“Just leaving.” Doug clocked out and went to wait outside. Standing against the warm brick of the store and waiting for the Chariot Driving car to show up, he found himself fantasizing about Mindy. It was really hot out. He hoped she had downdressed appropriately. He shouldn’t be having thoughts like that. She was as religious as he was and he was objectifying her. Not just objectifying her but tainting his brain with impure thoughts.
Finally, she pulled into the parking lot and got out from the driver’s side. Doug found himself staring at her in a completely unsatisfied way. She wore something that was a cross between a druid’s cloak and a nun’s habit. She waved as she moved around to the passenger side. Until she was that close, Doug wasn’t even sure it was Mindy. He slid into the driver’s seat.
“That outfit’s new,” he said.
“Oh, this...” She reached into the backseat and grabbed her helmet. She slid the hood down to her shoulders. Her blond hair was done up in a severe bun. She had to unleash the knot of hair to get the helmet on. He waited for an explanation about the garb but didn’t get one. With the helmet on, she could have been anyone. The cloak was so loose, he couldn’t make any trace of her form, which was probably the point. He wondered if he was the cause of the change of dress. Maybe she had seen him gawking at her on one of their previous drives.
She casually told him places to turn and he followed her directions. They made small talk.
“Have any plans for this evening?” she asked.
“Not much. Hanging out with a friend.”
“That Crank guy again?”
“No. He’s busy getting ready for his show.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a girl named Whitney Smith.” Doug thought maybe that would make him seem like less of a loser.
“Oh, a girl. Your mom lets you hang around with girls?”
“She doesn’t know. Besides, I’m hanging out with a girl right now.”
“Well, that’s different. I’m like a teacher. She knows you’re safe with me.”
Doug didn’t like to hear that. That made it seem like she had invited him to her party as a little brother or something.
Mindy reached over and patted his thigh. “Yep, nothing can go on between us. That would be unprofessional.” She let her hand linger there. Doug thought he would drive off the road. All the blood in his body shot to his penis and Mindy would have had to notice his state if she glanced down. Then he thought maybe she did because she said, “Oh,” and quickly took her hand away, curling it with her other hand in the black void of her lap.
“So you never told me why you’re wearing that... cloak.”
“This? It’s a ceremonial robe. I thought I told you about all this.”
“Huh uh.”
“This is my initiation week... at the Tabernacle. That’s what the party’s for. I invited you, don’t you remember?”
“Of course, I thought you said it was just a get together. I didn’t know it was something church related.”
“You still want to come, don’t you?”
“Definitely! I wouldn’t miss it.”
“It’s for myself and two other girls. Want to drive to the Tabernacle? You said you’ve never seen it, right?”
“Sure. No, I haven’t seen it.”
“I’ll write the directions down for you too. Or I could just come and pick you up.”
“Yeah. That’d be great.”
“Still want to see it?”
“Yeah.”
She guided him through town and onto the state route and they veered off onto a couple of back roads, went past the Church of the New Covenant, and then turned onto a gravel road. The sign said, appropriately, “Tabernacle Dr.” and, below that, “No Outlet.” Somebody had taken it upon themselves to spray paint, in red, “666” over the “No Outlet” sign. Doug had seen things like that before and figured it wasn’t anything new. He imagined all small towns were the same. There was always some place rumored to be the site of Satanic rituals and cults. He assumed it was more predominant the more religious the town was. Like yin and yang or whatever. For every Doug, there was somebody like Crank. But maybe even Crank was coming around.
Doug had to power the small car up a fairly steep hill.
“It’s right up here,” Mindy said.
He pulled the car to a stop when he ran out of gravel. He didn’t see any type of church or building or anything.
“We’ll have to do some walking. Just a little bit.”
He turned the car off and they got out, the engine ticking down. He proffered the keys to Mindy but she said she didn’t have anywhere to put them so he slid them into his pocket and felt very grown up. The woods were thick here and alive with the sounds of insects. Doug thought back to that strange thing he’d seen the other day and had a brief moment of panic. In the interim, he had managed to convince himself it was a deer but, thinking back on it, there was no way. Possibly a bear. Or some monstrous goat with a disease that rendered it vicious. Mindy didn’t seem too worried. She took off her helmet and tossed it into the car. She ran her hands through her shiny hair. The voluminous black garb only accentuated how attractive her face was. It was as close to perfection as Doug had seen. Her hair was now a little bit ratty, she didn’t look like she wore any make-up, and Doug thought he liked her better like this.
“Follow me,” she said.
She led him down a narrow dirt trail for about a quarter of a mile.
“Why’s this out in the middle of nowhere?”
“I don’t know. Probably cheap rent.”
“Why don’t they just let you guys do your thing in the Church?”
“Don says this is better for focus. There are guys in the Church and all that. He seems to think we’d take some of the attention. Or vice versa, I guess.”
“There aren’t that many guys in the Church.”
“No?”
