36: March Madness

All morning long, Dad was on the phone. He had a big sheet of paper spread out in front of him and each time he called someone, he made a bunch more marks. Mom was so happy she was singing and I couldn't figure out what the heck they were working on. Finally, Mom sent me out to the horses and told me to do a good job cleaning out the barn for spring. I was tempted to take Princess out for a ride since the snow was pretty much gone now. It was threatening rain, though, and I really didn't want to risk it. I'd got hit by a couple drops when I came out.

Mr. Barnes came out from next door and opened his garage door to pull his car in. He really looked a lot older than I remembered.

"Hey, Mr. Barnes," I called as I walked over. He paused and waited for me, glancing at the threatening sky. His car always looked like it had just been washed. "Uh ... Have you heard from Joanne lately?"

"Oh yes. She and her mother are back in Paris, but they plan to go to the Bahamas in April for another photo shoot. Oh. I was supposed to tell you to pick up a copy of the May Seventeen magazine. And thank you for keeping my drive plowed this winter. It's amazing how much work this place takes when you are alone. I wanted to give you some money."

"Not necessary, Mr. Barnes. It was really no problem to do your drive while I was plowing ours."

"Well, thank you."

"Sir?"

"Yes, Brian."

"I'm sorry Joanne and Mrs. Barnes aren't here with you."

"So am I, Brian. So am I."

I did a good thorough job of cleaning the barn and brushing the horses. They were losing their winter coats already and I thought about stuffing a mattress for the hayloft with horsehair. On the other hand, why would I ever need a mattress in the hayloft again? I could barely stand to go up there and get hay. Somehow, talking to Mr. Barnes made me really sad. Apparently Joanne's career was more important than even her own family. Geez! I had to get off of that. I should be happy for Joanne. What kind of selfish bastard am I anyway? I decided it was time to bake some bread.

"Mom! I'm going to bake," I called when I entered the kitchen.

"In a minute, Brian. We'll be out in a minute," my dad's voice snapped back.

Crap! What did I do? Then it hit me. My parents were having sex! Oh shit! I ran out through the garage and grabbed my bike and took off as hard as I could pedal. I didn't have any idea where I was headed, but I was in the wrong place! I rode the country block, decided I hadn't been gone long enough, and took off again. There's a good hill on Day Road and I'm pretty sure I hit thirty-five miles per hour on my way down it. The little clicky odometer I had fastened to the front frame went flying off somewhere. I was bearing down on our driveway as fast as I could in the rain, jammed on the brakes and spun 450 degrees and headed into our drive. I was exhausted, sweaty, and it had been raining pretty hard for the last mile. I was lucky I just spun around when I hit the brakes on that blacktop. I looked at my left leg and realized that I'd ruined my jeans when I scraped along the ground.

I ran in the house and was headed for the shower when Mom's voice stopped me.

"Where were you, honeybunch? I thought you were going to make bread."

"Sorry, Mom. I ... uh ... suddenly realized I hadn't been exercising since basketball season ended, so I went for a bike ride."

"Oh. I see. Exercise." I panicked.

"I ... I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean ... I mean ... I coulda gone to Geoff's or something. Or Timbuktu." I was panting, but only half of it was from my ride. I was sure my dad was going to throw me out of the house. Oh, crap! Mom looked at me straight in the eye with the scowl of doom on her face and walked toward me. "Please have mercy!"

"It's your fault, young man," Mom growled at me. "We do our best not to get embarrassed by your ... cavorting with your girlfriends. You'll just have to do your best to keep from being embarrassed by your father and me cavorting as a result. It's been ... inspirational. Pretty gross to think of your old parents having sex, isn't it?"

"It's not that, Mom, honest! I just felt so bad that I interrupted. I'm glad that you and Dad love each other and I hope..." tears were leaking again. Crap! "I hope I have someone who loves me and cavorts with me when I'm your age." That did it. Seeing Mr. Barnes and talking about Joanne and going to the hayloft and then realizing I'd interrupted Mom and Dad—I was crying in earnest. Dad grabbed me from behind and turned me around to hug him. I hadn't heard him come in.

Dad's pretty big—at least seven inches taller and eighty pounds heavier than me. I think he's always expected me to keep growing, but it looks like it's stopped again. Still, it surprised the hell out of me when he scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the family room. He sat on the couch with Mom beside him and rocked me like a little baby. I'm fifteen fucking years old and all I wanted was for my mommy and daddy to rock me and hold me.

