21 comments/  132613 views/  125 favorites

A Stitch in Time Pt. 01

By: MarshAlien



This is a coming of age story, I have asked that it be put in the science fiction and fantasy category because it starts out with a bit of time travel, and it really doesn't fit anywhere else. If you're looking for spaceships or dragons, though, you may want to click the back button. Because after the time travel, it's simply a story about growth and love and family. Oh, and baseball. And a little sex, of course. 

Chapter 1

Finding the men's room in the Maple Hills Shopping Mall was no more than a puzzle. It was getting there, through the holiday shoppers who, like my mother and sister, still hadn't finished their holiday shopping on December 23, 2003, that was the real challenge. The first time I passed the hallway that contained the men's room, I found myself too far to the inside of the mass of humanity that was circling the mall like a road rally at a roundabout. Instead, I used the next circuit to gradually move to the outside, from which I was finally able to launch myself into the deceleration lane that led to my goal. I had apparently discovered the only place in the mall that was wholly devoid of life. I stepped up to the farthest left of the three urinals and was standing there, taking care of the business that had summoned me, when I heard the door bang open.

Etiquette required that I continue staring at the wall in front of me, although etiquette also required that this new visitor use the right-hand urinal rather than the one in the center. Apparently he hadn't heard that. I could sense him stepping up next to me, leaving us separated only by the shoulder-to-knee metal divider.

"Ho-ho-ho," I heard a chuckle, "so what are you wishing for this Christmas, young man?"

I glanced over. He was obviously the mall's Santa, on a break from posing for pictures with tiny tots with their eyes all aglow.

"Santa," I acknowledged him with a grin as I returned my eyes to the front. I had no idea his red suit had a zipper in the front.

"Well?" his booming voice reverberated inside the tiled room. "There must be something you want!"

"Can't think of anything," I was still grinning. Apparently the guy really enjoyed this role. Although probably they'd fire his ass if one of the customers caught him smoking in the men's room and complaining about some little girl who'd just gotten a little too excited all over his nice suit. I finished up and walked over to the sinks to wash my hands.

"So you've got everything you want in life already?" he asked, still with the loud voice. "Everything's perfect?"

"Well, no," I said. "All right, you know what I'd like, Santa? Instead of just starting high school, what I'd really like is to be finishing it."

That way, I thought to myself as I looked in the mirror and tried to smooth my hair over to the side a little, I could avoid all the assholes, the bullies, the jocks, the bitches, the sniping, the teasing, the gossiping, the backstabbing — instead of three and half more years of this crap, I'd be just about finished.

John Marshall High School was not my idea of a good time. There was a core of jocks (male and female), cheerleaders, and the generally cool; orbiting planets for band members, newspaper and yearbook types, comics, theatre freaks, and druggies, who were at least connected; and then there were people like me, whose orbits occasionally brought them uncomfortably close to the solar system but who generally preferred to stay out among the asteroid fields. I was currently on one of my forays to the center, where I seemed to have been appointed the target-of-the-month by the freshman and sophomore football players and their tart-tongued girlfriends. The juniors and seniors, thank God, thought me so far beneath them as to not even be worthy of attention

It didn't help, actually, having an older brother who was one of those seniors, bound for Auburn University next year on a football scholarship. The gym coach was constantly expecting me to show even a fraction of my brother's athletic ability; the teachers were constantly expecting me to be as much a goof-off as he was; and the girls, even in my own grade, were constantly comparing his six-foot-two, 220-pound frame to mine. At five-foot-seven and 140 pounds, I was constantly disappointing them.

"That's a pretty tall order, young man," Santa laughed as he joined me at the sinks. "So basically you just want to skip all this annoying adolescence and go straight on into adulthood, huh?"

Was Santa Claus mocking me? I looked at him in the mirror, but he still wore the same jolly expression, even on his break.

"I was more mature at six than most of the guys in my high school will be when they're thirty-six," I said.

"Maybe so," he laughed again as I dried my hands and pulled open the door. "Have a Merry Christmas, young man!"

"Yeah, you too," I mumbled as I let the door close behind me.

I made my way back to where I was supposed to meet Mom and Jeanne, noticing along the way that Santa Claus was already back at his station, making yet another kid smile as he bounced her on his knee. Probably knew some sort of mall shortcut.

My pissy mood evaporated as soon as I saw them standing there, two women for whom the Christmas season seemed to have been designed. They were comparing what they bought, Mom a present for a new family at our church with a newborn baby, and Jeanne a couple of presents for two new girls in her circle of friends in the eighth grade.

"All set, Patrick?" Mom asked. "Sure you don't want to get anything while we're here? You have presents for everybody?"

"I think so," I said, pretending to go over the list again. "Dad," — that would be a set of offset screwdrivers — "you," — a bathrobe I'd actually picked out last summer — "Dave," — a copy of the new Madden Football game — "and Jill" - a pair of earrings for my fashion-conscious seventh-grade sister. "All done."

"Jerk," Jeanne smiled at me.

"Oh, and Jeanne," I said. "I must have gotten a present for Jeanne. Still, too late now, huh?"

"Jerk," Jeanne smiled again.

I'd spent the most time picking that one out, a sweater that perfectly complemented her green eyes. I would tell her that, two mornings from now, and she would ask how anything could complement eyes hidden behind glasses as thick as hers, and I'd kid her that her boyfriends would notice, and she'd ask which boyfriend, the older college-age one or the younger high school one. Then we'd both laugh. Neither Jeanne nor I were ever going to be among the school's beautiful people. Unlike Dave, for instance, the jock of jocks, who seemed to have a different girl every week, or Jill, who was already reveling in the attention she was attracting from high school guys, to the point where she wouldn't even consider dating an eighth-grader, let alone a guy from her own grade.

Jeanne and I were different.

Jeanne would start dating when she found a boy smart enough to look beneath the shy exterior. And maybe when she got a different pair of glasses; it wasn't so much that they were thick as that the frame did nothing to hide that fact. And, in truth, she could use a little bit more developing, just like I could. Just like I got compared to Dave, she got compared to Jill, about an inch and a cup size to Jeanne's detriment. She was constantly getting teased about her "little" sister, and the stuff I heard when she wasn't around was even cattier. But I loved my sister, and I knew that, even if she kept the same glasses and the same bust, someday she'd find a guy who thought as highly of her as I did.

I would start dating when I found a girl like Jeanne.

"So what are you doing tonight?" Jeanne turned around from the front seat of Mom's car to ask me.

"Why?" I narrowed my eyes.

"Cammie's coming over," she shrugged. "I just thought —"

"I'm busy," I said.

"Oh, stop it," she laughed. "Cammie's nice."

I held up my hands.

"I never said she wasn't," I protested. "But I don't know, chubby little metal-mouth Cammie Rowe and me? Can you see that?"

"I think you two would be a very cute couple," Mom piped in from her seat.

"Don't you have driving to do?" I pointed ahead for her. "Stop signs, lights, all that?"

"She's not chubby any more," Jeanne protested. "And she gets her braces off next summer."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "But she seems so, I dunno, desperate."

"She likes you," Jeanne objected. "God knows why!"

"So what are you doing tonight?" I asked her after a suitable pause.

Jeanne smiled. I couldn't fool her.

"We're gonna listen to some tunes and then walk around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights," she said. "You wanna join us?"

"Wouldn't that make either you or me the third wheel?" I asked.

"Yeah, one of us," she admitted with a smile. "But you know how much I like helping you out."

"Helping me out?" I raised my eyebrows. "You mean helping Cammie out."

"Next fall, Cammie's gonna have to beat the guys off with a stick," Jeanne pointed out. "She doesn't need my help."

It was true. I left them alone for the music portion of the evening, but allowed myself to be coaxed outside for the walk. Once there, Cammie's gloved hand had shyly made its way into mine as we strolled beside Jeanne and listened to her commentary on which of our neighbors had committed serious Christmas decorating errors and which had gotten it right.

When we were back in the house, after Cammie had discarded the scarf and wool hat she'd been wearing, I was struck by the suddenly clear vision of how pretty she was, in fact, going to be next year. If I waited until next fall, I'd never even be able to get close enough to get hit with that stick.

So later that evening, while Jeanne was making hot chocolate for the three of us in the kitchen, I sat with next to her on the couch and made inane small talk. What was I doing for Christmas? Nothing special. What was she doing for Christmas? She was leaving tomorrow with her family for Rhode Island, where her grandparents lived.

Finally, as I heard Jeanne unplug the electric teapot to pour the water into the mugs, I tentatively leaned in for my first kiss.

"Finally," Cammie agreed in a whisper as she pressed her mouth against mine, her soft lips self-consciously pressing out to make sure that I couldn't feel her braces with my own lips.

"Chocolate's done," Jeanne announced from the kitchen, giving us a full five seconds to disengage before she bustled in with the three mugs.

"So?" she asked. "True love yet?"

I blushed, while Jeanne and Cammie burst into giggles.

Later that evening, while Jeanne made a big production of washing out the mugs in the kitchen and carefully drying them, Cammie and I shared two more kisses, and agreed that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if we ran into each other when she returned in the New Year.

"So, did you and Cammie have a nice time last night?" Mom asked innocently at breakfast.

"Yeah," I grunted. "Sure."

"And did you have a nice time with Cammie after she went home?" Jeanne whispered when Mom was out of earshot.

"What are you talking about?" I could feel myself blushing.

"Squeak, squeak, squeak," she whispered.

I felt my cheeks burning as I tried to find something — anything — in my cereal bowl that was worthy of intensive study.

"Don't worry," Jeanne said, "she did it, too."

I looked up in astonishment.

"How do you know?" I whispered.

"She called me last night," Jeanne smiled.

I was finally able to close my mouth.

"And, um, she didn't tell you that sort of, um, in confidence?" I asked.

"And, um, she asked me, um, to tell you," Jeanne concluded with a big grin.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, one of Mom's bugaboos. Dave helped by staying out of the way, while Jeanne and I, and to a lesser extent Jill, dusted the cabinets, vacuumed the floors, and cleaned the kitchen counters. When Santa Claus came to the Sterling house tonight, he was going to find it spotless.

My day got even a little bit better late in the afternoon when we got our report cards. At dinner that evening, our traditional Christmas Eve roast, Mom made a big deal about my across-the-board A-pluses. My father grunted his approval, but he was far more interested in re-running the film of the state championship football game two weekends ago that Marshall had come within a field goal of winning thanks to my brother's 300 yards passing. While he and Dave watched the tape, the rest of us would be spending Christmas Eve decorating the tree, and then attending the 10 p.m. service at the church.

"I don't know," Mom teased me by cupping her hand to her ear after Dad and Dave left the dinner table. "I think I hear UVA calling."

"Mom," I reddened.

My Uncle Ted, married to Mom's sister Helen, was a tenured professor of history at the University of Virginia, and he described it in such glowing terms that even though it couldn't possibly all be true, I'd never lost my dream of going there one day. And Mom was right, these grades wouldn't hurt. The odd part was that I hadn't given a lot of conscious thought to them last semester. Instead, once my teachers had gotten past the me-as-Dave's-brother thing, they'd turned out to be a pretty good bunch. My English teacher in particular, Mrs. Palmer, was amazing. She had led these discussions of Charles Dickens that even had some of the druggies participating. So to the extent I got good grades, it was because I'd actually enjoyed doing the work.

"Calling all geeks, calling all geeks," Jill interrupted my reverie. I stuck my tongue out at her. She was capable of being a good student herself, and she'd actually done well last semester: three B's, an A-minus, and an A. Jeanne had just missed straight A's with a single B-plus. Dave? Well, it was a good thing it was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one. Still, he wasn't in any danger of not being able to play when he got there.

I went to bed that evening just before midnight, with the lights of the tree still illuminating the stairs leading up from the living room. I just lay there for a while, my hands behind my head, thinking that maybe I'd been a little hasty the day before in the men's room at the mall. I mean, if Cammie Rowe was going to be around, if the teachers were actually bringing this kind of work out of me, then high school might not be that bad.

I woke up at three, with a desperate need to visit the bathroom. I had no sooner gotten out of bed than I tripped on something lying on the floor. Swearing quietly, I pulled myself up and quietly walked down the hallway to the bathroom I shared with Dave. I sleepily drained my dick and washed my hands in the bathroom sink. Then, with just the barest of glances at my reflection in the mirror over the sink, I flipped off the light.

I flipped it right back on again and stared at the mirror. I had no idea who I was looking at.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. It was me; those were my blue eyes, that was my sandy hair. But whose ripped pecs were those? Whose muscled arms were those? And, just as a matter of general information, whose six-foot-three inch body was that?

I stayed there for another five minutes, raising my arm to make sure that the mirror was reflecting properly, and then touching my face, my arms, and my chest to see if they would disappear. I was fully awake now, and I eventually forced myself back into the hallway, still lit with a faint glow from the tree downstairs. I flipped on the light in my room, hoping that somewhere inside was a clue to my startling transformation.

If there was, it certainly wasn't going to be easy to find it. My room was a pigsty. What I had tripped on when I'd gotten up was a pile of clothes that easily topped the mattress on the bed. Other than that, I appeared to have gotten extremely lucky not to have tripped on the baseball between the bed and the door, not to mention the pens that littered the floor, lying among a set of notebooks.

I made my way over to my desk, uncluttered with anything that looked like schoolwork, and pulled out the chair. I sat down and looked around. There were clues everywhere now. It's just that I had no idea what they meant. There were all sorts of newspaper clippings pasted to the mirror that hung above my desk. According to the headlines, the Marshall High School baseball team appeared to have had a phenomenal year.

On the shelf directly below the mirror was a picture of a Marshall High baseball team, with the two guys in front, who looked like Jim Perkins and Carl Wascinsky, holding up a large trophy. They were two sophomore jerks who were also on the football team, and who'd been among my tormenters this past week. I was in the picture as well, in my new body. I was standing in the back with an arrogant grin on my face, holding up a much smaller trophy.

That trophy, I suddenly realized, was also sitting on the shelf. A baseball player perched atop it, and according to the inscription on the plaque, it had been awarded to "Patrick Sterling, MVP — State AAA Tournament, 2006."

I stared at it in disbelief. It was 2006? What had happened to 2004 and 2005? Had I been asleep? Well, no, apparently I'd been playing baseball. I fired up the computer sitting on the desk; fortunately it was the one thing in the room, along with the bed and the desk itself, that didn't appear to have changed. I opened the internet browser, and discovered that my home page was now a pornography site. All of my bookmarks, in fact, were porno sites. I finally had to type in the URL for Google to get something that looked familiar.

From there, I found out that it was, in fact, 2006. George Bush was still President, we were still at war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden was still the world's bête noire. Nothing new there. I "googled" myself, finding all of the articles in the local newspaper about the baseball team, among them articles that discussed the terrific recruiting war between Auburn and Alabama for my services, which appeared to include a 95 mile per hour fastball and a devastating changeup. And the Yankees and the Red Sox were interested as well, since baseball prospects could get drafted straight out of high school. Wow. No wonder I looked arrogant.

And then I found the brief article that broke my heart, dated June 26, 2005.

Sarah Anne Sterling, Community Activist

Sarah Anne Sterling died this past Tuesday of cancer at Mercy Hospital. She was 40. Mrs. Sterling was a noted community activist. Among her causes was the successful 1999 fight to establish what is now known as Lemmon's Park, built on a site that the city had been touting for development as a chemical processing plant. She was a member of the Vestry of the St. James Episcopal Church, and had served as the Vestry's Senior Warden in 2002-2003.

Survivors include her husband, Bob Sterling, and her children, David, Patrick, Jeanne, and Jill, all of Parker's Falls.

I shut down the computer and cried myself to sleep. What in God's name was going on?

Chapter 2

I opened my eyes very slowly, thinking — hoping — that perhaps I'd just had a very bad dream last night, a dream in which my mind, but not my body, had skipped three years of high school. Even with them half open, though, I knew that it had all been real. The room was just as messy as it had been when I had stumbled over the pile of dirty clothing. The newspaper articles about my baseball prowess were still attached to the mirror above my desk. And, I knew deep inside, my mother was still dead.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, telling myself that it's not like I could have done anything to help her. And I'm sure I said goodbye to her; somebody must have been operating this body for the last three years and he couldn't possibly have been that big a jerk not to have said goodbye to Mom before she died. It just wasn't me. I'd apparently gone through all of the stages of grieving already, and now I was going to have to do it again.


A Stitch in Time Pt. 01



I looked over at the clock: 9:24. It was, I suddenly remembered, Christmas morning. I needed to at least show up. I found a relatively clean pair of jeans on the floor, and a nice-looking flannel shirt hanging in my closet that appeared to have never been worn. I pocketed the pile of stuff on my bedside table — a wallet, a pocketknife, a couple of quarters, and a set of keys — and with a last look in the mirror (so far, this body was the only good thing about this whole nightmare) I headed downstairs.

I paused at the doorway to the living room, comparing the scene to the one I had left the night before. The furniture was completely unchanged. Same couch, same chairs, same lamps, same rug. The only thing that had changed was one of the pictures on the far wall. Mom had hung a painting of the church we attended, a 150-year-old building nestled among the oaks and maples that deserved the description it was always given — quaint. The new picture was a photograph; from my vantage in the doorway it appeared to be two people on a beach.

The Christmas tree was in the same place as always, although it didn't seem as "happy" as it usually did. It took me a minute to figure out why; no tinsel. Mom was always a big tinsel person, and I'd spent last night gleefully, but tastefully, helping her put it on the tree.

The three — three? — girls sitting around the living room didn't look all that happy either. The closest to me was Jeanne, sitting on the couch in a pair of jeans and a sweater as she neatly sliced the tape on the back of a wrapped present with a thumbnail. I smiled as I recognized the sweater I'd bought for her, the one I had intended to give her this morning. Back when this morning was still in 2003. I choked up a little, thinking that I would never now know whether I had told her how well I thought it was going to go with her eyes.

It was a little tighter than I thought it would be, meaning that I'd screwed up the size, or, more likely, that she'd finally undergone that growth spurt she'd been wishing for. Well, good for her. She was cutting her hair a little shorter, too, in a way that framed her face much better, and adding a few highlights to her brown hair. She was actually a very attractive young woman now, even if she did still have the same thick lenses in the same unattractive glasses.

Sitting at the other end of the couch was Jill, and my God, what a fox she'd become. If this was 2006, she would still only be 15 years old. Fifteen going on twenty-five, it looked like. Her lustrous blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing her perfect cheekbones and her lively blue eyes. Her somewhat over-mascaraed lively blue eyes, to my way of thinking. She was dressed in a bathrobe that had fallen open as she propped her long, tanned legs on the coffee table to paint her toenails with a bottle of polish the color of blood.

I had no idea who the third girl was. She was sitting in one of the wing chairs, her legs stretched open in front of her on an ottoman. She looked to be about 24 or 25. I always had a hard time guessing women's ages, though, so she could be anywhere from 20 to 30. She looked to be about five months pregnant, although again, she could be anywhere from four to six months as far as I knew. She wasn't an unattractive woman, either, with dirty blonde hair that hung down to her almost exposed breasts. She was wearing a short, nearly nonexistent nightie that did little to hide much of anything, particularly with her legs splayed out like that. Dave's wife, maybe? He'd never been the smartest guy when it came to protection, but this girl looked a little older than the standard-issue coed he would have run into at Auburn.

Jill suddenly realized I was standing there, and broke into a grin.

"Hey, bro," she said, "thanks for the gift card. Victoria's Secret. Be nice to buy something there myself."

"For a change," Jeanne muttered as she looked up, too. "Yeah, thanks."

Evidently, I'd bought her the same thing, although with somewhat less success. She picked it up off the coffee table along with a small pile of other gifts that she'd finished unwrapping.

"How come I didn't get one?" the pregnant blonde pouted.

"Maybe because you don't have any secrets," Jill sniped at her, casting a disdainful look at her exposed panties.

"Jill," the blonde warned her, "do you want me to tell your father we're not getting along again?"

"No, stepmother dear," Jill's voice dripped with sarcasm. "I'm so sorry."

Stepmother? Whoa. This was my stepmother? I leaned back against the door jamb as I processed this information. Dad had remarried? And since she was five months pregnant, and Mom had died 18 months ago, he sure hadn't waited very long, the son of a bitch.

Jeanne had finished gathering her stuff, and moved toward the doorway I was standing in. She stopped suddenly, and eyed me with suspicion.

"I thought you hated that shirt," she said.

"No, why would you think that?" 

"'Cause I've never seen you wear it before," she answered me, as if I'd done something wrong by not wearing it, and was doing something equally wrong now by having put it on.

"No, it's great," I assured her. "Matches my eyes, don't you think?"

"Of course I think it matches your eyes," she nearly took my head off. "That's why I bought it for you last year."

Without even the hint of a smile, she pushed past me and stomped up the stairs to her room.

"We saved your presents," Jill said, pointing to a pile of gifts sitting on the couch between her and the seat Jeanne had occupied. I sat down in the space Jeanne had warmed for me.

"Where are Dave and Dad?" I asked as I glanced at the card on the first gift, from Jill.

"Your father, uh, didn't get enough sleep last night," my stepmother giggled as Jill rolled her eyebrows. "He'll be down soon. Dave had to go in to open up the Seven-Eleven because his manager called in sick."

Jill's gift proved to be a very nice-looking cellular phone.

"This is awfully expensive, Jill," I said, "but thank you."

"You're welcome," she favored me with a well-practiced, but nonetheless glowing, smile. "And I actually got it free, sort of. It comes with instructions for transferring all your numbers from your old phone on it."

"Sort of free?" I asked.

"Well," she giggled, "he did get to take me to dinner."

I narrowed my eyes.

"Oh, fuck you," she grinned and threw a pillow at me. "Who are you to talk?"

Who was I? That was turning out to be a very good question.

"Anyway, thank you," I said, leaning across the couch to kiss her on the check and sitting back with another gift in my hands, one from "Dad and Mom (Tiffany)." Tiffany. That figured.

It was an empty picture frame, with a gold inset inscribed "Marshall High School — 2006 State Champions."

"It's for that picture you have in your room," Tiffany bubbled. "We can hang it on the wall now. Your father picked it out."

For me or for him? I couldn't help but think.

"Thank you," I smiled at Tiffany.

"Where's my kiss?" she pouted.

I stood up and walked over to her chair. She planted her feet on the ground and pushed herself up a little, and I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. She threw her arms around my neck, and I was only barely able to brace my arms against the arms of the chair to keep her from dragging me down on top of her.

"Thank you," I murmured.

"I wish this was our baby," she whispered into my ear.

She let go, and I turned and tripped over the ottoman, somersaulting onto the rug. "Our" baby? How could "we" have a baby? Oh my God, I was doing my stepmother. Not only had I managed to misplace my virginity in the last three years, but I'd apparently buried my self-respect along with it. Oh my fucking God.

"Are you okay?" Jill asked when I hadn't gotten up after a minute or two on the ground.

"Yeah, sorry," I said, pushing myself onto my elbows. "I just hit my head."

"Didn't hurt the golden arm, did we?" she arched her eyebrows, her voice taking on the slightest mocking quality.

"Which one is that?" I asked in all innocence.

She just clucked her tongue in disgust and returned to her nails. I returned to the couch, and opened a hastily-wrapped magazine from Dave, with a card telling me I'd be receiving Sports Illustrated for the next year.

"That's very nice," I said absently as I replaced it on the coffee table.

"It's a big sacrifice for Dave," Tiffany assured me.

I looked over at her. A subscription?

"He doesn't make that much at the Seven-Eleven," she seemed eager to press his case, "and it's hard for him to even think about sports after his injury."

"Oh, yeah," I agreed. "I hadn't thought about it that way, uh, Tiffany. Thanks for reminding me."

"Tiff," she said quietly.

Jill was rolling her eyes again.

"Tiff," I acknowledged.

The final gift I unwrapped was from Jeanne, a wool winter hat, mostly blue, with little white baseballs in it. It was just so - so Jeanne. I imagine I was grinning stupidly as I put it on.

"What do you think?" I asked Jill and Tiffany.

"Yeah, the girls'll flock to that," Jill said.

"You know, I just can't understand knitting," Tiffany was shaking her head.

"Jeanne knitted this?" I asked. "Herself?"

"You don't think anybody would sell those, do you?" Jill apparently found it hard to make comments that didn't include sarcasm.

"Jill," Tiffany used her stepmother warning voice again before turning back to me. "She did work on it for most of the last two months."

"Well, I like it," I said. "Hey, it comes with a matching scarf."

I put that on, too.

Dad wandered in just then, dressed in a bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy slippers that had obvious been a gift from Tiffany at some point. My father was 45 years old now, and he wasn't a fuzzy slipper kind of guy.

"You look like a dork," he muttered on his way past me as he leaned over to give Tiffany, the son of a bitch's pregnant wife, a long kiss on the lips. As they were kissing, she looked over to make sure that Jill was still intent on her painting, and then gave me a big wink.

Oh my fucking God.

"I need some coffee," Dad grunted as pushed himself off the chair. "Where's Dave?"

"Seven-Eleven," Tiffany said. "Manager's sick."

"Assistant manager at a fuckin' Seven-Eleven," Dad shook his head as he made his way into the kitchen. "You want some coffee, Trick?"

Jill and Tiffany both looked over at me. I was Trick?

"Uh, yeah, sure Dad, thanks," I yelled back.

He came back with the coffee, and Jill and I watched him and Tiffany open up their gifts. Mine was apparently a gift card to a steakhouse. Had I gotten everybody a gift card? I must have shopped for a whole fifteen minutes one day. Dad grunted his thanks while Tiffany called me over for another kiss, this one blessedly uneventful.

My mother had loved Christmas, and I found myself unwilling to let go of what little holiday spirit we had going by heading back to my room. So I grabbed the copy of Sports Illustrated that came with the subscription acknowledgement and started to flip through it. Jill had finished painting and was now in the drying stage. Dad and Tiffany were sitting on the floor, murmuring to each other. Dad put his hand and then his ear on Tiffany's stomach while she cooed about feeling the baby kicking.

"So can you take me to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth's now?" came a voice from my left. We all looked up to see Jeanne in the doorway, looking eagerly at Dad for an answer to her question.

"Hey, sorry, doll," Dad shook his head. "I gotta spend the afternoon changing the timing belt in my car, and Tiffy's car is still in the shop from hittin' the deer."

"The deer hit me," Tiffany protested with a sulk.

"Yeah," Dad chuckled, "but he hit you smack dab in the middle of the hood, and it's gonna be another week 'til they get in all the parts. Christmas, you know."

"But you said you'd take me," Jeanne protested, clearly struggling to keep a stiff lip.

"Nothin' I can do about the timing belt that quickly," Dad told her, still sitting on his butt on the floor. "You know, if you hadn't failed the driver's test twice, I'd have bought you your own car by now."

He returned his focus to his wife, Jill returned hers to her toes, and I watched Jeanne as her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She turned and started to walk slowly back upstairs. I suddenly remembered the keys in my pocket and pulled them out. One was labeled as a Subaru key, so it might very well be that I owned a car.

"Hey, J," I shouted after her, "I can give you a ride."

I looked up the stairs, to where Jeanne's butt was about to vanish into the ceiling. The butt slowly turned in place, and the girl ascending turned into a girl descending. Still not a happy girl, though.

"Why?" she said when she reached the third step, the first step at which she was able to finally look at me.

"I dunno," I shrugged my shoulders. "To say 'thanks' for the hat and scarf?"

She blinked at me a few times. Apparently, she hadn't noticed I was wearing them before now. That was probably because she hadn't even given me so much as a glance when she came back downstairs to ask Dad about the ride.

"Um, okay," she agreed. "When can we leave?"

"Whenever," I held out my hands. "My plans for the day were kind of gonna start and stop with laundry."

"Yeah, I could use some laundry, too," Dad chimed in. "What about it, Tiffy?"

"I still got a couple of clean pairs of panties," Tiffy adopted a sullen expression. "And it's Christmas. I'll do it tomorrow."

Dad grunted his assent.

"Let's go now," I said, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get out of this house. "Grab my coat, wouldja?"

That last line was a sudden inspiration, and it would solve one of the three immediate problems I had, namely, which coat was mine? Unfortunately, that was the most minor of the three. The other two, how you got to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth's, and how you drove a car, were going to be a little more problematic.

As it turned out, though, they were easily solved by the same method. As we walked out of the house — me wearing a very nice leather bomber jacket, along with the scarf and hat — I followed Jeanne toward a fancy silver Impresza. She began to walk toward the passenger side when I was re-inspired.

"Hey," I said, tossing her the keys. "You drive."

"Me?" her eyes widened as she caught them. "Drive your car?"

"Can't pass the test if you don't practice," I grinned. "You got a permit, right?

She crossed over to the driver's side and adjusted the seat while I took the other seat.

"I'm nervous," she said. "I hate sticks. That's why I failed the second test. I got so nervous driving Tiffany's car."

Shit! A manual transmission. Another good reason for me not to be driving.

"Well, just talk yourself through it," I suggested. Talk us both through it, in fact.

"All right," she started reciting a litany. "I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and shit!"

We jerked back about a foot and a half and stalled.

I looked over and she was literally shaking.

"Can you please drive?" her voice quivered as she stared down at her lap.

"No," I said, touching her on the arm. She looked at me with a mixture of embarrassment and anger and suspicion playing across her face.

"You remember when we were at Grandpa and Grandma's that one time," I asked her, "when I was, like twelve, and you were eleven? And we were learning how to fish?"

She blushed and looked back at her lap.

"Do you remember when you got that worm hooked to your finger?" I continued.

"Yes," she said softly.

"Me, too," I chuckled. "And after I got you two lovers apart" — that merited a small giggle from the driver's seat — "I gave it back to you, told you how to do it one more time, and then stepped away. Remember that?"

"Uh-huh," she said, looking forward now instead of down.

"And when I came back, you'd baited that little sucker all by yourself," I said. "And you ended up catching a big one, too, I think."

"He wasn't that big," she demurred.

"I think you're missing the point," I said gently. "First of all, I want to say 'thank you.'"

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "I love this hat and this scarf and I can't believe you made them for me."

"You do?" she asked, finally looking at me again.

"I do," I nodded. "Second of all, I bet Dad watches you like a hawk when you're driving his car, and Tiffany probably gets worried about you scratching up her paint or burning up her clutch."

She nodded.

"Or being attacked by a deer," I added as an afterthought, producing the first genuine laughter I had heard in the Sterling household all day.

"So I'm just gonna sleep here," I said, putting the seat back, slouching down in it, and closing my eyes. "Take me for a ride, Jeeves."

We stalled again on the way out, and once getting into first gear at the end of the driveway. After that, though, it was a piece of cake. I kept my left eye closed the whole way, in case she looked over, but the right was open, scanning the scenery. At a minimum I was going to learn how to get to Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth's.

As Jeanne smoothly pulled into the driveway, I learned that they hadn't moved. Whether I could find my way there again, or home for that matter, was another question.

"You should come in," Jeanne turned to me with a look of delighted triumph when she set the brake and turned the car off.

"Why wouldn't I come in?" I asked.

"When was the last time you were here?" she countered.

"I honestly can't remember," I said, honestly not remembering.

"Well, you certainly didn't come last Christmas," she said. "I was the only one who bothered. I don't think you've been here at all, in fact, since Mom died.

"Really?" I asked. That seemed unlikely. I had always loved visiting Mom's family; they were so, I don't know, exuberant about life.

"Hell, you practically spent all day last Christmas over at Sheila's," she sneered, drawing out the name "Sheila" so that it sounded like I'd spent the day with a slug. "Where was her husband, anyway? I mean, it was Christmas."

"I dunno," I said. I'd also been doing it with a married woman named Sheila? Who the hell was I? "So, inside?"

We walked up to the door, Jeanne growing more and more excited with each step she took. Finally, bouncing up and down, she rang the doorbell.

"Aunt Ruth!" she screamed as the door was opened.

"Jeanne!" Aunt Ruth, Mom's older sister, was just as enthusiastic as her niece. She stepped forward and the two embraced. Finally, Jeanne let go and turned to me.

"And is this your boyfriend, dear?" Aunt Ruth asked before Jeanne could speak. "I'm Ruth Parkinson."

She held out her hand. My Aunt Ruth, who'd nursed me through mononucleosis in the eighth grade, was offering me a handshake. God, what a pitiful asshole I'd become.

Chapter 3

Jeanne was at least as mortified as I was that my aunt apparently had no idea who I was.

"Aunt Ruth," she murmured, "it's Trick."

"Trick?" Aunt Ruth asked.

"Patrick?" Jeanne tried again. "My, uh, brother?"

"Oh my gosh," Aunt Ruth snatched back her hand like she might not even be sure whether I deserved a handshake. "Oh, Patrick, I'm so sorry."

She put her hands on my cheeks and looked into my face.

"I'm so embarrassed," she said. "Of course it's Patrick. And I saw you just last year. I just didn't realize how much you'd grown."

"I'm sorry I haven't come over more," I mumbled.

"Well, I certainly hope we see you more now," she said. "Now give me a big hug."

I leaned down — Aunt Ruth was only about five-foot-five — and got almost as enthusiastic a hug as my sister had.

"Well, come on," she let go and turned around, linking one arm in mine and one in Jeanne's. "Everyone's going to be so excited to see you both."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 01



We stepped into a simple foyer, made fancy by the evergreen roping that hung on the staircase, decorated here and there with elegant red globes. There were voices coming from the right.

"Eeeehhhh," I recognized the voice of my Uncle Bill imitating a buzzer. "Next, please."

"I thought it was perfect," Aunt Helen protested.

"Perfectly flat," her husband, Uncle Ted, chimed in.

"It's not too late to ruin the gravy," Aunt Helen warned him.

"Perfectly wonderful," Uncle Ted corrected himself. "But now it's my turn. Maestro? Excuse me, maestress? Maestrix?"

The tinkle of Aunt Ruth's piano drowned him out and filled the house, and Uncle Ted's baritone followed close behind.

"O ni-ight dee-viiiiiine. O-o niiiiiight, when Christ was booooorn. O niiiiight, dee-VIIIIINE — "

"No, it's hideous," another woman protested as the piano went silent. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

"Philistines!" Uncle Ted roared through the laughter.

By that point, Aunt Ruth had put our coats in the hall closet and escorted us into the living room, where a group of five adults was gathered around the piano, all five of them laughing helplessly. The living room was even more splendidly festive than the hallway. There were candles in all the windows, and a block-shaped pine-scented candle burning inside a wreath on the coffee table. The angel atop the Christmas tree was almost touching the nine-foot ceiling, while the tree itself held globes of silver, red, and gold; and ornaments of every shape and description, ranging from an elegant glass crèche to a homemade lime-colored clay wreath inscribed "Love, Jeanne" that had been given a place of prominence right in the middle. And tinsel. This was my mother's family. Strands of tinsel were draped on all the branches, making the whole tree shimmer in the reflected light of hundreds of tiny white bulbs.

I looked over to see a tear running down Jeanne's cheek, which she quickly brushed away before the singers realized we were among them.

"Uh-oh, cops," Uncle Ted grinned as he finally caught sight of us. "Cool it everyone."

"Jeanne!" Aunt Helen raised a glass of punch from the piano in a toast to my sister.

"And Patrick," Aunt Ruth added quickly, eager to save everyone else from making the faux pas of not recognizing their nephew.

"Patrick!" Aunt Helen's eyes twinkled. She pushed herself off the piano — she'd probably consumed a little more than a moderate amount of the punch, her own special Christmas recipe that I'd never been allowed to try — and walked over to me. "Give us a kiss."

She winked at Jeanne and stuck her cheek out at me. Helen was Mom's younger sister, probably still a year or two shy of forty, and she'd always been the adventurous one. And the flirtatious one. It was usually Ruth who got the cheek kisses; Helen always liked a nice firm smack on the lips, a source of unending embarrassment to the 15-year-old me who she'd fooled into giving her one that last time she visited us. Or the last time I remembered her visiting us, at least.

Like the others, she was dressed in what I thought of as church clothes — skirts and sweaters for the women; pressed slacks, button-down shirts for the men. I felt very out of place in my jeans and flannel shirt. Jeanne, I was only noticing now, had changed out of her jeans into a pair of black slacks and a very pretty plum-colored blouse.

I delivered the commanded kiss at the same instant that she turned her head. Our lips met briefly, and I hastily pulled back.

"He's gotten taller, hasn't he?" Aunt Helen asked Jeanne with a merry giggle.

"A little," Jeanne smiled back at her. "More support for his swelled head."

Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, and Jeanne collected a hug and a kiss from her other aunt as well. Uncles Ted and Bill came over with handshakes for me and kisses for Jeanne, and then Aunt Ruth turned to her other guests, a handsome couple in their late twenties or early thirties.

"Jeff and Sheila Jenkins," she said, "I'd like you to meet my niece and nephew, Jeanne and Patrick Sterling."

Jeff rose to offer his hand, while Sheila stayed seated at the piano bench, from which she offered us a half-hearted wave. She looked a little nauseous, to tell the truth, and Uncle Ted hustled back to her side to ask if she was all right.

"A little too much punch, maybe," she said weakly. "Could I just have a glass of water?"

My aunts raced toward the kitchen for some water as the men gathered solicitously around the stricken woman. She was incredibly attractive; her church clothes included a sweater that seemed to have expelled all of the air that might have fit between it and her skin.

"I thought you said she moved," Jeanne stepped toward me and hissed into my ear.

I suddenly wasn't feeling that good myself, and the next glass of water was for me. After a time, though, both Sheila and I recovered. She seemed intent on ignoring me for the rest of the afternoon, or at least ignoring whatever relationship we had had. For my part, I was as blissfully ignorant as everyone else in the room of the details of that relationship. Only Jeanne apparently knew that there had been one, and she treated Shelia with an initial coolness that I'd never seen in her before.

After a while, even that thawed. Jeanne could no more ignore the spirit of Christmas than she could stop breathing, and soon she was standing behind Sheila, her hand on Sheila's shoulder, taking her own turn at the show-stopping chorus of "O Holy Night." After I had a turn, standing well in back of Sheila, Jeanne was awarded first prize, and allowed to select any ornament she wanted from the tree.

"How 'bout that wreath?" Uncle Bill joked, pointing at Jeanne's youthful gift.

"You touch that wreath, Bill Parkinson," Aunt Ruth's eyes flashed, "and you'll lose something very dear to you."

"Very dear to you," he suggested with a flick of his eyebrows.

"I can get another one," Aunt Ruth quickly retorted.

"I could make a better one," Jeanne offered.

The room exploded into laughter.

"A better wreath, I meant," Jeanne turned a brilliant crimson. "It's a little, uh, lumpy."

"You touch that wreath, Jeanne Sterling," Aunt Ruth turned on her, "and you'll get no pie for dessert."

"She gets no pie and I get disfigured?" Bill asked.

"I know which punishments work on which offenders," Aunt Ruth smirked. "Now which one would you like, dear?"

Jeanne had to examine each and every ornament on the tree, and finally plucked a hand-painted wooden Santa Claus off a branch in the back.

She held it out to Aunt Ruth with great delight, and Aunt Ruth, with equal delight, pulled open a drawer in one of her tables and extracted a box in which the ornament fit perfectly.

"You knew!" Jeanne seemed awed.

"I bought it for you," Aunt Ruth smiled at her. "Still, I'm surprised you won it this early. I was figuring you'd win charades once everybody else got a little tipsy."

As it turned out, I won the charades, even though I had earlier been pronounced old enough to finally sample the punch and was probably a little tipsy myself. In a similar vein, both Jeanne and I were pronounced old enough to be able to dispense with "Aunt" and "Uncle," which Helen argued made her feel old.

Dinner was served just after three, a turkey that had been butchered at a local farm only two days earlier, and that Bill butchered again with his electric carving knife. It was still wonderful, though, just like stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and Ruth's exquisite gravy. Later, when Jeanne was busy washing dishes in the kitchen and Bill had dragged Ted and Jeff out to the garage to see his new toy, I found myself sitting at the table with Sheila.

"So how have you been?" she asked quietly.

"A little sick," I admitted. "Not quite myself lately."

"I've been thinking of you," she said. While she was thinking, she'd apparently kicked off one of her heels. I could feel a stockinged foot begin to trace a course up my leg. "My husband never found out who it was, you know. Only that I was cheating on him."

"Uh-huh," I agreed. Her foot had reached my crotch, and I couldn't believe that I wasn't exploding into my pants.

"Therapy was so boring," she said, taking another sip of the wine we'd shared during dinner as she began rubbing the ball of her foot up and down the ridge in my jeans created by my swollen dick. "And I guess I sort of promised not to do it again. But still..."

She gave me a look that could almost be described as predatory.

Just then, Helen popped back in from the kitchen, gaily humming "Deck the Halls."

"You drove out the men?" she asked us. Sheila had yanked her foot out of my lap as if it were on fire, and she lifted her glass for another drink.

"They went to check out Bill's car," I answered Helen, happy for a change of subject.

"His car," Helen nodded knowingly. "So that's where he keeps the annual Playboy magazine that Ruth gives him each Christmas."

Helen sat back down at the table and picked up her own half-full wine glass.

"So," she looked at me after a sip, "tell us what's new?"

"New?" I asked. As far as I was concerned, everything was new.

"New girlfriend?" Helen teased me with a guileless wink at Sheila. "Any new scholarship offers?"

"No," I shook my head. "Not that I know of.

"I'd still like to go to UVA," I added. I wondered if I'd even submitted an application? Or whether, as an in-demand jock, I simply considered myself above applications.

Now it was Helen shaking her head.

"Well, you can ask Ted," she said, "but apparently they've decided to toughen up academic standards for athletic scholarships, and I think they're starting with the baseball recruits. Here he is. Honey, what was it you told me about baseball scholarships?"

"Pretty ruthless," Ted said. "A two point seven five average and somewhere around a 1400 on the SAT combination."

I nodded to myself. That didn't sound that hard. The last report card I remembered, after the first semester of ninth grade, had straight A-pluses, which was like, what, a four-five? I had no idea what my average was at this point, of course, and no idea whether I'd even taken the SAT.

By now, though, everyone else had gathered around the table again, and judging by the look on Jeanne's face, I wasn't going to be attending UVA any time soon. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I tried to cover them up by knocking over my water glass.

"I'm sorry," Jeanne said gently as we got settled into the car for the ride home. "You never mentioned UVA anymore, so I thought you'd given up on it."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "That was fun, huh?"

"That was Christmas," Jeanne sighed, nestling herself into the passenger seat like she was ready for a nap.

Oh shit. She was in the passenger seat. I was in the driver's seat.

"So you wanna drive back?" I asked her as casually as I could.

"No," she said sleepily. "I just wanna sit here and remember that feeling."

She stretched like a cat, and I returned my attention to the car.

All right, I thought to myself, trying to replay the instructions Jeanne had recited, I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put it in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and - YESSS!

I pumped my hand as the car began backing down the driveway. Thank God for muscle memory; apparently I'd done this enough that my feet and hands could feel when it was time to shift and when it was time to let the clutch out. I'd done a good job memorizing the directions, too, and had no trouble navigating my way home.

Driving? That was another story altogether. Thank God for tryptophan, or whatever it is in turkey that puts you to sleep, because Jeanne would have been terrified of ever getting in any car again, let alone mine, if she had seen the two dogs we almost hit, the stop sign we ran through, the cute little family that had to jump back to the curb with expressions of horror on their cute little faces — yeah, like I'd really been that close to the stroller — and the general disregard I showed for the dotted and solid lines that had been painted down the middle of the road. Muscle memory is apparently of absolutely no use outside of that shifting thing. Once you've got the car going, that whole driving business apparently requires input from the brain. Mine was still 15 years old, the same age it had been yesterday when I went to sleep.

Finally, thank God for Christmas; on any other day of the year, the roads between our house and Aunt Ruth's would have been filled with traffic, and even more pedestrians than the ones whose lives I'd nearly ended. With sweat dripping from my chin, I pulled into our driveway and jerked the car to a halt.

"Are we here already?" Jeanne asked, once again doing the cat stretch. "Thanks, Trick. Thanks for bringing me. You did have fun, didn't you?"

"I did," I nodded, a little taken aback at the surprise with which she'd laced that question. "After a while, I even forgot what a schlub I looked like."

"Nobody noticed," she smiled, still lost in nostalgic reverie. "Nobody ever notices anything like that over there. Speaking of which, that was Sheila, wasn't it?"

Reverie over.

"Um," I said, "I really thought she'd moved. I haven't seen her in, like, forever. She seems to be happy with her husband, though."

"Bullshit," Jeanne said. "I saw the way she looked at you when she thought nobody else was looking. You be careful, Trick. The last thing you need is another paternity test."

She looked at our house, the lights of the tree in the living room the only visible sign that we celebrated Christmas.

"Whaddya bet they're in there having meatloaf for Christmas dinner?" she sighed.

She slammed the door and left me in the car to ponder my life. Another paternity test? I hoped to God I'd at least passed that one.

Chapter 4

In one sense, every day is the first day of the rest of your life. December 26, 2006, though, was a little bit more. Christmas was over, and I woke up to find myself in the same room, in the same body, and in the same life in which I'd found myself the day before. All of which were three years older than they were when I'd gone to bed on December 24.

My first thought as I woke up, stretched, and sat up in bed, was that if Mom were still alive, she'd reinstate spanking just to make sure my room never looked like this again. And I would have agreed with her; it was disgusting. So laundry was still high on my list of priorities. Since it was only seven o'clock, however, I figured I'd better wait a bit to start that project. Instead, I tiptoed down to the kitchen, where Dad and my older brother Dave were drinking coffee and reading the paper, Dad the sports section and Dave the business news.

"Morning," I said cheerfully.

"Huh," Dave grunted.

Dad just looked over at me.

"Say, Dave," I tried again, pouring myself a cup of coffee, "thanks for the subscription."

He nodded, still without so much as a glance at me.

"So wadda you doin' today?" Dad asked me.

"I dunno," I shrugged.

"You're not gonna lift, are you?" his eyes narrowed. "You don't need that shit at this point."

"Yeah," I agreed. Okay, no lifting.

"Yeah, wouldn't want to strain the golden arm," Dave muttered.

"I don't remember your brother givin' you shit when you were playin,'" Dad said pointedly.

"Yeah, I know," Dave sighed and finally looked at me. "Sorry, little bro. Thanks for the gift card."

"Sure," I said.

God only knew which store I'd gotten him a gift card from.

"Actually," I turned back to Dad, "I still need to do some laundry."

"Tiff'll be up soon," Dad said. "Let her do it."

"Maybe he doesn't want his clothes to end up all the same color," Dave blurted out.

I watched Dad tense up, to the point where I could see the blood throbbing in his neck. Dave also realized he'd gone too far.

"Hey, sorry, Dad," he said, pushing himself back from the table. "It's been a tense week."

"Things rough at the Seven-Eleven?" Dad growled. "I think the Wal-Mart's hiring."

Dave bit back his own snappy comeback, put his dishes in the sink and left. Dad watched him go, and then turned to me.

"I swear one day I'm just gonna chuck his ass outta here," he said. He left for work himself a few minutes later, and Jeanne appeared a few minutes after that.

"Morning," I said. I figured the third time might be the charm as she sleepily walked around the kitchen to get herself a bowl of cereal.

"What do you want?" she demanded. Apparently I was mistaken.

"Sorry," I said, holding up my hand. What was it with this family?

"Look," she paused with an open milk bottle in her hand. "Christmas was special. Nice, even. But you don't have to pretend we're friends any more."

She said it with such savagery that the part of me that wanted to protest — to whine "we're not friends any more?" — found itself without a voice. Instead, I simply asked if she thought that anyone would mind if I started a load of laundry.

She looked at me with a smirk.

"Queen Tiffy and Princess Jill?" she scoffed. "They could sleep through a fire. When did you get so domestic?"

"No underwear," I said, putting a quick end to that discussion. "Do you know if the school's open today?"

"I thought all you jocks had your own key to the weight room," she spat.

"I meant the office," I said quietly.

"Oh," she said. "I dunno. I guess. Why?"

"I was, uh, thinkin' about changing some classes," I told her.

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "I see Dave and I think, suppose I get hurt. You know, what would I do then? I mean, no offense to the guy, but that's not really where I wanna see myself."

"What is it with you?" Jeanne asked as she sat down at the table.

"What?" 

"Are you high?"

I just laughed. She shook her head, and we settled down to eat in silence. From my standpoint, the less I said about anything at this point, the less trouble I could get into.

I did my laundry, and around ten o'clock, with Tiffany and Jill still dead to the world, I hiked the two miles between my house and the high school. The front door was open, although the office itself held the only signs of life. Fortunately, it hadn't changed much. When you entered the office, you still came face-to-face with a counter, the first barrier between us, students, and them, the school's administration. Behind the counter were two desks, one normally occupied by Mrs. Carter, the other by Mrs. Waters. Together, the story went, they ran the school, occasionally dragging Mr. Linwood out of his principal's office to make announcements before they locked him back inside the office.

Today, though, there was only one young lady sitting at one of the desks, a Ms. Carter, if the sign on her desk was right. She was much nicer looking than either Mrs. Carter or Mrs. Waters had been, and if I lingered a few minutes at the counter before clearing my throat to attract her attention, well, who could blame me? Tall, slender, her auburn hair pulled back into a somewhat severe-looking bun, she sat there studying her computer screen with a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

"Did you want something, Mr. Sterling, or were you just going to stand there all and wait for someone to announce your visit?"

She still hadn't looked at me yet, although apparently I'd been wrong about the obliviousness.

"I, uh, I was thinking about changing my class schedule," I stammered.

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at me.

"I'm not sure we could make it any easier for you," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Maybe we could just assign you a room and your teachers could rotate in and out. Then we could have your lunch delivered as well."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 01



She'd put a couple of air quotes around the word "teachers." Did I not have real teachers this year?

"Trickster!"

A boyish-looking man came hustling out of the principal's office, his hand extended. I eagerly grasped it, the first sign I'd seen yet that someone knew who I was and was happy to see me. Evidently the occupant of the principal's office had changed as well. This would be Tony Peterson, according to the fake-wood sign at the entrance.

"How was your holiday, um, sir?" I asked.

"Excellent, Trickster, excellent. And call me Pete. How about yours?"

"Fine, thank you, sir. Pete," I said, finally pulling my hand loose.

"Excellent," he smiled. "So what can we do for you?"

"Mr. Sterling thinks his courses next semester are too hard," Ms. Carter said scornfully.

"Actually," I said softly, "I don't believe I said that, ma'am. I simply said I had some thoughts about changing my class schedule."

"Well, let's see what we've got," 'Pete' said.

Ms. Carter had already pulled my schedule up and was holding it between her forefinger and thumb as if it would infect her. Pete snatched it from her hands, her message flying right over his head,

"First period," he read, "Principles of Government with Mr. Kennedy. That looks good."

Ms. Carter was shaking her head.

"Second period," he continued. "The second half of Mr. Anson's American History survey. Just between us, you might want to go to a few more classes this semester, Trick."

Ms. Carter rolled her eyes.

"And fourth period," he concluded, "English Self-study with Ms. Torianni."

After a few seconds of silence, it became clear that he'd finished reading.

"That's it?" I asked. "Three classes? All I have is three classes? What do I do in the afternoon?"

