Double Grades

by Kristine Robinson

  She took hold of my hand as my cheeks emulated the venue’s red lighting.

  “I’d really like to go out with you, officially,” she added.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t respond, but just stared at her.

  “Did you hear me?” she said, frowning.

  All I could do was nod and grin.

  “Is that a yes?” she asked.

  She was grinning as broadly as I was.

  Chapter 5

  I had promised my parents I would come home for the weekend as I had already skipped out on one visit. I wasn’t looking forward to being back in my old neighborhood. Some of the surrounding areas had been upgraded recently, but not my hood. I got off the bus and stepped onto the cracked paving, up the street from my parent’s house. As I opened the rickety wooden gate and stepped into the front yard, the front door opened and I was greeted by my mother. Her hair was slicked back in a short ponytail. She hopped down the front stairs.

  “My baby!” she exclaimed.

  I shook my head and looked up and down the street.

  “Mother!” I replied.

  She wrapped her arms around me and led me into the house. The peeling yellow paint on the wooden exterior seemed to look worse every time I returned. I had told my brother he needed to come and repaint, but he had odd shifts at work and clearly hadn’t managed to yet.

  I put my backpack down on my bed in my bedroom. The old faded curtains, standalone dresser and pile of clothes stacked on the ironing board, looked the same as my last visit, but somehow the room felt different. I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore. I walked through to the kitchen and sat down at the round kitchen table. My mom put a sandwich in front of me with the crusts cut off.

  “Thanks mom.”

  “So how’s everything at the university?” she asked.

  She sat down opposite me, in one of the mismatched chairs.

  “Have you made any friends yet?” she continued.

  “Jeez ma, I just got here,” I replied, “Can we hold the interrogation?”

  I had made friends all right, but there was no way I could tell her about Jenna. I picked up the second half of my sandwich and walked out into the backyard. Weeds stood as tall as my waist and the broken doghouse still leaned against the back wall.

  Not much had changed here, but, I realized, I had changed in the last six months. My mom joined me on the back porch and caught me up on all the neighborhood news.

  “And I ran into your karate teacher the other day.”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “He wanted to know if you were taking karate classes on campus.”

  I hadn’t been training, but my body had been getting hot from other things! That evening, my mom’s chili heated me up from the inside. It was one of my favorite dishes. As the spicy food settled in my mouth, I sighed.

  “Nothing beats home cooking, huh?” dad joked.

  “So true,” I said between mouthfuls.

  After dinner, I listened to the rain falling heavily on the roof in my bedroom, my toes hidden beneath a knitted blanket. As I sat on my bed, I thought of Jenna and wanted to see her face, but the Wi-Fi connection was too unreliable. I sent her a message from my mobile instead.

  “Missing u!”

  “Missing u 2! Especially that big brain of yours! Chem homework’s a bitch!”

  “☹ only missing my big brain?” I joked.

  A knock on the door interrupted my chat and I quickly flipped my phone over on the bed covers.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You coming for our evening walk, hun?”

  It was tradition.

  “Be out in a minute, yes!” I replied.

  “Chat l8er. Gotta go. Xxx”

  ***

  I returned to res and to civilization on Monday with much relief. Jenna had invited me to an environmental protest the following Friday. It wasn’t really my thing, but I accepted anyway. I wanted to spend more time with her. She was different from the people I hung out with. Most of her class was going to attend and they had organized a bus to take everyone to the rendezvous point. When we arrived at the park, there were already over a thousand people there.

  Some placards had the president’s face on it and the words “unfit” underneath. One read “Climate change is a health crisis!” and another “Vegans are stopping climate change!”

  Jenna fitted right in with the rest of the greenies and I had to hurry after her as she hopped off the bus and joined the crowd. When I caught up with her, she handed me a banner. I looked down at the wording. Fund green energy.

  “That one fine?” she asked.

  Then she was off into her group again and I hurried after her. I watched her bustling around and organizing the banners and t-shirts for her class and smiled. Her green hair bounced around in two ponytails set high on her head. She was clearly in her element and I was proud of her.

  “Come Kaela!” she called, when the march began.

  I pushed through another group of people, all in green t-shirts, and stood beside her. She took hold of my hand and I felt part of them as we marched with the masses. The rowdy spirit of the crowd was catchy and I soon found myself shouting slogans along with the rest. Jenna turned towards me and kissed me on the lips. I frowned. We had never kissed in public before. With all the noise and excitement, I didn’t mind. I giggled to myself and then pulled her closer and kissed her back. It started to rain a few minutes later, but not even that bothered me. Jenna moved a few paces ahead of me in the crowd as the throng moved forward. I saw her touching one of her classmate’s shoulders, another woman. They started laughing. A few seconds later she touched the woman’s arm again.

  After the rally, Jenna and some of her classmates were going to watch Dave Matthew’s perform at a small café. I had never seen him live and tagged along. I sat next to her in the booth. The same woman she had touched earlier was sitting with us. They chatted more about environmental stuff. I didn’t say anything. I wondered if Jenna had forgotten I was there.