"Tell us about it, son," Dad said. "Is it Joanne?" I'd never said anything to them about Joanne. Never let on there was anything between us. Still Dad knew. I told them. Oh, I didn't tell them that we played doctor and slept together in the hayloft or that she came back on New Year's Eve to offer her virginity to me. I told them how she'd always protected me, even getting her friends to protect me and their siblings to befriend me. How I'd felt when I attacked the Kowalskis. How she'd even arranged for Rhonda to meet me. I told them that I'd always loved her and she said she loved me, but she'd never be with me because we weren't the same age. And finally, I told them how sad Mr. Barnes was and that he missed her even more than I did.

"There's always been something special between you and Joanne," Mom said at last. "We used to get together with the Barness quite often when we all had small children. When Joanne was four, she would do her best to carry you around. We thought that by having our children play together, you'd all grow up to be wonderful friends. But it always seemed to be Joanne and you against Drew and Betts. Well, Betts was contrary to everything and didn't like Drew any more than anyone else who was younger than she was. But he was always a convenient ally. She grew out of that and by the time she was in grade school she wouldn't have anything to do with Drew at all, but we gradually stopped seeing so much of the Barness because it was obvious that you and Drew weren't going to become friends. Still, there was always that something special when we saw you with Joanne."

"Mr. Barnes is so sad," I moaned. "It's not his fault."

"Everyone makes choices," Dad said. "Don't think this was all Joanne's doing. Ford and Ellen knew what was happening a long time ago and what it would lead to. But, son, you have wonderful friends. You have, what, fifteen girlfriends? Twenty? You are right where you should be at fifteen. You are developing lifelong relationships. Oh, your soul mate might not be among them ... yet. But if not, you'll meet her someday. And if so, you'll figure it out."

It turned out that the phone calls and big sheet of paper was figuring out how we were all going to get to the State IHSAA Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis next weekend. Rev. Gordon, Sunshine, called about three o'clock and after he'd talked to Dad, he put Rhonda on to talk to me.

"Isn't it exciting? We're all going to the games next week!" she said.

"I don't know anything about it yet," I confessed. "It's been a busy day. I kinda interrupted my parents having sex," I whispered into the phone. Rhonda laughed.

"Oh, I do that all the time."

"All the time?"

"Well, yeah. Dad's office is here in the parsonage. You never know when they're doing something. They just say to go play in traffic for an hour."

"Your dad is one cool dude. What's this about going to the game? I didn't think we'd even get tickets?"

"I don't know everything. Just that Daddy called the minister at First Church in Indianapolis and they agreed that we could all stay overnight in their Fellowship Hall."

"All twenty-one of us?"

"I think they meant all the parents and everything, too."

"Wow! Who all's going?"

"I don't know but we are."

"Rhonda, I had a good time yesterday and last night. You know I think I have wonderful girlfriends, but you really are the best girlfriend ever."

"You're a pretty good boyfriend, too. How come you didn't call this morning? It's your rule. I thought you didn't love me."

"Oh, pooh. You were in church. Besides which, my dad's been on the phone all day. This is the first time I've had a chance to use it."

"Well, you'd better call Rachel and Whitney then," she laughed.

"Wait. First I need to talk to Donna. Is she there?"

"You did! You remembered!" Rhonda said.

"Hello?" Donna must have been standing right beside Rhonda.

"Donna?"

"Yeah. Is this Brian?"

"It sure is, girlfriend. Apparently there's some super conspiracy going on to get us all to the tournament next weekend and I haven't been able to use the phone all day. Donna, I just wanted to say thank you for going to the game with us yesterday. I somehow felt real close to you last night and wanted to tell you I had a good time."

"Well, I'm not so sure I was part of the good time you were having," Donna laughed. "But I had a good time, too. Maybe it's a little weird to have the same boyfriend that my sister has, but thank you for letting me one of your girlfriends."

"Donna, I'm really happy you are. Maybe we could go out sometime and just talk—the two of us. I think we're both hurting over some of the same things."

"Thank you, Brian," she sniffed. "I'd like that."

As soon as I was off the phone I called Rachel. After we talked for a few minutes she asked, "Did you, uh ... touch yourself when you got home last night thinking about Whitney and me?" Her voice was scarcely a hoarse whisper.

