(Author's Notes: Welcome to Part Three of the serialized story, Laurie and Dag. If this is you're first time here and you would prefer to start at the beginning of the story (something I heartily recommend), simply use the links in the right hand column to navigate to previous chapters. And because Laurie & Dag is a sequel to the first story on this site, The Kid & Me, you may actually want to begin with that novella by also using the links in the right hand column. For those of you who are familiar with my work, you know that this story actually ran on the corporate site of The Sims 2, and after having been there for over a year with no problems, parts of it were hidden from view for reasons unknown. It did lead me to remove the story, and now I'm reposting it here. And while basically it is the same story, it is undergoing some heavy rewriting, mostly in the clarification of some events, but also in order to give the story a much harder edge to it than it had previously. It is not recommended for anyone under the age of thirteen. Also, at any time you can click on any picture and see an enlargement if you so desire. Once again thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Laurie and Dag.)~~~13~~~
~~~Narration by Laurie~~~
In the days that followed Mom and Dad’s anniversary, the household returned to a certain amount of normalcy. Dag spent four days at home with us, met Kurt, and then proceeded to go on and on about how much she really liked him. When Dag did return back to college she moved into a small off campus efficiency financed through Dad’s never ending generosity. Dag resumed exchanging emails with me on a regular basis and calling mom and dad on the phone once or twice a week. It was good to have things back to somewhat of a normal state of affairs, at least for the time being.
I guess those few days were what one could view as the calm before the many storms that soon followed. The events that occurred in the months ahead would shape my life forever, but they were events that bloomed from seeds planted long ago. That may have been okay except I wasn't even around for the plowing of the field so that much of what transpired was out of my control. It was to be a year that would be filled with torment and turmoil, a year in which I would continually question not only who I was, but would test my own sense of values.
By the time February rolled around Kurt and I were unofficially going steady. I say unofficially because there had never been a formal proposal by him that we do so. It was just taken for granted by everyone that we were an item as Kurt and I dated each other exclusively. There was never an official question such as, “Will you go steady with me?” It never happened that way with anybody I knew. You just continually were seen with and dated one person exclusively for a certain length of time, and everybody would then just accept it as fact.
I guess those few days were what one could view as the calm before the many storms that soon followed. The events that occurred in the months ahead would shape my life forever, but they were events that bloomed from seeds planted long ago. That may have been okay except I wasn't even around for the plowing of the field so that much of what transpired was out of my control. It was to be a year that would be filled with torment and turmoil, a year in which I would continually question not only who I was, but would test my own sense of values.
By the time February rolled around Kurt and I were unofficially going steady. I say unofficially because there had never been a formal proposal by him that we do so. It was just taken for granted by everyone that we were an item as Kurt and I dated each other exclusively. There was never an official question such as, “Will you go steady with me?” It never happened that way with anybody I knew. You just continually were seen with and dated one person exclusively for a certain length of time, and everybody would then just accept it as fact.
With each date and evening that we spent together I could sense in Kurt what I had been afraid of for a long time. He was becoming very serious about our relationship, and I began to sense that he was falling for me. Had he told me he loved me or anything like that? No, he hadn’t, and I did my best to keep him from doing so. I made it a point to talk about taking it slow and to let the future take care of itself. The strangest part of our relationship was that I wanted so much to feel the same way about him as he did about me, and would often tell myself that eventually the excitement would happen if I stayed on the right track. He was everything any girl could want in a guy. He was good looking, caring, thoughtful, intelligent, funny, ambitious, and charming. What was there not to fall in love with? But it didn’t matter whether it was Kurt, Orlando Bloom, or Justin Timberlake. I could never get very interested or excited about any of them. For me, watching Venus or Selena Williams conquer all pretenders at Wimbledon, or opening the box set of Xena: The Complete Series held far greater appeal to me than watching Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp fight over Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean.
When Kurt and I dated, we would often hang out with Chuck and Gail. As long as Kurt was nearby, Chuck was almost bearable to be around. Ever the diplomat, Kurt had even convinced Chuck to call me by my first name instead of Baker. One evening as we were coming out of the arcade, I heard Chuck whisper to Kurt, “you know, she isn’t so bad looking when she fixes herself up.” And I suppose that was about as high a compliment as I was ever going to get from Chuck.Nobody enjoyed our double dating more than Gail. Although she didn’t say so, I felt like she liked it because now there was someone to talk to instead of just Chuck. She once told me, “I love Chuck, but he can be such a bore sometimes. The only thing he ever talks about is sports.”
On some of these dates Chuck and Gail would wander off to places unknown, leaving Kurt and I to fend for ourselves. We would usually just wander a
round the park, or sometimes do nothing more than to sit and talk. Of course sooner or later, sitting and talking would turn into some heavy duty spit swapping. I had learned a lot about kissing since I had begun dating Kurt and we had gone well beyond that awkward first kiss in front of my house when I had clinched my teeth together. Just like with any guy, it was easy to tell when Kurt was perhaps getting a little too passionate. First there was the telltale sign when he would suddenly be pitching the old tent, and then his hands would start on a fishing expedition except trout wasn’t what he was after. But unfortunately for poor Kurt, no matter how much better I had become at swapping spit, I was of no mind to open up the taco stand for hands, fingers, fishing poles or anything else.
round the park, or sometimes do nothing more than to sit and talk. Of course sooner or later, sitting and talking would turn into some heavy duty spit swapping. I had learned a lot about kissing since I had begun dating Kurt and we had gone well beyond that awkward first kiss in front of my house when I had clinched my teeth together. Just like with any guy, it was easy to tell when Kurt was perhaps getting a little too passionate. First there was the telltale sign when he would suddenly be pitching the old tent, and then his hands would start on a fishing expedition except trout wasn’t what he was after. But unfortunately for poor Kurt, no matter how much better I had become at swapping spit, I was of no mind to open up the taco stand for hands, fingers, fishing poles or anything else.I kept waiting to experience the same thing Kurt was, but the magical mystical heated phenomenonan of teen boy and teen girl passion wasn’t happening for me. But Kurt said I was becoming a pretty good kisser, so maybe I was beginning to win the battle if not the war.
Then there was something else going on which came totally unexpected to me, sort of a fringe benefit of being with Kurt you might say. At school, I suddenly found myself becoming more popular, and it wasn’t popularity based on the fact that I was Dag’s sister or the smartest kid in school. Granted, it was a faux recognition dependent on my relationship with someone, but girls who had never bothered to seek me out before stopped in the hallways to talk to me, invited Kurt and I to their parties, asked me for help in their assignments, or sometimes we would all just hang out together. The fact was I enjoyed the attention. It was great not to be thought of as being radically different for a change. I had always prided myself on my individuality, but couldn’t a person retain that sense of being one's self, and still try to fit in?
At that time, I had convinced myself the answer to that question was yes. The ponytail became history, as did my glasses. I began wearing my contacts, and as it turned out the more I wore them the less they began to irritate my eyes. There were still occasions when they did, but it was a price I was willing to pay.By March though, I knew that I had to come to a decision. With each date, I felt Kurt was getting closer and closer to telling me how he felt. I had two choices and neither of them were good ones. I could either let him tell me he loved me, and try to convince him that I felt the same way, or I could convince him that somehow I would feel the same way given enough time, possibly a decade or two, or finally I could be completely honest and let him know the truth, that romantically I was coming up bankrupt on the Wheel of Fortune every single time Pat Sajak would spend the big wheel of life.
Such were the thoughts that were running through my head that Spring evening that I headed over to Gail’s house. I needed to talk to somebody, anybody, and Gail would have to do. Or maybe deep down inside I needed Gail to talk me out of doing what I thought would be the right thing, thus enabling me to blame someone else if things didn’t work out. I rang the doorbell, and Gail’s mother, Marcella, answered it inviting me in!
“Hi Laurie,” she told me. “Gail ran down to the store for me, she’ll be back in a few minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, but I’ve been so busy at the restaurant. How have you been, Laurie?”
“I’m okay, Marcella,” I replied.
“Hi Laurie,” she told me. “Gail ran down to the store for me, she’ll be back in a few minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, but I’ve been so busy at the restaurant. How have you been, Laurie?”
“I’m okay, Marcella,” I replied.
From the time I had first met her when I was about seven, Gail’s mom had insisted that I call her by her first name. She 
insisted on it from each of Gail’s friends, yet Gail herself never referred to her as anything but Mom. When Marcella had become pregnant with Gail, Gail’s father had shown his backbone by leaving town, never to be heard from again. It had been an uphill struggle for Marcella all of her life. Marcella had worked for years being a waitress, sometimes at two or three jobs at once. It had been a slow steady progress advancing from those jobs, to being a short order cook, finally becoming a head cook in a nice restaurant, and finally becoming a restaurant manager about the same time that Gail had started high school. Now, they were able to finally live comfortably, if not extravagantly.
“I was just relaxing and watching television for a change,” she told me. “You can sit here with me until Gail gets back.”
“I’m glad you came over, Laurie. I was afraid it would be Chuck again. I don’t trust that boy but there’s not much I can do about it. I just don’t want Gail getting in over her head.”
“Don’t worry about Gail,” I told her. “She’s headstrong but she’s not stupid.”
“I know she’s got this strange idea of being with
Chuck because she thinks he’s going to be a great football player or something, but I believe he’s just using her. She thinks she’s in love with him, she says he said that he loves her too. Laurie, I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but are they sleeping together? I mean that I can just about guess that they are. I only want to be sure that Gail is taking precautions. She of all people should know how difficult it is for a single mother to raise a child.”
I was beginning to squirm. Did I know for a fact that Gail and Chuck were sleeping together? I had of course, never been an eyewitness to such an event, and Gail had never came out explicitly and said, "Hey Laurie, did you know that Kurt and I are into screwing each other's brains out? It was a good job of rationalizing so that I could squirm around the truth and that is exactly what I did.
“I don’t know. She’s never said anything to me about it. Believe me though, having a baby is the last thing in the world that Gail wants.” I think Mar
cella understood my answer. Yes, in all likelihood they had gone all the way, even if I couldn’t testify to the event in a court of law, but Gail would be no fool when it came to birth control. That thought reassured her.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Gail popped through the door to put an end to the conversation that was becoming more than a bit uncomfortable and after she had put the groceries away, Gail came quickly back to the living room.
“Let me guess what you two are talking about. Mom is telling you how much she doesn’t trust Chuck. She’s then telling you she’s worried about me and probably is trying to pry some information out of you that you don’t have. Am I right, mom?”
Gail was smiling when she said it. She had not said it in a harsh way.
“Gail! It’s just because I worry about you. There’s nothing wrong with a mother worrying about her daughter.”
“No mom, there isn’t, but I’m not about to do anything stupid. I love you mom, and I appreciate all your sacrifices you’ve made and everything you’ve done for us. I’ve seen what can happen with my own eyes, so quit worrying. I'll come back down later and watch a movie with you, mom. Laurie and I’ll be in my room talking for a while.”
“Okay, Gail, I shouldn’t meddle so much.” Marcella said.
“Mom!” Gail said. “You have every right to meddle. If you didn’t meddle than I would think you didn’t love me. I just don’t want you to worry about me needlessly. You’ve worried yourself to death since the day I was born. It’s time for you to start relaxing a little, enjoy things, and find yourself a guy!” Gail walked over to hug her. “Please mom, don’t worry.”
Now, there are plenty of things one could say about Gail, and some of those things might be bad. But there was no denying how much she loved Marcella, and the bond between them was strong and unbreakable. I watched as Gail hugged her back and told her she’d quit worrying, but I knew that Marcella would always worry about Gail.
Once we were in her room Gail wasted no time in questioning me.
”So what did you tell her?” she asked.
“The same thing that you did, that you weren’t stupid and you’d be careful. You are being careful, aren’t you?”
Gail made a face. “Of course I am. Don’t worry about it.” She quickly changed the subject.
“What about you and Kurt? How are things progressing?”
“Well, about the same as always except that I think he’s falling in love with me.”
Gail did not try to hide her joy at hearing that. “That’s great, Laurie! Has he told you yet? I knew once the two of you got together that it would work out!”
“He hasn’t told me yet, Gail, and I don’t want him falling in love with me.”
“Are you nuts,” She began by yelling but quickly lowered her voice by the time she reached the word nuts saying it in almost a whisper. “W
hy the hell not?”
“Because, Gail, I don’t feel the same way about him. I like Kurt, I like being with him and hanging out and stuff, but I don’t love him. At least not the kind of love you’re thinking about.”
“Geezus Laurie, give it time! I can understand you wanting to take things slow, but this is ridiculous. He’s the first guy you’ve ever gone with for more than two dates and you’ve been going out for six months now. That must mean something.”
“He’s the first guy that’s ever treated me as an equal, that’s what that means. It means I have a good time when we’re out on a date. It means I think of him as a good friend. It means…oh hell I don’t know what it means. Right now I can’t think of him as anything more than a good friend, and I’m sure that’s what I’ll always think of him as,” I told her. “I can’t keep leading him on and when you get right down to it, that’s what I’m doing. I’m telling you Gail, he’s getting serious, VERY serious.”
