13: Together

Rev. Gordon picked up Rhonda and me and took me home after the game. Joanne and Donna were staying for the homecoming dance and he was picking them up at eleven. Mom invited Rhonda and her dad in and we sat and had hot chocolate and I promised to meet Rhonda for collections in the morning. I was beginning to think maybe Rhonda and I should become partners in the paper route. She'd only actually delivered the papers once, but I'd introduced her to almost all my customers during collections. We had a great time, anyway, riding bikes, riding Gypsy, skating and going to games.

Things went great with Rhonda and with school until Halloween. Well, they didn't go badly then, either. Rhonda's church youth group had a hayride and party after. Man, that was different. Cassie's church didn't let them celebrate Halloween at all. Said it was Satanist. Rev. Gordon just thought it was all in fun. He hired a guy with a tractor and wagon to cart us all around the neighborhood in our costumes. We'd jump off the wagon when he stopped and run up to the houses and yell trick-or-treat. This was probably the last year I'd go trick-or-treating. Mom said I was too old for that now. But I noticed that the wagon only stopped at specific houses and the people there had lots of treats for us.

When we got back to the church, the senior high youth group got in the wagon. I didn't think they were going to trick-or-treat, though. The rest of us went to the basement and found the older group had decorated and prepared a bunch of games for us. I liked the one where we had to try to eat a doughnut on a string dangling at head height without knocking it off the string onto the floor. First one to eat a whole doughnut won. I didn't care about winning. I got to eat a whole donut.

There was another race, too. It was more interesting. We paired up and Rhonda was opposite me. We were given a length of cotton string with a marshmallow threaded half way down it. On the ready set go, we had to pull the string into our mouths to see who got to the marshmallow first and got to eat it.

Rhonda is really competitive and was going like crazy. I wasn't going to let her beat me on this, though and we both got to the marshmallow at the same time. We both tried to get it into our mouths and our lips touched around that sweet little confection. Rhonda's eyes flew open wide and she pulled back a little to look at me. I just held the marshmallow between my lips and waited. She came back and met my lips again. We kind of squeezed them together and squished the marshmallow apart so we each got half.

All the other kids were laughing about who got the marshmallow, but the more I got to thinking about it, the more I thought the way we did it was how it was supposed to come out.

I'd kissed Rhonda. Well, sort of. It was going to be a long time before it happened again, but she smiled more when she was around me and every so often she would reach over and take my hand to lead me somewhere or get my attention. At the last football game of the season, we held hands through most of the second half. I don't know if we won or lost.

I was still cautious about Kirby and his gang. I'd seen him in the hall a couple times and each time he'd pointed a finger at me and acted like it was a gun to shoot me. What could I do? Tell on him for pointing at me? I'm not quite that stupid.

I don't know why I noticed him that Thursday afternoon. I guess because he and his gang were all piling into his car, some black monstrosity with flames painted on the side. He stood and watched me as I approached my bus and then pointed at me again. I could almost feel the bullet.

On the bus, I was still one of the younger kids. We were the junior highs and past the fifth or sixth row, we weren't welcome. The underclassmen filled in next and then the seniors—Betts, Doreen, and three others, occupied the back row. I don't know what inspired me to turn around when Doreen and Doug got off the bus, but there was Kirby's car sitting behind the bus. I waited until the next stop and looked back again. He was right behind us. When the bus turned on Day Road, so did Kirby and he stopped behind the bus.

This was too freaky. I went forward and sat in the front seat next to a seventh grader who practically crawled into the wall.

"Mr. Alex?" I said to the bus driver. He looked at me.

"What you doing up here, Brian?"

"Sir, I think there is a car following us. It's got a bunch of tough kids in it who have been threatening me at school. I'm worried that they might do something to Betts or Joanne."

"You know, they have been back there a long time. You go ahead and have a seat." I turned back to my seat and both Betts and Joanne were looking at me. I could hear the bus driver on his CB radio. "Breaker one-nine. This is Mellow Yellow. You there, Smokey?"

"Ten-four, Yellow. Come on."

"We got a car that's been following us all the way from school. Looks nasty and it's getting the kids spooked. Over."

"What's your twenty, Yellow? Over."

"Corner of Day and Grape, eastbound. Going slow. Over."

"I'm on my way, Yellow. ETA less than five. Ten-seven."

