Chapter 7

Well, Mom's meeting was as explosive as I expected. She started off with, "Nancy, your father has been keeping me posted in your progress as a superhero. Well, I guess I should say as a pair of superheros. I want you both to know that I am proud of you, even though I had some great reservations at first. We were testing you in various ways. The fact that you were kept in the dark about my knowledge of your adventures was one of the tests. We wanted to know if you two had the mental toughness to stick to your convictions even though we seemed to be divided over how you should act.

"That kind of leads us into the second reason for this meeting. You both have been exemplary in your sexual restraint. That was the other part of the test. We were concerned that you might not have the mental, emotional, or moral strength to hold out against what your instincts were ordering you to do. Well, you certainly have passed that test, and I will leave it up to you to decide which bed you sleep in tonight.

"Nancy, you have been on the Pill for months, now, to regulate your menstrual period and to help you cut down on PMS and cramps. Therefore, I release both of you from all of your promises of restraint. However, before you make a mad dash for the bedroom, I have a couple of other things to say.

"We don't care if you two marry or not; that is entirely up to you. All we ask is that you remain monogamous as long as you are together.

"The last thing that I ask is that you hold off on having children for the next few years. Nancy, as you know, your father us expecting some political unrest to develop in this country pretty soon. If he is correct, that will be no time to bring a child into the world! Nancy, you will be too busy staying alive to be able to devote adequate attention to an infant. I hope that he is wrong because we both want grandchildren, but he is rarely wrong, so I am trying to make the transition as easy as possible.

"Okay, now you two may go to bed if you wish."

We were polite enough to allow Mom to finish her last sentence, but we have no idea whether or not Dad had anything to add. What we did in bed is so obvious that I am not going to describe it here. However, I will say that both of us were sore in slightly different places. I was walking kind of funny, so I was glad that today was Saturday and not a school day. Well, Tom was walking kind of gingerly, too, but he claimed that it was from very tired abdominal muscles.

Mom and Dad laughed when they saw us, but both admitted that they had experienced the same thing. The main thing was that they did not tease us about our pains. We goofed off for most of the day, but we were in reasonably good condition by bed time. The second round was not as frantic, and neither one of us was nearly as sore the next morning. By Monday, we had learned a little moderation, so we were in good shape for school.

My actions and attitude, at least, must have made it pretty obvious what we had been doing. Over lunch, Sue whispered to me, "So you two finally got completely together over the weekend. Well, you certainly do make a wonderful couple, and I hope that it lasts a while for both of you. Do your parents know?"

"Yeah, Mom actually gave us her permission, and her only comment about a wedding was that it was up to us. I'm on the Pill, so we don't expect any complications."

"Is it as good as rumor says?"

"Oh my God, is it! I have never felt anything like that, and it seems to keep getting better as Tom and I gain experience. The way I feel right now, I won't be satisfied unless I die of too much sex at the age of 200! Find yourself a boyfriend and settle in for the duration. It is well worth the effort!"

"I'd like to, but I have no immediate prospects. I don't want to do it the way Ann did last summer; the thought of that much exposure to STDs scares me to death."

"Yeah, I agree with you, but you could use a condom. They aren't 100% effective against STDs, but they are probably close enough."

"Yeah, well, if I do, you will probably see me walking around on cloud 9 the way your are. Wish me luck."

At that moment, an argument broke out a few tables away that quickly escalated into fists being thrown. Neither fighter knew what he was doing, so there were no serious injuries, but it did take a minute for the conflict to be broken up. Marge Thompson said, "Uh-oh, it looks like the drug wars have moved to the school. I've been expecting this, but I had hoped for the best."

Tom asked, "Marge, what do you mean?"

"Those two, Ed Boson and Guy LeFette, are representatives of two rival drug gangs. The reason I know is that Ed Boson used to date a cousin of mine, and she dumped him because she got to be afraid of him and what he represented. She mentioned Guy as being Ed's major enemy and rival. Shit, we may have a drug war going on around here pretty damned soon!"

"Are they pushing drugs on the campus?"

"I don't know, but I would not be surprised one bit. My cousin said that the pushers have a quota that they have to meet, and the quota keeps being raised. That means that the customers have to come from somewhere, and the customers of a rival are the obvious candidates. As long as this stays as a fight with fists, we innocent bystanders will probably be alright, but I'm afraid that this whole thing could escalate to knives, or even guns!"

"What can we do about it?"

"I don't know, Tom. The best thing, it seems to me, is to stay as far from those two pushers as you can. Drugs are so pervasive that I don't know how they could be stopped."

"Well, Marge, I have never been attracted to drugs, and I simply don't understand the attraction that others feel about them. I wish that I knew what to do, but I am completely stumped by the stupidity of being trapped by a drug habit."

Just then, the bell for the next class rang, so we dumped our lunch trays and headed for class. I wondered if Dad could offer some insight.

That evening, we told Dad about the fight in the lunch room and the possibility of a drug war starting in the school. He shook his head and said, "I didn't expect things to get this bad this fast. I guess I had better push a little faster to get my assets converted into gold. Gold has an attraction for people that I really don't understand, but I am converting all of our uncommitted resources into gold. Tom, if you can do it, I think that you should try to get your father to do the same thing. The value of paper money and securities can go to Hell in such a short time that I think now is the time to start the conversion."

"Okay, I am due to see Dad tomorrow about some business he wanted to discuss with me, and I will bring it up to him then. I don't know what the other stuff is that he wants to talk about, but he should be sober enough to listen to me when we talk about his ideas."

The next day, after school, Tom and I went to see his father at his office Down Town. Mr. Turner was completely sober and actually surprised me by remembering me and my name. Tom said, "Dad, I brought Nancy along because we are committed life partners. I don't know if we will ever make it official by getting married, but we are definitely permanently attached to each other. For that reason, Nancy needs to know anything and everything about me and any business that I am connected to. Right now, her father is treating me that way."

"Excellent, Tommy! Oh, I guess that I should start calling you Tom, since you are acting so adult. In fact, I think that you are more adult than 99% of the people I know who are a lot older than you. Okay, you are right, and Nancy should be included in this discussion.

"The main thing that I wanted to tell you is that my doctor, after a lot of expensive consultations and that sort of thing, says that I have no more than six months to live. Now, please don't get all mushy on me. I really want to die so that I can join your mother wherever she is now. I don't drink anymore because I now know what to expect and that I will be seeing her soon. My only regret is that I will not be around to watch you as you progress through life."