room?" I asked.

"It's okay, I didn't ransack it or anything. I just breezed through it, you know, peeking in drawers, looking in her jewelry boxes and stuff. I was just worried that's all. But then I found that locked trunk under the bed."

Uh oh. The locked trunk.

"I couldn't get into it, but the next day, while she was in the bath I took that little key she wears around her neck and opened it up. I had to see what was in there. At first I was worried it might be drugs or booze, then I thought maybe it's all her mementos of her dad. Not so, apparently."

"What was in there?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"Stacks and stacks of porn," Vanessa replied with an unreadable tone to her voice. I couldn't tell if she was mad, scared, relieved, or what.

"Porn?" I said. "Weird."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. At first I was shocked, but then I was glad it wasn't drugs or booze. But then I was alarmed. There's so much of it? I've heard of teen girls being curious about sex, but that's going overboard. She's got stacks of it!"

Now I could sense a little bit of a tremble in her voice.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm just a little cold, and a little shaken up I guess. I hope you don't mind me waking you up like this so late."

"I don't mind," I replied. "I've been just as concerned about Sheila lately as you are."

"Just let me know if you want me to go or anything. I'm mostly here just to talk to somebody about all this. I felt like I would freakin' explode if I didn't get it all out."

"How did you know which one was my bedroom?" I asked.

"Well the bedroom on the other side of the house has these frilly, flowery curtains. I took a lucky guess, I guess."

Vanessa shivered again. It was early spring and the nights were still fairly cool. Finally when I saw her lip quivering I scooted over and put my arm around her shoulder. She was indeed shivering. I could feel it even more from close up. She reached her arm around behind me and hugged me in return. Suddenly the conversation felt a whole lot more intimate, though the topic stayed the same.

"So after that, I closed the trunk and returned the key. But then I went back, got the key, and opened it up again. I don't know why really. I guess I was just curious as to what kind of movies they were. Were they just cheesy blue movies like you see on TV late at night, or was it the hardcore stuff, you know? I grabbed a video, a magazine, and a novel."

"And?" I asked.

"I put everything back the way it was, closed it all up again, and went and hid the stuff in my room. I kept telling myself I was just being a concerned mother, but I don't think that was entirely true, you know?"