“No. I mean, there are some children who go to Sunday school but the only one our age or... my age anyway, was a guy named Jim Lankmeyer and he’s dead now. I guess there are some deacons and stuff but they’re all older.”
“Hm. Well then, maybe it was just to keep us away from you.”
Doug almost laughed.
They reached the Tabernacle. It looked like it had been converted from a one room schoolhouse.
“It used to be a one room schoolhouse,” Mindy said.
The building was pretty ramshackle looking.
“It’s pretty rundown,” Mindy said.
There weren’t even any windows in it.
“Don says it’s to help us keep focus. He’s really about focus and discipline. No windows. Nothing to distract us. We just have to clean up a little bit every now and then.”
“Are we going to go inside?” He was really curious about what the inside of this place looked like. He thought he might explode if he went in, knowing it was mostly just a few girls here all the time.
“I don’t have any keys. I just wanted you to see the outside of it.”
“Pretty neat.”
“I guess.”
Doug sneaked a peak at Mindy. She had beads of sweat standing up on her forehead.
“Aren’t you hot in that thing?”
“It is pretty warm. I guess I could take it off. I don’t have to wear it all the time or anything. It’s not like I’m a nun or something. But we had a lesson here earlier and I didn’t have time to go home and change.” She wiped some sweat from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “It is hot, though.”
She unfastened a drawstring around the neck, allowing the robe to fall open. Then she pulled it up over her head. Doug was expecting clothes. What she wore instead were a pair of white hip hugger underwear and a white sports bra.
She noticed him gaping and shrugged. He must not have done very well at hiding his surprise or lust. “Come on, this is less than what you’d see if you went to the beach. Why’s it okay to wear a swimsuit outside but not your underwear?”
“You’ve
got a point.” Doug’s penis again stiffened in his pants.
“You have been to the beach, haven’t you?”
Doug hadn’t. He didn’t say anything. Apparently he didn’t need to.
“Oh my God, you haven’t, have you? And you’ve never seen a girl in her underwear?”
Doug stared somewhere past her, not wanting to make eye contact.
“Come on. You can be honest with me. Besides, if you haven’t seen a girl in her underwear before then you have now. Right?”
She had a point. “Yeah,” he said, looking at her tight stomach. “I guess I have seen a girl in her underwear.”
“I’m sorry. Is this making you nervous? I didn’t mean anything by it. You said it yourself—it’s hot out.”
And it was. He could see the light sheen of sweat gathered on the rounded tops of her breasts.
“Ready to go back?”
He nodded. She didn’t seem to mind that he kept looking at her. She led the way through the woods and Doug stared at her firm ass the entire time. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. Occasionally she would glance back and smile like she knew what he was doing. They got back to the car way too soon. He expected her to put her robe back on and get back into the car but she didn’t. She tossed the robe into the car and went around to the trunk.
“Keys?” she said.
Doug reached into his pocket and grabbed the keys.
“You’ve about got this driving thing down, huh?”
“I think I got the hang of it.”
“So we’ll do the highway on Wednesday and then I think we can manage to count your time when you come to my initiation ceremony on Friday and that should be about it. Unless you wanted to spend the next hour or so driving around. Do you think you need that?”
“If you have things to do, that’s fine. Like I said, I think I’ve got it.”
“I don’t really have anything to do. It’s just that... driving around Clover gets kind of boring, you know.”
She slid the key into the trunk and popped the lid.
“Want a beer?” she said.
Doug wouldn’t mind having a beer at all.
Before he could even answer, Mindy had reached into a cooler and handed him a can of Miller Lite.
“Thanks,” he said. He popped the top and took a long sip. She did the same. She put the frosty can on her stomach. He watched her nipples tighten against the fabric of her bra.
“So this girl you’re seeing tonight, is it pretty serious?”
“Serious?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s your girlfriend, right?”
“Oh,” Doug laughed. “It’s a girl and she’s my friend but we’re not going out or anything.”
“Have you asked her?”
“Um, no, I’ve never thought about it.”
“You don’t like her in that way?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
Doug started to get nervous. He took another drink of beer, hoping that would help.
“Is she pretty?”
“She’s pretty in a certain way.”
“What’s ‘in a certain way’ mean?”
“Um, not like you.”
Now Mindy laughed. “Not like me?”
“She’s pretty in an attainable way.”
“Attainable?”
“Yeah. Like if I asked her out she might actually say yes.”
“Ah.” Mindy looked away and downed most of her beer. Doug was sort of hoping she would say something to refute him, at least to give him hope. “That’s not a good way to think of girls, Doug.”
“Like what.”
“Like ‘attainable’. How do you think that would make her feel?”
“I guess it’s moot anyway.”
“Why’s that?”
“I mean I might as well just get used to having girls as friends until it’s time to get married. Everything I could do with a girl except for talk seems like it’s a sin.”
“Sex before marriage is a sin. But that leaves a lot out.”
“Lust is also a sin.”
“But I like to think of it as a lesser sin.”