"Coach Torianni wanted that kept clear for scouts and practice," Pete winked at me. "I played a little ball in high school myself, you know, Trick. I know how important it is to make a good impression and keep in shape."

The phone rang just then, and Ms. Carter answered it and told Pete that it was Superintendent Frostman.

"Whoa, gotta take this," Pete gave me another wink. "Don't go away, Trick."

He bounded into the other room and closed the door behind him, but Ms. Carter and I could both hear the "Merry Christmas, sir!"

"So what is it you're unhappy with?" Ms. Carter turned her attention back to me.

I decided I needed to level with somebody, at least to a certain extent, and I'd concluded, based on nothing more than ninth-grade instinct, that Tony "Pete" Peterson might not be the best guy to start with. After all, he was a ballplayer, too, wink wink. I imagined him reacting the same way my father would have reacted if I'd told him I wanted a more challenging schedule.

"Can I ask you a question, ma'am?" I put as much sincerity into my voice as I could.

Ms. Carter blinked.

"Certainly," she said.

"Can I come sit at the desk?" I asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

I slipped around the counter to take the chair beside her desk after I got her nod.

"What would I have to do to get a 2.75?"

"You'd have to get B-minuses," she said, trying to figure out whether I was trying to trick her.

"No, I mean permanently."

"You mean for a high-school average?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting into the wispy bangs that had come loose from her bun.

"Exactly," I smiled. "What would I have to get this semester?"

She hit some keys on her computer.

"You'd have to take five substantive courses," she said, "and average a 4.6. Then you'd end up with a 2.749 which would get rounded up to a 2.75."

I'm sure my face fell. If I got all A-pluses I could average only a 4.5.

"So it's impossible," I mumbled.

"Well, no," she said. "Not impossible. But given your academic record I'd have to say it was extremely unlikely."

"But I could do it? In theory?"

"If you took one honors course," she said. "And got A-pluses in everything."

She looked skeptical, and given what I'd learned up to this point — that it would take five A-pluses this semester just to get me close to a B-minus overall — she probably had good reason. But I saw an opening, and I wasn't about to let it close.

"So, like, what could I take?" 

She pushed a few more buttons and printed out a schedule for me. First and second period were the same; third period was Honors English, fourth period was "The Physics of Astronomy," and fifth period was something called "People of the Book" a course labeled "REL 101."

"And other than astronomy lab on Wednesday afternoons," she said with a quiet seriousness, "this leaves all your afternoons free like Coach Torianni wanted."

"Huh," I looked at the paper. "Can I ask you another question?"

"Certainly, Mr. Sterling," she smiled at me. "I'm enjoying today very much so far."

"'Cause you think they really coddle athletes around here, don't you?" I asked.

She stared at me.

"Your mother thought that, too," I said. "I remember her talking with my mother once, about my older brother, when I was still in ninth grade and hangin' out here at the office waiting for a ride home. And this English Self-study I have with Ms. Torianni — the coach's wife? — " she was nodding — "is...?"

"Crap," she said with the ghost of a smile.

"So I can take all these courses?" I held up the list.

"Why?"

I looked at the principal's door, and then turned back to her.

"I would really like to go to the University of Virginia next year," I said. "And I was told they require a 2.75 average and a 1400 on the SATs for a baseball scholarship."

"You're serious," she looked at me, her eyes softening just a bit.

"I am," I nodded.

"You'll have to re-take the SATs, you know." 

"I figured," I nodded. "I guess I really didn't put a lot of effort into them, huh?"

"You got a 790." 

"On the reading?" I asked. I'd looked up the SAT scoring system when I got back home last night. Evidently there were now three of them: Reading, Math, and Critical Analysis. I was always better at reading. A 790 was pretty damn good.

"On all of them, Mr. Sterling," she said. "A 790 on all three of them together."

"Shit," I blurted out.

"That pretty much describes it, Mr. Sterling." 

I looked over to see a smile playing across her lips once again. I couldn't help but smiling myself, and pretty soon we were both laughing out loud. Finally, we quieted down and she waited for me to continue.

"I'm dead serious about this, Ms. Carter," I said. "I can take 'em again on the 27th of next month, right?"

"I'll sign you up, Mr. Sterling. As for these classes, the only prerequisite for the three new courses here is Introductory Physics, and you took that last year."

So I knew physics? Well, damn.

"So what's this course?" I pointed at the "People of the Book."

"The School Board wanted a religion class this year," she frowned.

"Who teaches it?" 

"Mrs. Jenkins." 

"Old Mrs. Jenk-?" I stopped myself.

"-kins," she finished with another smile. "Yes, Old Mrs. Jenkins. This is her last year, and she insisted on being allowed to teach this course. She was afraid that it would become just another Christian education class if somebody else got hold of it. You haven't had her for anything else, have you?"

She was frowning at her computer while I mumbled my answer.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Sunday school," I finally said. "I had her for Sunday School."

"Perfect," Ms. Carter smiled. "Now it won't just be a class of evangelicals. You only have one problem left."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You have to get Mrs. Palmer's permission to take Honors English," she said, in a tone that suggested that that would require some sort of divine intervention.

"Mrs. Palmer likes me," I protested. "I got an A-plus from her last, er, in ninth grade. Uh, first semester"

Ms. Carter looked back at her computer as my voice trailed off.

"Yes, you did," she nodded. "And then a B second semester. And then a C last year, after your initial incomplete. As I remember, you turned in your final paper two weeks late, and got a C on it. Normally, the incomplete would have been replaced with a C-minus, one grade lower than your paper, but she talked Mr. Linwood into giving you the C. So you may have used up all your good will with Mrs. Palmer.

"Unfortunately," she continued, "she's on her winter cruise this week, and won't be back until next Monday. You really think you can talk her into this?"

"Honestly, I have no idea," I said. "It's worth a try though, huh?"

"For UVA? Yes, it is. My father went there. He used to go on and on about it. I tell you what, why don't we keep this our little secret until then?"

I gave her a quizzical look.

"If it doesn't work," she said. "You can take your current schedule and go on to the major league draft. We'll be the only ones who ever know. Because if Mrs. Palmer says okay, Coach Torianni's gonna hit the roof. And this one" — she nodded toward the principal's door — "will run right to him to tell him.

"So if you can talk her into it," she continued, "give me a call on Tuesday and I'll have you all set to go when school starts on Wednesday."

"That's the only way?" I asked.

"I'm afraid all of the other honors classes have prerequisites that you don't meet," she shook her head.

"Even in the afternoon?" I asked.

"I'm afraid so, Patrick," she said gently. "I'll be keeping my fingers crossed."

"So!" boomed Pete from his office doorway. "What do we need to do to make your schedule better, Trickster?"

"You know," I said, "I think that Ms. Carter and I have got it all figured out. Turns out we can't make it any easier after all."

Ms. Carter had the decency to blush as I stood up, and I thanked her and "Pete" and made my way out to the street.

My next stop was the public library, another two blocks past the high school. I was supposed to know physics and baseball, and the library had always been where I went for information. It was one of my favorite places, or at least it had been back in ninth grade. Two days or three years ago, depending on your point of view. I found myself hoping that it hadn't changed too much. The lady who sat behind the circulation desk most of the time, Lynn Edwards, was probably my very first crush. She'd started work when I was between seventh grade and eighth grades, just after she graduated from college. She was just about my size then, maybe five-foot five inches tall. I was always afraid she'd catch me staring at her, although it never stopped me, particularly when she was wearing a sweater. And yet, as nice as she looked, her best feature was her beautiful smile; I loved to ask her for recommendations about books because it was so clear that she loved to answer me.

I was very pleased to find the place open. It was about as crowded as the school had been. There was one older lady by the new arrival shelf with a book in each hand, comparing the blurbs on the back of each to decide which one to check out. And there she was, sitting at the desk, just as beautiful as she'd been, well, two weeks ago. Wearing a sweater to ward off the winter chill.

"Hi, Miss Edwards," I approached her shyly. "I was looking for a book on — "

"Trick!" her face lit up with a smile as she saw me. Not the smile of a librarian who had a new book she was dying to recommend, but an odd sort of expectant smile that she emphasized by running the tip of her tongue across her upper lip.

She held up a finger to quiet me.

"Let me get rid of Mrs. Parsons first," she whispered.

"Okay," I said, "but really, I just wanted a book — "

"I know, Trick," she interrupted me. "I remember the game. But not with Mrs. Parsons standing right over there. Why don't you go look at the new Sports Illustrated?"

I actually picked up a Newsweek — did everybody think I only read SI? — and settled into one of the comfortable chairs in the library's reading room. Miss Edwards stood up, smoothed her skirt with a wink at me, and approached the older lady.

"Why don't you just take both of them, Mrs. Parsons?" she suggested.

"Oh, no, dear," the woman protested, "I always end up being overdue, and then I have to pay the late fee, and I really can't afford to —"

Miss Edwards had taken the books out of her hand and strode back to the circulation desk, leaving Mrs. Parsons in her wake making her futile protests to Miss Edwards' back.

"There," Miss Edwards said when she was seated again, "I wiped out all your late fees, and I've made sure that neither of these books is due until the end of February."

"Well, thank you, dear," Mrs. Parsons seemed more than a little taken aback by Miss Edwards' forbearance.

"Merry Christmas, Mrs. Parsons," Miss Edwards smiled at her.

"Well, you, too, dear," Mrs. Parsons said. She slipped the books in her large bag and began to make her way slowly toward the front door. I watched her close the door behind her, and then turned back to see Miss Edwards looking directly at me, once again slowly licking her upper lip as she held up the index finger of her right hand. She looked at the door, and suddenly jumped to her feet and quickly covered the twenty feet between her desk and the door. With a quick look outside, she took the sign off the door that read "Open" and turned around to show me that she'd tucked its little chain into the front of her skirt. With a grin, she grabbed the little sign that hung by the side of the door, the one with the little clock on it that read "Out to Lunch. Will return at." She glanced at the clock over the circulation desk, which read 11:45, and set the clock on the sign. She turned it around to show me she'd set it for 1:00.

Realization was slowly beginning to dawn on me; the "Open" sign hanging on the front of her skirt was too obvious even for me to miss. But the idea that Miss Edwards would be interested in me, a ninth-grader, was nearly too much to take. I watched in a haze as she hung the new sign in the window, and pulled the shade down behind it.

"I'm sorry," she said to me in a husky voice as she went back to sit behind the desk, "you were asking me about a book, Mr. Sterling."

She returned to the book she was reading when I came in.

Okay, I thought. Don't panic. She said it's a game. It's a game with librarians and books. Well, of course, it's a game with librarians and books, idiot, you're in a frickin' library.

I pushed myself out of the chair and walked over to her desk.

"Um," I began far more suavely than I felt, "I wondered if you had any surveys of American history."

She peered up at me over the top of her book

"I believe we have a few books on that subject, young man," she said. "Follow me, please."

She led me to an aisle containing one of those two-step stools that librarians use to get books off the top shelf.

"I think we might have something on the top shelf," she grinned at me. I tentatively climbed the stool and she immediately reached for the zipper on my pants when I reached the top step.

"Oh, God," I moaned. Lynn Edwards seemed to know her way around my cock like it came with its own road map, teasing me with her tongue and her teeth, gently tugging on the shaft with her fingers when her lips were busy with the head, and then burying her chin against my balls before she backed off with an explosive exhalation of air through her nose.

Unfortunately, it was my first blow job, and knowing that last week's crush had magically become this week's lover didn't help. It ended quickly.

"Well, that was certainly a brief trip to the library," she said with a little asperity as she finished swallowing my spunk.

Oh, shit, it ended way too quickly.

"Maybe you should take a look," I said hastily.

"I should take a look?" she asked me, wrinkling her brow.

"For the book," I said.

Apparently this hadn't been part of the game before, but she took my hand and let me walk her up the little step stool. Based on, aah, previous experiments, I knew that it would take a little time for me to recover. And I kind of had the feeling that if we spent that time, oh, I don't know, looking through the card catalogue, I might find myself an unwelcome library patron for the rest of my life.

I moved behind her and slowly rolled her skirt up over her ass. As a somewhat introverted ninth grader, my sexual experience to this point had included a full-semester health class and a few kisses with Cammie Rowe. Not much to go on. Oh, and while I was deleting most of the porn bookmarks from my computer before I'd gone to bed last night, I did sort of look at a few of them first. I probably knew just enough to get me in trouble; the potential for seriously disappointing Miss Edwards was clearly there.

Pulling her white panties tight into her crotch, which itself earned me a shiver and a moan, I began kissing my way around her two beautiful round cheeks. It soon became apparent, though, as she gripped the bookshelves for support, that the panties, and not my kisses, were responsible for most of the moaning she was doing. I was nothing if not adaptable; I pulled them down to her knees and replaced them with first my fingers, and then with my tongue, and then with both together.

"Oh, God, Trick," she cried. "That's so good, honey. I can't believe you're doing this to me."

I couldn't believe I'd never done it before. What a selfish son of a bitch I must be. This was actually fun; not only that, it considerable shortened the time I needed to come back to life. In fifteen minutes, just after my finger had located something that made her scream "Oh, yes, my clit, do my clit," she scrambled down the stepping stool and bent over in front of me.

This time I was determined to last. I thought about old Mrs. Jenkins, I thought about old Mrs. Carter, I thought about baseball (what little I knew about it); I thought about everything except the gorgeous ass on the gorgeous woman in front of me. I reached around to finger the clit I'd found before, sending her into a spasm of what I hoped was pleasure. She didn't make me stop, so I kept right on, managing to get two more spasms from her before I had a spasm of my own.

Oh, shit. Well, too late now. Pulling herself off of me, she turned and threw her arms around me, driving her tongue halfway down my throat. I did my best to respond in kind, and it seemed to satisfy her.

"God, Trick," she teased me after pulling back a bit. "Been doing some extra reading on your own, have you? Or just practicing with your other girlfriends?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't take care of the, uh, protection thing, you know."

She laughed, a glorious peal of giggles.

"Yeah, right," she said, giving my softening cock a squeeze. "The day Trick Sterling puts a rubber on is the day I let him do me in the ass."

That was enough to make me twitch again, and she looked down in amazement.

"I — I can't do it again, baby," she looked at me suddenly, tears welling in her eyes. "You were just pounding me for so long. I'm — I'm sorry."

"That was great," I said.

"Say it," she grinned up at me. I only now realize that I topped her by a good eight inches.

"Say what?" I asked.

"You know," she went on in a teasing voice before dropping her voice to a parody of a man's. "You were great, baby."

"You were great, baby," I agreed.

"You too, stud," she said, giving me another long kiss before she finally disengaged.

"Shit," she said, looking at her watch. "One-oh-five. Guess I better open up, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "About those books, though?"

"What?" she laughed, straightening out her skirt as I pulled my pants back up. "You really want books?"

"Yeah," I said. "Is that so odd?"

"Not three years ago," she said, reaching up to pat me on the head. "Little Patrick Sterling was my favorite customer then. That was before he became big Patrick Sterling."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 01



She pulled her hand down to pat me on the crotch before she walked out to re-open the library.

"So what can I get for you?" she asked when she returned.

I walked out of the library with Physics for Dummies, American History for Dummies, and Baseball for Dummies. I explained the last one by telling her that I was going to be doing some coaching this year and needed to know how to reach the novice players I'd be working with. I would have checked out Sex for Dummies, too, if they'd had it, but I thought it would be even harder to explain that one than the baseball book.

I spent the next two days studying, in between cleaning up my room. One of the things I discovered was the paper I'd turned in to Mrs. Palmer after my junior year, in a course on Contemporary Drama. It was an essay on "Murder in the Cathedral," by T. S. Eliot, and as I read it, I could see why I only got a C. I could have written this in ninth grade.

Apparently Mrs. Palmer had agreed. There it was, in black and white on the last page: "You could have written this in ninth grade, Patrick. It is at best average work for an eleventh grader; it is below average work for the eleventh grader I expected you to become."

I sat down hard on my bed. Talking Mrs. Palmer into letting me into her class wasn't going to be as easy as I'd thought. It wasn't until late Thursday afternoon that I came up with a plan for that one.

I kept on reading and working throughout Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, keeping my door locked against the chance that Tiff would come calling for some of what Lynn Edwards had gotten. I still couldn't imagine that I'd had sex with my father's new wife, even when she wasn't pregnant. The thought of doing it now almost made me gag. But apparently I was nothing if not a son of a bitch.

On Sunday morning I got up and started to get ready to go to church. I'd gone to church the week before, in my old life, and I was a bit surprised to find that I had nothing in my closet now that I could remotely call "church clothes." I put on my best pair of jeans and a halfway decent corduroy shirt, and met Jeanne in the hallway as she was coming out of her room.

"What do you think?" I asked her.

"About what?" she asked.

"This," I pointed to the outfit. "For church."

"You're going to church?" she asked. "You haven't been to church since Mom died."

"Well, maybe I want to go again," I said. I was stunned. I had three years of perfect attendance at Sunday School. Somewhere in my room there were three gold stars to prove it.

"No," she shook her head, "not in that."

"Why?" I asked.

"It's disrespectful," she said. "If you really want to go to church, buy something nice. God knows you can afford it. Now if you'll excuse me."

She stepped around me at the same time I heard a car pulling into the driveway. I walked back into my room and saw a well-used Corolla idling at the end of the front walk. Jeanne emerged from the house with a wave at the car and climbed into the passenger side as I tried to figure out who was driving. She looked very familiar. Oh, God. Cammie Rowe. It was Cammie Rowe, my first kiss. Jeanne said something to her and Cammie suddenly looked up to see me looking back down at her. I smiled and waved at her. She flipped me the bird and turned around to begin backing down the driveway.

to be continued



A Stitch in Time Pt. 02



Chapter 5

The woman who opened the door to my knock early in the afternoon on January 2 was clearly surprised to see me.

"Mister Sterling," she said coldly, holding the door open two feet and no more. "What can I do for you?"

"I came to ask a favor, Mrs. Palmer," I said. I'd dressed nicely, in the same outfit I'd tried to wear to church before Jeanne shot it down. I figured if I'd dressed in church clothes — which I hadn't managed to buy yet, anyway — Mrs. Palmer would have been a little suspicious. As it was, she gave me a long look, as if measuring me for a suit.

"Come in," she sighed finally, after the inspection was finished. "May I offer you a drink?"

"No, thank you, ma'am."

She gestured to the couch, and took a seat opposite me.

"Ma'am, I'd like to take your English Honors class," I began.

"Absolutely not," she cut me off.

"Ma'am, I — "

"Mister Sterling," she cut me off again. "Let me tell you a story. I had a very good student in my ninth grade English class. But he became involved in sports and unlike some of the athletes I've known — some of the student-athletes — his academic work started to slip."

"Ma'am," I started again.

She held up her hand and I shut up again.

"I monitored his progress throughout tenth grade," she continued, "and it continued to slip. I decided to give him one more chance last year, out of respect for his mother, who'd become a dear friend of mine, and because I remembered what kind of student he'd been. Are you following me, Mister Sterling?"

I simply looked at her.

"He came to class less than half the time," she was working herself into high dudgeon. "When he was there he sat in the back with his friends and smirked at me. He didn't submit his final paper until two weeks after the school year ended.

"A paper that was below what he was capable of doing, Mister Sterling," she went on, nearly foaming at the mouth now. "Well below. And even then, Mister Sterling, even then, I went out on a limb for him and convinced the principal to give him a C as his final grade instead of the C-minus that the rules said he should have received. No, Mister Sterling, you are out of favors."

"I understand that, ma'am," I said, "but —"

"It is not something that admits of any buts, Mister Sterling," she insisted.

"This is for you," I said, opening the manila folder I'd brought with me and handing her its contents.

"What is it?" she asked skeptically.

"It's the paper I should have turned in last spring."

She read the title and looked up at me.

"You wrote this paper last spring and turned in that other piece of —" she began.

"Crap," I agreed. "No, ma'am."

She looked even more surprised.

"You wrote this recently?" 

"Last week, ma'am," I nodded.

"Why?"

"To show you how serious I was about getting into your class, ma'am."

She gave me another long look and then turned her attention to the paper. She read the first paragraph or two before looking back at me.

"If you had come to class," she said, "you would have known I don't agree with your thesis about the role of the Fourth Tempter in Eliot's play."

"Actually, ma'am, I was in that class," I said. The notebook I'd found in my pile had contained, among its few scribblings, a notation of Mrs. Parker's views of that very thing.

"Then why this?" she held up the paper.

"You wouldn't consider it a very persuasive paper, ma'am," I suggested, "if you were already persuaded of its conclusion before you read it."

She looked at me like I'd grown antennae, and slowly returned to the paper.

"So you're suggesting that if I acquiesce in your request, I can expect this kind of work, rather than the crap you gave me last year?" she tossed the paper on her coffee table when she'd finished.

"I'm suggesting only that this is the kind of effort I'll give you, ma'am," I said. "What you'll get is a different question entirely."

She gave me a kind of half-smile, still turning it over in her mind.

"I have to point out that this is your fault, ma'am," I said, really pressing my luck.

Her eyes flashed at me, challenging me to explain that outrageous statement.

"Ma'am, if you'd let Mr. Linwood give me that C-minus, there'd be no way I could pull my average up to a 2.75. But you gave me a C, and Ms. Carter in the office tells me that if I do well enough this spring, including in your class, I can get a 2.74 something that will get rounded up to a 2.75."

She looked at me and gave me a crooked smile, which turned into a small chuckle after a few seconds.

"Hoist by my own petard, eh, Mister Sterling?" she said.

"So it would seem, ma'am," I agreed.

"Of course, if you'd turned in this paper, you wouldn't need to take my class," she said, picking up the paper on the coffee table.

"Touché, ma'am," I smiled. "Of course, I'm the one who's going to have to pay for both of our mistakes by working my butt off, ma'am. All you have to do is let me in the class."

"Oh, very well," she said. "This 2.75 is important to you?"

"Yes ma'am," I said. "It's —"

She cut off my explanation with her hand.

"Allow me the fantasy of pretending that your love of learning has simply been reborn, Mister Sterling," she said. "And I don't need to point out how disappointed I will be if I don't see the kind of effort you have promised me."

"No, ma'am," I smiled. "Thank you. May I use your phone, ma'am? I need to call Ms. Carter and let her know."

"I'll do it myself, Mister Sterling," she said. And she did. Right then and there with me listening.

I got up early the next morning and found what I thought was most likely the kind of outfit I would wear to school. Jeanne didn't say anything nasty about it at breakfast, so I was fairly confident as I followed her out the door to the bus stop.

"Where are you going?" she turned abruptly to confront me.

"To the bus stop?" I suggested.

"You have a car," she pointed to the Subaru in the driveway. "You're a senior. Why take the bus?"

"Do you want to practice driving?" I asked her.

"No," she said after a moment's thought. "I'd be too nervous pulling in there. Why aren't you driving? Won't Stephie be upset you're not picking her up?"

She said "Stephie" in the same scornful tone she'd said "Sheila" on Christmas, so I jumped to the conclusion that Stephie was a girlfriend, probably the girlfriend if she expected a ride to school.

"She'll just have to be disappointed," I said nonchalantly. Picking Stephie up had three problems. The first, perhaps not insurmountable problem, was the actual act of driving. I hadn't had the car out since Christmas Day, and wasn't confident of my ability to navigate busy streets that would have crosswalks filled with children. The second, more difficult problem was that I had no idea where Stephie lived. And of course, the third problem: I had no idea who Stephie was. I didn't remember a Stephie, or even a Stephanie, from ninth grade.

"So tell me," I said as we reached the bus stop, "which of my girlfriends have you liked?"

"I liked Cammie," she hissed.

"Cammie," I nodded.

"Before you turned into an asshole with your little blow or go ultimatum," she seethed.

"My what?" I asked.

"Oh, fuck you, Trick," Jeanne spat. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

The bus's arrival prevented any further discussion, so I found a seat by myself at the back. I wouldn't really have broken up with Cammie Rowe because she wouldn't give me a blowjob, would I?

"PaTRICK STERling," came an annoying whine from the front of the bus after one of a series of stops to which I'd stopped paying attention. "The TRICKSTER!"

I vaguely recognized Bobby Bunt, a guy I'd been in ninth grade with. He'd never been particularly talented athletically, and he certainly hadn't been nice to me back in ninth grade, so I was inclined to brush him off now. Of course, there was a chance that he was my best friend now.

"Dude," I nodded as he eagerly sat down in front of me and turned around. I'd decided that "Dude" would be my answer to everyone, until I figured out who was who and what was what.

"So, good holiday, Trickster?"

"'Sokay," I nodded. "Yours?"

"Excellent, Trickster," he nodded. "Excellent."

We weren't best friends. He was too eager. I'd be willing to bet he'd been cut from the varsity baseball team last year. He managed to chat on for another ten minutes with minimal contributions from me until we reached the school.

Fortunately, there were a number of students who couldn't remember the combination to their lockers after the two-week holiday. None of them had my additional problem — no idea which locker was actually theirs. But both of them turned out to be a non-issue. Ms. Carter was standing at the counter in the office with a big book opened in front of her, writing down locker numbers and combinations as a line of students filed past her. I waited my turn, I told her my name, and I got my slip of paper. I opened it up just outside the office: "137, 34-22-5; nicely done, Patrick."

The printout that Ms. Carter had given me the week before let me know that I had Mr. Smithson for homeroom, and the absence of any explosion or even icy staring let me know that it wasn't something I shared with the mysterious Stephie. I had become more and more apprehensive about meeting this girl. Who was I dating? What was she like? Did we have common interests? I was heartened by the fact that I had obviously been found attractive by Miss Edwards, and disheartened by my apparent rejection of Cammie Rowe.

Stephie wasn't in my first period class. Mr. Kennedy's government class apparently appealed to the athletes. I recognized most of the guys as athletes, greeting them with high fives, low fives, and forearm bumps as they were offered to me. I greeted every "Trickster" with a "Dude." There was a smattering of girls in the class, as well, although they were a distinct minority. It was a fairly dull class; Mr. Kennedy was a fairly dull teacher. He passed out the textbooks, gave us our first assignment, and began lecturing on the separation of powers. I took careful notes, to the obvious surprise of the guys sitting around me.

Second period was a little more exciting. Mr. Anson greeted me with a sarcastic "Nice to see you, Mr. Sterling," and then, no more than ten minutes into a quick review of last semester's work, asked me with a smirk to explain the cause of the War of 1812. 

"The nominal cause, sir, or the real cause?" I innocently blinked my eyes.

"I'm sorry?" he stopped his pacing of the front room to stare at me.

"Well, of course the nominal cause was the British impressing sailors off of American vessels," I explained, parroting what I'd read in "American History for Dummies." "But many scholars believe that the real causes were economic, of course, having to do with trade between a young America and two countries, France and Britain, that were still at war with each other. And then there's the issue of territorial ambition. Many powerful Americans coveted Canada, which was —"

"Thank you, Mister Sterling," he stopped me.

It ended up being a long time before he called on me again, and then only because I raised my hand to argue with him about the objections voiced by Abraham Lincoln to President Polk's 1848 war against Mexico.

Stephie wasn't in that class, though, nor was she in Mrs. Palmer's class, the Honors English Seminar. I didn't get any high fives, low fives, or forearm bumps in that class. What I got was an entire class of stunned looks, the kind that a luncheon of society matrons would give a bum who wandered into their midst from the street.

Mrs. Palmer smiled at me, though, and told me she had saved me a seat in the front row. I smiled back and thanked her. And took my seat.

She started teaching immediately, informing us that the entire seminar would be devoted to the works of a single author, Herman Melville. She gave us our first reading assignment, a short story called "Bartleby, the Scrivener," and our first writing assignment.

"What I want," she said, "is a one-page single-spaced hypothesis. On the syllabus that I just passed you will find the URL of a website that contains a short biography of Herman Melville. I want you to pick one fact from that biography — just one — and hypothesize about how that fact might have influenced Melville's writing. Has anyone here read Melville?"

It turned out the answer was no, and Mrs. Palmer smiled.

"Good," she said. "I don't want to know — yet — how it did or didn't influence him. What I want from you, by Friday, is how it might have influenced him. For example, he was a crewman on a whaling boat. Oh, and that's the one fact that is off limits. How might his experience on that boat influence his work? What would you look for when you're reading? Miss Josephs?"

"Will you be grading this, Mrs. Palmer?" came a prim voice from directly in back of me. I recognized Missy Joseph's voice, dripping with even more false sweetness than it had in ninth grade. From the little I remember of her, she probably felt betrayed, that Mrs. Palmer had stolen her seat and given it to me.

"I will be grading every single thing you write in this class, Missy," Mrs. Palmer said. "If you write on the board, I will grade that. If you pass notes, I will grade them. If I catch you text-messaging, I will grade that. And since none of you seem to be able to spell in text messages, you should be prepared accordingly. There will be no examinations. This is a writing seminar. Any other questions? Very well, the essay by Friday. Bartleby by Monday."

I was on my way to my fourth period Astronomy Class, clear across the building in the science wing, when I was grabbed by the shirt collar by a short but well-muscled man wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, who spun me into the front office.

"Coach?" I guessed.

"What the hell is this, Sterling?" he asked, waving a piece of paper in front of me.

I tried to follow it, unsuccessfully, until I started to get dizzy. I gave up.

"Sir?" I asked.

"Your schedule?" he finally let me in on what we were discussing. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I could see Ms. Carter watching me intently from behind the counter.

"Sir," I began, "I'm taking advantage of the fine educational opportunities that this school offers. I believe I've been remiss in that the past few years."

Coach was a little taken aback; behind him, Ms. Carter was utterly failing in her effort to suppress a smile.

"Why?" Coach finally sputtered.

"Because I don't want to end up as assistant manager at the Seven-Eleven like my brother if I get injured. Sir."

"I've gone to a lot of trouble to arrange visits from scouts for you this semester," he changed tactics. "Pro scouts, Trick."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I still left my afternoons free, except for Wednesdays. And that's only sixth period."

"You do realize that this is our chance at the big leagues, don't you, Trick?" he said. "The team's not gonna be hittin' or fieldin' behind you like last year. We'll be lucky to make the conference playoffs."

"Yes, sir," I said. It didn't surprise me; most of the guys in the front row in the picture on my desk had been seniors last year. I was a little curious about "our" chance at the big leagues, though.

"When is the first one scheduled, sir?" I asked.

"Thursday," he muttered. "Seventh period."

"I'll be there," I smiled. "Ms. Carter, can I have a pass for my next class, please?"

The bell had gone off several minutes ago, and with pass in hand I ran down the hall to the physics room, where the students sat not at desks but at lab benches, with two stools to a bench. I handed Mr. Carruthers my note, and he directed me to the only open seat, at the back of the room near the window, with a very hot-looking blonde who'd broken into a big grin as soon as I entered the room.

"Hey, Trick," she whispered to me as I took my seat.

"Hey," I said.

"Didja get what you wanted for Christmas?" she continued in a low, sexy tone.

Mr. Carruthers was in the midst of passing out textbooks and explaining what would be expected of us, but I was a little leery of just telling this girl to shut up. She could be Stephie's best friend. Hell, she could be Stephie, although that seemed a little unlikely.

"Yeah, sure," I tried to end the conversation.

"I didn't get what I wanted," she pressed on in spite of me.

"A gag would have been nice," hissed the girl directly in front of me as she turned around to glare at us.

"Cammie Rowe," my benchmate smiled cruelly as she readied a retort, "why don't you —"

"Some problem back there?" Mr. Carruthers asked.

"No, sir," Cammie whipped back around after a final glare at me.

"No," the girl next to me drawled insolently.

"No, sir," I said. "Something was squeaking back here — this chair maybe — and Miss Rowe asked me to keep it quiet. I'm sorry if it bothered the class."

In front of me, Cammie Rowe and her bench partner, a guy I vaguely remembered as some sort of band guy, started shaking with giggles. The girl beside me turned her cruel smile into a malicious glare and then turned it on me. But she did shut up for the rest of the class.

Mr. Carruthers spent the rest of the period explaining that there would be no lab today, but at next Wednesday's lab, he would assign us partners. A week later, he expected each pair of partners to pick a single area of the sky on which they would concentrate their research. Throughout the semester, he explained, he would give us the tools to understand everything we needed to know about the stars and other objects we'd be viewing, and our final research project would reflect our application of those tools to our chosen area. By the end, I was very pleased to be in this class.

No Stephie in the religion class either. There were only seventeen students in all, and the first three seats of the five rows were already occupied when I entered, each of them with a smartly dressed student wearing a pastel button-down shirt and either slacks, for the boys, or longish skirts, for the girls. I found a seat four back, next to the only other student who didn't look like she'd come from the same mold.

"Patrick Sterling," I introduced myself as I sat down before the bell rang.

"Tanya Szerchenko," she smiled shyly. Mrs. Jenkins walked in then, frowning slightly at the rows of cookie-cutter classmates that Ms. Carter had warned me about when she'd signed me up for the class. She smiled at me and Tanya, clearly the class misfits, and began to lecture. She explained that we would be examining the Old Testament as history, putting various books — some historical, some prophetic — in the contest of their times. This was actually better than Sunday School. By the end, I was glad I was taking this class, too.

I finally met Stephie at lunch. It was after I'd stood in line, paid for my burger and fries, and stood stock-still at the door, realizing I had no idea where I was supposed to sit. My "usual" table — the one I'd been sitting at before Christmas, when I was in the ninth grade — was still in the same place. I recognized Rabbit Parker, who'd added maybe another inch in height but nothing in weight, and Tommy Narburg, who had apparently never stopped eating the "extra" food from Rabbit's plate. And Bill Kuehn, who used to whip my butt semi-regularly at chess, and Sammy Houghtaling, who played the trumpet. Next to them was the kid from Astronomy, the band guy, whose name suddenly came to me: Aaron Fleishmann. I took two steps toward them before I realized that they were sitting with two girls, a very obvious change from the table I'd left. One of them was Cammie Rowe; the other was my sister, Jeanne.

"Patrick!"

A shrill voice floated across the room, cutting through conversations like a knife through butter.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 02



I looked around and found her, sitting at a table with Debbie Wadsworth, who was probably the cheerleader captain this year; Paul Scholl, probably the captain of the tennis team, or maybe the golf team; and Lindsay Zimmerman and Patty Colinksy, two more of the school's beautiful people. The girl who had called my name occupied the middle seat on one side of the table, with the seat across from her left open. I was dating the Queen Bee.

With a last glance at the horrified, curious faces of my former friends, I swallowed hard and approached the table to which I was apparently assigned.

She was very pretty, in a sort of obvious way. Her long brown hair curled around her head in a deliberate, almost practiced manner. Her blue eyes were surrounded by just enough makeup to emphasize her high cheekbones and full, red lips. Her hands were clasped together on the table, her fingernails the same blood-red that my little sister Jill had been using on Christmas morning. She tilted her head sideways as I came closer, waiting for something more than for me to take my seat across from her.

For the moment, though, that was all I was willing to do.

"Stephie," I smiled at her. "How was your Christmas?"

"How was my Christmas?" she spat at me, her lips suddenly growing thinner as she stretched them across a set of perfect teeth. "Where the fuck were you?"

"At home?" I said.

"With a broken cell phone, I assume?" she said.

Other people couldn't help but notice us now; heads were popping up across the cafeteria, like grazing wildlife that become aware of danger to the herd but don't know yet which way to turn.

"You know, I completely forgot to turn it on," I said. "Did you try my home phone?"

"God, Trick," Lindsay chimed in, "that's so last century."

Stephie shut her up with a glance.

"And this morning?" she demanded.

"This morning," I nodded. "I took the bus."

The entire table exploded with derisive laughter.

"The point of having my father lease you a car," Stephie bored in on me, "was so that you could pick me up."

"He leases cars to all the athletes," Patty said before she realized she'd taken the wrong side and snapped her mouth shut. Even still, she got a full-second glare from Stephie before it swung back to me.

"Are you trying to humiliate me in front of my friends?" Stephie asked. "Is that what you're trying to do? Break up with me? Maybe so you can try that little Jew girl from your religion class?"

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked. Up until that instant, I could understand the attraction. She was attractive, impeccably attired, obviously well-connected. And she was a fucking bigot. The way she'd sneered out "Jew girl" was so much the opposite of what my mother had taught me that I found myself on the verge of nausea. I couldn't believe I'd ever even started dating this woman; what the hell had I done with this life?

"You heard me, Trick," Stephie radiated hostility.

I stood up.

"Where are you going?" Stephie's eyes grew big.

"For air," I said quietly, trying to suppress the revulsion and anger that I was feeling, directed partly toward her but mostly at myself.

"Nobody leaves me, Trick Sterling," she lifted her head in an almost imperial gesture.

"Sorry," I said. I left my tray right there and began walking out of the cafeteria, followed by every pair of eyes in the room. A few steps away, I took out my key ring, worked off the key to the Subaru, and put it in my right hand. Without breaking stride, I twisted my torso back and looked at the shocked faces at the table I'd just left.

"Here," I said quietly, flipping the key toward Stephie. It was a horrible toss, sailing over her head. Paul had to stand up to catch it for her.

I continued on my way out through the silence.

That evening I was sitting on my bed, throwing a nerf baseball against the opposite wall. There was a soft knocking at the door, and Jeanne stuck her head in.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes wide.

"Yeah," I smiled.

"You really broke up with Stephie van Carlen?" she asked.

"You were there," I grinned at her. "I found this on the floor outside my locker at the end of the day."

I picked up the two pieces of a very nice leather jacket, sliced neatly up the back right through the felt "M."

"And of course the car was gone," I said.

She looked at me a little longer and then began to back out.

"Thanks, Jeanne," I said.

"For what?" she stuck her head back in.

"For stopping by to ask," I smiled at her.

I would say that Thursday was nowhere near as eventful a day as Wednesday, but that would be obvious. I don't think I've had a day since that has been as eventful as that Wednesday was. In hindsight, of course, Thursday was not without its moments as well; it's just that in comparing them to Wednesday, anything short of a circus parading through the halls of the school was bound going to come up a little short.

Government was basically the same as the day before, although the other jocks were keeping their distance until they figured out how this whole thing was going to play out. I imagined that would pretty much take place when their girlfriends decided how it was going to play out and told them. History was the same as the day before. Mrs. Palmer's seminar held my interest, just as it had the day before, although I was acutely aware of the stares of every kid in the class on my neck. Astronomy was a little different; the blonde had dropped the class, probably afraid that being assigned as my lab partner would forever ruin her social standing at John Marshall High School. So I sat at the bench by myself, exchanging greetings only with Aaron, who turned out to be a real nice guy who was planning on going to Tech next year, until Cammie showed up. And Religion was exactly the same. Fifteen eager beaver Christians, Tanya, and me.

I found a table by myself at lunch, and was eating in comfortable silence, looking up periodically to catch people quickly looking back at their own lunches, when I became aware that someone had stopped in front of me.

"Is this seat taken?" Tanya asked.

"That seat?" I laughed. "Nope. That one isn't either, though. Or that one, or... I'm sorry, no. Will you join me?"

I stood up as she pulled out her chair, something my mother had taught me long ago but which seemed to set off another round of stares. She seated herself, I sat back down, and we started eating.

"So you don't mind sitting with a —" she started.

"Shut up," I interrupted her savagely.

She froze, her fork poised halfway between her mouth and plate.

"If you start thinking of yourself like that," I said, "as something that begins with 'a' — a member of this group or that group, a cheerleader, a flute player — you're really no different from them, are you?"

Both of us knew who I meant by "them."

"And I'll get up and leave you, too," I told her when she still hadn't moved. "But no, I don't mind sitting with Tanya, er, Tanya..."

"Szerchenko," she giggled.

"Exactly," I said.

We talked about the school she'd transferred from at the beginning of the previous semester, and we talked about her religion class. She was a little nervous when I asked her why she was taking it, because the answer involved her religion and she was afraid that I'd storm off. Eventually she explained that her parents had vociferously objected to a religious class in school, but that Mrs. Jenkins herself had asked Tanya to enroll, in order to prevent the class from becoming just another session of Sunday School for the other kids. She told me that she had been very pleased to see me there on the first day.

The bell rang, and we parted as friends. I liked Tanya Szerchenko. Four or five or eight years from now, when I started thinking about dating again, I might ask her out.

Lunch had not only been enjoyable, it had been an excellent distraction. But it eventually ended, and I got even closer to what I had been dreading ever since the night before, my seventh period debut as an experienced baseball pitcher. The "Baseball for Dummies" book had been very helpful; I had a good grasp of the game and its rules; its history and traditions; and the basic principles of pitching, defense, and base running.

I had been trusting, though, that the muscles of my arm and fingers would retain the memory of how to grip the ball and throw it, because I had no clue. And I had been dismayed to learn that I wasn't alone. The arm and fingers were just as ignorant. I'd gone out to the ball field the night before by myself, just before twilight. My room was full of baseballs, and I brought five or six of them with me. Standing on the mound, I hefted one in my right hand, hoping to identify the place that my fingers rested. I looked into the book in the fading light, trying to match my fingers with the ones in the picture. Finally, in desperation, I simply rocked back and hurled the ball toward the backstop. It hit the metal backstop and, its momentum spent, dropped straight down. If that was a 95 mile per hour fastball, the cars that were whizzing by on the road behind me were averaging 250 miles an hour. I threw another one; it hit the ground six feet in front of the plate. I threw a third; it sailed high. I kept throwing until there was no more light, with no better success.

"Coach," I said when I reported to him in his office at the end of sixth period, "I think the arm's a little sore today."

He watched me swing my right arm around while I grimaced, and he gave me a look of utter stupefaction.

"Just get into your gym clothes," he finally told me.

I reluctantly did as I was ordered, and emerged into the gym to find Tommy Narburg, my old, slightly chubby friend, dressed in a catcher's mask and padding, standing with the coach and another man in jeans. A bucket of baseballs rested on the ground beside them.

"This is Andy Mastring," Coach said as I approached. "He's a scout for the Orioles. Andy, this is Trick Sterling."

"Heard a lot about you, son," the man said in a Southern drawl as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Lookin' forward to seein' you do some throwin.'"

You and me both, I thought.

"Don't worry, Trick," Coach said, reacting to the look on my face. "He understands you haven't started real workouts yet. Just toss a couple to Tommy."

"Hey, Tommy," I said.

"Pat," he nodded. "I mean Trick."

Tommy was apparently not my regular catcher, because when he paced off the appropriate distance and dropped into his crouch, he looked like he was ready to dive off to the side and bail out on me at any moment.

I took the ball from Coach Torianni and turned it over in my hand.

"Coach?" I finally said, ready to start my confession.

"Where's your glove, son?" he asked me suddenly.

"Uh," I stammered.

Coach looked at the scout and shook his head.

"Kids," he muttered. "I'll get it."

"I saw some film of you from last year, son," Mr. Mastring smiled after Coach had jogged back into the locker room. "You got a lotta potential."

"Yeah, see, about that," I began.

"Here you go!"

I turned around to see a glove flying at me, and snatched it out of the air with my right hand. I recognized almost instantly that it was a glove for the right hand.

"But I'm, uh, right-handed," I murmured, pulling the glove on and noticing how well it fit, how snugly my fingers slipped into the individual holes, how the middle finger rested on the outside of the glove underneath the strap.

"Yeah, I don't understand it either," Coach Torianni tried to share a laugh with the puzzled scout. "And nobody else can explain it to me. I've had doctors look at it, orthopedists. He does everything with his right hand except throw."

While he was talking I had picked up a ball with my left hand, working it around, feeling the way each of the seams fell against calluses that I hadn't noticed over the past week. I was a goddamn lefty.

"You gonna throw it, son?" the scout asked after a while.

"Yeah," I probably had a goofy grin on my face. "Yeah, ya know I think I will."

I turned my right side to Tommy, exactly the opposite of what I'd tried to do the evening before. My body actually did remember; I just hadn't given it the right cue before. I came to a set, brought my right leg back, pushed forward, and fired the ball into the glove that Tommy was holding in front of him like a shield. The impact drove the glove backward into his chest, and knocked him back against the wooden stands that were folded back against the wall.

"Easy, Trick," Coach said sharply. "Tommy's not ready for the season yet either."

"Sorry!" I yelled down to Tommy, who was reluctantly assuming his crouch once again. Like hell I was.

Still, I tossed the next one in softer, and the next one softer than that.

"Show him your change," Coach smiled at the scout.

"He already did," Mr. Mastring looked back at him with a big grin on his face. "Goddamn, son, what was that, mid '70s?"

How the hell did I know? What was I, a frickin' speedometer? I did know, though, that with the changeup, as long as it looked like a fastball to the hitter, slower was better.

"Maybe," I nodded. "Probably a little higher. I still got some work to do this year."

"Not much, buddy," he clapped me on the shoulder and shook his head. "I'm afraid we may not pick high enough this year for a chance at you. And we pick fifth. Thanks, Kenny."

"Sure, Andy," Coach smiled at him, happy that "we" had been successful. "Good job, Trick. Thanks, Tommy! That's all!"

They walked toward the office as I waited for Tommy.

"What the hell were you trying to do?" he asked me. "It's gonna take me two more months before I can catch that heater."

"Sorry, man," I answered. "I honestly thought it would take me longer than that to throw it again."

"So you really broke up with that bi—" he started to ask before his eyes suddenly widened and he clammed up.

"Couldn't quite hear ya there, Tommy?" I grinned at him. "But yeah."

"Back among the peons, huh?" he grinned back.

"Nah, not that low, Tommy," I said as we both laughed.

I finished my paper for Mrs. Palmer that evening, and the rest of my homework along with it. I was in a very good mood the next day, and even walked to lunch with Tanya after our fifth period class. Her "usual" table turned out to be a bunch of yearbook geeks, so I companionably ate with them while they peppered me with questions about baseball. As little as I knew, it was still more than they knew. I actually went to bed Friday night a fairly contented young man.

"Shopping!" I yelled as I banged on Jeanne's door at ten o'clock the next morning.

"What do you want?" she threw the door open and glared at me.

"Shopping trip," I dangled a set of keys in front of her.

"Whose car?" she asked.

"Tiffany's," I told her. "She told me to borrow it any time."

"So you didn't actually ask her?"

"She didn't actually get up yet," I shrugged.

Jeanne rolled her eyes at me.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"For me?" I said. "Church clothes. For you? It's a surprise."

Despite her suspicions, she got her purse and coat and followed me out to the car. I quickly hustled around to the passenger side.

"The mall, driver," I ordered, feigning sleep once again.

She approved my church clothes — a new suit, a sports coat, a couple of ties, a new pair of slacks, and three new button-down shirts — and then I walked her down to the other end of the mall.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"In here," I said.

"The optometrist's office?" she asked.

"When was the last time you went?" I asked her.

"Couple of years," she mumbled.

"Time for some new glasses, then," I said. "You said the other day that God knows I could afford to buy some nice clothes. And you were right."

Was she ever. Apparently I'd gotten some cushy summer jobs the past few years, no doubt with one of the town's sports boosters, because I had over seven grand in my checking account.

"So now I want to spend some on you," I told her, pushing her into the store. It took a little more discussion, but when she saw how lightweight the new lenses were, even for prescriptions as strong as hers, and how attractive she looked in different frames, she finally let me buy them for her.

She liked the next stop even more, a used car lot where I bought an automatic 1998 Civic for $1,200.

"Why should I take twelve hundred bucks when it's priced at fifteen?" the salesman had smiled at me.

"Because I've got twelve right here in my wallet," I smiled back at him, "and before I tried it out, that car hadn't been off the lot in a month and a half."

My smile grew a little bigger, his a little smaller, and I owned a car. Actually, Jeanne and I owned a car, because I registered it in both of our names.

"Two weeks," I said as I threw her the keys and got in the passenger side.

"For what?" she laughed.

"Your next driver test. Home, Jeeves."

She drove us both to church on Sunday morning. And then sat up front with Cammie. I sat in the back, keeping to myself. Life is still slow sometimes, even when you take it three years at a time.

Chapter 6

If we'd had an impartial referee, I have no doubt that the contest would have been declared a complete and total mismatch and never allowed to begin. As it was, it was nearly over before I even realized that it had started. In one corner, you had a sophisticated high school senior, a seductress who had spent the last three years navigating her way through the complex social webs that connect the various groups at a suburban high school. In the other corner, a ninth-grade naïf who had no memory of how he had spent those same three years. I was doomed.

In retrospect, of course, Saturday and Sunday had probably been my last chance to sue for peace, or more accurately to grovel before the throne of Stephie van Carlen. A simple apology might have sufficed on Thursday or Friday, although I might have hurt my chances for that by sitting with Tanya Szerchenko at lunch both days. By Saturday, though, that ship had undoubtedly sailed. As it was, I spent both days, Saturday and Sunday, watching the NFL playoffs.

And in any event, I hadn't entertained any idea at all of apologizing, let alone groveling. With no idea what kind of relationship Stephie and I had had before Christmas, my impression of her was based entirely on our single encounter in the cafeteria on Wednesday, and as far as I was concerned, it wasn't a relationship I saw any reason to continue.

Monday started on a high note, a very high note, although I did have to wait until third period. I had already figured out that that was probably going to be true every day. There weren't likely to be high notes during first or second period. In Government, I was quickly learning that Mr. Kennedy was happy if you copied down everything he said during class, mostly from the way he paused to let us keep up with his pearls of wisdom. I had every expectation that the tests would require that and little more; as long as you knew what a bicameral legislature was, it didn't really matter whether you knew why the Founding Fathers thought it would be a good idea. A cynical view, sure, and one based on only three classes, but I was fairly confident it would hold up.

Mr. Anson's history class was a little better, but I still had the feeling that we were going through the motions of rote learning. Here, for example, is where you needed to know that the Founding Fathers wanted a bicameral legislature. You just didn't need to understand what it was.

Third period was when the day started to get interesting.

I'd read "Bartleby" over the weekend, but Mrs. Palmer started class by asking those of us with front row seats to pass back a Xeroxed paper that she was handing out. I took one and turned around to hand the stack to Missy, who gave me a little smirk and snatched them from my hand, apparently upset now that I had one of her jobs, that of the first passer-backer. I turned back to my seat and was mortified to see my own handwriting on the piece of paper that Mrs. Palmer had been distributing. I looked up to find her standing directly over my desk, just in case anyone had missed my name scrawled across the top of the essay.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 02



"Mr. Sterling has favored us with his attendance for the fourth day in a row," she said to giggles from the class. "A season-best, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Sterling?"

"Yes, ma'am," I felt my face flushing with heat.

"As well as an excellent example of the kind of essay I was looking for," she pulled me back from the edge of humiliation. "He selected a single fact from Melville's life, the scarlet fever from which he suffered as a young boy. From that, he created a hypothesis, that Melville would feel more sympathetic — although I believe a better word would have been empathetic, Mr. Sterling — toward the weak and downtrodden in society, toward people whose afflictions might make others view them with pity, or even with scorn. And in his next paragraph, he explained what he would look for in Melville's work to support his hypothesis. Beyond that, he did me one better; he explained what he would look for to dispute his hypothesis. I would ask him to read his paragraph to you, but I've embarrassed him enough already and you're all perfectly capable of reading. What some of you are going to need practice on is writing. Miss Smith, did you read the Bartleby?"

With that, we plunged into a discussion of "Bartleby, the Scrivener." At the end of class, Mrs. Palmer passed back the papers, and mine had a red A-plus circled in red. All right! I was on my way. Let the games began.

