Chapter 11

Just after Thanksgiving Butch got one of the jobs that he’d applied for, driving a truck doing local deliveries, and he and Karen moved out to an apartment shortly after the first of the year.

“So, are you going to move back to your own bedroom?” April asked as soon as we heard the news of Butch’s job. Just hilarious. No, she wasn’t laughing, though everyone else was.

“It’d be more likely for you to move out on Bob,” suggested her mother.

“Mom! We’re getting married in a couple of months.”

“My point exactly.”

“Oh.”

Yep, we were joined at the hip. Not at the groin — yet — just at the hip.

The demands on our time went up a little when Karen and Butch moved out since she’d handled a lot of the cooking for us, but it was nothing that we couldn’t deal with.

Shortly after school started up again our little group grew by one. Alex Reynolds was new to the school, having transferred in over Christmas vacation. In some ways he reminded me of me — fairly small, quiet and he studied hard and was always pushing himself in school.

He was in several of our classes, most notably American History, so we’d seen him around since vacation ended. One day he asked Jodi where we sat in the lunchroom — to our general amusement. The next day he actually asked us if we’d mind if he came in and ate lunch with us.

“You’ll really need to talk to Mr. Jamison about that,” I replied. “We’re here on his forbearance.”

“Oh, I’ve already done that. It’s just that if you’re in here with four pretty girls you may not want any competition.”

More amusement ensued. Trish then explained to him, “Jeff’s my stepbrother. When he wanted to skip eighth grade I came up with the idea of him hanging around with my friends as a sort of camouflage given how small he was. We’re now a couple so he won’t be competing with you for their affection.”

“Well, then, allow me to introduce myself,” he said, sweeping a bow to the girls. “My name is Alex Reynolds, I’m 15 — 16 next month, 5’4”, a romantic at heart, no communicable diseases, reasonably good teeth and I’ve had all my shots. Lately of Salt Lake City and, no, I’m not a Mormon.”

“Jodi Nelson”

“Felicia Ramirez”

“Jennifer Alexander,” with a pretty little curtsy.

“Patricia — Engleman for the time being”

“The time being?”

“Until this darling person,” she reached out and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, “is old enough to put a ring on my finger and make me Patricia Larson.”

Extending his hand to me he said, “And, I guess that makes you Jeff Larson?”

“Yes it does. Pleased to meet you.” I shook the offered hand and we all welcomed Alex into our study group.

Alex fit right in. He understood why we were working ahead in our classes where we could. He was an absolute whiz at English which helped us all — we were already doing well technically but he helped us to add some flare to our writing. Math wasn’t his strong suit so I gave him some extra tutelage to get him completely up to speed. He became, fairly quickly, the best male friend I’d had on this timeline — and one of the best that I’d ever had.

The girls liked him and he seemed to dote on them as much as I did. He didn’t show any signs — that I could see, at least — of having a favorite. Instead he treated them all like lovely young ladies. He was a bit more reserved with Trish, but only a bit. I had no doubt that if I were absent he’d happily offer her an arm or pull her seat out for her just because she was his friend. He was a truer ‘old soul’ than I — his level of maturity at 16 was amazing.

April and Bob were married in a civil ceremony at the end of March. Bob had gotten a job offer with IBM in Armonk and they moved to New York shortly after Trish’s birthday in early May.

I thought that Trish would have been happy to see April move; they were at best cordially distant and it seemed they’d never been particularly close. Part of it might have been April’s reaction to me but it seemed that it went back further than that.

Whatever the story behind the distance between them, the fact was that the news of April’s impending move cast my girlfriend into a funk. It wasn’t a deep depression but she was quieter and several times I saw her looking at her sister with a certain sadness in her eyes.

The big trailer felt a little empty after they moved out — it had four bedrooms but there were only two couples living in them and those couples were on very different schedules most of the time. In the weeks following April’s departure Trish gradually came out of her funk, though there was still a sadness in her eyes that troubled me. I did what I could to lighten her mood and I flatter myself to think that I usually succeeded.

And yet there was one incident that stuck with me...

Just before school got out I happened to be heading for our bedroom when, through the open door, I heard her stereo playing one of my favorite songs from my original timeline. I listened through the first verse and then quietly stepped into the room. Trish was sitting in front of the stereo, looking at it with tears gently rolling down her cheeks. I loved the song and, seeking to comfort her somehow, I joined in with the second verse:

Have you seen the old girl

As soon as she heard my high, reedy voice join in her head whipped around and she looked at me with a startling intensity, a pain I didn’t understand behind her eyes. Seeing that, all I could do was put all of the compassion that I could into McTell’s haunting lyrics — the words bringing tears to my eyes as well, as I sang, no longer with the stereo, but only to the lovely young woman in front of me who was obviously in so much pain:

Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She’s no time for talking,
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags.
So how can you tell me you’re lonely,
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?