Mindy took the keys to the front seat of the car and stuck them in the ignition. The beer had made Doug somewhat bolder and he watched her rounded ass bent over the seat, the muscles in her legs drawn tight. She turned the radio on. It was something loud with a steady bass beat. Different than whatever kind of metal music she was listening to before. Doug thought this sounded like something people would listen to at a rave.
“How is lust a lesser sin?” he asked.
“Well, you have to make a distinction between thinking and doing. I mean, murder is a sin, definitely. But who hasn’t thought about killing someone from time to time? Granted, if you think about it all the time it might mean you’re screwed but, otherwise, I think it’s normal and certainly not anything you would end up burning in hell for. So, really, what’s lust except for thinking about sex? You’re a teenage boy. I know you’ve thought about sex. In fact, I think you have to. To know why you don’t want to commit that sin and to realize yet another beautiful aspect to marriage, you have to think about sex. About what it can create and the harm it can do. It’s like that game the Church likes its members to play—Redemption. That forces people to think about sex. And it also forces them to refuse it. To not give into the sin. You’ve played it, haven’t you?”
“A little.”
“And you can’t admit to me that you didn’t have a hard-on sometimes.”
Mindy using that word caught him by surprise. He almost choked on his beer. “A what?”
“A hard-on, Doug. An erection?”
“Oh.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So did you ever get hard while you were playing that?”
Now he felt the redness creep back up into his cheeks. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess... sometimes.”
Mindy moved closer to him. “Want another beer?”
“Why not?”
She reached into the trunk and pulled out two more beers. “You know, mostly, it’s people from the Church who are posing as the prostitutes in that game, so they can monitor you.” She moved close to him again. “It might have even been me.”
Doug swallowed hard.
“Do you think dancing’s a sin?”
“Not always.”
She began to move slowly to the beat of the music from the car. She pressed her damp back to him, bringing her butt against the front of his pants. He put his hands on her hips to try and force her away, not wanting her to feel his hardness, and she grabbed his hands and clamped them down on her hips so each one was half on her underwear and half on the stickiness of her skin. She moved her ass against the front of his pants. He moved his hands farther to the front of her hips, feeling bone beneath the skin, and pulled her against him. She pressed harder until his clothed penis was between her ass cheeks. She looked over her shoulder, throwing her hair out of her face, and said, “We’re just dancing, Doug. Just dancing.”
He was beyond speech. He wondered if this was an invitation to do anything. He wondered if he would do anything. No. He had to draw the line somewhere. But, Jesus, there were so many things he wanted to do with this girl. Already, he had done more than he ever had before.
She continued to move her ass faster and harder against him. He felt ready to split out of his pants and through her thin underwear. He moved his head into her neck to smell her sweat and perfume scent. He moved his hands up to her breasts, expecting her to push them down. She didn’t and he could feel her nipples against his palms, the weight and softness of her breasts like nothing he’d ever felt before. Now he was sitting on the tailgate of the car and she was on his lap, her head practically on his shoulder, her legs spread out to either side. He moved his hand between her legs and momentarily felt her damp warmth before she pulled his hand up to her thigh. She continued to move against him and when he looked down he saw th
at her underwear’s waistband had come down a bit and he could see the crack of her ass. He knew he was going to do something at that point and thought that he really should make her stop but just when he thought about forcing her she said, again, “Just dancing, Doug. Just dancing...” And his penis stiffened as much as it could and then released, warm and slimy in his tight underwear. She danced on him for a few more seconds and then slowly got off, pulling her panties from the crack in her butt and pulling the waistband up.
“Now,” she said, “I bet we both feel better and no sins were committed. Right?”
Doug wasn’t sure about that but said, “Right,” anyway.
“I guess we should probably go, huh?”
“You’re the instructor,” Doug said.
“So did you want to drive to your friend’s house or home?” Mindy smiled at him.
“Um, I need to go home and grab some things. She lives right next door so don’t worry about it.”
Doug got behind the wheel. Mindy put her robe and helmet on and they drove off.
Twenty-seven
Doug’s mother sat in the living room, the TV blaring. That horrible show, Johnny Got His Gun, was on. Doug didn’t get the appeal of it. He didn’t say hi. Neither did she. He went up to his room and sat on his bed. He took deep breaths. He didn’t know what had happened with Mindy. He was pretty sure he was supposed to feel bad but he felt good. Really good. Except for the sticky mess in his underwear. He thought about calling Crank to tell him what had happened. But Crank would probably just laugh at him.
His breathing still didn’t feel right. He felt out of control. There was a moment with Mindy when he would have done anything she asked him to. There was a moment when he had to fight the urge to do whatever he wanted to with her. He knew he would never do that, but the thought was there. Of course it was. That was why it was a sin to indulge in sex and sexual thoughts. Because you only wanted more. After a while, it probably didn’t even matter what you did or who you did it with.
He had to change pants and underwear before he went to Whitney’s.
Whitney.
Jesus. He thought he was attracted to her too. Even though she was the complete opposite of Mindy.
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