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.
It was from Cindy and Tracy's ranks of friends that I chose my sexual companions. They were both part of the popular crowd, members of the elite and in my previous life I would have been intimidated as hell to be at a party with them. But now things were different. I could not bring myself to be intimidated by teenagers, but oh how I lusted after them. I rarely left a party without using one or more of the condoms I carried with me at all times. I got to sleep with girl after girl from my fantasies and it was usually THEY who would approach me thanks to an underground reputation I had developed among the females.
The guys at these parties, who were for the most part older than I, either seniors or college freshmen, were oblivious to what I was doing. Despite my reputation with Fairview they considered me harmless, even as I was taking their girlfriends out for a little walk while they were playing a game of quarters or having someone pour beer down their throat with a beer bong. They wondered what I was doing there of course. I was inevitably the youngest male in attendance and none of them ever chose to converse with me.
That was fine with me. As long as they saw me as no threat when they spotted me talking amongst the girls or having a private conversation with one of their girlfriends.
Tracy told me once that many of them thought I was gay. They didn't tease me about it because of Richie Fairview but that seemed to explain why I chose to hang out with the girls instead of trying to come over and talk football or cars. I never tried to convince them otherwise although the queer logic of this amused me to no end. A guy wants to hang out with girls so he must be gay.
I had careful rules about my relationships during that summer. I generally didn't sleep with anyone more than once and I made it clear that I desired no sort of commitment or ongoing relationship. I was in it for the sex and the sex only. Most of them understood this. They were in it for the sex too and happy that I was happy to keep my mouth open while it was on their pussy and closed afterword. I had two exceptions to this rule however: Cindy and Anita. I continued to sleep with both of them on a regular basis.
It was nice. They both understood the rules, especially Anita who had no desire to have anyone find out she was boffing a teenaged boy. They were also both on birth control so I didn't have to wear a condom with them. It is nice to sink bare flesh into bare flesh for a change of pace.
Except for the rift with Mike and except for the absence of my discussions with Nina, which I missed, it was quite a pleasant summer. The best one I'd ever remembered to that point.
I got my learner's permit that August when I turned fifteen and a half. Dad then 'taught' me to drive.
"You've caught on to this remarkably quick." He said, looking at me with something close to suspicion the first day. "Tracy hasn't been letting you drive, has she?"
"No Dad." I assured him, expertly changing lanes, feeling ecstatic to be behind the wheel after, how long? More than six months? "I guess I just have a knack for it."
"Some knack." He said. "I guess we won't have to go out all that often, will we?"
September brought the start of my junior year and Tracy's senior year. I had a whole new slew of classes and subjects that I'd chosen a few weeks before. I was particularly pleased to find that I no longer had to take PE.
My first period class was Introduction to Molecular Biology. Mrs. Crookshank taught it and it was a subject I knew little about. I'd taken it so that I could relieve some of the boredom of school by learning something new. I walked into class the first day and Mrs. Crookshank greeted me stiffly.