Chapter 6

When the word got out that I had floor seats for the concert, I was soon a very popular guy. I told them that I had some tickets, but I wasn't sure how many I had to sell. I wanted to judge the demand before I set the price. Miss Wilson my Home EC teacher stopped by my table, and said, "Nick, I hear you might have some extra tickets for the Fleetwood Mac concert. If you do, I'd be interested in buying two."

This is where you fall in to a dilemma. My plan, at that point, was to ask forty dollars a ticket. I based this on what kids said they'd pay me, for the great seats, but my conscience said that you couldn't do that to a teacher. This left me with several options. I could either lie to her, or tell her I'd sold all of them, which I could make happen in about ten seconds, or I could give them to her at a fair price. I remembered what my Mom taught me. Sometimes money isn't the only thing that has value. I reached in my book bag and handed her two tickets.

"How much do you want for them?"

"I want you to have fun."

"I can't take these from a student without paying for them. I know they're worth much more, but would face value be OK?"

"Since I gave them to you, it's up to you to give me whatever you want, and it would be fine with me."

She went to her desk, and came back with twenty-five dollars. "Thanks, Nick, my roommate is a huge music fan, and she's going to love this concert."

"I'm glad to hear it."

I sold the last six tickets for forty each, which netted me a hundred and forty bucks. When I returned to the room that night, and I related the story, Julie thought that it was cute, but Tess told me she felt pissed.

"What the hell were you thinking, freshman?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Julie said that you gave two tickets to Miss. Wilson. Your seats are right next to mine."

"Yep. What's wrong with helping out a teacher?"

"How do you expect us to party, and have some fun if we have a teacher right next to us?"

"How do you expect her to have fun with a bunch of students' right next to her? No one can hold anything against you that happens at a concert. On the other hand, whatever she does could haunt her."

"Shit, you're right. She'll just have to smoke some weed in the parking lot, and hope the buzz lasts throughout the concert."

"I'll let her know that you felt concerned about her."

"No you won't. I still don't like it, but teachers also have the right to listen to good music."

I studied in my room that night, even though Tess had left to go back to her own study hall.

Friday, the school played its first football game against Phillips. They are a neighboring school of similar size, and it just happens that they're our main rival. They killed our team by three touchdowns, and to top it all, they had their second string in the game to start the second half. But we soon had our chance for revenge. On Saturday morning, we raced against them in a cross-country meet. Our girls' team went first. Nadia beat Marsha by five steps and the top girl from Phillips followed them. After her, there were two more girls from Emerson. When the rest of the group finished, our girls were the clear winners.

When it was time for the boys' race to start, the team captain Gary Tomlin came over, and said, "The girls have done their part. Now it's time for us to do our part to reclaim some dignity, for our school." Out of the fifteen guys on our team, we had four that were fast, three that were good, and the rest were in the "also ran" category.

The plan was for me to go out, as fast as I could. The idea was for me to try to burn out the other teams' top runners. Gary would set the pace, for the rest of our group, so they could finish strong, and the rest would do their best. Gary's group would also have to go out strong, so that if the other team decided to fall back to a fast pace, that Gary could still catch up.

I was the rabbit, so I took off running in almost a sprint. As expected, the other team came after me. So I settled in, running a four and half minute mile pace, for the first half mile. By then, the others were still with me, but they were slowly burning out on speed. Gary's group passed them at the two-mile mark, as they struggled to keep any speed in their legs. I backed off after the first mile to a six-minute pace. When I finished the race, I had over a hundred yards on Gary, and three other teammates giving us spots one through four. Our fifth place runner came in seventh. It was a blow out when they added up the scores.

Cross-country racing wasn't a long season. Usually, we ran in small dual meets similar to those that we ran against Phillips. But, we also ran in larger meets against several other schools. Those included meets against boarding schools, private schools, and some small public schools. If I were to sum it up, we were good, but not great. In the big meets, we were usually in the top five, and I only won one other race during the year.

School was school except for my elective classes. In Home Ec, we finally reached the point where we could cook a meal. For our first assignment, we made a white sauce, and then macaroni and cheese. We followed the recipe to a tee, and received an A. For this assignment, the teacher allowed us to use a little more creativity. So Julie and I decided to include meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and, for extra credit, we made an apple pie. We should have made six pies the way those skinny girls scarfed the entire pie down. I barely got the chance to lick the pie tin.

The Photography class was slow going. It was because we had to deal with the camera and all the other stuff in the book. When we finally started to take pictures, and do some work in the darkroom, the class became a lot better. The study of optical illusions drew me in like a bee to honey. It was due to the way you could arrange the shots to look different from reality. First, I started it with double exposures. Next, I placed one guy further away, and had another guy stand somewhat closer and hold out his hand. The way I framed the picture, I made the farther away person look like he was standing on the closer guy's hand. From there, I just kept trying to top the earlier shot.