Without my knowledge, though, a different game had already begun. By the time I got to lunch, not only had Tanya run out of Religion before I could even turn to talk to her after the bell, but the radioactivity of my table had spread to all the surrounding tables as well. With Tanya's table full, and with its occupants, like the rest of the crowd, glancing at me with expressions that ranged from discomfort to outright hostility, I simply reclaimed the seat I'd taken on Thursday. After a few minutes, I realized that nobody was sitting within twenty feet of me. Some people, in fact, left the cafeteria altogether when all of the other tables — the ones not near me — had filled up.

I'd been getting dirty looks from other people all morning, growing in number and intensity as I passed through my classes, but I just shrugged them off. Sure, Stephie was obviously a popular girl. Sure, I was going to have to suffer a little purgatory for breaking up with her. But I was a popular guy, too, right? I mean, I was a star athlete. So eventually, the little Stephie circle would go its way, and my little jock circle would come around my way, and things would settle down to normal. As I looked around the cafeteria, though, I had the distinct feeling that that was going to take a little longer than I thought.

I spent the rest of the day in study hall, trying to figure out the retrograde motion of Venus, something that Mr. Carruthers had started lecturing on today, and that nobody else seemed to have as much trouble with as I did. It took me the rest of the afternoon to figure out, interrupted only a summons from Coach Torianni to remind me that "we" had a tryout for a scout from the Atlanta Braves tomorrow afternoon.

Even my own family was cool toward me. Jeanne had eagerly accepted my offer to drive our car to school on Monday morning, and had expertly placed the car in the seniors' parking lot. After school, though, on my way to the lot, I watched as she almost ran to the line of buses. Thinking that perhaps she'd just forgotten we drove in together, I managed to drive myself home without, as far as I knew, breaking any laws.

Dinner that evening was no different than "usual." As we had every evening since the day after Christmas, we all listened to Tiffany describing in minute detail what she did during the day and how the pregnancy was affecting every organ of her body. Since the organs under discussion invariably included her boobs — their growing size in particular — it wasn't a subject that drove me from the table as quickly as it usually did Jeanne and Jill. This time, though, they departed with even more haste than usual, both of them glaring at me as they retreated to their rooms. After I'd done the dishes — without Jeanne's help this time — I knocked on her door. No answer. I called her name. Still no answer.

I was seriously bummed. This was the week that I was going to start tracking down the mystery of life. Or at least the mystery of my life. Who the hell was Patrick Sterling, and how the hell did he get that way? I already had a pretty good answer to the first question. He was an arrogant asshole who said "That was great, baby" to a woman he'd adored since the seventh grade, and who'd dumped Cammie Rowe when she wouldn't put out. He'd had at least one affair with a married woman, and at least one session with his current stepmother, I hoped to God before she married to his dad. He hadn't visited his relatives in a year and a half, and, oh yeah, he'd been dating a bigot.

How he got that way, though, was a little more difficult to figure out. I figured that Jeanne would be the best source of information, and while I had no intention of actually telling her the truth, I kind of hoped that if I enlisted her aid in my reformation project, I could sneak in a few questions about the downward spiral that my life had taken in the last three years.

I hadn't broached the subject up until now because frankly, I hadn't had the time. I think it was Socrates who said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. Easy for him; he didn't also have to spend time examining physics and baseball and American history, not to mention writing a paper on T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral." And in any event, I think what he had in mind was an examination that was a little more introspective than I was capable of at the moment; with respect to the last three years, at any rate, I was solely depended on extrospection, or whatever the opposite of introspection is. And of course, that was dependent on Jeanne's actually talking to me. For the life of me, I just couldn't understand why my breaking up with Stephie would make Jeanne mad. The way she'd said Stephie's name when we were waiting for the bus last week, in fact, had led me to believe that she would welcome my breaking up with her.

Jill's reaction was a little easier to understand. She was more than likely the Queen Bee of her own class, and my horrible faux pas had probably, through some strange commutative property of high school transference, been considered some sort of reflection on her. I didn't know that for a fact, though, because I still hadn't really gotten to know Jill yet. She'd obviously grown up, as evidenced by the fact that she'd had dates every night between Christmas and the start of the school year. And not with the same guy, either; I don't think I'd seen the same car yet pull into the driveway and honk its horn to summon my hot youngest sister. Since school started, we simply hadn't been in the same room long enough for me to start up a casual conversation about the last three years of her life.

Jeanne continued to scorn me the next morning. She responded to my offer to once again let her drive our car to school by turning her back on me and walking to the bus stop. I was unwilling to drive myself in, so I hurried after her. Once on the bus, I found all the other kids turning their heads to look out the window as I walked down the aisle. Even Bobby Bunt, who'd made a complete nuisance of himself the week before by sitting in front of me and explaining his athletic prowess every morning, found a seat at the front of the bus.

The rest of the morning followed a similar course. Nobody would initiate a conversation with me, and the responses to my own openings were brushed aside as quickly as possible. Tanya, in fact, bluntly told me to "fuck off" when I tried to talk to her before Religion Class. As a result, the only people I really talked to on Tuesday were Coach Torianni, and the guy from the Braves. Even Tommy Narburg, whom I didn't knock backward this time when he caught my tryout, responded to my banter only with grunts and single-word answers.

By Wednesday, it had spread to the faculty. Mr. Anson and Mr. Kennedy both looked at me like I was the lowest form of life on earth, and Mrs. Palmer refused to look at me at all. Mrs. Jenkins met my eyes in Religion, but her eyes were filled with such pain and such disappointment that I found myself unable to hold her gaze for any length of time.

Mr. Carruthers spoke to me, but only because we had lab on Wednesdays and he had to assign me a lab partner. Or assign me no lab partner, as it turned out. My classmates were already sitting next to their first choice in lab partners, and he eagerly ratified their choices.

"Mr. Sterling," he uncomfortably turned to me after going through the rest of the class, "because we have an odd number of students this year, it seems that you'll have to do your lab work by yourself. I assume that won't be a problem."

"No, sir," I shrugged. "I kinda figured that after, um, the other girl I'd been sitting next to dropped the class."

"Good, very good," he dismissed me from his mind. "Now about next week, class, I told you that I wanted each pair of you, or just you, Mr. Sterling, to look for a particular area of the night-time sky to focus your studies. We're going to continue with the planets of the solar system for the next two weeks, and after that we'll start looking at our own sun as an introduction to the stars. So some of you won't really have a lot of information on which to base your selection."

He pulled down a picture of the sky from a set of rolled-up maps that hung above the board in the front of the room.

"Now I know," he continued, "that some of you are already familiar with the heavens, and that places like the Horsehead Nebula are going to be quite popular. So I'll warn you right now, if more than one set of partners —" he gestured at me as if he wanted to continue reminding everyone that I didn't have a lab partner "— picks the same general area, we'll have a drawing for that one."

"So what are we supposed to be looking for?" asked a kid from the other side of the room.

"Pretty much any area will have enough of interest in it to allow you to complete the project I have in mind," Mr. Carruthers answered. "If it doesn't, I'll let you know."

"So what if we find life there?" asked Teddy Collins. Teddy had been the class clown since we were in the seventh grade together. He was a pretty smart guy, too, although he never missed an opportunity to get a laugh.

"If you find life," Mr. Carruthers gave Teddy his chuckle, "I'll give you an A-plus on the spot. Yes, Judy?"

"How do we identify the area for you?" Judy Wilson asked.

"Aah, an excellent question," the teacher answered. "A single star will suffice. If you give me a single star, we will consider your area to be everything that we can see when we center the school's telescope on that star. In fact, the following Wednesday, I will provide you each with photographs of your areas."

The bell rang and we all got up.

"Oh, one other thing," he said as we were leaving. "Make sure your star appears in the evening sky. I don't want to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to take pictures for you. If you have any questions, the room's open first and seventh periods."

I had nothing better to do the next period, so I remained in the lab while everybody else, including Mr. Carruthers, filed out. I was looking at the star chart, trying to figure out some rational basis for my choice, when he came back in.

"Oh, Patrick," he was clearly discomfited by my presence. "Can I help you?"

"Just trying to pick a star, sir," I smiled at him.

"Oh, well, carry on," he said. "I just need to collect some papers."

So I carried on, turning my attention back to the chart.

"Patrick," he said quietly after a few minutes.

"Sir?" I turned around.

"Have you considered transferring to another school, Patrick?" 

"Another school?" I was dumbfounded. "Why?"

"Because of your recent, er, notoriety."

I had no idea what the word meant, but it didn't sound good. Particularly if it was something that would make me think about leaving John Marshall.

"You mean because I broke up with Stephie," I paused a few seconds, trying to remember what Jeanne had said her last name was, "van Carlen in the cafeteria last week? You mean because I threw her my car keys?"

"Because your attitude toward women has become so, er, well known," he said.

"My attitude?" I was treading carefully now. My attitude toward women at the current moment was exactly what it had been in ninth grade — extreme bafflement. On the hand, I had no idea what attitude I'd exhibited over the last three years.

"I think we both know what we're talking about, Patrick," he gave me a patronizing smile as he collected his papers and prepared to leave. "Just give it some thought."

"Yes, sir," I nodded slowly.

By Thursday, I simply couldn't take it anymore. After another day of silence and sneers, even dinner itself was ominously quiet. Tiffany had apparently caught wind of whatever was going around; and whenever she found me looking at her, she simply shook her head and returned to her food. After Jeanne had run off to her room, I excused myself and followed her.

"Jeanne!" I said, rapping hard on her door. "Jeanne, I need to talk to you."

"Fuck off!" came her muffled response.

"Jeanne," I said, "I'm gonna stand here all night until you talk to me."

A few seconds later, I heard the creaking of her bed, followed by the shuffling of her feet on the carpet and the click of her door unlocking.

"What?" she asked, cracking the door open.

"Are you okay?" I asked. Her eyes were red, her face stained with tears.

"Of course I'm not okay, you asshole," she spat. "You think it's easy being the sister of the school perv?"

"The school perv?" I asked. "Look, I don't even know what Stephie is saying I did!"

She stared into my eyes, apparently thinking the truth was buried somewhere in there.

"I don't believe you," she said.

I stuck my foot in the door just before she tried to slam it closed.

"Jeanne!" I protested softly.

"All right," she said. "Just answer one question. Did you ever make a videotape of you and Stephie fucking?"

I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"Ya know," she said. "I kind of hoped you could at least deny that. Now get out."

I let her push me backwards and slam the door in my face. As I walked numbly back to my room, I wondered whether it was the tape itself that upset everyone or whether it was something on the tape. Probably both. Back in my room, I searched my computer for all of the video files I could think of. Other than a bunch of porno clips that "I" had saved — none of them starring me — I drew a complete blank.

It wasn't until Saturday that I found out.

If anything, Friday was worse than the day before. The stares had turned from disdainful to malevolent, as if the concentrated telekinetic power of the entire high school could make me drop dead where I stood. The only ray of hope was a note I found in my locker at the end of the day: "Let's throw tomorrow at Lemmon's Park at 10. RP."

Rabbit Parker was waiting for me in the bleachers at Lemmon's Park.

"Where's your glove?" I asked him as I approached. It had been a very odd winter so far; it was already January 13, and we still hadn't had any snow to speak of. So I actually thought the note was sincere. I sat down next to him in the bleachers.

"I didn't want to throw," he said quietly. "Some of the guys on the team just wanted me to tell you they're behind you."

"Pretty damn far behind," I pointed out.

"True," he acknowledged. "They all have girlfriends. And they're not about to give them up for you."

"Will somebody for God's sake tell me why?" I answered, near tears myself.

"For what it's worth," he said. "Cammie doesn't believe it."

"Cammie Rowe?" I asked him.

He nodded.

"Are you and she, uh..." I began.

"We're just friends," he said. "But I'd never get another date with any other girl that saw me here talking to you."

"WHY?" I almost screamed at him.

"Cammie told me that you're an arrogant asshole," he said, "but she says there's no way you would hit a woman."

"Hit a woman?" I gasped. "Stephie's saying I hit her?"

He turned away from me and stared out toward centerfield, steeling himself. After a deep breath he turned back.

"She says you were physically and verbally abusive," he said. "That you slapped her, that you choked her, that you spit in her face, and that you called her a cock-sucking whore."

I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and I knew that Rabbit was waiting, just as Jeanne had waited on Thursday night, for me to deny it.

"I would never," I said, "ever. I couldn't."

I suddenly realized that this was the "attitude" Mr. Carruthers had been talking about. But no matter how much I'd changed in the three years since Christmas Eve, 2003, there was simply no way that I would ever start treating a woman like that. Finally, I became aware that Rabbit was talking again.

"Apparently, none of your other former girlfriends think you could do it," he said. "It's not like they were going to join your fan club, though, after you kind of worked your way up through them to Stephie."

"Rabbit," I said. "You have to believe me. I'd never do anything like that."

He looked at me and nodded.

"Paula claims there's a video," he said.

"Paula?" I asked.

"Paula Owens," he said, as if I should know her. "Stephie's best friend? Apparently you pissed her off in science class last week."

No doubt Paula was the hot blonde, my one-time future lab partner in Astronomy.

"Has she seen a video?" I asked.

"She won't say," Rabbit shook his head. "But she says that Stephie just has a clip, which you e-mailed her after you shot it."

"Rabbit," I implored him.

"Yeah, I know man," he nodded. "I can get the word out that you deny the whole thing, including the taping, and that the team supports you. But at this point everybody thinks Stephie has a clip."

"But she can't!" I protested. If she did I might as well just shoot myself right now.

He shrugged.

"This ain't Law and Order, man," he said. "They don't need to see it to believe it. Oh, shit. One other thing. Completely different subject."

I sat there waiting.

"You're sister Jeanne's lookin' pretty nice these days," he said.

"And?" I asked, suspiciously.

"And, uh, Sammy wants to ask her out," he said after a pause.

I was delighted, but cool.

"So tell him to ask her out," I said.

"He wants to know if she'll say yes," Rabbit said.

"So tell him to ask Cammie," I said. Wasn't that how these things were normally done?

"Cammie told him to stop being such a baby and ask her out," Rabbit smiled.

"So he came to you?" I asked. "And you didn't tell him the same thing?"

"Sammy and I have been friends since second grade," he said. "I told him I'd ask you."

I was about to repeat my earlier advice, which corresponded so perfectly with Cammie's, but I figured I owed Rabbit. And if the price of his conversation with me was finding out if my sister would accept a date with Sammy Houghtaling, I could do that. I just nodded.

Rabbit clapped me on the shoulder and left me sitting in the bleachers. I slowly walked home. On the one hand, I at least knew now what I was being accused of. I just didn't know what I'd done.

Cammie drove Jeanne to church the next day, and I drove myself, becoming more and more comfortable with the act of driving. I sat at the very back. The Episcopalian confession of sins requires that we ask God to forgive us for those things that we have done, as well as those things that we have left undone. To it, I appended my own fervent prayer that He be a little more specific about exactly what those things were.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 02



Chapter 7

I spent Monday, the MLK holiday, hiding in my room, playing the games I'd discovered on my computer over the weekend. Fortunately, that basically killed the whole day.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay there all week, and it was a lonely drive to school on Tuesday without Jeanne. When I got out of my car in the seniors' parking lot — I was actually doing pretty good with this driving stuff now — I noticed Tanya Szerchenko standing at the door to the school. As I approached, I wondered how someone could look that beautiful and miserable at the same time.

I hadn't really had a good chance to admire Tanya from afar before. When we were speaking — two weeks ago now — she was either sitting down next to me, sitting down across from me, or standing next to me while we walked to the cafeteria or waited in line. I knew she was fairly tall for a girl, about 5'7" or even a little taller. Her shoulder-length hair was blonde, the result of her Ukrainian heritage. She was slender, with breasts that didn't so much call attention to themselves as they called attention to the entire package.

It was only now, though, as she stood there, apparently waiting for someone — me? — that I could appreciate how well put together that package was. Even wrapped in a winter parka against the cold, even with a long beige skirt that almost completely hid her legs from sight, she took my breath away.

"Hey," I said hesitantly as I took the steps two at a time.

"Can I talk to you a minute?" she asked, speaking even more hesitantly than I had.

"Sure," I said. The steps leading to the entrance of the school were stone, and Tanya was leaning on the foot-thick stone railing running up each side of them. I sat down on the cold stone, and she sat down next to me.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," she said.

"Okay," I nodded, when it looked like she was expecting an answer.

"I'd only known you for three days," she said, "and when they started telling those stories about you, I didn't know what to believe. I should have just asked you."

She'd hung her head during most of her apology, but now she was looking up at me through impossibly long eyelashes.

"That's okay," I finally blurted out, the chill air turning my exhalation into a white wisp that dissolved above her hair.

"One of my friends said that you were denying the whole thing," she continued, "and I realized that all that video crap was just so much talk, and that I should have had a little more faith in you."

I smiled down at her.

"Since we're in Religion together?" I joked.

She gave me the beginnings of a grin.

"So we're still friends?" I asked.

"Still friends," she offered me her hand for a shake. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to crush her against me and kiss her, but I accepted the handshake. I walked her in to her locker, and continued on to mine, much happier than when I'd gotten out of my car.

It certainly wasn't a complete thaw of last week's freeze-out. I got a few hand-slaps in Government, but by the time I reached Mrs. Palmer's third period seminar, it was clear that the tide was running against me. She twice ignored my hand during our continuing discussion of Bartleby, just as Mr. Carruthers curtly accepted my identification of Gamma Cassiopeia as the subject of my research project. In contrast, when Aaron and Cammie, sitting in front of me, selected the star Pollux, in the constellation Gemini, you'd think they'd just discovered another planet.

Mrs. Jenkins, on the other hand, clearly wanted to believe me. We were still discussing the book of Genesis, having spent most of last week arguing over her decision to call it a "creation story," which most of the class interpreted as giving it the same weight as the Hindu creation story or even, God forbid, the Navajo creation story. Mrs. Jenkins, God bless her, had refused to knuckle under, and the discussion had been lively and even heated. Finally, though, she turned to me.

"Mr. Sterling," she said, "tell us about Noah."

Needless to say, I didn't get very far as a solo artist. It soon became a duet, and then a trio, and then a symphony, with even Tanya offering her opinion.

Tanya walked me to lunch, and sat with me at "my table," but nobody else joined us. At one point, I caught a glimpse of Stephie holding court on the opposite side of the cafeteria. She looked up to see me looking at her, and gave me a look that was filled with triumphant malice.

The worst part was that Jeanne refused to come around. I spent another quiet dinner hour that evening under the glares of three Sterling women.

Wednesday was yet another day in the cold war. Its high point was Cammie Rowe turning around to me in Astronomy just before the bell rang.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm fine," I nodded. "I —"

The bell rang and she turned around immediately. Or perhaps she turned around and then the bell rang. I like to think it was the former. The only disturbing news of the day came during seventh period, when I got a note from Coach Torianni indicating that my tryout the following day, with a scout from the St. Louis Cardinals, had been canceled. I thought nothing of it at the time; probably he was just delayed somewhere and we would reschedule it when he was free. After all, it wasn't like I was going to be going anywhere.

That cancellation, however, was like the crocuses in spring — a small but certain promise of things to come. On Thursday, Coach Torianni caught me as I came out of Astronomy class and brought me back to his office.

"I got bad news, Trick," he said when we were finally alone and he had brushed off my protests that I had a Religion class for which I was going to be late.

I had become almost inured to bad news recently, so I stoically sat there across from him and waited for him to begin.

"Look, kid," he finally said after a long pause, "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. Auburn and Alabama have both withdrawn their scholarship offers."

"What?" I asked, my heart once again pounding in my chest.

"I dunno," he said. "I kind of thought this whole thing you and your girl got into would just blow over, like any other high school thing. Because you know, I didn't want to believe that you did anything like what they were saying, you know?"

I nodded.

"But somebody's been talking to the coaches at these schools," he said. "I got calls into 'em, but you know, I don't really know these guys, just the scouts that showed up at our games last spring. So I can tell 'em you're denying the whole thing — you are, right? That's what Rabbit told me."

"Yes, sir," I choked out.

"Good," he nodded. "But they got no reason to believe me, and somebody's already told 'em your girl's side."

"Who would do that?" I asked.

"Somebody you pissed off," he shrugged.

"But who would they listen to?" I continued.

"That's a good question," he said. He'd been sort of rocking back and forth in his little swivel chair, and now he stopped and sat up, as if it hadn't occurred to him before. "Somebody you pissed off who's pretty well connected. Got any ideas?"

Of course I didn't. I had no idea who I'd pissed off over the last three years. I didn't even know who my friends were, let alone my enemies.

"Oh, Jesus, I know who it is," he finally said after a minute's thought. "Oh, God, kid, I'm afraid you may be well and truly fucked."

"Who?"

"Van Carlen," he said. "Your girl's dad. 'Dutch.'"

"The car dealer?" I asked.

"Yeah," he nodded. "That asshole's tied into booster clubs all over the country. I think he might of even gone to one of these schools. Damn it!"

He pounded his fist down on the desk, nearly making me jump out of my seat. We both sat in silence; Coach was obviously racking his brain to see if he could figure any way out of this, while, for my part, I was just a stunned observer, caught halfway between the idea that this was happening to me and the idea that it was happening to someone else who I just happened to be watching.

"Just let me think, Trick," he said. "Make some phone calls. I'm just a gym teacher and a baseball coach. This is way outta my league. But let me see."

"Sure, Coach," I said. I got up and numbly walked down the hall. As I approached Mrs. Jenkins' class, I realized that I didn't have a note to excuse my absence. I retraced my steps to the gym, but Coach was nowhere around. By that point, it was already twenty minutes into fifth period, and I just gave up. I was going home. The hell with this crap.

I slowly shuffled down the deserted hallways to my locker to dump off my books. When I opened it, though, I found a note inside: "Meet me at the mall, in the Cinnabon, at 4:30 this afternoon. Very important. RC."

I stood there in the hallway, my locker open in front of me, racking my brain to remember an RC. After five minutes without any success, I just dumped all my books in my locker and started wandering the halls. Twenty minutes later I was still there when the bell went off to signal the end of the period and the classes burst into the hallway in the race for the cafeteria.

By then, I'd decided to spend my sixth period study hall in the library, looking over old yearbooks. In the meantime, though, I had to sit through lunch. I got my food and took my table, and then spotted Tanya coming out of the serving line with her own tray. I caught her eye and smiled, nodding at the chair opposite me, but it became clear that she'd really rather be somewhere else. Finally, though, she walked over and slowly sat down across from me.

"If you lied to me, I will never speak to you again," she said quietly. I noticed that she'd been crying.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"Paula Owens," she gasped, "came up to me in third period, and told me, in front of everybody in the class, that she'd seen the little video she said you sent Stephie, and she couldn't believe that I'd want anything more to do with you."

"I swear," I said with as much conviction as I could, "I would never tape a girl, ever."

She gave me a long look, as if she could see deep into my soul. Finally, she nodded.

"Okay," she said. "But like I told you..."

Now it was my turn to nod. Fifteen minutes later, though, when neither one of us had said a word to each other and our lunches were turning cold on their trays, I excused myself, and heard her sigh as I got up to leave the table.

I got to the mall at four-fifteen, having completely failed to figure out who needed to see me outside of school that badly. Ricky Cratty was a lowlife jerk who was rumored to deal in drugs. If he wanted to see me, I was probably in more trouble than I thought. Rebecca Clemmons was an airheaded Stephie wannabe; I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that I'd dated her at some point over the last three years, particularly given the remark Rabbit had dropped about my "working my way up" to Stephie. But ever since we'd been in fourth grade together, she'd demanded to be called Becky, and it would have been odd if she'd dropped that in the past three years. There were also juniors and seniors in the book with those initials, but I didn't know any of them. So I would just have to wait to find out.

I scanned the mall, trying to pick out a face that I recognized from school. There were so many kids, though, and so many that I didn't really know anymore, that I quickly gave it up. I looked down at my watch — 4:40 — and looked back up to see a woman standing in front of me, taking off her winter coat, her stylish hat, and her sunglasses.

"Ms. Carter!" I yelped. "You're RC?"

"Rachel Carter," she said as she pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down even before I could stand up to greet her.

"I don't have a lot of time, Patrick," she went on, glancing up and down the mall as she talked. "I told them I have a doctor's appointment and they want me back at 5:30."

"Who?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Patrick, they're going to try to have you expelled," she said bluntly.

"What?" I whispered.

"I've been typing up the papers and assembling the packet this afternoon," she continued as she scanned the mall. "They're going to notify you tomorrow after school."

"Expel me!" the words shot out of my mouth in an explosion. "What the hell for?"

"'For conduct that disrupts the learning process, '" she quoted.

"But I haven't done anything," I protested.

"Shhhh," she silenced me. "I know that. Actually, they know it, too. When they heard rumors about this video clip today — they being Mister Peterson and Superintendent Frostman — they called Miss van Carlen into the office. I couldn't hear what she told them, but apparently it didn't satisfy them. If they had a video, they wouldn't be as worried as they are. In fact, it was after she left that they decided that 'conduct that disrupts the learning process' can be read to mean 'presence that disrupts the learning process.'"

"So just because Stephie's spreading this story about me," I asked, "I'm the one getting kicked out of school? That's not right."

"No, it's not," she said. "How old are you?"

"Huh?"

"How old are you, Patrick?" she repeated.

"Seventeen," I said. "I'll be eighteen in a couple of weeks."

"Well, then you can't hire a lawyer by yourself," she frowned. "How about your parents?"

"Hire a lawyer for me?" I laughed. "My dad hates lawyers."

"Aunts, uncles?" she continued.

"I can ask my Aunt Ruth," I furrowed my brow.

"Do it," she said. "In the meantime, though, here's what you need to do. They're trying to get this over with fast by giving it tomorrow afternoon. You've got three days to ask for a hearing, and since Monday's a teacher service day, they're hoping you won't come back in until Tuesday, when you'll be a day late."

My mouth dropped open. Those fucking bastards.

"I know," Ms. Carter nodded. "Close your mouth, Patrick. Now what you need to do is make sure you have a pen with you all day. When they give you the notice of expulsion, you write on the bottom of it, 'I request a hearing.'"

"I request a hearing," I repeated. "I request a hearing."

"Exactly," she said. "In the meantime, I need to ask you something."

"Okay," I said. "Anything."

"Understand, I'm not judging," she held up her hand.

Uh-oh.

"Okay," I agreed anyway.

"Have you been fucking Liz Torianni?" she asked.

I blinked at her. Liz Torianni, the wife of Coach Torianni? I'd seen her picture in the yearbook I had been looking at earlier in the day; she was also a gym teacher and the coach of the girls' volleyball and softball teams. And, if I remembered correctly, my original English Self-study teacher. She was a very attractive woman, with a very prominent chest.

Ms. Carter was waiting for an answer, and I had nothing to go on but the little I knew of how I'd spent the last three years.

"Uh, yeah," I said.

"I knew it," she shook her head. "Joanie West and I have lunch together — she teaches typing — and she says that Liz is your biggest defender among the faculty. She's actually a pretty smart little bitch. I'll bet she dropped you last summer, too, right before they passed that new law about teachers and students."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"If you can't get a lawyer, maybe she'll represent you at the hearing," Ms. Carter said. "I'll ask her. Shit! I've got to get going. Remember —"

"I request a hearing," I nodded my head. "Ms. Carter, why are you helping me?"

She was blushing a little, and refused to meet my eyes at first.

"I told you," she said quickly. "My father went to UVA. Plus I hate to see the Stephie van Carlens of the world win that easily. See you tomorrow, Patrick."

She was already halfway down the corridor before I had a chance to say good-bye.

I sleepwalked through class the next day. I was very fortunate not to be called on, and even more fortunate that there weren't any pop quizzes. I did ask Tanya during Religion if she would mind if I didn't sit with her at lunch, and she looked more relieved than anything else.

The summons was delivered to my study hall during ninth period, by one of those underclassmen that get shanghaied into working in the office. I reported as soon as the bell rang, getting a surreptitious nod and thumbs up from Ms. Carter as I was passed back into the principal's office. It was a very different "Pete" Peterson who sat behind his large desk, his hands officiously crossed in front of him as he frowned and nodded me toward the single seat opposite him.

"Mr. Sterling," he began, "I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. Based upon information that I have received and the investigation that I have conducted to date, I am forced to recommend your expulsion from this high school, effective immediately, under section three dash twenty four of the student disciplinary code."

"Information from whom, sir?" I interrupted his little oration.

"That is confidential, young man," he said breezily. "What is relevant is the outcome of my investigation, which suggests that your retention at this institution has the potential to seriously disrupt the learning process of the other students whom we are charged with teaching."

He waited for another interruption, but I'd already learned what I wanted. There was pressure from the outside. Plus, I figured I might as well let him finish the little speech that he'd written, the one he tried to keep me from noticing that he was reading from.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that, sir?" I asked. He'd started reading again and I'd missed a bit.

"I said, Mr. Sterling, that you have three school days, er, that is, three business days, to request a hearing. This envelope contains a copy of my recommendation, a copy of the student disciplinary code, and a handbook of procedures at hearings to be held under the disciplinary code. I would urge you to study it very carefully before you decide upon your next step.

"Yes, sir," I said, ripping open the sealed envelope. "This is the recommendation, sir?"

"Um, yes," he nodded.

I pulled my pen out of my pocket and very carefully printed "I request a hearing," signing my name below it as neatly as I could.

"Will you excuse me a moment, sir?" I asked.

"Excuse you?" he said.

"Thank you, sir," I said, although by then I was already on my feet pulling the door to the outer office open. "Ms., um, Ms. Carter, would it be an imposition to ask you to put the date and time on this piece of paper and make me a copy of it?"

She bit her lip to keep from smiling, but stood up and took the paper out of my hand. When she'd returned it, I handed Mr. Peterson back the original and stuffed my copy into the packet.

"Is that it, sir?" I asked.

"Uh, yes," he said.

"So you'll notify me of a hearing date?"

"Yes," he said, "a hearing date."

"Thank you, sir," I said. Standing up, I strode to the door, opened it, and left the office without another look at either Pete Peterson or Ms. Rachel Carter.

The weekend went from bad to worse. At the dinner table on Friday night, I told my dad, and Tiffany and Dave and Jill and Jeanne, that I'd been recommended for expulsion.

"What the hell for?" Dad demanded.

"For — " I started.

"For hitting his girlfriend," Jill interrupted me.

"You hit a woman?" Dad pushed himself back from the dinner table, looking like he was ready for a little violence of his own.

"No, sir," I said vehemently.

"Jake Harper said that Paula Owens saw a videotape of it," Jill was speaking to Dad rather than me.

"There's no videotape, sir," I told my dad. "I don't hit women. I didn't hit Stephie van Carlen."

"You better hope the hell you didn't," Dad returned to his dinner.

"It was, uh, suggested to me that I'd be better off with a lawyer to represent me," I said tentatively.

"Fucking lawyers," Dad spoke through his food. "If you didn't do it, what do you need one of those parasites for?"




A Stitch in Time Pt. 02



He was looking at me, waiting for an answer. To him, apparently, only the guilty needed a lawyer.

"Okay," I nodded.

Jill looked at me in triumph, Tiffany in disgust, Jeanne in despair. When I knocked on Jeanne's door that night, she still had the same look in her eyes.

"Cammie must have told you I couldn't have done this," I pleaded with her.

She nodded.

"Please, Jeanne, you've gotta believe me," I said.

"Then why wouldn't you tell me that you didn't videotape her?" she demanded.

I knew this would be the sticking point. I'd searched my computer looking for every video file on it. Most of them were porn, but none of me and Stephie. Actually, I was happy to see, none of me at all.

But I didn't have many choices to correct the "lie" that Jeanne thought she'd caught me in when I'd refused to deny that I'd videotaped Stephie. I could lie about the lie: no, Jeanne, that never happened, you must have misinterpreted my silence. Jeanne was too smart for that. My second choice was to tell the truth, about everything, and hoped she believed it. I hadn't a shred of proof to back me up, though, and her most likely reaction was just to tune that out as just another lie.

My third option: the even bigger lie. Just one that sounded more like the truth.

"Because I did," I said.

Her eyes widened.

"But nothing beyond just messin' around, you know?" I added quickly. "Stephie got real hot thinking about the idea of taping ourselves one afternoon. But I would never hit a girl."

"All right," she finally said, opening her door to me and admitting me to her room. I sat on her bed and explained my odd little friendship with Ms. Carter, concluding with her recommendation that I hire a lawyer.

"I thought of Aunt Ruth," I said eagerly.

"Yeah, she would," Jeanne said. "But Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill just left for a two-week cruise. I don't know what to tell you."

"Well, Ms. Carter said that Mrs. Torianni would represent me," I said. "That's better than nothing, I guess. Will you go to church with me on Sunday?"

She looked a little taken aback.

"Why?"

"I dunno," I said. "I just figured that the more people I had praying for me, the better chance I'd have of actually getting it answered."

"Sure, Trick," she smiled. "I'll be happy to say a prayer for you."

Jeanne and I began our real thaw — unlike the Christmas day thaw, which was just like that thaw you get in late January before the real blizzard arrives — the next day. I took her out driving for two hours on Saturday morning in the mall parking lot, and then we had lunch together in Bennigan's.

"Thank you for the new glasses," she said shyly at one point when we were waiting for our burger to arrive.

"Sure," I smiled.

"I actually had a few guys checking me out last week," she smiled back.

"And why not?" I said. "You're a great girl. Hot, smart" — always list hot first — "fun to be with."

Oh, shit. Sammy Houghtaling.

"You haven't said you'll go out with any of 'em, have you?" I asked.

She blushed.

"Nobody's asked me," she said. "Why?"

"I, uh," I stammered. "I kind of promised a guy I'd find out if you'd go out with him."

"What guy?" she narrowed her eyes. "Why doesn't he just ask me?"

"He's a coward," I shrugged. "I'll just tell him no."

"Wait a minute," she said, putting a hand on my arm. "Who is it?"

"Why?" I asked. "He's a wimp. You can do better than him."

She was getting ready to explode at me when she realized I was just teasing her.

"Tell me," she whacked me on the arm.

"Sammy," I said.

"Sammy Houghtaling?" her eyes lit up. "Are you serious? He's, like, the most gifted guy in the whole school."

"Musically," I said.

"Period," she said. "He's also first in your class."

"Speaking of my class," I saw an opportunity, "when did Cammie join my class?"

"Just this year," Jeanne said. "When she realized she'd have enough credits to graduate this year. She used to be in your class, actually, 'til she went to France. Then she got behind a little bit. Anyway, she got really bored last year, so her mother let her skip eleventh grade. She said you were in her Astronomy class. When did you get interested in Astronomy?"

"I'm not, particularly," I said. "Although it looks like a fun class. I'm just trying to get my GPA up."

"Why?" Jeanne asked. "Oh my God, you still want to go to UVA, don't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "If I ace all my courses and double my SAT score."

"But why?" Jeanne asked again. "You spent the last, like, two years being a, well, a..."

"Jerk?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "A jerk."

"I guess I just decided I didn't like being a jerk anymore," I said after a long pause. "You certainly meet better girls that way."

"You've got a new girlfriend already?" Jeanne smiled, taking just as much delight in my life as she did in hers.

"Just a friend," I nodded. "She's a transfer student."

Jeanne knew enough to let it drop.

"What happens when baseball season starts up again and you start hanging out with your, uh..." she started.

"Asshole friends?" I suggested another ending.

"Yeah," she grinned.

"Most of 'em have graduated, haven't they?" I asked.

"That's true," she thought for a minute. "You guys aren't gonna be that good this year, are you?"

"That's what Coach says," I agreed.

"Probably be good for you to suck," she laughed.

"It probably will be," I nodded.

We reached a natural pause, so I asked her point-blank what I should tell Sammy.

She picked up one of her last French fries — lunch had come and nearly gone by this point — and twirled it in her hand.

"You tell Sammy Houghtaling," she smiled, "that if he wants a date with a hot, smart, fun-to-be-with junior, he ought to ask her pretty damn quick."

We both laughed at that, and after lunch she drove us home. Dinner was another mostly silent affair, and when I knocked on Jeanne's door that evening afterward, I found she was out for the night.

We did drive to church together the next morning, though, although we still sat in different pews. Afterwards she left to spend the afternoon with Cammie and I left to drive myself home. I hoped that she hadn't forgotten her promise to say a prayer for me. Because I didn't want to ruin what had turned out to be a pretty nice weekend by getting thrown out of school the following week.



A Stitch in Time Pt. 03



Chapter 8

Ex Libris Salvatio. Do you like that? I made it up. I have no idea whether it's actually Latin, but it is my new motto. From books, salvation. Or more accurately in my case, from the library, salvation. A lot of people find solace in the library; heck, I'd found some pretty good solace in the library myself the day after Christmas. But salvation? That was a lot harder.

Since Monday was a day off, for the students anyway, I decided to return the three library books I'd checked out, all of which were due on the following day. At the same time, I thought I'd start work on a paper that Mr. Anson had assigned us on President Andrew Jackson's battle against a national bank, a harbinger, according to Mr. Anson, of the Civil War struggle over states' rights. It actually wasn't due for another two weeks, and there was always the chance that I could be expelled by then, but I had a naïve hope that justice would prevail.

Mostly I just found it hard to accept the idea that they'd throw me out of school because Stephie van Carlen was trash-talking me. Particularly if she wasn't willing to share the video she supposedly had. Stephie was only the queen of the senior class, after all, not the whole school.

My working hypothesis, based on what Coach Torianni had told me, was that it was actually Stephie's father who wanted me thrown out. And I figured that if he had enough clout to get my scholarships withdrawn, and my tryouts cancelled, getting me expelled was probably like swatting a fly. Stephie as queen? No. Dutch as king? Sure.

Why did he want me thrown out? It was possible, of course, that Stephie was still the force behind the throne. In my limited experience, though, that would be a pretty big overreaction. Although I couldn't remember breaking up with a girl myself, I did remember it happening to other couples in eighth and ninth grade. Some of them got to the public tears and yelling stage, but never any farther that that. So the idea of Queen Stephie screaming "off with his head!" over a breakup, particularly with an asshole like me, was just a little much. On the other hand, King Dutch getting me chucked out because he thought I'd abused his little girl? Sure, I could see that. I could see that pretty easily.

Nevertheless, I trooped down to the library to start my research. Most of the kids, I figured, would just do their research on the Internet, but they were a lot more comfortable with the Internet than I was, and I'd always liked real books anyway. I got there around ten, and Miss Edwards gave me a big smile when she saw me, but there were too many people around with too many demands on her attention for me to give her more than a whispered "hi."

I was wading through a poorly written book on the controversy when I heard a voice across the table: "The library's closed for lunch, young man."

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," I yelped. I'd slammed my book closed and nearly jumped to my feet before I realized that I'd been given the message by a beautiful woman leaning over the table wearing nothing but a bra and panties, both of them with delicate white lace attached to what looked like shiny black silk.

I sat back hard in my seat, completely bowled over by the gorgeous Lynn Edwards.

"I didn't say you had to leave, silly boy," she said with a smile. "I just said the library's closed. Everybody else has left, and we won't open until 1:30 this time."

I watched in awe as she proceeded to crawl onto the table in front of me.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you to stand up when a lady joined you at the table?" she giggled.

I did jump to my feet then, and she giggled again as she reached for the front of my jeans.

"I thought you might be here today," she said in a voice that was half-whisper and half-moan as she pulled down the zipper, all the while looking up at me and giving me a view of her chest that literally took my breath away.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asked with another giggle. "Yeah, in fact, I tried to call your cell to find out, but your voice mailbox is full, you naughty boy. Too many other girls, probably."

By now, her delicate fingers had reached into my cotton briefs and pulled out my cock.

"Mmmm," she purred, stroking it gently with her hand. "I figured I'd take a chance anyway, though, and wear the undies you like so much."

Well, my tastes hadn't changed at any rate. I liked them just as much now. On the other hand, I'd never seen a real pair of tits, either. So as Lynn ducked her head to swallow my cock, I reached forward for the hook on her bra. With only a little trouble — nowhere near enough, I hoped, to cause Lynn to think that her lover's body had been taken over by the brain of a horny ninth-grader — I unhooked it. Without missing a beat, she slid first one arm and then the other out of it, letting it drop to the table beneath her.

Oh, God, I thought as I reached down to caress her back with my fingertips, please help me last longer this time.

He may not answer those kinds of prayers, but I could tell within a couple of seconds that I wasn't going to explode in Lynn's mouth as quickly as I had the last time she blew me. How wonderful. Slowly, almost not believing my fortune, I slid my hands around the sides of her ribcage until I had two delightfully soft handfuls of Lynn Edwards's tits.

"Mmmmm," she moaned.

"Mmmmm," I moaned right with her. I found myself gently squeezing her, letting her nipples slip through my fingers and then very slowly squeezing them as well.

"Bastard."

I looked down to see Lynn looking up at me through heavily lidded eyes.

"Do you want a blowjob or not, Trick?" she asked in a husky voice. "Oh, fuck, Trick."

She closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side.

"Let's —" she gasped. "Let's go to the sofa in the office."

Apparently there was a sofa in the office. Even better. I let her lead me there, both of us walking kind of hunched-over to avoid being seen through the library windows. When we were finally in the office, she practically pushed me down onto the couch.

"Now you just leave my boobs alone for a minute, Trick Sterling," she scolded me. "And let me finish my job."

She reached down and pulled my pants and shorts completely off, and then dropped to her knees in front of me.

"I don't think so," I teased her. I reached down and grabbed her under the arms, causing her to yelp in surprise as I swung her up into the air and deposited her beside me on the couch. By the time she could react, I was on my knees in front of her, my hands once again caressing her body, only this time from the front. I took only a moment to admire her sno-cone perfect breasts, and the small red nipples that topped them, each surrounded by just a wedding ring of crinkled red flesh.

"Trick," she moaned as my fingers closed over them and cut off my view. "Stop."

"Why?" I asked her, resting my chin atop her pubic mound, still covered by her black panties but already giving off the wonderful smell that I remembered from our last session together two weeks ago.

"'Cause they're too small," she murmured.

"Baloney," I said, leaning forward until my mouth hovered over her left tit.

She looked down at me, her body still slowly undulating beneath me.

"They're perfect," I breathed. I dropped my head a fraction of an inch and reached out with my tongue.

"Oh, God, Trick" she cried out, "oh, God."

If the spasms I'd caused the other day were climaxes, she had two more of them, one from sucking each of her breasts, and yet another two when I finally pulled off her panties and applied my newfound talents there.

Finally, with her panting and gasping underneath me, I moved up to insert my still hard cock into her.

"Fuck, Trick!" she yelped as I slid the whole thing deep inside of her well-lubricated opening. "Oh, fuck, I'm gonna... oh, Trick."

That last Trick was drawn out, turning into a wavering keen over twenty to thirty seconds, like Tri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ck!

I still wasn't ready to cum myself yet, though, so I just changed my rhythm ever so slightly and within five minutes had her on the verge of another one. This time I was right with her. We spent five more minutes coupled together before she finally blinked open her eyes and gave me a strange look.

"You've changed, Trick Sterling," she said.

I decided the best course was to simply smile at her. If I had changed, she certainly hadn't seemed to have any objections to it.

"You always told me my boobs were too small," she smiled at me.

"I was an ass," I said. "Your boobs are perfect."

"Say it," she said.

"Say what?" I asked her.

"You know," she nudged me.

I sighed inwardly.

"You were great, baby," I told her.

She looked at me again and opened her mouth, and then burst into tears. She sat up and threw her arms around me, still sobbing on my shoulder.

"What?" I asked, slowly pushing her off of me and wiping the tears off her cheeks. "What is it?"

She sniffled at me.

"I know it's just our game," she sniffled. "You say that, I say 'you too, stud, ' and I pretend I'm one of your high school girlfriends. I'm sorry."

"Sorry about what?" I asked. "About crying?"

She nodded, her eyes welling up with tears again.

"Why?"

"'Cause it actually sounded like you meant it," she buried her head in my shoulder again.

"Hey," I said. I lifted her head by the chin. "I did mean it."

Her upper lip trembled, her eyes looked deep into mine.

"Why do you doubt it?" I asked her.

"In high school," she sniffled again, "I was always pudgy, with these tiny little tits. I never dated at all. And only a little bit in college. And then when we started, you know, fucking, I used to pretend that I was in high school, and that I was one of your girlfriends, instead of, you know, a woman ten years older."

"Hey," I was still holding her chin. "Right now you're my only girlfriend."

"Why?" she looked astonished.

"It's a long story," I shook my head.

"Well, I'm gonna give you the blowjob of your life," she told me fiercely, "and then you can tell me all about it."

I couldn't possibly tell her what a small goal she'd actually selected for herself. Let her think that I'd had dozens of girls blow me, even if all she really had to top was the blowjob she gave me two weeks ago. I was honestly going to be able to tell her that it was the best I'd ever had.

"So," she said after we'd finally cleaned up, still ten minutes short of the time she was supposed to re-open, "tell your older lover what's going on. What about that teacher you were doing?"

"She, uh, broke up with me last summer," I explained. "After they passed that law."

Lynn nodded.

"And your current girl?"

"I just broke up with her," I said. "And now I'm about to get expelled from school."

"For what?" Lynn demanded.

I hemmed and hawed, but finally just swallowed my pride.

"This girl is saying that I, um, hit her and, uh, choked her," I stammered.

"Trick," she cocked her head at me. "Tell me this is not that loopy bitch with the cock-sucking whore game."

I stared at her, frozen into immobility.

"The what?" I finally gasped.

"That nut case you told me about who wanted you to spank her and slap her and call her a cock-sucking whore," Lynn said. "I thought you told me you were going to break up with her."

"Uh, well, I didn't," I said. "Until last week, anyway. So I, uh, told you about this?"

"Yes, don't you remember?" Lynn asked. "You said it was disgusting. You couldn't believe she wanted you to do that. How come you didn't break up with her right then and there?"

"I guess she must be pretty persuasive, huh?" I scratched my head.

"Men," Lynn shook hers. "All you have to persuade is the little head. The big one never stands a chance. So why don't you just tell them that you couldn't possibly have done that. Surely all your other ex-girlfriends will back you up. Oh. You don't get along with most of them, right? And if I told them, people would just assume you only treat high school girls that way, huh?"

I smiled at her.

Like I'd ever ask her to do that. I'd known better than that when I was a ninth grader.

Someone started banging on the library door just then — it was 1:31, after all — and I got lost in the stacks while she let them in. A few minutes later, when a larger crowd had entered, I made my way back to my research. When the library closed I walked by the circulation desk to check out a few more books, and then dropped a note in front of Lynn. As I reached the door and looked back, I saw her finish reading it and blush furiously. Well, it was the best.

The next day at school, I at least had some peeps on my side. Mr. Anson and Mr. Kennedy weren't among them, but Mrs. Palmer at least called on me during class. Aaron and Cammie both said hello when I got into Astronomy, and Tanya was waiting for me with a shy smile on her face when I reached Religion. We were apparently friends again, just like we'd been at the beginning of last week. We sat together at lunch and she asked me, again with exquisite shyness, if I wanted to go to the Winter of our Disco-tent. 

"The what?" I asked her.

"The winter dance," she said. "Haven't you seen the posters? They're all over school."

I had actually seen the bright yellow posters, but I hadn't paid a lot of attention to them. So little attention, in fact, that I thought it was some sort of Shakespeare thing; I was quite proud of the fact that I'd read "Richard III" when I was still in ninth grade. It turned out, though, that I'd just missed the joke.

"I honestly don't know if I'm going to be here then," I said softly, after Tanya had explained that the dance was still several weeks away, on the tenth of February.

"You will," Tanya smiled. "I believe you, Trick. I'm sorry that I kind of pulled away last week."

I smiled at her. Tanya Szerchenko was no less a kid than any of the rest of us, just as susceptible to peer pressure.

"I thought maybe you wouldn't ask me because of all of this stuff," she continued. "So I decided to ask you."

"Well, then, sure," I agreed. "If I'm here. As friends."

"As friends," she smiled.

And then, since we were friends, she asked me for my cell phone number.

"Cell phone number?" I repeated.

"You do have a cell phone, don't you?"

"Well, sure," I said. The way she'd looked at me suggested that if I didn't have one, I was probably some sort of antisocial freak. And actually, I did have a cell phone, come to think of it. Stephie had been upset that I hadn't answered it over the Christmas break. Lynn had told me that my voice mailbox was full. And Jill, bless her heart, had gotten me a new one for Christmas.

"Actually, I just got a new one from my sister," I said. "And I haven't figured out if I can keep the same number or not."

"Well, that's just a simple call to the provider," Tanya said. "And you have to change out your simcard."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I'll just do it tonight and let you know the number tomorrow."

I smiled at her and she smiled back at me. It was nice to have a friend. She looked like she thought the same thing, even if hers was an idiot.

After lunch, I got a summons to the nurse's office, where I found Ms. Carter waiting for me to tell me that I had a meeting with Liz Torianni during my seventh period study hall. Mrs. Torianni's office was just like her husband's, albeit on the girl's side of the gym, but fortunately it didn't require a trip through the girls' locker room to get there.

"Hello, Patrick," she extended her hand as I entered, greeting me with a firm handshake that had me rethinking my answer to Ms. Carter about the nature of my relationship with Mrs. Torianni.

"Mrs. Torianni," I smiled.

Her face fell. But she recovered and shut the door behind me.

"Four months of fucking and all I get is Mrs. Torianni?" she asked me.

"With the door open, Liz," I stood up.

She gave me a big smile.

"How've you been, Trick?" she asked, drawing me in for a hug against her big tits.

"You tell me," I said. "You're my lawyer."

"I wish," she said ruefully as she sat down behind her desk. "Why did you ever start dating this bitch? You certainly weren't dating her when we broke up. Never mind, it's not relevant."

"Do you think it would help to have people, um, other girls testify that I've never done anything like this to them?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she said flatly. "They'd just say you changed. Besides, it's not really your conduct that's at issue here; it's your presence."

"So I'm screwed?" I asked. "Even if, like, Stephie liked getting, you know, slapped around."

"Is that your defense?" Liz asked. "That she wanted you to hit her?"

"No," I said quickly. "I just wondered. You know, hypothetically."

"Trick, we don't have time for this," Liz said. "If you actually had a lawyer he could probably just demolish this whole thing and convince them to pay you his fees. But all you've got is me."

"My aunt is gone for another week and a half," I told her. "She's the only one who might help me hire a lawyer."

"The hearing's next Monday," Liz said, lifting a piece of paper off the desk. "I just found out. And I asked my husband, the dick, about helping you out with a lawyer, and he said absolutely not, he wasn't jeopardizing his job here even if you were the next Roger Clemens. And since all our money's in one joint account, I can't help you either, Trick."

"So what do we do?"

"We make the best argument we can," she said. "And if it doesn't work, then maybe you can get your aunt to hire you a lawyer and appeal it to the school board."

We sat there for another half-hour, reading through the documents that I'd brought with me. I left school even more depressed than I had on Friday. And dinner, even though Jeanne did her best to involve me, wasn't a big improvement.

