Chapter #55A Player Off His Game by: Seuzz   "I'll let you know later," you tell Caleb. "Maybe I'll meet you someplace."
"We'll spring for dinner," he counters. "If you come with us."
"My mom's probably got dinner ready already," you reply, and it sounds very lame even in your own ears.
"Well, come out and meet us, even if it's just up at Eastman for an hour. You'll wanna look at these guys before you pick one."
"Sure, I'll talk to you later." You jump out of the car and slam the door shut.
You're inside the garage—the door is up, and your dad is already home, you notice to your chagrin—before you hear the car drive off.
* * * * *
Supper is on the table, and your parents and brother are already eating.
"It's on the stove," your mom calls as you come in from the garage. "Chicken and dumplings. I wasn't sure if you were going to be home for dinner," she adds with what sounds a little bit like a sniff.
You can't help flinching. It's almost like she expected you to be busy with something else, or was even planning for it.
That's not the only allusion she makes which gives you a bit of a scare. After you've settled at the table with a bowl, she says, "Are you going out this evening?"
"I ... don't know."
"It's Friday. I thought you might have plans."
"Not really, not yet."
"Caleb and Keith aren't doing anything?"
Oh, they're doing plenty, you think. Aloud, you say, "We haven't decided on anything."
"Don't forget you have a curfew," your father says. He is absorbed in reading his Tablet, but apparently has attention to spare.
Even if you weren't shy about going out with Caleb and Keith (or Jared and Cody Larson, as is the case now), his comment would dampen your enthusiasm. But you only mutter that if you do go out, you'll be home in plenty of time for your curfew.
You get a text from Jared's cell phone along about nine, asking if you're going to come out to Eastman High. No g2 stay in, you reply. Text me tomorrow. You ignore his two subsequent texts, trying to bully you into coming out. You try not to think of the names—Pussy. Chicken shit.—that he's probably directing at you.
* * * * *
Why are you so shy about going out with him and Keith? You don't like the question, because you suspect you won't like the answer. But as you lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering when sleep will come, you try to face up to it. You will have to say something to Caleb tomorrow when you see him and Keith.
Do I have some kind of ethical problem with it? You don't know if it is with horror or relief that you find, after testing your intuitions, that you don't. What Caleb is doing—what he is inviting you to do—is impersonating someone else for a short time, without the intention of stealing their identity permanently. It would be like joyriding in someone's car—
Okay, put that way, it doesn't sound so good. But you mean to return it unharmed and without their even knowing that you took it. No harm, no foul. Right?
Yeah, you concede with some chagrin afterward, when your conscience refuses to bark. That's not the problem.
Is it because I want to anticipate it before doing it? That's what you tried telling yourself when you turned down the chance to impersonate Cody. That might be part of it. You were so shocked by what you learned out at the barn that you hardly had time to think. You needed to get used to the idea before you could feel ready to try it out yourself. And now that you have gotten used to it ...
You make a face in the dark.
Yes, you are used to the idea. But you still don't want to go out and meet Caleb and Keith—Jared and Cody—at Eastman, or go to the Warehouse with them. Despite everything, they still feel like strangers, and they would be surrounded by strangers.
Is that it? you wonder, startled by a new thought. Am I just shy because I'd feel out of place with a bunch of people I don't even know?
It would make sense. You've always been slow to make friends, and you have long been content to have only a handful of them. Caleb and Keith are the only two you're really close to, even Carson Ioeger and James Lamont being kind of on the fringes. And when you were going out with Lisa, you always felt jumpy when her friends—whether girlfriends like Eva and Jessica Garner, or Yumi Saito, or (ugh!) Kelsey Blankenships; or boyfriends like Anthony Kirk, Martin Gardinhire, or (puke!) Geoff Mansfield—were around.