“Laurie, you don’t know how you’re going to feel a month from now or six months from now. I’ve seen you two together. You don’t kiss somebody who’s just a friend the way I’ve seen you kissing Kurt.”
“Dammit Gail, have you and Chuck been spying on us?”
“No, of course not,” she answered quickly. “We just saw you once accidentally when we were walking back up through the park to meet you.”
I didn’t find her answer to be totally satisfactory but decided to give Gail the benefit of the doubt. “That’s just it, Gail. When I kiss him, that’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like I’m only doing it because I’m supposed to. Kurt gets turned on just fine, but I don’t at all. It’ll be best if we break up now so Kurt doesn’t begin to think this is going to head somewhere that it’s not.”
“You can’t do that Laurie. You just can’t.” This time she made no effort to lower her voice. “If you do this now, you might as well forget your senior year. You’ll be back to being a nobody.”
“I was a nobody before, Gail, and it never seemed to matter to anyone.” I told her.
“It won’t be like it was before, Laurie. You don’t du
mp one of the most popular guys in school for no reason and come out of it smelling like a rose.”
“I do have a reason. It’s not fair to Kurt for him to think there is something there or a chance for something to be there when there isn’t. I can’t do it.” My head was beginning to spin as our argument seemed to be going around in circles.
“Laurie, Kurt has been nothing but great to you. Everybody knows that. If you break up with him, people are really going to think you are weird.”
“Why am I weird, Gail? Because I want to be somebody, because I want to do something important? Because I don’t think I should be leading a nice guy on? Why is that so weird?”
“I’m not talking about that, Laurie. I think it’s great that you want to be Dr. Super Duper Surgeon. More power to you. But this is completely different. Before kids spoke in
whispers, and those whispers can quickly become quite loud chants filled with taunts and accusations! Laurie, you’re almost like a sister to me. I don’t want to see you hurt!”
“I won’t get hurt,” I told her. “Let them talk. What harm can it do? I’m used to it.”
“Right, Laurie. You WERE used to it,” she said emphasizing the word were. “Look at you now. You don’t wear that awful pony tail anymore; I haven’t seen your glasses on you in a month. For all your high and mighty preaching you’re no different than the rest of us. You found out you could fit in and you liked it for the same reason I do and everybody else does. It makes life a heckuva lot easier. If you are going to dump Kurt for no reason, you might as well go home, take your makeup off, put the pony tail in and throw away your contact lenses, then stand in a corner from now until you graduate from school because you can count on having one friend and one
friend only and you’re looking at her. Just give it more time, that’s all I’m asking. Maybe you are just trying too hard. If you could just learn to relax and enjoy being with him instead of overanalyzing the situation then I’m sure it would work out”
I stood staring at Gail. In a way, she was right. I had been trying way too hard to make something romantic happen with Kurt. Maybe that was the problem. While I had no problem dreaming up improbable warrior adventures about Xena, or daydreaming about playing doubles with one of the William Sisters, or a thousand of other equally improbable fantasies, I had been forcing myself to conjure up romantic visions of falling in love with Kurt instead of just letting it happen. Worse, she had exposed my own hypocrisy of how I had changed my appearance in order to fit in more easily at school, just as everybody else had. The truth was, it felt good to no longer only be known for being the smartest girl in school with the prom queen sister and the rich parents. Now kids went out of their way to talk and to be with me.
“Well….,” I told her hesitantly. “I guess I could try. But if he tells me he loves me, and I can’t return that love, I’m going to tell him so. I don’t want to hurt Kurt.”
“Fair enough, Laurie,” she told me. “When are you going out again?”
“We have a date Friday night,” I told her.
“Perfect. Go somewhere romantic. Take a walk in the park or something. Quit trying so hard, Laurie!”
I had hoped to leave Gail’s home with a clear mind and a clear conscious. Instead I left with thoughts more convoluted than ever, and a conscious nagging at me the way Mom would nag Little Frank to get him to do his homework or how she would goad Dad into mowing the lawn.
When I returned to the house, the twins, Patsy Lynn and LeAnn Faith were running around playing cops and robbers, Little Frank was practicing his diving with Dad as his instructor, and Mom was sitting and trying to read while keeping a watchful eye on LeAnn and Patsy. She looked up at me and greeted me as I walked by. I didn’t acknowledge the greeting, not because I was being rude, but because my own thoughts had blocked my mind out from hearing her.
I went up to my room for some peace and solitude, and for once was glad that Dag was back at college. After changing into my pajamas, I stood looking at the poster of Xena. Then I began chastising myself, wandering what a seventeen year old girl was doing daydreaming about a mythical woman that was nothing more than a five dollar poster hanging above her bed. Maybe I had built the wrong atmosphere around me. If I were to put a few posters up of say….whom?.....hmmmm……..maybe Ashton Kutcher, than it could possibly help get me on the same page as Kurt, Gail, and everybody else I knew. If he was good enough for somebody like Demi Moore, old Ashton should be good enough for me.
“Sorry, Xena, but I think it’s time for you to go. And I guess you guys too,” I said looking over at the Williams Sisters and Mia Hamm.
I laid on the love seat thinking about Kurt and how he was such a great guy and how lucky I was to have him in my life. I would hate not having him around and if I did break it off with him, he would surely move on to someone else quickly. Then I would be dependent on Gail to occupy my time which would not have been a problem except that Gail had become more and more devoted to spending time with Chuck.
I was so preoccupied with these thoughts that I didn’t hear Mom knocking on my door at first.
“Can I come in Laurie,” she asked.
“Sure mom, come on in,” I answered. She walked into the room.
“Is there something wrong, Laurie,” she asked. “You acted like you were in a daze when you came in. You didn’t even tell me hello when I spoke to you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I told her. “No everything is okay, I guess.” I knew the “I guess” part would be a dead giveaway to her that everything was not okay. It was my way of telling her I wanted to talk but wasn’t sure about what or where to begin.
I sat up so she could sit next to me.
“What’s wrong, Laurie? Is it Kurt? Is something wrong at school?” she asked me.
I thought for a moment. “Mom, what was it like when you kissed Dad for the first time.”
Mom smiled as if she were remembering the moment. “It was nice, very nice,” she said. “It was warm and wonderful, and just about perfect.”
“Is it always supposed to be like that?” I asked her.
Mom laughed, but I knew she wasn’t laughing at the question. “Of course not, Laurie. Sometimes you’ll kiss a boy and it’s almost like kissing your brother but you never know until you do it. Your dad and I were a special case when we first kissed. We had known we loved each other for quite a while before we finally kissed each other. That’s what made it special.”
“But before, Dad, you kissed other boys didn’t you? They couldn’t have all been like kissing your brother could they?”
“No Laurie, I kissed a few boys when I was in high school. Some of them were quite nice, and yes sometimes it would get quite passionate. But that was their hormones and mine working overtime, and had little to do with the kind of love your Father and I have.” She paused for a moment. “Is Kurt pressuring you to do something, Laurie?” she asked.
“No, mom! Not at all! It’s not like that!” I answered hurriedly. “Kurt’s a great guy. Just about perfect. I enjoy being with him and everything but when we kiss, I don’t feel anything much at all like you describe. I mean, not even my hormones are acting up!”
Mom chuckled at that. “Laurie, kids develop different
ly. It’s not going to happen the same way for every girl, or even for every boy for that matter. The worst thing you can do is to try too hard to make it happen just because you think it should be a certain way. You’re also going to find that many boys will be pressuring you to go all the way and that just as often you may find yourself wanting to go along. When that happens, more often than not it has very little to do with being in love. It’s more about sex drive and hormones.”
I hesitated before asking my next question. “How did you handle it, or were you able to handle it?”
“That’s very personal, Laurie,” she answered. She knew what the last part of the question meant. “I was tempted to go further quite a few times. Sometimes I was on the brink, but I managed to stop despite the fact that it was often difficult. But I always knew that the boys I dated in high school, or went with, were not really in love with me or was I with them. I knew that when I made love for the first time, I wanted it to be with someone special, somebody I really cared about, and somebody I wanted to share a special moment with. If I had felt that way about one of them, then I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop. What you have to remember Laurie, is that by the time I reached High School, I had already grown up quite a bit after having lost two mothers, taking care of your grandfather and helping to raise your Uncle Nick. But when I married your father, I was glad I did stop all those times because it made being with him that much more special for me.”
“You mean, like rockets and fireworks, and stuff?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Even with your father the first time it wasn’t like that. The rockets, fireworks and explosions came later. It was quite awkward as a matter of fact. What did make it special though is that it made us feel more of a part of each other, even through the awkwardness. Laurie, don’t try to convince yourself you’re in love just because you think you should be, or because everybody else thinks you should be. And don’t ever feel like you have to have sex with some boy just to hang on to him. If he tells you that you have to do it to keep him, then he doesn’t really care that much. But I know you well enough Laurie that when you do decide to have sex, you’ll do it on your own terms and not some artificial ones laid down by someone else.”
“Do you think it’s wrong for me to try and fit in at school a lot more?” I asked quickly. I wanted to change the subject.
“My, you do have a lot of things on your mind tonight, Laurie! Is th
at why you don’t wear your 
glasses or pony tail anymore? You’re going to find as you grow older that you do have to compromise in a lot of ways in order to get along, whether it’s work, friends, school or whatever. But you can only compromise on the things that aren’t important to you as a person. Don’t ever compromise who you are, or what your values are just to fit in. And most of all, don’t compromise what you believe in just to be accepted. Once you begin selling out your values, Laurie, then it never stops, and in the end you’ll be hurt or you’ll hurt someone in the process. So don’t change who you are just to get along. And don’t compromise who you are because you think you are supposed to be in love or are in love with someone. That’s too high a price for anyone to pay.”
It went without saying that the last thing she said was a direct reference to Dag’s failed romance with Andy. It was her way of telling me to learn something from my sister’s mistake. It kind of made me smile. She got up to leave.
“Everything okay now, Laurie?” she asked.
“Well, I understand things a lot better,” I told her.
She chuckled. “I guess that’s something then,” She gave me a hug and left me alone.
I was finally ready to go to sleep. I walked over to my bed. “Okay,” I said looking at my posters. “I guess you gals can stay around a while longer.” I smiled and soon I had drifted off to sleep.
The very next Saturday morning I was in the living room reading to Patsy while Mom fixed breakfast. Dad was helping her and keeping her company. Little Frank was playing cops and robbers with LeAnn. I was in the middle of my second reading of Green Eggs and Ham when the doorbell rang. I quickly jumped up, hollering, “I’ll get it!”
I opened the door to dad’s friend and attorney, Jay Daggett.
“Hi Mr. Daggett, Come on in,” I told him.
“Is your father around, Laurie? I need to speak to him.” Dad’s lawyer was usually a friendly kind of guy, but today he sounded grim. He had no sooner spoken than Dad came into the living room.
“Hi, Jay! You’re just in time for breakfast. What brings you way over here this early on a Saturday? Is it business or pleasure,” Dad asked.
Daggett laughed. “Well, it’s always a pleasure to come over, especially when I can smell Bettie’s cooking. But I’m really here on business. Let’s go sit down, this might take a while.”
Dad had started to the living room. I had just started to head into the kitchen to help mom when Daggett stopped me.
“Laurie, can you join us? I’m afraid this concerns you also.”
“Me? I didn’t do it whatever it is that was done!” I told him. I tried to joke but I was totally mystified. I had no clue as to what was going on. I sat down in the love seat.
Jay wasted no time or words. “As you know Laurie, Joe had asked me to see what I could find out in regards to your grandparents. Well, it seems I have some news but it’s probably not what you wanted to hear. I received word yesterday that your grandparents have passed away, Laurie.”
One thing about Jay Daggett was that he believed in getting to the point right away. I swallowed hard. Despite the things dad had told me about my grandparents I had always hoped to meet them somehow. I wanted to find out for myself if they were as despicable as Dad had said or whether it was an exaggeration conjured up in Dad’s mind when he was younger. It was a faint possibility but a possibility nonetheless”.
I couldn’t speak, nor could I cry for someone I had never met. I just felt kind of numb. Dad spoke for me. “What happened, Jay? How did you find out?”
“I had hired a private detective to help track them down. He was finally able to locate their last known residence but it was no longer occupied. A quick call to the county confirmed that they were both deceased. They had lived practically as hermits for years, having as little contact with anybody as necessary. Since their death, the county they lived in had been trying to find their descendents if there were any so they would know what to do with their property that they left behind In this case, that descendent would be Laurie. She’s their only living relative. Now here’s the strange part. It seems that about six months ago, Justice, Laurie’s grandfather, had a stroke and died. About a month later, Ethyl hung herself in the kitchen.”
A chill ran down my spine, as Jay continued. “They left no will of any kind. Since there was no will, all their belongings including their house automatically belong to Laurie. They had no outstanding debts, and all their property taxes were paid up. They also had a couple of bank accounts, but I have no clue as to how much is in them until I contact the estate lawyer appointed by the court. . It’ll take quite a while to get the estate settled.”
