Chapter 6: Friday Lunch

After the incident with Clayton, Faith announced that she wasn’t in the mood to hang around with the whole crowd so she invited the four of us back to her family’s place for lunch. Her family was out for the day so we would have the house to ourselves and they had plenty of leftovers from yesterday so there was no shortage of food.

Dan and Pearl and Danielle all seemed to agree with Faith about not wanting to stay with the rest. That was strange because I didn’t really care either way. I wanted to be with them so I agreed to go to Faith’s family home. If they’d decided to stay I would have just as cheerfully agreed to stay. I didn’t feel bad about what happened. It seemed like what happened with Clayton happened to somebody else. Maybe it was B. Clayton was being a jerk, B got angry, she took over and dealt with him. It felt weird that people wanted to talk with me about what happened because I wasn’t there, it was B.

I guess if I was being really honest, I have to admit that I don’t think B actually exists as a separate person. It’s just easier to think of her that way. It seems like when I get angry I do stuff I wouldn’t normally do. Then when the anger goes away, I wonder why I did all that stuff. Blaming it on B is easy – probably too easy. I can just imagine the speech The Parents would give me about this. Take responsibility for your actions. You mustn’t find excuses or blame other people for the things you do.

Okay, so I guess I have to be responsible for what happened to Clayton. He was annoying me so I got angry and kneed him. I’m not even sure he deserved it. When Dan taught me how to use my knee like that, he told me it could really seriously injure the guy. He said that I shouldn’t do it for trivial things. Maybe what Clayton was doing was trivial. I hope I didn’t seriously injure him. I would feel really bad if I did. I kind of wish I hadn’t reacted like that. I should have walked away from him. I could have gone over and stood with Faith and Danielle. If I’d done that Clayton would’ve given up. Instead I got angry and I hurt somebody who probably didn’t deserve to get hurt.

But like I said, it seems like that was another person. Even by the time I got back to Dan’s car it felt remote and distant – like something I’d seen on TV. So me feeling bad about Clayton being injured would be like feeling bad for what happens to somebody in a movie – you see it happen and you feel bad for a while but then the commercials come on and you start wondering if you really need to start up a funeral plan when you’re only thirteen.

While we were driving, Dan and Pearl asked me if I was okay. I shrugged and nodded. Then I asked them to talk about something else. I felt fine but I didn’t want to keep talking about all of that. I wanted to switch channels and watch a different movie. The romance movie starring Dan and Pearl was much more interesting than a repeat of the stupid action movie starring Clayton and B. I think Dan and Pearl got the message because they spent the rest of the trip talking about other stuff. I’m serious about the romance movie being interesting. It was good watching and listening to Dan and Pearl spending time together. They seem to have gotten to the point where they feel really comfortable with each other. It seems like it happened pretty quickly but I’m not exactly an expert on how long stuff like that is supposed to take.

Faith’s family house turned out to be in one of the nicer parts of town – not too far out from downtown. It sprawls in three levels up the side of a hill and has lots of wood paneling and big windows and so on. I wouldn’t describe it as a super rich house. The DiMartinos’ house is probably more expensive and even they aren’t super rich. But it’s definitely a nicer house than ours.

The five of us went inside and left our shoes in the entrance hall. It made me a bit sad to take off the nice boots that Pearl had loaned me. Those boots and I had become good friends. I felt as if we had bonded. I expected to have problems getting around LaserCity in them but they never bothered me at all. I wasn’t used to heels but they weren’t so high that I couldn’t manage. As a matter of fact by the time we left LaserCity I hardly even had to think about walking in the heels – it seemed so natural. Now I was walking around in my socks and it felt weird not to have heels.

Faith gave us a brief tour of the house. The whole house is very open and seems to have lots of space everywhere. The furnishings and decorations are all restrained and elegant. They have a den with walls covered with bookshelves, a fun looking games room/gym in the basement and a hot tub on an enclosed balcony.

In the living area I was surprised to see a copy of the picture I drew of Faith and Danielle hanging on the wall – together with various other pictures of the family. Danielle saw me looking at the picture and gave me a little hug from behind and a kiss on the cheek. She thanked me again for the picture and told me that she had another copy above her bed in her room at the college and that Faith had the original in the apartment she shares with Pearl.

Danielle linked her arm through mine and we continued the tour like that. As we walked, Danielle told me that she was staying there with Faith for the remainder of the long weekend. She had made the shortest appearance with her family that she could get away with and then fled. Danielle told me that Faith’s family had been really nice to her.

