Chapter 3

When I got to Ronnie's house, I thought she wasn't there at first, because I knocked and nothing happened. I was about to leave when the curtains moved, so I waited. Finally she opened the door about a foot. She had on a thick robe, but it wasn't closed tightly, and there was a lot of cleavage. I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near acceptable to stare at that, as delicious as it looked, so I got my eyes off of that and put them on her face. She was just staringt at me and I thought she was going to yell at me, or tell me to go away, but eventually she opened the door wider, in an unspoken invitation to come in.

It was hot inside, and I wondered about that thick robe until I heard the click-clack of her wind up swing and saw Timmy sleeping in just a diaper as the swing rocked him endlessly.

"What do you want?" she asked, as I walked farther into the house.

I had no idea what I wanted. I didn't even know why I was there. What had been on my mind all day dithered in my head.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She didn't answer at first, and when I turned to look at her she was looking off out a window, like her mind was somewhere else. Then those blue eyes swung to me.

"I'm a big girl," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Oh," I said. Now what did I do? I had no idea. "I just want you to be okay," I said, kind of uselessly.

"Thank you," she said. "You're always so polite."

I know you're supposed to feel good when an adult pays you a compliment, and I knew if my mother had heard that, she'd be beaming. But all that did was embarrass me.

"I'm sorry," I said. One of her eyebrows rose just a fraction. "That I ... um ... looked at your pictures," I explained.

"My pictures," she murmured, looking away again. Then she looked at me. "They're not my pictures, Bobby. They might be of me, but they are nothing I'd want to claim."

It was pretty obvious she was still down in the dumps. Of course that seemed perfectly normal. You didn't just get over something like she had been through like it was a broken fingernail. And I could imagine how hard she'd been trying to forget it, even moving away and stuff. And now it had all been brought back. I remembered her comment about them being where everybody could see them.

"It might not be as bad as you think," I said, without thinking it through first.

Now that eyebrow went way up.

"And just how is that possible?" she asked. Her voice sounded so cold that the robe seemed perfectly natural.

I got jittery, and when I get jittery I kind of run off at the mouth.

"I'd been looking at sites like that for like a year before I found those," I said. "So they're pretty old. I didn't look to see if they had been reblogged, but I haven't seen them anywhere since then." It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't been looking at tumblr sites for probably four or five months. Once I had those pictures, I didn't need any others. "But maybe not..." I finished lamely.

"What do you mean ... reblogged?" she asked.

So I had to explain how each picture usually had comments about it, and some of those comments were about who had reblogged the picture at some other site. That's how pictures became popular. They got copied all over the place. You saw the same pictures at lots of sites.

"It's kind of like going viral," I said, artlessly and without thinking. "Those are usually the best pictures."

I realized she was staring at me as I said those last words.

"Sorry," I said, automatically.

"Come with me," she said, imperiously. She cranked the winding handle to Timmy's swing and then started for the bedroom she had turned into her office, and didn't look back. By the time I got moving and actually followed her into the room, she was already sitting at her computer tapping keys.

Her doggy style picture suddenly filled the screen.

What the fuck?!

"Show me what you mean," she said.

"What?"

"About the reblogging," she said.

I stared at the screen. Then I realized she must have found that picture herself, and bookmarked the page it was on.

"How'd you get that?" I asked, confused. She must have sifted through days worth of thumbnails to find that.

"I sent it to myself in an email from your computer," she said. "Show me!"

Suddenly I understood. I had bookmarked that page, and the other pages with her picture on them. Then, to make the PowerPoint presentation, I had just selected the pictures on those pages. She had decoded all that, found the original page. She had then sent the link to that page's location to herself in an email.

I reached for the mouse and moved the slider down, revealing the list of people who had liked this picture, or reblogged it.

It was a long list.

It was a very long list.

There were literally dozens of lines that said, "(insert stupid name like '12_inch_dick@tumblr.com') reblogged this photo." I didn't have to explain again. She caught on quickly. Even as I stood there, leaning over her shoulder and breathing in how good she smelled, her hand knocked mine away from the mouse. She copied the link for 12_inch_dick.tumblr.com and opened her browser. She pasted the link into the address bar and, much faster than my computer would have, the site popped up and the screen was covered with thumbnails.

This particular guy was into anal.

"This is disgusting!" she growled.

"Yeah, I stay away from places like this," I said, like that would get me off the hook for masturbating to her pictures. I realized she didn't know I did that, and reminded myself to watch my freaking mouth so as not to give that fact away. I was already in enough trouble.

She abandoned the mouse and her doggy page popped back up.

