Chapter 30

Time marched on. The weekly visits from Amud and Bala resumed without further incident. Janey wore her collar occasionally, even skipping some weekends she was entitled to wear it. Her social life was picking back up and she was just too busy to be tied up all weekend, pun intended.

Sally started getting back to normal, too. Thank God! Although I don't think Janey appreciated it. Getting back to normal meant that she now had time to focus on her daughter's life, not just her own submissiveness. I heard the two of them more and more, chatting, laughing, chiding and chaffing; just normal parent-teenager stuff.

At one point Sally even enlisted my help. After her last request for my help, she had tended to take things having to do with Janey on herself, especially lately. She seemed determined to show me that things were back to normal. I just grinned and let her deal with it for the most part, mainly because teenagers were aliens as far as I was concerned and the females of that species were as perplexing as human females. It was also good for Sally to know that she could do it herself.

This time, however, Sally was beyond herself. Janey had been coming home late from school. Nothing unusual so far, as she often had activities after school. Her cheerleading coach had called one afternoon, however, and asked where Janey was, as she had taken a leave of absence from the squad for the entire basketball season. Nothing surprising there really, given what had happened. Then there was her refusal to tell Sally what was going on, why she was late. OK, that was unusual, as were the tears and rips, crudely mended, in some of her gym clothing. She was also spending a lot of time in the whirlpool after school, alone.

Nothing Sally did convinced Janey to talk. Threats, promises, bribes to her friends, talks with the teachers, nothing. It didn't sound too serious to me, but to keep Sally happy, I decided to look into it. Sally made me promise to be discrete. What? Me? Heavy-handed?

It took several days, but I found out what Janey was doing after school. I couldn't believe it, but she was practicing with the boy's wrestling team. For a while I thought she was just hanging around trying to get a cute boy's attention — as if she needed to do that! But she was going through all the practice drills with the team and even scrimmaged with the others in her weight class. She lost, but she didn't do badly and she kept getting better. Like her mother, she was a scrapper.

OK. Now I knew what. But why? No amount of digging revealed that to me. I kept at it for several weeks, during which time I didn't say a word to either of them. Janey went to practice every day and, as I watched her covertly, got better, much better, to the point where she finally won a spot on the starting roster.

The day the roster was posted, I was waiting for Janey outside the girl's locker room door. Her expression was priceless, much like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, but not knowing how she was found out.

"Uh, Hi, Dad. Just driving by?" she asked hopefully.

"Nope."

"Oh. Is everything OK at home? Did Mom send you to pick me up?" She tried to sound worried, but didn't succeed.

"Nope."

"Oh." She was silent for while. "You know?"

"Yep."

"Does Mom know?" I could tell she dreaded that for some reason.

"Nope..."

Her head whipped up to look at me at that. Hope flooded the car like a gully washer.

" ... not yet."

"Oh, please Dad," she pleaded, "don't tell her. Please!"

"Tell me something, kiddo." I turned to look at her. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why wrestling? Is it a guy? Don't we give you enough affection at home? Why?"

Janey was so cute when she blushed and giggled. Damn, she was beautiful! Who was I kidding?

"Oh, Daaaad."

I felt like I finally belonged to that great and honorable club of patriarchs. I had just exasperated my teenager and been addressed in the proper fashion.

"Well?"

She looked at me, now thoroughly exasperated. I wanted an answer from her and wasn't going to take a cutesy blush as a diversion. It almost worked, though.

"It's hard to explain," she said evasively.

"Try me."

"It started as a dare," she said, finally

Oh, shit. I shuddered when I remembered some of the things I had heard about — and participated in — that started out with a dare. Old Mrs. Johnson would never be the same after waking up with 25 naked and very obviously horny teenaged boys in her bedroom. Well, she was old to us. 25 is a lot older than 16...

"I see. Who dared you?" I asked her

"Well, that's where it's confusing. I guess I sort of did myself. You see, there was this cute guy..."

I knew it!

" ... and he was, well, there was an argument about how tough wrestling was and that's how come there weren't any girls on the team. I sort of got volunteered to make the team if I could."