“From the first time Faith brought me home with her, they welcomed me warmly and made me feel comfortable. Her father even carried my bags straight up to Faith’s room. There was never any awkwardness about us sleeping together. It’s so wonderful to be here.”

“I agree with Danielle, 100 per cent,” said Pearl. “I’ve stayed here a couple of times and everyone is really nice. Except I get to stay in the guest room, of course.”

Faith pouted at her and then grinned.

“My family is okay – except for my little brother,” said Faith. “He’s a pain in the butt. He’s twelve and he’s decided it’s fun to annoy my friends. He thinks it’s his mission in life to embarrass me as often as he can.”

“I know how you feel,” moaned Dan. “I have a thirteen year old sister and she’s always embarrassing me.”

I gasped at him. He grinned back at me so I punched his arm.

“And she hits me for no reason,” complained Dan.

The others laughed.

“But we luurv Bec,” said Faith.

She wrapped me up in another hug but she didn’t lift me up and spin me around this time so I guess she’d calmed down since the morning.

“She’s sooo cute.”

Faith landed a wet sloppy kiss on the side of my face and then let me go.

“Liam isn’t cute and he isn’t lovable. He’s an annoying little boy.”

“Liam isn’t that bad,” protested Pearl. “He’s awkward around girls. And since all of your friends are girls...” She stopped and did a hand gesture to indicate that the conclusion was obvious.

Faith sighed. “I know! You’re right! And I love him and all that. But he’s sooo annoying.”

We ended up in the kitchen sitting around the kitchen table. The kitchen is as bright and roomy as the rest of the house. The counters are all polished marble and the table top is solid redwood. Faith and Danielle opened the fridge and started transferring plate after plate piled with Thanksgiving leftovers onto the table. The five of us managed to eat only a small fraction of the food that was there.

The conversation meandered through a variety of unrelated topics – some serious, others not so serious. I wasn’t completely silent. I spoke a few times – answering questions and so on. But mostly I was happy to sit there and listen to them talk and to laugh along with their jokes. I felt relaxed and calm. For the first time in ages, I wasn’t shut down or upset or angry. I was happy. I was with Dan whom I love more than anything and Pearl whom I love nearly as much. I was with Faith and Danielle who are really good people and good friends. Now that Faith wasn’t performing for an audience, she and Danielle had gone back to being quiet and gentle with each other. They look so comfortable together that it makes me feel good watching them lean against each other. Best of all, these four special people were treating me like someone who belonged in their circle. I felt safe and comfortable and relaxed and happy.

I guess it was as predictable as the sun setting in the west but eventually the conversation wandered back to my encounter with Clayton at LaserCity.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Pearl. “You’re not upset about it or anything?”

“I’m fine. He made me angry but I’m over that now.”

“Did he hurt you at all?” asked Danielle.

“No! Except I might have bruised my knee.”

“Please don’t tell me his balls are made of cast iron,” moaned Faith. “There’s a joke about that which I really don’t want to apply to Clayton.”

“No, his testicles went squish just like they were supposed to,” I explained.

I realize that what I said made me sound cruel or something. I didn’t mean it to be cruel. Maybe I should have said it differently.

“My knee hit the bottom of his pelvic bone.”

I’d been thinking about the skeleton we had to study in science class and figured out what my knee must have hit.

I lifted up my leg and slid the bottom of my dress up to expose my knee. Then I pointed to a little patch of skin on the top of my knee. “Right there.”

To my surprise there wasn’t any sign of a bruise.

Dan leaned over and kissed the spot I was pointing to.

“There you go, Princess. All better,” said Dan. “No more ouchy.”

I smiled at Dan. He can be so sweet sometimes. Then I saw a gleam in Faith’s eye and I guessed she was about to offer to kiss my knee better as well so I quickly put my foot back down on the floor and covered my knee with my dress.

Not that I would have really minded Faith kissing my knee better but I knew if she did it then Danielle and Pearl would also end up kissing my knee. Then I figured Faith would suddenly discover a bruise on her elbow or her ear or somewhere like that and we’d all have to kiss it better and then she’d point out that Danielle’s lip was sore and we’d all have to kiss that. The kissing wouldn’t stop there either. I kind of suspected she would do it all to get an excuse to kiss Dan without actually having to admit what she was doing. For a self-declared total lesbian, Faith was spending a lot of time gazing at Dan with a kind of curious lusty expression on her face.

I once heard a girl (one of Dan’s girlfriends) describe herself as bi-curious. She meant she was straight but she was kind of curious about doing sex with a girl provided it was the right girl. I think maybe Faith was feeling a bit bi-curious about Dan. All the business about throwing herself all over Dan at LaserCity had been a big act but maybe there was a bit of desire hidden in there as well.

