by A W Hartoin
“Hello, Puppy,” he said.
“Hi, Mr. Hubbert.”
“Looking for someone?”
“Sort of.”
“May I enquire as to whom?”
“Miss Pritchett,” I said.
“Really.” Mr. Hubbert’s eyebrows nearly touched his graying widow’s peak. “You aren’t planning anything, are you?”
“No way.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t tell me even if you were. I don’t know why I asked. But you needn’t fear running into your nemesis. Miss Pritchett is ill and won’t be attending.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Concern for Miss Pritchett was unfamiliar territory.
“You look disappointed. You were planning something.” Mr. Hubbert put his large hand on my shoulder. His long fingers wrapped around and squeezed. “Your year with Miss Pritchett is over. It’s best to let these things go.”
“Is she okay?”
“Of course. It’s just the flu. You have to let it go, Puppy.”
I attempted an innocent face. “I know.”
Mr. Hubbert laughed and walked away.
Miss Pritchett was ill, but that could mean anything. She did get sick a lot. It was the only good thing about her. She took a lot of sick days. But how ill did a person have to be to make the sounds that came out of Miss Pritchett’s window? An uneasy feeling started in my chest, like I’d forgotten something and needed to get home to get it. I followed Mr. Hubbert’s path through the growing crowd, eating my pie and looking for Melody Harper. She’d emailed me a dozen times since school ended. I replied twice. I figured I’d better talk to her quick before she got too mad.
I found her next to the baby pools with her group, drinking a shake and wearing a tennis dress. She had a deep tan and a new henna tattoo on her ankle. Melody looked good, nice, and the same as ever. Just before she noticed me, my mind flitted back and forth between images of Shasta and Sophie.
“Hi, Puppy.” Melody gave me a little wave and ground the toe of her white sandal into the dirt.
“Hi.” Suddenly, I didn’t want to be there anymore. I couldn’t remember why I came in the first place.
“How’s your summer?” She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and smiled, showing no teeth.
“Okay, I guess. How’s yours?”
“Is that all you have to say?” She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Er…I guess.”
Sophie appeared over Melody’s shoulder and smiled at me, all her brilliant white teeth showing between her moist lips. My face went bright red and I couldn’t stop looking at those lips.
“Puppy?” said Melody.
“I got to go. I’ll see you later, okay?” I skirted Melody and her group. Behind me, I heard their whispers and complaints. I didn’t care. Sophie was smiling at me.
“Hi, Pup. Want to give me the lowdown on your cousin?” Sophie asked. “He claims he had a brush with death.”
“He fell in some oil.”
“Face first?”
“Well, you know he just kind of does stuff.”
“No kidding. Let’s go hear the latest incarnation of his story.” Sophie didn’t mention my stupid blushing and there’s no way she didn’t notice. Instead, she hooked her arm through mine and steered me toward Luke, who sat in the middle of a mass of admirers.
Luke saw us and stepped over several girls to reach Sophie, who let go of my arm. “Hey, Pup. Your girlfriend’s looking at you,” said Luke.
I glanced back to see Melody standing in a circle of her friends glaring at me.
“Yeah. Um…I gotta go find Cole…um…see you later.” I passed Luke, who’d already forgotten me and was kissing Sophie’s neck.
I waved to classmates who tried to waylay me. I had to get away until my clown cheeks disappeared. I tried every door I passed; none opened until the boys’ locker room. I listened for sounds of occupancy and then walked in, leaned against a row of lockers, and slid down to the floor.
“Hey, Puppy.” Cole’s voice echoed against the metal and I jumped, banging my head against a bicycle lock.
“What the hell, Cole? What are you doing in here?”
“I don’t know. It’s the only door that’s open.” Cole sat opposite me under a shelf that held the basketballs and bats. His arms were wrapped around his brown legs and he looked bewildered.
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a sigh of relief. Being startled made my flushing go away and I wondered if it was like hiccups. If someone scared you, it went away.
