Naked In School

"Are you OK?" he said.

"I think so," I told him.

"OK? Is she OK?!?!?" My mother howled. "Have you been listening to any of this?"

"Every word," Daddy said. "Look, Emily, your daughter’s having a bit of a rough time right now."

"Of course she is! She’s walking around naked, sleeping with boys! She’s making it rough! What do you want to do, Amanda, ruin your life?"

Daddy just sighed. "You keep talking about control," he said to me, "that you’re worried about losing it. You know what happens if you continue to worry so hard about your control?" I looked at him blankly. "You turn into that," and he pointed at Mother.

"What?" Mom whispered.

"That is the result of trying to hold onto your control as hard as you can. It slips out. And it’s ugly, messy, and counterproductive. I knew her when she wasn’t like this," Daddy went on. "You think she’s happier now? You think you’ll be happy if you don’t let loose once in a while?"

"I see your point," I said to Daddy as Mom fumed, "but there are limits. I hurt Jared badly today."

"Right. But if you don’t test the limits, you’ll never know what they are. And you’ll go over them, continually. If I were you, your Mother would have exceeded her limits in my eyes a long time ago. And Jared forgives you, remember that."

"I know," I said with a smile.

"You don’t know anything!" Mom interjected. "You don’t know the first thing about it! I thought you were popular, Amanda. I thought you had friends. I thought you had a full social life."

"It wasn’t enough," I told her.

"Not enough? I would’ve killed for that at your age. But I was poor and nerdy and unpopular. Until I filled out, when I was 13 or so. Oh, then I had lots of people wanting to be around me. Lots of boys. It took me a while to figure out they were only interested in one thing. That is what happens when you lose control, young lady. You end up going to bed with a long line of boys that only want that from you, and dump you as soon as they get it. You shouldn’t need that. You have other things to do with your time."

I was trying to come up with an answer to that, when I got a glimpse of Daddy’s face. It was etched in shock. "You told me I was your first," he managed to get out. "You even made me wait until the wedding night!"

"Right, because I wanted you to prove you wanted me for more than sex."

"But you lied to me! And twenty years later, and I never knew this?"

"When I met you, it had been a couple of years since I figured out the game, so it had been a couple years that I hadn’t slept with anybody. I figured it didn’t matter."

"Didn’t matter?" Daddy roared. "You have been uninterested in sex since shortly after Amanda was born. You let me think that whole time that I was the only one. Which means I’ve been beating myself up for the last fifteen years because I thought your problems with sex were my fault! And I’ve let you beat up Amanda about sex, because I figured that, since I was the problem, I had no business butting in!"

Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

I had to get out of there.

They didn’t even notice I had gone, they were still going at it.

I tried to hold it in. I tried to keep calm, hold it all in. And then I realized-no. That’s the old Amanda. The new Amanda doesn’t do that. She lets it out, because she realizes she needs to.

And the new Amanda isn’t afraid to be vulnerable around those she cares about. She isn’t worried about control when control isn’t important. And she isn’t afraid to ask for help.

I called Jared.

I think he flew to my house.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN JARED

I made it to Amanda’s house in record time, pretty worried about what I’d find there. I knocked, she opened the door, and flung herself into my arms. She was very upset-but not crying or breaking down any.

"Sit out here with me," she said, pointing to the swing on her porch. She sat next to me, and started gently swinging the swing.

"I used to love coming out here when I was younger," she told me. "It was so simple and peaceful and uncomplicated."

"What happened?" I asked. She told me, the whole thing.

"Listen, this wasn’t your fault," I told her. "This is between them, this isn’t about you."

"I know, deep down-but it was my problems that caused all this."

"What problems?" I said, smiling. "You don’t have any problems."

"I don’t?" she snorted incredulously.

"No, you don’t. No, listen to me. What problems do you have?"

"I hurt my boyfriend."

"He’s over it."

"I hurt my mother."

"That’s her problem, not yours."

"I’m out of control."

"I thought we discussed that. No, you’re not. You’re just trying to find a middle ground. You’ve been overcontrolling for years. You overreacted. You’ll figure it out."

"I’m oversexed?" she said with a hint of a smile.

"This is a problem?" I laughed.

"Ah, Jared," she said, wrapping her arms around my waist. "What would I do without you?"

"Be overcontrolled, repressed, and undersexed, most likely." I got a genuine belly laugh for that one.

"Look," she started, "do you think it would exceed your parents’ coolness limits if I, er, stayed over with you tonight? I really don't want to be alone."

"No, they won’t care."

"Do you mind?" she asked.

"I’d love it," I said honestly. "But what will your parents do?"

"I don’t care, at this point, but I know I don’t want to be here tonight."

Just then, we heard the front door open. "Punkin? You out here?"

"Over here, Daddy," Amanda called. Her father came out of the house and walked over to us.

"Hello, you must be Jared," he said-pleasantly, considering the circumstances. "Pleased to finally meet you."

"Likewise," I shook his hand.

"Punkin, will you come in for a minute, please?"

"Not by myself," she asserted.

"That’s fine." She led me into the house. We sat. Her father sat down across from us, next to her mother, who was glaring at me.

"Mom, this is Jared," Amanda said. Her mother at least flashed me a smile.

"Amanda," her father began, "your mother and I have had a long talk. We have some things to work out. But what’s going on between us is not your fault."

"I know it’s not, really, but I still feel responsible," she said.

"Look," her mother started. "I’m worried. Perhaps you think I’m overcontrolling, but you didn’t grow up like I did."

"That’s right, Mother, I didn’t," Amanda told her. "And I’m not you, and I can’t be you. This is a different world, and I’m a different person." I listened to her voice grow in strength as she went on. "You have to understand something-the only thing I’ve done that I regret is having sex with Eric this afternoon-and the only reason I regret that is this guy." She wrapped her arm around mine. "If I weren’t in love, I wouldn’t care who I had sex with. Something I’ve discovered these past couple of days is that I like sex. I like walking around naked. I even like getting felt up in the hallways! What I did today was the wrong thing because it was a breach of trust-but that was the only thing wrong with it."

"And, even then," I butted in, "you did it for what were, at least in part, some pretty good reasons."

"Oh, you do forgive me," she said softly, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Told you I did."

"Anyhow," she went on, head still on my shoulder, which amused her father no end, "I can’t keep running from life. I need to experience it. All of it."

"I understand what you’re saying," her mother said, very controlled-though she was obviously trying, "but what you haven’t yet figured out is that some experiences are bad."