"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.
"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."
"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."
He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.
"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."
"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."
"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.
I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?
As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.
Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.
Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.
"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.
"Sure." I smiled back, following her.
Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.
Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.
"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.
"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."
"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"
"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"
"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"
"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"
"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."
"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"
"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.
I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.
The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.
Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.
I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.
By the time Mike abruptly ended our friendship Nina and I were quite close and able to confide pretty well in each other. As I entered the lunchroom the day after my telephone conversation she immediately noticed my upset expression.
"What's wrong?" She asked, giving me her shy smile.
"Oh," I said, sitting down and opening my lunch bag. "You know my friend Mike that I've told you about?"
"Yeah," She nodded. "The guy who likes to smoke pot all the time."
"Right." I agreed. "Well yesterday…"
I poured out the whole story to her, omitting of course the part about how I'd once been a thirty-two year old and couldn't relate to a sixteen year old very well anymore. She listened without interruption and then, when I was finished, looked at me thoughtfully.
"You seem like you're blaming yourself for this." She said.
I shrugged. "We've been friends for a long time. Maybe I'm being a little hard on him. Is it that much for him to ask for me to drive to school with him each day?"
"If you're putting your life at risk it is." She answered. "It sounds to me like HE is the one to blame for this, not you. He is the one willing to end a friendship over something so stupid as who you drive to school with and whether or not you smoke pot with him."
"Yeah, I know." I agreed. "But we've been friends a long time. I can't help but feel I've let him down or something."
"If you've been friends a long time," She said. "Don't you think he'll eventually grow up a little and realize how stupid he's been? He'll come around."
"It might be too late by then." I blurted.
She looked at me puzzled. "Why do you say that?"
"Oh, just ignore me." I told her. "I can be awfully bleak sometimes."
I left the lunchroom that day feeling better about the situation. Though nothing had changed I always felt better after I'd talked to Nina.
I also got into the habit of checking the business section of the newspaper each day. I would look through the stock market report, memorizing and tracking various stocks. It became such a routine at the breakfast table each morning that Dad quickly stopped asking me why I was doing it. In my former life I'd followed stocks only as they related to my 401k plan. Now I was trying to get a grip on the market, to begin the process of understanding it and eventually mastering it. If I could master it I knew, I could master everything.
Summer break began. When I brought my report card to my mother I actually feared she was going to faint as she stared at it.
"Straight A's Billy?" She asked, looking at it in disbelief. "You?"
"I guess I just started to take all that stuff you're always sayin' about how education is the most important thing, seriously Mom." I told her.
An extended version of THE LOOK followed this.
"Do you think you can make your tacos tonight?" I asked next.
"Sure." She said numbly.
The summer went by quickly in a haze of hot days and sexual activity. Although Mike no longer hung out with me I found new companionship with Cindy and Tracy. My relationship with my sister had improved to the point where she was confiding secrets in me. She began telling me her hopes and dreams; that she wanted to go to law school, that she wanted to marry a nice man and have children, that she wanted a nice house and a nice car. These were things I'd never known about her since her life had been cut short before we'd gotten out of the teenage rivalry stage.
She also no longer seemed to have a problem being seen with me. Maybe something I'd said, something I'd done had given her a little kick in the head, but she treated me that summer as a friend and companion, taking me with her when she went to parties, either with Cindy or with one of her other friends.
She'd also developed a similar aversion to being in a car with an intoxicated driver; an aversion she'd managed to share with Cindy. Whenever we went out one of the girls would stay sober enough to pilot the car safely home. They developed a designated driver rule long before that buzzword caught on. I always suspected that my little speech to Tracy that one night had a lot to do with it.