We sat listening to the quiet in a place known for noise, avoiding each other’s eyes and looking pathetic as hell. I couldn’t think of a cool explanation for why I was there, and I was dying to know why Cole was.
“So you going to stay for awhile?” asked Cole.
“I don’t know, are you?”
“Maybe.”
“Me, too.” I picked at my shoelaces, stealing looks at Cole. “Okay man, I can’t stand it. What are you doing in here?”
Cole gave me a miserable look and said, “Tiffany’s out there.”
“So.”
“She’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
“How should I know? I didn’t do anything. Why are you in here?” Cole looked around like he wanted something to throw.
“Melody’s mad at me,” I said.
Yeah, that worked and it was a lot better than saying I blushed like an idiot.
“Why?”
“Cause I didn’t want to talk to her.”
“That’s why Tiffany’s mad at me. She acts like she’s my girlfriend or something.”
“Why would she think that?” I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.
“We kind of had a thing,” Cole said, looking bewildered again.
“Like the thing you had with her before?”
“Yeah, kind of. I don’t get it. What’s their problem?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I did know.
Cole was popular. Girls were always sending him notes and calling him. I didn’t know what it was, but Cole had something girls liked. It’d all been okay until this year. We made the basketball team and for the first time we had away games. The cheerleaders rode the bus with the team. Mr. Carter and Mrs. Wainwright, our coaches, sat in the front of the bus grading papers or listening to their iPods. Before long we all figured out the coaches didn’t care what we did as long as we were quiet about it. I learned how to French and unhook a bra by the third away game.
On our fourth drive home, Tiffany sat with Cole. I was making out with Melody and happened to open my eyes at the right moment. Over Melody’s shoulder I saw Tiffany’s head go down into Cole’s lap. I was trying so hard to get my hand under Melody’s bra, it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. The bus ride seemed to go on forever and I never did get under Melody’s bra, but Cole got things I didn’t even think were possible.
After that, it was all downhill for Cole. Every girl in our class was mad at him. None of them would say why. Finally, on Valentine’s Day, Melody told me why the girls were mad.
“They’re mad because of what you did with Tiffany,” I told Cole the next day.
“What’d I do?”
“You know, on the bus after the Clearwater game.”
“But that was like forever ago,” said Cole.
“I know.”
“And why do they care, anyway?”
“Beats me,” I said.
We went over it and over it, but we couldn’t get a grip on the exact problem. We decided in the end that girls were crazy and the whole thing blew over by March. Then it happened again, Cole and Suzie Underwood on the bus coming back from a field trip. Cole was caught in another firestorm of girl hate with no idea what he did wrong. I thought it was over by the end of school, but Tiffany was mad again.
“So she did it again?” I looked Cole over, trying to discern how he managed it. All Cole’s face revealed was pride and confusion. Neither was anything new.
“Yeah. The last day of school after the assembly. You were already gone.”
“But she was mad at you. How’d you get her to do it?”
“I don’t know,” said Cole. “We were making out and she just did it.”
“How’d you get her to make out with you? She hates you.”
“I don’t know. She just wanted to. I never asked her.”
As good as it sounded, and it sounded pretty damn good, maybe it wasn’t worth it, if a guy ended up hiding in the locker room afterwards. Of course, I never even got under Melody’s bra, so my chances of a BJ were low at best.
“You can’t hide in here all day.” I was ready to go since my face was back to normal.
Cole didn’t answer. He peeled a scab off his knee and poked at the pus with his fingernail.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll just ignore them and they’ll get over it like last time.”
“Okay,” said Cole, sounding unconvinced.
We left the locker room and wandered back to the field, avoiding the food area where the girls usually congregated. Luke and Caleb were playing touch football. We watched them running in the sun, shirtless and smiling. I pulled off my shirt and ran into the game. I leapt into the air and caught the other team’s pass, then withstood the crowd’s hisses. We did a do-over since I wasn’t part of the team when the pass started. I managed another interception and spent the next hour dodging guys a head taller and thirty pounds heavier. By the end I was pretty scraped up and my shorts were green from grass stains.