That was as far as I got. She positively launched herself at me, only just catching herself in time to keep from knocking me flat — she was still taller, heavier and stronger than me, though I’d finally cleared 5’ and 100 lbs. I reached my arms around her and led her to the bed where she made herself as small as possible, with her head in my lap, as I petted her hair and whispered words of love.

I didn’t ask what had brought on her reaction and she didn’t offer. That was fine — we were two separate people and entitled to our little secrets. I was, after all, keeping a huge secret from her.

Trish had decided to take Driver’s Ed during the summer so we could take Trig during the same period the following year. This made our summer schedule a little bit more hectic than it had been the previous year. We still mowed lawns, still limiting it to two per day, and still tried to find time to ride out to the lake or other parks a couple of times a week. The difference was that we rode out to the school each afternoon for her class. I wasn’t in the class — I wouldn’t be eligible for my learner’s permit until the second semester of my senior year — but the teacher was okay with me listening in as long as I didn’t interrupt.

Mr. Olson was a decent teacher. He was conscientious and tried to help his students understand the responsibilities that went with driving a car on public roads. His delivery, unfortunately, lacked any snap and the students mostly seemed to tune him out almost immediately.

For my birthday that year Trish got her driver’s license. We were now somewhat more mobile — Helen’s Impala wasn’t in use as a daily commuter since our parents carpooled — but we still chose to ride most places. When we did take the car Trish was a good, cautious driver.

Shortly before school started again we were enjoying Sunday breakfast with everyone present — even Karen and Butch were there — when Helen stirred things up a bit.

“I still can’t get over how mature you two are,” she said. That would have been fine if she hadn’t followed with, “You are being careful, right? Still taking your pills?”

“Yes, Mom,” Trish replied. “I’m still taking my pills,” then a long pause and, “Not that I’ve needed them yet.”

After a few gasps the entire table went dead quiet. I swear they could hear me cringe!

Karen broke the silence. “Wait a minute! You two have been sharing a bed for a year — do you really expect us to believe you haven’t done anything?”

“I didn’t say that we hadn’t done anything, just that we hadn’t done anything that would require me to be on birth control pills.”

Butch just snorted, swallowing his laughter at Trish’s tone.

Helen looked more than dubious. “Even with as special as you two are I find that hard to believe. If you’re not having sex, then what are you two doing in there?”

“You’ve already said you won’t believe us but we’re mostly just sleeping. We do some other things as well but the best part of sleeping with Jeff is just the feel of his arms around me.”

I decided it was time to come to my lover’s rescue so I nodded my agreement with Trish’s statement, hoping to attract the next salvo myself. It worked.

“Okay, Jeff. If I believe her, why have you two refrained? You know that we’re fine with it — if we weren’t we wouldn’t have let you share a bedroom, let alone a bed. I can’t imagine two adults sleeping together for a year without having sex, let alone teenagers.”

“Um, I just turned 14 a couple of weeks ago? I know that you feel we’re ready for that step but we want to be sure before we take it. We do enjoy ourselves, but we’ve decided to wait on sex until we both feel it’s the right time.

“Say, would you like to hear a joke?” I added as a complete non sequitur.

I chose to take their puzzled expressions as assent.

“Seems there were two guys who were cruising bars looking for chicks. They hadn’t had any luck when they spotted a little place that neither of them could remember having visited before so they went in...”

About half way through the joke Butch’s eyes popped open — he’d apparently heard it before. A couple of seconds later Trish’s did the same, and then she lowered her head into her hands and started softly laughing. The others were just sitting there waiting to understand what was going on. After her treatment of Trish I decided to be just a little nasty to Helen and timed the punch line for when she took a drink of her coffee.

“ ... he just sits back in the corner licking his eyebrows.”

Coffee everywhere! Karen and my father had shocked looks on their faces, Butch and Trish were laughing so hard — largely at Helen — that they were gasping for breath.

As soon as she got her breath back Trish slid into my lap, snuggled in and, to the general amusement of the table, said, “My Hero!” She then turned back to her mother and said, “No, he can’t lick his eyebrows, but we all know that it’s not what you’ve got it’s what you do with it, right?”

The start of our junior year brought up the question of where to eat lunch. None of us wanted to eat in the lunchroom and the teacher for the class we had after lunch, Chemistry, didn’t like the idea of us in the lab alone. We would have been fine, but I could understand his point! Finally it turned out the Journalism classroom, where the school newspaper was put together, was open during lunch and the teacher — a Mr. Olson but not the same one who taught Driver’s Ed — was happy to have us eat there. That brought back memories — it had been the Journalism classroom to which I’d retreated during lunch in my first timeline.