Late that night, after I'd finished my homework, I pulled out the new phone that Jill had "bought" me for Christmas, and read over the fifty-page instruction booklet. After a few minutes searching, I found my own phone, lying in its charger in my bookcase. I flipped it open to find a bright banner flashing at me: VOICEMAIL! VOICEMAIL! And after a few tries, I figured out how to get rid of it. Or how to start getting rid of it, anyway; I apparently had 24 messages.

The first one — surprise, surprise — was from Stephie. Maybe all of them were going to be from Stephie. Listening to all of these was going to be a real treat.

"Hi Trick. I wish it was the real you. It's Christmas Eve, and we finally got here at six after five hours on the road. God, five hours with Daddy and Mommy and Andy. I feel like a fuckin' dishrag. Anyway, call me when you can, as long as it's before eleven. And if it's not before eleven, where the fuck are you? Bye-bye!"

I had my finger poised over the number six key, following the machine lady's instructions for deleting the message. But suddenly I decided no, I should listen to them all first. I can always go back and delete them afterward. By the time I finally went to bed, around one o'clock in the morning, I still hadn't deleted any of them. But I was feeling a little bit better about life in general.

The next day of school, Wednesday, went much like the previous day. Except that in Astronomy lab, Aaron Fleishmann was absent. Mr. Carruthers explained that the experiment that we were supposed to be performing, involving the measurement of gravity and the calculation of its effect on heavenly bodies, was the foundation of the whole semester, and urged me to move up next to Cammie so that we could do it together.

"If you screw this up for me, Patrick Sterling," Cammie hissed at me as I took Aaron's seat and we began to set up the experiment, "I'll never speak to you again."

We were actually allowed to talk freely during lab, but it seemed that Cammie wanted this conversation to remain confidential.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 03



"You don't speak to me now," I whispered back to her.

She glared at me, and then her face softened, just a little.

"Look," she said, deciding on another tack, "I need a good grade in this course to get into this college, okay?"

"Which one?" I asked.

"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute," she whispered. "I've been wait-listed."

She saw my frown.

"What?" she asked.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Jeanne said you were really smart. How come you couldn't get into an American school?"

"You ass," her eyes flashed at me. "It's in Troy, near Albany."

"So do you have to learn Rensselearish or Trojan?"

She gave me a hard stare and returned her attention to the experiment. After a bit, though, I could see her shoulders start shaking.

"Or Albanian," I couldn't resist adding. "Do they speak Albanian 'cause it's near Albany?"

She kept her head down so I couldn't see the corners of her mouth turn up, and after a while she just whacked me on the arm and we got down to work. We finished the experiment in the spirit of pure scientific collaboration.

At lunch that day, I finally remembered Sammy Houghtaling. As I walked to my table I gave Rabbit Parker a subtle nod, and looked briefly at Sammy, on one side of him, and my sister Jeanne, who was sitting across the table. He smiled and nodded back; he'd take care of it. It Looked like Jeanne was going to be going on a date.

That evening after school I bought a tape recorder.

I had a ton of homework, though, so it wasn't until Thursday night that I finished all of my taping. At lunchtime on Friday, I told Tanya that I had some work to do to help Mrs. Torianni get ready for my hearing on Monday, and went instead to see Ms. Carter in the office. As I'd hoped, "Pete" was out to lunch, literally this time. Ms. Carter was all alone, and gave me a big smile when she saw me.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Sterling?"

"I need some advice," I said in a confidential tone.

"Come on back," she motioned me around the counter. "What can I do for you?"

"It's about the hearing."

"Patrick, you should really talk to Liz Torianni about this," she stopped me. "I work for Mr. Peterson, you know."

"I know," I said. "But I don't wanna tell her, and you're the only one I know who's, well, smart enough to do it."

"To do what?"

"To help me track down Stephie's father."

"What?" she sat back.

"He's the one who got my scholarships cancelled," I explained, "and my tryouts cancelled. And I know he's the one who's been supplying Mr. Peterson and Superintendent Frostman with information. And probably pressuring them to throw me out, too. I just want to talk to him."

"Do you really think that's a good idea, Trick?" she said.

I smiled at her. It was the first time she'd called me Trick.

"I really do," I said.

She punched at her keyboard and then picked up the phone.

"Is Dutch there?" she asked, in a low, sultry voice she'd certainly never used around me before, a voice, I realized, that had suddenly had a Southern accent attached to it. "No, aah don't need to talk to him. Just tell him that aah'll be at his office at five this evenin' to go over the test results. No, aah think he knows who this is; we don't need any names. Thanks ever so much, honey."

She put down the phone and laughed.

"How do you know he has a Southern girlfriend?" I asked.

"I don't," she grinned. "But I figured, what are the chances he doesn't? Here's the address. Be careful, Trick. He's a powerful man."

"Yeah," I grinned back. "But so am I."

I left with a swagger that made her laugh, and at 4:50, I was in the anteroom of Dutch van Carlen's office in the nicest building in the downtown area.

"Can I help you?" the secretary asked.

"Patrick Sterling," I said. "Here to see Mr. van Carlen."

She looked shocked.

"Is he expecting you, Mr. Sterling?" she finally said.

"I kinda doubt it, ma'am," I said. "Is he busy?"

"He's with his attorney at the moment," she said. "I'll just let him know that you're out here."

She scurried into the office, glancing nervously back at me one more time as she knocked and entered. She emerged with a man that I assumed wasn't Dutch; he didn't look like a "Dutch" for one thing, he was kind of young, for another, maybe in his early thirties, and he was dressed like a lawyer.

"Patrick, I'm Bob Hastings, Mr. van Carlen's attorney," he offered me his hand and took a seat beside me. "Mr. van Carlen tells me that he doesn't have anything to discuss with you."

"That's fine," I smiled. "I can just discuss it with you. I brought some tapes for him. Shall I play them for you?"

"Tapes?" he asked. The secretary was also looking at me.

"Well, one tape," I said.

There were two tapes, actually; I'd left the other copy at home. I pulled out the recorder and pushed the button.

We listened to the first message together, and when it looked like he wanted to say something, I pushed the "pause" button.

"What's the point of this, Patrick?" Mr. Hastings said.

"I think the point will become obvious, sir," I answered, "as we listen to more tapes.

I pressed the "play" button.

BEEP!

"Hi, Trick, it's Christmas morning now. You were a naughty boy last night, not calling me back. I got some great stuff this morning, probably to make up for being dragged to nowheresville. Or maybe just general guilt. Last night, Daddy started fucking Mom's little sister Rhonda again. Mom told me after a few eggnogs that if Rhonda gets knocked up, she'll be happy to give Daddy and his little dick to her. Call me, baby, I need to talk to you."

Mr. Hastings held up his hand again and we soon found an empty conference room out of the secretary's earshot.

"Hi, Trick, late on Christmas. Where are you, baby? This is like a fucking soap opera here. Dad was off watching some sports shit — sorry, baby — and Mom and Rhonda practically got into a catfight. Mom finally ended up crying when Rhonda told her that Daddy wouldn't run around on her so much if she'd gotten a boob job like Rhonda. I just feel so dirty, and you know what that means! Whoops, gotta go."

BEEP!

"Sorry, it was just Mom. Anyway, baby, little Stephie is horny, baby! She wants your tricky dick in her hot little pussy. She wants you to spank her like you did last month, baby, 'cause she feels dirty. She's your cock-sucking whore, baby. Damn it!"

BEEP!

"Mom, again. I know you think I'm too kinky, baby, but I never came as much in my life as I did after that. God, when you spat in my face I almost came right there. Oh, God, Trick, you've gotta do that again. I'll do anything for you, baby, anything. Maybe a little threesome with Paula Owens, how 'bout that? She's a slut, baby, she'll spread her legs in a minute. And I'll get between 'em for you. Please, Trick, huh?"

The messages got dirtier, then angrier, then dirtier and angrier, and finally settled on angrier again for the last few messages, including the most recent, which she'd left on New Year's Eve.

I looked over to see Mr. Hastings with his head buried in his hands.

"So how much do you want?" he asked, a newly hard edge to his voice.

"How much what?" I asked.

"I assume this is blackmail, son," he said. "How much do you want?"

"And I assume, sir, that you're unaware of what's been happening to me recently," I said as I tried to quell the nervousness in my voice. "What I want is, first, to have my scholarships reinstated. Second, to have my professional baseball tryouts reinstated. Third, to have my expulsion hearing cancelled. And fourth, to have a written letter from Stephie van Carlen apologizing for lying to people about my being abusive toward her."

He just stared at me.

"Apparently my assumption was right?" I asked calmly.

"You believe that Mr. van Carlen did all of this to you?" he asked.

"I do, sir," I said. "And if I'm wrong, and he can't fix all of these things, I assume that I'll be sued after everyone finds out that I've played these tapes next week in school at my expulsion hearings."

He sighed.

"Come on," he said as he got to his feet.

I followed him back to the anteroom, where he ushered me back to my seat and knocked on the door to van Carlen's office.

"Is that little shit gone yet?" came the roar from the office.

"No," was the last thing I heard before the door closed.

Mr. Hastings emerged about fifteen minutes later, a legal pad in his hand.

"I want to make sure I have this straight," he said, a little more rattled than when I first met him. "Scholarships reinstated, hearing cancelled, and a letter of apology."

"And my professional baseball tryouts, too, sir," I said.

"You really good enough to play pro ball?" he asked.

"That's what I want to find out, sir," I grinned. "That's why I need the tryouts."

"All right," he said. He stood to go.

"Oh, sir?" I piped up.

He looked back and raised his eyebrows.

"That other woman, the one with the test results? She won't be coming."

He was still laughing when I left the room and headed for the staircase.

I raced home, excited at the prospect of telling Jeanne what I'd done. I didn't want to blab to the whole family, though, thinking that it might jinx whatever luck I'd managed to accumulate. I'd tell her tonight. Then, during dinner, Jeanne asked me if I needed a ride to the test tomorrow.

"What test?" Dad asked suspiciously.

"What test?" I echoed, a small knot already growing in the pit of my stomach.

"The SAT," Jeanne said with no little astonishment. "You said you were gonna take it again."

"What the hell for?" Dad asked.

"I'm sorry?" I looked at him wildly when I realized he was speaking to me. My mind had been elsewhere. Shit, January 27. Damn it. I'd even bought a study book. I just hadn't looked at it.

"What the hell you takin' that test for again?" Dad repeated.

"College," I said.

"How the hell you goin' to college, boy, when you get your ass kicked out of school?" he asked.

"Yeah, that will make it harder," I agreed. "May I be excused? Oh, Jeanne, yeah, a ride would be great."

By the time I'd finished with the test early on Saturday afternoon, I was wiped. I'd spent the previous night trying to cram in all the stuff I should have been doing for the last few weeks. And a few nagging doubts had started to slide back in by morning. After all, I was dealing with a rich, powerful man, his vindictive daughter, and their lawyer. A lot could happen between now and Monday afternoon.

I staggered out into the parking lot, blinking in the bright sunlight, and walked right past our car. Jeanne had initially parked it in the far corner of the parking lot, and it was now in one of the spaces closest to the school. Absorbed as I was in my test-induced panic, I hadn't given much thought to what Jeanne would be doing while I took the SAT; it's not like she brought a book or anything, or that she would have spent three hours sitting in a car in January even if she had. She had apparently gone somewhere else, though. I learned that when she laid on the horn as I was passing the car.

"You're not supposed to drive by yourself," I grumbled as I slumped in the passenger's seat.

"I didn't," she said gaily. "How did it go?"

"Couldn't have been worse than last time," I said.

"Yeah, you stayed for the whole thing," she said.

"What are you so frickin' happy about?" I finally asked her as she pulled out of the parking lot. She'd been practically bouncing up and down ever since I got in the car.

She reached up and pulled down a piece of plastic from the visor: a freshly-minted driver's license, hot off the DMV laminating machine. I studied it for a minute, and handed it back.

"That's the first good picture I've ever seen on one of those," I said.

"You jerk," she laughed.

I smiled back at her.

"Congrats, Jeanne," I said. "Third time's the charm, huh? So how did you get there?"

"Cammie took me," she smiled. "First appointment of the day."

"So whatcha been doin' ever since?" I asked.

"I took Cammie to breakfast," she said. "To say thanks. And now I'm taking you to lunch for the same reason. Thanks, big brother."

"Sure, kid."

After that, it was a great weekend. I slept for most of it, but it was still a great weekend.

Chapter 9

The car wouldn't start on Monday morning, so Jeanne and I had to race to catch the bus. It seemed like a bad omen to me, but once I got to school, I decided that maybe I had just gotten my bad luck out of the way really early. Because there, on the steps of the school, handing out a piece of paper to every student who walked by him, was Mr. Bob Hastings, who gave me a grin as I approached.

"I hope everything is to your satisfaction, Mr. Sterling," he said as he gave me a copy of his handout. "Your scholarship offers will be back in place today, your tryouts start again next week. We can't actually control the expulsion hearing, but I don't think it'll be a problem. And here's your letter."

"Thank you, sir," I smiled. "I hope you're getting overtime for being here so early."

"Damn right," he smiled back at me.

I don't know what kind of letter I'd expected. The chances of Stephie just saying "I'm sorry, I lied" were probably pretty slim to begin with. But this letter was odd, and I was just going to have to wait to find out whether it did what I wanted it to, namely, restore me to the good graces of the Marshall High student body.

I didn't have to wait long. Mrs. Palmer altered her usual schedule at the beginning of our third period seminar.

"We're going to take a little break today, people," she began in a stern voice, "and temporarily suspend the fascinating discussion we began last week on Mr. Melville. I always believe in calling attention to excellent writing, and I found an example of it this morning in my mailbox."

She handed me the papers for my row. After I'd passed the stack back to Missy, I realized it was a copy of the letter I'd been given this morning.

"You'll note that I have redacted the name of its author as well as another name in the letter," Mrs. Palmer said. "Do you know what 'redacted' means, Mister..."

She looked down at her class list.

"Sterling?"

I looked up to see her smiling at me.

"Crossed out with a big ol' magic marker, ma'am?" I asked.

The class tittered.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Now let's all take a minute to read the letter first."

My fellow students, I was thrilled this weekend to learn that I have been accepted into Richmond Arms, the prestigious private academy from which both my mother and my grandmother graduated, for this final semester. As a result, I will not be returning to school this spring. Before I leave, though, I feel responsible for correcting a mistaken impression that a number of you may have received during the past two weeks. As many of you know, I am a very creative person, and have often regaled you with fantastic tales and scenarios. Of course, my previous boyfriend, XXXXXXX, would have played a large part in some of those tales and scenarios. Recently, however, it occurred to me that some of you may have misinterpreted those stories in a way that would lead you to reflect poorly on XXXXXXX. Accordingly, I feel compelled to tell you that to the extent that you may have inferred that he ever actually engaged in any of the activities I may have included in my tales, you may wish to apologize to him for those thoughts. I will certainly only ever have the best memories of my time at John Marshall High School, and wish all of you well in the years to come. Sincerely, XXXXXXX

"It almost reads like it was written by a lawyer, doesn't it, Mr. Sterling?" Mrs. Palmer asked.

"The guy who was handing these out kinda looked like a lawyer, too, ma'am," I agreed.

"Very good," she said. "Is everyone done? Okay, let's begin. We'll leave aside for the moment this business about Richmond Arms. There are two ways of getting into Richmond Arms — grades and money. The better the grades, the lower the tuition, and vice versa. In this case, I suspect the young lady's parents —Richmond is a girls' school, so we know the author, or let's say the signer, is a young lady — her parents finally decided to fork over enough money to meet the magic figure."

The class giggled at that.

"I also want to note that I personally was unaware of this creativity this young lady claims to possess," she continued. "That surprises me, of course, because I personally edit the school's creative writing journal. But be that as it may, let's turn to the fifth sentence, where it turns out that some of us here at Marshall may have misinterpreted this young lady's fantasies. I'm sure that by now you're all familiar with those apologies that start out, 'I'm sorry if you took offense at what I said.' I'm not sorry I called you a dingbat; I'm sorry that you, for whatever reason —"

The class burst into laughter as she threw out her arms and rolled her eyes.

"—considered that to be offensive. To you personally.

"This letter, people, is even better than that. It's not her fault, it's not the fault of the person whose reputation she's been trashing all over school. No, it's the fault of all of us for inferring the wrong thing. What's the difference between inferring and implying, Miss... Kennedy?"

"You imply something in your own speech," Sheila Kennedy said, "but it's your listener who infers something from it."

"Exactly," Mrs. Palmer said. "And apparently I've been guilty of this as well. So I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to issue a general apology, here in front of all of you, for ever even thinking that this nonsense might be true. And I commend this letter to you if any of you, God forbid, ever want to become lawyers. Now, let's get back to Mr. Bartleby."

I sat next to Cammie in Astronomy the following period, because Aaron was still out, and she gave me a punch in the arm. Which was probably as good as I was going to get from Cammie. I sat next to a very pleased Tanya in Religion and at lunch, surrounded by tables filled with other kids who were no longer convinced that I had typhoid.

Finally, after school had ended, I walked into the principal's office with a half-suppressed grin, joining "Pete," Superintendent Frostman, and Liz Torianni. Pete shuffled a few papers on his desk, and then called the hearing to order.

"Due to some, uh, new information that I have received," he started officiously, "it has been determined that the recommendation that Patrick Sterling be expelled from Marshall High School cannot proceed, and that it should be withdrawn."

He droned on for a bit, but I was too busy grinning at Liz Torianni to pay much attention. Fifteen minutes later, I opened the door to the outer office and saw Rachel Carter looking at me hopefully. The bench that took up the entire length of the wall opposite the counter was filled with my friends, also all looking hopeful: Tanya, Jeanne, Rabbit, and Cammie. And Sammy Houghtaling, who was apparently going to be one of my new friends.

"Well?" Tanya asked after I paraded out in silence

I curved my fingers and blew on my fingernails before rubbing them on my chest.

"It's going to be sponged from my record," I announced proudly.

"Expunged," Liz corrected me as she followed me out and shut the door behind her.

"Ex-sponged," I agreed.

Liz just shook her head and laughed.

"And I owe it all to the support of my friends," I said, smiling at Rachel Carter before I turned back to Tanya. "Looks like you'll have to go to the dance with me after all."

She smiled back.

"How about you guys?" I asked the others. "You all goin' discoin' next weekend?"

Cammie and Rabbit were nodding; Jeanne was looking intently at Sammy, who was staring at his shoes.

"Oh, fer cryin' out loud, Sammy Houghtaling," I said. "What are you waitin' for, an engraved invitation? Come on, buddy, ya snooze, ya lose. The tide waits for no man. Wait not, want not. Help me out here, Ms. Torianni."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 03



"I think you're doing fine," Liz laughed. "Although I think it's 'waste not, want not."

"That, too, Sammy Houghtaling," I said.

By now everyone was looking at Sammy.

He swallowed hard.

"Um, Jeanne," he asked, "would you like to go to the dance with me?"

"I'll think about it," Jeanne threw her head up in the air.

"You'll what?" I stared at her.

"Okay, I'll go," Jeanne said. She turned to me. "What, you want everyone to think I'm easy?"

As everyone laughed, I remembered my manners.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Torianni," I said. "This is my friend Tanya, my sister Jeanne, my friend Rabbit, my friend Cammie, and Jeanne's date, Sammy."

"Tanya, it's nice to meet you," Liz shook hands. "Jeanne I remember from gym last year, Rabbit I know from the team, and who are you again?"

"You're the bitch that coaches the volleyball team, aren't you?" Cammie said with a grin.

"Very funny, Rowe," Liz said. "That's gonna cost you two laps after practice today. Sammy, it's a pleasure. You're a lucky guy. I've got to run. Trick, I have no idea what happened today, but I'm very happy that it worked out for you."

She gave me a hug and left, and then I introduced Rachel to all my friends as well. Finally, Jeanne and I headed out to walk home together. Tanya lived in the other direction, and Sammy kindly offered to drop her off on his way home.

"Thanks for waiting," I said to Jeanne when we reached the sidewalk.

"Thanks for giving Sammy the push," Jeanne answered.

"Oh, he'd have gotten there," I said.

"Yeah, maybe the day before the dance," Jeanne said. "And I'd have had to scramble around to find something to wear."

"So Cammie plays volleyball?" I asked after a short pause.

Jeanne stopped short, forcing me to turn around to look back at her.

"Are you serious?" she asked. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you have no memory of that horrible, godawful dance you had to do with Cammie at the sports banquet last year, when you were both Athletes of the Year? Where you could have fit, like, two people in between you while you were dancing?"

We started walking again, in silence.

"I think I've been trying to kinda blank out all the really asshole things I did over the last couple of years," I finally said. "Part of starting over, I guess."

"Well, starting over is good," Jeanne said. "If anybody needed to start over, it's you."

Bobby Bunt joined me on the bus on Tuesday morning, returning the world to its usual orbit. Dad had promised to work on the car that evening — actually, to help Jeanne and I work on the car that evening — but we'd be riding the bus for at least another day.

"So I notice you hangin' out with that Tawny Skurchinko chick," Bobby said.

"Shur-chenk-o," I corrected him coldly. "Tanya Szerchenko."

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "You athletes get all the pussy."

"We're just friends."

"Yeah, Trickster," he said with a knowing look. "Just friends."

I looked down at my book.

"Friends with benefits, though, right?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?" I looked back up at him.

"Hey, no offense, man," he grinned at me. "Those are some pretty nice benefits, if ya know what I mean."

Actually, I had no idea what he meant. The expression "friends with benefits" hadn't been in wide circulation when I was a ninth-grader, back in 2003, at least not in my crowd.

"What exactly are you talking about?" I asked him.

"You know, benefits," Bobby looked at me like I was from Mars. "You know, bennie meaning good, fit meaning fit. You know, a nice tight fit."

He waggled his eyebrows and I was still none the wiser.

"Jeez, man," he looked at the blank expression on my face. "You know. Squeak, squeak, squeak."

He began to crudely thrust the forefinger of his right hand in and out of his left fist through his curled left forefinger.

That's when I realized what he was talking about.

And that's when I took a swing at him.

I missed — the little bastard was faster than I thought — which is why I didn't get suspended. I still found myself sitting in Pete's office with Coach Torianni during my sixth period study hall, though.

"Geez, Trick, thank God you didn't hit him," Pete said, trying to be my buddy again. "You could have been suspended."

"So you just missed him?" Coach asked.

"He's a fast little son of a bitch," I said. "I hit the frame of the window on the bus."

Coach sat up.

"You didn't hurt anything, did you?" he asked. "We got another tryout on Thursday."

"No, it was my right hand," I said as I flexed it. "'We'll' be fine."

Coach examined the hand, flexing it even more than I had. If Coach had been a doctor, he'd have had his license suspended.

"So this was that Bunt kid?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"And he's fast?" Coach asked.

"Faster than me," I shrugged. "Why?"

"He was the last kid I cut last year," he answered. "If he's fast, he could end up battin' leadoff this year. You need to make sure you get along with all your teammates, Trick. You're gonna need all the runs you can get this year."

I ended up giving Bobby a kind of half-hearted "sorry." My guess was that he had been forewarned by the coach, because he returned a full and complete apology for disrespecting any friend of mine, promising that he'd never do it again, ever.

By Wednesday, word had gotten around that I'd been a knockdown drag-out fight with Bobby Bunt because of something he'd said to my girlfriend. Tanya, of course, asked me about it at lunch.

"No, I just, you know, swung at him," I said. "That was it." "Over something he said about your girlfriend?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, sort of."

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend," she said calmly, taking a sip from her soda as she looked up at me through those eyelashes.

I stared back down at her.

"I, uh, don't," I said. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"So who were you defending?" she asked.

"Uh, that was, uh, you," I squeaked.

"Me?" she asked, cocking her head slightly. "Did he say something bad about me?"

"Could we just talk about something else?" I asked.

"No," she sat back and laughed, tossing one of her french fries at me. "We can talk about this. I can't believe you won't tell me. Was it worse than Jew girl?"

"No," I swallowed.

"Then what was it?" she asked me.

Oh, Christ. This might have been the gentlest, slowest Inquisition in the world, but it was an Inquisition nonetheless. I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said. "He asked if you were my girlfriend. I told him no, we were just friends. He asked if we were friends with benefits."

Tanya stopped in mid-bite of her burger, as if she'd clearly expected the story to go on a lot longer.

"And?" she managed to say around a mouthful of hamburger and bun.

"And I swung at him?" I suggested.

She finished eating and took another sip of soda before resuming the conversation.

"Because?" 

"Because he was a jerk."

"Because you're not my friend?"

"I am your friend," I said confidently.

"And you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

This was one of those Matrix moments, where everything around you slows down, to the point that you can just duck out of the way of the bullets when they start flying at you. Yeah, I wish.

Everyone else in the cafeteria was frozen in place. I could feel the cold soda on my tongue from the sip I was in the middle of taking. I could identify every scent in the air of the cafeteria, from greasy hamburgers and tuna melt to mashed potatoes and gravy. I could hear the dime — no the quarter — that somebody had just dropped on the floor. I could feel the plastic straw collapsed between my clamped teeth, and I looked down it at Tanya Szerchenko, this beautiful, blonde girl I'd met just three weeks ago, who perhaps, maybe, possibly, had just asked me if I wanted to fuck her. On the one hand, she had said it so obliquely, and so matter-of-factly, that I thought, no, that couldn't be it. And on the other hand, there was Bobby, who'd pretty clearly implied — or I'd at least inferred — that that was the meaning of "friends with benefits." And Tanya Szerchenko had said — I was desperately trying to remember exactly what she'd said — "and you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

Was yes the right answer? Did that mean yes, I do, or yes, I don't. Wait, maybe it should be no. No, I do. Or was that no, I don't. Damn it. Why was this so complicated?

I could feel the soda about to slide down the wrong way. Coughing brought me right back to regular time. I was out of the Matrix.

Tanya had a grin on her face.

"Geez, Trick, you'd think I just asked you to kill somebody," she whispered.

"Patrick," I said.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"My mom called me Patrick," I told her. "Or sometimes Pat."

She smiled as if I'd just presented her with a gift.

"Okay, Patrick. Why the hesitation?"

"Well, I was getting these vibes that said, you know, that you didn't want to be my girlfriend," I started, "so..."

"I don't," she sighed. "It's, um, complicated."

"Exactly!" I gestured toward her, as if she'd just answered her own question.

She smiled at me and took a strand of her hair between her fingers, rolling it around as she tried to find the explanation.

"When we moved here in September," she finally began, "I kind of promised my mom..."

"That you wouldn't date me?" I preempted her. Was I some sort of world-renowned asshole?

"Not you," she said. "Guys like you."

"Jocks?" I asked. "Tall guys?"

"Gentiles," she said softly.

"Non-Jews," she added, seeing my puzzled look.

"Wait a minute," I held up my hand.

"I know, I know," she said. "You just went through three weeks of hell because I was Jewish, and now I'm not dating you because you're not. Look, last year, I went to a nice, mostly Jewish high school in a nice, mostly Jewish suburb. And I dated nice Jewish boys."

"Not nice, mostly Jewish boys?" I tried for the laugh.

"No such thing," she shook her head seriously. "You either are, or you aren't. Anyway, my mom is really concerned about me marrying outside of the religion, because she wants to be a nice Jewish grandmother for some nice Jewish babies, so I kind of promised her that I'd only date an M.O.T."

"A mot?" I asked.

"Member of the tribe," she explained. "A Jew."

"Okay."

"So we can't date," she concluded, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my boyfriend."

"It's okay," I patted her on the arm.

"But what you did was the most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me," she said fiercely. "And I'm gonna be proud to bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my friend, and we're just gonna hang out together sometimes."

I smiled.

She smiled back.

"And if you just happen to get a few benefits along the way," she added, nonchalantly returning to her meal, "who's the wiser?"

I couldn't help but laugh.

"All right, Tanya Szerchenko," I said. "We're friends, with benefits."

"Really good benefits, too," she said.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"I've got a really good benefits package to show you," she said, her voice dropping down an octave. "Real soon."

I swallowed hard and nodded.

"I wish it could be this weekend, in fact," she said. "But we're going to a wedding. We have to leave Friday at noon to get there before the Sabbath begins, and the wedding's on Sunday. We won't be back until late."

"You're gonna miss the Super Bowl," I pointed out.

"I'll try to make do," she smiled. "You're gonna miss your benefits. Are you gonna try to make do?"

I choked one more time on the last gulp of soda I'd been sipping, and lunch ended with us smiling at each other.

I sat with Cammie again in Astronomy lab that afternoon, because Aaron was still out, with mononucleosis if the rumor was true. We worked together in silence until about halfway through the period.

"Uh, thanks for coming on Monday, Cammie," I said quietly.

She looked over at me through her lab goggles.

"You're still an asshole," she said.

"True," I agreed.

"But Rabbit says you're a good guy," she said after a long pause.

"He's a good guy, too," I nodded.

"Yeah," she said wistfully. "What did you get for the calculation in number three?"

After that it was purely a scientific conversation, just between us scientists.

We were back to our usual routine at dinner time as well, with Tiff gushing about how big her boobs were getting, with Jeanne and Jill rolling their eyes, and with Dave and me hanging on every word. Dad and Jeanne and I then installed the new alternator that Dad had picked up on the way home from work. I wasn't sure that this was exactly what the Mormons had in mind with all those radio commercials about the importance of "family," but it was nice to be back to normal in the Sterling house.

On Thursday, I had a tryout for the Mariners, and on Friday, another one for the Cardinals. That was the one that they'd cancelled the week before. Coach claimed that they were eager to make it up. Fuck them. I wasn't about to play for the Cardinals. Assholes.

On Thursday night, I finished my paper for Mr. Anson. I thought it was pretty good; I'd found some books over at the library, after Lynn and I had enjoyed our lunch together, that offered some surprising insight into Jacksonian democracy. So I was pretty confident when I turned it in on Friday morning.

And then Friday night brought a new treat. Jeanne knocked on my door about seven o'clock.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked.

"Feeling sorry for myself," I grinned. "Tanya's gone all weekend."

"I like her," Jeanne said. "But isn't she the one who isn't your girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh?"

"In your life?" Jeanne shook her head. "Not even close. You want to go to the game?"

"Sure," I said. "What game?"

"Volleyball," she said. "Last home game of the year. 'Til the playoffs start, anyway."

I grabbed my coat and followed Jeanne out to the car. The gym was fairly crowded, and Jeanne scanned the bleachers until she picked out Rabbit and Sammy and a couple other kids who played in the band. We were about to climb up to join them when she grabbed my arm.

"Oh, shit," she said. "Trick, I'm so sorry. I forgot all about this being senior night."

"And?" I asked.

"Cammie's dad's looking over at you like he wants to kill you," she hissed. "Come on, let's keep going."

We made our way up to our seats and I looked around. Jill was sitting in the stands on the other side, the only girl in a group of about four or five guys. They were all fairly big, fairly stupid-looking guys, more grown-up versions of the yahoos who'd been picking on me two months ago, when I was still a ninth grader. She was hanging all over one of them. He wasn't the biggest, nor the stupidest-looking, but he wasn't the kind of guy I really wanted to see my sister with. At some point, I was really going to have to try to talk to Jill.

And of course I easily identified Mr. Rowe. He was the guy who looked like he wanted to kill me. Fortunately for Cammie, he put his anger aside while they introduced the seniors on the team. Liz presented all three girls with bouquets of flowers and then posed for photographs with them and their parents.

After that, I was entranced with the game. Girls' volleyball is a fast-paced sport, and Cammie was particularly good on defense. She was constantly diving to the floor, "digging" the ball out and putting it back into play. She was an excellent setter, too. Since they only got three hits per side, it was usually one dig, one set, and one spike. Five times out of ten, Cammie was the one doing the digging as she roamed the back line. The other five times, she was the setter. It turned out to be an easy win for Marshall. According to Jeanne, that meant that we'd clinched the second seed in the upcoming league playoffs.

"So you want to go get a burger?" Jeanne asked. None of the others in our little group had made any move to leave with the rest of the crowd filing out.

"Sure," I said.

"Good," she smiled. "We usually just wait here for Cammie."

I spent the next half hour listening to Sammy Houghtaling and Margie Jackson arguing about the war in Iraq. It was fascinating to be a part of an intellectual discussion, even if my part consisted of looking like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Finally, Cammie emerged from the hallway, her hair still wet from the shower. She had a somber look on her face as she mounted the steps, not at all what I would have expected from a playoff-bound athlete.

"Mom and Dad want to take me out," she said slowly. "And you guys, too, except, um,..."

"I'll just head home," I said as I stood up. "Can you drop Jeanne off?"

Cammie just nodded, unwilling to look at me.

"Hey," I said. "I don't blame 'em. Like you said on Wednesday, I'm still an asshole. See you guys."

I took the car and drove home, feeling even sorrier for myself than I had before I came to the game. The rest of the weekend was a sort of blur. Church on Sunday morning, Super Bowl pre-game on Sunday afternoon with Dad and Dave, and the Super Bowl itself on Sunday night with Dad, Dave, and, oddly enough, Jill. We didn't get to talk about her personal life, but we did talk some football.

And, as usual, I fell asleep before the end of the game.

Chapter 10

Looking back, it probably should have occurred to me some time during, say, the entire month of January, to wonder how Jill got to school. She certainly didn't ride the bus, and I'd never seen her leave the house before Jeanne and I did, even on the days we were driving. I knew she went to school, of course; I'd seen her there. She didn't have lunch at the same time Jeanne and I did — sophomores shared a fifth period lunch with freshmen, while juniors and seniors had sixth period lunch — but I'd seen her in the halls now and then. Up until today, though, it had never occurred to me to wonder how she got there.

My newfound curiosity may have been prompted by my actually having spent a good bit of time with her the previous evening watching the Super Bowl. She had asked a lot of questions, and when Dave's answers proved as technical and convoluted as Dad's, she plonked herself down next to me on the couch. Until I'd fallen asleep, confident that there was no way the Bears could possibly come back, we'd actually been connecting on some superficial level.

Or it may have been simply that, for the first time in a month, I was actually looking forward to a week of school, and had enough time while I was driving there — Jeanne and I had agreed to take turns — to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

"So, um, how does Jill get to school?" I asked nonchalantly.

Jeanne looked over at me like she was about to question my sanity, yet again.

"Humor me," I said.

"Her asshole boyfriend picks her up, like, five minutes before school starts. I don't think she's made it to her homeroom on time yet, but Mr. Adams has a hard-on for her, so she never gets called on it."

"And her current asshole boyfriend is?" I asked.

"Andy," she said, once again with the look.

"Andy...?" I tried to prompt her.

"Andy Lebo? The quarterback? Of the football team? You really have just lost it, haven't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I kinda have."

She shook her head but she kept talking.

"She's been dating Andy since like last spring, when it became clear that he was going to be the starter."

"Wait a minute," I said. "That's not the guy she was with last week at the game. Andy Lebo's a string bean."

"Yeah, in tenth grade, maybe," Jeanne laughed. "So were you. Rumor is his Dad gets him steroids."

"What about all those other guys that picked Jill up over Christmas?"

"The college guys?" Jeanne asked. "Mostly old boyfriends, from last year, when they were seniors."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 03



"And Jill was a freshman," I nodded.

Jeanne shrugged.

I smoothly pulled into the parking lot, and we made our way into the school. First period was my first Government test of the year, and as soon as I got the questions, I knew I'd pegged this class correctly. The major question — "describe how a bill becomes law" — was straight out of the textbook. I could even see the page in my mind; there were twenty-eight steps. I could only remember twenty-seven, so I made one up: "No. 21, the President pro tempore impresses the bill for the register." Did it make sense? No. Did it have a number? Damn straight.

In History, Mr. Anson began his analysis of Jacksonian democracy. I was very pleased to learn the extent to which it coincided with my analysis. There were some teachers, like Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Jenkins, with whom I was happy to disagree. They would grade my work based on its reasoning, not whether they agreed with its conclusion. Mr. Anson, though, was more likely to believe that anyone who held a contrary opinion was just wrong. Since my UVA admission depended on my being right almost one hundred percent of the time, I couldn't afford too many contrary opinions in his class.

Third period, Mrs. Palmer dropped the bomb. Literally. She walked around the room, a sadistic little smile on her face, dropping copies of "Moby Dick" on everybody's desk. We'd be finished with Bartleby this week, she told us. Chapters one through five to be read by next Monday, five through ten by the following Friday. The same schedule for the rest of the year. Five more chapters every Monday, and another five every Friday. There were lots of chapters, people, but they were small. A paper entitled "Why not call him Bob or Sam?" was due on the 20th of February. No, Mrs. Palmer would not explain the title; we should read chapters one through five first. She would answer the question next week, although her look implied that she hoped she wouldn't have to. Yes, Mrs. Palmer was aware that the weekend before the paper was due was a three-day weekend; students were free to turn in the paper on the preceding Friday if they wanted, but they'd get no additional credit.

In Astronomy, we learned that Aaron Fleischmann had contracted pneumonia as a follow-up to his mononucleosis, and that he was going to be home-schooled the rest of the semester. Mr. Carruthers asked if Cammie and I minded having each other as lab partners. I said no instantly; Cammie reminded me about the consequences of screwing with her admission to R.P.I. which, I'd since learned, was actually a very good engineering school in upstate New York. But she ultimately agreed to accept me as her new permanent partner.

And fifth period was Tanya. Oh, and Religion. But mostly Tanya. Who told me she'd had a nice weekend but she'd have probably rather spent it here with me.

"Probably?" I whispered.

She gave me a brief but beautiful smile.

"How do I know?" she asked me. "Yet?"

At lunch, I suddenly found myself with a full set of friends. Jeanne motioned us over to her table, where I sat next to her and Tanya sat next to Sammy. A week ago, I would have wanted nothing more than to eat lunch with a group of people. Today, what I really wanted was a chance to ask Tanya what "yet" meant.

I never got that chance the entire week. Not only had we been accepted into a new circle of friends, but there seemed to be one of them around us every minute of the day. With the exception of Cammie, who was probably going to be cool toward me for the rest of our lives, everyone else treated Tanya and I like we'd been part of the group forever. For that matter, Cammie and Tanya also seemed to get along great.

The only excitement during the school week came on Wednesday night, when Jeanne showed me what I was going to be wearing to the dance on Saturday.

"I am not," I protested.

"Oh yes you are," she said.

"It looks like somebody threw up on it," I pointed out.

"What were you going to wear?" she countered.

"I dunno," I said. "Jeans? A button-down shirt?"

She gave me a smug little smile.

"You'd have never gotten past the door," she said. "Dress code is seventies. Margie's got Mo sitting by the door for the first hour keeping out the undesirables."

Maurice "Mo" Perra was probably the biggest guy in the school. He'd been in the baseball team picture last year. I assumed he was the first baseman. Even on the pickup softball games we played in gym class back in the ninth grade, Mo had been "the" first baseman.

"They wore jeans in the seventies," I said hesitantly.

"Yeah, you try that out on Mo," Jeanne crossed her arms.

"So what the hell is this?"

"Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd," she said. "Saturday Night Live. Two wild and crazy guys. You want to see a clip?"

"I guess," I said. She'd downloaded one onto her computer and I had to admit that it was a good routine.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You got two shirts. Who's the other one for?"

"Sammy," she said proudly.

"I'm wearing the same outfit as Sammy Houghtaling?" I asked.

She nodded.

"No way," I said. "Tanya'll never —"

"Call her," Jeanne interrupted me.

I stomped off to my room to get my cell phone. Tanya wasn't picking up, but I did get a return text message: URAQT. I was a cutie.

"She already knows, doesn't she?" I asked when I returned to Jeanne's room.

Jeanne just smiled at me, and I stomped off back to my room again.

Then I returned for the shirt.

"What's Tanya going as?" I asked.

"It's a surprise," my sister smirked.

Then she gave me the pants that went with the shirt. The plaid pants. And the hat.

Women.

I was destined not to find out what Tanya was going as until Saturday night, when I rang the doorbell at the address Tanya had given me looking like a fruitcake. An actual fruitcake.

The woman who answered the door was older than I would have thought Tanya's mom should have been, perhaps in her mid-to-late-fifties. She gave me a long look up and down before she stepped back to admit me.

"Mrs. Szerchenko?" I asked hesitantly. "I'm Patrick Sterling."

"I know," she said coolly. "Please come in. Tanya will be right down."

Right down was apparently a more relative term than I was used to; I cooled my heels for ten minutes in the Szerchenkos' foyer until Tanya finally emerged at the top of the staircase.

"Oh my God," I blurted out.

She was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt with short white shorts, accessorized with a white belt and a pair of white tennis shoes. The hairdo was unmistakably that of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the look unmistakably that of one of Charlie's Angels.

"Oh my God," she snorted.

"You're gorgeous," I stammered.

"You're a riot," she giggled.

"Shall we go?" I said.

"Did you meet Mom and Dad?"

"Your mom," I shrugged.

"Then she just left you here?" Tanya sighed. "Figures. Come on."

She grabbed a long coat, and I escorted her out to my car. Mo Perra was sitting at the door of the gym, his white teeth flashing in his dark face. He gave me a good laugh and told me my twin was already inside. Then he gestured Tanya to open her coat. She took a step back and flashed him, and he gave her an appreciative whistle.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "Eyes forward."

"Gotta check everyone out, man," he said. "Chief's orders."

The one thing I had learned during the previous week was that Margie Williams was "The Chief." Margie was the president of the senior class, the organizer of all social events. In a nutshell, she was the eye of the John Marshall High School hurricane. If something needed arranging, like this dance, Margie would do it. And without delegating anything, either. Margie had created the idea for the dance, booked the D.J. with orders to play nothing that didn't come from the seventies, and led the crew that decorated the gym. They'd done a great job, too. With a few pieces of cloth, they'd made it look just like the inside of a tent. That and a disco ball were all that Margie needed. This was the indeed the Winter of our Disco-tent.

As I entered and looked around, I realized that everyone else in the gym had pretty much dressed in generic seventies clothes, and I did see a number of jeans. I frowned at Jeanne as we approached her table, and she just laughed at me. I was at the Jeanne Sterling table, and we had all done things the Jeanne Sterling way. Jeanne had outdone Tanya, and was attracting stares from across the room as the title character from the television show I Dream of Jeannie. I immediately revised my previous opinion of my sister's figure. She was a hottie. And smart, too, of course. Jeanne always did her homework. When one wise-ass pointed out that I Dream of Jeannie was a 1960s show, she smugly pointed out that the last show had aired on May 26, 1970. Then she giggled and stuck out her tongue.

Jeanne had saved us seats at her table with my wild and crazy friend Sammy and a bunch of other television characters. Cammie was a very convincing, if somewhat drab, Hot Lips Houlihan. Rabbit, in a white shirt and a maroon vest, on top of a maroon pair of pants, was a hysterical Keith Partridge.

Tommy Narburg was the best, as a slightly larger version of Gopher from the "Love Boat." He kept asking us if everything was okay, and did we need him to get us anything from the bar, which in our case was a table with punch. Tommy was great fun, but as the evening wore on, he kind of wore down. Part of it, I'm sure, was not having a date. Tanya, Cammie, and Jeanne did their best to drag him onto the dance floor, but there were times when we three couples were out there dancing and Tommy was sitting there by himself. Another part of it, though, was Andy Lebo and his gang, who kept walking by the table and yelling out "Hey, Woodchunk" and "Hey, buddy, time to go-fer another piece of pie, huh?" By the end, I'm sure he wished he'd picked another outfit.

For my part, I wished that Jill hadn't been a participant in the ribbing. She was hanging on Andy's arm for most of the evening. As far as I knew, she never actually said anything to Tommy, but she certainly joined in the laughter with Andy and his friends. At one point, I met her in the hallway leading to the boys' and girls' rooms, and asked her if she would please knock it off. She just rolled her eyes at me, as if she couldn't believe what a wuss I'd turned into.

The music was fun; I didn't know anything about disco, and with good reason. But there was some good disco — mostly the Village People — and the other tunes included some great rockers like Springsteen and Bob Seeger. Tanya was pretty much my constant dance partner. When she got up to dance with Sammy or Rabbit or Tommy, I just sat at the table and looked around. I wasn't about to dance with my sister, hottie or not, and I wasn't about to ask Cammie. The only other girl I danced with, in fact, was Margie, who came by to thank all of us for dressing up so "festively."

Margie wasn't my only other dance partner, though; it's just that I found hard to think of the third one as a "girl." As the party began nearing its scheduled conclusion, Margie stopped by the table one last time to ask if any of us knew Rachel Carter. We all looked blankly at each other, and then shrugged our shoulders and told her we didn't.

"Wait a minute," Rabbit said as Margie was about to leave to try the next table. "You mean Ms. Carter who works in the office?"

"Yes," Margie said eagerly. She followed Rabbit's gaze to me, where everyone else at the table was now looking, and raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, um, I do," I said sheepishly. "I know her. I mean, sort of. I'm sorry. I just think of her as Ms. Carter. Why?"

"She's one of the faculty chaperones," Margie said.

"Seriously?" I looked around. I hadn't seen her all night.

"She's back there in the corner," Margie pointed to an area behind the D.J. "She's been just sort of sitting there all night and I wondered if somebody could just go talk to her."

"Sure," I said. "I guess. Is she upset?"

"Honestly?" Margie leaned in to confide in us. "I think this is the first time she's been out since her fiancée died."

"Died?" I asked.

"In Iraq," Margie said. "Almost a year ago. He was a grad student or something, but his Reserve unit got called up. That ass Peterson ordered her to show up here tonight. Could you please, Trick? You're a doll."

I was a little reluctant to leave Tanya, but she gave my hand a squeeze, and I made my way over to Ms. Carter. She was, in fact, sitting in the corner, wearing a fringed leather halter-type top and a pair of hip-hugger bell bottoms. And still that same bun.

I approached her cautiously, and she sensed me coming when I was still about ten feet away. My shirt did look a little radioactive, come to think of it. She got at least the beginnings of a grin on her face.

"Well, you look about like I feel," she said as I sat down next to her.

"I don't know how you feel," I said. "But I know how you look."

"Ridiculous?" she asked.

"Really, really hot?" I suggested instead.

She gave me a long, searching look.

"You are the Trickster, aren't you?" she smiled. "Where's your blonde friend — Tanya, right?"

"Over at the table," I said, pointing in the general direction. "I came over because I never thanked you properly for meeting me like that at the mall."

"Oh, it wasn't anything," she smiled.

"No, it was," I shook my head. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have fallen for that three-day thing, and I'd have been out of luck."

"Well, it was my pleasure," she said, offering me her hand for a shake.

"Mine, too," I stood up and pulled her to her feet.

"Trick," she tried to pull back.

"Nuh-uh," I pulled even harder.

I pulled a good bit harder, and I soon had her on the edge of the dance floor. The disc jockey began playing Bob Seeger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," and she slowly began swaying back and forth in rhythm to the music. We were joined by a hundred of our closest friends, and soon found ourselves bouncing up and down in an area the size of a telephone booth. She was a very attractive woman, although she'd certainly never dressed to emphasize it at school as far as I could tell. This time, her outfit did some justice to her body, revealing curves that the student body of John Marshall High School had probably never suspected.

By the end of the dance, she was smiling at me, and when she tripped over someone and fell into my arms at the last chord, I held her there until the next dance began. It was a slow dance, and we danced as closely as a 20-something-year-old woman and a 17-year-old high school senior dared dance at a school function.

"This was nice," she said. "Thank you, Patrick."

"It really was my pleasure," I grinned.

And then another song began, another slow one. I was actually ready to pull away; this time it was Rachel holding onto me. Apparently, she knew the song. After its slow start, it turned into yet another disco tune, called "Last Dance." And dance is what we did. Actually, to say that Rachel and I danced is an overstatement; I was to Rachel pretty much what a maypole is to a maypole dancer. She was amazing, twirling under my arms, sinuously moving around me, even dipping herself twice, fortunately without my dropping her. At one point, holding onto the fingers of my left hand with the fingers of her right as she extended herself backward, she reached behind her head and pulled something, causing her beautiful auburn hair to explode around her shining face like an aura. By the time the dance ended, and the D.J. was screaming out, "That's the last dance, boys and girls, thank you for coming," everyone else was just standing there watching us. And when we finished, with her in my arms again, everyone applauded.

Almost everyone. My table was looking on in amazement. Or shock. Or horror. I walked over and Jeanne stood up to stop me as I watched Tanya head out with Sammy to get her coat. Tanya took one last look back at me over her shoulder, and I could tell that she was furious. And I thought I knew why. I'd danced the last dance with Rachel Carter rather than saving it for her.

"Jeanne, I was just helping..." I looked at Tanya and pointed back in Rachel's direction.

"I know," Jeanne said. "Probably one dance too many, though. Sammy will take her home. Come on. You can take me."

On the way home, Jeanne countered each of my arguments about how I had just been being a good guy with the sympathetic observation that Tanya was upset, and that she'd probably get over it. "Probably" — that was a big help.

At church the next day, Jeanne sat in the back with me, leaving Cammie by herself in the front. When she caught me looking particularly forlorn during the confession of sins, she leaned over and whispered that I should just go to Tanya's house.

"Jeanne," I began to protest.

"Just go. Now. Do you really think the stupid communion is more important than she is? Just tell her you're sorry."

So while everyone else was exchanging the peace, I slipped out the back.

I arrived at the Szerchenkos' about 11:20, and the same cold-looking woman answered the door.

"Hi, Mrs. Szerchenko," I said. "I'm here to apologize to your daughter for — "

"Apologize to her?" she hissed, shutting the door behind her as she joined me on the porch. "If you even so much as hint you're sorry, you'll be forbidden this house for the rest of your life."

"I'm sor —" I started. "What?"

"She told me everything this morning," she said. "The mitzvah you did for her in school, the mitzvah you did last night, and how she left you at the dance. I told her I couldn't believe I'd given birth to such a selfish little bitch and sent her to her room."

"Her room?"

"Until noon," she nodded. She suddenly broke into a dazzling smile. "Come in. Have a bagel."

Despite my conviction that I had slipped into the twilight zone, I followed Mrs. Szerchenko into the kitchen, where she explained to her husband, a somewhat unassuming guy, that I was the mensch that his no-good daughter had mistreated last night. He offered me a bagel as I sat down at their dining room table and Mrs. Szerchenko poured me a cup of coffee. I put a small scoop of cream cheese on the bagel, and Mrs. Szerchenko snatched it from my hand and told me I needed to learn to schmear — she told me I ate like a Gentile.

"I am a Gentile, you know," I said.

"I know," she suddenly looked sad. "I don't suppose you want to convert, do you?"

"I don't think I could do that to my, uh, to my mother's memory," I said.

"Your mother died?" she patted me on the cheek. "And she must have been so young."

She gave me a long, sad look, and then turned to her husband.

"We should be going," she patted him on the knee and abruptly changed the subject.

"Where are we going?" Mr. Szerchenko offered the first sign of a challenge to his wife's authority.

"Lunch," Mrs. Szerchenko announced.

"Lunch?" he was astonished. "We just finished —"

She didn't even need to speak. The look alone was enough to shut him up.

"Lunch," she said again, firmly.

"Lunch," he sighed.

I stood up to leave with them.

"No, no," she said. "You stay here. Tanya will be down at noon."

"You're just leaving?" I asked. "Leaving me... here... with, uh...?"

Was she serious?

"And remember," Mrs. Szerchenko smiled as she got in my face and shook a finger at me, "no apologizing. I'll leave Tanya a note in the kitchen. Sit."