"July fifteenth," she muttered.

Her fingers tapped again, and suddenly the new site was back. She knew some kind of keyboard shortcuts to do things that was lots faster than the mouse. Again, she showed how quick a learner she was by finding the month tab, which displayed the last year's worth of months. She clicked on March, and a new set of thumbnails showed up. She moved the mouse to hover, and the date of the photograph was displayed.

She paged down, checking a photograph now and then, until she got to the middle of the month. Then she just paged down, slowly scanning each one.

There it was! It was in the upper right corner of the page.

"Shit," she muttered.

"Go to August," I said, on a hunch.

"Why?"

"Because if he really liked that picture, he'll keep moving it from month to month, to keep it current."

She looked up at me. I realized her robe was gaping open, and I could see a heck of a lot of the inside of her right breast.

I got caught staring.

She snorted and pulled her robe closed.

"Sorry," I said, automatically.

"Sure you are," she said. "You're a male. I should expect this from you."

"Look," I said, a little more loudly than I should have, most likely. "I really am sorry your feelings are hurt. I can't help looking, but I'll try not to from now on, okay? I really will."

"Feelings got hurt," she muttered, looking at the screen again. "Like he has any idea."

I realized she was talking to the monitor, and just kept quiet as she found August.

"Now page down slowly, like you did before," I said. "You're looking for the same picture."

It wasn't there. She tried September, October, November and went through December too. That picture wasn't in any of them. Neither were any of the other two.

"See?" I said. "The last time it was popular was six months ago. Plus there are tens of thousands of these sites, and the likelihood that anybody you know even looks at these sites, is next to nothing!" I said, filling my voice with hope.

"You did," she pointed out, turning those blue eyes on me.

"I'm a pervert," I said before I thought it through. "You don't know any perverts."

"I didn't think I knew any perverts," she said, but it was clear she was arguing with me. "But I was obviously wrong!"

It was pretty clear that she wasn't going to forgive me. I felt a little sick that I had hoped she would. I didn't really deserve her forgiveness, after all.

"I know," I said. "I wish I hadn't found them, or used them. But I can't wish that away. I'll just get going. I just wanted to see if you were okay."

"What do you mean 'used them'?" she asked, swiveling the chair to face me.

"What?" I felt panic seize my chest.

"You said you shouldn't have used them," she reminded me. "What did you use them for, Bobby?" She stood up. "Did you show them to somebody else, Bobby?" I saw what could only be epic rage gathering on her face. I had never seen her really angry about anything before, but I suddenly realized that I never wanted her really angry with me, because my instincts told me she was the kind of woman who would go to any lengths to even a score.

"No!" I yipped. "I'd never even think of letting some other guy see them!"

She stopped, and stared at me. Her face calmed.

"You're telling the truth," she said, examining my face. Her hand came and impossibly strong fingers gripped my chin. "You didn't show them to anybody else."

"No!" I agreed, happily. "I wouldn't do that."

Slowly she removed her hand. I felt like working my jaw back and forth, but resisted the impulse.

"Why not?" she asked, suddenly.

"What?"

"You're a boy. A teenager. I'm sure you have lots of horny teenaged male friends. Most boys in your position couldn't show them around fast enough!" She peered at me. "So why didn't you?"

The answer to that was that I was jealous as hell of those pictures. She was mine! And nobody else was about to see her like that.

Of course I couldn't very well tell her that.

"Um ... it wouldn't be right?" I suggested, hopefully.

Her eyes, which had gone a little glazed for a few seconds, cleared up and got back to freezing me, deep down inside.

"You never answered my question, Bobby. What did you use those pictures for?"

I didn't answer.

"You had them in a looping slideshow," she murmured, her eyes going out of focus again. "It was actually going when I activated the laptop."

That was because, earlier in the evening that New Year's Eve, she had danced with me while my mom and dad danced. And I had gotten a monster boner, of course, so I had slipped off to my bedroom to take care of that. And I had used the obvious (and my favorite) pictures to do that with.

But it was actually unthinkable to tell her that!

Her eyes cleared. That eyebrow went up.

"Of course," she whispered.

She folded her arms under the breasts she had only moments ago covered securely. The robe gapped open as her arms squeezed her breasts. I managed to only glance at the deep cleavage and then look away. I knew, deep in my heart, that she knew. I don't know how I knew that she knew, but I knew that she knew and there was no getting around knowing that.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, automatically.

"You need to go home now, Bobby," she said. Her voice was level and calm. There was no pain in it, but I knew she was masking that. She knew I was a pervert and she would never talk to me again.