“Where were they living? What kind of a house did they live in?” I asked.
“They were living in a town called Waverly. It’s outside of Barstow about twenty miles or so. I don’t know anything about the house, but they are
supposed to send me a key so we can check it out.”
“When do you suppose we should do that, Jay? You can check it out and take care of it. I have no desire to do so,” Dad told him.
“I thought I would take a drive up there next Saturday,” He answered.
“I want to go,” I said. “I want to see.”
“What on earth for, Laurie?” Dad asked me. “What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”
“They were my grandparents, Dad! They may have been rotten but they were still my grandparents. Maybe they had some pictures of mom or something else belong to her that she left behind. I have to find out for myself.”
Dad looked at me for a moment as if he were unsure. “What do you think Jay? We can all ride up together.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Jay told him. “It will be her house and property, so I don’t see any harm in it. Truthfully though, from what Susan told me before she died, and from what you told me Joe, I’m not particularly looking forward to it.”
“Thanks, Jay,” I told him. “Thanks, Dad.”
Just then Mom entered the room. “Are you staying for breakfast, Jay?” She asked him.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he told her.
I got up and started into the dining room. “What’s going on anyway,” Mom asked.
“Nothing much,” Jay told her. “Except that Laurie just inherited a house.”
Mom stared at him. “A house? What kind of a house?”
“We’ll explain over breakfast,” Dad told her. That Saturday would be a strange day for me. I had a feeling of loss, apprehension, and curiosity which overwhelmed me all day. It was all I could do later to get ready for my date with Kurt.
insisted on it from each of Gail’s friends, yet Gail herself never referred to her as anything but Mom. When Marcella had become pregnant with Gail, Gail’s father had shown his backbone by leaving town, never to be heard from again. It had been an uphill struggle for Marcella all of her life. Marcella had worked for years being a waitress, sometimes at two or three jobs at once. It had been a slow steady progress advancing from those jobs, to being a short order cook, finally becoming a head cook in a nice restaurant, and finally becoming a restaurant manager about the same time that Gail had started high school. Now, they were able to finally live comfortably, if not extravagantly.
“I was just relaxing and watching television for a change,” she told me. “You can sit here with me until Gail gets back.”
“I’m glad you came over, Laurie. I was afraid it would be Chuck again. I don’t trust that boy but there’s not much I can do about it. I just don’t want Gail getting in over her head.”
“Don’t worry about Gail,” I told her. “She’s headstrong but she’s not stupid.”
“I know she’s got this strange idea of being with
Chuck because she thinks he’s going to be a great football player or something, but I believe he’s just using her. She thinks she’s in love with him, she says he said that he loves her too. Laurie, I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but are they sleeping together? I mean that I can just about guess that they are. I only want to be sure that Gail is taking precautions. She of all people should know how difficult it is for a single mother to raise a child.”I was beginning to squirm. Did I know for a fact that Gail and Chuck were sleeping together? I had of course, never been an eyewitness to such an event, and Gail had never came out explicitly and said, "Hey Laurie, did you know that Kurt and I are into screwing each other's brains out? It was a good job of rationalizing so that I could squirm around the truth and that is exactly what I did.
“I don’t know. She’s never said anything to me about it. Believe me though, having a baby is the last thing in the world that Gail wants.” I think Mar
cella understood my answer. Yes, in all likelihood they had gone all the way, even if I couldn’t testify to the event in a court of law, but Gail would be no fool when it came to birth control. That thought reassured her.I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Gail popped through the door to put an end to the conversation that was becoming more than a bit uncomfortable and after she had put the groceries away, Gail came quickly back to the living room.
“Let me guess what you two are talking about. Mom is telling you how much she doesn’t trust Chuck. She’s then telling you she’s worried about me and probably is trying to pry some information out of you that you don’t have. Am I right, mom?”
Gail was smiling when she said it. She had not said it in a harsh way.“Gail! It’s just because I worry about you. There’s nothing wrong with a mother worrying about her daughter.”
“No mom, there isn’t, but I’m not about to do anything stupid. I love you mom, and I appreciate all your sacrifices you’ve made and everything you’ve done for us. I’ve seen what can happen with my own eyes, so quit worrying. I'll come back down later and watch a movie with you, mom. Laurie and I’ll be in my room talking for a while.”
“Okay, Gail, I shouldn’t meddle so much.” Marcella said.
“Mom!” Gail said. “You have every right to meddle. If you didn’t meddle than I would think you didn’t love me. I just don’t want you to worry about me needlessly. You’ve worried yourself to death since the day I was born. It’s time for you to start relaxing a little, enjoy things, and find yourself a guy!” Gail walked over to hug her. “Please mom, don’t worry.”
Now, there are plenty of things one could say about Gail, and some of those things might be bad. But there was no denying how much she loved Marcella, and the bond between them was strong and unbreakable. I watched as Gail hugged her back and told her she’d quit worrying, but I knew that Marcella would always worry about Gail.Once we were in her room Gail wasted no time in questioning me.
”So what did you tell her?” she asked.
“The same thing that you did, that you weren’t stupid and you’d be careful. You are being careful, aren’t you?”
Gail made a face. “Of course I am. Don’t worry about it.” She quickly changed the subject.
“What about you and Kurt? How are things progressing?”
“Well, about the same as always except that I think he’s falling in love with me.”
Gail did not try to hide her joy at hearing that. “That’s great, Laurie! Has he told you yet? I knew once the two of you got together that it would work out!”
“He hasn’t told me yet, Gail, and I don’t want him falling in love with me.”
“Are you nuts,” She began by yelling but quickly lowered her voice by the time she reached the word nuts saying it in almost a whisper. “W
hy the hell not?”“Because, Gail, I don’t feel the same way about him. I like Kurt, I like being with him and hanging out and stuff, but I don’t love him. At least not the kind of love you’re thinking about.”
“Geezus Laurie, give it time! I can understand you wanting to take things slow, but this is ridiculous. He’s the first guy you’ve ever gone with for more than two dates and you’ve been going out for six months now. That must mean something.”
“He’s the first guy that’s ever treated me as an equal, that’s what that means. It means I have a good time when we’re out on a date. It means I think of him as a good friend. It means…oh hell I don’t know what it means. Right now I can’t think of him as anything more than a good friend, and I’m sure that’s what I’ll always think of him as,” I told her. “I can’t keep leading him on and when you get right down to it, that’s what I’m doing. I’m telling you Gail, he’s getting serious, VERY serious.”
“Laurie, you don’t know how you’re going to feel a month from now or six months from now. I’ve seen you two together. You don’t kiss somebody who’s just a friend the way I’ve seen you kissing Kurt.”“Dammit Gail, have you and Chuck been spying on us?”
“No, of course not,” she answered quickly. “We just saw you once accidentally when we were walking back up through the park to meet you.”
I didn’t find her answer to be totally satisfactory but decided to give Gail the benefit of the doubt. “That’s just it, Gail. When I kiss him, that’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like I’m only doing it because I’m supposed to. Kurt gets turned on just fine, but I don’t at all. It’ll be best if we break up now so Kurt doesn’t begin to think this is going to head somewhere that it’s not.”
“You can’t do that Laurie. You just can’t.” This time she made no effort to lower her voice. “If you do this now, you might as well forget your senior year. You’ll be back to being a nobody.”
“I was a nobody before, Gail, and it never seemed to matter to anyone.” I told her.
“It won’t be like it was before, Laurie. You don’t du
mp one of the most popular guys in school for no reason and come out of it smelling like a rose.”“I do have a reason. It’s not fair to Kurt for him to think there is something there or a chance for something to be there when there isn’t. I can’t do it.” My head was beginning to spin as our argument seemed to be going around in circles.
“Laurie, Kurt has been nothing but great to you. Everybody knows that. If you break up with him, people are really going to think you are weird.”
“Why am I weird, Gail? Because I want to be somebody, because I want to do something important? Because I don’t think I should be leading a nice guy on? Why is that so weird?”
“I’m not talking about that, Laurie. I think it’s great that you want to be Dr. Super Duper Surgeon. More power to you. But this is completely different. Before kids spoke in
whispers, and those whispers can quickly become quite loud chants filled with taunts and accusations! Laurie, you’re almost like a sister to me. I don’t want to see you hurt!”“I won’t get hurt,” I told her. “Let them talk. What harm can it do? I’m used to it.”
“Right, Laurie. You WERE used to it,” she said emphasizing the word were. “Look at you now. You don’t wear that awful pony tail anymore; I haven’t seen your glasses on you in a month. For all your high and mighty preaching you’re no different than the rest of us. You found out you could fit in and you liked it for the same reason I do and everybody else does. It makes life a heckuva lot easier. If you are going to dump Kurt for no reason, you might as well go home, take your makeup off, put the pony tail in and throw away your contact lenses, then stand in a corner from now until you graduate from school because you can count on having one friend and one
friend only and you’re looking at her. Just give it more time, that’s all I’m asking. Maybe you are just trying too hard. If you could just learn to relax and enjoy being with him instead of overanalyzing the situation then I’m sure it would work out”I stood staring at Gail. In a way, she was right. I had been trying way too hard to make something romantic happen with Kurt. Maybe that was the problem. While I had no problem dreaming up improbable warrior adventures about Xena, or daydreaming about playing doubles with one of the William Sisters, or a thousand of other equally improbable fantasies, I had been forcing myself to conjure up romantic visions of falling in love with Kurt instead of just letting it happen. Worse, she had exposed my own hypocrisy of how I had changed my appearance in order to fit in more easily at school, just as everybody else had. The truth was, it felt good to no longer only be known for being the smartest girl in school with the prom queen sister and the rich parents. Now kids went out of their way to talk and to be with me.
“Well….,” I told her hesitantly. “I guess I could try. But if he tells me he loves me, and I can’t return that love, I’m going to tell him so. I don’t want to hurt Kurt.”“Fair enough, Laurie,” she told me. “When are you going out again?”
“We have a date Friday night,” I told her.
“Perfect. Go somewhere romantic. Take a walk in the park or something. Quit trying so hard, Laurie!”
I had hoped to leave Gail’s home with a clear mind and a clear conscious. Instead I left with thoughts more convoluted than ever, and a conscious nagging at me the way Mom would nag Little Frank to get him to do his homework or how she would goad Dad into mowing the lawn.
When I returned to the house, the twins, Patsy Lynn and LeAnn Faith were running around playing cops and robbers, Little Frank was practicing his diving with Dad as his instructor, and Mom was sitting and trying to read while keeping a watchful eye on LeAnn and Patsy. She looked up at me and greeted me as I walked by. I didn’t acknowledge the greeting, not because I was being rude, but because my own thoughts had blocked my mind out from hearing her.
I went up to my room for some peace and solitude, and for once was glad that Dag was back at college. After changing into my pajamas, I stood looking at the poster of Xena. Then I began chastising myself, wandering what a seventeen year old girl was doing daydreaming about a mythical woman that was nothing more than a five dollar poster hanging above her bed. Maybe I had built the wrong atmosphere around me. If I were to put a few posters up of say….whom?.....hmmmm……..maybe Ashton Kutcher, than it could possibly help get me on the same page as Kurt, Gail, and everybody else I knew. If he was good enough for somebody like Demi Moore, old Ashton should be good enough for me.
“Sorry, Xena, but I think it’s time for you to go. And I guess you guys too,” I said looking over at the Williams Sisters and Mia Hamm.
I laid on the love seat thinking about Kurt and how he was such a great guy and how lucky I was to have him in my life. I would hate not having him around and if I did break it off with him, he would surely move on to someone else quickly. Then I would be dependent on Gail to occupy my time which would not have been a problem except that Gail had become more and more devoted to spending time with Chuck.
I was so preoccupied with these thoughts that I didn’t hear Mom knocking on my door at first.
“Can I come in Laurie,” she asked.“Sure mom, come on in,” I answered. She walked into the room.
“Is there something wrong, Laurie,” she asked. “You acted like you were in a daze when you came in. You didn’t even tell me hello when I spoke to you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I told her. “No everything is okay, I guess.” I knew the “I guess” part would be a dead giveaway to her that everything was not okay. It was my way of telling her I wanted to talk but wasn’t sure about what or where to begin.
I sat up so she could sit next to me.
“What’s wrong, Laurie? Is it Kurt? Is something wrong at school?” she asked me.
I thought for a moment. “Mom, what was it like when you kissed Dad for the first time.”
Mom smiled as if she were remembering the moment. “It was nice, very nice,” she said. “It was warm and wonderful, and just about perfect.”
“Is it always supposed to be like that?” I asked her.
Mom laughed, but I knew she wasn’t laughing at the question. “Of course not, Laurie. Sometimes you’ll kiss a boy and it’s almost like kissing your brother but you never know until you do it. Your dad and I were a special case when we first kissed. We had known we loved each other for quite a while before we finally kissed each other. That’s what made it special.”
