Scatter, I'm sure, wasn't interested in knocking off a boy. He didn't have the juice or the power to own one, but he flirted with me every chance he got, which made me blush like a schoolgirl with a crush. I hated that about myself but I couldn't help it. Whenever he tapped his foot, I turned as red as a taillight.
I wrote to Claudia that night and asked her what she had decided to do. Did she tell her parents? Could she get an abortion? Her parents were strict, and I was glad I wasn't there when they found out-maybe the only time I was relieved to be in prison. I didn't know what to do, but felt like I needed to say something. "I'm sorry," I wrote. "I should've used a rubber."
The first time we had sex was in the back of her dad's Ford Pinto. It was at the drive-in movies in Wayne where she worked in the concession stand. We backed the car into the last lane, dropped the seats and lifted the hatch back. Everyone else parked in the back row was doing the same thing, which had nothing to do with watching the movie.
After we necked for a while, I tried to yawn and act like I was tired, but she said, "Uh, uh," and pulled me back down on top of her. I had to go through with it.
I ended up watching jaws thirteen times that month. Each night I would slip under the fence, drive her car from the back of the concession stand and wait for her in the back row to get off work. To keep from getting bored, I memorized every line in the film. "Uh, oh. We're gonna need a bigger boat," I said, when Jaws leapt from the water.
While my crush for Scatter continued, Miss Pepper seemed to develop a thing for me. She began to smile and stare, and for a queen, could get fairly aggressive. "Now don't start dropping your cookies, honey. I'm just admiring your beauty," she said one day in the bathroom.
"Drop my cookies?" It was a weird expression, but Miss Pepper was good at spicing up her conversation with made up words and twisted phrases. "What are cookies?"
"Them pretty little dimples of yours."
"I didn't know I had dimples," I said. I looked at myself in the shower room mirror.
"Well don't be droppin' your face and hiding the cookie jar, little boy. I ain't gonna bite."
"Thanks." I smiled, out of embarrassment, but I didn't want to encourage her. "I have to go," I said.
"Well one of these days, honey, you're gonna have to shit or get off the dime."
"You're mixing your metaphors," I said, remembering my fifth period English class.
"Now don't be talkie' out the side of your neck, honey. You know Miss Thing don't be doin' no orgies."
She made me laugh.
Later that evening, while brushing my teeth before bed, I stared at myself in the mirror again. I wasn't sure what dimples were exactly, but I was pretty sure I didn't have them. My face was looking clearer. Big Cat's facials were working.
Miss Pepper's feminine features and mannerisms didn't do it for me. Since I liked macho men, I could have sworn, I heard my cookies when they hit the floor when Chet's boy, Brett, returned from court. His blond hair, blue eyes, and rugged good looks of a high school varsity team quarterback completely dazzled me.
19
Taken by Surprise
It's not like there was anything in particular I had done wrong, but I just came to associate parent/teacher conferences with punishment and pain. Most kids looked forward to it, because it meant a half=day off from school, but my parents usually came out of the meetings angry and ready to punish me.
It was after one of these conferences that I learned I was being held back agrade. Because of my behavior, they said. I was still with my mom then, but now I was living with Dad and Sharon.
It was Dad's turn to go that day. "Wait in the car," he said to me.
Would I begrounded again? And for how long? Maybe he'd just hit me and leave it at that.
When Dad returned to the car, he didn't say a word to me. I sat there silently, as we made the thirty-minute drive downtown. I didn't want to ask, in the hopes that by the time we got to wherever we were going, he would forget about whatever it was that was said.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Not really." When we arrived at Hudson's Department Store, he took me inside and up the escalator to the old-fashioned soda fountain, where he ordered us each a Saunder's hot fudge cream puff.
To this day, I have no idea what the teacher said. I never had the courage to ask.
Peterson came by with the mail, but as usual didn't stop. It had been two weeks since I mailed my letter to Claudia. I was leaving for court at the end of the week and prayed that she'd respond before then. I was finally being sentenced for the Photo Mat.
"The guys don't think you're coming back," Slide Step said.
I had taken a plea bargain, so I was expecting to receive two and a half years, matching the time I was serving for the hotel.
"You'll go through Quarantine again," he said. "And then probably to a camp."
"I don't want to go to a camp," I said. "I want to cone back here." Slide Step had been making my time there as comfortable as possible. And other than having to have sex with him, I felt safe and I was enjoying his company. Considering what had happened when I first got here, it was the last place I wanted to be-but there was an emotional pull that was developing because I was getting the attention here that I wasn't getting at home.
He frowned at me with sadness. "I don't think