I enjoyed working with Adam on his project. I'd read his technical analysis books, and a couple of chapters in his programming book on flow charts. One day, as we were in the middle of working on his flow chart, the phone rang. It was Mr. Rutter, and he wanted to stop by the room.

Adam said, "This is normal. He comes by, for a visit, once a quarter. He always gives us at least fifteen minutes notice before he knocks on the door."

Mr. Rutter knocked and came in. He asked what we were doing. It was time for study hall, so we should be studying. I told him that I was helping Adam.

He asked, "Shouldn't you be studying for your own classes?"

I grabbed my textbooks and folders. "Read it, read it, three chapters ahead, read it, making meatloaf, here is my last test, a ninety-eight. As you can see, I'm ahead on my reading and other work, and I've completed all my homework. For this other work, I'm Adam's assistant."

He could see that we had many flowchart pages written that we'd taped to the wall. These laid out the flow diagram for Adam's project. Adam said, "I'm not tall enough to tape those pages at the top, so my assistant does that for me."

"What's this project about?" he asked.

Adam started to explain what it was, and how it worked. Mr. Rutter seemed impressed, and asked me a question about it.

"Well, it's all based on models of support and resistance, and taking the time to notice and follow trends. If you carefully watch the trends, you can predict when something will occur before it happens. In other words, buy low, sell high."

He glanced around, and told us to have a good night. Adam waited for him to leave. He said, "He can now put a check in the box, and we'll see him next quarter."

After he left, we went back to work on his project. We were still in the pencil and paper part, and were still diagramming, and figuring out formulas and data paths. I thought it was fun, and challenging.

The days turned to weeks, and then months. I met up with Nadia a couple of times a week, but it was purely physical. Mika came by a few times a week to play in bed, but we saw each other more, because we had classes together. Sometimes we'd get together to study, or just hang out.

I didn't have too many places to go overnight, or past curfew, so Adam could hang out, and not play mommy to me. At the end of the semester, I had straight A's. I smoked some pot, drank some alcohol, and had sex with different girls, but other than that, I was a great student. I kept out of trouble, and performed well in sports.

The week of the concert finally arrived. Marsha and Nadia were both going to the concert with tickets they'd bought from me. I, on the other hand, was taking Mika to her first U.S. concert.

Adam had bought an extra pair for some friends, and Tess had bought a ticket for Mitch, who rode down with Julie, Adam, and Tess. Mika and I got a ride with Marsha and Nadia. Tess had given me four joints. After we found a place to park, we lit up and partied in the car, for a while, until we were all high. I tucked the other two joints and the lighter in my jacket pocket. I made sure I had a flask of Jack Daniels in the other jacket pocket. When we entered the arena, we went to a concession stand, bought three large Cokes, and I asked the guy for an extra cup. After splitting the Coke, I cautiously topped each of our drinks off with the Jack.

We walked down to the floor, and found our seats. It turned out that we had almost an entire row about twelve rows back from the stage. Miss Wilson was on the aisle with her roommate Janice. Most of the people didn't recognize Miss Wilson, as a teacher from our school. I asked my friends not to make a point of it. Next, Miss Wilson introduced me to Janice, and I introduced Mika to both of them.

"Mika, this is Janice, and this is Miss Wilson"

"Please call me Rhonda since we aren't at school."

"Mika, this is Rhonda." I turned to Miss Wilson, and said, "Rhonda, while you're here, please relax and feel, as free as you want. Just be yourself. I know these people aren't ones that you'd normally want around you. I can't speak for all the people in the row, but for the four or five of us sitting next to you, please relax, and have some fun. If you happen to see a joint being passed or some alcohol being added to a soda, it's just your imagination."

Janice asked, "What about me?"

"If you happen to see an imaginary joint passed to you and you take a hit, then you can imagine that you're getting high."

"Well if you see any, make sure they make it down this far."

"I will. Janice, will you hold my soda for me?"

When she took hold of it, I nodded. First, she took a sip, and then a gulp. I looked at Miss Wilson, and, with a shrug, she resigned herself to let go, and have some fun. Janice tried to give my drink back, but I told her to keep it, and I shared Mika's.

The opening band was all right, and did what they were supposed to do, get people up and moving. When Fleetwood Mac took the stage, and the lights dropped, everyone stood up, and started screaming at Stevie Nicks, as she started the concert with, ' Say That You Love Me'. By then I'd lit a joint, and passed it to Janice. She took a big hit, and passed it to Rhonda who turned, ducked, and sucked a couple of huge lung-full of smoke before passing it back to Janice. Then Janice passed the soda to Rhonda, who took a drink to clean her throat. When she drank, her eyes opened at the taste of the Jack Daniels.

I was standing with Mika, and looked away before Rhonda caught me looking at her. Janice passed me the joint, so I took a hit to show that I trusted her, and then passed it to Mika. It went down the line until it disappeared.