“But before, Dad, you kissed other boys didn’t you? They couldn’t have all been like kissing your brother could they?”
“No Laurie, I kissed a few boys when I was in high school. Some of them were quite nice, and yes sometimes it would get quite passionate. But that was their hormones and mine working overtime, and had little to do with the kind of love your Father and I have.” She paused for a moment. “Is Kurt pressuring you to do something, Laurie?” she asked.
“No, mom! Not at all! It’s not like that!” I answered hurriedly. “Kurt’s a great guy. Just about perfect. I enjoy being with him and everything but when we kiss, I don’t feel anything much at all like you describe. I mean, not even my hormones are acting up!”
Mom chuckled at that. “Laurie, kids develop different
ly. It’s not going to happen the same way for every girl, or even for every boy for that matter. The worst thing you can do is to try too hard to make it happen just because you think it should be a certain way. You’re also going to find that many boys will be pressuring you to go all the way and that just as often you may find yourself wanting to go along. When that happens, more often than not it has very little to do with being in love. It’s more about sex drive and hormones.”I hesitated before asking my next question. “How did you handle it, or were you able to handle it?”
“That’s very personal, Laurie,” she answered. She knew what the last part of the question meant. “I was tempted to go further quite a few times. Sometimes I was on the brink, but I managed to stop despite the fact that it was often difficult. But I always knew that the boys I dated in high school, or went with, were not really in love with me or was I with them. I knew that when I made love for the first time, I wanted it to be with someone special, somebody I really cared about, and somebody I wanted to share a special moment with. If I had felt that way about one of them, then I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop. What you have to remember Laurie, is that by the time I reached High School, I had already grown up quite a bit after having lost two mothers, taking care of your grandfather and helping to raise your Uncle Nick. But when I married your father, I was glad I did stop all those times because it made being with him that much more special for me.”
“You mean, like rockets and fireworks, and stuff?” I asked.She chuckled. “Even with your father the first time it wasn’t like that. The rockets, fireworks and explosions came later. It was quite awkward as a matter of fact. What did make it special though is that it made us feel more of a part of each other, even through the awkwardness. Laurie, don’t try to convince yourself you’re in love just because you think you should be, or because everybody else thinks you should be. And don’t ever feel like you have to have sex with some boy just to hang on to him. If he tells you that you have to do it to keep him, then he doesn’t really care that much. But I know you well enough Laurie that when you do decide to have sex, you’ll do it on your own terms and not some artificial ones laid down by someone else.”
“Do you think it’s wrong for me to try and fit in at school a lot more?” I asked quickly. I wanted to change the subject.
“My, you do have a lot of things on your mind tonight, Laurie! Is th
at why you don’t wear your 
glasses or pony tail anymore? You’re going to find as you grow older that you do have to compromise in a lot of ways in order to get along, whether it’s work, friends, school or whatever. But you can only compromise on the things that aren’t important to you as a person. Don’t ever compromise who you are, or what your values are just to fit in. And most of all, don’t compromise what you believe in just to be accepted. Once you begin selling out your values, Laurie, then it never stops, and in the end you’ll be hurt or you’ll hurt someone in the process. So don’t change who you are just to get along. And don’t compromise who you are because you think you are supposed to be in love or are in love with someone. That’s too high a price for anyone to pay.”It went without saying that the last thing she said was a direct reference to Dag’s failed romance with Andy. It was her way of telling me to learn something from my sister’s mistake. It kind of made me smile. She got up to leave.
“Everything okay now, Laurie?” she asked.“Well, I understand things a lot better,” I told her.
She chuckled. “I guess that’s something then,” She gave me a hug and left me alone.
I was finally ready to go to sleep. I walked over to my bed. “Okay,” I said looking at my posters. “I guess you gals can stay around a while longer.” I smiled and soon I had drifted off to sleep.
The very next Saturday morning I was in the living room reading to Patsy while Mom fixed breakfast. Dad was helping her and keeping her company. Little Frank was playing cops and robbers with LeAnn. I was in the middle of my second reading of Green Eggs and Ham when the doorbell rang. I quickly jumped up, hollering, “I’ll get it!”
I opened the door to dad’s friend and attorney, Jay Daggett.
“Hi Mr. Daggett, Come on in,” I told him.
“Is your father around, Laurie? I need to speak to him.” Dad’s lawyer was usually a friendly kind of guy, but today he sounded grim. He had no sooner spoken than Dad came into the living room.
“Hi, Jay! You’re just in time for breakfast. What brings you way over here this early on a Saturday? Is it business or pleasure,” Dad asked.
Daggett laughed. “Well, it’s always a pleasure to come over, especially when I can smell Bettie’s cooking. But I’m really here on business. Let’s go sit down, this might take a while.”
Dad had started to the living room. I had just started to head into the kitchen to help mom when Daggett stopped me.
“Laurie, can you join us? I’m afraid this concerns you also.”
“Me? I didn’t do it whatever it is that was done!” I told him. I tried to joke but I was totally mystified. I had no clue as to what was going on. I sat down in the love seat.
Jay wasted no time or words. “As you know Laurie, Joe had asked me to see what I could find out in regards to your grandparents. Well, it seems I have some news but it’s probably not what you wanted to hear. I received word yesterday that your grandparents have passed away, Laurie.”
One thing about Jay Daggett was that he believed in getting to the point right away. I swallowed hard. Despite the things dad had told me about my grandparents I had always hoped to meet them somehow. I wanted to find out for myself if they were as despicable as Dad had said or whether it was an exaggeration conjured up in Dad’s mind when he was younger. It was a faint possibility but a possibility nonetheless”.
I couldn’t speak, nor could I cry for someone I had never met. I just felt kind of numb. Dad spoke for me. “What happened, Jay? How did you find out?”
“I had hired a private detective to help track them down. He was finally able to locate their last known residence but it was no longer occupied. A quick call to the county confirmed that they were both deceased. They had lived practically as hermits for years, having as little contact with anybody as necessary. Since their death, the county they lived in had been trying to find their descendents if there were any so they would know what to do with their property that they left behind In this case, that descendent would be Laurie. She’s their only living relative. Now here’s the strange part. It seems that about six months ago, Justice, Laurie’s grandfather, had a stroke and died. About a month later, Ethyl hung herself in the kitchen.”
A chill ran down my spine, as Jay continued. “They left no will of any kind. Since there was no will, all their belongings including their house automatically belong to Laurie. They had no outstanding debts, and all their property taxes were paid up. They also had a couple of bank accounts, but I have no clue as to how much is in them until I contact the estate lawyer appointed by the court. . It’ll take quite a while to get the estate settled.”
“Where were they living? What kind of a house did they live in?” I asked.
“They were living in a town called Waverly. It’s outside of Barstow about twenty miles or so. I don’t know anything about the house, but they are
supposed to send me a key so we can check it out.”“When do you suppose we should do that, Jay? You can check it out and take care of it. I have no desire to do so,” Dad told him.
“I thought I would take a drive up there next Saturday,” He answered.
“I want to go,” I said. “I want to see.”
“What on earth for, Laurie?” Dad asked me. “What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”
“They were my grandparents, Dad! They may have been rotten but they were still my grandparents. Maybe they had some pictures of mom or something else belong to her that she left behind. I have to find out for myself.”
Dad looked at me for a moment as if he were unsure. “What do you think Jay? We can all ride up together.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Jay told him. “It will be her house and property, so I don’t see any harm in it. Truthfully though, from what Susan told me before she died, and from what you told me Joe, I’m not particularly looking forward to it.”
“Thanks, Jay,” I told him. “Thanks, Dad.”
Just then Mom entered the room. “Are you staying for breakfast, Jay?” She asked him.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he told her.
I got up and started into the dining room. “What’s going on anyway,” Mom asked.
“Nothing much,” Jay told her. “Except that Laurie just inherited a house.”
Mom stared at him. “A house? What kind of a house?”
“We’ll explain over breakfast,” Dad told her. That Saturday would be a strange day for me. I had a feeling of loss, apprehension, and curiosity which overwhelmed me all day. It was all I could do later to get ready for my date with Kurt.
~~~14~~~
~~~Narration by Laurie~~~
Kurt picked me up promptly as usual. This time we headed to the arcade where we met up with Chuck and Gail. Kurt and Chuck were both hitting the slots and video games, which gave me a chance to tell Gail about Jay’s visit.
“That’s just totally awesome, Laurie. I mean, owning your own house and stuff. And they had money in bank accounts to boot? How much is it?”“Jay didn’t know for sure. He said it’ll take a while to get things ironed out. I don’t care about that anyway. I still would have liked to have met them before they died.”
“Even after the way your dad says they treated your mother? And don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Laurie. With that money you can be completely independent of your parents when you go to college. What more could you want? I wish somebody would die and leave me something,” she said.
“That’s an awful thing to say, Gail,” I told her. “They were still my grandparents, and my last living relatives besides my dad. Maybe they weren’t ALL bad.”“Oh, don’t take it so seriously. I wouldn’t really wish anybody dead. I was just joking,” she said.
Just then Kurt and Chuck joined us. “Feel like going for a walk,” Chuck asked Gail. Gail laughed and got up. “You know I just love going for walks, Chuck. What about you guys?”
As we usually did, we followed Gail and Chuck to the Park. Also as usual, by the time we entered the park, they were no where to be seen. As for Kurt and I, we took up our usual occupancy on a park bench.
I told him about the events of the day as I had Gail. He seemed a lot more sympathetic and understanding than Gail did. And as usual, he wanted to do a little smooching. It was hard for me to concentrate on what I was doing though with the thoughts about my grandparents cluttering my mind and I guess he sensed it, because he quickly sat up taking his arm from around me.“Did I do something wrong?” I asked him.
“No Laurie, most of the
time everything is fine. It’s just that sometimes when I kiss you it seems like you’re a thousand miles away, especially tonight.” He said.“I’m sorry Kurt,” I answered. “I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately.”
“When I kiss you, its okay, isn’t it Laurie,” he asked. “I mean sometimes it just seems…..” he let his voice tail off. I couldn’t believe it. Kurt was asking me if he was the one who couldn’t kiss properly.
“It just seems what, Kurt?” I asked. I was getting a bit nervous about where the conversation was headed.
“It’s like you don’t enjoy it at all, sometimes” he told me. “Sometimes, it’s good, sometimes it’s exceptionally good, but at other times it seems like you would rather we just didn’t kiss at all. Is it me?” Kurt was stumbling over his words as he spoke.“No Kurt, that’s not it at all. I….I…never kissed any boys or anything before you came along. It’s not you. You’ve probably made out with lots of girls before you began dating me. I’m still learning I guess. And sometimes I do have other things on my mind. I’m under a lot of pressure at school to keep my grades maxed out, and maybe I’m…..the truth is Kurt is that I’m probably trying too hard.”
“I haven’t made out as much as you might think, Laurie. I guess I have been getting kind of pushy with you about it lately. Do you enjoy it when we make out?”I swallowed hard. Gail’s words from a few nights ago rang in my head. “Give it time,” I kept thinking to myself. “It’ll come to you. Don’t blow this relationship because your hormones are physically retarded.” Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him, so I did the only other thing I could do short of telling him the truth. I evaded the issue.
“Kurt, I love going out with you. We always have a great time. You don’t treat me the way other guys always did. Not to mention you’re funny and smart. I just don’t want to take things too fast. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Kurt?”“I think so, Laurie,” he replied glumly. But I really didn’t think he did. “I do care a great deal about you,” he continued, “I like being with you, and sometimes I’m just happy when we sit and talk for hours on end. When we talk, we talk about so many different things. When I used to call other girls on the phone, most of them wanted to do nothing but talk goofy to me or hang on the phone for hours and say nothing. You’ve never done that. I think what we have is special.”
“I think our friendship is special too, Kurt,” I answered him making sure I used and emphasized the word friendship. “But let’s be realistic. In just over a year, I’ll be off to college studying medicine. And it’ll be years before I finish. You’ll probably be somewhere else, far away, studying architecture. You don’t want to give up your dreams and I know I won’t. So why even think about getting serious? Can’t we just take it slow and be friends for now? If you or I either one think of carrying the relationship any further than that, it’s just going to lead to disappointment for one of us or both of us.”
He sat silently for a moment, as if trying to come to terms with what I had just said. And then he frowned. “I guess I see what you’re saying, Laurie. And I do want to keep going out with you. I guess the problem is that deep down inside I know you’re right. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. Sometimes the truth is hard to take.”
As we stood up, I kissed him, as passionately as I thought one could. “I really don’t deserve you,” I told him. And I meant it. From everything he had said I knew for sure that he was beginning to feel the pains of love. I could only hope that everything I had told him would take root, and he would understand that any romantic dreams of the future between us were impossible. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to hurt him.
“Now that’s a good kiss,” he said laughing hoping to lighten the mood. Then he kissed me back. And all I could think of is why, why couldn’t I fall in love with this wonderful guy that I didn’t deserve to be with. And as he kissed me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gail and Chuck returning from places unknown. It was time to leave.