I left when Mr. Hubbert announced it was time for organized games and went to find Frank and Cole. Frank was easy to spot on the sidelines. He never joined any game if he could help it. His back was to me and he stood behind Cole and some other guys from our class. I came up behind Frank, but before I could speak, I heard what he was listening to.
“She is such a tasty piece,” said Zeke.
“Which one?” asked Cole.
“Either one. I’d like to get me some of that.”
I looked to see who they were talking about. A group of girls were practicing cheers in their bikinis. They were wet and slick from running through the sprinklers and didn’t seem to notice half of their male classmates drooling over them. Ella and April were among them, but their presence didn’t register with me. I was too busy looking at Sophie. Her red hair was knotted on top of her head and she wore a regular bikini, not the Brazilian, but that didn’t make her any less incredible. She was curvy, where most of the others were built like two-by-fours. She hopped up and down showing Ella a cheer and there were more than a few mouths hanging open on the sidelines.
“Dude, you are so lucky. You get to spend the whole summer with them. You ever see their tits?” Jamie Elkland asked Cole. He was my sisters’ age, and I didn’t know him very well.
“I wish. It’s not like they walk around with their tops off or something,” said Cole. “But I think she kind of likes me. Maybe we’ll go skinny-dipping.”
“Which one? Ella or April?” asked Zeke.
They were talking about my sisters. They were talking about my sisters’ tits. I didn’t even realize my sisters had tits. That natural development was beyond my imagination. I grossed myself out by looking to check. Sure enough, they did.
I took two steps towards Cole and Zeke, but was knocked back by Frank, who turned suddenly and ran into me.
“Sorry,” said Frank and rushed off.
I watched him go, surprised by the pained look on his face, but I quickly forgot it as I rammed my hand against Cole’s shoulder.
“What the hell?” Cole spun around, then took a step back. “Oh, Puppy. I didn’t—”
“I bet you didn’t. You talking about my sisters?”
Their guilt-ridden faces betrayed the truth I already knew.
“You better stop looking at them or I’m going to kick your asses. You got that?”
Zeke, Jamie, and Cole nodded assent and I walked off, so mad I could’ve punched somebody. Then I saw Frank eating some cotton candy, all hunched over and morose. He didn’t talk nasty about my sisters. Like April said, he was a good guy. I joined Frank, took a hunk of the cotton candy he offered, and decided to forget the whole thing. After all, Cole didn’t stand a chance with April or Ella. They weren’t interested in guys yet. I was sure of that.
We got home a little after midnight. I sat in the van until everyone else got out, surveying the yard and the distance to the door. Beatrice wasn’t in sight, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t lurking around the corner with a huge glob of goo, waiting for me. I shoved open the van door, stumbled out, and broke for the house. I ran past the others and knocked into Mom. She dropped an industrial-size box of laundry detergent, which burst when it hit the ground.
“Puppy! What is your problem?” yelled Mom.
I stood on the porch inside the screen door, looking back and forth like a distressed weasel.
“Beatrice might be out there,” I said.
“Oh, for crying out loud. Stop being a wuss and help me clean up this mess.” She kicked at the detergent lying in snowy heaps around her feet.
“No way. That’s what she’s waiting for.”
“Puppy, so help me God, if you don’t get out here and clean this up, I’m going to spit on you.” Her hands went to her hips and she glared at me through the screen. Luke and Ella laughed behind her. April knelt down and began scooping the detergent back in the box.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll do it,” she said.
“April, it’s not your job,” said Mom.
“I know. Don’t worry, he’ll pay me back.”
An hour later, I went to bed, followed by Frank. Cole stayed out in the living room talking. After a half hour, he tried to sneak in unnoticed. I rolled over when he came in, but I couldn’t go to sleep. I listened to Frank’s snores and thought of Sophie. She was Luke’s girlfriend and off-limits, but it didn’t bother me. Dreaming was allowed.