Faith pouted at me when she realized that I’d figured out her plan and prevented it but then she started chuckling silently. I think she was mainly laughing at herself.

“Faith,” I said, “if you’re so upset about missing out, I happen to know Clayton has an ouchy you could kiss better.”

“Eeew!” Faith screwed up her face in disgust. Everyone else laughed.

“I have to admit,” said Dan. “I’m kind of glad that happened with Clayton.”

“Huh!” I think all four of us girls said it at the same time.

“I mean, with you starting at our school next Wednesday, I was a bit worried. A few of the guys can be a bit ... well they tend to make a play for every innocent girl coming in from high school.”

“They’re like sharks,” said Danielle. “At the start of each new semester there’s always a couple of sharks circling around the fresh meat.”

“Most girls figure them out pretty quickly,” added Pearl. “But there’s always a couple of girls who get swept off their feet by a smooth talker. Often it’s the first time in their lives a nice looking, older guy has paid so much attention to them. Before they know it, they’re lying in the back seat of a car with their underwear around their ankles wondering what the hell just happened.”

“Guys are all pigs,” said Faith with a fair amount of passion.

“Not all guys are like that,” pointed out Danielle.

Faith scowled at Danielle. I watched as Danielle calmly looked Faith in the eye without backing down. After a moment Faith nodded and looked away.

I looked at Pearl. “That sounded like it was from personal experience,” I said to her.

She gave me a tired little smile. “I was lucky enough to have a couple of brothers who warned me about what to look out for. But I’ve had a few girls cry on my shoulder after the guy they thought they were in love with turned out to be a total jerk.”

I could tell from her face that she did a lot more for those girls than let them cry on her shoulder. I’m guessing she spent serious amounts of time with them helping to put their lives back together. I could also tell from her face that she always found that task very draining.

Danielle reached across the table and clasped both of Pearl’s hands in her own.

“You’ve also had one girl cry on your shoulder who was lonely and lost and confused about her sexuality. You were so kind to me. I can’t ever thank you enough for that.”

Pearl smiled warmly back at Danielle but she didn’t say anything.

“Most importantly,” said Faith. “Pearl’s stunningly attractive roomie came in while they were talking. That lost and lonely girl was struck dumb to be in the presence of such beauty.”

Faith made a big show of flipping her hair back and sticking out her chest and preening.

“I seem to recall that you came in from the shower wrapped in a very small towel,” said Danielle. “It wasn’t your beauty that struck me dumb, it was those long sexy legs of yours and the possibility that any second you were going to flash me a view of something more.”

Pearl rolled her eyes at me as if to say, “Do you see what I have to put up with every day?”

“I introduced Danielle to Faith,” Pearl said to me. “I told Danielle that Faith could probably answer some of her questions better than I could.”

“And for that I owe you big time, roomie,” said Faith. Faith blew Pearl a kiss.

“I was so grateful that I promised to rock her world,” Faith explained to me. “But she keeps turning me down.”

Faith pouted and then winked at me. Pearl silently shook her head like she’d given up on trying to stop Faith.

“Pearl seems to listen to you, Bec. Maybe you can persuade her to let me thank her properly.”

I grinned at Faith. “I believe flowers and chocolates are the widely accepted ways of thanking someone.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Pearl. “Did you hear that, Faith? Flowers and chocolates are good – no world rocking is called for. I like my world nice and stable, thank you.”

Faith pouted again. It seems like she was doing a lot of pouting – it was all playful pouting, but still.

“You’re no fun at all,” said Faith with her bottom lip stuck firmly forward and a sad expression pasted on her face.

“I still don’t get why Dan thinks it was a good thing for Clayton to try that stuff with Bec,” said Danielle.

“The point is more about what Bec did to Clayton,” explained Dan. “Those guys we were talking about...”

“The sharks,” interrupted Faith.

“ ... yeah, the sharks. Those guys will hear about what happened to Clayton and they will probably leave Bec alone.”

“But wouldn’t they leave her alone anyway?” said Danielle. “I mean, she looks so young. Surely they wouldn’t be interested in someone that young.”

Danielle picked up my ponytail that was closest to her and ran it loosely through her hand. Then she placed it carefully in position over my collar-bone and down onto my chest. She straightened up the ribbon and played with the bow to make it sit up properly.

“When Bec wears her hair differently and has the right clothes she can easily pass for sixteen or even older,” said Pearl. “Have you forgotten the basketball game when everybody thought she was Dan’s latest girlfriend? Those sharks have no problems with going after sixteen year olds.”