~~~15~~~
~~~Narration by Laurie~~~
The following Saturday, Dad and I awoke early. He had insisted that mom not get up to see us off and that we would have breakfast elsewhere. At 6 a.m., Jay Daggett pulled up and we left. It was about a two and a half hour drive to Barstow, where we stopped to have breakfast, and it took us another half hour to find the house of my g
randparents, Justice and Ethyl Pendleton.The house was a large two story stucco dwelling, painted in a distinct dingy yellow, a bit different from the undistinguishable dingy beige which was common place for the California desert. I had expected the grass to be about two feet high, but as it was there was no grass. The oddest thing about the house was the fact that the windows were all stained glass, as if it had once been a church, and the front doors were heavy and wooden, as if they had lost their way from medieval times. The mailbox still carried the name of Pendleton on it.
“I guess this is it,” Jay told us. We walked up to the front door which he quickly unlocked. When he pushed it opened, the hinges squeaked louder than the joints of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. We walked inside and as we did I shivered as a chill crept slowly down my spine.
The house was sparsely furnished, smelled incredibly musty, but not as dusty as one would expect it to be. The thing that struck me first were the religious paintings covering the wall from one end to another. But they weren’t the variety of paintings that one might find in most religious homes. Every single one of them was of the crucifixion. There were no Sacred Hearts, no Virgin Mary, no Last Supper, and certainly no Resurrection. I half expected Carrie White to be lurking around some where, and if not her, then at least her mother.
A picture of my grandparents hung alone on one small wall. I don't know if you've every seen the dour looking farm couple in the painting "American Gothic", but the picture of Justice and Ethyl Pendleton made that couple seem like a barrel of laughs. Ethyl was wearing a plain black dress, and Justice was wearing a black suit as if they were preparing to go to a funeral. Neither of them was smiling and there was something foreboding about them. For the first time I was suddenly glad I had missed the pleasure of their company.
“It’s not much to look at, is it?” Jay said softly.
“No it isn’t,” Dad replied. I couldn’t help but wish I was tuned in to his thoughts. I knew this had to be difficult for him, for there was no denying his hatred of my grandparents. There was a bookcase in the living room. We checked each book individually but they were all of a religious nature, and at least ten of them were different versions of the bible. There were no secret levers behind any of them opening a forbidden passageway to the unknown.
We walked around the downstairs but there wasn’t much to see. There was no basement. When we reached the kitchen, where Ethyl had hung herself, we crept in cautiously as if we had the absurd notion that she might still be
hanging there.Jay opened the refrigerator door, and the stench of rotting food quickly filled the house. He slammed it shut. We opened the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, but the only thing that was left in them were the usual things you could find in any kitchen. My hopes were beginning to sink, as I saw no signs of all that I would find any kind of a connection with my mother by anything the Pendleton’s had left behind. But we still had the upstairs to explore yet and that was our next stop.
The first room we came to was obviously their bedroom. Eerily, one side of the bed was still turned down, as if Ethyl had just awaken only to go downstairs to do herself in. Unlike the downstairs walls, there were no paintings or pictures. There was a dresser in the room, so we walked over and began going through it. There were still clothes in it, several men’s suits, all of them black, and several woman’s dresses, all of them plain and black also, along with other men’s and women’s undergarments. We rummaged through the drawers but there was nothing else and my heart sank again.
There were two more rooms to check though. As we reached the first one, I held my breath as Jay opened it and we walked inside.
“Jackpot,” Jay said. The fact that the room was a mess was the bad news. The good news was there were many sealed boxes, and a chest straight out of a pirate movie which was what made it a mess.
“They must have lived here for at least sixteen years,” Dad said. “You would have thought they would have found some time to unpack this stuff. It’ll take us forever to go through these things. Maybe we should come back.”
“Dad! Can’t we please go through some of them?” I asked. “It’s early yet. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Are you in a hurry, Jay,” Dad asked him.
“No, I’m okay. We can look for a while.”
I went over to the chest while Dad and Jay began going through the boxes. After moving some of them around I was finally able to pull the chest out. It was heavy but I tried to open it. The lid wouldn't budge. It was locked.
“I guess I won’t be looking in here,” I told them. “It’s locked.”
“Not for long, it isn’t,” Jay told me. “These are the
keys the county gave me” There were six or seven keys on the key ring he pulled out of his pocket. “One of these might fit.”Jay walked over to the chest and tried several of the smaller keys. None of them would even fit in the lock.
“I have one left,” He said. I watched as he inserted the key into the lock and turned it, and he lifted the lid up. The chest was filled with papers. “It’s all yours Laurie,” he said.
While Dad and Jay continued to go through the boxes, I sat down next to the chest, and began going thumbing through the papers. On top there were thousands of religious pamphlets. I began removing them one by one, just to be sure.
Underneath the religious tracts were various bills, and various receipts. I was beginning to wonder whether my grandparents had ever thrown anything away. I was halfway through the chest and was once again beginning to lose hope when I found a single dingy folded sheet of paper. I unfolded it and my excitement began to grow as I realized it was my mother’s birth certificate. I held it in my hands as if I had found a bar of gold or the hope diamond. I read her name, her date of birth, and the hospital she was born in and traced my fingers over them. I felt as if I had found a part of my life. If I found nothing else, that would have been enough.
I neatly refolded it and put it in my shirt pocket.
It wasn’t long before I began to find other items in the chest. And if I had any doubt remaining as to the nature of my grandparents psyche, what I found quickly erased it. The first thing I came to was a notebook. There must have been at least a hundred pages in it. I opened it, and what was hand printed by pencil on the first page was hand printed on every page, back and front, on every line, three times on each line. The printing had obviously been done by a young child, but it was done very neatly, too neatly. And what was printed was this:
I will not cry during prayers. I will not cry during prayers. I will not cry during prayers. I will not cry during prayers. I will not cry during prayers. I will not cry during prayers.
Three times on each line, twenty five lines on the front of each page, and twenty five lines on the back of each page. And there were four or five others just like it with similar phrase such as I will not cough during prayers. In that particular notebook, the printing wasn’t quite as neat, the
lines at times uneven. It was reminiscent of the handwriting of someone who was struggling to write, perhaps because of an illness. A tear dropped from eyes onto the yellowed sheets of lined paper. I quickly set them aside.Underneath the notebooks were three black and white polaroid photographs, of a young child dark haired and very plain. She was wearing a simple plain dress and on the back of each photograph was simply written Susan.
The child in the picture looked lost and alone, and her eyes haunted me. I had never seen a
picture of a child who looked as sad as this, let alone three of them. In none of the pictures did she smile, and she was extremely gaunt, almost anorexic. My eyes were beginning to blur with tears. I set the pictures down next to the notebook.I looked in the chest again. There seemed to be nothing left but religious tracts and as I had done with the others I pulled them out and stacked them to the side. Underneath the tracts though, there was two items left wrapped in a brown paper bag. I opened it up and pulled out what
The first item was a diary. On the cover it said simply, Property of Susan Pendleton. I opened it and began to read, and as I read I began to shake. In the early pages, it was hand printed as the notebook had been. Later it turned into script, but like the printing was extremely neat. The pages were yellow with age, but were in no danger of dissolving.
Most of the early pages were passages of my mother writing to Jesus, telling him to make her a better person so that her mom and dad would love her. But as I read the passages became more and more horrifying and my tears began to soak the yellowed pages. There were passages where she wrote of beatings: “Please God, help me to love you the way daddy and mommy want so they won’t hit me anymore.” One entry was even worse, “Baby Jesus, I do love you. I don’t like being locked in the closet. Please tell mommy and daddy I love you so I won’t have to stay in the dark.” Then there was this one, “Jesus please forgive me. I’m sorry I wet my pants while we were praying but we were praying for so long. I didn’t mean to. Daddy spanked me again, so I won’t do it anymore.” And there were more like it, some of them worse.
Through my tear stained eyes, I picked up the other item, a cigar box that was underneath the diary. In it were more photographs lying face down and held together with a rubber band. I noticed that there was printing on the back, the same printing I had seen before only smaller so that the same phrase could be written on each photograph as often as possible. The phrase was, “Forgive me Jesus.”
I slid the rubber band off, and my shaking hand turned the photographs over. I had thought I had been prepared for anything, but nothing I had ever experienced before had prepared me for this. There were ten different old polaroid photographs of my mother. In some she was young, perhaps five or six, and in others as old as ten or eleven. In each, she was wearing nothing but a pair of panties. In some she faced the camera, and in others her back was turned to it. In one, there were huge red bloody welts down her back and down her legs where
Susan had been whipped mercilessly. In another there were bruises, deep dark purple bruises which completely covered her back. It was the same scene repeated over and over again, front and back as if the photographs were meant to be a reminder, a reminder of sins that had never been committed.I could hear Dad and Jay talking in the background, but their voices seemed to be coming from the end of a long tunnel. The room began to spin violently as the photographs slid loosely out of my hands. My stomach began to churn.
“Laurie, Laurie, what’s wrong,” I heard a voice speaking to me. Then there was a hand on my shoulder and it was as if I had been jolted with electricity. And I began to scream, but it was as if it was someone else’s voice doing the screaming. I felt myself being pulled up off of the floor, and it was then that I realized I Dad had pulled me up and held me close to him. Only then did the room stop spinning.“Holy mother of God!” I heard Jay’s voice say as sobs continued to wrack through my body. And he must have shown the photographs to Dad because it was the one and only time in my life that I remember him having used either the F word, or in this case the M-F word.
"Jay, get the pictures and the diary and let's get out of here." He barked the orders as if he was a general in the army. "She's hysterical."
My body was still shaking mercilessly; My tears had already soaked my dad's sweater. He
scooped me up in his arms as if I were only two years old and I clung to him, holding him as tight as I could."It's okay," he told me. "It's okay baby. They'll never hurt anyone again." Jay opened the door, and Dad carried me through it. The grotesque stories I had only heard about my grandparents had now come to life. They were no longer just the ramblings of my father, they were as real as anything could possibly be. It had happened. And it was worse than anything I could have imagined. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream.
When we were outside again, he held me until my sobs began to subside.
“Why dad? Why would they do that to her? How could anyone do that to a child?”
“I don’t know sweetie, I just don’t know. It’s absolutely senseless. Don’t try to make any sense out of it. There was something mentally wrong with them.”
But all I could think of was my mother and the years of pain, torture, and torment she had
suffered at the hands of two monsters. The images of the photographs had been forever seared into my mind.“What should we do about the house,” Jay asked Dad.
I didn’t let Dad answer. “Burn everything inside then demolish the house. I don’t want their damn house or their money. Sell the land and give the money away, I don’t care. I hope they are burning and rotting in hell for what they did to my mother.”
Jay looked at Dad, who simply nodded affirmatively to him. The ride home was long and torturous. A few short miles down the road, Jay pulled the car over; I opened the door climbed out and began to vomit until there weren’t any contents left in my stomach.
Upon arriving home, I went straight to my room. I stayed there for two days, most of them in bed depressed and disillusioned. Mom had wanted to take me to a doctor but I refused. Physically, there was nothing wrong with me. I think both Mom and Dad finally decided that it was best just to give me the space that I needed, although Mom came up to comfort me quite often for which I was eternally grateful.
I never looked at the photographs of my mother as a child again, for the one glance I had of them was enough to haunt me for a long time. I would forever prefer the portrait of her on my wall, a portrait made during a happier and better time in her life. Except for the photographs of my mom’s beatings, Dad put them away. The other photographs he destroyed along with my mom’s childhood diary. I did not object, for I knew I could never read it again, nor would I ever again be able to look at the horrid photographs. Eventually, the few things that were in the home that were worth anything were sold, with the money given to women’s shelters. The house was eventually demolished, as I requested, and the land sold, with that money also being donated to various organizations to fight child abuse. My grandparents had roughly $75,000 in various bank accounts and other assets and it took Jay a while to sort everything out. When he did, that money went to cancer research to be added to whatever funds were received from Dad’s book.
When Gale called me on the phone asking me about the house, I told her that I didn’t want to talk about it. Not now or ever, and that was that. She objected at first, but I told her I would hang up if she ever asked again. Eventually I was able to tell her what had happened. And for the first time that I could remember, Gail had no smart comeback, or remarks. She simply hugged me and told me she was sorry. I would never speak of the subject with her again, and she never attempted to bring it up. With Kurt, I was even vaguer about the details, and just told him I didn’t really want to talk about it. He respected my wishes.
By the time March turned into April, I was finally able to put the photograph and the diary behind me enough so that I was able to return my life to a state of normalcy, at least for the time being. Because it wasn't too long afterwards that Angela Jordan came into my life and once again my life would never be the same.
~~~16~~~
Narration by Laurie
I remember it now as if were just yesterday. I was just leaving my American Literature class
when my teacher Elizabeth. Schaeffer stopped me in my tracks by calling me over to her desk.“Laurie,” she told me. “As you know, I’m going to be pairing each class member up with someone else for the end of term class project. I want you to pair up with Angela Jordan.”