"Ten-four, Smokey. Ten-seven."

Before we made the corner onto Early, I heard a siren in the distance. I looked back and could see the lights. Mr. Alex pulled over and threw out his sign. I watched as Kirby pulled out and passed us burning rubber. A few seconds later, the sheriff's car flashed past us. I breathed a sigh of relief. Ten minutes later, we got off the bus. I paused and looked back down the road. Betts was already half-way down our driveway. I turned and Joanne was waiting for me. She smiled.

"You did it again, Brian," she said as we walked up the drive.

"I didn't do anything."

"Okay. Then I didn't say thank you. Or ask you to volunteer to feed the horses tonight."

I looked at her with my mouth open. She smiled and raised an eyebrow. I nodded. She bumped into me with her hip and then went on home.

"I'll take care of the girls tonight, Betts," I said. I think she was knocked over. She'd just been complaining about some big homework project she had to work on and it was an ideal time for me to act like a good little brother and help her out. "I don't have any homework tonight and I could use a little alone time," I added.

I grabbed my jacket and rushed to the barn. I went straight to the hayloft to toss some hay down to the horses and Joanne was waiting for me.

"Thank God it's you!" she said. "I was so afraid you wouldn't come and then Betts would find me up here waiting. We haven't talked since school started and I just had to see you."

"We can talk any time you want to, Joanne. We don't even have to come up here."

"How's it going this year?"

"Pretty good except for getting cross-wise of Kirby and his gang. It's nice, though, to have friends who are on the football team and basketball team. Kirby keeps away from them."

"Must be nice having a girlfriend, too." I blushed. "Are you getting lots of practice kissing?"

"Um ... Joanne. We don't do that. I mean at the lake on Labor Day, it seemed like everybody was going to kiss me but when Rhonda showed up, everybody backed away a little."

"Does that bother you?" I thought about it for a minute.

"No. It's really kind of nice. I really like her and we have lots of fun. Can you imagine any of the other girls in my class getting up in the morning and delivering papers with me?" Joanne laughed and shook her head.

"I like you a lot, Brian, but I wouldn't do that." We sat down and leaned up against a hay bale. It was fun to sit and talk to my friend and guardian angel. I knew she'd helped protect me for a long time. "I was thinking," she said, "that it's weird that we are two grades apart when we're only like seventeen months apart in age. I mean, nobody ever thinks of a fifteen-year-old dating a fourteen-year-old if they're in the same grade. You're fourteen now and I'm still fifteen until spring. One of my friends in school has a birthday at the end of August, so she's just turned fifteen."

"Yeah. It's too bad we aren't in the same year, but I've got a girlfriend now."

"I know. I'm really happy about that. I was just thinking, though, that you'll want to kiss her soon and I haven't really done my best to teach you how. All that stuff about smooching your arm was so lame. I should have just kissed you."

"Wow. I mean ... wow."

"Brian, the truth is, I haven't been practicing much myself and I'm afraid I'll be a big disappointment when I really want to kiss a boy. Could we—just because we're best friends—practice a little so we don't disappoint our dates when the time comes?"

"Uh ... you mean... ?"

"Yeah. Just try kissing me and let me see how you are doing at it. Maybe you can give me some pointers, too." I don't know why I had such a strong reaction to Jennifer crawling into my sleeping bag at the dude ranch but I had no compunction at all about kissing Joanne. I mean, sure I had a girlfriend, but this was Joanne. We'd done all kinds of things when we were little. Learning how to be better kissers was the least we could help each other with.

I pecked her lightly on the cheek first. She'd told me once that you had to start that way so the girl would know what you were going to do. If she looked at you, then it was okay to try again. Joanne looked at me and I leaned forward to kiss her on the lips. About a million gazillion volts of electricity shot up and down my spine. I kept my lips soft like she'd always told me but I didn't pull away. I felt her lips part a little and her tongue touch my lips. Rose and Brenda had both kissed me like this and I'd tried once with Cassie, but this was the real deal. This was Joanne. I let my lips part and my tongue touch hers. I completely lost myself in the sensation as I wrapped Joanne in my arms and let our kiss go on and on. I could feel her holding me tightly—like no matter how our lives changed, this kiss would still be going on.