I sat. I was too nervous to finish the bagel, so I just sat. Ten minutes later, at noon exactly, I heard a tentative voice from the top of the stairs.

"Mama?" she called. "Mama, can I come down?"

I stood up and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She was still on the top landing, waiting for an answer.

"Hey," I said, as we finally saw each other. "I came over to — "




A Stitch in Time Pt. 03



"NO!" she screamed as she started running down the stairs. She was wearing a bathrobe, and missed the second to the last step, tripping into my arms.

"Oh, God," she said, sobbing as I held her. "I'm so sorry, Patrick. I'm so sorry."

"Me, too," I said.

"Don't you dare apologize," she put a finger to my lips.

"That's what your mom said," I smiled.

"Oh, God, Mom," she said, pushing herself off me, and trying ineffectively to wipe off the tears on her cheeks. "Where is she?"

"She, uh, went to lunch," I said hesitantly.

"To lunch? She just finished breakfast."

"Yeah, um, your dad pointed that out," I nodded. "So look, about last night..."

By then we had started down the hallway toward the dining room.

"I already got an e-mail today about you," Tanya said with an enigmatic smile.

"From Jeanne?" I asked. That wouldn't have surprised me.

"No," she said slowly.

"From Cammie?" I asked. That would have shocked me.

"It said, 'You are the luckiest fucking bitch in the whole school, and if you don't go crawling back to him I will make your life a living hell.'"

"So not Cammie," I frowned.

"From the school," she smiled.

"The school?"

"From Rachel," she patted my cheek. "She must have gone into the office and gotten my e-mail address. I can't believe my folks just left like that."

"Your mom said she was going to leave you a note in the kitchen," I told her.

"Ah," Tanya said. She went in through the kitchen door and returned with a much redder complexion. She was even cuter when she blushed.

"What is it?" I asked.

She threw the note at me and headed for the hallway. I missed the note, of course, and it took its time drifting to the ground. By the time I picked it up and read it, I could hear her ascending the stairs.

I hope that your friend derives some benefits from our departure.

The words "friend" and "benefits" were underlined.

I went to the bottom of the stairs again.

"I can't believe you told your mother this," I yelled up the stairs.

"She wanted to know why, if you weren't my boyfriend, I was so concerned about you dancing with Rachel Carter," came the return yell, the voice sounding almost giddy. "Well, are you coming?"

Was she kidding? With the note still clutched in my hand, I took the stairs two at a time.

"Where am I going?" I said when I reached the hallway at the top.

"Can't you even find a naked woman on your own?" Tanya giggled.

I followed her voice to a door at the end of the hallway. I stood there, staring, the note fluttering to the floor for a second time.

Tanya Szerchenko naked was even more breathtaking than she was clothed. If my mother's life hadn't been so tied to the Episcopalian church, I would have become a Jew right then and there. She was lying in the middle of a pink bedspread on a queen-sized bed, her blonde hair flowing out from her head like so many clouds at sunset. Her breasts floated on her chest, each one topped with a large, fully erect nipple. Her pubic area was a neat triangle of sparse blonde hairs, issuing an invitation that she highlighted by parting her impossibly long legs just a little bit.

She held out her hands to me, writhing ever so slightly on the bed.

"Trick," she whined.

"God, you're gorgeous," I said.

"You said that yesterday," she said. "Now come here make love to me."

So I took off my clothes, climbed onto the bed, and made love to Tanya Szerchenko. It was an exploration at first, between two young lovers who both brought their own experiences with them. I learned that her breasts weren't terribly sensitive, but that the back of her neck was an unparalleled and, as far as I could tell, heretofore untapped erogenous zone. Tanya in turn learned that whatever technique she'd used blowing her last boyfriend, or benefits friend, wasn't particularly satisfying for me. We both proved to be very adaptable, though.

Best of all, she liked to have her clit massaged. I knelt between her thighs, using the thumbs of both hands to rub her, gently at first, and then harder and harder. She was emitting little girlish squeals of "Oh! Oh! Oh, Pat! Oh, Pat!" that were wholly at odds with her very adult body.

It was incredible watching her. With her legs locked around my waist, she twisted on the bed in front of me, her hands roaming from my dick to the headboard to her pillow, and even to her stuffed animals. At one point, she nearly tore an ear off a poor little dog.

"Fuck me," she whispered after her orgasm had peaked.

"I'm not sure you need me to —" I teased her.

"God damn it, Patrick," she tried to give herself an angry look, only to burst out in giggles, "just stick your dick in me."

"Hang on," I said.

I reached for my pants and pulled out my wallet. I'd stolen a few condoms from Dave's room, and I slid one over my cock as she smiled at me.

It wasn't love — she'd made it clear that she didn't want to let herself fall in love with me, and I was still somewhat on the mend from my misery of the night before — but it was a glorious session of love-making nonetheless. As she said, she offered a great benefits package. And I like to think that I gave as much as I got. With gasps and moans and laughter, with me on top, her on top, and finally me on top again, we actually managed to climax at the same time.

"Wow," she said quietly, stroking my face afterward as she lay snuggled underneath my arm. "I am a lucky fucking bitch, aren't I?"

"I don't think of you as a bitch," I assured her.

She grabbed the stuffed dog and started hitting me with it. I grabbed her arms to stop her.

"But if that's what you want..." I said.

I took her wrists in one of my hands, and twisted them gently, rolling her over underneath me.

"Oh, Patrick," she moaned, her face buried in a pillow. "I can't."

But the way she wiggled her cute little ass at me told me she could. So we did. And the second time was just as wonderful as the first.



A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



It was enough time, though, for Jill and me to sit down with her report cards. She'd never sunk as low as I had; even her grades for the most recent semester were B's and B-minuses. But I couldn't help but notice the straight A's she'd gotten in the second semester of seventh grade. She claimed to have no idea why they'd peaked like that; she was back to B-pluses in eighth grade. By now, though, I thought I had a pretty good read on my sister. The second semester of her seventh grade came right after the first semester of my ninth grade, my straight-A semester. It seemed to me that my baby sister looked up to her big brother a good bit more than she wanted to let on.

Jeanne came home around four that afternoon, more than a little surprised to find Jill and me playing a spirited game of Chutes and Ladders on the living room floor. She joined in the next game, and when Dad and Tiffany got home, around six, we were all three hysterical with laughter. He explained that Tiffany's pains had amounted to nothing, but asked if we'd mind helping out with dinner for the next couple of nights.

"I got it," Jill sprang to her feet. "We defrosted some chicken, anyway."

All four of us — me, Jeanne, Dad, and Tiffany — stared at her as she waltzed into the kitchen.

School was open again the next day, and the world hadn't completely changed. Jill was still waiting for Andy when Jeanne and I left in our car. I hadn't had time to give Tanya a final call the night before to tell her my good news, but I eagerly filled her in on what had happened with Jill as we walked down the hall after Religion. At lunch time, Cammie informed everyone that last night's volleyball playoff game had been re-scheduled for tonight, and before I could say anything, Tanya promised that she and I would be there to cheer Cammie and her team on.

As I drove Tanya back to school that evening for the game, I started to explain to her why we might not be welcome for any post-game festivities.

"Because Cammie's parents think you're an asshole?" she asked sweetly.

"Uh, yeah, that would be it," I said.

"So does Cammie, for that matter," she said, as if we were discussing the weather.

"Uh, yeah, her, too," I agreed. "Did she tell you that we used to, um —"

"Date?" Tanya finished. "Yes, she did. That's how the asshole part came up."

"Okay," I said after a pause. "And you and me? We're still fine?"

"Why wouldn't we be?" Tanya said. "I didn't know the asshole last semester, and he hasn't shown up yet this semester. Why wouldn't we be fine?"

"Just asking," I said.

"Of course, if he ever does..." she left that sentence hanging out there.

"Understood," I said.

It turned out that Cammie's father was out of town, and that her mother harbored nowhere near the grudge against me that her dad did. So she sat with us, next to Tanya, in fact, and explained some of the finer points of the game. When it was over, she asked me if I wouldn't mind giving Cammie a ride home after our pizza party. I picked my jaw up off the floor and blathered that sure, that was no problem, happy to be of help Mrs. Rowe, anytime.

"You do remember you're my friend now, don't you?" Tanya asked as we walked to my car.

"Sure, why?" I said. "What did I do?"

"I don't know," she shook her head with a smile. "You were being awfully nice to Cammie's mom."

"Just making amends," I assured her. "I know who my friends are. I mean, who my friend is."

"Good," she said, slipping her arm into mine. "I'd hate to see you lose your benefits."

Me, too.

On Friday, I learned that the Szerchenkos, damn their insatiable wanderlust, were going away for the upcoming three day weekend, this time for a family reunion. So my tryout on Friday afternoon was an uninspired performance that left scouts from both the Texas Rangers and the Milwaukee Brewers unimpressed. Well, I didn't want to play there either. As we were finishing, Coach reminded me that I might want to — which I heard as probably should — start some light weight-lifting the following week or, in any event, no later than Monday, the 26th. He gave me another key to the outer door to the locker room to replace the key that I claimed I must have lost, so that I could get access on weekends,

But without Tanya around, this particular weekend was both boring and painfully slow. Jeanne had a date with Sammy on Friday night. Jill had a date with Andy on both Friday and Saturday nights. I had a picture of Tanya on my cell phone. In church on Sunday, I found myself in an internal debate about whether my confession of sins was broad enough to cover things that I had left undone but that I would have done if I had the chance. I decided it probably wouldn't. You couldn't apologize for not doing something that you would have had to apologize for doing. I definitely wasn't going to get an A-plus in church this year. Thank goodness it wouldn't show up on my transcript.

Chapter 12

"Now, if we remain very, very quiet, we may actually be able to observe the highly ritualized mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. The incredibly slow mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. These two first saw each other more than fifteen minutes ago, when the lawyer entered the library. He quickly scanned the room, and then did a double-take when he noticed the librarian sitting behind the circulation desk. Never having hunted in this territory before, he found himself a seat in the periodical reading area, which affords an excellent view of the circulation desk. He picked up a magazine — Time, it appears — and began flipping mindlessly through the pages.

"The librarian noticed him almost immediately after he entered, her senses fully attuned to the presence of the male of her species. There, did you see that? She looks his way again. He looks back. She drops her eyes. He looks back at the magazine. She looks over again. He, however, is concentrating on the magazine, which he has now finished. He puts it back in the rack, and absent-mindedly selects another one. The extent of his interest in the Librarian is now clear to the trained eye. Only now, back in his seat, does he notice that the magazine he's picked is Tiger Beat. A mistake. Can he return it? No, it's too late. What will she think if she sees it? But she notices only that his attention has been diverted. She frowns, and she pushes a pen off her desk. Success! He's watching once again. She stands up, smoothes her skirt, walks around the desk, and picks the pen up with a very lady-like knee bend. She returns to her seat, having been under his careful gaze the entire time. She looks up to see him looking at her. She smiles, he smiles back, and they look away."

"Is this going to take much longer?" Mrs. Parsons asked.

"I'm sorry?" I whispered, still using my nature documentary voice.

"I could have another heart attack before they get together," she complained, looking at her watch.

"You want me to give 'em a shove?"

"How?"

I smiled at her and stood up, immediately attracting the attention of both the lawyer and the librarian. It was another holiday — President's Day, this time — and I was trying to finish my paper on Moby Dick. I had a little bit of an advantage over the other kids in the class on this particular topic, since none them were also in my Religion class. Ishmael was not only the name used by Melville's character, of course, but it was also the name of the first son of Abraham in the book of Genesis, a book on which we had spent a good bit of time in Mrs. Jenkins' class.

That only got me so far, of course. As Mrs. Palmer had pointed out, anybody could look up the name on the Internet. So I decided to go a little further, and look up a book that Mrs. Jenkins had recommended as "supplemental reading" on her syllabus, something called an exegesis — I swear it's a real word — by some guy named Walter Thomas. It was, thankfully, available in the library, and I had arrived there around one o'clock. I had exchanged a few words with Lynn, who confessed that her book club had been disappointingly feminine in composition, not at all what her girlfriend had promised. Then I had found the book I wanted and settled down to work.

Mrs. Parsons had entered about an hour later. I stared at her a little too long, struck by the fact that she seemed to be at the library every day that I was. Maybe she came every day. Or maybe she had just gone through last Monday's book pretty quickly. I had waved to her, and she had waved back. We were library pals now.

A half-hour after that, I had looked up to see Bob Hastings, my good friend Dutch van Carlen's lawyer, walk into the place and look around like he'd never been here before. His gaze had lingered on Lynn Edwards and then he had taken a seat among the periodicals with his Time magazine. Mrs. Parsons and I had watched them separately for ten minutes or so, and then she had sat down next to me.

"Good match, don't you think?" she had said, indicating the two of them.

That's when I had started narrating my faux documentary, much to Mrs. Parson's delight. She was right, though; at this rate, we had a better chance of an earthquake throwing those two together than of one of them making the first move. I walked toward the circulation desk, distracting Lynn in the middle of yet another of her furtive looks toward the periodical area.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a louder than usual voice as I neared the desk.

I smiled and walked around the desk into the back office.

"Patrick?" Lynn called out.

I returned with her coat, glancing over to see Mrs. Parsons nearly convulsed with laughter.

"What are you doing?" Lynn asked as I passed by on my way to the periodicals. I figured that was one of those rhetorical questions, because by that point it should have been pretty clear to her what I was doing.

"Patrick," she hissed, "come back here."

"Mr. Sterling," Bob stood up and offered his hand.

"Mr. Hastings," I smiled as we shook. "Enjoying your magazine?"

He flushed as we both looked down at the Tiger Beat in his hands.

"I, uh, you see —" he stammered.

"Uh-huh," I said.

Lynn joined us as I took the magazine from Bob's hand.

"Patrick, what are you doing?" she asked me in a fake sweet voice. She reached for the coat only to find that I'd thrust it into Bob Hastings' now empty hand.

"What are you doing?" Bob echoed, but a smile began to appear on his lips. Lynn pulled at the coat; Bob refused to let it go.

"Well, frankly, Mrs. Parsons," I nodded at her, still laughing over at our table, "is afraid she'll have a heart attack before you two finally decide to actually speak to one another, so we thought I should give you a bit of a push. Stop trying to take the coat."

This was directed to Lynn, who finally stopped trying to tug it free of Bob's grip.

"Hold it for her," I directed him.

"Slip it on," I told her.

"Now, there's a coffee shop down the street," I said. "Go find out if you want to date."

"But the circulation desk —" Lynn offered one final protest, although she was already fastening the coat.

"I can probably handle it for twenty minutes or so," I said. "Now go. Come on, there's the door."

I shooed them in that direction and bowed to Mrs. Parsons as they left. She was silently applauding me.

"Well done, young man," she said as I collected my book and papers from the table to take them to the desk.

"Just call me Cupid," I smiled. "Only five days after Valentine's Day, too."

Ten minutes later, she was helping me figure out how to check out the murder mystery she had selected when the telephone rang.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Lynn?" came the low, almost whispered response.

"She stepped out," I said. "Can I help you?"

"This is Dottie Simmons," she said. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea," I said. "But I'll be happy to help if I can, Mrs. Simmons."

"Do you know where she is?" she asked.

"Do I know where Ms. Edwards is?" I repeated. "I, uh, can you hold on just a minute, ma'am?"

Mrs. Parsons had been mouthing something to me.

"What?" I asked her with an exaggerated sigh.

"Is that Dottie?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Tell her we sent Lynn off to try to get her laid," Mrs. Parsons said. "Tell her she's been kind of crabby lately."

I handed the phone to Mrs. Parsons. That kind of message was not in the scope of my duties. A minute or two later, Mrs. Parsons returned the phone. Apparently answering the next part of the call was my job.

By the time that Lynn returned twenty minutes later, her hand in Bob's arm, Mrs. Parsons was long gone.

"Did anyone call?" Lynn asked.

"Mrs. Simmons," I nodded.

"Oh, my gosh," she said. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," I said. "They had a birthday party for Ralph yesterday, so she couldn't call then."

Lynn turned to Bob.

"This lovely old lady who lives in the retirement home does the New York Times crossword every Sunday," she said, "and takes a lot of pride in finishing it without using a dictionary. But she always gets stuck on something, so she had her daughter get her a cell phone. She takes it into the bathroom every Sunday afternoon at 3:30 and calls me up for help. I was going to call the home tonight if I didn't hear from her. Were you able to help her?" She looked at me anxiously.

"Yeah," I smiled. "The clue was Castor's twin."

"So you told her Pollux?" Lynn asked.

"No, I told her Olive," I said with what I thought was well-earned sarcasm. "I thought she meant castor oil. Oh, gosh. I hope I have not screwed things up. Whatever will she do with the extra space? Of course I told her Pollux."

Lynn stuck her tongue out at me, and Bob Hastings had a good laugh at the two of us.

"Excuse me," Lynn said. "I just didn't know today's high school students were that familiar with mythology."

I just grinned at her. I knew them as Cammie Rowe's stars. If they were also characters in mythology, that was fine, too.

"So, are we dating?" I asked.

They smiled at each other.

"Mrs. Parsons wanted me to call and tell her," I said.

"All right, then, yes," Lynn said. "Friday night."

"And thanks," Bob added.

"Sure," I said. "Glad to be of help. Now if you'll excuse me, I hear Ishmael calling."

"As in 'Call me, Ishmael?'" Bob punned.

"Exactly," I said.

I left around five and spent until midnight putting the paper together, interrupted only by a phone call from Tanya, who said she would definitely have rather spent the weekend with me. The next day Jill was standing in the kitchen door while Jeanne and I finished breakfast.

"Can you guys give me a ride to school?" she asked.

"Sure," Jeanne said. "Isn't Andy coming?"

"I don't know," Jill sounded worried. "I'd just rather not ride with him."

"So you mean he might show up here any way?" I asked. "And lean on his horn?"

Jill shrugged.

We all piled into the Civic, Jill in the passenger seat and me in the back. I was at my locker after second period, dumping off my Government and History books and retrieving my Melville paper when I saw a meaty hand planted on the locker next to mine and sensed that its owner wanted a word with me.

He was vaguely familiar. Jesse Tasker or Tacker, something like that. One of my tormenters from ninth grade. From his size, two inches taller and 20 or 30 pounds heavier than me, I figured him for a football player.

"Sterling," he said in a low voice.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Message from Andy," he said.

"What are you, his little message boy?" I asked flippantly.

He looked around and grabbed my arm.

"Did you tell your sister not to hang around Andy any more?" he suggested.

"No," I said slowly. "I think I might have implied that he was a bigoted racist, but I don't tell my sister what to do. Maybe she just inferred that hanging around him wouldn't be a good idea any more."

"Well, maybe you'd better tell her different," he said. He was starting to sound like somebody from a 1940's gangster movie. I grinned at him.

"So you mean Andy isn't a bigoted racist?" I asked him.

He paused. For much too long. The bell went off.

"Sorry," I said as I pulled free. "Gotta go. Have a nice day, Jesse."

"Andy's gonna be angry," he said to my back as I sprinted down the hall toward Mrs. Palmer's class.

Mrs. Palmer smiled as I knocked on the closed door of her classroom.

"Mister Sterling," she said, opening it but standing in the middle to prevent me from passing. "I was afraid you were going to break your record."

"No, ma'am," I gasped, breathing hard.

"Paper?" she held out her hand as she continued to bar the door.

I handed it to her and she slowly walked back to her desk, scanning the paper as she went. I slid into my seat.

"Your thesis is that his name wasn't Ishmael?" she turned back to me with surprise.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Does anyone else agree with Mr. Sterling?" she asked the rest of the class. "That Ishmael is a pseudonym?"

They did not. I heard Missy Josephs' snort from behind me.

"Miss Josephs," Mrs. Palmer had heard it, too, "why not?"

"Because," Missy sputtered.

"Because?" Mrs. Palmer asked.

"Because he said to call him Ishmael," she blurted. "Why would he say that..."

"If it wasn't his name?" Mrs. Palmer finished. "Well, perhaps Mr. Sterling has an answer. I shall look forward to reading his paper. Of course, we'll never know if he's right or not."

She gave me a big smile, and turned the discussion to the five chapters we were supposed to have read over the weekend — we were up to chapter twenty now, only a hundred and ten from our ultimate goal. In Astronomy, Mr. Carruthers handed out our observatory assignments. Each pair of lab partners was to report to the school's observatory on a specific Friday or Saturday night. Because Cammie and I had different areas of the sky, we were given two nights: on March 3, two Saturdays from now, we'd be looking at Cammie's area, and on April 13, a Friday, we'd be observing mine. In the meantime, of course, we were free to check out either of the school's smaller telescopes any time we wanted.

After Religion, on our way to lunch, I asked Tanya if us "friends" could get together over the weekend.

"You mean like what?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "A movie, dinner?"

"See, that's kind of getting into boyfriend-girlfriend stuff there," she said.

"So, what's not boyfriend-girlfriend?" I asked.

"Well, we can go to tonight's volleyball game," she smiled at me.

"Okay," I agreed as we walked into the cafeteria to join our usual table.

I was still confused, though. It had seemed to me, as we had walked to my car after last week's volleyball game, that Tanya had seemed a little, well, jealous of the attention I'd been paying to Mrs. Rowe. Jealous probably isn't the right word. Mrs. Rowe was a very nice-looking lady, but she certainly wasn't any competition for Tanya. In the parking lot, though, Tanya had taken particular care to make sure that I knew that I was her friend. Which I was. Just not her boyfriend, apparently.

This week's volleyball game turned out to be a major bummer, on three counts. The first was that Mr. Rowe was back in the stands with Mrs. Rowe. The second was that the Marshall girls lost a heartbreaker. They were the higher-seeded team, and had beaten the Wilson girls at the beginning of the season. And they won the first game pretty handily. But Cammie twisted her ankle in the second, and Wilson rallied to win that one and the next one. Cammie returned for the fourth game, but the Wilson team was on a roll, and easily closed out the game to take the match.

The biggest bummer, though, had to do with Jill. Tiffany had asked Jill at dinner about the asshole who'd been honking his horn outside the house for five minutes this morning, and Jill had breezily said that she had broken up with her boyfriend and that he hadn't gotten over it yet.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



"No kidding," I said. "One of his friends paid me a visit today. Jesse."

"Jesse Trasker?" Jill looked up.

"Yeah," I said. "He wanted to let me know that Andy's going to be angry."

Jill gave me a panicked stare.

"With me?" she asked.

"More with me, I think," I told her. "He was under the impression that I told you not to see him any more."

Jill blinked at me a couple of times and then returned to her food.

"Jill?" I asked. "Did you tell Andy that I told you to break up with him?"

"It was easier," she finally said as all of us stared at her.

"Than what?" I asked. "The truth?"

"He called your girlfriend a kike," she blurted out.

"I don't have a girlfriend," I said. "What do you mean, a kite?"

"A kike," Dave explained. "It's an uncomplimentary thing to say about someone who's Jewish."

I looked back and forth between Dave and Jill. I was surprised that Dave knew that, and equally surprised that Jill cared.

"So just tell him he's disgusting," Jeanne said.

"Yeah, right," Jill said. She looked like she was about to say something more, but snapped her mouth shut and again stared down at her plate.

"I told Andy's friend that I told you that he was a bigot," I said.

"Oh my God," Jill stared at me, her body almost shaking. "He'll kill me."

"He won't kill you," Jeanne scoffed.

"You don't know him," Jill told her. "He will."

"Who will, baby?" Dad interrupted.

"Andy," she told him. "He wants everybody to think he's like this great, perfect guy and everything."

"Eeeh," I dismissed him with a wave. "So you dumped him. What's the worst that can happen?"

Jeanne was the first to start laughing, and the whole table soon joined in. Even Jill smiled, although she still looked a little nervous.

That evening, I learned why. After the second game, I left for a pit stop. The boys' room was down the hall a bit, and as I was washing my hands, I heard the door bang open. I looked up to find an angry Andy Lebo blocking my way. Behind him, Jesse Trasker leaned against the door, a stupid-looking grin on his face.

"Sterling," Andy said seriously.

"Andy," I nodded.

"Jesse here tells me you've been disrespecting me to your sister."

Telling Andy that it was Jill who told me about his racism was probably a really bad idea. I decided that my only real choice was to agree with him.

"So?" I asked.

"So I'm thinking you should maybe tell her you were wrong," he said.

I'd been pretty much a coward in ninth grade, but I'd also considered myself a master of sarcasm. Despite my new body, my mental approach to life hadn't changed much.

"I'll do just that, Andy," I nodded. "I'll make sure to tell her tonight that you're not a racist bigot. Yessir, that's just what I'll do as soon as I get home. Now if you'll excuse me?"

He didn't have a chance to excuse me, because Jesse Trasker suddenly came flying forward, slamming into Andy's back and knocking him toward me. The two fell to the ground together as I neatly I sidestepped them. I looked up to see Tommy Narburg holding the door.

"Jeanne was worried," he said as we walked quickly back to the gym.

"I didn't know you were that strong," I told him, looking back over my shoulder every few seconds to see if we were being followed.

"Proper application of weight," he said with a smile.

"Well, thanks, pal," I said. "I was getting a little worried there, to be honest. Speaking of weight, I'm gonna start weightlifting next week after school. Wanna join me so we can spot for each other?"

"Weightlifting?" Tommy asked. "For what? Did Coach put you up to this?"

"How well did you hit last year?" I asked.

He gave me a glare and mumbled something.

"What was that, Tommy?" I cupped my hand behind my ear.

"Two thirty," he muttered a little louder. "Asshole."

"Yeah, I get a lot of that," I smiled. "Start on Monday?"

He nodded.

"I'll get Coach to set up a program," I said.

Jill rode in with Jeanne and me again on Wednesday, but on Thursday she was already gone by the time we left. At lunch time, Jeanne told me that she'd seen her in the hallway talking with Andy. I saw them myself later in the afternoon, walking together as if they'd never broken up. I found the sight disturbing. It had been easy enough to tell Jesse Trasker that I didn't tell my sister what to do. But it was hard advice to follow.

Thursday was yet another tryout, this time for the San Francisco Giants. It was a little different from the others. After the guy watched me throw a few times, he told me he was going to go stand in the batter's box in front of Tommy and said he wanted to see a little "chin music." They hadn't covered that in my book. I was on the verge of asking him what the hell he was talking about when Coach caught my eye. As the guy was walking down toward Tommy, Coach leaned in to hand me another ball.

"He wants you to throw at his chin," he whispered.

"He wants me to what?" I hissed back.

"Brush him back off the plate," Coach continued casually. "High and inside."

"All right," I said skeptically.

"Just don't hit him," Coach added.

No fucking kidding, I thought as I watched him take a stance. He was crowding the imaginary plate a little bit, and Tommy looked a little uncomfortable. But, as we'd done for the past couple of tryouts, he started to run through some of our signs for the coming year.

He called for the change-up. I shook him off. He called for the fastball. I nodded. He gave me a second sign for location. Low and away. No. Low and inside. No. High and away. No. He tapped his crotch — straight down the middle. No. His eyes widening, he gave me the only other sign he had. High and inside. I nodded. And threw.

Tommy stuck his glove up in the air and, bless him, held it right there after he caught the ball. When the scout got back up — he had ended up on his butt — he looked over at Tommy's glove and then back at me.

"One more time?" I asked cheerfully.

He was shaking his head as he walked back.

"Looks like you're gonna be a Devil Ray," he said.

"Yes, sir," I said. He left and I turned to Coach.

"Why the hell would I want to be a Devil Ray?" I asked.

Coach stared at me.

"They have first pick," Tommy said as he joined us.

"In the Major League draft," he added as he saw the look on my face.

"But I don't have to —"

I was about to tell him that they couldn't seriously expect me to play for some team I didn't like, but then I realized — duh! — that's why they called it a draft.

" — play for them if I go to college, right?" I changed the sentence.

"No," Coach said. "They lose their rights as soon as you take your first class. We went over this whole thing last year. Are you okay?"

"Sure, Coach," I said. "Just nerves, I guess."

"I got class in five minutes," Tommy said. "I gotta hustle."

We watched him leave, and I turned back to Coach.

"Me and Tommy are gonna start lifting next week," I told him. "What kind of weights should we be starting with?"

"Tommy? How'd you get Tommy to start lifting?"

He was staring at me again.

"I asked him? Was that wrong? Shouldn't he lift?"

"Hell, yes," Coach said. "But he's never done it before. Maybe he's just taking it seriously now that he could be the starter."

"Could be?" I asked. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"That Trasker kid on the football team said he'd try out this spring," he shrugged. "We'll have to see."

"Tommy's my catcher," I said firmly.

"Not if he can't hit," Coach said.

"Tommy's my catcher," I repeated. He'd damn well better hit.

"Then it's a good thing he's gonna be lifting," Coach said. "Come on. I'll give you a schedule."

That evening was another "friends" event. I picked up Rabbit, Tanya, and Tommy and we headed over to the band concert. It was fairly ordinary at the beginning; the junior high band was no better than it had been when I was in junior high school. I'd been to their concert just before Christmas, in fact, and they stunk. The senior high band, though, was amazing, even though, for the most part, it was the same people I'd seen playing for the junior high band just two months ago. They'd clearly gotten a lot better in the three years I'd missed. And when Sammy Houghtaling came out as a soloist, to play some kind of trumpet thing by Haydn, fifteen minutes worth of music that he'd memorized, I couldn't believe it.

"Isn't he great?" Jeanne gushed into my right ear as we stood up. I was too busy applauding to answer.

Friday brought something else new: a religion test, on the first five books of the Bible. I was pretty pleased with myself overall, although I probably could have done a little better on the essay question. After class, Tanya was bubbling away that if all the tests were going to be this easy, she'd ace this class for sure. Since she'd already been admitted to Cornell, though, I failed to see what the big deal was. Jealous? Maybe I was. Probably, though, I was just upset that I still hadn't figured out all the rules of this "friends with benefits" thing yet. There weren't any friends events scheduled for the weekend, and it looked like I was going to be doing without my benefits for at least another week.

The only really good part of the weekend was Sunday afternoon, when I made a point of arriving at the library just before 3:30. Mrs. Parsons was sitting next to me as we both pretended to read. The phone rang, and Lynn answered it.

"Did I what?" she asked in horror. "We've only had two dates."

She cast a murderous glare at the table where both Mrs. Parsons and I were laughing hysterically.

"Crabby?" she yelled at us, attracting the attention of everyone else. "I'll show you crabby."

She returned to her call.

"Now what can I help you with?" she asked Mrs. Simmons.

It turned out to be a baseball question, and Lynn had to call me over to help her answer it.

"Two dates, huh?" I asked after I hung up. "I noticed you didn't tell Dottie that the answer was no."

Lynn Edwards was blushing furiously as I returned to the table to exchange a high-five with Mrs. Parsons. Our work done, our entertainment over, we walked out of the library together while Lynn was distracted by another patron. As I walked to my car, though, I couldn't help but think that a weekend where Lynn Edwards got laid and I didn't was not a good weekend at all.

Chapter 13

T.S. Eliot apparently wrote somewhere that April is the cruelest month. Maybe he went away every February. Because as far as I'm concerned, April has nothing on February. February is still cold, it's still dark, and it has that damn Valentine's Day in the middle of it.

My own February hadn't really been that bad, particularly since it followed a January where I had come a little too close to being thrown out of school. I had made a friend with benefits, even if we'd only had benefits once so far. And even if we didn't really have one of those Valentine's Day relationships. I had made a bunch of other new friends, too. And I was on track for A-pluses in Government, History, and my Honors English Seminar.

Then, on February 27, I got my first Religion test back. Mrs. Jenkins must have spent the entire weekend grading them, the old biddy. She gave me an A and yes, I know that an "A" is an excellent grade. It says so right on the report cards. A = Excellent. So I really couldn't complain about it. Besides, she'd written "Very nice job, Patrick" across the top of the test, and she smiled at me when she gave it back like I was a prize show dog that she was particularly proud of. But A+ = outstanding. And I needed outstanding grades to get into UVA. I had been right. I could have done better on that essay question.

The day hadn't started off well, either. Jeanne and I were about to get into our car for the trip to school when Andy Lebo pulled his land ark into the driveway behind my car and honked his horn. We watched Jill come out of the door and climb into his car. Jeanne and I traded glances and got into ours. And then we waited for Andy to leave. And waited. And waited.

Finally, after five minutes, I left the car idling and walked over to Andy's car. He had turned the radio up and closed the windows. He and his buddies, Jesse Trasker and Brian Hughes, who were sitting in the back seat, were just laughing at me as I tried to ask him to move. Jill was sitting in the front seat, and while she didn't join them in laughing, it didn't look like she was doing anything to help us. Finally, with about five minutes to go before the start of school, he backed out of the driveway and tore off down the road. Jeanne and I followed at a more sedate pace, and were naturally a few minutes late by the time we got to school.

Mr. Smithson refused to let me into homeroom without a note from the office, and when I got there I found Jeanne ahead of me, nearly in tears. We were the only people there other than Rachel Carter, who was so busy typing that she hadn't noticed Jeanne arrive. I hadn't had occasion to come by the office since we'd danced together, and I was very happy to see her wearing her hair loose now.

"Hey, gorgeous," I called out. "How 'bout some service over here?"

Her head snapped up, ready to take offense.

"Here's trouble," she grinned. "What can I do for the Sterling family?"

"The Sterling family got held up by a bunch of assholes on the way here," I told her, "and can't get into their homerooms without notes."

"What's this?" Pete Peterson came bustling out of his office. "What happened, Trick?"

"We just had a run-in with some guys who wanted us to be late," I said.

"Who?" he asked. He seemed a little eager, like he hadn't disciplined someone in a while and needed to pad his statistics.

"It was —" Jeanne began.

"Mister Peterson," I interrupted her. "Do we look like we're the kind of people who'd squeal on our classmates?"

With a disappointed glance at Jeanne, who probably did look like she was that kind of person, he agreed that no, we didn't.

"Anyway, it didn't happen on school property," I said. "But we still need notes to get into our homerooms, of which we only have about five minutes left."

As Pete was interrogating us, Rachel had prepared the necessary paperwork, and we both hustled out of the office.

"Why didn't you tell him?" Jeanne demanded as we were about to part ways.

"Do you really think that he wouldn't confront Andy, and that Andy wouldn't take it out on Jill?" I left her standing there, open-mouthed, as I hurried back to Mr. Smithson's classroom.

I passed Andy's locker on my way to fourth-period Astronomy, and he was just leaning on it, smirking at me.

"Nice trip, Sterling?"

"Yeah, thanks, Andy," I said as I hustled past. "You know, next time you and Jesse and Brian oughta try to finish your play date a little earlier so you can pick Jill up before school starts, huh?"

I'd said it loud enough that it got some giggles from the kids within earshot, and it earned me a righteous glare from Andy. In retrospect, of course, it probably hadn't been the smartest thing to say.

And then Religion. I could tell that Tanya was delighted with the A that she showed me, and I did my best to share her enthusiasm as we dumped our books in our lockers and walked to the cafeteria. It would have been hard to explain why a fuck-up like me was all of a sudden getting bent out of shape because he got an A rather than an A-plus. Instead, I told her the conclusion of the Lynn Edwards saga, and then had to tell the whole thing over again at lunch for everyone else's benefit.

After school, Tommy and I began our weightlifting program. It went well, and Tommy told me he wanted to come back every day. But Coach wanted us to start the first week doing every other day, so Tommy agreed to wait until Wednesday.

At dinner that evening, Jeanne did something that I hadn't seen her do in a long time, even by my truncated measuring stick. She complained to Dad. She launched into a diatribe about our having been late to school, and put the blame squarely on Jill.

"Hey, I didn't do anything," Jill protested.

"It was your stupid boyfriend who just sat there in the driveway laughing at us," Jeanne pointed out.

"I didn't tell him to do it," Jill argued petulantly.

"So why didn't he just drive you to school?" Dad asked Jill.

"I don't know," Jill said as she played with her food. "He said he wanted to..."

"To what?" Dad asked.

"To jerk Trick around a little," she said reluctantly.

"Why?" Dad pressed her.

"'Cause he says that Trick tried to break us up," she said, tears forming in her eyes.

"Hey, Dad," I interrupted.

He looked over at me.

"It's not a problem," I said. "I'll take care of it. I'll make sure Jeanne gets to school on time."

He gave me a long look, and then looked at Jeanne and Jill in turn.

"Good," he grunted. "Because it's not like I can stick around here to referee your little high school problems."

We all returned to our dinners, but after Jeanne and I had finished the dishes, I knocked on Jill's door. It was ajar, and I could see her in there at her desk, her ear plugs in and her head nodding to something mellow on her iPod.

"What do you want?" she asked when she finally realized I was in the doorway looking at her. She dialed down the volume.

"Is it important to you that he thinks that I tried to break you up?" I asked her.

She made a show of taking out her earplugs and asking me to repeat myself. I did, even though I knew full well that she'd heard me the first time.

"Yeah," she said. "You did."

"No, I didn't," I said gently.

"Yeah," she glared at me. "You did. Can you just leave me alone, please?"

"Jilly, what's the —"

"Please, Trick?"

I went out later that evening and parked the car on the street. When Andy came the next day, I just pulled out and left him fuming in the driveway. Even Andy wasn't about to mess with us in the middle of traffic. And after that he apparently decided it wasn't worth the trouble any more.

On Wednesday morning, I got back my Melville paper, another "Very nice job, Patrick" printed across the top. Unlike my Religion test, this one came with an A-plus attached to it. Thank you, Mrs. Palmer. On Wednesday afternoon, Tommy and I met again in the weight room after school for some lifting. He said he was a little sore, but he eagerly agreed to meet me again on Friday. On Wednesday evening, Tanya scuttled those plans with a single phone call.

"My parents are going to a friend's house for the Sabbath," she said.

"You guys are gone like every other week," I grumbled.

"I didn't say I was going."

"You're not going with them?" I perked up.

"No. Interested in an after-school special?"

"You bet," I said. At least, I thought I was. It sounded a lot like sex. Either that or we were going to watch TV. Either way, it would be time well spent as long as Tanya was there.

"Good. I'm feeling really horny."

So it wasn't TV. There was a long pause, and I finally realized that I was expected to respond.

"Me, too," I said.

"Good," she repeated. "I was getting worried."

"About what?"

"That you might not have, you know, liked it," she said shyly.

"Are you serious? It was great. You were great. It was amazing."

"You're blabbering," she giggled.

"Exactly."

"Then why didn't you ask me again?"

Was that the rule?! I couldn't ask her out to dinner or to a movie, but I could say, 'hi, wanna get together and fuck this weekend?' Is that what this meant? Hell, why didn't everybody do this?

"Uh, I guess I'm just too new at this," I said. "I've only done the boyfriend-girlfriend thing before."

We talked a little longer, and finally signed off with "see ya." None of that messy "I love you" stuff for me and Tanya.

On Thursday, I had a tryout for the Devil Rays, the team that had the first selection in the upcoming baseball draft in June. The scout tried not to appear that interested in me, and kept reminding me about up some hotshot lefthander at Vanderbilt that they were giving a real hard look. I uncorked a couple of my best fastballs — Tommy was getting more and more comfortable catching them — and told him that that was fine, I was looking at a bunch of colleges, too. Our little chat after the throwing session took up so much time that I never noticed Tommy leaving. As a result, I forgot to tell him about the change in our Friday afternoon plans until I saw him in the hallway Friday morning.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



He was very disappointed.

"But I'm going over to Tanya's house, man," I said quietly.

"Trick," he pleaded, "I really need to get some serious playing time this year. I've gotten a couple of feelers from some Division II schools because of those games I caught Billy in last spring. My folks can't pay for my college tuition."

"All right, all right. Hey, I know, I have the key!"

"To what?"

"The weight room," I said. "We can go in there on Saturday morning and lift. How 'bout it, buddy? You get your lifting, I get my Tanya-time. Besides, I already told Coach you were my catcher this year."

"Seriously?" he asked, his eyes alight.

"Seriously," I nodded.

"What'd he say?"

"Actually, he said you better start lifting," I admitted.

"See?" he laughed. He punched me on the arm. The right arm, fortunately.

On Friday afternoon, I drove Jeanne home, shoved her out of the car, and raced off to Tanya's. Maybe I was a little more polite than that. The car probably came to a complete halt before Jeanne exited.

I rang the doorbell. My phone started ringing. Yeah, like I was gonna stop and take a call. I waited a minute and knocked, peering through the glass windows on the side of the door to see if I could catch a glimpse of Tanya inside.

I rang the doorbell again. My phone started ringing again. I finally understood. With a smile on my face, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and saw Tanya's number on the screen.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Upstairs," she answered.

"Upstairs where?"

"Upstairs in my house."

"Well, why don't you come downstairs and let me in?"

"I should come downstairs to open the door when I'm naked and about to step into the shower?" she countered. "Why don't you just turn the handle and see if it's locked?"

I did. It wasn't. One of these days I would actually go up the stairs in the Szerchenkos' house one step at a time.

Tanya had her own bathroom off her bedroom, and she was waiting for me in the bathroom doorway. She was standing with her back to me, looking back over her shoulder at me. I tried to keep looking at her face, honest, but with those long legs, that tight little butt, and the way her blonde hair cascaded down around her shoulders, it was a battle that my good manners had no chance of winning.

"Coming?" she arched her eyebrows.

Not yet, fortunately, but I was damn close. She walked into the bathroom, out of my sight. I heard her start the water as I pushed my pants and my shorts and my socks off, hopping ever closer to the door. I heard the shower curtain being pulled back as I unbuttoned my shirt. By the time I added the shirt to the trail of clothing and entered the bathroom, the curtain was already closed again. It was a combination bath and shower, with more than enough room for two. I reached for the edge of the curtain farthest from the showerhead, and pulled it open enough to slide inside.

"Mmm," Tanya purred without looking at me. She had put her hands against the tiles on the front of the shower, and stood there with her legs spread, as if I was being invited to frisk her. Instead, I simply watched the water stream down her shoulder blades until it ran in glistening rivulets off of her incredible ass.

"Patrick," she hissed, her voice barely audible above the sound of the water striking her back, "put it in."

"Condom," I gasped.

Damn it! I'd left them in my pants.

"Patrick," she whined. "I've been on the pill for a month. Please put it in."

She reached down between her legs with one hand and used her fingers to slowly expose herself to me. Did women do this on purpose? Did they want us to come even before physical contact? Stepping up behind her as quickly as I could, I slid my hand around her waist, sliding it along her stomach, and then underneath her hand to feel the smooth, bare skin of her completely hairless—

"Oh my God," I cried, paralyzed by the thought that she'd shaved her pubic mound bare.

She laughed softly, and reached back between her legs to grab hold of my cock. Aiming it, she pushed herself backward, impaling herself on me as I just stood there and let her fuck me.

"Tanya," I cried out, shooting the product of three weeks of celibacy into her.

"Oh, Patrick," she murmured. I'd been in the shower for all of two and a half minutes when Tanya pulled herself off of me.

"That was cruel, wasn't it?" she said over her shoulder.

"God, Tanya, I'm so sorry," I said.

Her body was shaking and I grabbed her shoulders.

"You doof," she laughed in my face as I spun her around. "Not you. Me! I was cruel."

"You?" I said hesitantly. "But I only lasted —"

She put the fingers of her right hand to my lips.

"Exactly as long as I thought you would," she said.

Her other hand held a bar of soap and she quickly lathered both hands up and returned the soap to its dish.

"I've been getting myself ready for you since I got home from school," she said, applying her soapy hands to my cock and smiling up at me, "because I wanted to get this one over quickly. The water tends to wash away all the natural, um, lubricant. It was perfect. Sometimes I like to just feel you spurt, you know? Don't worry, I enjoyed it. Maybe not as much as you did, but I expect you'll make it up to me when I've got you cleaned up. Now, do you see anything you want to soap up?"

As much as I enjoyed having my cock lathered up, I did have more fun of rubbing the soap all over her breasts, and then all around her ass and pussy. By the time I was done, she was not only clean, but she was breathing harder as well. I was harder too, so we decided to move things back into her bedroom.

Actually, she decided that. My only decision was that this time was going to be all about Tanya. I didn't even climax a second time. I put her on the bed and sucked and licked my way around her thighs, drawing ever closer to her pussy. I stopped just short, and turned her gently onto her stomach. Then, parting her legs, I knelt behind her and gave her pubic area a long, slow massage. When I finally turned her over again onto her back, her eyes were nearly closed, her body trembling beneath me. I thrust slowly into her, watching her face, feeling her nipples, listening for her breaths. After she finally stiffened and trembled in what I hoped was an orgasm, I pulled out. I lay back, pulling her over on top of me, and stroked her back with my fingers as she lay on my shoulder.

She slept for a while, and woke up to find me watching her.

"Mom wanted me to make sure you aren't interested in converting," she said, drawing her fingers across my nipple as she lay propped on an elbow.

"Mom wanted?" I asked.

She blushed

"I hate not being your girlfriend," she said. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Sure," I said. "Anything."

"I don't think I could take knowing that you were with somebody else. So I'll be available to you whenever you want, okay? Just promise me that if I can't find a nice Jewish boy while I'm here, you won't start publicly dating some hot little shiksa."

"Okay," I said. "What's a —"

"Hush," she said. "It's my turn to be on top now."

I never did find out what that shiksa thing was, but if Tanya Szerchenko was going to make me feel like this, I honestly didn't care if it was some sort of porn star. I left about nine o'clock, with an invitation to return the following evening, when her parents would be home to celebrate something called Purim.

My alarm went off the next morning at eight, and I dressed and drove to the school. I didn't see Tommy's car in the parking lot, so I figured I'd wait for him in the weight room. I opened the locked door and was more than a little surprised to find three people in there before me: Andy Lebo, Jesse Trasker, and a small, pretty brunette whose scared eyes locked on mine as soon as I entered. Andy and Jesse had both tossed their shirts onto the weight benches. The girl was wearing a jean jacket on top of a T-shirt and jeans.

"Shit," Jesse muttered as he looked at the floor.

"Sterling, this don't concern you," Andy said with a scowl.

"Thank God," I said. "What's your name, honey?"

She looked from Andy to Jesse and back to Andy, as if she needed permission. They just looked angry, so she finally returned her gaze to me.

"Marcia Burns," she said.

Marcia Burns, I thought. Marcia Burns. Where the hell did I know that name from? I'd certainly never dated her; she was, like, Jill's age. And the only "M" in my girlfriend mnemonic, "Some bakers like baking honey muffins and delicious rolls," was a Maria Torres. I'd spent a good bit of time trying to figure out who all the girls were, mostly by looking at old yearbooks. Maria's picture had been in my tenth grade yearbook but not the one from eleventh grade, so I figured she must have transferred out. In any event, Marcia wasn't a girlfriend.

Then I suddenly realized who she was. This was the girl who, according to Jill, had been watching me fuck her sister Liane. Liane Burns, the "like" in my mnemonic, had actually been the hardest of my former girlfriends to find. She'd been a senior when I was a junior, and it had simply never occurred to me that I would have dated an older woman. Fucked them, sure. Apparently I did that all the time. But to have one of them actually date me, in public? That was a surprise. Particularly, as I discovered once I had found her picture in my eleventh grade yearbook, when the girl-slash-woman in question was a hot-looking brainy older cheerleader.

"You need a ride home, Marcia Burns?" I asked.

"Sterling, why don't you just give yourself a fucking ride home?" Andy said.

Just then the door banged open behind me. I was unwilling to turn around and look, but Jesse's disgusted "fuck" told me all I needed to know.

"Hey, Tommy," I said as he came to stand beside me.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Not any more," I said.

"Tell you what, Marcia Burns," I said. "When Tommy and I are done lifting, how 'bout I give you a ride home?"

"Okay," she nodded vigorously.

"Good," I smiled. We stood there for a while, the five of us, until Andy finally tired.

"Fuck this shit," he said to Jesse as he reached for his shirt. "Let's go, Jesse."

"Have a good day boys," Tommy said to them as I watched Marcia slump down onto one of the benches.

"Oh God," she was hyperventilating. "Oh God. Oh God."

She looked up at both of us, seconds away from crying.

"I just," she started. "I just..."

"Yeah, but nothing happened, honey," I said. "You're fine. But this is a weight room, so we only talk about manly things. You know anything about baseball?"

"I play jayvee softball," she offered.

"Good," I said. "Explain the infield fly rule to Tommy here while we lift."

Neither one of them knew the first thing about the infield fly rule, but neither was willing to admit that to the other. By the time we were finished, the rule had metamorphosed into a strict injunction against an infielder catching a fly ball that should actually be played by an outfielder, upon penalty of the batter's being awarded an additional base. Listening to the two of them, I could barely stop laughing long enough to do any serious lifting. Tommy was stoked, though, almost as if he was showing off. Maybe he was, come to think of it. Maybe I should have let him drive Marcia home. Ah well, he could always ask her out. I burst out laughing again on my way home. Like that would ever happen.

I didn't see Jill the rest of the day. By evening I was caught up in Purim, which is apparently a holiday devoted to getting drunk. Sort of like Saturday for Episcopalians. It began at sunset, and I arrived a few minutes later, just after six. I was in my best suit and tie, a bouquet of flowers for Mrs. Szerchenko in my hand. She answered the doorbell and reached up to grab my ears. As she pulled me down to kiss me, on the lips, it became apparent that Mrs. Szerchenko had already started celebrating. She managed to put the flowers in water, though, after yelling up to Tanya that her friend was here. Tanya came thundering down the stairs to greet me, and before we could walk into the kitchen, she gave me a little primer. The first rule was that I shouldn't mention the Lord's name. Her parents were very strict about that. I could call Him Hashem. I nodded, repeating it several times. As for Purim, she said, the idea was to get so drunk that we couldn't tell some guy named Haman from some other guy named Mordecai.

"Are they here, too?" I asked.

"They're from the book of Esther," she giggled, whacking me on the arm.

"In the Old Testament?"

"In the Testament," she corrected me. "Now, hush, you're supposed to be a religious scholar."

Mrs. Szerchenko tipsily explained the meaning of the holiday to me all over again, and I chimed in "from the book of Esther, right?" at the appropriate moment, leading to smiles all around.

And then I was presented with a glass of wine that would have gotten a small pony drunk. My attempt to remind Mrs. Szerchenko that I was still underage, by slightly more than three years, was pooh-poohed instantly. She might have actually said, "oh, pooh-pooh," in fact. Or maybe it was "oh, pish-tush." My second attempt, where I invoked my having to drive home tonight amid all the drunken Purim revelers, was much more successful. Although Mrs. Szerchenko was heard quietly grousing about the fact that the only drunken Purim revelers in the city lived in this particular house.

It was fun watching Tanya get tipsy, and Mr. and Mrs. Szerchenko get drunk. I left shortly after dinner, vowing to take a quick look at the book of Esther that evening when I got home. It looked like a fine piece of writing, with your good guy, Mordecai, and your bad guy, Haman. But as an excuse for a party like that? I was pondering that thought when the phone in our kitchen rang. I hadn't gotten a call on that line since, well, since the ninth grade, so I was shocked to hear Jeanne call out my name.

"For me?" I yelled downstairs.

"Yes," she yelled back.

We passed each other on the stairs.

"You stupid, fucking ass," she muttered.

I was looking back over my shoulder at Jeanne, wondering what had gotten into her, and ran into the kitchen table.