I was surprised. I knew very little about Angela Jordan except that she was a new girl who had only been attending our school for a month. Angela was in several of my classes, but she seemed to have blended in mostly unnoticed. I had hoped to work with Gail or Kurt on the project.
“I guess I could do it Mrs. Schaeffer,” I told her. “But I don’t really know her. I’ve never talked to her except to say hello.”“Laurie, the reason I’m doing this is because I know you will treat her the same way you treat everybody and you won’t look at it as a burden. Angela has a very difficult time in class, but only because her family moves around so much and she's had to change schools a countless number of times. Her father is an Army Colonel, and he is always being transferred. It’s difficult to keep up when you go from school to school, changing classes and teachers who having different teaching methods. She’s a good kid and very smart. I know you can handle this.”
“Okay, Mrs. Schaeffer,” I told her. “Whatever you want.” At that time, Elizabeth was already one of my favorite teachers in all of my years of schooling. There was some inexplicable rapport and kinship that we seemed to have with one another that I couldn’t quite put my finger on at the time.
Just then there was a knock on the door and Angela entered the room.
Angela, in a lot of ways could almost be described with the same adjectives that had often been used to describe me when I wasn't wearing my pony tail. She was not a raving beauty, but she certainly could be described as attractive or cute. She had been in our class for a month, but the extent of the conversation between us had been, "Hi, How Are you," and answered by "okay". I didn't know if she was shy or was like any teen in a new school, just having trouble adjusting. It was only when she walked over to stand next to me that I noticed how the dark pools of her eyes seemed to sparkle. I didn’t even realize how intently I was looking at Angela until I heard Mrs. Schaeffer’s voice.
“I’m glad you’re here, Angela. I want you to know I’m teaming you up with Laurie for the end of the term project. Laurie is an exceptional student, so I’m sure the two of you will do just fine”
I made a face. It always embarrassed me when a teacher would refer to me as being an exceptional student as if somehow it made me superior to everybody else and set me apart from them. Angela looked at me as if she was sizing me up.
“Okay, Mrs. Schaeffer. If Laurie doesn’t mind, it’ll be okay. Uh…Mrs. Schaeffer, what is it that we’re supposed to do exactly.”
Mrs. Schaeffer laughed. “I’m sorry Angela I forgot to tell you. Well, you have a choice. Everybody is to prepare an essay of a hundred pages. It can either be fiction or non fiction. There really are no set criteria for subject matter. You are both supposed to research it equally, and each of you is to write an equal amount of the essay, in your own words, and present it to the class. If you write a fictional story, it must have an element of truth to it. Whatever grade you get, that grade will apply to both students."
“But Mrs. Schaeffer, that’s not fair to Laurie if I don’t do well. It’ll pull her grade down,” Angela protested. Suddenly I began to like Angela Jordan very much.
“Don’t you worry Angela; I don’t think you’ll pull Laurie’s grade down at all. As a matter of fact, this assignment will probably have just the opposite effect.” I really didn’t care for it when Mrs. Schaeffer said that. I know she meant well, but to me it seemed as if the only way Angela could get a good grade was by doing the project with me.
Once out in the hall way, we stopped to look at each other. It felt awkward, but only for a second.
“Well, it looks like you got stuck with me, Laurie,” Angela said. “Sorry about that.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Hey don’t worry about it. I didn’t get stuck. Now if she had paired me up with Chuck Easterman, than I would have considered that getting stuck with someone.”She laughed. “Yeah, I haven’t been around here long, but long enough to know who’s obnoxious and who’s not. Your boyfriend Kurt is kind of nice though.”
I wasn’t surprised that she knew Kurt and I were dating even though she had only been at our school for about a month. It was a rare occasion in high school when everybody didn’t know everybody else’s business.
“How about you, Angela, do you have a boyfriend?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve never lived in one place long enough to have a boyfriend. And if I did, I’d be lucky if I ever got him past the front door. Dad would want to interrogate whoever it was mercilessly. He’s very strict.”“So, when do you want to start work on the project,” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Whenever and wherever you want to start working. You obviously know more about it than I do. I just have to know ahead of time if we are going to work at your house, so I can tell my parents and Dad can do a CIA check on your family.”
I wasn’t sure whether she was serious or not, until she started laughing. “My house, I guess. We can work up in my room and nobody will b
other us there. Why don’t you come over tomorrow after school and we’ll start planning what we’re going to do. Is that enough time?”“Sure, as long as I’m working on school stuff and you aren’t a guy Dad won’t mind. Do you have a phone number? My dad will want one.” I hurriedly took out a piece of notebook paper and scribbled my address and phone number down.
“Does he need my grade point average and a photocopy of my school record,” I asked.
She laughed. “Nah. But you might include a copy of your social security card and birth certificate.”
Outside the school, I watched as she walked away in the opposite direction towards her home. Suddenly, I was very glad to be working with Angela. She certainly seemed to have a good outlook on life, despite the difficulties she faced from having to move so often and having such a strict father to boot. I watched her until she turned a corner up at the far end of the street.
When Gail found out at school the next day that I would be working with Angela, she was none too pleased. “Damn! I was hoping she would let us work together on this Laurie. I hate to think whom I’m going to get paired up with.”
That same afternoon Gail found out who she her lucky partner was. It was Ryan Fisher, who was an A student like myself, but very snobbish about being one. When Mrs. Fisher had told Gail who she was pairing up with I heard Gail let out a groan.Angela and I met outside the classroom as soon as class was over. Gail was there also and she was in an uproar.
“I can’t believe she stuck me with that little twerp,” she said. “It wouldn’t be so gawdamn bad if he didn’t hold his A+++ average up to everyone like it was the freaking Oscar.”
“Did he ask you when you were going to work together?” Angela asked her.“Ask? No he didn’t ask! The little monster ordered me to be at the Library tonight at 6:00. Orders me around like I’m in the damn Army or something, no offense meant Angela.”
“None taken,” Angel replied. But Gail was on a roll.
“Then he tells me not to be late because he is on a very tight schedule and his time is valuable. And Chuck just laughing his butt off about it. He was afraid I’d get one of the good looking guys. It’s going to be a long three weeks until the end of this project.”
“Well, look at the bright side,” Angela said. Gail and I looked at her.
“What bright side might that be?” Gail asked.
Angela looked as if she was thinking. “Come to think of it Gail, there might not be a bright side.”I couldn’t help but laugh. Gail threw out her arms in exasperation. “See, see what I mean."
When we reached the front of the school, Gail told us she had to leave. "Chuck has a baseball game today and I’m supposed to be there to root him on. Aren’t you going, Laurie? Kurt’s pitching today.”
“No, Angela and I want to get started on this project today. I already told Kurt I wouldn’t be there.” The truth was I had never taken that much of a liking to baseball the way Dad, Mom, Dag and Little Frank had. And besides that, I had really begun looking forward to working on the project with Angela.
“Okay, I’ll call you later,” she said and hurried off.
Angela and I started to leave the school. “Gail is kind of nice,” she said.“Yeah, a bit nutty but she is nice,” I told her.
“Well that too,” Angela said. And we both laughed simultaneously. It was nice to see we were in quick agreement.
Once we were in my room the great debate started. Angela wanted our essay to be fiction and I wanted it to be non-fiction. I was more into research than imagination. I had already been told by more than one teacher over the years that while my essays were always accurate and well done, they did lean toward the dry side.
“I’ve just never been much of one for research, Laurie!” she told me. “I get a headache just looking at an encyclopedia.”
“I’ll do the research, then and you can help with writing the text.” I told her.
“But that wouldn’t be fair to you, Laurie! It’s supposed to be 50-50.”
“Then what do you suggest?” I asked her. “We can’t do both.”
She looked lost in thought for a moment. “Yes we can!” she suddenly shouted. “We’ll do a fictional story, but we’ll do as Mrs. Schaeffer suggested. She said use elements of the truth so we’ll simply use non-fictional events as the background for the story.”“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Well, it’s sort of like the way they do in the movies. They’re always putting fictional stories in historical events. Sort of like Gone with the Wind, A Farewell to Arms, Titanic, or even Red Badge of Courage. It’s done all the time.”
“Angela, you are absolutely positively brilliant,” I told her. “So what do we write about? What historical event or real life setting do we use?”“Well, I have an idea….kind of,” she told me. “Why don’t we do a story about the war in Iraq? We can make a story about a soldier in the reserves who is about to finish his commitment to the services. We’ll make him a teacher or something. And suddenly he gets called back to active duty and has to go over to Iraq, leaving his wife and kids. I’ve met people like this, Laurie. It really happens. We can write about how his family copes with him being away, and
how he copes in Iraq being away from him.”I sat down at the computer and we began to outline the story from start to finish, marking the places that would require some research. It took us a couple of hours but as we both shared ideas, before long the two of us seemed to be operating on the same wavelength. Sometimes we would ask each other things or talk about things unrelated to the project. She saw my poster of the Williams Sisters.
“Oh Laurie, aren’t they great!” she exclaimed. I got to see them play at the U.S. open a few years
back. Someone owed Dad a favor and he got tickets when we were stationed back East. My mom and I went. Dad hates tennis”“I’m so jealous,” I told her. “I’d give anything to meet them. And the U.S. Open! That is so cool!” I couldn’t believe I had found someone interested in many of the same things as I was. I found out that at one time Angela had run track, but switching schools so often had made her give it up.
Suddenly Angela looked at her watch. “Oh heck,
I’ve got to go or my dad will put me before a firing squad. When do you want to work on this again? Tomorrow?” She seemed eager to continue with the work as much as I was. The afternoon had flown by.But then I made a face. I wanted to but tomorrow was Friday and I had already made a commitment to go out with Kurt. “I can’t tomorrow. Kurt and I are going to the movies.”
Angela looked disappointed. “Why don’t you go to the movies with us?” I asked her.
“I don’t think my dad would let me,” she told me. “Especially if he knows there’s a boy along. And your boyfriend probably wouldn’t care for me tagging along either. You can’t do that to him, Laurie.”
“Your father doesn’t have to know. We can meet Kurt at the theater. It's not like you'll be going out with a guy. I’ll come over and pick you up. Kurt won’t mind. Your dad would let you go with me especially if I showed him this.”
“Show him what, Laurie?” she asked.
“Give me five minutes, and then you can leave,” I told her.
I hurried into the bathroom, removed my contacts, wiped off much of my makeup and threw my hair into a pony tail quickly and put my long ne
glected glasses on. I emerged from the bathroom and posed.“See Angela, instant geek!” Angela had only been at our school for a month so she had never seen what used to be my normal every day look.
Angela laughed. “Geez Laurie, is that really you? Yeah, I think dad would think you’d be quite safe to be with. Well if you’re sure Kurt won’t mind. I’ll ask Mom and Dad tonight and let you know tomorrow.”
“He won’t mind,” I told her. “Let me know tomorrow morning, first thing.”
“Okay, I’ve got to run if I’m going to make it home on time. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She literally flew out the door and down the steps.
Angela persuaded her father to let her go out to the movie with me and called me with the news before I left for school so I quickly called Kurt. When I told Kurt about it, he didn’t seem too happy but then I laid a sob story on him about how Angela was really cool and didn’t have any friends because her family moved so often, he began to melt. I topped it off with how nice it would be for her to finally have some real friends for a change and that did the trick.I promptly arrived at her home to pick her up at five o’clock, and I was in full geek mode along with being as polite as I possibly could. Mr. Jordan was a tall muscular, huge, intimidating man. Of course Mr. Jordan interrogated me as if I was a prisoner of war. It went something like this:
“What does your father do, Laurie?”
“Uh…he’s a millionaire….and a writer.”“Oh, he’s made a lot of money as a writer. What does he write?”
“Well sir, he was a millionaire first, and then he became a writer.”
“Oh? How many books has he written?”
“One,” I answered. “It was just published.”
“What’s the name of the book.”
“It’s called The Kid & Me.”“Well the fact that you have writing experience in your family should help you and Angela with your school project. Angela tells me you’re a straight A student.
“Yes, sir,”
“Is your father’s book about children, Laurie?”
“No sir, it’s actually a tribute to my mother but there are kids in it.”
It was Mrs. Jordan who saved me at that point.“I think that’s just wonderful, someone writing a book that’s a tribute to their wife,” she said. “Why don’t you write me a book, Philip?”
“Maybe when I retire, Louise,” he answered. “You two run along now.” Mrs. Jordan winked at us and we left.
“Your mom’s kind of cool,” I told Angela.
“Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes when dad’s away she let’s me do things I can’t always do when he’s around.”
I wasn’t sure that Kurt was that happy to see me back in my geek outfit, but he didn’t say anything when we met him in front of the theater. We stopped to talk for a bit, and he did his best to make conversation with Angela as much as he did me. We finally went inside to see the movie.