"Oh, a challenge, not a dare."

I felt slightly better, but not much. I remembered some challenges I had participated in, too, mostly having to do with bare chests at sub-zero temperature football games in college.

"Yeah, I talked it over with the men's coach and he said OK, as long as I had triple protection over my, you know," she indicated her crotch, " and a double strength athletic bra. I talked to the women's gym teacher — she thought I was crazy — and she helped me get all that stuff.

"You know, wrestling's tough!" she ended.

"But you made the roster for the next match! Aren't you excited?"

"Geeze, Dad. What do you do? Know everything?" She looked at me suspiciously.

"Only about the people I care about," I kidded. "Seriously, your Mom was concerned and asked me to look into it. I did."

"It was nice to make the roster. I earned it, too. But I'm not too thrilled about my first match. I have to wrestle the defending State Champ, probably twice."

"Twice?"

"It's a double-elimination with four schools. You have to lose twice to be out. I'm the only other one entered in this weight class, so the rules say we have to wrestle twice."

Something in her voice didn't sound right. "What's the problem?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Just I heard when he found out he might have to wrestle a girl, he made some pretty rude comments about what he would do to me."

She started to cry, little tears trickling down her face.

"You want me to stop your match?"

She shook her head fiercely.

"No. I know it must be strange for him, you know? But why can't he just fight me like a guy. I mean, I know I'm not a guy, but dang it, Dad, why are some guys such big assholes?"

Now, how often do you get 'dang it' and 'asshole' from your sweet innocent little girl in the same sentence? She was serious, too! It was, however, an eternal question. I didn't know the answer, and knew if I said anything, she would know I didn't know. I said nothing.

We drove home in silence, her only request was that I not let Sally know. I told her I couldn't promise to do that. I felt it was her Mom's right to know about this. But I told her I wouldn't spoil her match.

Friday night came. Janey didn't come home as it was an away match at one of the other schools. That night before dinner I handed Sally a big shopping bag and told her we were going out for the evening. She started to open the bag, but I stopped her. What was in the bag was for later.

It was unusual for us to go out, so she was excited. I think she was curious when I headed for a small town about 25 miles away and not our usual bistro. I kept up a banal line of chatter for the hour drive, not letting on what was up.

The fare at the local diner was a disappointment, but the company was excellent. I think Sally felt the same way too, but now she was more curious than ever. She dropped hints, finally asking me point blank. I ignored both the hints and the direct hints. As 7:30 approached I handed her the bag and told her she'd better get ready.

Her face was a study in perplexion as she pulled out a big floppy hat, an over-sized pair of sunglasses and a bulky shapeless overcoat. I had her put them all on — she was surprised she got to keep her other clothes on, I think — and we headed back to the car. She was even more puzzled when we pulled into the crowded high school parking lot. I don't know if she noticed the big yellow bus from Janey's high school in the lot, but I parked right next to it.

The gym was a cacophony of noise as we entered as the early matches already underway. Behind her sunglasses I could see her questioning eyes darting around trying to discover what we were doing at a high school wrestling match. I could tell to the millisecond when she spotted Janey. I still have the bruises on my arm to prove it.

"You knew what she was doing all along?"

"Kind of."

"Kind of? What the Hell does that mean?"

"Well, I knew what she was doing, just not why."

"Oh."

I was amazed to get away with that simple of an answer. Sally knew my inquisitive nature. She knew of my protective instincts and the honor code I lived by. If Janey had asked me not to tell, I wouldn't, if I could. I had known and that's all that mattered. If Janey had been in trouble, I would have intervened. Sally had asked for my help, after all.

"Well, you could at least have told me..."

I was going to hear about this for a long time, I could tell.

They called Janey's match. It was painful to watch. The kid she fought really was good, but, as she had said, he was an asshole. He toyed with her. He never quite did anything inappropriate, but I could tell towards the end that the referees were beginning to watch where he put his hands on her body. He pinned her with 7 seconds remaining in the last period. Like a trouper, Janey shook his hand — after his coach made the asshole come back out onto the mat — then she made her way back to her school's bench.