The hard beat started up on the next song, The Chain. I took Janice in my arms and started dancing with the little hippie. Her skirt was thin, and when I felt her ass, she moved her body against mine, and we moved to the hard beat. After the song, we all cheered hard, and then when the next song started, I moved over to Mika, and started a slower dance with her to, Dreams.

Lindsey Buckingham started singing the next song, Not That Funny. It was my least favorite song of the concerts, so I lit up the last joint, and passed it to Janice. She repeated her earlier action while shielding Rhonda, so she could hit the thing a couple of times. Then we passed it down through Mika, Nadia, and Marsha, and finally, me.

By now, we all felt buzzed, and I knew that, for that night, I could not do anymore. The only thing that I could do now was simply to go along with the buzz, and enjoy myself. At that point, I realized that there were no more joints, and I was out of booze. Now it was time to work it all out of my system while partying, dancing, singing, and listening to the concert. Rhiannon was the next song, Nadia switched places with Mika to move in to my arms, and she sang along with Stevie, as she moved against me. About half way through the song, she moved in front of me, so she'd see the stage, and she rubbed her ass against the front of my jeans.

Janice was watching, as she swayed to the music. I caught her eye, and she just smiled. Don't Stop was the next song followed by, Over My Head. I held Mika through the first song, and then held Janice from behind while she rubbed against me. I made eye contact with Rhonda, for most of the song, while her big tits sprouted points, and her blood shot eyes showed the lust in her body.

The song ended, and I wanted to sit, when they started into, Oh Well. This was their nod to the new age scene, and it turned out being ten minutes of what sounded like the group tuning their instruments. Mika sat on my lap, and I held her. Most of the audience sat through the song, and I reached over, and touched Janice on the leg. There was no question that the "kid" next to her was making her feel good. Her friend Rhonda was feeling good, and just going with the flow.

Sara was the next song, and brought everyone back to their feet. Mika leaned against me, so I pulled Janice to my side, and used my hand to fondle her ass. She didn't pull away. The next two or three songs were filler in the concert, so we all just stood there, and enjoyed the music. Then they sang Landslide, so I moved over behind Janice, and as she moved back against me, my left arm went around her waist. My right hand reached over to Rhonda. I pulled her over next to Janice, and Janice slipped her arm behind her, so she could grab my cock through my jeans. She did a double take before grabbing Rhonda's hand, and guiding it back for a feel. Rhonda's head whipped around, and she was licking her lips, as her eyes caught mine.

I just smiled, and squeezed her ass, as Janice got a couple of thrusts up against her butt. At the end of the song, I moved away, and focused on those friends that I'd ridden with to the concert. I told them to drive safely after the concert. I hung out with Nadia, Marsha, and Mika. Julie looked my way a couple of times.

The concert was over by ten-thirty, so going home, we drove slowly. It was a few hours since we partied that gave Marsha enough time to sober up for the drive back to New Hampshire. When we arrived, we checked our names in, as back on campus. Then we ran over to my place, so I could take care of Nadia and Mika before they had to return to their rooms.

After we had a great time in bed, we found that Adam was back in the room, with Tess. Mika and Nadia left to go to their rooms. Tess thanked me for waiting overnight to buy tickets, because they had a tremendous time. I thanked her for the joints, and told her that I also had fun.

The Thanksgiving recess was approaching. As usual, the school would close from Tuesday afternoon through the next Monday. This gave those students going home for the holiday, a couple of extra days to travel. I planned to fly home for Christmas, but not Thanksgiving. Since they closed the cafeteria, there would be no meals available.

For those students who were remaining at school, the school would try to find local families who'd take them in for the Holiday. Those teachers, who usually stay in the dorms, travel elsewhere, so they end up being with family.

Mika would be going to Boston to stay with a girl from her dorm. My plan was to stay with a guy from the cross-country team named Dave. I knew that I had one problem. It was my turn to stand in line to purchase the tickets for 'The Who' concert on Saturday morning. I had to plan it with Adam and Julie. Adam made some other plans, so I could stay with "another friend" starting on Thursday night. On Friday morning, Julie would pick me up at Dave's. I'd camp out at the box office Friday night, for tickets that they'd start selling Saturday morning. Then on Saturday, Julie would pick me up and, drive me to school where I'd stay in our room, and eat out of our small kitchen.

It turned out that Dave's family was nice, I was happy to play games with them, and eat their feast with them. Julie stopped by at noon on Friday, and we drove down to the Boston Garden to find a place in line. I'd brought two sleeping bags, thinking that I had two options. If it were warmer, I'd use one, as a pad, or put one inside the other if it was colder. Julie was nice enough to hang out with me, and had brought me some supplies, including a couple of joints that she'd bought from Tess. Her parents wouldn't let her spend the night, so after making friends with those around us she got up to leave, as she did, I noticed Rhonda, (Miss Wilson), and her roommate Janice walking up.