"I don't feel like I ever really thanked you for rescuing me last spring," she whispered, almost in my mouth. She kissed me again. "That night, all I wanted was for you to take me in your arms and kiss me. I'm sorry I can't be your girlfriend. The fact that you've found Rhonda proves that I was right. But maybe we could sometimes—I don't mean like all the time—but sometimes we could practice a little so we are ready for our real girlfriend and boyfriend. I'm sure I'll have one someday."

We didn't talk much more, but we couldn't stay out in the barn much longer, either. I kissed Joanne once more and felt so full of love I wanted to dance under the stars. I went to bed thinking about that kiss. It was so satisfying that I didn't even beat off.

I moved to the attic. The last step was to install the permanent stairway and open the heat vents over the furnace. The room was a little cool, but I had a space heater I bought with scrip from Goldblatts if I needed extra warmth. Thanksgiving weekend, Dad helped me move my bed, dresser, and desk up the narrow stairs. Betts bitched the entire morning.

"I don't see why he gets the whole attic. Half of it has always been mine. If anything, I should get it all because I'm older."

When I started moving my clothes upstairs, I think Betts was on the verge of a tantrum.

"Elizabeth Ann, hush and get in the car," Mom finally snapped at her. I don't think I'd heard Mom use that tone of voice with her since she was thirteen. Betts shut up and went to the car. Mom turned to Dad and me. "I'll take care of this," she said. "We have Christmas shopping to do."

Dad worked with me to get the space arranged the way I wanted it and we even had an old rug that we put at the end of my bed and a little throw rug for the bedside. My bedroom was the entire length of the house and only a few feet narrower. On the north wall, dormers poked out of the sloping ceiling. On the other side of the room, a wall separated me from our storage space. That was new, but when we were sheetrocking, Dad suggested that it didn't make for a very pleasant bedroom to have all the Christmas decorations and various boxes of old clothes and school projects from first grade stacked in the room.

The stairway came up almost in the middle of the floor from the hall downstairs and I'd always had my train and laboratory right at the head of the stairs. I put my bedroom space at the opposite end. Otherwise, there were no walls. I could have the whole gang up here. I actually started to think about that.

Of course, Dad kept hitting his head on the sloping ceiling and I figured most of my friends would have the same problem. I didn't think a thing about it.

Something Mom had said kept nagging me, though, and when we finished making the bed I figured out what it was.

"Dad, can we talk? Man to man?"

"Well, son, your mom and I have always told you that if you had questions about growing up and the changes in your body we'd always be willing to talk to you. I was hoping that conversation wouldn't come up until you were around sixteen, but I suppose with a regular girlfriend you've got questions that we should talk about now instead of later." What was he talking about? I turned about ten shades of red when I realized he thought I wanted to talk about sex! Oh man! If he only knew.

"Well, Dad, it is kind of about my girlfriend," I said. "How do you choose a Christmas present for a girl? It just dawned on me that I don't just have you and Mom and Betts and Gramps to get presents for this year. I don't have any idea what to give Rhonda. And should I get a present for her sister and her parents? Boy! This could get expensive." Dad breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh! I was expecting an easier question for our first time talking about girls. You got right to the toughest one," Dad laughed. He got down on the floor and started fiddling with my train set. We'd had to move it out of the way a little when we were moving furniture and I plopped down and helped reassemble some of the pieces.

"I guess I just never thought about this part of having a girlfriend before."

"First off, there are rules that you have to follow and they are age appropriate. There's no telling what you've read or seen in magazines and catalogs. Rule number one is 'no jewelry.' Until you are out of high school, the only jewelry that should pass between you and a girl is maybe a friendship bracelet or exchanging your class rings if you decide to go steady."

"Why? I thought girls liked jewelry."

"They do! That's the problem. Jewelry implies that the relationship has progressed to a certain level of commitment. You see, good jewelry costs good money. You don't want your girlfriend thinking she isn't worth you buying good jewelry. Worst thing ever is to give her something gold that turns her finger, neck, or wrist green. And if you give a girl something that is really valuable, you expect her to be with you for a good long time. Worst of all, some girls see jewelry as meaning they owe you something more than they are willing to give. It's just good practice to keep away from jewelry until you are old enough to know you are in love and will be with the girl for the rest of your life."

"Wow! I never thought of that. What about clothes?"

"Rule number two is 'no clothes.' Who gives you clothes? Your family. What would you think if Rhonda gave you underwear for Christmas, or socks?"