Later, we went to the beanery and the three of us had coffee and cappuccinos. Angela told us all kinds of stories about the places she had lived. She had even lived overseas a few times, in France, Germany and once in Great Britain. I found it fascinating, but Kurt looked kind of bored. We ended up losing track of time though and had to hurry to get Angela home. Kurt waited for me around the block, while I walked up with her. Her mom invited me in for a while but I told them I had to get home also and I hurried off.Kurt was waiting under a street lamp and I greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“For being such a good sport,” I told him.
“Aah, she’s okay I guess,” he told me
We went for our usual walk in the park. And of course, Kurt wanted to do the usual smooching but I didn’t mind. I had made up my mind that somehow, someway, I was going to find a way to get Angela’s father to loosen his iron clad grip at least somewhat. I mean for Pete’s sake, the girl was seventeen! And that’s what was running through my mind as Kurt began kissing my neck, and tickling my ear lobe with the tip of his tongue.
The following Saturday morning, Angela and I headed to the library to begin researching our project. We checked out as many books as we could find on the subjects we needed then headed to my house to begin using the internet. As it turned out the internet turned out to be more useful than the library, because we could find up to the minute data on Iraq and the war, but what amazed both of us was how much neither one of us actually knew about what was really happening. We found an abundance of information you couldn’t find by listening to the lame newscasts of the corporate media, or reading the local conservative newspaper owned by one of the same corporations.By the time I looked at my watch it was fifteen minutes before noon. I slapped my forehead.
“Darn! I forgot Kurt was coming over and we’re supposed to go for a swim,” I told her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Laurie,” Angela said. “We can work some more on this on Monday.”
“Why don’t you stay and swim with us Angela? I’ve got a suit you can borrow.”
“You don’t think Kurt will mind do you Laurie? I don’t want him getting mad at you because of me?”
“Why would he mind?” I told her. “It’s not like we would be alone anyway with both my parents here and three kids running around.”
“Sure, okay then. But if he’s going to be here in fifteen minutes we’d better hurry.”
I quickly dug her out a suit and she went into the bathroom to change while I changed in the
bedroom.When she came out, I couldn’t help but notice how much better she looked in the bathing suit than I ever would have which is why I had never worn it.
“I don’t know,” I said looking at her. “Kurt might ditch me for you with you looking like that.”
She blushed. “I’ve never worn a suit like this before. Dad would have a fit. But I love it. It makes me feel daring!”
We had changed none too soon, as Mom hollered up the stairs announcing Kurt's arrival. When he saw Angela there he looked peevish at first. I was just hoping Angela didn't notice his attitude.
As a diver and a swimmer, I was merely adequate. Angela turned out to be not only an exceptional diver but swam like a fish also. I watched admiringly as she made a couple of dives off the diving board.
“Wow, that’s a 6.0 if there ever was one,” I said when she surfaced.
“What’s a 6.0,” she asked.
“That’s how my dad grades himself when he dives, like in the Olympics. A 6.0 is the highest score you can get” I told her. “It looked perfect to me.”
Kurt then took a dive off the diving board, but he must have been trying too hard to impress us because something went horribly wrong and it was far from being one of his best dives. In fact it was just plain lousy but I tried to be generous.“How was that,” he asked me.
“Well, maybe an 4.0,” I said laughing. He frowned.
“Okay, that’s a 6.0 too,” I said trying to soothe his hurt feelings.
I walked up on the diving board. “Now you’re going to see a 2.0,” I said and I jumped into the water off of the diving board.
One thing was certain; Angela was more physically fit than any girl I knew. At one point, she raced Kurt up and down the pool for four laps, and touched the wall seconds before he did. I cheered her on which didn’t seem to make Kurt too happy.“Where did you learn to swim like that?” Kurt asked her.
“My dad makes us work out all the time. I’ve been swimming since I was about two, so don’t feel too bad about me beating you. I beat a lot of the guys at the base too.” That seemed to make Kurt feel better for having lost to her.
“And what are you doing cheering her on?” he asked me. “I thought I was your boyfriend.”“Because, you know that you’re going to win against any other girl. I just like seeing a guy lose once in a while. Don’t be such a weenie.”
An hour later they both left, although Kurt returned for our usual Saturday night date with Gail and Chuck. All evening he was unusually quiet, and it was on the walk home that I asked him what was wrong.“What is it Kurt? Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Nothing. What makes you think something is wrong?”
“Because you’ve hardly said ten things to me all evening,” I told him. “So don’t even try to pretend there’s nothing wrong.”
“Well, all night last night when Angela was with us you ignored me. Then today when we were swimming together, you not only ignored me, you were ridiculing me in front of her.”
I made a face. “How was I ridiculing you Kurt? Because of the way I graded your dive and because I rooted for her to beat you in the race?”
“Well, yeah.” He said.
I made a face but was quiet for a long time until I decided to let him have it in no uncertain terms.
“For crying out loud, Kurt what is it about men and their egos? I would expect that from Chuck but not from you. How often do you get to see a woman best a man at something like that? Not very often! I’m sorry if your feelings got hurt but there’s nothing I can do about it. If it were me swimming against Chuck I suppose you would have rooted for Chuck!”“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’d root for you because I know you would lose anyway.”
“That’s a nasty thing to say,” I told him. “So you’re saying if I had the capabilities to best Chuck, then you would have to root for him. So what’s the difference in me rooting for Angela?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I was just making a joke.”
“Well it wasn’t that funny,” I told him. “And as for spending so much time talking to Angela, do I need to remind you of all the time you spend running off with Chuck to the game machines at the arcade leaving me and Gail alone? Do I have to remind you that when the four of us are together both of you have a bad habit of doing nothing but talking sports and leaving us out of the conversation? But that doesn’t bother you does it?”He made a face. He knew he wasn’t going to win this argument and I think that bothered him more than anything. Neither one of us spoke until we reached the front of my home.
“Look Kurt, Angela is my friend, and she hasn’t had many. It’s not like she’s going to be going out with us on every date, so what’s your problem? You sound like you’re jealous.”He crossed his arms. “I’m not jealous Laurie and I don’t want to fight,” He said.
“I don’t either Kurt. But you’re not in competition with Angela. Okay?”
“Okay, I guess. I suppose I’m just being a bit silly. I’m
sorry Laurie.”“Apology accepted,” I told him. “I have to be working on this project for three more weeks with her. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” He said, “of course not.”
“Fine. I’m glad that’s settled. Now kiss me goodnight.” I knew his feelings had been hurt because I had come down on him so hard. I figured it was time to try and soothe things over. He gave me a kiss and then walked quickly away with his head down.
In the days that followed Angela and I worked diligently on the Literature project. Sometimes we would work at her house, and I think it was impressing her dad how hard we were working because he seldom objected or asked questions anymore when she would come over to my house. There was big drawbaack though. We were working too much and were going way too fast. At the pace we were keeping, we would be finished with the assignment way ahead of schedule. I made up my mind for us to slow down somewhat.The following Friday, Kurt’s cousin Mitch was in t
own visiting so he came along on our date, along with Angela. It was also the Friday that I invited Angela to spend the night at my house afterwards. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even that hard to convince her father to let her do so. And I didn’t even have to use my geek look to do it.As for the date itself, it went well enough. Although I didn’t sense a strong connection between Angela and Mitch, they got along quite well. It also helped to ease the tension between Kurt and I which had spilled over from the previous weekend. With Mitch there, I made it a point to pay more attention to him and soothe Kurt’s bruised ego. By the end of our evening things seemed to be back on an even keel.
Afterwards, when we were up in my room I asked her about Mitch.
She shrugged her shoulders. “He’s okay I guess. He’s nice enough. I was just glad he was there so that Kurt wouldn’t feel like I was tagging along and interfering with the two of you.”“Kurt wouldn’t think that,” I told her.
She laughed. “Laurie, if there’s one thing I do know it’s that guys don’t want someone tagging along on their date. I kind of had that feeling last weekend. I appreciate you asking me, but I don’t think I’ll tag along with you and Kurt anymore.”
“Kurt and I are just friends. It’s not like we’re going together or something.”
Angela shook her head and laughed. “Laurie, you don’t date anybody else, so you’re going together whether you like it or not. It doesn’t have to be an official thing.”
She started changing into her pajamas. “I like being with Kurt, he’s a lot of fun, but it’s not like I feel all romantic or anything like that. With what I want to accomplish in life, who has time for romance anyway?” I wasn’t sure why I was trying so hard to convince her.It was then that she caught me staring at her as she had finished changing. It wasn’t like I meant to, but I couldn’t avert my gaze from her.
“Oh, you like these pajamas?” she said. “I think they’re cool and I’ve kind of kept them hidden in the bottom of my drawer. Dad would have a fit if he knew I was wearing something like this. He thinks a girl should wear flannel until their at least 21”
“Uh…yeah, they're cool!” was all I could manage.
The truth was it wasn’t just her pajamas that had caught my eye at all. It had been her and only her and everything about her; I had been looking at her as if she was Xena, or even Gabrielle for that matter. I suddenly felt flushed, but I quickly shook it off.
“Yeah, Angela, where did you get them? I’d like to get a pair myself!” I quickly said hoping she wouldn’t notice my embarrassment.
“Some place called The Fashion Sense,” she told me. “Ever shop there?”
“Yeah, all the time,” I told her. “Look, as far as Kurt goes, I really don’t think he’ll mind you
hanging with us at least some of the time. Honest I don’t,”“If you say so Laurie,” she answered. “But not all the time! If I go on Friday, then you go out with him alone on Saturday or something. You and I can hang out in the afternoon and on Sunday. I don’t want him to start disliking me because I’m occupying all of your time.”
She came over and sat next to me on the love seat. “So what do you want to do now?” she asked.
“Tell me, Angela, why haven’t you ever gone out for any of the sports teams or anything like that?” I asked. “From what I saw in the pool you could whip some serious butt.”“Yeah, I suppose so,” she shrugged. “But I never know when Dad is going to get transferred. Sometimes it’s on very short notice. If I were on a team, I’d have to just up and quit and that wouldn’t be very fair to them.”
“Well, how do you stay in such good shape,” I asked. “I mean when it comes to athletics, I’m a zero.”
“Oh, I do a lot of running and swimming and hiking. It helps pass the time. When you don’t have any friends you need something to occupy yourself. It kind of helps me forget that.”
“Well, you’ve got a friend now,” I told her.
“Yeah, I do don’t I?” she smiled at me, a smile which I readily returned. “Hey, do you want to
go jogging with me sometime?”
“Sure, I’d love to go, if you have the patience.
Yo
u’re so far ahead of me physically I’ll never catch up.”“Laurie, I’ll be your personal trainer. I’ll have you on the front of a box of Wheaties in no time!” She yawned and headed for the bed. “I’m about bushed,” she said. “Are you coming to bed?”
“I’ll be ready in a little while. Will it bother you if I watch a little television? I’ll keep the volume down.”
“Won’t bother me a bit,” she said. “I watched as she climbed under the covers. “I sleep like a log. Goodnight Laurie,”
“Goodnight Angela,” I told her, as I flipped on the TV. I turned the TV to an old episode of Law and Order but paid no attention to it.
Instead my gaze kept returning to Angela, who was sound asleep. And later, when I finally went to bed to dream, it was no longer Xena, Gabrielle and I fighting the forces of evil, it was Angela and her trusty sidekick Laurie followed by a doubles tennis match pitting the two of us against the Williams Sisters. We kicked some serious ass together.
~~~17~~~
~~~Narration by Laurie~~~
During the days that followed, my friendship with Angela grew by leaps and bounds. The project came along nicely, and what I found was that Angela had a flair for creative writing. I did most of the research, and she weaved the facts into the story with imaginative prose that I never could have written. My writing had always seemed stiff, but Angela made the story come alive. What the story dealt with was one reservist with a wife and two kids, called away from his job to active duty in Iraq via the backdoor draft, of how he was sent to fight in the war, unprepared and with little training, how he was injured in the war, and returned home to his family wounded and disillusioned to face a bureaucra
tic mess, including cuts in health benefits, an underfinanced veterans system, and no job that was supposedly to have been guaranteed for him when he left. Finally it was finished, and when we laid it on Mrs. Schaeffer’s desk I felt good about it although Angela had misgivings.Often Angela and I would spend the afternoons, jogging, swimming laps and working out in our exercise room, a place I had rarely visited. During the first week of these workouts I spent a lot of time afterwards nursing sore muscles. By the second week though, the stiffness began to dissipate, and Angela didn’t have to slow down her pace nearly as much in order for me to keep up with her.
“Do you want to race?” she asked me one afternoon as we were working out at the school football field.“Are you kidding? You’d leave me in your dust,” I answered.
“I’ll give you a head start,” she told me. “We’ll go once around the field.”
“How big of a head start,” I asked.
She looked around. “How about fifty meters?”
Fifty meters was a pretty hefty head start. I just might be able to pull it off.
“Okay, we’ll give it a try,” I told her.
I got into a starting position and waited until she yelled for me to go. Then I was off like a bullet.
I passed what I thought was a hundred meters, but I didn’t look back to see her.