"Hello?" I said absent-mindedly when I finally located the receiver.

"You stupid, fucking ass. Where the hell are you?"

"Hello?" I said again, buying time.

"You know perfectly well this is my night at the observatory," Cammie said. "I knew you'd fuck this up."

"I'll be there in five minutes, Cammie," I hung up the phone. The observatory was six miles away. I was there in four.

"Cammie, honestly," I said as I walked in. "It's just been a bad day. I came across two of our classmates with a very scared tenth grade girl in the weight room this morning."

Her anger dissolved instantly.

"Seriously?" she said. "Who?"

"Well, I can't tell you that," I said. "But tell me, what do you think of Andy Lebo?"

"He's an asshole," she said.

"And Jesse Trasker?"

"He's another asshole," she answered.

"Got it," I nodded. She'd already set the telescope for the proper coordinates, so I simply got ready to take down her observations.

"One more question before we start."

"What?" she gave an exasperated sigh.

"Andy's an asshole, Jesse's an asshole, and I'm an asshole," I said. "Any distinctions in there at all for me to hold on to?"

She gave me a long look, and I finally got a Cammie Rowe smile. What I didn't get was an answer.

Instead, she handed me a copy of the picture that Mr. Carruthers had taken of her star. She had marked it off with a grid, A through J along the side, 1 through 10 on top, like it was some sort of road map.

"What are you, some sort of frickin' scientist or something?" I asked.

"Yes," she stared at me. "I am."

Oh, right.

We were at the observatory until just before midnight. Cammie spent most of it bent over looking through the eyepiece of the telescope, so in addition to a Cammie Rowe smile, I also got to see some nice Cammie Rowe butt.

I thought about the asshole issue again the next morning in church, as I watched a sleepy Cammie Rowe join my sister in the front pew. We didn't go in much for the book of Esther in the Episcopal Church. But if there was a line to be drawn among the various assholes of the world, I was hoping to be on the Mordecai side rather than the Haman side.

Chapter 14

"So what should we do for Trick's half-birthday?" Jeanne cheerily asked the usual group sitting at our table at lunchtime on Monday.

"My what?" I asked.

"Trick's birthday?" Tanya asked in a quiet tone of voice that nonetheless commanded the attention of the entire table. Her look was directed not at Jeanne, though, but at me. I gave Jeanne my most baleful stare.

"His half-birthday" Jeanne corrected her. "He found out two years ago that he shares a birthday with Missy Josephs, so he started making us celebrate his half-birthday."

"I do not," I protested.

"Hah!" Cammie said. "Last year I heard you had the frickin' baseball team carry you around the cafeteria in a chair."

I blinked at her.

"Seriously?" I asked, looking at Rabbit and Tommy.

"Not us," Rabbit said. "It was Jim and Carl and Paul, I think."

"Chip," Tommy was very helpful. "Jim and Carl and Chip."

I looked at Jeanne.

"Don't look at me," she held up her hands. "Cammie and I had fifth period lunch last year."

I gave Tanya a mystified look, noticing only who tightly her lips were stretched across her mouth.

"Excuse me," she said, standing up abruptly.

"Excuse me," I said as I watched her put her tray away and leave the cafeteria. "Jeanne, can you...?"

"I'll get your tray," she said. "Just go. You are such an ass."

I caught up to her in the hallway.

"Tanya," I grabbed her arm.

"Let go of me, Trick Sterling," she yanked it away, her eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to hide her tears. "Well thank you very much. That was just about the most embarrassing day of my life. Everybody knows it's your day except for me?"

"Tanya, can we sit down and talk? Please?"

She reluctantly let me lead her into an empty classroom.

"Look, I'm sorry," I began. "I just forgot."

"Forgot that your birthday was six months ago?" she said coldly.

"Well, no," I agreed. "I forgot that, um, that..."

"That you like celebrating your half-birthday?"

"Yes," I said. That was exactly it. Although, in light of the story about last year's half-birthday, that was probably going to be a bit of a hard sell. I looked at Tanya, my best friend, and took a deep breath.

"Okay, I need to be honest with you," I said quickly, trying to commit myself to finishing. "And I know it's going to sound a little weird."

"You haven't been honest with me?" her voice had lost none of its edge.

I found that I was squeezing my hands in my lap, and stopped only with an effort.

"I haven't been honest with anyone. Not you, not Jeanne, not Jill, not my Dad, nobody."

She waited for me to continue.

"The last birthday I can remember celebrating was in eighth grade," I said. "I turned 14 that year, and we had a cake and I got some presents, and it wasn't really that big a deal. It just wasn't. So my half-birthday means pretty much nothing to me."

Her eyes narrowed as she watched me.

"I'm sure I had birthdays in ninth grade and tenth grade and eleventh grade," I said. "Just like I'm sure I was just as big an asshole as Cammie says I was."

"Everybody says you were," Tanya pointed out.

"Whatever," I agreed. "But it wasn't me. I went to sleep on Christmas Eve, 2003, and I woke up two months ago, on Christmas, December 25, 2006. It's like I just skipped three years of my life. Somebody lived them, but it wasn't me."

Tanya cocked her head, no doubt torn between wanting to believe me and wanting to run away from the lunatic she was alone with. It was at that point that I elected to leave out the part about Santa Claus. That wasn't likely to tilt her decision in my favor.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



"So like you lost your memory?" she asked.

That wasn't really it, of course. I just hadn't lived those three years. But it was a lifeline, however slender, and I was a drowning man.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"This sounds like a lot of bullshit," she declared. "Did you go to a doctor or something?"

I thought about that a minute. That would have been a fun visit. See, Doc, what happened was I ran into Santa Claus, see, and... 

I decided not to answer her directly.

"If you had heard that you lived the last three years that I did, would you want them back? I swear, Tanya, I can't remember anything between 2003 and 2006. Like being carried around the cafeteria. It sounds like something I would do. Or really, more like something I would have done last year. But I have absolutely no memory of it. I was a colossal asshole for three years, but to me, the me that's here with you, it never happened."

"You know," I tried lightening the mood a little, "as far as I know, I was a virgin at the beginning of the year."

"Oh, that's stupid," Tanya said heatedly. "You had like a dozen girlfriends."

I looked at her and she blushed. It pleased me, in an odd way, that she'd made some sort of effort to find that out.

"I know," I nodded, saddened once again by what had happened to me, and by what was happening now. "And the only one I can remember is Cammie Rowe, who was my very first kiss, on the day before Christmas Eve in 2003. And who I apparently treated like dirt after that. But I can't remember that part.

"You know," I wiped the back of my hand across my own suddenly wet eyes, "my mom died a year and a half ago, and I can't remember anything about that either."

Tanya stared at me and then pulled me into her chest.

"Oh, Patrick," she breathed. "Patrick."

I was being a baby. No, I was being a fourteen-year-old. In an eighteen-year-old body. With an eighteen-year-old friend waiting for me to, well, grow up. I pulled myself erect, another round of tears just waiting to flow.

"Tanya, you're the only friend I have," I said with as manly a whimper as I could muster. "Because you're the only one who sees me the way I see myself, without the last three years fucking everything up."

She took a deep breath and exhaled.

"So I'm sorry I didn't tell you about my half-birthday," I said. "It really never was that big a deal to me before I lost those years. I mean, in my mind. I understand now how important it was to you not to be surprised by it, and I'm sorry. Please, Tanya, I —"

She cut me off.

"I still don't know if I believe this whole thing," she said as her eyes started to tear up. "I admit it explains a lot of stuff, but it's kind of freaky, you know? But you're my friend, too. So when is it?"

"When is what?" I sniffled.

"Your half-birthday, jerk."

"Um, tomorrow, I guess. But I —"

She pulled me close and we hugged, cheek against cheek, the most intimate moment that the two of us had shared. Finally, I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket and we cleaned each other's tears up. When she pronounced me acceptable, and I pronounced her gorgeous, we headed back to the cafeteria.

"So about Trick's half-birthday," she said as we reclaimed our seats. "He doesn't want the chair thing this year. What should we do instead?"

We decided on dinner at Carter's, and in a few minutes, Rabbit, Sammy, Tommy and I were just so much surplus baggage. Rides were planned, reservations were made, cake was ordered, and we guys just sat there, nodding and grinning. The bell for the next period went off just as we were about to learn what outfits we were supposed to wear. I assumed that information would be e-mailed to us tonight.

Monday was also the day that baseball practice was scheduled to begin, so Tommy and I did our lifting during our free seventh periods.

Practice didn't inspire a lot of confidence. At this point, though, that didn't worry me. With the exception of pitchers and catchers, all of the regular position players from last year's team were told not to show up until Thursday. So these were just the wanna-bes. Coach apparently intended to use the first three days to help the pitchers get ready for the season and see what kind of new talent he was going to get.

My snap judgment was that he wasn't going to get much. Jesse Trasker showed up to try out for catcher, and was doing fairly well. I probably didn't help by glaring at him every chance I got. As far as pitchers went, the only real possibility was an eleventh-grader, Cary Roberts, who had a wicked-looking curveball. At one point during a break, I sat down next to him asked him to show me how to hold it.

"You want to know how to throw my curve ball?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Well, a curve ball. Yours looks pretty good."

"But you're Trick Sterling."

"So?"

"You're like, going pro next year," he stammered.

"Look, um, Cary, right?"

"Yeah," he grinned.

"Cary, we might be teammates this year, right?"

"I hope so," he said eagerly.

"So look, if we're gonna be teammates, that means you gotta stop lookin' at me like I'm some kind of fucking baseball god, okay?"

"But, uh, Benny Stevens said that you," he started, "that you, uh..."

His voice trailed off, and I suddenly realized where we were going with this.

"Benny Stevens told you to give me a pretty wide berth, huh?"

He stared at me, afraid now that he'd gotten Benny Stevens, whoever the hell he was, in some kind of trouble.

"Look, Cary. Last year Benny would've been right. This year, though, the team needs all the help it can get. Look at some of those guys out there."

We watched an eager shortstop prospect let the ball go right between his legs.

"You, me, Rabbit Parker, Mo Perra, Tommy over there," I nodded. "All of us, we gotta be a team this year if we're gonna win. I got a good fastball and a good change. If you want help with either of those, ask me. But I don't have a curve."

He gave me a hesitant smile and showed me how he held his curve. A few minutes later, I tried it out. It bounced about two feet in front of home plate and it ricocheted up into Tommy's crotch, leaving him gasping on the ground. Obviously that was a pitch that was going to need some more work.

That was pretty much the highlight of the week, for me if not for Tommy. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Smithson handed me a note indicating that I was wanted in the office. I breezed in and gave Rachel Carter a big hello. She gave me a tight grin and asked me to take a seat.

"It's my half-birthday, Ms. Carter," I said, somewhat taken aback by her reaction.

"Happy half-birthday, Mr. Sterling," she said soberly. "Please sit down."

I sat down on the bench, bummed that from the bench I couldn't see the very attractive outfit that I'd noticed Rachel wearing when I walked in. It wasn't until I heard my name called, that I knew I was in real trouble.

"Patrick."

I looked up to see Pete standing in the doorway, looking very serious.

"Come on in," he said.

He closed the door behind me as I walked into his office. An older guy in a suit was sitting in one of his chairs, a briefcase beside him.

"Patrick, this is Darrin Hestrick of the College Board," Pete said. "He has some questions for you. It concerns, uh —"

"Perhaps you could just let me ask a few questions first, Mr. Peterson," Mr. Hestrick interrupted him in a nasal tone.

"Certainly," Pete ushered me to a seat.

"Mr. Sterling," my interrogation began, "you recently took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, did you not?"

It took me a moment.

"The SAT?" I asked. "Yeah, in, like, January."

"On January 27th?" he asked.

"That sounds right," I answered slowly.

"Can you describe the circumstances of that testing?"

"The what?" I asked him. "The circumstances? What's going on?"

"Where did you take the test?"

"Room 112," I answered.

"With how many other students?"

"Twenty?" I guessed. Most of my classmates had taken the test in the fall.

"Do you remember any of them?"

"I'm sure the school has a list," I suggested helplessly.

"I'm sure they do," he said. "Do you remember any?"

"God, let me think."

It shouldn't be that hard. They were mostly a bunch of fuckups like me.

"Jesse Trasker," I suddenly remembered. "And those other guys, um, Barry Plaintree and Kenny, uh, Cutting. Oh, and Angie Valenziano."

Angie had been "sick" last semester. Right now her mother was taking care of her eight-pound "illness."

"And the proctor?" he asked.

"Um, ya got me there," I said. "I don't know his name."

"Mr. Adams," Pete chimed in, earning a glare from Mr. Hestrick.

"He's the assistant coach of the football team," Pete explained.

"Will you please tell me what this is about?" I repeated.

"Have you tried to access your score on our website?"

"No," I said. "I didn't know you could."

"Most people can," he continued. "Most people would have received notification by today in the mail. Your score is embargoed, Mr. Sterling."

"Meaning what?" I asked.

"Meaning it will not be released to any colleges until we are satisfied that it is a true and accurate representation of your potential academic abilities."

I looked over at Pete, who was studying his shoes. He finally looked up at me.

"They think you cheated, Patrick," he mumbled.

"They what?" I gasped.

"Mr. Sterling," Mr. Hestrick broke in, "your score went from a combined 790 to a figure just over twice that. Can you explain how that happened?"

"Well," I paused. "I didn't leave early this time."

"Did you study?" he asked.

"Yes. Well, a little."

"And you took the test at a time when you were facing a disciplinary hearing here at school, did you not?"

I glared at Pete. So much for expunging.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"And you expect me to believe that in the middle of that, you were able to double your score without any serious preparation?"

"I didn't cheat," I said. "Sir."

"Perhaps not," he gave me a tight smile. "I will talk to Mr. Adams. I will talk to these other students who were there."

My jaw dropped open.

"Don't worry, Mr. Sterling," he said. "This is a confidential investigation. Nobody will know why I am asking these questions."

The bell rang, and I stayed rooted to my chair.

"You'd better get to class, Patrick," Pete said gently.

"Yes, sir," I murmured. I arrived late, but Mr. Kennedy took one look at my hapless expression and silently let me in anyway.

By the end of the day, news of the "confidential investigation" was sweeping through the halls of the school. Baseball practice was a particularly desultory affair, with Jesse Trasker giving me a smug grin and the newcomers treading very softly around me, either because of my old reputation as an asshole or my new reputation as a cheater. Only Tommy was in my corner, telling me that he was sure that I'd be cleared by the end of the week.

That was the consensus at my so-called party as well. I wasn't convinced.

"They're going to question Jesse Trasker, Barry Plaintree, and Kenny Cutting," I pointed out. "And you know how much the football team likes me these days. You really think they won't find a way to suggest that well, maybe he did have a little piece of paper fall to the ground?"

"There aren't any pieces of paper that can help you on the SAT," Tanya pointed out.

I glumly shrugged my shoulders, and then Tommy came up with the answer.

"Take it again," he said.

"Again?" I'm sure I sounded just as astonished at that suggestion as I was.

"Again," he nodded. "They offer it again on Saturday. You get in that guy's face tomorrow morning and tell him you'll take it this Saturday in a room with only you and four teachers. Any teachers he wants. And you tell him that if you do worse than you did on the January test, he can keep your fucking score embargoed as long as he wants."

"Say what?" I asked.

"And if you do better," Tommy pressed on with considerably more energy than I had at that point, "then you get the new score and a public apology."

He sat back in triumph.

"I busted my butt taking that test last time," I pointed out.

"But you didn't study," Jeanne said.

"Well, no, not much," I agreed.

"There are three nights left," Tommy said. "On Wednesday you cram for the Reading with me. On Thursday you cram for the Math with, um..."

He looked at Cammie and then quickly looked away at the other faces around the table.

"I'll do it," Cammie said quietly.

Tommy nodded.

"And on Friday you do the Writing part with me again," he finished.

"I'll do that one," Tanya said.

Tommy looked a little offended.

"I got an 800," Tanya said.

"Like I said, you do that part with Tanya," Tommy concluded to general laughter. "I will goddamn guarantee you a higher score than whatever you got last time."

I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said, "but you goddamn better be right, Tommy Narburg."

By the time Saturday morning came around, I was wiped. If I was going to get a higher score this time, it was going to be purely because of what Tommy, Cammie, and Tanya had shoehorned into my tiny little brain the previous three nights.

I had made the offer in Mr. Peterson's office on Wednesday morning. Mr. Hestrick spouted some drivel about my not being pre-registered, but ultimately found himself unable to refuse. As Pete pointed out, it was just too darn reasonable.

And by Wednesday afternoon, the news of my little deal with the College Board had started to leak out. Jesse's expression at practice that afternoon was much darker. After we were finished, Tommy came over to my house, endured Jill's gibes about geeky baseball players, and drilled me on reading comprehension.

By the time baseball practice started on Thursday afternoon, the first day of full-team practice, the whole school knew. In two days, I had gone from being a presumptive cheater to being the hero of the downtrodden. If I was guilty, the thinking went, I obviously wouldn't be taking a chance like this. This was apparently the Trick Sterling that everybody liked. The gambler. The guy who would throw his fastball right down the middle of the plate even though everybody, including the guy with the bat, knew that it was coming. I was high-fived throughout practice. A group of cheerleaders stopped by to wish me well on the way from their practice to the showers. Two or three jokingly invited me to come along with them. I flirted with them for a while, and then hit the showers. The ones in the boys' locker room. I left that evening almost glowing with self-confidence. Yeah, I agreed, those College Board wussies were going down.

Cammie was waiting for me out there, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself. Turning into an asshole was easier than I thought. I tried to thank her for her time as humbly as I could, and she smiled and said she hoped it worked. When Jill saw her sitting on the couch with me that evening, going over one math question after another, she just stopped and stared at us.

Friday was pretty much a repeat of Thursday, with three exceptions. First, we found out that our mid-term exam in Government would be the following week. Second, we were assigned a History paper on the Civil War, due in two weeks. And third, and best of all, it was Tanya who was waiting for me when I came out of the locker room after baseball practice. Jeanne had already taken our car home, so Tanya drove us there. Before dinner, I eagerly introduced her to my Dad, my stepmother, my brother Dave, and my sister Jill. She bowled over every single one of them. And then she sat down with me and taught me writing. Fortunately, I was already fairly good at writing, as she cheerfully acknowledged. In fact, it was around nine o'clock when she apparently concluded that there wasn't anything more she could teach me.

That was also when she noticed that the house had emptied out. Dad and Tiffany were at the bowling alley. This was a relatively recent development. Dad didn't particularly like to bowl, but Tiffany, looking much like a bowling ball herself, had developed a craving for the bowling alley's pizza. So now they went there every Friday night. Dad bowled a few games, Tiff ate a few pizzas.

Dave left for his night shift at the 7-Eleven at about seven-thirty, although not until after Jeanne had told him that he ought to be taking some courses at the community college to get a start on getting his degree. During dinner, she had gotten Dave to tell her about his first semester at Auburn, the one that he had completed before he had blown out his knee in a bowl game shortly before Christmas in 2004. Dave just sat there and nodded as Tanya explained the advantages of attending a community college before transferring to a four-year school. There was no excuse for not taking advantage of college in this day and age, she claimed. When he left that evening, in fact, she sweetly asked him if he was going to follow through on his commitment. He just sort of nodded and scurried out the door.

The girls were on dates, of course. Sammy had knocked on the door at seven-thirty to take Jeanne to dinner and a late movie. Andy had leaned on the horn shortly before eight, to take Jill to God knows where.

Tanya certainly didn't know where, and she didn't care.

"Are you sure I'm ready for this?" I asked with no little surprise as I saw Tanya start packing up the book bag she'd brought with her. It did seem awfully early to me. Tommy and Cammie had both been here until nearly eleven.

"Ready for what?" she zipped up her bag and lowered her voice as she reached for the zipper of my jeans.

"The test?" I yelped, scooting back on the couch and casting a worried look at the door.

"The test?" she repeated with a gay laugh. "Patrick Sterling, if you don't come out of the Writing portion of that test thinking that you have absolutely aced it, I will..."

"Will what?" I asked when she didn't finish the sentence.

"Drop to my knees on the steps of the school and blow you right there when you walk out," she concluded with a laugh.

That was good enough for me. I still was worried about someone coming in the front door, though, and glanced in that direction. She saw my look and smiled.

"Come on, Pat," she said in a seductive voice. "Haven't you ever done it when someone could walk in on you?"

"Let's see," I said. "Your parents were out to lunch, and then they were away on a trip. So no, I haven't."

And of course the library doors had been locked.

Tanya's eyes softened as she remembered what I'd told her about my own memory.

"God, I'm sorry, Pat," she said.

"Although," I said, my eyes twinkling, "when I kissed Cammie that night I told you about, there was always the chance that Jeanne could walk back in with the hot chocolate."

"You bastard," she whacked me on the shoulder.

"'Course, Jeanne wanted us to kiss anyway," I recalled.

"Did she really?" Tanya sat back on the couch. "Why?"

"I don't know. She probably thought hey, my big brother, my best friend, who better to get together?"

"It would have been good," Tanya agreed after a pause that lasted long enough for her to imagine the Rowe-Sterling couple well into old age.

"I guess," I shrugged. "Too bad I fucked it up, huh?"

"Too bad for Cammie," she leaned in again. "Not so bad for Tanya, though, huh?"

"Not so bad for Patrick either," I smiled at her as she reached for my zipper a second time. "How 'bout we go upstairs, though?"

"Chicken," Tanya laughed as she bolted from the couch and ran up the stairs.

"First one on the right!" I yelled after her as I followed.

She refused to have sex with me that evening, but she gave me a blowjob that left me gasping for breath. With me sitting on the edge of my bed and her kneeling between my legs, fully clothed, she applied her tongue to everything: my thighs, my balls, the base of my cock, the tip of my cock, everything. And then she started to suck. I remember, the first time she blew me, not liking it that much. I had explained to her why I hadn't liked it, communication being one of the easiest part of the whole "friends with benefits" thing. And she had done a much better job a few weeks later, after our little shower. This time was simply amazing. If she got a chance to practice on me any more, I'd be dead.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



Instead I was just dead to the world. When she finished, after she'd swallowed every bit of the cum I'd stored up the last two weeks, she pushed my exhausted body back into bed, set my alarm, and gave me a soft, brief kiss on the lips.

"Good luck, Patrick Sterling," she said softly from the doorway just before she flipped off the light. "You'll do great."

I mumbled what I hoped were my profound thanks and slept like a rock until the alarm went off the next morning at seven. Jeanne was already up, ready to drive me to the test again. At my instructions, she parked in the same spot she had last time, although she pointed out that there were plenty of other, closer spaces available this time.

"That's cause only the real fuck-ups have to take the test again in March," I grinned at her.

"Well, try not to fuck up this time," she grinned back at me.

Mr. Katz, Miss Dullin, Mr. Abercrombie, and Mrs. Krankowsky watched me like a hawk for the next three and three-quarters hours, and every now and then I looked up and gave one of them a big smile. By the time I was finished, having confidently answered every single question, they were all smiling back at me. Mr. Hestrick snatched the paper from my hand as I exited the room, promising me that I would have my results back at exactly the same time as everyone else who took the test, and not a day sooner. I thanked my proctors, and together we left the building.

Tanya Szerchenko was standing at the foot of the steps, her hands in the pockets of the jean jacket she had worn to protect her against the still chilly March weather. She cocked her head at me as I walked down the stairs, and raised her eyebrows.

I stopped right in front of her as the teachers breezed past with their farewells.

"Well?" she asked.

I tried to look thoughtful for a minute.

"There was this one question," I finally said.

"Very funny," she laughed. "No way, José, are you getting a public blowjob for messing up one question, Patrick Sterling."

"In that case, Tanya Szerchenko, let's plan a celebration," I grinned.

"You really think you did that well?" she asked in surprise.

"I really do. And I have some very heartfelt thanks to deliver. Let's go round up the gang."

Dinner at Carter's that night was on me. Tommy got a Swiss Army knife that he loved just as much as Tanya thought he would when she saw it at the mall. Cammie just sat there staring at the lapis lazuli necklace that I had insisted would suit her perfectly. Finally she just closed the box and said, "Cool. Thanks." Tanya, of course, was already wearing the friendship ring that matched the one on the little finger of my right hand, her face glowing like a small sun.

The next day at church, I offered thanks again, for all of my friends. And I did notice that up in the front row, sitting next to Jeanne, Cammie was wearing the necklace.

Chapter 15

None of the teachers in the ninth grade had ever given "pop" quizzes. In the ninth grade, they told you what they were going to teach you, and they told you when you would be tested on it. Then they taught you, and then they tested you. That apparently changed somewhere between ninth and twelfth grades. Now you were supposed to be much better at absorbing the material, so that a sudden, off-the-cuff quiz, like the one Mr. Carruthers handed out in my Astronomy class on Monday morning, would be greeted with a smile. Like the one on Cammie Rowe's face.

The expression on my face was no doubt one of shock. I numbly took the test questions from Mr. Carruthers as he circled the room, and bent my head to the task of answering them with a vague sense of impending doom. Fortunately, most of them were multiple choice. The remaining few were short essays. Which helped only a little. Because as much as I thought I understood the retrograde motion of Venus, I soon discovered that my understanding was lacking. It was certainly lacking the answer to question number six. Damn. It looked like I was going to be digging myself out of a hole in this class. The only saving grace was Mr. Carruthers's announcement that this test, and the others that would be "popping up" during the semester, would count for no more than ten percent of our final grade. Our lab notebooks would be another forty percent, and our final project a full fifty percent. So it wouldn't be a very deep hole. Just a hole.

On Monday afternoon, I walked into the locker room to get ready for baseball practice just in time to hear Andy Lebo proclaim that all bitches were the same, so it was just a case of finding the one with the best tits and the tightest cunt. I glared at him and he smirked at me. At that point, I was already ashamed that I hadn't even tried to tell Jill about what had happened last Saturday in the weight room, when I'd found her very scared friend Marcia with Andy and Jesse. Andy's little monologue made it that much worse, and I made up my mind to sit down with my little sister that evening.

Oh, I had had plenty of excuses. She hadn't been around much on Sunday, and in any event I'd spent the day in a state of euphoria, elated that Tanya and I had finally reached a meeting of the minds on this "friends with benefits" thing. Monday had been pretty much taken up with the rush of planning for my birthday, which involved Jeanne coming into my room every five minutes to ask, did I like burgers (yes), what kind of cake did I like (chocolate), did I want presents (no), was there anyone else I wanted to ask (no). I spent Tuesday in a state of horrified shock, followed by my birthday party and three nights of cramming for a test that left me completely exhausted. Except for the party I'd thrown on Saturday night.

God, I really was an asshole. Because even if all of those were legitimate excuses, and they weren't, I had spent Sunday playing games on my computer and outlining my Civil War paper for Mr. Anson's history class. The one that wasn't due for two weeks.

So as I drove home after practice on Monday, I went over in my mind what I was going to say to Jill, and tried to anticipate her defensive responses. So I'd seen her friend Marcia in the locker room with her boyfriend and another guy? So what? Was there an innocent explanation? Probably not. Was I prepared to tell my sister my explanation? I guess. Would she believe me? Probably not. On the other hand, hadn't she talked to Marcia about it?

I knocked on her door after dinner and she waved me in.

"What?" she said impatiently.

"Did, uh, Andy tell you I'd seen him in the weight room last Saturday?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Why should I care? I know about his stupid weights."

"He was with Jesse and, uh, your friend Marcia."

"What friend Marcia?" she asked.

"Marcia Burns?"

"Oh, God, she was my friend, like, last year," Jill scoffed. "I mean, she still hangs around with us, but she's such a little Miss Priss. Like so totally the opposite of Liane."

"Okay. Anyway, she was in the weight room last Saturday with Jesse and Andy."

"If that ugly little slut thinks she can steal my boyfriend," Jill started to lecture me.

"I'm not sure she was there, you know, completely voluntarily," I interrupted her.

"Yeah, right," Jill's voice dripped with sarcasm. "She's been trying to worm her way closer in since school started in September."

"Jill, I'm just saying —"

"I know what you're saying. You are trying to break me and Andy up. I knew it. Go to hell, big brother."

I retreated to my room, remarkably unsuccessful in my quest to, well, break up Jill and Andy. Although I really saw it more as making sure that Jill had all the information she needed. To break up with Andy.

Baseball practice got more and more intense as the week went on. We would have our first scrimmage on Monday, and Coach told me I should expect to pitch no more than five innings. I wouldn't pitch at all in Thursday's scrimmage, so that I would be fresh for the season opener on the 26th. He made it clear that as the team's number one pitcher, I was going to be expected to contribute almost fifty percent of the team's pitching during the coming year. He was pleasantly surprised with Cary Roberts' development, and thought he'd probably by the number two. During the weeks that we needed more than that, he implied, we were going to be in trouble.

I was pretty much done with the in-school tryouts. If anyone wanted to see me, they could just come to a game. So Tommy and I were lifting together on Mondays and Fridays after lunch, and we lifted by ourselves on Wednesdays, since his only free period corresponded with my Astronomy lab.

On Tuesday, I learned to my surprise that I was also a pretty good hitter. We started taking batting practice, and when I took my turn, I was spraying balls all over the place. Including a couple of foul balls right back off of Jesse Traskers' catching mask. Which is actually very difficult to do if you're trying to do it on purpose. My hitting didn't surprise anybody else, though. When I suggested to Cary that my hitting was an unexpected dividend, he told me that most right fielders are expected to hit the ball pretty well, to make up for their not having to field all that much.

"But I'm a pitcher," I pointed out.

"And a right fielder on the days you don't pitch," he said. "At least that's what everybody's been telling me."

On the way home that evening, I stopped by the library to check out the Baseball for Dummies book again. With the chapter on "Fielding the Outfield" under my belt and my good old friend muscle memory, shagging fungoes on Thursday afternoon actually went pretty well.

The rest of the week was spent studying for my government test on Friday, working on the history paper that was due next week, and learning that my benefits friend had out of town relatives coming in for the weekend. Out of town relatives that unfortunately included a cousin who was going to be Tanya's responsibility. Since the Sabbath extended from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, we agreed that the three of us — Tanya, her cousin, and me — would go to a movie on Saturday evening. A late movie, actually, since Daylight Savings Time had kicked in last Sunday and sundown was now an hour later every evening. Damn the United States government.

On the other hand, three cheers for the United States government. It was the very orderliness of that government, the carefully prescribed system of checks and balances, that so perfectly suited the student who was willing to memorize every page of his text book and his notes. I walked out of that test on Friday morning serenely confident that my A-plus in Government was in no danger at all.

It was seven-thirty on Friday evening when I heard a knock on the door. That was the second knock, actually, after I finally realized that nobody else was going to be answering the door. I looked around, annoyed, because I knew it wasn't going to be for me. The sun had already set. And it wasn't like there weren't plenty of other people around to answer it. Dave was downstairs in his basement apartment, although the chances of its being for him were admittedly small. But Jill and Jeanne were both upstairs. Of course, Jill usually got summoned by horn.

I yelled out, "yeah, I'm coming," and threw down the Sports Illustrated I'd been reading. I ambled over to the door and yanked it open to find an absolutely ravishing blonde.

I was about to smile and ask if I could help her when her eyes widened and she threw her arms around my neck.

"Trick," she murmured between kisses on my cheek and neck. "Thank you so, so much."

"Uh, sure," I muttered. "Come in?"

She walked like she'd been here before and threw her coat onto a chair. She sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her.

"Well, first off, how have you been?" she asked.

"Okay," I said, sitting where I was told. I was being very cautious. The slightest sign of fear or doubt could chase her away just as quickly as she'd come. "And you?"

"Oh, fine, you know how hard it is to adjust to someplace new."

Tell me about it, lady.

"Tell me about it," I suggested.

"No, I want to catch up with you first," she said. "Baseball season started yet?"

I managed to converse for another five minutes without getting even the smallest clue as to this woman's identity. She was my age or a little older, blonde, as I'd said, with blue eyes visible through a stylish pair of glasses. Even better, she had a stunningly curvy body that she was showing off in a knitted sweater and a pair of jeans that she'd obviously been sewn into. I went through my mnemonic for girlfriends again, but I'd actually dated relatively few blondes. And I for damn sure would have remembered a picture of this one.

I was saved, briefly, by the honk of a horn. Jill came thundering down the stairs and stopped in the doorway to the living room to look in. She furrowed her brow, clearly waiting for an introduction.

"Jill," I started very slowly, "this is —"

"Liane!" Jill yelped. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you as a blonde."

"You like it?" Liane said, flicking it out. "Your brother here hasn't said a thing."

"Yeah, um..." I stammered. Hair coloring, shit. Plus she hadn't been wearing glasses in the yearbook photo.

"Men," Jill dismissed me. "It looks nice."

"Thanks. Got a date?"

"Yeah. Andy Lebo, remember him?"

"Andy Lebo?" Liane's voice turned icy. "The asshole who almost raped my sister?"

She whipped around to look back at me.

"How can you let your sister date somebody like that?" she was nearly screaming.

"I don't tell her who to date," I protested.

"Wait a minute," Jill said. "What do you mean raped your sister?"

"How could you not tell her about it?" Liane screamed at me.

"I did tell her about," I protested.

"You tell me," Jill suddenly grew quiet and sat down across from Liane.

The horn sounded again. I got up and opened the door.

"Just wait a minute!" I yelled out to the waiting Andy Lebo.

His window rolled down.

"Tell the bitch to hurry up!" he yelled back.

I cocked my head at him, challenging him to say that again.

"Look, man," he yelled, "just tell your sister I'm here."

I closed the door and went back to the living room. Jill's face was white. Both women looked at me. Jill took a few deep breaths and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Her face assumed a steely sort of expression that I'd never seen before.

"All right, I'm breaking up with him," Jill finally said. "Happy now?"

"Actually I am," I said to her back as she stormed out of the room.

"I didn't mean to yell at you like that," Liane said as I resumed my seat. "Marcia said that if it wasn't for you and, um..."

"Tommy."

"Tommy," she nodded, tears starting to well up in her eyes. "She said that they were both going to 'have her' at the same time."

I let her cry on my shoulder as we both listened to the muffled screaming from outside. Finally, the door burst open again and Jill slammed it behind her. She locked it and began to walk back toward the stairs.

The sound of Andy's fist beating on the door made both Liane and I jump.

"Jill," he bellowed. "Get out here."

"Fuck you," Jill yelled back through the locked door. "Asshole!"

The next sound was louder by far than Andy's first hammering, and I looked up to see Jill turn white.

"NOOO!" she screamed, tearing off up the stairs.

I jumped to my feet, having only belatedly realized that Andy had kicked the door in, lock and all.

"Out of the way, fucker," he growled as I put myself between him and the stairs.

"Get out, Andy," I tried to remain calm.

He took a few steps toward me.

"Out of the way, pussy."

"Liane, call the cops," I said into the living room.

"Fuckin' asshole," he muttered. He took a swing at me which I easily blocked. And then he simply put his hands on my biceps. We'd both been string beans in ninth grade. I had put on some muscle. Andy Lebo had put on more. With surprisingly little effort, he heaved me to the side, into the living room. I found myself tripping over one of the hassocks and heading face-first for the glass top of the coffee table.

I was only out of it momentarily. When I hauled myself out of the table's broken wooden frame, shattered glass was lying all around me. I could taste blood in my mouth, and it was running into my eyes, probably from at least two cuts on my forehead. Through the haze, I could still make out Liane yelling into phone for the police to get here. I'm sure she would have been Andy's next target, but then we heard Dave's "what the fuck is goin' on?" as he thundered up the steps from the basement. The door opened onto the first floor between Andy and the stairs, so there was now at least a well-muscled former quarterback standing between Andy and Jill.

Jill, meanwhile, was still in the upstairs hallway looking down at Andy's march through the house.

"Get the fuck out of here!" she screamed. "Get out, you fucking rapist!"

Whatever doubts Andy had about going through Dave evaporated in the white heat of Andy's anger.

"You fuckin' cunt!" he screamed back at her. "I'll rape your fuckin' ass!"

"I don't think so, kid," Dave said in an even tone.

It looked like it was going to be a very tough fight. Dave and Andy were about the same size. But apparently Andy knew Dave better than Dave knew Andy. I watched in horror as Andy looked down at Dave's knees, and with a malicious smile on his face yanked his right leg back and delivered a vicious kick to the outside of Dave's left knee.

Dave blanched, and when Andy kicked his knee again, he gave a heart-rending groan and dropped to the floor. Upstairs, Jill screamed again, and we could hear her running down the hall. Andy stepped over Dave to the bottom step.

"You can't hide, cunt!" he screamed at her.

A door slammed upstairs — probably Jill's bedroom — and Andy took off up the stairs. I shook my head, spraying the couch with blood, and tried to wipe the rest of the blood off my face. I didn't have time to try to stop the bleeding, and I learned later that facial cuts in particular were notorious bleeders anyway. I took the steps two at a time and looked down the hallway to see Andy trying Jill's door. That lock wouldn't keep him long, though. He turned and saw me.

"You want what your brother got, you come here, pussy," he snarled at me and beckoned me forward with his hands.

I stepped into my room, looking for a baseball bat or anything else I could use as a weapon. The only thing that immediately swam into view were the two baseballs sitting on my desk. I grabbed them up and stepped back into the hallway. Andy had his back to the wall opposite Jill's door, ready to kick it in like he had the front door. He lifted his right leg, and I threw. He was only fifteen feet away, he wasn't looking at me, and his left leg was supporting all of his weight. It was a carnival toss, the kind of throw that most people miss from sheer nerves.

Very fortunately, I don't suffer from those kind of nerves. Jill's door burst open under Andy's kick at virtually the same time that Andy shrieked in pain and collapsed to the ground, the inside of his left knee forced outward by a fastball that had been traveling well in excess of eighty miles an hour. He turned his face to me, a mask of hatred. Grabbing hold of the door jamb he hauled himself to his feet.

"You're a dead man, Sterling," he seethed.

He took two steps toward me, limping steps that clearly left him in agony. At that rate, he might have reached me in about five minutes. I hefted the second ball in my left hand, knowing full well that I could run away at this point. But there were no other exits from Jill's room. She had no way out except to get by Andy.

"The police are on their way!" Liane screamed from the bottom of the stairs. I looked down quickly and saw her kneel beside Dave. I looked back and saw Andy hesitate and then turn his face ever so slightly toward Jill's door. That was enough. I threw again, a little chin music. Andy crumpled to the floor again and lay there, motionless.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 04



"Jill?" I yelled. "Are you okay?"

"Is he dead?" Jeanne's voice came from Jill's room.

"I hope not," I said ruefully as I stepped over him and looked into Jill's bedroom. The two girls were together, kneeling on the floor next to Jill's bed as far away from the door as they could get. Jeanne was in front, clutching a pair of scissors in front of her like a broadsword. Jill was behind her, holding onto her shoulders.

They saw me at the same time I saw them, and they both went white.

"Oh my God," Jeanne said quietly.

Behind her, Jill fainted and dropped softly to the carpeted floor.

By the time the cops arrived, some five minutes later, I had looked in a mirror and could see why the girls had been so alarmed. I must have had a dozen cuts on my face, although only one of them, on my left cheek, looked really serious. We ended up with three ambulances: one for Andy, one for Dave, and one for me. Liane rode with Dave, and, after we managed to wake her, Jill insisted on riding with me. Jeanne said she would bring our car once she called the bowling alley and told Dad what was going on.

She apparently made a number of other phone calls. When I emerged from the treatment room at the ER, my face bandaged and stitched by a very sympathetic lady doctor, eight heads popped up to look at me: Jeanne, Jill, Sammy, Cammie, Rabbit, Tommy, Marcia Burns, and another girl, about Jill and Marcia's age, whom I didn't know. I felt a twinge of disappointment that Tanya wasn't among them, but I quickly forgot about it when they all stood up and started asking me, all at the same time, if I was going to be okay.

"Hang on, hang on," I held up my hands. "I'm going to be fine. Jeanne, did you get hold of Dad and Tiffany?"

She nodded.

"They're in with Dave," she said. "He's going to need surgery."

"That goddamn fucker," I muttered.

"He's going to need the same surgery," Rabbit said.

I smiled. Served the asshole right.

"So what about your face?" Jeanne asked.

"Oh, you can't mar beauty like this," I joked.

"Asshole," Cammie smiled.

I smiled back at her.

"Seriously," I continued. "The doc said that most of these would just heal up in a week or two. The one on my cheek might leave a little bit of a scar."

Jill was looking a little pale again.

"But she said that it would actually make me more attractive," I held my head up in a fake pose that brought a wan smile back to Jill's face.

Cammie opened her mouth to talk but a voice from behind me beat her to the punch.

"No where to go but up in your case," Tanya said.

Cammie stifled a snort as I turned around. Tanya put a hand to my face and gently traced some of the bandages, her face showing the concern that her flippant remark had lacked.

"Actually, it will," she pronounced after an inspection. "Give you a little character. Not that you're not enough of a character already."

"I'm sorry to interrupt your Sabbath," I said.

She waved a hand to suggest it was nothing.

"Did you meet Rhonda?" she asked.

"We didn't have time yet," Jeanne chimed in. "Trick, this is Tanya's cousin Rhonda. My brother Trick."

"Charmed," I kissed the hand that she offered to me. "I understand we have a date to go to the movies tomorrow."

"With me," Tanya said acerbically as she noticed Rhonda's face brightening.

"Spoilsport," I turned to her. "So if she's been here, where have you been?"

"With your girlfriend," she said.

"My...?"

"Liane," she said.

"Former girlfriend," I pointed out.

"Yeah, I think you've lost her to Dave," Tanya smiled. "She told me that she had a crush on him in tenth grade."

I shook my head.

"Football players get all the..." I trailed off, suddenly realizing the effect that an insensitive statement like that might have on Jill.

"Pussy?" Sammy sang out. For a smart kid, he was none too bright. Jeanne gave him a fierce glare, and Jill started to leak tears.

"Hey, I need some time with my sister," I said as I put a protective arm around Jill. "Why don't you guys go find the snack bar?"

They all nodded and started to walk away.

"Honey, it wasn't your fault," I said to Jill as I brought her back to a seat. "You couldn't have known."

"I'm sorry," she fell into my chest, the tears pouring from her eyes.

"I know," I said. "But it wasn't your fault."

We silently hugged her for a few more minutes until I realized that there was a policeman lurking a few feet away, who evidently wanted to talk with us.

"Mr. Sterling?" he cleared his throat.

I looked up and raised an eyebrow.

"I need a statement from you," he explained.

I looked down at Jill and shrugged, as if to suggest that my time was not my own.

"I'll stay with her," Tanya said quietly. I hadn't noticed that she'd been sitting in a far corner of the waiting room. She took my place, her arm around Jill. The policeman took me to another private room, and I spent fifteen minutes relating the evening's events. When I returned, the whole crowd, including Liane, Dad and Tiffany, was in the waiting room. Dad opened his arms and, for the first time in a long time, drew me into a hug.

"Thanks," he finally choked out. "Let's go home."

"What about Dave?" I asked.

"They gave him a sedative. He'll be out all night. They want to wait until the swelling goes down before they operate. Probably on Monday."

I had a small prescription for my own sedatives, because the doctor said that the topical anesthetic would wear off and my face would start to sting. So I slept very well that night. And the next night, after I'd taken Tanya and Rhonda to the movies. And I slept well on Sunday night, after Jeanne had physically pulled me up to sit with her and Cammie in the front row, and after I had heard both girls whisper "and for Trick" during the prayer of intercession.

"Trick's fine," I whispered.

"Shut up," they both whispered back.



A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



Chapter 16

There was a fairly large crowd of kids outside of the school when Jeanne, Jill, and I arrived on Monday morning. They seemed oblivious to the threatening clouds overhead. Instead, they did their best to pretend to be involved in conversations. It became obvious from the sidelong looks we got as we walked toward the steps, though, that they were all there for the same reason. Word of the Lebo-Sterling incident had evidently gotten around, and cats have nothing on high school kids when it comes to curiosity.


It was a very surreal experience for me. I wanted so badly to start tossing off all the lines I'd saved up all weekend. I know I look bad, but you should have seen the coffee table. Yes it hurts, but only when I smile...or frown...or sneeze...or raise this eyebrow here. But joking had a problem, a problem named Jill. She had spent virtually the entire weekend in hibernation. Emotionally she just didn't seem to be there.

Obviously, there were still too many reminders around of what she thought of as her fault. Dad had the damage to the house fixed by Saturday night, but my face was going to look like this for a while. And Jill had only visited Dave briefly on Sunday, leaving Jeanne and I in the room with him while she went to look for a soda. The one time I tried to joke about it, she had burst into tears, and Jeanne had rather forcefully suggested that I spend some time in my room. The only good sign came when she accepted Jeanne's offer to ride to school with us. But she never said a word the entire trip.

As we approached the steps, Tanya stepped out of one of the small knots of people. I smiled at her and she smiled at me. Then she walked right past me to put her arm around Jill.

"Come on, honey," she said softly. "Let's leave Trick with his little groupies."

She got a soft laugh from Jill, although I didn't think it was all that funny. Certainly not as good as anything I'd come up with. But it was exactly what Jill needed. As I watched Tanya lead Jill to another entrance, all of my excellent material went right out of my mind. I walked up the steps in a daze, hearing competing shouts of "way to go, Trickster" and "fuckin' cheater." They both kind of just bounced right off, although "cheater" seemed a little harsh. What was I supposed to do, strap on the boxing gloves? The asshole broke into my house to attack my sister.

The teacher network must have been in action as well, because nobody thought it odd that I appeared to have had an accident with a lawnmower. I was just another face in Mr. Smithson's homeroom, neither more nor less attractive than when I'd been there on Friday morning. As I sat in Mr. Kennedy's class, I could feel the hostile looks from Jesse Trasker and Brian Hughes but Mr. Kennedy just started writing the new homework assignment on the board.

"You know you ruined Andy's college chances, don't you?" Jesse hissed from his seat in the back row.

I whipped around to stare at him.

"I think Andy did that when he kicked the front door of our house down," I said.

He looked stunned. Evidently he'd gotten a different version of events. That would explain the "fuckin' cheater" line as well.

The rest of my teachers pretty much ignored me just like Mr. Smithson and Mr. Kennedy had. Although it did seem to me that Mrs. Palmer had a small smile on her face when she discussed our next assignment, a paper to be titled "Obsession," due the day we were back after spring break.

"You can write about Mr. Melville and his character Ahab," she said, "or you can write about anything else you choose. If you have an obsession, write about that. If you know someone with an obsession, interview that person and write about him or her. As long as it isn't fiction, and isn't about perfume, Lisa Carlson, you'll be fine."

My classmates had no qualms about openly staring. To be honest, I would have stared too, if it had been somebody else. It looked worse today than it had over the weekend, as the bruising had deepened and highlighted the puffy scratches. And it really did hurt to smile. But I managed. Cammie Rowe smiled at me in Astronomy, and I smiled back. Tanya smiled at me in Religion and I smiled back. When I answered a loudspeaker summons to report to the office after fifth period, Rachel Carter smiled at me. It was a smile, though, that didn't replace the apprehensive look on her face as much as it was superimposed on it.

I smiled back at her, too.

"Coach Torianni wants to see you, Trick," she said.

"So how come you didn't order me to report to the gym?" I leered at her. It was probably a really, really ugly look.

"Because I wanted to see for myself whether or not I should be avoiding you in the hallways from now on," she shot back. "Like the Phantom of the Opera."

"And?"

"Maybe for a week," she grinned. "Then you might actually look better."

"That's what everybody's been saying," I shook my head. "I didn't think I had that much room for improvement."

She stuck her tongue out at me, and I left to see Coach. He gave me a long look, and asked me if I felt like pitching in the practice game that afternoon. That was assuming that we didn't get the rain that the weatherman was calling for. I readily agreed. Nobody had told me I couldn't pitch, although it was true that I hadn't asked.

I arrived at lunch about ten minutes late, grateful that Tanya had saved me a seat. We talked about the fight for all of five minutes. I spent the first three urging my friends to put out the real story about the fight, because I really didn't want anybody (by which I meant any big football types) thinking that I was the instigator. I spent the last two trying out my jokes, which were met with silence and disdain.

Coach ended up canceling practice entirely, so I drove Jeanne, Jill, and Tanya over to the hospital to see how Dave's operation had gone. Jill reluctantly came in with us, but she cheered up a little when she saw Dave. He was grinning from ear to ear, only part of which could be explained by the blonde college student holding his hand.

"You don't mind if I steal your girlfriend, do ya, little brother?" he asked as I entered the room.

"Of course he doesn't," Tanya answered for me before I could draw breath.

"You taking her dancing this weekend?" I asked. Jeanne and Tanya each found an arm to whack, and Liane good-naturedly threw a box of Kleenex at me.

"Soon," Liane said, smiling down at Dave.

"They think they can repair the damage from my injury," he said. "Cool, huh?"

"Really?" Jill asked breathlessly.

"I may even be able to play football again," he said. He gave me a quick look, as if to tell me privately that the answer to "really?" was "no."

"So that's what you're so happy about," I nodded.

A half hour later, Dave was starting to tire, and we all left happier than when we'd arrived.

By Tuesday morning, there were a few less epithets as I entered school. My story was probably more believable than Andy's and my friends were doing a good job getting it out there. Not everybody was satisfied, though. I was once again summoned to the office after fifth period, and this time Pete Peterson led me into his office to meet an officer of the law.

"Trick, this is Detective Hickson."

We shook hands, and the detective invited me to have a seat. Pete slipped out of the office and closed the door behind him, and Detective Hickson informed me that Andy's parents had filed a criminal complaint against me for assault with a deadly weapon.

"It was a frickin' baseball!" I blurted out.

"Son, I understand that you have a side of the story," he held up his hand. "And I want to hear it. But not here, not now. Can we meet tomorrow after school, at the station house?"

"Are you serious?" I was almost yelling. "That asshole —"

"Shut up, son," he said sternly. "Tomorrow. After school. You might want to bring a lawyer."

A lawyer?

I was still there, frozen in my seat, when he left. I only knew one lawyer, so when I was finished with baseball practice that afternoon, I told Jeanne and Jill, who were waiting outside the locker room, that I needed to stop by the public library.

"Why are you guys here, anyway?" I asked.

"I had tryouts," Jeanne smiled.

"Cool," I grinned. "What are you going out for?"

"The musical."

"The what?"

"The Sound of Music. It's this year's musical."

"And you, um, sing?" I ventured.

My car suddenly held two silent women. I glanced over at Jeanne, who was sitting with her arms crossed, looking straight ahead. I guess I should have known that she sang. They both waited in the car while I hustled into the library, where I once again found Mrs. Parsons.

"What, do you live here?" I asked her with good humor as I approached the circulation desk where she was talking to Lynn.

"Oh my God, Trick!" Lynn yelped.

"You look different, young man," Mrs. Parsons said. "Those all look superficial, Miss Edwards, except for the one on his cheek. He'll have a little scar there. Although it actually might —"

"Don't say it, lady," I warned her.

"What happened?" Lynn asked breathlessly.

"I won a fight," I said. "Now I need a lawyer. Do you, um..."

She immediately reached beneath her desk and pulled out a cell phone out of her purse. Flipping it open, she hit the number "1" and handed it to me.

