7: Scarred for Life

I had a long talk with Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, Joanne, and my parents Friday night. Betts was "out" and I found out that Mom and Dad had agreed to let her officially date at the end of her sophomore year. It sounds weird that they were so protective when I knew that all the parties Betts had gone to this year were boy-girl parties. Doug had told some stories his sister told him. His sister is cool and mine's a bitch. What's fair?

Anyway, the talk. No one was mad at either Joanne or me, which was good. In fact, once they heard the real story—I let Joanne tell it—they said they really appreciated me coming to her rescue. They felt they'd lost control of Drew and the idea that he would sell his sister to his friends was the last straw. He'd been sent to some relatives out in Iowa. They lived on a working farm and had no children, so Drew was promised that he would be worked hard and would be too tired to get into trouble. There was no mention of when he would return.

"I have to know, Brian, how you just happened to have a bottle of ammonia in your pocket," Mr. Barnes said. I looked at my parents and they nodded.

"I ... um ... had some trouble with ... uh ... dogs on my paper route last year."

"Brian," my mom interrupted, "this is the time to be truthful. Everyone here has a right to know and you have a right to own the real story." Wow. I wasn't sure about this. I'd figured out that my parents knew what happened, though not everything. I took a deep breath and started in again.

"Last May, I'd just finished my collections on Saturday morning and was riding my bike home. Drew and the Kowalskis came blasting out of their drive on bikes and shoved me off mine and into the ditch. The change in my pouch scattered all over the road and they grabbed up as much as possible and ran off. My bike was bent and I had a scrape. I was short a bunch of money and my receipt book was all wet. Mom and Dad..."

"I'll tell this part," Dad said. "Brian got home and told his Mom that a dog had chased him and knocked him off his bike and that he lost his money in the ditch. I'm telling you this because he never made an accusation against any of the boys. He just took it. You might have noticed that Brian is a little ... small for his age. While I don't advocate violence, he's too easy a target for bullies and needed some protection. We gave him a squirt gun filled with ammonia to protect himself on his paper route. You've never used it before, have you, Brian?"

"No, sir."

"But this wasn't a squirt gun," Mrs. Barnes said.

"No ma'am. It's against school policy to carry a squirt gun to school. Even though it's just a toy, it falls under the 'no weapons' clause of banned items. Last fall I ordered the squirt bottle from Edmund Scientific and carried it all year. I wasn't looking for an opportunity to use it, but I always made sure I had it with me. It seems like all year I had some good—and big—friends around me all the time. It was a whole year with nobody shoving me around."

"Yet as little as you are, you heard me scream and came to help me," Joanne said. "I think you're my best friend, Brian. And my hero." My chest swelled up and I sat up straight in my chair. If she hadn't been sitting across the table from me, I'd have hugged Joanne. I think she knew it.

The end of school-year party at Brenda's on Saturday was different. All the same things happened, pretty much, but the group of kids was different. There were still about twenty of us, but we no longer had a "class" that was together all day long. Brenda didn't feel responsible for inviting her whole home room and we had real friends that had forged a link at lunch this year. I think Brenda's parents were a little surprised that seven of the kids at the party were black. Still, aside from being surprised, they seemed to be fine with it and welcomed everyone the same as always.

It also was apparent that there were more couples at the party. Not everybody, but Lionel and Sugar had a thing going and Samantha and Simon were still together. Liz broke up with her boyfriend sometime after Valentine's Day. I was surprised to see Carl and Brenda cozying up to each other again. Rachel and Doug didn't make a big deal about whether or not they were together, but they always teamed up for chicken fights in the pool. I thought Rose was seeing Derek, one of the guys in Lionel's group, but they didn't seem to have anything more than a casual friendship at the pool. In fact, Rose grabbed me for Chicken fights after Whitney fell off. With Rose shorter than me, we were a little more stable in the water and lasted a little longer. Whitney joked that next time she was carrying me. That could be embarrassing.

After we got out of the pool and changed clothes, we headed for the backyard and burgers. Rose sidled up to me as I was chowing down on a big juicy one with everything on it. It's funny, though, that there were no onions on the table. Dang it.

"So I hear you're a good kisser," Rose said softly. I choked on my burger. I kept coughing and she hit me on the back a few times. I looked at her and realized there were some tears in my eyes from the sudden choking and back slapping. "Sorry. I didn't expect that reaction. You okay?"

"Yeah," I croaked. "You surprised me."

"So, are you?"

"I don't know. I don't have anything to compare to."

"I do. You should let me test you and I'll tell you how you stack up." I looked at Rose. Talk about stacked. She was probably about the same size around her chest that Brenda was but Brenda was a good three inches taller. I'd grown another inch during the year, but it was all before Christmas and there hadn't been any movement from my 4'8" since. Rose was close to five feet tall now. She had also packed her boobs into a halter top that was apparently supposed to be a bra and top all in one, but I could clearly see that her nipples had popped out.

"Um..." I realized I was staring and looked up. Rose leaned back a little and pushed her boobs out a little more. "Who said I was a good kisser, anyway?" My eyes drifted back down and I forced them up again.

"Cassie."

"I didn't know you were friends."

"Well, we girls all had a slumber party at Liz's house. She's still real good friends with Cassie, though I guess Brenda and Whitney don't like her much. Anyway, the conversation about one in the morning came around to boys and Brenda zeroed in on Cassie like you wouldn't believe. I thought she was going to chew her up. She wanted to know why Cassie dumped you. She's a real friend to you, Brian. She was ready to shred Cassie for hurting you. Cassie was almost in tears. She said she really, really liked you, but that you'd kissed her so good last summer that she knew if she kept seeing you she wouldn't be a virgin by the time she got to high school. For some reason, that's really important to her. Then with a little prodding, she went into great detail about how you'd been meeting in the woods all summer to play and then that you kissed her with your tongue and she got scared."

"You actually talk about that stuff?" I said. I was horrified. "Cassie said all that?"

"It took a little encouragement and Brenda was actually comforting her by the time she was done telling us. We're girls. We talk about all kinds of stuff. But don't get your hopes up. Cassie made it very clear that she wasn't going back to you because you are too dangerous. She has a new boyfriend at church and when we pressed, we found out that they never even held hands." Rose had moved close enough to me so we could talk without being overheard and her left boob was pressed right into my right arm and I could feel her little point like it was red hot. "Later, Brian," she said. Oh man. I sat down so my stiffie wasn't as obvious.

After dinner we all went to the basement rec room and played games. Rose found me again just before Mom picked me up.

"Brian, we're not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend or anything like that," she said sternly. "But if you want to get together sometime this summer, maybe go skating or something, I'd like it. I mean if you wanted to."

Want to? I wanted to a lot.

Of course, when you are thirteen going on fourteen, you don't have that much control over your summer. Rose took it upon herself to organize a skating party the first of August so we could all get together and we decided to try to get our parents to agree to a Labor Day party at Crystal Lake again. Rose and I held hands while we skated, but we never got a chance to try kissing.

And Rose really didn't want a boyfriend. She skated with a couple of the other boys who were there and I held hands with a couple other girls as we skated. Even with Brenda. That was interesting. They lowered the lights a little and turned on the mirror ball in the middle of the rink so little light flashes went around the space. I wasn't all that great a skater, but I could do it without falling down. It still surprised me when Brenda pulled my right hand around her waist and we held our left hands together as we skated. She was still a good inch or two taller than me, but she leaned into me so she could talk over the music without shouting.