Could that also be why you're lukewarm on the idea of impersonating one of the Larsons' friends? Because they would be strangers? Maybe. Again, you compare your intuitions about impersonating some unknown person versus impersonating Micah Larson, their cousin at Westside who came looking for Mickey last weekend. You feel your eyebrows go up as you recognize that, yes, familiarity with Micah makes him more attractive as an impersonation.
And when you let your mind wander to other possible impersonations at Westside ...
Yes. Even though some of the names and faces are not all that attractive in themselves, you would feel more comfortable (it seems) at Westside as them than at Eastman as someone else.
Because the thought of being in a strange school daunts you.
It is with a sense of relief—not because you have overcome a fear, but because you think you now understand your own reluctance better—that you turn over and let your cock unfurl between your thigh and the bed. Slowly you begin to masturbate to a fantasy involving your body and the body of Cindy Vredenburg, cheerleader, embracing.
And when your face blurs into hers, and you touch your chest and find her breasts there, things get even hotter.
* * * * *
You wake relatively early—it's a little before ten—and don't dawdle in bed before getting up and staggering into the shower. Downstairs, you shovel some cereal down your gullet, then go back upstairs to dress.
There are no messages from Jared or Cody on your phone—you'd bet they are passed out somewhere, if last night went to plan—but there is one from Caleb's number that came in while you were bathing. U ready to hang out with us?
You quickly shoot a text off to Carson Ioeger instead.
* * * * *
"Gotta say, Prescott," Carson says as he bounces the tennis ball off the court with his racket, getting a feel for it. "It's nice to see you for once without your ass glued to Johansson's." He lofts the ball and knocks hard and fast over the net.
In two strides you're in front of it, and smack it back. Two, three, four times you and Ioeger trade the ball before he misses. He calls you a dirty name as he tosses it over the net to you.
The city tennis courts are not your natural habitat. But tennis is just about the only sport you were ever halfway decent at, and so the only sport that you kept somewhat in practice at. (You played pretty often from the June after your sophomore year through the end of your junior year, and have only slacked off since the start of summer vacation, when you were paying more attention to Lisa.) Also, it is one of the few activities where you and Carson can meet as something like equals. So you were very happy when he quickly answered your invite to a game with a cheerful-sounding It's your ass!
"Well," you too-lately retort to his opening jibe, "it's nice to see you without Lamont's cock in your mouth."
He returns you a sour smirk, along with a hard counter-volley after you serve. Two, three strokes later and his ball goes out of bounds. "Son of a bitch!" he exclaims.
"Am I getting in your head?" you taunt. He just gestures you to make the serve.
Three games you play, and you win all of them, one of them by a blowout. Though Carson usually makes you mad with his smugly superior attitude, you decline to rub his losses in, and ask him why he's off his game.
"Out of practice," he growls as he swings his racket through the air a couple of times. Then he snarls, "Nah, fuck that."
"Something wrong?" you ask. He has seemed preoccupied since the moment you met him.
He scowls and swings the racket around a few more times. Then he shoots you a piercing glance.
"What's going on with your friends and that girl?"
"What girl? Oh!" To your embarrassment, you actually forgot about Teresa for the moment. "Nothing. Why?"
"I told you the sexual chemistry goes all weird when you mix a girl in. You noticed anything yet?"
"No."
"You're either blind or a liar, Prescott. Where is she now?"
You roll your eyes.
"I don't know. But—"
"Is she with Johansson? Or Tilley?" His eyes narrow. "Couldn't be that you're the one taking a break from her."
"No! And as for Caleb or Keith— Well—"
"Yes?" Carson's eyebrows go up.
You give up.
"Okay, I don't know, maybe there is something going on between her and Caleb."
"Something serious? Like—?"
"I don't know! I mean, Keith thought there was something going on between her and me—"
"Jesus!" His eyebrows shoot up again. "Was there?"
"No! I'm just saying I don't know if there's something going on between her and Caleb. 'Cos I know what it might kind of look like without it being, you know, really that way." You have the following choice:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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