"Hell, yes," I said. "Rachel, thank you for letting me touch you. I really feel honored, but god, it turned me on. I know we're not as close as maybe you are with ... someone else, but I'd love to spend some more time with just you. Not even necessarily to do more of that. I just would like to know you a lot better."

"Yeah. I'd like that. You'd better call Whitney before I start talking to you about what we did last night and start touching myself again. 'Bye, Brian." She hung up before I could respond to that. Crap! I dialed the phone again. Mrs. Anderson answered and said Whitney told her to wake her up when I called.

"Brian?"

"Hey, sweetheart."

"Mmm. I didn't get much sleep last night. I just woke up."

"And why is that?"

"Rachel kept me awake."

"It's all Rachel's fault?"

"No. I kept her awake."

"I had a good time last night, Whit. Thank you for being my girlfriend."

"I know we have a lot of boyfriends and girlfriends," she said, suddenly intense. "But I'm the fairy queen. Don't forget that, Brian. You're really the only boyfriend that counts for me. And don't think I'm asking for anything else. You just always see past the fact that I'm over six feet tall and some kind of giant and just see me for me. Thank you for kissing me. I won't ask again—for a while."

"Well, I might ask you," I whispered. "I hope you'll let me kiss you again."

"Thank you, Brian. Love you. Goodnight." I was pretty sure Whitney was asleep again before the phone was dead.

It turned out that we needed a block of fifty-five tickets for the game. Doris Trane, Lionel's mom, and Cecile Carver, Renee's mom, went to stand in line to get the tickets at five o'clock in the morning on Monday. Families of the players and cheerleaders got priority to buy tickets and since Doris had two sons on the varsity squad, she led the charge. It turned out that she and Cecile were great friends and both single moms. They didn't have too much trouble getting the block of tickets they wanted since most of them were for students. Another weird thing was that all schools got the same number of tickets on the first day. So our high school of 1,200 got as many tickets as Indianapolis Attucks at 3,500 students. The next day, the tickets would be counted and the surplus from the smaller schools would go to the bigger ones. We were the smallest school in the final four. The other northern school was East Chicago Roosevelt. They'd beaten Kokomo in the finals at Purdue. The last two schools were Terre Haute and Attucks.

Our table at lunch was a buzz of excitement.

"My daddy's letting me go!" Cassie squealed. "He didn't want me to miss church, but after Rev. Gordon talked to him he finally agreed. Rhonda, I love your father!"

"Mom says that since she and Renee's mom will be there to pick us up, we'll be allowed to leave after the game with them instead of riding the team bus all the way back Saturday night," Lionel said. "That means that Lamar and Renee and I will be with you all at the church Saturday night."

"How many of us are going to be there?" Rose asked. "What church can just give us all accommodations?"

"First Church in Indianapolis is huge," Donna said. "I went to a youth retreat there last year that had 200 kids camped out in the basement."

"How are we getting there?" I asked. "Not that I didn't like cuddling with my girlfriends all the way back from Fort Wayne, but I can't imagine my folks would let us do that all the way from Indianapolis. In the daylight."

"Didn't you know?" Brenda asked. "My dad chartered a bus for all of us. Parents included."

"So our dating group and our parents are really going to the State Finals!" Whitney said.

"More than our dating group," Carl added. "Both my brothers are going."

"My sister, too," Samantha said. "And she got to invite her little friend from school."

"Oh, man," Sora said. "We're going to have to pry your sister and my brother apart."

"Let's not forget what we were like as seventh graders," Carl said. "All I've heard from Rich for two months is Judy this and Judy that. I'm really getting curious about this girl, Brian. You started this."

"Well, Judy has another contender for her attention in Ross," Rose said. "He'll be on the bus, too."

"It's cool that the five of them will get to go. But if we're all riding the bus together and then sleeping in this church basement together, including little brothers and sisters and parents, we should probably be ... um ... circumspect about activities."

"Yeah, you're right," Liz sighed. "I certainly don't want my parents to see anything that's more than PG13. I'm still scarred from what I saw my mom do on New Year's Eve."

"It's kind of a new code," Rose said. "I've caught my parents twice looking at each other and saying 'two by two?' Then they disappear into the bedroom." Liz blushed and the rest of us all laughed. I really loved it when Liz blushed. We hadn't gotten together in a long time. I wondered how she was doing.