"Number one," I said suggestively. "Somebody's got a —"

"Hey," the voice on the phone interrupted my teasing. "How's that cute little ass feeling now? Still sore?"

I paused, not quite sure how to answer that.

"Honey?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

I cleared my throat.

"I'm fine," I said as I looked around the desk at Lynn Edwards' cute little butt, dressed in an attractive short skirt and parked in her severe librarian chair. "Thank you for asking, sir. And that other matter you mentioned appears to be fine as well."

Bob Hastings started to chuckle and Mrs. Parsons burst into laughter.

"You do realize," I asked Lynn as I held the phone out of reach of her attempt to grab it, "that your number shows up on his phone, don't you? No you can't have it back. I'm the one with a problem. You're just embarrassed."

"What's the problem, Patrick?" Mr. Hastings asked. I wandered off with the phone and explained what had happened, and he agreed to meet me during ninth period and accompany me to the police station. When I returned to the circulation desk, Lynn snatched the phone out of my hand.

"You already hung up!" she protested after flipping it open.

"I was done talking," I smiled at the two women. "See ya."

"Have a nice evening young man," Mrs. Parsons said. Lynn was too busy waiting for her phone call to be answered.

I was getting the silent treatment that evening at dinner, as well, so I knocked on Jeanne's door after I'd done the dishes. She grudgingly told me to come in, and I found Jeanne at her desk and Jill on Jeanne's bed, both of them doing their homework in companionable silence. I sat down on the bed next to Jill and put a hand on her calf.

"Look, about this afternoon," I looked at Jeanne.

"If you'd come to just one of the shows last year like I asked you to," Jeanne started crying. "Like I practically begged you to. Or even one of my chorus concerts."

"Jeanne, I —"

"Get out," she screamed. "Just get out Trick."

I left and was sitting in my room for no more than five minutes when I looked up to see Jeanne standing in the open doorway, a puzzled look on her face.

"Jill says you've lost your memory," she said cautiously.

"Seriously? She said that?"

I don't know which was more startling, that Jill had finally spoken or that she'd reached that conclusion on her own.

Jeanne was just staring at me, so I finally just nodded.

"It's true," I exhaled.

"It sounds like bullshit. She says you don't remember any of the girls you dated, and that you were trying to pump her for information."

Wow! Jill had garnered all that from our game of Truth or Dare.

"Is she all right?" I asked.

"No," she looked back down the hall and then came in and shut the door behind her. "But before we can deal with her, we have to get this straight. How did you lose your memory?"

"I have no idea."

"When did it — oh my God, Christmas. It was at Christmas, right?"

I nodded.

"So what, you like, hit your head or something?"

"Honestly, Jeanne, I don't know"

"What do you remember?"

She sat down on the bed next to me.

I told her about Christmas, 2003, about the presents I'd purchased, about Cammie Rowe and kissing and hot chocolate. She listened in a state of detached disbelief. But then I told her about waking up Christmas morning, about my room, about my body. And finally I told her about surfing the net and finding Mom's obituary. By the time I was done we were both hugging and crying.

"Did you tell Tanya this?" she asked as we dried our tears.

"Yeah, a little. I was trying to explain about the whole half-birthday thing, which I swear I knew absolutely nothing about. I'm not sure she believed it, though."

"I know she didn't. Not completely, anyway. She asked me last week if you had been acting strange the past couple of months."

"Which I have," I said ruefully.

"That's what I told her. So why didn't you tell me about it?"

"Would you have believed me?" I asked her.

"Maybe," she said after a pause.

"I think you mean 'no,'" I smiled.

"Maybe not 'til I talked to Jill. But you're different. You're just a different person than you were before Christmas. The guy who got me the gift certificate, I knew him. The guy who spent last Christmas with Sheila instead of us, I knew him, too. I didn't like him much, but I knew him. The guy who was wearing the shirt I gave him, the guy who put on my scarf and hat, the guy who offered to drive me to Aunt Ruth's — him I didn't know at all. But I liked him too much."

"Too much to what?"

"To ask him who he was," she started crying again. This time it was me joining her.

"Didn't you ever want to start filling in the gaps?" Jeanne asked after we had recovered once again. "Maybe it would all come back."

"I did at the beginning. Was I really that big of a jerk? How did I get to be that big of a jerk? But then when I realized that yeah, I was that big of a jerk, I thought that maybe I didn't really want to know more. When the last thing you remember is kissing Cammie Rowe, and the next time you see her she's giving you the finger, you kind of think that hey, maybe it's better just to start over."

"That's what Tanya is, huh?"

"Yeah, sort of a do-over. Except she's not interested in me as a boyfriend."

"Bummer," Jeanne patted my knee.

"But she's a great friend," I smiled.

"Yeah," Jeanne smiled.

"And you're a great sister."

"That is so true. And a great singer, too."

I laughed.

"But you weren't one in eighth grade, right?"

"I discovered I could sing in the ninth grade. I'm not great or anything. But Mr. Collins said last year that he was going to do The Sound of Music just so I could sing Maria."

"So you are good," I pointed out proudly. "So you got the part."

She shook her head.

"They have another set of tryouts next week, and then he's going to announce the casting after we get back from our chorus trip."

"Trip?"

"We have a tour over spring break," she explained. "We leave next Friday afternoon."

"Cool. We leave on Saturday for our baseball tournament."

"Well, we all have talents."

"They just don't turn all of us into assholes," I grinned at her.

She grinned back.

"Of course, we don't all get do-overs, do we?"

"No," I agreed.

"So that's why you want to go to UVA now?"

"Well, to me it seems like I've always wanted to go to UVA. I guess it looks different to you, though, huh?"

"Oh, God, big time. Last year you were all, like, 'I'm gonna get picked in the first round of the draft and skip all that college shit.'"

"Really?" I asked.

"You really don't remember, do you?"

"Jerk," I said. "You were just testing me, weren't you?"

She smiled and spread her hands.

"Jilly's the one who believes everything you tell her. I'm the skeptic."

"Okay, skeptic. Now what do we do about Jill?"

Jeanne shook her head. Apparently, my memory loss was the only subject that had caused Jill to break her 72-hour silence. She had pretty much attached herself to Jeanne when she wasn't in school. Mostly, she just sat around quietly, reading or staring out the window. Jeanne thought that eventually she'd snap out of it, but she was particularly worried about leaving her alone for the weekend.

"Maybe she'll be better by then," I tried to comfort her. "I mean, that's a week and a half away."

"True."

She went back to her homework, and I went back to mine. Sliced face or not, police questioning notwithstanding, Mr. Anson was expecting a paper on the Civil War on Friday, and I hadn't even started writing yet.

In Astronomy lab on Wednesday, I ran into my first real obstacle to my quest for a do-over, a B-plus on my quiz. Yes, I knew there would be more quizzes. Yes, I knew that combined they would only represent ten percent of my grade. But still, it was damn hard to sit there and watch Cammie Rowe bounce in her seat as she tried to keep from telling everyone that she aced the thing.

The following period just added to the week's surrealism. As we had arranged, I met Bob in the office, where Rachel Carter sent us to an unused room on the second floor, after giving him a nice, long inspection. Sorry, Rachel, I already gave him to somebody else.

"All right," he said, looking terribly out of place in a student desk and chair. "First off, this is really all just a formality. Unless you tell them something they haven't heard before, they have no intention of charging you with anything."

"Then why are they doing it?"

"Andy's mother is a councilwoman. And the story she told police is the same one Andy told, that your sister invited him in, and then you and your brother attacked him.

"Which is nonsense, I know," he held up his hand to forestall my protests. "They have partial boot prints on the front door and the bedroom door, thanks to the mud in front of your house. They have statements from you, your brother, your sister Jeanne, and your friend Liane. But this screaming of yours is not going to help. They're going to try to trick you into admitting you did something — anything — that you shouldn't have so they can make Mrs. Lebo happy."

"I swear I'd be better off if people didn't have parents," I muttered.

He gave me a knowing smile.

"What you want to do," he explained, "is listen to the question. If you don't understand it, ask them to repeat it. If it has a false premise, like if they say "after you let Andy in the house," just correct it. Then before you answer take a deep breath. If I want to butt in, that's when I'll do it. Otherwise, just answer the question, calmly and slowly. Okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks."

"Sure. Now let's practice."

Bob Hastings' practice turned out to be just like the real thing. Detective Hickson and his friend Detective Trout didn't ask me a single question that Bob hadn't anticipated. I didn't once scream out that it was only a frickin' baseball because Bob had explained that, in my hands, even a frickin' baseball could be a lethal weapon.

The questioning seemed to turn about halfway through, when Trout asked me if Andy had come toward me after I'd blown out his knee.

"Yes, sir."

"And then you threw the baseball?"

"I think you need to be a little more specific that that, Detective" Bob interjected while I took my breath. "The word 'then' is awfully ambiguous."

Trout gave him a little smirk, and rephrased it.

"He took a step toward you, and immediately thereafter you threw the baseball at his head."

"No, sir. He took a step toward me, and then he stopped and looked back at my sister's room. They didn't have another way out, sir. That's when I threw the baseball."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



"At his head," Trout nodded.

"At his chin," I corrected him. "Not anywhere else on his head. If I wanted the baseball to hit somewhere else, sir, it would have."

Both detectives sat back, and the rest of the questioning was conducted with a distinct lack of interest on their part. At four-thirty, they finally told us that we were free to go.

"And the charges?" Bob asked.

"You know better than that, Counselor," Hickson chuckled.

"Have a nice day, gentlemen," he said as he led me out.

I sort of collapsed on the steps of the police station, and Bob took another two steps before he realized he'd left me behind.

"You did great, Trick," he said, sitting down beside me.

"Thanks to you," I blurted out.

"That's my job," he smiled.

"Well, thank God. How much do I owe you?"

"I'm just paying off a debt," he smiled.

"For what?"

"Lynn told me what you did for her," he said.

I shied away a little from him.

"She didn't tell me everything," he laughed at me. "Though I can guess some of it. But I think she considered your introducing her to me to be a sort of blessing from you."

"A blessing?" I nodded. "A blessing. That's pretty cool. Father Sterling."

"Don't even think about it, Mr. Sterling," he looked up into the clear blue sky as if waiting for lightning to strike. "And don't say it while I'm around."

We shook hands and I went home. I hadn't told anyone about my run-in with the law and I didn't tell anyone when I got home. Dave was coming home tomorrow afternoon. That was enough of a conversation topic for dinner, trumping even Tiffany's swollen belly. Even Jill was smiling a little. We spent the night setting up his room for him, including a bell on a pulley that he could use to let us know when he wanted something. Then I began writing my Civil War paper for Mr. Anson.

Thursday was our first "exhibition" baseball game of the year, basically an intra-squad contest before Coach made the final cuts. I pitched only an inning, because Coach wanted me fresh for the season opener the following Monday. On the other hand, he wanted me to have a little work, too, so I got into the game in the fourth inning. I threw a total of twelve pitches. A fastball and two change-ups struck out the first guy, who wasn't going to be making the team anyway. The second guy was Mo Perra, who swung at two fastballs and then fouled off a change. Tommy called for a curve on the fourth pitch, and I figured what the heck? I hadn't thrown a curve even to the plate, let alone over it. Sure, Tommy, let's show him the curve. It bounced two feet in front of the plate. But Mo was already swinging at it. The next batter was Jesse Trasker, and the first pitch went straight at his chin, knocking him down on his ass. After that — well, let's just say you probably aren't going to be making contact when you're standing two feet away from home plate. Three quick strikes and Jesse went back to put on his catcher's gear while I took a seat on the bench.

"That was a little close," Coach observed as he pretended to watch the game.

"He was crowding the plate. I just played him a little chin music."

"Friend of Lebo's, isn't he?"

"Darned if he's not, Coach," I said after pretending to think about it.

"You want him off the team?" he asked in a sincere voice.

He was looking directly at me now. I opened my mouth to say "yes" and surprised myself when "no" came out.

"Seriously?" Coach was surprised as well.

I shrugged.

"He can hit. He can catch, although Tommy is my catcher. Don't leave him off because of me."

Coach looked at me a little longer and then finally nodded and returned his attention to the game.

Thursday night I finished my paper and joined Dave and Jeanne for a game of Scrabble. Jill sat in a chair behind us. Dave accused Jeanne of letting him win, and she assured him that he'd won fair and square. I did notice that he didn't accuse me of anything. Apparently the whole family believed I'd lost my intelligence somewhere between the ninth and twelfth grades. Fair enough. Maybe I had.

On Friday, I pulled Tanya aside and eagerly informed her that I thought we should find time to get together this weekend for some benefits. After all, I pointed out, we hadn't had real benefits together for over a month. She just as eagerly asked me where we could do it, because her father had come down that morning with a bad case of the flu, and both of her parents were going to be underfoot all weekend long.

"Shit," I muttered. "We have Dave at the house now. And it's not like he's going anywhere for the weekend. For that matter, it's not like Jeanne's gonna leave Jill alone while she goes out on a date."

"Well, that's too bad," Jeanne said. "She and Sammy are a really cute couple. Maybe I should take Jill for a girls' night out."

"We don't need a girls' night out," I protested. "We need a guy's night in. Namely, this guy. In you."

"I know," she patted my cheek. "I need a guy in me, too."

I raised my eyebrows.

"I meant you, Patrick," she whacked me on the arm. "So if you think of a place that doesn't involve the back seat of that dinky car of yours, let me know. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until next weekend."

"Next weekend's out unless your parents go somewhere on Friday," I said in disappointment. "We got invited to some fancy tournament that weekend. We leave on Saturday."

"You'll be back by Monday night, won't you?" she asked in a worried voice.

"I think so," I said. "We got two games on Sunday and one on Monday morning. Why?"

"Passover starts on Monday night," she said. "I already told Mom and Dad you'd be coming over for the Seder."

"The Seder?" I asked doubtfully.

"Yes, there will be food, Patrick," she assured me.

"I'll be there," I nodded. This girl was getting to know me much too well. "If we're back, I'll be there. The Seder. Huh. And then Easter's the following weekend. You want to go to church with me?"

She looked very skeptical.

"Where you all stand around and blame the Jews for killing Jesus?" she asked.

"Naw, that's earlier in the week," I said. "I'm joking, Tanya. We don't do any of that. Jesus was a Jew."

"Yeah, I know that," Tanya said. "Sometimes I wonder if everybody else does. All right, Patrick Sterling, but if I find even one hint of anti-Semitism, you'll be benefit-less for the next month."

"So I'm responsible for everyone at St. James Church?" I protested.

"You're a big boy," Tanya smiled. "You can handle it."

Coach posted the cut list on Friday afternoon, and Jesse Trasker sort of accidentally sat down next to me at practice that afternoon.

"Sterling."

"Trasker."

"You could have kept me off the team, right?"

I gave him a look that suggested that yeah, maybe I could have.

"So how come?"

"I guess I'd rather have you on my team than not on my team," I finally suggested.

That seemed to satisfy him, although my motives were probably a little more egotistical. Jesse Trasker was a jock who wanted to win. And as good a pitcher as Cary Roberts was, if Marshall High was going to have a winning season, it was going to be on my arm. So I wanted to give Jesse Trasker as strong an interest as I had in making sure that arm didn't get hurt.

Friday night was a disaster. Dad came down sick as well, so I was the one who ended up taking Tiffany to the bowling alley. And to top it off, Tanya came over to my house to keep Jill company while Jeanne went off on a date with Sammy. Man, I just couldn't catch a break. I did bowl a 212, though, while Tiffany was scarfing down her pizza. Saturday was another lost opportunity. We had baseball practice in the morning, and Tanya came over for supper with the family. Then Tanya joined our Scrabble game in the basement, and whipped all of our butts. And then she went home.

The next day in church I was back in the last row by myself. Cammie had invited me to join her and Jeanne in the front pew, but I had declined with equal politeness. I figured I'd just rather be by myself. So I prayed alone. I knew better than to ask God to create an opportunity for Tanya and me to get together some time before I left on this trip. But I asked anyway. I mean, it couldn't hurt, right?

Chapter 17

Monday was the season opener against Park View, and we were all happy to find the bleachers full. Jeanne and Sammy were there, and Jill and Cammie and Tanya. Even my Aunt Ruth had come for the game.

I just hoped they would be able to see a good game. As I finished my warm-up throws before the first inning, and watched Tommy's peg to second go right through the second baseman's glove into centerfield, I began to realize that this might be a very long season. Coach had announced the starting lineup at Saturday's practice. Tommy would be catching, Mo would play first and Rabbit was the starting shortstop. Eddie Carper, a sophomore who had at least been on the JV team last year, was at second. Matt Denton was at third. He was a junior with a decent bat but suspect fielding skills. Jesse was in right field, because Coach wanted his bat in the lineup. Hal Stonerider, a senior who'd ridden the bench last year, was in center and my pal Bobby Bunt was in left.

My sense of unease only increased during the first inning. What looked to my untrained eye to be a fairly routine grounder by Park View's leadoff hitter went right through Matt's legs at third. I threw the next pitch right down the center of the plate, and their number two hitter sent it straight back at me. I snapped my glove out by instinct and the ball went right into it. It got a nice "Ooooh" from the crowd, and Matt yelled at me to throw it around the horn.

"Time," I asked the umpire.

He held his hands out for time, and I waved Tommy out and Matt over. Tommy was just my cover; it was Matt I needed to talk to.

"Mattie, you see that guy on first?"

"Yeah."

"See, when we got a guy on first, we don't throw it around the horn, on account of somebody might drop it, see? And then we got a guy on second."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh. Now come on, let's get our head in the game."

I was very conscious that Coach wanted to limit my pitches in my first game. So I only used four more the first inning. One three-pitch strikeout and then a nice fat pitch to the cleanup hitter, who was so surprised at getting something he could hit that he popped it up to third base. He slammed the bat to the ground and walked back to the dugout, so that when Matt dropped the fly, he still had an easy throw over to Mo at first for the out. We were in real trouble.

We got three runs in the bottom of the first, on a slap single by Bobby, a sacrifice by Rabbit, an RBI double by me, and a homerun by Mo. Jesse and Matt grounded out to end the inning, but after that we got four more runs and put ourselves on a kind of on cruise control. There were a couple more errors by Matt and one by Eddie that let Park View close within five runs. We scored again, and by the time I came out of the game in the fifth, we were comfortably ahead by the score of 9-2. I was working on an earned run average of 0.00, and I gave Tanya a thumbs up when Coach came out to get me.

"So Coach," I slid over to sit next to him when we were out in the field in the eighth. "We don't have any other third basemen?"

"I'm open to suggestions," he said.

I had no idea who else would be a good third baseman, so I decided to offer another suggestion.

"How 'bout if Mattie takes some extra infield?"

"I think that's a great idea," he gave me a big smile. "But I can't do that as the coach, you understand? League rules and all."

"Okay," I nodded.

"Course, if the captain wanted to make that kind of suggestion..." his voice trailed off as he watched the action on the field.

I looked around the field and realized I had no idea who the captain was. Obviously we had one, but since I had no memory of ever playing baseball before, or any other sport for that matter, I had no idea how you were supposed to know who it was. Before I could figure it out, the game got interesting, thanks to our shaky relief pitching. It finally ended with a bases-loaded pop-up to short, which Rabbit had no trouble handling. A 9-5 win looked pretty good in the books, but it should have been a little less exciting than that.

Tanya was waiting outside the locker room afterward, but I was still surprised when she accepted my offer to take her out to dinner. After all, that would almost make it a date. As it turned out, she just wanted to tell me that she'd talked to Jeanne earlier in the day.

"About what?" I asked.

"About your memory, and your do-over."

"And?"

"Just that. And I believe you now. So when I'm married to a nice Jewish guy with a bunch of nice Jewish kids, and you're married to some —"

"Shiksa?" I asked.

"Exactly. You'll still be my best friend, Patrick Sterling."

"And you'll be mine," I lied. Right. Like I'd ever introduce my wife to a former girlfriend as hot as Tanya Szerchenko. Say, babe, this is my best friend, Tanya. You don't mind if we just hang out and talk, right? Well, yeah, she is attractive, now that you mention it, and we did do it a couple of times, but it didn't mean anything. You're the one I love. Yeah, I can see that happening.

"In the meantime, though," she interrupted my reverie. "I think I've figured out a plan for Friday night."

I managed not to spit out the food in my mouth, and calmly indicated that she should tell me more.

"Jeanne's going to be taking Jill on her chorus trip," she leaned forward in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Seriously?" I said. "That's really neat of her."

"Yeah, so —"

"I really hope she can snap out of this funk, you know."

"Do you want to hear about the weekend or not?"

"Well, yeah, sorry. But I mean..."

"I know. She's your sister. Sometimes I so wish you were Jewish. I hope she's better, too. We had a nice time on Friday night. So anyway, if your Dad and Tiffany go bowling..."

"That still leaves Dave," I pointed out.

"I think I have just the thing for Dave," she leaned back in her chair.

"Which is?" I said after a long pause.

"You'll just have to trust me on this," she smiled.

I tried to calm myself with another bite of food. Women.

We had another game on Wednesday, at Bishop Connor, the Catholic school in the city. Cary was pitching, Jesse was catching, and I was in right field. We were doing our best to keep the game close on both sides. Mo and I had each homered with men on base for four quick runs, and our stellar rookies had committed four errors to account for three runs for Connor. I was sitting on the bench next to Rabbit in the top of the third. Coach had bumped him down in the order because Matt Denton had had a good practice yesterday, and Coach wanted to boost his confidence a little. Rabbit was a little bummed about it. I was about to tell him to suck it up and get over it when I looked up in the stands and saw a familiar baseball cap on a man sitting by himself taking notes.

"Rabbit," I hissed.

"What?"

"Look there, in the stands. See that guy in the green jacket?"

"Yeah?"

"What kind of cap is that?"

"University of Virginia, I think," he said. "Why?"

"Think Coach'll let me go talk to him?"

"During the game?"

"Yeah."

"No. We've already got two outs."

It was a good point. The next inning, though, after Cary had given up another run to even the score and we returned to the dugout, I asked Coach for permission to leave the dugout. Hal, our first batter, was still looking for his bat, so Rabbit was standing near us, waiting to take his place in the on deck circle.

"Why?" Coach asked.

"He might be a scout."

"Now you want to go to Virginia?"

"Yeah," I gave him a crooked grin. "Maybe."

"Who's coming up?" he looked at his card. "Hal, Rabbit, and Cary. Make sure you're back here when Cary starts hitting."

I took off at a jog, although Hal's first-pitch pop-up left me with grave doubts about my spending any quality time with the guy. I turned it into a sprint, and approached him with a breathless smile.

He folded up the notebook he was writing in and gave me a smile.

"Hello, son. What can I do for you?"

"Are you a scout, sir? For the Cavaliers?"

"In a manner of speaking, son," he held out his hand. "Buddy Rogers."

"Pat Sterling," I said, giving him as hearty a handshake as I could. "I was, uh, wondering, sir, if the school had any uncommitted scholarships for the coming year."

He shook his head. Oh, fuck.

"Although there is that one kid, out in California," he said, "who's probably gonna go to Stanford instead of here. But if he turns me down, there's a lefty down in Georgia that I have my eye on."

"I'm a lefty, sir," I said eagerly. "I was hoping you could save a scholarship for me."

"A left-handed pitcher, son," he said.

"Yes, sir, I'm a left-handed pitcher."

He gave me a patronizing smile.

"I'll tell you what, son," he said. "I'm actually here to look at this kid playing shortstop for Connor here, for the following year's team. But I've got my assistants' list of this year's prospects right here."

"You're not a scout, sir?"

"I'm the coach, son," he chuckled. "We have an off day, and I owe Connor's coach a favor, so I told him I'd take a look at his boy. Anyway, if your name's on the list, I'll be happy to give you a look-see."

I flipped the list over a number of times, trying to figure out different spellings for my name. I anxiously glanced out at the field, where Rabbit had run the count up to two balls and two strikes. I finally found my name, on a different list.

"Sir," I asked after a while, "what's the IYDB list?"

He laughed.

"That stands for 'In Your Dreams, Buddy,'" he said, taking it from me and skimming the list before he pointed to a name. "See, I ask my assistant, what about this Trick Sterling kid at Marshall? And they say in your dreams, buddy. There's no way that kid's not turning pro."

"Not if I get into UVA, sir," I said.

He stared at me for a couple of seconds.

Rabbit fouled off a pitch.

"I'm sorry, son, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"That's me, sir, Patrick Sterling," I said. "Trick for short. From Marshall. This is Marshall. We're the visiting team."

He looked out onto the field and then back at me, and then down at his clipboard and then back at me.

"Son, are you seriously telling me that you want to attend the University of Virginia?"

"Yes, sir, my uncle Ted, Ted Clark, teaches history there."

"I know Ted," he said absent-mindedly. "Have you submitted an application?"

Rabbit fouled off another pitch.

"No, sir," I hung my head. "I've been kind of, um, just screwing around up until now. But I am serious, sir. Dead serious. Is that a really big problem, sir?"

"If I still have a scholarship, Trick, I'll have my secretary fill out the damn application. How are your grades?"

"Not too good, sir," I said. "Uncle Ted told me about your standards. I don't have the grades now, but I think I can get them by the end of the semester."

He thought about it for a minute as Rabbit took a third ball.

"And your SAT?"

"The last one was a bit low, sir, but I'll have a new score any day now."

"Let me tell you my problem here, Trick," he finally said after Rabbit had fouled off yet another pitch. "If I get to the end of the semester, and you decide you'd rather go pro, or you don't get the grades, it's going to be too late for me to find a top-quality recruit. You see my problem, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"How big a problem do you think that is?"

"The part about my deciding to go somewhere else, sir? That's not a problem. The grades? I'm working just as hard as I can on that, sir."

He gave me a long stare as Rabbit fouled off another pitch.

"Let me think about it, son. How do I get hold of you?"




A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



I gave him my address, phone numbers, e-mail address, everything I could think of. He stopped me when I started to give him Tanya's contact information, in case I wasn't available.

Rabbit sent a foul ball screaming towards us. It hit the bleachers harmlessly a little to our right, but it was enough to make me look down at Rabbit in the batter's box. He was looking back up at me, his hands spread wide, as the pitcher paced around the back of the mound.

"Well?" he mouthed.

I nodded, and he sent the next pitch screaming into left field for a single.

Mr. Rogers shook my hand, and wished us good luck in the game today. I left him there in the bleachers and returned to my seat on the bench in time to see Cary ground into a double play.

"Thanks," I said to Rabbit as I tossed him his glove on my way to right field.

"Don't mention it," he smiled.

By the top of the final inning, we were back in the lead, although only by a single run. Cary had been taken out during the top of the fifth inning when he started to tire, and we were now in the hands of our relief pitchers. I sidled over next to Coach.

"I can give you an inning," I said.

"You threw enough on Monday," he shook his head.

"Nine pitches," I said. "Just nine pitches."

He looked back at me and up into the stands where Buddy Rogers was still sitting, and then nodded.

"Narburg!" he yelled. "Warm Trick up."

The bottom of the seventh — the last inning in high school baseball — actually took ten pitches, because their first baseman fouled off a wicked third strike on the outside corner. But when it was over, three strikeouts later, it was in the books as a 10-9 Marshall win. Coach Rogers was waiting for me at the door to the bus.

"I'll call you tomorrow, son," he said with a barely disguised smile.

"I'll look forward to it, sir."

Instead, I was summoned down to the office after fifth period by a very excited Rachel Carter, who practically shoved me into the vacant desk next to hers and threw a pen and a pad of paper at me. Then she just sat there smiling at me.

"So I'm getting prettier already?" I finally asked. "And you decided we should spend more time together?"

"Shut up," she said. As if on cue, the phone rang.

"Marshall High School," she sang out. "Yes, ma'am, he's right here. Push the blinking button, Trick."

"Why?" I asked.

"Just push it!"

I pushed it.

"Hello?"

"Patrick Sterling?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"This is Cynthia Salem. I'm Coach Rogers' secretary at the University of Virginia."

"Yes, ma'am," I smiled. I liked the way she said that. THE University of Virginia.

"I believe we need to fill out an application."

"Yes, ma'am," I agreed. I looked over to see Rachel Carter practically glowing at her desk.

It was a great week, except for Jill. She was still a sort of zombie as she boarded the afternoon bus with Jeanne and the other choristers, including Cammie. Dad and Tiffany left shortly after seven for the bowling alley, with Tiffany making sure that I knew that they wouldn't be home until after eleven. I was still none the wiser about Tanya's plans for the evening, but by now it was clear that she had enlisted Tiffany as a co-conspirator. The knock on the door came less than ten minutes later.

I opened it to find a pom-pom thrust in my face and then yanked back to reveal a beautiful blonde.

"Are you de guys dat awdahed de cheehleadahs?" Liane's gum-chewing New Yawk accent was flawless.

"Ordered, um, cheerleaders?" I asked slowly. "Plural?"

"We nevah delivah alone in this neighbuhood," a gum-chewing Tanya stepped out from in back of Liane. They were wearing identical cheerleader outfits: sleeveless sky blue tops that ended well above their belly buttons, with white piping and with a large "M" across the front; matching short skirts that were so tight they looked like they would be hard to move in; and white tennis shoes.

So are you atheletes gonna let us in, or what?" Liane asked after I'd stared at them for much too long.

"Uh, yeah, I mean, yes, of course, come in."

"Oooh, muscles," Liane squeezed my arm as she passed me.

"Oh, I wanted dis one," Tanya pouted as she followed and I shut the door.

"All right," Liane huffed. "Beeyitch. Where's de udder one?"

"Um, downstairs," I pointed.

Tanya and I watched Liane pull open the door to Dave's basement apartment.

"Are ya decent down theyah, sweetie?" she yelled down.

"Liane?" Dave answered in a panic-stricken voice. "No, I —"

"Good," Liane said. She turned back to us. "See ya, sweetie."

"See ya," Tanya answered her.

I turned to look at her again.

"This is just amaz —" I had a big smile by now.

"So ya got a game tomorrow, right?" Tanya interrupted me.

"I, uh, yeah, a game," I stammered. "The big game."

"Good," she said in an echo of Liane's earlier approval. "So ya got a bed, sweetie?"

"Upstairs," I gestured, letting her precede me. I followed, watching those long legs extend out of that short, tight skirt as they slowly ascended the stairs. I reached for the skirt, and she reached back to slap my hand.

"Naughty boy," she laughed. "Just hold yer horses."

She sashayed into my room and leapt onto the bed with a pirouette that left her sitting against the headboard.

"There," she said. "Now speakin' o' horses, let's see dat stallion all de girls have been talkin' about."

"Um..."

"Come on, sugah," she snapped her fingers. "What kinda frat house is dis? Dey just let de slow guys in? I'll bet Liane's already got your brudda undressed."

"He was taking a shower," I said as I nearly ripped off the buttons on my shirt.

"Excuses, excuses," Tanya shook her head. "Maybe somebody isn't interested in a little cheerleader pussy."

Her voice had returned to its normal state, and she spread her legs to let me know that the only thing between me and cheerleader pussy were my own clothes. I was naked in mere seconds, my face buried between those cheerleader thighs.

"Oh, God, Pat, I was so hot coming over here," she said breathily as my tongue explored her.

I looked up over the skirt that was bunched around her hips to see her reach for the bottom of her cheerleader top.

"Leave it," I growled.

"Oooh, somebody likes the idea of doing a —"

"Leave it and shut up," I grabbed her hands off the top and pulled them underneath her ass, causing her to squeal and making her just that much easier to snack on.

I kept at it, tonguing and sucking through all the moans and the gasps until I finally got to the "oh, Pat, honey, Trick, oh, fuck, honey, I'm almost... almost..."

I looked up over the skirt again, taking a moment to admire how her sky blue chest was rising and falling, how the lids of her nearly closed eyes were fluttering, and how her lips were trembling. Then I stopped.

Tanya's eyes flew open.

"Honey?" she asked hopefully.

I sat back on the bed.

"My turn," I said cheerfully.

"You bastard," Tanya said with a little heat.

"Athlete," I explained, holding up my hands. I nodded toward her. "Cheerleader." And down at my erect cock. "Blowjob."

"You bastard," Tanya was laughing now. "I'll give you a blowjob."

She did the same thing to me I'd done to her, bringing me right to the edge and then stopping. Then she went back to her sucking, to licking the shaft, to kissing the balls, to swirling her tongue around the head. And then she stopped again.

"You're just being mean now," I laughed.

"Payback's a bitch," she grinned up at me.

We were both laughing as I grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and sat her down in my lap as she folded her legs on either side of me. A little squirming on her part was all it took to get me lined up properly and slip inside of her. But I just held her there, the tip of my dick parting her but going no farther.

"Trick," she warned me, her eyes lidded once again.

"Honey?" I asked her.

"Pat," this one came out as more of a whine.

I let her go, and she impaled herself on my dick. I leaned back and watched Tanya ride me, her hand gripping the base of my cock like she was afraid she would get bucked off. I was half afraid of that myself, and kept my arms resting on her thighs in case she got too rambunctious. Other than that, it was all Tanya: Tanya rising, Tanya falling, Tanya squeezing me with muscles that I had never felt before.

"Oh, Pat," she squeaked. "Oh, honey, yes... yes... oh, I, oh..."

I pushed my hands forward on her thighs until the fingers slid underneath that skirt, finally meeting and then climbing the angle of flesh where her legs joined her hips.

"Oh, Pat," Tanya squealed again, looking down at her lap, where she could feel but not see the thumbs of both of my hands sliding toward her clit.

"Honey," she keened, grabbing hold of both of my wrists and then stiffening, her face thrown back her eyes wide open now, her mouth locked in an astonished "O." Her body shook with release, and then finally she collapsed forward onto my chest.

"You haven't," she panted. "You haven't come yet, Pat."

"Do that thing again you did before," I pushed the hair out of her eyes and smiled at her.

"What thing?" she asked, breathing heavily.

"That thing where you squeezed me with your little cheerleader pussy and I — oh, fuck!"

She pushed herself back to a sitting position and did "that thing" a couple more times, smiling down at me as she brought me to a very vocal climax of my own.

"Tanya. Oh, fuck! Oh, yeah, honey. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yes. Uh. Uh."

"Mmmm," she snuggled onto my chest. I had slipped out of her, but she was still sitting astride my lap, and we just held each other for a long, long time.

So long, in fact, that the next thing we heard was "Hey, sweetie, we gotta go."

I looked up to see Liane in the doorway smiling at us.

"Tanya," I shook her a little.

She mumbled something.

"Tanya," I said again.

"I'm coming," she said, sitting up and again finding herself impaled on me.

"Not again you're not, girlfriend," Liane laughed. "They'll be home soon."

"All right," Tanya said. "Beeyitch."

The two laughed together and Tanya joined Liane in the doorway.

"You sure I can't borrow him when you're not using him?" Liane asked Tanya, giving me a predatory smile.

"A shiksa like you?" I answered for her. "Not a chance."

They left and I went down to find out if Dave needed anything before I turned in.

"Did that really just happen?" he asked me sleepily. Apparently he'd already taken one of his pain meds.

"Yeah," I said. "I just hope you didn't pull out any stitches."

I was in a very good mood the next morning, when we boarded the bus for the five-hour ride to the tournament site. I slept most of the trip, and woke up only after we'd arrived at the motel. Tommy and I got settled in our room, and then it was back on the bus for a late afternoon practice session at the minor league stadium where we would be playing our first game.

"Trick," Coach called out as I finished throwing. I followed him into the dugout.

"We got invited here because we had a good team," he explained.

I nodded.

"Unfortunately, that was last year," he said. "There's no way we can win this thing. We only have two decent pitchers, and if you and Cary both win, we're gonna get killed in the final. Which'll make everybody miserable for the rest of the week. So what I'm gonna do is pitch you in the first game tomorrow morning. If you can win that, we'll finish no worse than fourth. Then I'll pitch Steve or Donnie in the second game, tomorrow afternoon. We'll lose that one. So on Monday we'll be playing for third place. Cary can pitch that one, and I'll have you available for an inning or two. How's that sound?"

"Fine, Coach," I shrugged. I didn't get it. All he needed to say was "Sterling, you're pitching tomorrow. Don't screw up or we'll be playing for last place."

I found out why the next day. We were ahead 1-0 in the fourth against one of the local teams, Clifford High School. With one out left to go before we took the field for the bottom of the fourth, Rabbit leaned over to me and said he'd be shading their captain a little bit toward third right this time. If it was hit back to me, I should go to Eddie if there was a man on first.

"And, uh, which one is that?" I asked innocently. "The captain?"

"The shortstop?" Rabbit looked at me quizzically. "Guy with the 'C' on his chest?"

"The 'C, '" I smiled. "Got it. Thanks, Rabbit."

"Are you okay, Trick?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, peering around our dugout without success.

"Are you looking for something?"

I finally gave up.

"Oh, hell, Rabbit, who's our captain?"

"Parker, on deck!" Coach yelled.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked as he stood up.

It wasn't until he walked away that I figured it out. I surreptitiously glanced down at my own chest. "C." I was the captain. Well, that was embarrassing.

We ended up winning that game 2-0, since nobody on the Clifford team had figured out the percentages in hitting the ball to our third baseman. It was only after the game had ended and we were eating a very nice buffet that the host school had laid out for us that I remembered it was Sunday and that I hadn't been to church that day. I figured that was okay. I'd done plenty of praying during the game, mostly that they wouldn't hit the ball at Mattie. That probably counted.

After lunch, though, and a short bus trip to the nearby college where we would play our second game, I learned that I must have used all my prayers up. Hell, even the left-handed hitters on our semifinal opponent were trying to punch the ball toward third. Neither Donnie nor Steve could stop them, and at the end of the fifth they invoked the mercy rule on us, so that it went down as a 16-6 defeat. I could only thank God that it hadn't happened at home.

That evening I knocked on the door of the room that Mattie was sharing with one of our backup outfielders, Ron Braskin. I could hear the TV, so I kept pounding on the door, and Ron finally opened it on the chain.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sorry. I was afraid it was Coach."

I walked in to find the two of them watching a porn movie on a channel that probably should have been restricted.

"Mattie, tell me why you aren't outside gettin' somebody to hit you grounders," I said.

"Aw, fuck you, Sterling," he answered, watching the movie and not embarrassed at all about his performance.

"No, fuck you, Denton," I retorted. I reached down and found the cable to the television, surprising myself at the ease with which I could yank it out of the wall.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Ron screamed at me.

"Right now?" I asked. "I'm going to go tell Coach that I broke your TV. You want me to tell him what you were watching on it?"

"NO!" they both yelped at once.

"Good choice," I smiled. "Maybe we can trade rooms after you take some infield over in that grassy area next to the parking lot, huh?"

I explained to Coach what I had done, emphasizing my anger and omitting the porn. I volunteered to pay for the damage once we returned home, and I repeated my offer to switch rooms. He told me that wasn't necessary and that he'd explain it to the hotel. If they couldn't fix it, he said, Matt and Ron could have his room. He had a smile on his face when I left his room.

I returned to the room I shared with Tommy.

"You talk to Mattie?" he said without lifting his head from the book he was reading.

"How did you know I was going to talk to Matt?"

"Somebody had to. You're the captain. Who better than you?"

I sat down and picked up "Moby Dick," but my thoughts were elsewhere. Maybe I had finally reached a turning point. There probably wasn't anyone better than me to take on that job. And I had done it, too.

Chapter 18

Monday morning's game was a distinct improvement over Sunday's afternoon fiasco. The minor league stadium was reserved for the championship game, so our third-place game was played at the college field where we'd been yesterday. Cary started off well, but got shelled for four runs in the top of the fourth inning. Mo and I had already driven in three runs, and Jesse added a two-run shot in the bottom of the fourth to put us back into the lead. In the top of the fifth, their best hitter sent a tough bouncer toward Matt, and we all held our breaths. But he scooped it out of the dirt and threw it over to first to beat the guy by two steps. The guys in the dugout leaped off the bench to cheer him. Mattie turned and gave me a thumbs up. Cary settled down again, and we went on to an 8-5 win and a third-place trophy. We left after another great lunch, and got home around six.

I raced home, showered, and arrived at Tanya's around seven, well before sunset. That gave us all a while to chat before the Seder began. It was a fairly formal gathering, and I was a little nervous. We were all a little nervous, actually. Unlike Purim, we hadn't had anything to drink.

"So, have you been done anything exciting for your spring break so far?" Mrs. Szerchenko asked as we sat uncomfortably in the living room.

I gave Tanya a malicious grin and leaned forward.

"I did break a television yesterday," I told her parents.

"You broke a television?" Tanya asked with alarm. "In the motel?"

"You were in a motel?" Mrs. Szerchenko's radar had gone on full alert. "What were you doing in a motel?"

"I was out of town, ma'am. We had a tournament."

"How did you break a television?" Tanya asked.

"What kind of tournament?" her mother inquired.

"Ladies, ladies," Mr. Szerchenko came to my aid. "First off, tell Tanya how you broke a television."

"I yanked the cord out of the wall," I smiled.

"Why?" Tanya insisted.

"Does she get another question?" I asked her father.

"No. Now tell Anna what kind of tournament you were at."

"A baseball tournament."

"You play baseball?" Mr. Szerchenko's face lit up.

"Yes, sir." I turned to Tanya. "You never told them I play baseball?"

"It never came up," she said weakly.

"Pffft," her father exhaled noisily through pursed lips. "She thinks we're intellectuals who hate sports."

"You do hate sports, daddy," Tanya protested.

"I hate overpaid professional athletes," he corrected her. "But amateur sports, that's a different question. Did you know the Final Four is on tonight, Patrick?"

"I did know that, sir," I grinned.

"I have a television in the study," he winked. "In case we get tired of celebrating the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. Now, as for baseball, my favorite sport —"

"You've never watched a baseball game in your life, daddy," Tanya sputtered.

"And how much of my life have you been around for young lady? Eighteen, almost nineteen years?"

"When is her birthday?" I interjected.

"April 28th," Mr. Szerchenko said quickly to avoid interrupting his argument. "And I am how old, sixty-one? So how much of my life is that you've been here for? A third?"

"Less than a third, I think," I put in, getting a dirty look from Tanya and a grin from her father.

"I'll admit I haven't watched it recently," he continued. "They're all overpaid now. Isn't that right, Patrick?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," I scratched my head. "I'm sure they're worth every penny they get."

"You just say that because you're going to get drafted," Tanya said.

"You're good enough to be drafted?" her father seemed to swell with pride.

"Well, we'll see," I said with a smile.

"So you're not going to college?" Mrs. Szerchenko was prepared to act horrified.

"Oh yes, ma'am," I said. "If I can get a scholarship to the University of Virginia, I'll go there. And if not, there's always the draft."

Mr. Szerchenko leaned forward.

"Do you know who Sandy Koufax was?" he asked, nearly vibrating with excitement.

"Yes, sir," I said. "Left-handed pitcher for the Dodgers. Back in the sixties. I'm a left-handed pitcher, too, so I Googled the best ones to see if I could learn anything."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



"I saw him at Shea Stadium when I was fourteen, and again the next year. He was Jewish, you know?"

"I did not know that, sir."

"He refused to play on Yom Kippur once in the World Series. Not that they needed him with that damn Drysdale."

"I do know he had a great curveball," I smiled and leaned back.

"And you?" he asked. "How's your curveball?"

"I have a good fastball. My curve only goes about fifty-eight feet, six inches so far."

Mr. Szerchenko burst into laughter to the bewilderment of his wife and daughter.

"Home plate is sixty feet, six inches from the pitcher's mound," he explained. "Your friend's curve breaks a little too early."

"I still can't believe you watched baseball," Tanya shook her head.

"And I can't believe that you didn't want to tell us that your friend was an athlete," her mother shot back.

It looked like the beginning of a good family argument. I had no idea why Tanya had tried to keep it a secret, but it was time for me to play the white knight.

"I think she was afraid I'd get a swelled head," I said to her parents.

"I'm sorry?" her father turned to look at me.

"She liked me before she knew I was a jock," I smiled at Tanya. "And I think she wants to make sure that I always know that. I do tend to kind of get a little full of myself in the spring. My sister calls this the golden arm."

I held the arm out as if it was an object worthy of everyone's reverence, and Tanya whacked the other one. The tension was broken. Tanya's mother got up to finish getting the dinner ready and her father excused himself, too. My best girl and I were left sitting alone on the couch.

"So this is the Seder?" I asked after a pause. "The meal that follows a Jewish family counseling session?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just didn't think they'd understand."

"Why you like somebody who likes sports?" I asked softly.

She nodded.

"Cause all of your earlier boyfriends have been, like, chess guys?"

She nodded again.

"Maybe they don't care, you know. Maybe they just like the people you like. Maybe they trust you."

"And you're saying that I should trust them?"

"Hashem forbid I should get into the middle of this," I said. Tanya whacked me again and I raised my voice toward the kitchen. "Is there anything I can help you with, Mrs. Szerchenko? Please?"

She came out with a bottle of wine for me to open, and the Seder was underway. It was amazing. I hate to call it a meal, because it was a meal and a celebration and a solemn religious observance and a discussion group and an occasion for love. And for me, of course, it was an education, although it reminded me a lot of Christmas at my Aunt Ruth's. I found myself wondering what Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill were doing for Easter this coming Sunday. It wasn't until I left, in fact, that I realized that I had no idea who had won the NCAA Final Four.

Early the next morning I got a phone call from Bob Hastings.

"Trick, I just want to let you know that Andy Lebo was released from the hospital yesterday."

"Jeez," I said, "I kinda thought he would have been out before now."

"Evidently he needed a second operation," Mr. Hastings explained.

"So he's not being charged either?" I asked, a little shocked.

"Hell, yes, he's being charged. Breaking and entering, assault, assault with intent to maim, destruction of property — it's a nice, long list."

"So he's in jail?" I asked hopefully.

"I'm afraid not, pal. But it cost his parents a $500,000 bond, and they forfeit it if he gets within one hundred feet of the school or any member of your family. So I wouldn't be surprised if his folks are finding a nice military school for him to finish his education."

"I guess he couldn't get into to Richmond Arms, huh?" I asked, naming the girls' school where my former girlfriend Stephie van Carlen was finishing her education in lieu of going to the same school as I did.

Mr. Hastings started to chuckle.

"I wonder how far down I am from valedictorian?" I mused aloud, getting an even bigger laugh. We finished the call, and I went out to celebrate. Actually, I went shopping.

Practice wasn't until 3:00, so as soon as I hung up with Mr. Hastings, I called Tanya see if she was free. She was and — oh lucky day! — so was her mother. I don't know why, but I thought that all mothers worked. Mine had. Everybody else's did. Mrs. Szerchenko did not. So my plan to spend the day with Tanya, at her house, just the two of us, never got off the ground. Instead, it was going to be a shopping trip for three. What fun we were going to have.

It was the first time I'd gone back to the mall where I'd had my really freaky meeting with Santa Claus in 2003, just over three months ago on the Patrick Sterling timeline. I was afraid that would weird me out a little bit, but the mall is a much different, much colder place in the non-Christmas season. So I very amiably spent most of the morning and early afternoon listening to the two women argue about shoes. Mrs. Szerchenko also insisted on buying me a hideous baseball tie. All in all, the first part of the day went just about as well as I would have predicted if you had told me I was going to spend it at women's shoe stores in the mall.

Practice that afternoon came as a welcome relief. So, for that matter, did my assignment the next morning to stay home for Dave duty. Dad grudgingly took the day off from work to take Tiffany to the doctor's office for another checkup. At that point, it was starting to look to me like the poor women didn't need a checkup so much as she needed somebody to come and remove the damn thing. Her due date wasn't for another five weeks, on May 11, but I didn't think she could possibly get any larger. That evening, when we all had dinner together down in Dave's room, Tiffany told us that she had finally broken down and asked the doctor about the baby's sex. It was a girl, it turned out, and she and Dad had planned on naming it Brittany. What did we think of that?

We tried to be thrilled. Until Dave pointed out that if their next one was a boy they could name it Normandy. Then we were just laughing too hard.

"You guys are very funny," Tiffany said. "Ha-ha-ha. I wonder whose room we'll start making over for the nursery."

"His," Dave stopped laughing pointed at me. "He'll be gone right after the draft."

"His," I pointed at Dave. "Tanya's gonna make him go to college."

We both looked at each other and turned to Tiffany.

"Jeanne's," we said in unison.

"But she'll be here for another year," Tiffany protested.

"She can double up with Jill," I explained.

"Girls love that," Dave agreed.

"Men," Tiffany huffed. "You're all just useless."

All three of us were looking at her pear-shaped body.

"I didn't say you weren't necessary, just useless," she snapped back.

I tried calling Tanya that evening, but remembered, when I got her voicemail, that her parents had taken her into the city for an opera. They'd invited me along for that one, too — her father had been particularly eager to offer me his ticket — but I pleaded my "Obsession" paper. In truth, I hadn't even really started it yet. I had wasted the first week milking my fight injuries and finishing my History paper, and the second week concentrating on baseball. I only had four days left, which included another game and Easter. So I really did have to work on it that night. Besides, opera? Were they serious?

On Thursday morning I got a call from Rachel Carter, asking me to come into school. I pointed out to her that I was on spring break, and she pointed out to me that I was still a senior at Marshall and if I wanted to graduate with my class, I'd better get my damn butt into school. I was more than a little reluctant, right up until I actually walked into the office.

"Trick!" Rachel yelped as I walked up to the counter. She jumped out of her seat, rushed around the counter, and leaped on me, throwing her arms around my neck. She was wearing a particularly attractive soft, knitted turtleneck, and I found myself wishing that I hadn't worn a windbreaker. I mean, it wasn't every day a guy got a hug from Rachel Carter.

"So I'm not in trouble?" I asked when I put her back down on the ground.

"God, no," she laughed. "We got an e-mail from the SAT, and I just wanted to say congratulations."

"You got my score?"

"You didn't check online?"

Now that she mentioned it, I did remember being given a card with a password that I could use to get my score on the SAT website. I sheepishly pulled it out of my wallet and Rachel triumphantly seated me at her desk as I brought up the website and plugged in the information.

"Holy shit!" I pointed at the screen.

Rachel cuffed me on the back of the head.

"I mean, gosh, look at that. A combined score of 1970. That's pretty good, right?"

She cuffed me again, and I turned around to look at her.

"For sarcasm," she explained. "You know damn well it's good."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"You said 'damn!'" I pointed at her.

She frowned. Then she laughed.

"Your friend Mr. Hickson wrote to apologize for taking so much of our time," she said.

I invited her out for a celebratory lunch, but she told me that since Mr. Peterson was away, she had to stay at her desk and man the office. She did ask for a rain check, though, when things weren't quite so hectic.

I was more than a little surprised to see all three Szerchenkos at that afternoon's baseball game against Hanford High School. A home game during spring break had seemed like a particularly stupid idea to me, but there was a pretty decent crowd, including the slightly fish-out-of-water Szerchenko family. Actually, Mr. Szerchenko could still pull off the baseball fan look, with a cap and sweatshirt, and Tanya was dressed like any other high school kid. It was Mrs. S, in the long skirt, who stuck out like a sore thumb.