  The girl went to dance to one of the songs, in the small gap between the tables and beckoned for Jenna to join her. She did. After a few seconds she looked at me and beckoned for me to come dance too. I shook my head and watched her. She was smiling and laughing, without me.

  After the gig, we all left the venue together. She gave the girl a hug goodbye. In the cab ride home, I was silent.

  “What’s wrong, Kaela?” Jenna asked.

  The cab turned into the street on the border of the university. I sighed irritably.

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing. What’s the matter?”

  I thought it would be obvious. She was flirting with another woman and only seemed to remember me when the other girl had left. As we got to the entrance of our res, I finally came out with it.

  “You were flirting with that other girl in your class!” I exclaimed.

  She turned her head to the side and frowned. “Flirting?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, you were all over her!” I said.

  I felt like I was outside my body, and someone else was controlling it. I didn’t know how to stop it now that this monster had taken over.

  “Are you talking about Hazel?” she said, her voice louder now too.

  “Hazel! Yeah!”

  “I wasn’t flirting with anyone, let alone Hazel!” she said.

  She took a step backward.

  “I know what I saw. Are you sleeping with her too?”

  “Wha-what?” she exclaimed.

  I stared at her with my one eyebrow raised. The monster would not relinquish its grip, as much as I wished I could vanish.

  “Why the hell would you think that Kaela?” she said, “What do you think of me?”

  She turned and ran up the stairs. The monster and I watched her back as she disappeared around the corner of the stairwell.

  ***

  I never had a chance to make up
with her. I tried to contact her before I left but she wasn’t responding to my calls and didn’t appear to be in her room, when I knocked on the door a final time. I didn’t want to leave under those conditions. I should have felt happy and excited about the internship, but all I wanted was to see her pale, pretty face again.

  The letter had arrived two weeks earlier. My mother immediately bragged to the entire neighborhood, before I had even chosen to accept. But there was no way that I could turn it down. It was my dream, even if it wasn’t at their head office. Jenna would have been so happy for me, I thought, as I watched the university building diminish from the bus’s back window.

  One week and then another flew by, after the program commenced. We worked about 80 hours a week and had barely any time for anything else, other than shoving food into our bodies occasionally and surviving on as little sleep as possible. It was the most challenging time of my life and forced me to be my best 100% of the time. It was probably good that I didn’t have any distractions other than the work.

  But, when I collapsed on my bed, I still thought of her. I had the same dream about her in the forest again too. Since I didn’t share my accommodation with anyone, I took advantage of the privacy. I let my hand wander under my panties and found the hottest spot on my body, between my legs. I pushed a finger up and felt the wetness, the thoughts of Jenna had created. It couldn’t compare to the last time we had been together, almost a month ago. She had taken a lit candle from her bedside dresser, handed it to me and asked me to pour little drops over her naked butt. I thought she was mad, until I heard her groans of pleasure as the molten drops connected with her soft skin.

  “Oh yeah!” she cried out.

  She raised her butt and her hand disappeared under her belly, making her groans louder. I had stopped dripping the wax, mesmerized by her squeals.

  “More wax,” she implored.

  I tilted the candle slowly, until the liquid wax pooled and let it drip over the edge. One little splash was followed by another.

  “Eek!” she exclaimed.

  I stopped suddenly and pulled the candle away from her pert rear.

  “I’m sorry!” I said, “Did I hurt you?”

  Then I laughed at the silliness of my question. She began to laugh too and rolled over onto her back. She continued to play with herself and I watched eagerly. Her breasts rose with her deep breaths. Her finger circled her swollen mound. She had taught me about it and how much fun it was to play with. I could see that demonstrated clearly as she groaned and her pelvis raised upward.

  She moved her hand down, between the delicate folds of skin, and one of her fingers disappeared inside the entrance. Then another. She had recently put two fingers inside me and said I was really tight. I wanted to feel what it felt like to have my fingers inside her.

  “Can I try that?” I asked and grinned at her.

  She frowned and stopped her fingers for a second. “Okay, if you want to, Kaela.”

  I nodded and moved closer. She spread her legs further apart and I brought my hand slowly closer. I had barely ever touched my own, and now I was going to touch another woman’s! I stroked her neatly shaven landing strip and looked up at her.

  “Go for it!” she said.

  I placed a finger at her entrance and pushed it slowly inside. I could feel her skin around my finger and the moisture of the passage. She had definitely got things started down there already. I pushed up deeper. It felt really weird and reminded me of the feeling of raw meat, but hot. I retracted my finger and pushed it back up again, continuing until Jenna began to pant. She was rubbing her swollen mound at the same time. The faster I moved my finger, the faster she rubbed.

  I probably wasn’t as adept as she was, and missed her fingers, as I rubbed my own swollen nub in my quiet room. I rubbed it slowly, then fast and tried rubbing gently and hard. The change in rhythm and pressure felt good. I pressed hard again and groaned.

  Chapter 6

  I was one of two who had been selected for the summer internship from our university, but the other student was a year ahead of me. We had to do a report on the experience for our classes and got together to prepare. I didn’t feel comfortable going to his flat, which was off campus and we met instead at one of the coffee shops on campus.