Halfway around the field though, I could hear her closing in. “Come on, Laurie,” she yelled at me. “You can do better than that. You’re running like an old Lady.”My legs were already beginning to strain but I tried to will them to move faster.
As we neared the end of the race, she was running alongside me effortlessly. Angela turned towards me, smiled and said, “Hi, do we know each other?”
And I burst out laughing, pulled to a dead stop and fell down on the ground.
She stood above me laughing, then sat on the ground next to me.“You’re a trip,” I told her.
“Well, Laurie, I don’t think you’re ready for the Derby yet, but you don’t have to worry about being put out to pasture either,” she told me. When I finally was able to stop laughing she reached out her hand, to pull me up off the ground.
“Want to go get a bottled water,” I asked her.
“Sure, but the loser buys and that would be you,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said still trying to catch my breath. “I’ll buy. Just don’t ask me to race you to the convenience store.”
She smiled. “Wouldn’t think of it,” she told me. “I’ll tell you what though, if we get an A on our project, I’ll not only buy you a drink, I’ll buy you dinner too.”
“That’s a deal,” I told her. As we walked off the field I was quiet.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“I’m thinking about that great big juicy steak dinner we’re going to have in about a week. It’s as good as in the bag.”
“You nut,” she said punching me lightly in the shoulder.
As April turned into May, my friendship with Angela continued to deepen. On the friendship scale she even seemed to be leaving Kurt in the dust. Having to go out with Kurt and leave Angela behind was becoming somewhat of an annoyance.
I couldn’t help it. When I woke in the morning it was with thoughts of Angela, when I went to sleep at night it was thinking about her, and how great our friendship had become. Gail had been my friend for a much longer time, and we were still good close friends, but it was never like it was when I spent time with Angela. And anyway, as Gail continued to spend more and more time with Chuck, it seemed we were drifting further apart. Sometimes she would go shopping at the mall with Angela and me but most of the time she had what she called other plans.
Gail and I still talked regularly on the phone though. Except one evening as we talked, she became quite irritated as I went on about Angela this and Angela that without even realizing I was doing it. She finally interrupted.
“Laurie, is Angela all you can talk about now? We’ve been talking for an hour and you haven’t even mentioned Kurt one time!”“Well, Kurt and I are about the same as always,” I told her. “And what difference does it make? All you ever talk about is Chuck this and Chuck that and Chuck said the funniest thing.”
“He’s a guy Laurie! We’re supposed to talk about guys!”
“Excuse me, Gail. I didn’t know I was offending you by not talking about Kurt! What’s there to tell? We do practically the same thing every weekend, and half the time you and Chuck are there anyway so you know what’s going on with us. I won’t talk about Angela in your presence any
more.” Now I was annoyed.“Don’t’ go getting yourself in such a snit, Laurie. I didn’t mean anything by it. But Angela IS all you talk about and I’m just bored hearing about her. Don’t take that the wrong way because I like Angela, but don’t make her your whole life.”
“Whatever, Gail. I have to go. Mom needs some help and she’s hollering up the stairs. I’ll talk to you at school tomorrow.” I hung up the phone fuming. Of course mom wasn’t hollering up the stairs but I was becoming increasingly irritated with Gail. I almost sensed she was jealous because I had found another friend I could depend on besides her.
A week later, Mrs. Schaeffer began returning the term papers one by one. When she got to Gail’s and Ryan Fisher’s paper, she laid it on Gail’s desk. “B+ Gail and Ryan,” she said. Good work. I watched Gail smile, but I heard Ryan groan. So did Mrs. Schaefer.
She turned toward Ryan, “The reason I pair students up, Ryan, is so that they learn to work on things together, something you all need to learn to do not only in life, but especially if you’re going on to college. That doesn’t mean take over the project Ryan and do it all yourself.”I couldn’t help but smile. Gail had told me that when she tried to work with Ryan, he wanted absolutely no input from her at all. After a week, she had given up in frustration, and went in to see Mrs. Schaeffer. The B+ was the result of that which was fine with Gail as it was a plus more than she was used to
She finally came to the paper Angela and I had written, and walked over to Angela’s desk. “This paper here, she told the class, is a perfect example of what can be achieved when students work together. Just from reading it, I can tell you that it has excellent research,” she looked over at me then back to Angela, “which was put into a wonderful story that I think you should all read. A+ Laurie and Angela.”I had received many A’s and A +’s over the years. But none of them had ever pleased me as much as this one did. Angela looked over at me and I at her, and she gave me thumbs up with a grin that went from ear to ear. I winked at her and mouthed the words, “I told you so!”
After class we met out in the hallway.“Okay, when do we go for that steak dinner,” I asked her.
“What steak dinner?” she replied innocently.
“The one that you said you’d buy if we got an A,” I replied.
“But we didn’t get an A,” she told me. “We got an A+. So all you get is a hamburger.”
I tried to look crestfallen, but I didn’t succeed. Instead I just answered, “Well, as long as it’s a double quarter pounder with cheese” I said.
“For an A+, I’ll spring for a triple cheeseburger,” she said laughing.
“With everything?”
“Yeah, with everything,” she answered.
It soon became time for the prom. I had been looking forward to it but was disappointed that Angela didn’t have a date. The week before the prom, I convinced Kurt to get his cousin Mitch to ask her, which he did, even though Mitch had to travel thirty miles to do so. I told Kurt to give him my personal thanks. And Angela’s father was finally letting her go out on a real date. The only drawback was once again, Angela had to be home early, before midnight while the rest of us were planning on making a late night of it. Mom and Dad had already given me permission to stay out late. Mitch wasn’t happy about the way that Angela’s father interrogated him before we left, and none of us were happy about the countless pictures he wanted to take also.When we dropped Angela off that evening, she gave Mitch a hug and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she turned and gave me a hug also.
“Thanks, Laurie,” she told me. “Thanks for everything.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.
“Yes you have too. If it weren’t for you, I’d have been sitting home on prom night. It meant a lot for me to be able to go. I’ve never had a friend like you Laurie. You’re the best, the absolute best!”
She hugged me once more and this time I returned it.
Then we watched as she walked into the house. “She’s a good kid,” Mitch said. “I’d like to hang out with you guys, but five is an odd number, so I’ll be taking off."
“You don’t have to go,” I told him. “I appreciate you taking Angela to the prom.”“I know I don’t have to, but it’s a long way back home." We drove Mitch back to his car which was parked at Kurt's house then the four of us went to the arcade to hangout. It was there that Gayle whispered in my ear, "Chuck and I are taking off; we'll catch a ride home later." I simply nodded. I didn't want her to tell me why, because the less first hand knowledge I had of such things the better.
Kurt and I left and drove over to his house. His parents were gone on a business trip but that didn't bother me any. Anyway, sitting on his sofa was way better than sitting on a hard wooden bench in the park or cramped in the front seat of his mother's car.
“Do you think Mitch likes Angela,” I asked him.
Kurt shrugged. “Yeah, he likes her okay. But he’s not about to start dating someone regularly who lives thirty miles away.”“I’m glad she had a good time tonight though,” I told him. “I’m glad her father is starting to let her do more things.”
“Yeah, I guess it could be kind of rough,” Kurt replied. He put his arm around me and we kissed.
“I wander if all army father’s treat their daughters that way,” I asked as I came up for air.
“Laurie, are you going to sit here and talk about Angela all night?” Kurt asked getting exasperated.
“No, of course not,” I replied. He started to kiss me again, this time quite passionately. And as always I did my best to respond or at least make him feel like I was responding. I must have been doing a good job of it because his hand wandered across my breasts, coming to a full stop. I decided not to object as I knew Kurt had been more than patient with me when it came to my friendship with Angela. And besides, it was prom night so why not give him a little more roaming room than usual. We continued to kiss, and his hand began to slide under the top of my dress, but as his other hand found it’s way slowly up my leg and began heading northward, I quickly moved it away thinking he wa
s just caught up in the moment. It was a move he had not made before and it could just as well have been an accident. But when his hand went upward again, I knew it was time to put a stop to the proceedings. I quickly slapped his hand away.“Don’t Kurt,” I told him.
“Sorry Laurie, I guess I got carried away”. We continued to kiss, and it happened a third time. This time I not only slapped his hand away, I quickly sat up, pulling the top of my dress up.
“That’s enough, Kurt. Time to stop before you want to go any further.”“Any further! Geez Laurie, what’s the big deal anyway? You act like I was trying to rape you or something.”
“I never said you were going to rape me or something, Kurt. Don’t be so dramatic. I know the drill though. You’ll end up getting so worked up you’ll want to go to the next step, then the next, until finally there won’t be any steps left. I told you, let’s take it slow. I’m not ready to go that
far.”“At the rate you’re going Laurie; you won’t be ready in this century.” He told me.
I stood up. “I’m leaving!” I told him. “You can either stay here or you can walk me home. I don’t care which.”
I walked out the door, and headed up the sidewalk.
I hadn't gone very far when I heard Kurt come running up behind me.
"Wait, Laurie!" He hollered. I stopped and turned around.“Look Laurie,” he told me. “I didn’t mean what I said. It was a stupid thing to say. You’ve been honest about our relationship from the start, so I shouldn’t have any complaints.”
“Do you want to quit seeing me, Kurt,” I asked it point blank. “Because if you’re that desperate to have sex, I’m not ready.”
“No, Laurie, of course not. I’m sorry if I started getting a little carried away in there. I care about you a great deal. I’ve never felt this way around any other girl. I know what you said about taking it slow and I’m trying to…….but it’s just that…..”
His voice tailed off. I began to get nervous, almost scared. He was going to tell me he loved me. I was sure of it. I was kicking myself for letting Gail talk me into this several months back. He began to speak again and I held my breath.
“It’s just that….I don’t know how to tell you this but when school’s out, I’m going to be gone for two whole months. I’m going to Hawaii with my parents. Mom’s been hired to do some work there and we’re making it a two month vacation since we won’t be able to do anything as a family once I go off to college next year.”I breathed a huge sigh. Not one of disappointment but a sigh of total relief. I was temporarily off the hook.
“Gee, Kurt! Two whole months! You’ll probably end up with some nice Hawaiian Girl and forget about me. Actually it should be a lot of fun for you.”
“You don’t act very disappointed,” he told me. We had reached the front of my house.
“Well, I’ll miss you,” I told him trying to appear crestfallen. That was true in a sense. In a way I would miss his friendship. But I was also hoping that he would return in two months not quite so enamored of me. “But we can write to each other. It’s just two months so that won’t be too bad and maybe we could use a break right now.”
Despite the fact that he had once again not told me he loved me, I couldn’t help but think that was what he really wanted to say to me when he had suddenly caught himself.
“You’re probably right,” he told me. “But I’ll still miss you. I would rather be here with you than in Hawaii.” He took me in his arms, to kiss me, and I returned it.“I am crazy about, you Laurie,” he told me. I gulped. He had not used the love word, but he just as well had. He was doing his best to play by the rules I had laid down but he wasn’t succeeding very well.
I searched for what to say to him. “I know you are Kurt, and I think a great deal of you also. But remember what I told you. Anything beyond friendship right now would be pointless.”
He kissed me again. “You’re right, Laurie. I know you’re right. I also know you’re being completely sensible and logical. But logic doesn’t always control how someone feels. Maybe I do need a couple of months away though, to put things in perspective.”
“When do you leave, Kurt?” I asked. My heart was aching, not because he was leaving, but because I knew in the end, he was going to be hurt and that it would be my fault, and he had done absolutely nothing to deserve it. I could only hope that two months away from each other would help set things straight again.“Next Saturday,” he told me. “School will be finished and I’ll have to leave right away. Mom and Dad are there right now getting things ready.”
“Kurt, if you find someone over there you want to date, I’ll understand,” I told him. “We really haven’t made a commitment to each other.”
“I know Laurie. But I don’t think I’ll find anyone like you.” He kissed me one more time, then he took me by the hand and walked me home. There was something about it, something about the way he held my hand in his and the way he put his arm around me that told me when Kurt returned in two months he would feel no different.
When we reached the house, the way he held me, holding me close in gentle silence, then kissing me softly and romantically, and I knew I was right. Kurt was head over heels in love with me. Worst than that, I felt absolutely powerless to do anything about it without hurting him. It was easy to blame Gail, for talking me out of breaking up with him some months back, but she hadn't put a gun to my head.The house was dark and quiet when I entered. It was almost four a.m. and I was exhausted. Prom night was supposed to be a night of fun and having a good time. Mine had ended with a heavy burden for me to bear. I quickly changed into
my night gown to lay in the bed. Kurt would be gone for two months. In two months, a lot could happen. Chances are he would find someone else to date.I was however quickly comforted when I suddenly realized that for at least two months, I would have Angela all to myself, and there would be no Kurt bugging me about bringing her along on our date. He had been a good sport about it, but I knew he had grown weary of her tagging along. And as I lay down in the bed, I began to plan all the things Angela and I would do for the first two months of summer. I had the whole first month already planned out when I finally fell asleep thinking that it would undoubtedly be the best summer ever.
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