“Total assholes,” said Faith. “They deserve a good kneeing even more than Clayton did.”

Nobody argued with her.

The conversation crashed to a halt and we all sat around in silence for a few minutes. By this time we’d all finished eating. I guess everyone was thinking about different stuff. I was thinking about how I needed to make sure I watched out for sharks when I got to college. Dan had said they would probably leave me alone – probably is different from definitely.

Faith pushed herself away from the table and started cleaning up. The rest of us stood up and started helping without any discussion.

Pearl was at the sink scraping her plate when she stopped what she was doing and stared out of the window above the sink.

“Cool,” she said.

We all turned and looked at her for an explanation.

She pointed at the window. “Lightning.”

We all crowded up to the sink and looked out. Being up on the side of the hill we had a view across the suburbs. Sure enough, huge dark clouds hung low in the distance. As we looked, a double flash lit up the inside of the clouds. The lightning turned the clouds transluscent and revealed the structure of the clouds – lighter and darker patches in random and irregular shapes. It was beautiful.

Apparently the others all agreed with me because there was a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs.”

“You know,” said Faith, “the best place in the house to watch a storm is in the hot tub upstairs. I turned it on before so it’s ready to use.”

“Oh!” said Pearl. “What a shame we didn’t bring our suits.”

“That’s okay. It’d just be us. We go in it naked all the time. Dani and I were in there last night with some of my family. None of us had a stitch on. It’s no biggy.”

I blinked a couple of times. Did she really say that we should be naked in the hot tub? I replayed the last few sentences in my head. Apparently she did. I shivered. No way was I going to get naked in front of these people.

I was thinking that surely there must be somewhere in the house where we could get a good view without getting naked. I was just about to open my mouth and object when Pearl spoke.

“We can see pretty well from here,” said Pearl. “Why don’t we stay here and watch?”

“The hot tub room has floor to ceiling windows,” explained Danielle.

“Besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve sat in a hot tub and watched an electrical storm,” said Faith.

“It’s just that...” Pearl’s voice trailed away into nothing.

“You’re not feeling shy are you?” said Faith. “There’s really no need. The bubbles make it impossible to see anything. As long as you stay down you’ll be completely covered.”

Pearl sighed. “Really?”

“Truly,” said Danielle.

I stayed silent through all of this. I guess I was kind of hoping that Pearl would refuse and that would save me from making a fuss. But Pearl crumbled. She left me high and dry. Faith and Danielle might have convinced Pearl to go along with getting naked in the hot tub but nothing they said made me feel any different.

I kind of wished that I’d spoken up and agreed with Pearl when she objected. Maybe if I’d said something she wouldn’t have crumbled so quickly.

Everyone had pretty much ignored me through all of this. I don’t know why. Maybe they assumed that I would go along with it. Or maybe they assumed I wouldn’t want to so they didn’t even bother asking. I don’t know.

Dan had been quiet too. He didn’t look at all worried about the idea for himself. I guess he wasn’t going to knock back the chance to watch three good looking girls get naked – even if two of them were effectively unavailable. I could see he was staying quiet so that he didn’t put any pressure on Pearl. He was letting her make up her own mind. He wasn’t even looking at Pearl. He was standing beside her – using his physical presence to silently let her know that he supported her, whatever she decided to do. Remember how I keep saying that Dan can be sweet, sometimes?

In the meantime, Pearl had shrugged and agreed to go along with it. Faith stepped in and gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“You’ll be safe,” Faith said to Pearl. “I promise to keep my totally understandable lust for the hotness of your gorgeous body under complete control.”

Pearl rolled her eyes at Faith. “Let’s go already, before I chicken out.”

That’s the point where Dan turned to me and raised an eyebrow. I did a tiny shake of the head and he nodded. He was about to say something but Danielle beat him to it.

She turned to me and said, “What do you want to do, Bec? Are you going to join us?”

I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said but it came out really quietly. I’m not sure if she heard me.

“Bec’s fairly shy,” explained Dan. “Maybe I should leave you girls alone to enjoy the hot tub and I’ll take Bec home.”

“NO!” I said – a bit louder than I meant to. I wasn’t ready to go home yet.

Dan looked surprised by my reaction and then he looked curious.

I really didn’t want to go home yet. I didn’t even want to think about going home yet. When Dan put it that way he was giving me the choice to either go in the hot tub or go home. I started to feel sick in my stomach. My throat went dry and I felt little shivers of fear go through me. Both options terrified me. The only question was – which choice terrified me more?