"Well, I need to warn you," Mom said. "I talked to her a bit this morning, and I realized something. That girl is absolutely starved for love."
"I’ve noticed that, myself." I looked at Mom. "And you think she’s picked me."
"I think it’s possible."
"Oh, man," I said. "I don’t know if I can handle that. I mean, up until very recently, I thought that girl was the biggest bitch in school."
"It’s easy to be bitchy when you’re alone, David."
"She was horribly bitchy to her best friend, though!"
"Well, I have to tell you something, David. You’re a guy. You don’t hang around with girls much, and two of the girls you do sometimes hang around with, Lily and Maggie, are very unusual. For that matter, Amanda’s fairly unusual, too. The friendships between teenaged girls aren’t always smooth, and rarely is it just one of girls’ fault. You know my best friend, Kendra?" I nodded. "We’ve been best friends since we were eight-except for sophomore year in high school. We didn’t speak that whole year."
"Why?" I said, astonished. Kendra and Mom were so close, I thought of Kendra as my second mother.
"The usual reasons. Jealousy, pettiness. She was jealous that I was sleeping with your father. However, her way of dealing with that jealousy was going into full goody-two-shoes mode and trying to make me feel guilty about having sex with your father. I, of course, tried, in turn, to make her feel undesirable because she didn’t have anyone to have sex with. This, dear son, is very typical 16-year-old girl stuff. You don’t see it, because Maggie and Amanda have a very unusual, strong, and non-jealous friendship; and because Lily approaches friendship like a guy does. What Cassie and Missy are going through is more typical."
"From what you’ve told me, Cassie-with Missy and Laura-was the ‘good girl’ of that group, right?"
"Yes," I said. "Cassie’s a sweetie."
"To you. If you think she never lorded her ‘sweetness’ over the other two, you’re dreaming. Cassie’s not a virgin, is she?"
"No, and not even before Frankie."
"And Missy is, you’ve told me."
"Yes."
"Another thing to get petty about, believe me. Cassie’s nicer, more popular, and more popular with boys. Missy resented it-and, I’m sure there were times when Cassie didn’t help."
"Hmm."
"I guess what I’m saying is, don’t think Missy’s going to dump on you just because she’s had problems with Cassie. If you enter into a friendship with her-or something more-it’s not like the friendship between two girls of your age. And, you know what? I’m making a prediction. Cassie and Missy are going to work it out."
"Actually, there were little signs of that today."
"See?" she said. "We know that the bad things Missy did to Cassie were very bad, and very public. What we don’t know is if they were in response to a bunch of little slights that Cassie had given Missy that piled up in Missy’s mind. I get the feeling that Missy is a whole lot more sensitive than anyone realizes."
"Hmmm." As usual, Mom had given me a lot to think about.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN MISSYI drove home rather pleased with myself. It was nice. I don’t get pleased with myself too often.
Why did I do it? Well, I admit it-I wanted my hands on him, just for my own selfish hormone-addled reasons. Though I couldn’t do anything about it myself at the moment, I had a nice little image stored away to aid my fantasies. Hell, the look on his face when he came just by itself almost made me wet!
But, I just felt compelled to do something for him, and this was the best thing I could come up with. He’d been so nice. And, I kept thinking of what his mother said-why was it inevitable that I’d eventually steamroller him? It didn’t have to be that way. She was right. I can be nice to people. So, I guess, I just wanted to be nice to him.
Me. Nice to somebody. And it felt good. Unbelievable.
Anyhow, being nice was over, as I was home.
"Hello," I called as I walked in.
"Hello, Melissa," Mom said. "Did they put you back into the program?"
"Well, of course. Do you think Mr. Tilling could stand Daddy’s arm-twisting?"
"No more ‘assaults’, I hope."
The fucking bitch. That was sarcastic. "Well, I almost got assaulted. Mr. Tilling didn’t have any choice but to put me back in The Program, thanks to you and Dad, but he did make an announcement that nobody was supposed to touch me today. He saw how much pain I was in yesterday after the assault that I’m supposedly telling tall tales about. Anyhow, some goon decided to ignore his words and tried to rip my right nipple off. David intervened. Got clocked right in the nose for his trouble."
"Come again?" Mom asked.
"A guy grabbed me, roughly. David stepped in between us to protect me. The guy smacked David in the face. He was going to come after me again, but two of David’s friends grabbed him and held him off. Took him to Mr. Tilling’s office. He got suspended for the rest of the school year from what I understand."
Just then, Dad walked in. "Hey, what’s going on?"
"Oh, Melissa’s just telling me about her knight in shining armor," Mom said with a little smirk.
And people wonder why I’m a bitch. Example, example, example.
"What are you talking about?" Dad asked. I told him the whole story.
"Well. All’s well that ends well," Dad said.
"Yeah. Easy for you to say," I snorted.
"Melissa, I have had just enough of you attitude!" Dad yelled.
"Attitude? ATTITUDE? Jesus!" I yelled. "You want me to take my clothes off, so you can see my swollen nipple? Shit, I should’ve taken ‘em off yesterday, you could’ve seen my bruised pussy! You might even get to see it now-it’s better, but not completely. Attitude? Tell me something, how hard did you twist Mr. Tilling’s arm to get him to put me back in The Program? Just so you wouldn’t look bad! Attitude, my ass." I started out of the room.
"Melissa, get back here!" Dad hollered.
"Why? Why should I? So you can lecture me some more?"
"You seem to forget who are the parents around here and who is the child," he said tightly.
"OK. Whatever. I’m tired of this. Just do me a favor, OK? The next time you want to see me beat up, just do it yourself, OK? It’d be much easier that way."
"Melissa, I do not want to see you beat up!" Dad said.
"Then why did you coerce Mr. Tilling into putting me back into the damn Program? WHY?"
"Because a Jenkins upholds his or her commitments."
I snorted. "What, like their marriage?"
"I uphold my commitment to your mother," he said tightly.
"Come on, Dad. Do you think I don’t know about the affairs that you two constantly have? I’m not that stupid. I’ve known for years." They both looked at me in shock. "Great way to uphold your marriage. Of course, it appears that the marriage is in good shape, and appearances are all that counts, right? So you want me to stick it out through The Program so I can appear to be tough and strong and committed, and thus a credit to the Jenkins family. Well, guess what? I’m not. I’m weak and needy and hurting and confused and sad and scared. But you don’t care about that. As long as it looks good. Just like you don’t care who you fuck behind your spouse’s back, as long as it looks good." At that, I turned and headed upstairs.
They, thankfully, didn’t bother me the rest of the night.
PART FOUR THURSDAY
I woke up Thursday morning feeling, well, strange.