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE CREEK SHORES were crowded with blankets and coolers. Abe Krause had finally gotten to come out after spending five months at a wilderness camp for troubled youth. Abe was the only member of The Pack to ever get in serious trouble and even then it was kind of his parents’ fault. Abe found a baggie of pot in his dad’s sock drawer when he was fourteen and tried it out. He tried to buy some at school, and occasionally he could get ahold of a small amount. Luke and Caleb tried it out. They made it sound like no big deal, but it didn’t sound all that attractive either. School was taxing enough and I couldn’t afford to lose any brains cells. Of course, Luke and Caleb could lose a billion and still be ahead of everybody else. In the end, they quit because it hurt their sports performance. That and it made Luke so paranoid he started hiding cookies in light fixtures.
Abe came back from what he termed his imprisonment with a deep tan and zero remorse. He did say that if anyone mentioned the word pot or any of its variations, he’d knock their teeth out. Since he’d gained thirty pounds of muscle, I believed him.
Sophie and Jewel came out to Camp with Abe and Tom Maloy and their girlfriends. That was the first time Sophie and Jewel got to spend the weekend, a miracle in our minds. Jewel’s mom’s boyfriend gave her a weekend in the Virgin Islands. She’d let Jewel spend the weekend at a brothel to get her out of her hair and Sophie got to come because Jewel did.
Even Shasta was there in her faux suede bikini decorating an old blanket with a bunch of her friends. We considered Shasta a summertime member and anyone she chose to bring along was fine by us. Plus, her friends were hot. Between Sophie’s Brazilian bikinied butt and Shasta’s whole body, I didn’t know where to look.
Beyond the girls, Caleb served mojitos and beer at a makeshift bar made out of driftwood and rocks. The temperature topped off at a steamy 103 degrees and he couldn’t make mojitos fast enough. Frank manned the fire pit next to him, grilling hot dogs and corn on the cob. The smell of sizzling meat and melting butter drifted around with the charcoal smoke, the very
essence of summer. It didn’t hurt that I’d had two of Caleb’s mojitos and felt all glowy. I’d eaten half a dozen dogs already and was about to have another when Luke started yelling at Cole.
“No, no! You got to pull it all the way back!”
Cole sat on a rusty tricycle near to the top of a ramp made of half-rotted wooden planks. He tried to scoot backwards up to the top, but didn’t have enough leverage.
“I can’t get any farther!” Cole yelled back.
“Go ahead, then!”
Cole lifted his feet and hollered as he raced down the ramp. It took him half a second to reach the end of the ramp, and then he shot off and arced in the air above Indian Creek. The tricycle left his ass, but he held on tight to the handlebars and they came up and whacked him in the face as he hit the water.
The splash was tremendous. Fat drops pounded us as we cheered. When Cole’s head broke the surface, blood streamed down his face and into his smiling mouth.
“That was so cool!” He pumped his fist over his head and dove down to retrieve the trike. He came up again and said, “I can’t get it. Come help me, Puppy.”
I rolled off the ragged old beach blanket I shared with Frank and squished down to the water in my water logged tennis shoes.
“Come on.” Cole tried to tread water, imitating my technique. His small hands grasped at water, but his head kept slipping under.
The cold water bit my toes as I stepped into the creek and sucked the breath out of me when I slipped under. I opened my eyes and saw minnows swimming past and the trike lying on its side on the bottom. I grabbed the seat and kicked as hard as I could to lift it up. When I got to the surface, Cole grabbed the handlebars and we swam the few feet to where we could touch the rocky bottom.
Cole pulled it up on the shore. “Whose turn is it?” Blood still ran out of his nose and he wiped it on the back of his arm. A wide stripe of red ran from his elbow to his fingers.
“Oh crap,” said Frank. “He broke his nose. Cole, you broke your nose.” He inched away from Cole across the blanket.
“You are such a puss. I didn’t break it. It’s just some gooey blood.” Cole walked towards Frank, shaking his head until strings of bloody snot flew out and slapped his cheeks.