  We reminisced about the crazy hours we’d worked and the one party we went to. We had partied from 22:00, when we finished work, right through till the time we started work and went straight through to the work site. I had not been drinking alcohol at least, but there had been many red, heavy-lidded eyes on site that day. But I did have another kind of fun. I found an intern from another university that also preferred girls to guys.

  We only discovered our mutual interest in the early hours of the morning, but I didn’t go back to my room that night. I joined her in her accommodation. She laid a towel down on her bed, stripped my clothes off and had me lay down on my stomach on top of the towel. Then she lit scented candles. I thought she was going to drop wax on me, like Jenna liked, but then I smelt essential oils. I recognized a dominant fragrance, ylang-ylang. The scent grew stronger as I felt her oily hands contact my skin. Her hands were warm. They travelled up the sides of my spine, along my shoulders and down the outer sides of my back. She was surprisingly strong. As my muscles began to relax, another feeling grew stronger. Feeling her half-naked body on top of me made my pussy throb. She slid backward and moved her hands down my lower back and massaged my butt.

  Her strokes would occasionally tickle my inner thighs and I thought, if she came any closer to my pussy, I would definitely come. Her hands massaged just above my knees and began to work their way slowly up. As she reached my thighs, I was already breathing deeply. My pussy was throbbing and I wanted her to fuck me. Her hands reached my inner thighs.

  “Oh god!” I moaned.

  She giggled. I had had a sports massage before, but this was very different. Her oily hands glided up my inner thigh and her fingers brushed against my pussy lips. I groaned.

  “Enjoying it huh?” she joked.

  The essential oil soaked into my skin. Her hands circled higher up my thigh and grazed my lips again. Then she flipped me over onto my back. I felt her oily hands caress my breasts. My nipples were erect. I reached down and rubbed my clitoris as she massaged my breasts. I wiped some oil off my leg to use as a lubricant. I rubbed over the top of the swollen nub and pressed hard.

  “Hey,” she said, “I was getting there!”

  “Sorry!” I replied, “I couldn’t wait!”

  Her fingers massaged the sides of my pelvis as I rubbed my clit. She found spots on my body I never knew could turn me on. My pelvis arched up from her skillful movements and my own ministrations. My body began to quiver as my pelvic muscles tensed up. Here it came. She had really revved my body up with her sensual strokes and the essential oil had heightened the thrill.

  “Oh god!” I cried out.

  I bit down on my bottom lip as my pussy muscles contracted and the world disappeared. The wave of pleasure rose and crashed down over my body. The next morning, she winked at me when we gathered with everyone for a meeting. It had been quite a night!

  The walls of the café came slowly back into focus as I finished my cappuccino and tipped the mug back to get the last of the milk froth out. I could feel I had a frothy mustache and was about to lick it away when I stopped.

  “Kaela?”

  “Jenna?” I replied.

  I quickly licked my top lip, as she began to giggle.

  “I didn’t know you were back already?”

  I was surprised she was speaking to me, with the way things had ended the last time.

  “I got back two days ago,” I replied. “I like your hair.”

  She had cut her hair into a long bob and it was no longer green, but rather a platinum color. She looked even more beautiful and I couldn’t control the warmth that suddenly intensified between my legs. I uncrossed and crossed my legs.

  The other student I’d been working w
ith excused himself and left.

  “I’d love to chat,” Jenna said, “but I’ve got a class in two minutes and we’re writing a test.”

  And then she was gone again. She hadn’t seemed angry at me, but a lot could change in three months. It was so good to see her though, it gave me courage.

  “U free tomorrow aft at 15:00?” I messaged her.

  A few minutes later, my mobile finally beeped.

  “Sure. Where?”

  “The entrance to the arboretum.”

  She replied with a thumbs-up icon and I couldn’t help punching the air, after I read it.

  ***

  It was a perfect day for a walk among the trees. The leaves were beginning to turn orange, red and yellow. I watched as a figure in the distance began to take on the form of Jenna. My heart beat faster, the closer she came. I didn’t want to be disappointed and was sure she had another girlfriend, but I wanted to at least apologize for my behavior.

  “Hi Kaela,” she said, “This was a wonderful idea! It’s beautiful out here.”

  “Hi,” I replied, “Yes. I’m really glad you came!”

  She tilted her head and smiled at me from behind stray strands of hair. We stepped into the arboretum and followed the paved walkway over an old arched bridge. The path led onto the grass and a stone-walled lake lay to the right-hand side. I slowed my pace, as I realized I was walking quickly.

  “I err-” I started awkwardly. “I wanted to say sorry – for how I behaved last time.”

  “You don’t need to apologize, Kaela,” she said softly, “I’m sorry if I pushed you into something that you maybe weren’t ready for.”

  The paving resumed and led passed a garden of pink, white, orange and red roses. In the distance a tall arch, laden with a creeper plant, stretched over the walkway. I would have loved to have picked a rose for her, but it wasn’t allowed. And she would have probably been mad at me for harming a living plant.

  “Well, it wasn’t that I didn’t want you, Jenna, but yes,” I replied, “maybe I wasn’t emotionally ready. And –”