But when we met at the end of the game, she admitted that she had had a good time. In truth, it had been a good game. I struck out 12 guys, but we had trouble scoring ourselves. So we didn't win until the bottom of the seventh, when Rabbit Parker hit the first walk-off home run of his life. He later confirmed, as I guessed from the way he acted when the umpire finally gave the home run signal, that it was the first home run of any kind that he'd ever hit in his life. Since he had also poked two singles into left field, to raise his average to .383, I was going to be very surprised if Rabbit Parker wasn't batting second next week.

After the game, the Szerchenkos took me out to dinner. Mr. Szerchenko alternated between pumping me for information about our hit-and-run strategy — as far as I knew, we hit the ball, then we ran — and trying to impress his wife and daughter with his knowledge of baseball. Then they broke the bad news. Mrs. Szerchenko's mother was ill down in Miami — not really ill, Hashem be praised, but slightly ill — and all three of them were leaving the next morning to visit her. They wouldn't be back until Monday. I glowered at the lot of them. I was particularly disappointed that Tanya wouldn't be able to attend Easter services with me. Mrs. Szerchenko assured me that Tanya would make it up to me the following weekend.

"Make it up to me?" I whispered to Tanya as we walked out to where we had parked our respective cars. We had slowed to put a little distance between us and her parents.

She flushed a deep red.

"I guess they know us athletes need constant reassurance about our performance," I needled her as we approached the Szerchenkos' car. Her parents were already in their seats.

She stopped and looked up at me.

"You know, I have been to a Christian mass before. I think my favorite part is where everyone very solemnly intones, 'Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.'"

"We do that at our church," I smiled.

"Well, that's fine," she poked me in the chest. "But when I get back I don't want find out that anybody else has been doing any rising and coming again."

It was a good line, only slightly blasphemous, and I gave it the laugh it deserved before I realized what she'd left out.

"But what about dying?" I asked in mock horror.

"That's true," she said after appearing to give it a moment's thought. "Don't do that, either. If you were a righty, maybe... Dad says there are plenty of them."

"See ya, Tanya," I said.

"See ya, Trick," she answered. I held open the door of their car and closed it behind her.

Tanya's absence did give me a chance to finish my "Obsession" paper. On Wednesday evening, I had struggled to put together a thesis about Ahab. On Thursday night, I gave up and wrote about me. Me and Tanya Szerchenko. It was a little, er, steamy. So I filed that away and wrote about me and UVA. Both of them met the requirements of the assignment, but I really couldn't see Mrs. Palmer enjoying the Pat and Tanya story.

I finished it on Friday afternoon, which Coach had generously allowed us to have as a day off, and drove to the church for Good Friday services. I had a hard time holding it together when we got to the part of the service that Tanya had mentioned, drawing stares from the parishioners in the pew in front of me.

I was at the school parking lot on Saturday at exactly noon, just as I'd been ordered in the message that Tiffany had passed along to me. I watched Cammie Rowe get off the bus, with Jeanne right behind her. And then Jill stepped off, her eyes shining as she listened to the girl behind her say something. Still on the steps, she looked up, looked around, and saw me.

She leaped off the bottom step, and began to run toward me. I was probably the only guy — the only straight guy — at Marshall High School who wouldn't have gotten a hard-on at the sight of Jill Sterling, even in a fleece jacket and jeans, running toward him. Her blonde hair flowed behind her head, her long legs stretched toward me with each stride, and a broad smile showed every one of her beautiful teeth.

"Trick," she exulted as I caught her in my arms. "Oh, God, Trick."

"Hey, Jilly, good trip, huh?"

"The best. Oh, God, I've been so worried about you."

"Worried? Why?"

"Cause Andy got out."

"On bond," I pointed out. "If he comes anywhere near me they'll throw him in jail and give me the key."

She was sobbing in my arms, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

"He threatened me, didn't he?" I asked her softly. "He said he'd hurt me if you didn't get back together. Is that what happened, Jilly?"

I felt her nodding her head against my shoulder.

"Don't worry, sweetie, I have two bodyguards now."

She pulled her head back to look into my face.

"Tough Tommy Narburg and the traitorous Trasker."

"Jesse?" she asked.

"He's a baseball player now," I smiled. "He doesn't want this arm hurt anymore than I do."

I hope.

"Or I do," Jill added.

"Now tell me about your trip," I smiled.

"Can't," she said, trotting back to the bus. "Have to wait."

Apparently it had to wait until Jill returned with her suitcase and Jeanne and Cammie.

"You want a ride home, Cammie?" I asked hesitantly. Her parents didn't know my car, but her dad certainly knew me.

"No," she smiled. "I just want to ride around until you hear this story. They've been practicing it since last night. Then you can bring me back here. That's my car right over there."

I drove us to the food court at the mall. Jeanne started talking almost as soon as our butts hit the little plastic chairs.

"So the first two concerts go fine, and then we get to the third city on Tuesday, and Mr. Collins calls a meeting and tells us that Ann O'Hara, who's in your class, has laryngitis. I was so bummed."

"Oh, God, you should have seen her face," Cammie said.

"So then he says, I'm sorry, Jeanne," Jeanne suddenly stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops, I left out part. So like for most of the concert we just sing group songs, right, but the first half of the show ends up with a trio with me and Cammie and Ann, and the chorus behind us, singing this song from Gilbert and Sullivan."

"Who are?" I asked.

"They wrote all these operettas," Cammie interjected.

"Little operas?" I guessed.

"Yes, can I finish?" Jeanne was getting just a little impatient. "Hush up, Cammie. And then in the last half of the concert, I sing a duet with Katie Wright, and Ann sings one with Barbie Moore, in French. Okay?"

"Sure," I nodded.

"So anyway, Mr. Collins says I'm sorry Jeanne, sorry, Cammie, sorry, Barbie. The songs with Ann are going to have to be cancelled. And then he kind of laughs and looks around and says, 'unless someone else knows Three Little Maids, ' which is the trio. And we all laugh, because of course nobody does. And then we all see that Mr. Collins is staring at the back of the room. And we all finally turn and look and see this one, who basically hasn't said a word the whole trip so far, and has just been hanging around us wherever we go, and she pipes up —"

"'I think I can sing it,'" Jilly said shyly.

Jeanne picked it up again.

"And Mr. Collins is looking really doubtful, so he does this long, 'Ummmm' because he has no idea who she is. And then he suddenly remembers she's my sister, so he says, in kind of this superior way he has, 'Miss Sterling, do you really know Ann's part in Three Little Maids?'"

I followed Jeanne's eyes over to Jill, who suddenly gave voice to this incredible song, which might as well have been real opera for all I could understand it.

"So you just sang it?" I asked her. "Without even practicing, or hearing it before, or being, like, a singer?"

"Trick?" Jeanne warned me back to silence.

"And Mr. Collins says, very slowly, 'O-kay, so then we just have to cancel the duet, unless, ' and his voice kind of trails off and he cocks his head like this and looks over at Jill and —"

I was absolutely flabbergasted. Jill had had two years of Spanish, and there she sat, singing what sounded to me like perfect French.

"How can you do this?" I asked her.

I was conscious of three women staring at me.

"Sorry," I said. "Go on."

"So she gets to practice with Miss Beachem — the pianist? — for like an hour, and we give the concert, and right before the trio Mr. Collins explains that we have a replacement and asks everyone to be understanding, and Jilly's just standing there glaring at him like this."

Jill gave me an evil stare.

"Like, understanding, my ass. And then we sang."

The entire mall stopped and listened as Jeanne, Cammie, and Jill sat there at the table singing to me. Then the rest of the patrons joined me in what turned out to be their third standing ovation for the song, since they had also performed it again on Wednesday night, before Ann finally got well enough to sing on Thursday.

We dropped Cammie off at the school parking lot, and drove back home while I told them of my exciting spring break. That afternoon was the first Game of the Week on FOX, and when I settled into the couch to watch it, I was very pleased to have Jill and Jeanne sit down on either side of me. Jill popped some popcorn, and tried to learn baseball. She had even more questions than she had during the Super Bowl because, as everyone knows, baseball is a far more complex and intellectual game.

And yet, as good as that day was, the next day, Easter, was even better. When I emerged into the hallway, dressed in a full-fledged suit and tie, I found two Sterling girls waiting for me, dressed in their Easter finest. Together, they dragged me up to the front row, where we sat with Cammie and her own visitor, Rabbit Parker. After church, Jeanne ordered me to drive to Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill's, who were waiting for us on the front porch of their house. They had no trouble recognizing me this time, or Jill either for that matter, and we sat down to an absolutely wonderful mid-afternoon supper of roast lamb and mashed potatoes.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



Chapter 19

It is simply a fact of life that nothing is going to get accomplished on the first Monday after spring break. Everyone has to tell all their friends where they were and who they saw and who said what to whom and why all of this was just sooo important. The teachers usually just give up. Mr. Kennedy spent the first half of Government, in fact, quizzing Jesse and Hal Stonerider and me about the results of our baseball tournament.

When I wrote that the teachers usually just give up, of course, you knew that I didn't mean to include Mrs. Palmer. Mrs. Palmer collected all of our essays at the beginning of class, and then started a discussion of Captain Ahab. It quickly became clear from the sighs throughout the room that a number of my classmates weren't in complete accord with Mrs. Palmer's views of the captain, and were now wishing that they had written their papers on some other subject. Apparently, they hadn't yet figured out that Mrs. Palmer only cared if it was well-written.

In Religion, Mrs. Jenkins announced that there would be another test on Friday, when we would end our study of the "historical" books of the Old Testament. On the following Monday, we would begin the "prophetic' books, beginning with Isaiah. As I was writing myself a note to remind myself to let Tanya know about the test and the new assignment, I became conscious of a sort of buzzing in the classroom. I looked up and saw people trading excited whispers as Mrs. Jenkins finished writing the assignment on the blackboard. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

We had a baseball game that afternoon against Garden City, one of our toughest opponents. At least that's what Coach claimed. On the bus trip there, he tried to motivate us by telling us that the Gardeners were still stinging from the beating we gave them in last year's league playoffs, and that they were loaded for bear this year. We really didn't hear anything after "Gardeners," though. The final outcome demonstrated, better than anything else, that we weren't quite prepared to take the "Garden City Gardeners" seriously. Particularly once Matt asked them if they had a lot of hoes at their school. It was hard to imagine that they hadn't heard it all before, but it still riled them up. After they scored four in the bottom of the first and two more in the bottom of the second, Cary Roberts sat down next to Matt and told him in no uncertain words to shut the fuck up. It was too late. We scored a few runs ourselves, but Matt and Eddie combined for three more errors and we ended up losing 12-4.

The bus ride back home was a sort of surreal experience. The second tournament game was the only sporting event in my life that I had any memory at all of losing, and I had reacted by ripping Matt's television cord out of the wall of his motel room. But we'd all gone back to our rooms after the brief trip to the motel, so this was really the first time that I had seen how the whole team reacted to adversity. They reacted pretty much the same way that they had to success. The bus trip back from Bishop Connor two weeks ago had been full of guys laughing, rough-housing, and bragging about girls they had never gone out with, The bus trip back from Garden City was full of the same guys, who appeared to have forgotten the game as soon as it was over. There were a few exceptions, of course. Cary sat up front with Jesse, going over the pitches that they'd been successful with and the ones that hadn't worked out quite as well. Coach sat in front with his assistant, Coach Craig, as if they were resigned to a season of games like this. Tommy and Rabbit were off in their own little calculus world, quietly trying to figure out something their teacher had stumped them with earlier in the day.

Maybe this was how it always worked. Forget the loss, concentrate on the next game. So I just sat next to Bobby Bunt as he dozed off. I still took pride in the fact that after thirteen innings I had an earned run average of zero. And hell, we were still 4-2, although that came out to 2-1 in league play.

I called Tanya that evening, and we traded stories on what had happened while she was out of town. It was a very one-sided conversation. After she told me about visiting her grandmother, we were quickly into re-runs on her network. I told her about my SAT score, and she shrieked with delight, particularly since my highest score had come on the writing portion for which she had been my ostensible tutor. I told her about Jill, which also pleased her. And I told her about our ball game, which she quickly dismissed as an aberration. Then I told her about Religion, about the test and the assignment, and I asked her if she had any idea why the book of Isaiah would cause such a stir in Religion class. She just sighed.

"Tanya?"

"It's just I wish we were starting with another book. The Christian gospels are all written to treat Isaiah as a sort of prediction of the coming of the Messiah. Have you ever listened to the Messiah?"

It sounded like opera, and the answer, in any event, was definitely no.

"Well," she said, "it's loaded with passages from Isaiah, to give the idea that Jesus' arrival as the Messiah was all pre-ordained. So I just have the feeling that next week I'm going to be a very lonely voice in a very loud crowd."

"Don't worry," I assured her. "I'll be there for you."

"I know it," she sighed.

To be honest, it didn't sound as if she knew it. At the moment, though, I had more to worry about than whether Tanya thought I was going to take the Christian side in Religion class next week. For example, I still had a Religion test this week, and the A, rather than the A-plus, I had received on the first test we had taken, was still on Mrs. Jenkins's book. I knew that I had to buckle down and study for this test, so that's exactly what I did, pretty much to the exclusion of anything else.

Excluding Tanya didn't turn out to be that hard. I had sort of forgotten that her other set of friends — the ones we'd had lunch with oh so many months ago when she'd first rescued me from Coventry in the cafeteria — were all yearbook types. It turned out that Tanya was actually the editor of the faculty section. And as the editor of the faculty section, she was going to be busy every afternoon that week with final preparations for getting the yearbook to the publishers. From my standpoint, though, she couldn't have picked a better week. She was happy in her world; I was cramming like hell in mine. The thought of what another A on a Religion test would do to my quest for UVA was enough to overcome, temporarily at least, my other obsession. We did make plans to go to the hastily scheduled choir concert on Saturday evening. Mr. Collins was apparently so taken with the success of the tour that he decided an immediate performance was needed. Ann O'Hara was fully recovered, of course, and would perform her duet. But Jill was going to be in the Three Little Maids.

Excluding the non-Tanya aspects of my life was not that hard, either, although in retrospect, I would have been better off with, say, a slightly wider focus. For example, I really didn't pay sufficient attention to the third round of tryouts for "The Sound of Music." I had no intention of trying out myself, of course. My knowledge of "The Sound of Music" was limited to the movie, and Julie Andrews' freakishly high singing voice. From what I knew of the characters in the movie, the only one I was qualified to play was the goat. And he was a puppet.

Originally, of course, there weren't supposed to be any more tryouts. Jeanne had tried out at the first set, three weeks ago now. Then there was a second set, on the following Tuesday. Mr. Collins was supposed to announce the cast after we came back from spring break. Instead, while Jeanne and Jill and I were doing dishes together on Monday evening, Jeanne had glumly informed us that there was a new sign posted outside the music room, indicating that yet another round of tryouts was to be held the following afternoon.

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know," Jeanne answered. "Do you think he's unhappy with who tried out? Like, what's the point of more tryouts?"

Jill grabbed Jeanne's arm, nearly quivering with excitement.

"You mean I can try out?" she asked, her eyes alight. "Oh, god, I could be, like one of your daughters."

"What daughters?" I asked.

"You know," she dismissed the question. "When that nun chick —"

"— Maria," Jeanne interjected.

"— marries the old guy —"

"— Captain von Trapp."

"— she gets like ten kids."

Jeanne was smiling now, too.

"That would be cool," Jeanne said. "You could be Liesl, the oldest one. She and Maria have a duet together. Or the Mother Abbess. She and Maria have a duet together, too."

"Wait a minute," I asked. "This is another mother?"

Jeanne sighed at my ignorance.

"The head of the convent," she told me.

When that didn't make any obvious impression, she tried another idea.

"The chief nun."

"Aaah," I nodded.

"Of course, that is supposed to be Ann's role," Jeanne mused.

"Yeah, and I think she'd make a better nun," Jill laughed.

"Wait a minute," I said. "This is Ann O'Hara?"

"Yeah," Jeanne agreed.

Jill was right. Ann would make a better nun. She was just a little chunky. Putting a body like Jill's in a nun's outfit would be a crime against humanity. Well, a crime against men, at any rate.

"Okay," I said. "Help me out here. This is Ann O'Hara who's in my class, right? So if she can sing duets in French and all, how come she's not going to be this Maria?"

Jeanne smiled.

"It's tradition," she explained. "You get your big role in eleventh grade and then in twelfth grade you sort of mentor the next girl coming along. So last year Ann was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and this year she's supposed to be the mother abbess. She has some really great songs. She sings 'My Favorite Things' with Maria and then she sings 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain.'"

Jeanne launched into the last two lines of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," — "Follow ev'ry rainbow, 'tiiiiiiiil yoooouuuu fiiiiiiind yooooour dreeeeeam" — and then burst into laughter.

"Those are the only lines I know. I've sort of been practicing Maria's songs," she said shyly before she turned to Jill. "Anyway, it's tomorrow after school. I'll come with you. You just sing that French song."

So we had a plan.

In addition to the musical, I didn't pay enough attention to Astronomy. During Wednesday's lab, Cammie asked me what time I wanted to get together on Friday night.

I looked over at her. Why would I want to get together with Cammie Rowe on Friday night? I mean, other than the obvious. More important, why would Cammie Rowe want to get together, or even be willing to get together, with me on Friday night? I hadn't skipped any more time, had I?

She sat there, waiting for an answer, and I finally blurted out, "seven-thirty?"

"Seems kind of early, don't you think? I don't think the sun sets until almost eight."

"Eight-thirty?" I asked.

"Okay," she said as the bell rang to signal the end of class. "Don't make me call you this time. This is your project, remember?"

Oh, shit.

Needless to say, that killed any spare time I had for the rest of the week. As much as I was motivated by getting an A-plus in Astronomy, I suspect that there was also a part of me that didn't want Cammie to think of me as any more of a fuck-up than she already did. So I ended up dividing my time on Wednesday and Thursday nights, as well as Thursday study halls, between studying for the Religion test and setting up a schedule for my observations on Friday evening. There was a chance of rain on Friday night, which would make visiting the observatory a little pointless, but I wasn't going to count on that. I stayed up until one o'clock on Wednesday night, but I could only make it to midnight the next night.

I was very happy with my performance on the Religion test. As far as I could tell, I nailed every question. Astronomy didn't go quite as well. Cammie had to correct a few things I had done. But she was okay with that. We were lab partners. That was what lab partners did for each other. And she was impressed with my preparation, particularly the little grid that I had copied from her. Finally, at eleven-thirty, we were done.

"God, I'm exhausted," I slumped back in my chair as Cammie handed over the observations that she had recorded.

"Fortunately, it's the weekend," she said.

"For you," I laughed. "I got a game tomorrow."

"Oh, that's right," she smiled. "A big one, right?"

"They're all big, kid," I said, standing up and stretching.

"Asshole. Rabbit says that Montgomery's supposed to have a good team this year."

"Yeah, but I'll be pitching," I winked at her.

"Asshole. You know today's Friday the thirteenth, don't you?"

"Are you serious?"

"Why?" she laughed. "Don't tell me you're superstitious. Oh wait, you are. Jeanne told me she had to park in the same space when you took your SAT last time."

She was having a good old giggle at my expense.

"Very funny. So you coming to the game?

"I don't know. The Red Sox are on the Game of the Week tomorrow afternoon. That'll probably be a good game."

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I couldn't call Cammie Rowe an asshole no matter how much she deserved it. My obvious frustration just made her laugh all the harder. We turned off the lights, locked the door, and walked to the parking lot together.

"See you tomorrow, Cammie. Thanks for coming."

"You turned out not to be such a bad partner after all, Sterling."

"Thanks, Cammie. Thanks for taking the chance."

She gave me a nice smile, and then finally got into her car.

Despite her threat, she was there the next afternoon in time for the 1:30 start of our game. The rain had come through overnight, and left behind it some unseasonably warm weather for the beginning of April. It produced a very large crowd, with a lot of young kids. Tanya was there, too, with her parents, all of them dressed very appropriately this time. Jeanne and Jill were there, with a very smug-looking Sammy Houghtaling sitting between them.

Tommy plonked himself down on the bench next to me.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, fine," I said automatically. "I mean, you know, I didn't get enough sleep last night, but yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"'Cause you keep looking at your arm, and moving it around like that," he pointed to my arm as I was doing a very slow impersonation of a windmill.

"It's fine," I said.

"You know, I'm gonna have to tell Coach if you aren't throwin' right."

"Look. It's not sore or anything. It just feels, I don't know, heavy."

"Heavy? You mean like stiff?"

"No. Just heavy. I'll be fine.

He got up and gave me another look.

"Really, man, I'll be fine."

The top half of the first inning was over almost as soon as it started. The first guy up popped the first pitch to Mo, and the second guy struck out on three pitches. The third guy also swung at the first pitch, and popped it foul. Tommy made an excellent catch for the third out.

"Okay," he laughed as we sat down together on the bench. "You're fine."

Rabbit walked with one out in the bottom of the inning and I singled him to third, but Mo's double play ball sent us back to the field. I struck out two, and the last one grounded to Rabbit. In the bottom of the inning, we put together a little rally for a 2-0 lead.

When we returned to the dugout for the bottom of the third inning, things had gotten weird. For one thing, nobody would sit next to me. When I flied out for the second out, I sat down next to Tommy. He got up and moved down the bench to sit next to Jesse Trasker, of all people. And they both sat there, staring into space, not saying a word. Mo flied out for the third out, and we were back on the field again.

I threw the first pitch over the heads of Tommy and the umpire, all the way to the backstop on a frozen rope. As I expected, Tommy leaped from his crouch and called for a time-out.

"What the hell was that?" he asked as he neared the mound.

"What the hell is that in the dugout?" I countered.

He glanced over nervously at the dugout and back at me.

"What?"

"Oh, don't give me that crap. Why is everybody suddenly treating me like I smell like I had a fight with a skunk?"

"We're not," he protested. He was looking past me, at Rabbit, at Matt, anywhere but at me.

"You are so," I insisted.

"Let's go, boys," the umpire shouted from behind home plate.

Tommy left, and the batter hit my first pitch on the ground to Rabbit. The ball hit off of his glove and popped into the air, but Rabbit snatched at it with his bare hand and fired it to Mo to beat the guy by a mere half a step. I watched them throw it around the horn, taking in the anxiety on the faces of all four of my infielders. This time I called "time."

I had a grin on my face when Tommy approached this time.

"This is some superstition thing, isn't it?" I asked. "They haven't touched me yet, and Coach told you not to talk to me."

"Yeah," Tommy admitted. "It's supposed to be bad luck."

"Yeah, but look at these guys," I indicated the whole infield. "Even Rabbit looks like a —"

"Rabbit?"

I started to laugh.

"Seriously," I tried to maintain a straight face. "Mattie and Eddie are probably peein' in their pants."

"Probably," Tommy tried not to look at them.

This time the umpire walked out to join us.

"All right, boys," he said. "That's all you get this inning. You call time once more, and I gotta give the batter first base."

I motioned him closer.

"Does that count as a hit, sir?"

"A hit, son?"

"Yes, sir. If you give the guy first base, does that count as a hit?"

"No, I think it's charged as an error on you, son," he said with a grin.

"And I still get the time?"

"You get until I'm finished arguing with your coach about the call," he winked at me.

We all went back to our positions, I called time, and the umpire sent their number eight hitter down to first. Coach burst from the dugout and, with a worried glance at me, started arguing with the ump. I called the infielders in.

"All right, that's an error on me, guys, so there's no perfect game, and I don't care how many fucking errors you guys make for the rest of the game. Is that clear?"

Rabbit and Mo grinned, and Matt and Eddie broke out in big smiles. The next guy grounded into a perfect 6-4-3 double play, and we returned to the bench. I still had my no-hitter going, and my teammates still wouldn't get near me, but I was a lot more confident now that most of them would actually be more of a help than a hindrance. So I pulled a cell phone out of my bag and text-messaged Tanya, "cool huh".

I watched as she heard her phone go off, and then read the message. Laughing, she showed it to her father. Mr. Szerchenko reacted with horror, grabbing the phone from her and shoving it deep into his pocket. I couldn't help but laugh at the expression on their faces as they looked down at me in the dugout. Tanya waved, and Mr. Szerchenko grabbed her arm and yanked it down.

The fifth inning: a strikeout; a grounder through Matt's legs, another strikeout, and an unassisted force at second by Rabbit.

The sixth inning: two quick strikeouts and a fly ball to the outfield, the first one of the day. Hal made an easy catch, and we only had one inning left. By then we were ahead 5-0, and I went out for the seventh inning determined to enjoy this feeling as much as I could. I was apparently the only one, though. Normally, Rabbit was the only infielder who tried to stay on the balls of his feet right before a pitch. Now, all four of them were practically bouncing up and down. Even the outfielders were nervous, although they'd only had one ball hit to them all day. Still, the next ball could come their way. Tommy was the only one who appeared calm, although his mask made it hard to tell.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 05



The worst was the crowd. I looked around as the guys finished throwing the ball in from the outfield. Mr. Szerchenko had apparently explained the stakes to Tanya, because she was sitting on her hands, staring at me with wide eyes. Cammie, Jeanne, Jill, Sammy — they were all sitting on their hands, completely motionless, completely silent. I hoped they were breathing. Only the little kids were screaming, "C'mon, strike him out." But they had been screaming that all game, sometimes when I was batting.

The first batter was just as nervous as everybody else, and swung weakly at the first pitch. It squibbed out to my left, just beyond my reach, and I instinctively ran toward first to cover the bag in case Mo had a play. I watched in amazement as Mo dove, all 220 pounds of him, his glove enclosing the ball. He struggled to his knees, and flipped it to me. I barely remembered in time to slap my foot down on the base, and we only nipped the runner by a fraction of a step.

The crowd exploded into cheers. I waited until Mo got back up and put the ball in his glove, so he could throw it around the horn.

"Nice play," I smiled.

"Don't make me do that again," he panted.

"Sorry."

The next batter hit a pop foul down the third baseline with two strikes. Matt gave chase, but Rabbit was even faster, snagging it as it came down just on the other side of the chain link fence separating the field from the bleachers. That brought up their clean-up hitter. He was a big guy, who had already struck out twice. And he had no chance. I was loose, I was happy, and he was in my way. His bat never moved off his shoulder during the first two pitches. The third was a changeup. He was so far out in front of it that the guys had started running toward me even before it landed in Tommy's glove. I was buried by the Marshall baseball team. It was a great feeling.

When we finally undid the pile, I walked toward the dugout and acknowledged a standing ovation. I was shocked to find that all the little kids had rushed down to the fence, holding out cups and credit card receipts, anything made of paper that they could find. Coach brought me his pen, and I signed the first candy bar wrapper with a flourish, Patrick Sterling.

The nine-year-old boy looked at it and looked up at me, tears in his eyes.

"I wanted it to say 'Trick, '" he whispered.

Oh, fer cryin' out loud.

"Coach!" I yelled over to where he was greeting some of my teammates' parents. "Can I have the used balls there?"

There was a pile of baseballs that the umpire had taken out of the game for one reason or another, and Jesse Trasker good-naturedly brought them over after Coach had given me the okay. I asked the boy his name, and wrote, "To Charlie, thanks for coming, Trick Sterling, April 14, 2007, 5-0 Marshall."

Yes, of course it took longer. And yes, my left arm was sore. Fortunately, in everything except pitching, I was right-handed. Finally, the kids were gone, and I looked down to find I had one baseball left. I looked up to see my friends and family, Tanya, Jeanne, Jill, and Cammie standing a little in front of Sammy and the Szerchenkos.

"Only one left, girls," I said. "But maybe you have something else you'd like me to sign?"

I waggled my eyebrows.

"We were hoping to get Mo Perra's autograph," Camme retorted instantly.

I couldn't stop myself, the Szerchenkos and my sisters notwithstanding.

"Asshole."

She laughed and I tossed the final ball to Tanya. I had written "To my best friend. Cool, huh? Patrick, April 14, 2007, 5-0 Marshall."

We all celebrated at Carter's after the game, although it was a quick party, because Jeanne, Jill, and Cammie had to get ready for the concert. They had a decent crowd, and I was a little relieved to learn that Mr. Rowe was once again unable to be with us, having been summoned out of town on business. So Mrs. Rowe sat with Rabbit and Sammy and Tanya and I. Just before the concert was to start, Jill slipped down from the stage door and asked us to move over so that she could have the end seat.

"Didn't they save you one up there?" I asked from two seats over.

She smiled and put her finger to her lips.

The concert wound its way through what I'm sure were some very fine pieces for girls' chorus, all of which sounded, to be quite honest, a little squeaky. After five songs, Mr. Collins stepped forward to address the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls," he started, leaving out only puppy dogs, "the chorus has just returned from its spring tour, and we were heartbroken at one point when one of our best singers came down with some very severe laryngitis. I announced that we would have to forego the next trio, and then an extraordinary young lady, who is not in the chorus and was just accompanying her sister on the trip, tells me that it's no problem, she's heard the song three times already, she can sing it. I initially said thank you very much, but this is serious music. And then she sang it for me. Of course she sang it beautifully. She comes from an extraordinary family. Her sister Jeanne was already part of the trio, and her brother Dave was an all-state quarterback, and her brother Trick threw a no-hitter today for the Marshall High School baseball team."

I felt a little bad stealing Jill's thunder, but she hissed that I should stand up to acknowledge the applause. I waved, and the clapping eventually died down.

"And now," Mr. Collins sighed, "unfortunately for me, the youngest member of the family, Jill Sterling."

Mr. Collins got his laugh, and Jill got a polite hand as she walked up on stage to join Jeanne and Cammie, who came down from the risers to stand in front of the chorus. They got another standing ovation.

The next day at church the Sterling family once again joined Cammie Rowe in the front pew. We all gave thanks for an exceptional week, quite possibly the best week the Sterlings had ever experienced as a family. It was too bad that we couldn't take it and somehow freeze-frame it. The good thing about bad weeks is that there's always another week on the way. And the bad thing about good weeks is exactly the same thing.



A Stitch in Time Pt. 06



Chapter 20

By Monday morning, I was the king of the school. Mr. Peterson went on about my no-hitter for three minutes during the morning's announcements over the loudspeaker, and even Mr. Smithson gave me a nod. Mr. Kennedy spent nearly a third of the class asking me about it, and telling me how sorry he was that he had stayed home to watch his beloved Red Sox play. Mr. Anson congratulated me during History class.

None of those was a real surprise, though. The surprise was having Mrs. Palmer ask me about it, and then wink at me when I finished telling her. The surprise was having Mr. Carruthers not only mention it but use my fastball, or his scientific description of it, to illustrate one of the principles of physics that he wanted us to apply to our research. Carruthers was a very good teacher, but he hadn't really struck me as one of the guys who like sports. He struck me as more like, well, me, from back in the ninth grade. But before his lecture, he asked me for a brief summary. With Cammie sitting next to me, I did my best to deflect some credit to Rabbit. She gave me a big smile.

As surprising as those two were, the stunner was Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs. Jenkins had actually been at the game. She didn't manage to tie it in to the book of Isaiah, but I got to bask for a little while in Tanya's company. Fortunately, Tanya's fears about the class discussion were quickly assuaged by Mrs. Jenkins. One of the cutouts in the back of the class raised her hand as soon as Mrs. Jenkins started and launched into a discussion of Jesus.

"What's the name of this course, Miss Phillips?" Mrs. Jenkins asked sweetly.

"The People of the Book?" Clarissa said hesitantly.

"Which book are we reading?"

"The book of Isaiah?"

"Was Jesus in the book of Isaiah?" Mrs. Jenkins's voice was taking on a little bit of an edge.

"Well, no, but —"

"Then he's not one of the people we care about, is he?" she said bluntly. "He's not one of the people you're going to be tested about, is he?"

"No," Clarissa answered sullenly.

"Then perhaps we should confine our discussions to relevant matters," Mrs. Jenkins concluded.

"What about Trick?" piped up Tim Tolliver.

"Are you comparing Trick with Jesus, Tim?"

"Um, no, of course not."

"Good," she said. "Mr. Sterling spent a minute this morning updating us on his accomplishments over the weekend, and I think we've devoted at least that much time to Jesus. So unless anyone wants me to take note of their unwillingness to participate in the discussion of this particular book of the Bible..."

I looked over to see Tanya trying to hide a smile. So I stopped trying to hide mine. I was perfectly happy to see a nice wide separation between church and state. Particularly with Tanya belonging to another church altogether. After all, if I wanted to learn more about Jesus, all I had to do was go back to Sunday School. With Mrs. Jenkins.

Tuesday also started out well. After spending my homeroom period with Pete in the office, a chat that seemed to please him even more than it pleased me, I got my "Obsession" paper back in English. Unlike all the other classes in which she had returned our work, Mrs. Palmer waited until the very end of class to pass out the papers. Her practice had always been to pass out the papers, and then pass out one copy of one student's paper for us to discuss. This time, she just went around the room handing out papers until the bell rang. Handing out papers, that is, to everyone but me. In the rush of leaving, I'm not sure that anyone else had noticed that, nor did they pay much attention to her very casual, "Oh, Mr. Sterling, can you stay after class for a minute?" 

In my confusion, I could only nod. The class left, and I remained in my front-row desk facing Mrs. Palmer as she leaned back against her own desk. With a frown on her face, she reached behind her and held up a paper.

"Oh, thank God," I smiled. "I thought maybe you'd lost it or something, and then I'd..."

I trailed off as her frown deepened.

"You goddamn son of a bitch," she said. "Didn't I tell you I didn't want to know why you were taking my class? Didn't we have that conversation when you showed up at my door begging to be let in?"

"Well, yeah," I admitted.

She glared at me.

"I mean, yes, ma'am."

"And then you turn in this," she threw the paper toward me. It fluttered to the ground well short of my desk, and I wasn't about to stand up and get it. That would just bring me closer to Mrs. Palmer.

"I'm sorry if the paper wasn't what you wanted, ma'am," I finally said. "It was the first obsession that came to mind."

Well, actually the second. I could just imagine what her reaction would have been to a paper about my relationship with Tanya Szerchenko.

"The paper was excellent, Mr. Sterling," she said, her face relaxing. "Pick it up. I won't bite you."

I retrieved it from the floor. An A-plus. Actually, what it said was, "A+ Jerk."

"Do you know how hard it's going to be for me to grade your papers now, knowing that I might be the one who keeps you out of the University of Virginia by giving you a bad grade? Or even worse, a not outstanding grade?"

I smiled at her.

"Ma'am, I wouldn't worry about it. We both know you're going to be fair. We both know that if my next paper deserves a B, you'll give it a B, UVA or not."

She studied me for a long time before she finally sighed and smiled.

"I just wanted to make sure you knew that," she said. "Let me write you a note for your next class."

After religion, before we got to lunch, Tanya pulled me aside in the hallway.

"Did you get invited to a pool party on Saturday?"

"Sorry, no. Guess they want your hot body and not mine, huh?"

"I'm serious. They told me I was welcome to bring you. But why would Debbie Wadsworth invite me to a pool party. Wasn't she a friend of that girl, Stephie?"

"Yeah, I think so. Isn't it a little cold for a pool party?"

"It's an indoor. Will you please just focus?"

"All right. I dunno. Maybe she wants to get to know you better."

She stood there and stared.

"Maybe she wants a better yearbook picture," I suggested.

Again with the stare.

I grinned.

"Maybe you got invited 'cause you're friends with the best athlete in the school, who just threw a no-hitter and is gonna get his picture in Sports Illustrated next week."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, Mr. Peterson told me this morning. I'm getting my picture taken after lunch. It's just that little "Faces in the Crowd" section. A picture and ten words of type."

"For the no-hitter?" she smiled.

"Sort of. They aren't really that rare in high school. But I also threw one last year. Also on April 14th."

"Ooh, that's so weird," Tanya widened her eyes in mock horror. "How about the year before that?"

"I don't even remember the one last year," I reminded her. "So are we going?"

"I don't know. It might be fun. It wouldn't weird you out, just a little?"

"Not unless Stephie shows up. But I guess it would be a chance to see how the other half lives. We only have an indoor pool when Jill stuffs up the bathtub drain so she can fill it up to the very top."

Tanya raised an eyebrow.

"She let it run over once," I explained. "It flooded the kitchen."

She smiled and we continued on to lunch. Once there, I couldn't help but notice, with the intense filial connection that we had rediscovered, that Jeanne seemed a little nervous.

"Jeanne, are you okay?"

I was surprised to find that the words hadn't come out of my mouth, but out of Tommy's.

"Yeah," Jeanne said. "Why?"

"'Cause you're bouncing up and down like a yo-yo," Tommy said. "The whole table's shaking."

"Sorry," Jeanne said. "I'm sorry. Mr. Collins said he was going to post the cast list this afternoon, and I'm just nervous."

"About what?" I asked. "I thought you said he already told you that you were going to be, um..."

"No," she said quickly. "He just told me that we were going to do Sound of Music and asked me what I thought. He never promised I'd be Maria. It's just tradition."

"Oh, you'll get it," I flipped my hand at her.

The rest of the table agreed. And that made all of us wrong.

The team bus left ninth period for the half-hour trip to Fort Hill High School. It wasn't until we were on the bus that we learned that Cary's grandfather had died yesterday and he was out of town for the week. I couldn't possibly pitch on two days rest, so that left us with Donnie Spencer or Steve Manzilla. Donnie had been the starter last time Cary and I couldn't pitch, so this time it was Steve's turn. We didn't fare any better this time, and Coach summoned Donnie during the bottom of the third to try to hold their lead down to five runs. Matt booted another one in the fourth to load the bases after two walks, though, and Bobby badly misjudged a long fly in left. By the time Hal got to the ball, three more runs had already crossed the plate. Only Mo's three RBI's kept us from being mercy-ruled out of town.

Once again, the bus trip home was surprisingly upbeat. Donnie, Steve, and Matt were all playing hearts in the back of the bus. Four other guys were watching, the whole group of them laughing like we hadn't just had our butts handed to us. I saw Coach give them a look and shake his head, and then he looked over at me. But this wasn't like Mattie not taking enough grounders. What was I supposed to do, tell them to stop laughing?

Rabbit and I walked out of the locker room together after the bus returned, and found Cammie sitting in the hall.

"Hey," Rabbit smiled at her.

"See you guys," I said.

"Wait a minute," Cammie said. "I need to talk to you, Trick. Can you give us a minute?"

The last question was directed at Rabbit, and he just nodded and went back into the locker room.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Can you just tell your dad that Jeanne's going to be at my house?"

"Sure," I said, more than a little puzzled. "What's going on?"

"We're just gonna spend some time together."

"Cammie," I said. "Oh my God, she didn't get the part. Did Ann get it?"

"No," Cammie said slowly. "Ann's the Mother Abbess. Jeanne's Liesl."

"The daughter? But that doesn't make any — oh, God, don't tell me..."

Cammie was already nodding.

"Jill? But why? Was her tryout really that good?"

"Oh, grow up, Trick Sterling. Jeanne is a much better singer."

"Then..."

Cammie rolled her eyes at me, and then cupped her hands in front of her chest.

"Are you serious?"

"Just tell your dad, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Thanks, Cammie."

By the time I got home, though, well after dinner was over, Jeanne had already called to tell Dad she would be spending the night. I did knock on Jill's door, though, and was greeted with a big smile. Jill had another take on the story, of course. She insisted that she had had an excellent audition, and that Mr. Collins assured her, this afternoon in fact, that her selection was based entirely on merit.

"But you've been singing for what, two weeks?" I asked.

"Natural talent," she giggled. "Just like you, golden arm."

"I guess," I shrugged. "But I do practice."

"And so will I, big brother," Jill smiled.

"Don't you think it's going to be a little weird, with Jeanne as your stepdaughter?"

"Who told you? Cammie? I'll bet she thinks I got picked 'cause Mr. Collins likes my boobs, huh? You know, girls can be such jealous little cows."

I shrugged again. Maybe she was right. Maybe Cammie was just taking Jeanne's side.

I did see Jeanne at lunch the next day, of course, when she asked me how Dave was.

"He's fine," I said. "So when are you coming home?"

"I can't face it right now," she said. "It's going to be hard enough when rehearsals start next week."

"Just give her some time, Trick," Cammie said.

That afternoon, I picked up my first loss of the season. It was an away game at Black Lake High School, and they had a very good pitcher as well. We got to him for six hits, but scattered them throughout the game. Black Lake's defense was flawless, and their pitcher didn't walk anyone. I struck out more of his guys than he did mine, 12-9, but my team committed more errors, 3-0, and we ended up losing a 1-0 shutout. Even though Coach had warned me that there would be days like this, I was seriously bummed. Then we had the party bus again on the way home, and I decided fuck them. I pulled my iPod out of my jacket pocket and ignored the assholes all the way home. If they wanted to celebrate after losing the game for me, let 'em. I still had my 0.00 E.R.A.

Without Jeanne around to jolly me out of my bad mood, I was pretty surly Friday morning when Debbie Wadsworth stopped me in the hall.

"Jesse said you pitched well yesterday."

"Not well enough," I said.

"Two hits? That's pretty damn good, Trick. So I'll see you at my party tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah, um, thanks for asking us. Is there anything I can bring?"

"A swimsuit," she smiled. "At least for the beginning. I sent Tawny an e-mail with the directions."

I smiled back, my mind reeling with the thought of the high school's elite at a party where you needed a swimsuit only at the beginning. I forgot to tell Tanya that on the walk to lunch, and her family obligations prevented us from getting together, or even talking, that night.

I spent Saturday afternoon helping Jill clean up the house. With Jeanne still over at Cammie's, Jill and I had simply decided between ourselves to do her share of the household chores. We finished in time to watch the game of course, a late-afternoon contest between the Yankees and the Red Sox. But in the seventh inning, I finally had to leave. Jill blew me a kiss as I left, and on the drive over to Tanya's, I found myself wondering if my relationship with my two sisters was going to survive the next month unchanged.

I pulled into the Szerchenkos' driveway, and before I could get out of the car, Tanya came out the front door. She looked nervous although, in a pair of khaki shorts on top of a white one-piece bathing suit, she looked beautiful as well. Of course, so did everyone else at the party, which took place at the Wadsworth estate on the west side of town. We had apparently been allowed a glimpse into the world of the beautiful people, or at least the people as beautiful as their wealth could make them.

Despite her attractiveness, Tanya clearly felt out of place. Part of it was the money, of course. We arrived at the same time as Paul Scholl, the tennis team captain and formerly part of Stephie's retinue, and I parked my Civic next to his BMW convertible. He gave it a scornful glance as he got out of his car, and then gave Tanya a full appraisal as she got out of mine. The house, which occupied the same space as two or three of the houses that I was used to, was surrounded by immaculately maintained grounds. We were actually lucky that Paul was there. Otherwise we could have spent hours just trying to find the indoor pool room. Once we got there, we just stared at the size of the pool and the amount of glass and metal that was needed to protect it from the elements.

But that sort of discomfort applied equally to both of us. Tanya had her own issues. It didn't help, for example, that I knew a lot more of the kids than Tanya did. Part of that was simply that I'd been here longer. I recognized all of Stephie's friends, for example. I also knew Jesse Trasker and Hal Stonerider from the team. Even without tenth and eleventh grades, I just knew most of these kids.

It also didn't help that most of them knew who I was, and had absolutely no idea who Tanya was. They were polite enough to her when they wandered over to congratulate me on the no-hitter. The guys in particular were always glad to be introduced another nice-looking girl. Most of the girls, though, barely glanced at her.

Finally, it didn't help that she was the only girl there wearing a one-piece bathing suit. At one point, we found seats on two chairs beside the pool, and watched for a while as the other guests circulated in and out of the house, none of them actually swimming, all of them carrying cups of beer or something stronger.

"I feel like a frump," Tanya whispered.

"You're beautiful," I smiled.

"She could have told me. I do own a bikini. A very nice one, too."

"I'll bet you do," I did my best Groucho impersonation.

"I'm just saying it would have been nice to fit in, not to — oh, shit."

I followed her gaze to one corner of the dimly lit room that contained the Wadsworths' indoor pool. And then I quickly looked back.

"Well, you're not the only one in a one-piece any more," I joked.

"That's not funny. Look, there's another one. Did you know this was going to be a topless party?"

"As far as I remember," I said very carefully, "I've never been to one of these parties."

"I know, I'm sorry. It's just..."

"You're not comfortable here," I nodded.

"Are you?"

"I'm a guy. There are topless girls. Of course I'm —"

"Oh, fuck you, Patrick. Next you're gonna tell me that you're all genetically programmed to appreciate attractive women. That's just a pitiful excuse to let you look."

I smiled. I didn't know all that much about evolutionary biology. It sounded right, though. Why else would every single pair of tits be so fascinating? It wasn't that we couldn't be domesticated. It was just that, like dogs, you always run the risk of backsliding.

"We can go whenever you like," I said cheerfully.

"No, we've only been here half an hour. I can stick it out until at least seven."

"And it's not like everyone is doing it," I pointed out.

"Will you please stop looking?"

"I'm gonna look a little odd staring off into the far corner of the pool room for the next hour. Besides, that couple over there is gonna start, uh, okay, how 'bout I just stare at you?"

"Let's get something to drink," she said after a horrified glance at the girl fellating the guy in the corner.

We wound our way into the kitchen and spent some time talking to Missy Josephs, who was in my English class and Tanya's history class. And who was at least wearing both the top and bottom of her bikini. But then Debbie, our hostess, breezed in without her top to get some more beers and eagerly offered me one.

"Thanks anyway," I raised my glass. "I'll stick with Pepsi."

Eventually, we settled into the den with a bunch of other mostly clothed, mostly normal people. I was even trusted to venture forth by myself at one point to get us a couple of burgers from the grill that Debbie had set up. My eyes were assaulted with naked female flesh on all sides, but I survived and returned in triumph with my prize of two plates of rare meat.

We lasted until seven-thirty, when a fresh wave of half-dressed revelers convinced Tanya that it was time to go home.

"So you want to, um..." I began as we neared her house.

"You know, I think I'd like to just go home, watch a movie, and forget the whole day," Tanya blurted out. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all," I said.

The ease with which I justified my decision to return to the party, without Tanya knowing, surprised even me. Rather than turning around in her driveway, I continued on down the street in the direction of my house. Only when I got to Main Street did I reverse my tracks and head west.

There was a twinge of guilt. But it's not like she was my girlfriend or anything. And this was the girl who had explicitly told me that she would always be available for me whenever I wanted, and who had decided to spend the evening by herself. And there were all those girls at Debbie's. I was just going to look.

I wandered back into the kitchen and this time got myself one of those beers that everybody else was drinking. It was my first, as far as I knew, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how quickly it went down. Grabbing another, I made my way back to the pool room. It was dark by then, and the dim lights that surrounded the pool had only encouraged my schoolmates. There were couples all over the room. I found myself in a conversation with Jesse and Hal, and their two topless girlfriends, about the pitiful fielding on the team. But they wandered off after a while, and I grabbed a seat on one of the lounge chairs to admire the scenery.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 06



"Where's Tawny?"

I looked to my right, my gaze lingering on a very nice set of tits and then finally drifting upwards to look at the smirk on the face of Debbie Wadsworth.

"She wasn't feeling well. So I took her home."

"I'm glad you came back. Wouldn't be much of a party without the athlete of the week."

"I'm gonna get my picture in Sports Illustrated."

"I heard. Oh, shit, John's going to start in again. I wish I never started dating him. Gotta go, Trick."

I nodded, draining the last of my second beer. My eyes continued to drift, finally coming to rest on a pretty blonde, still wearing both pieces of her bikini, who was walking in my direction with two beers.

"Hi," she said when she got close enough for me to hear her soft voice. "Debbie said you might be needing another."

"Thanks," I relieved her of one of her beers. "Trick Sterling."

She laughed.

"No kidding," she said. "Kirsten Aaron. I'm in your sister's class."

I shifted my butt a little to the right so that she could sit her much prettier one on my left.

"Which one?" I asked.

"Jeanne," she laughed again. "I don't think anyone's in Jill's class."

I smiled at her. Pretty and clever. A devastating combination. Still, I had promised Tanya that shiksas were off limits, so I was more than ready for her next question, two beers or not.

"So you wanna hook up?"

"Thanks," I said, shaking my head in a manner that I hoped conveyed my eternal regret.

"I'm a cheerleader," she offered. "Just made varsity."

"Sorry," I continued shaking my head.

"Girlfriend?"

"Yeah," I answered. It was easier than the truth.

She leaned in to whisper in my ear.

"How 'bout I just blow you?"

I thought for a second, but ultimately decided that no, that would be breaking my promise, too.

She pouted.

"Then how about you do something for me?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"How 'bout if the golden arm meets the golden puss?"

I had no idea what she meant until she put down her beer and took my left hand, wrapping my left arm around her waist. Staring into my eyes, she pushed my hand underneath the waistband of her bikini bottom. My fingers slid through a thatch of sparse hair. She was already slippery, and I simply sat there and let her press my middle finger inside her. With her hand outside the bikini and mine on the inside, she began rubbing herself against me, or rubbing me against herself. She was in complete control, and after a few minutes, she moaned and gave a little shiver.

She released the pressure on my hand, which I took as a signal to pull it out. She leaned down again, and kissed me softly on the lips.

"Thanks, Trick," she smiled.

She picked her beer back up and took a sip.

"Nice place, huh?" she asked with remarkable casualness.

"Yeah," I gasped, taking another sip and looking around. This time my eyes lingered on the doorway to the rest of the house. Two girls were standing there, both of them topless, turned in profile as they talked to each other. They were both silhouetted by the light pouring from the room behind them, giving the entire pool room a look at their dueling breasts. The girl on the left had a smaller, higher pair, while the girl on the right had a much larger, lower set.

Kirsten sighed. I looked back at her.

"I wish I had boobs like that."

"Yours are very lovely," I assured her.

"Not as nice as Jill's," she nodded toward the doorway.

"Jill's?" I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

"Your family just got all the genes, huh? Thank God she didn't go out for cheerleader."

I was staring at Jill, and then realized what I was doing and snapped my head back to look at Kirsten.

"So you sure I can't interest you in anything more?" she asked with a grin. "Something for you, maybe?"

"Uh, no," I said. "I have to be going soon, actually."

I watched her hips sway as she walked away from me, my mind racing at the thought of Jill being here. I decided to play it cool, so after I finished my third beer, I got to my feet and made my way back toward the kitchen. She was no longer in the doorway, unfortunately, and it took me another fifteen minutes of looking until I found her. She was sitting on a couch in the Wadsworths' den, giggling as Paul Scholl touched one of her nipples and then another.

"Scholl," I said sharply.

He looked up.

"Fuck off, Sterling. You're not entitled to claim all the pussy just because you threw one lousy no-hitter."

"I'm entitled to claim my sister, Scholl," I said as soberly as I could. His hands retreated to his own lap.

"My fifteen-year-old sister," I added.

"Sixteen in June," Jill sang out giddily.

"Hey, sorry, man," Paul stood up quickly. "It's just that she looks, like, you know..."

"Yeah," I said. He slipped past me.

"Where's your top, Jilly?"

She had no idea, so I just grabbed one from the kitchen and tied it on her. Then, not quite fully sober myself, I helped her to the car and got her home, driving no more than 25 miles per hour the entire trip. She was dead to the world when I pulled in the driveway, so I carried her upstairs and put her in her bed.

I decided to skip church on Sunday. For one thing, Jeanne was very likely to be there with Cammie, and I didn't want to look like I was taking sides. For another thing, I was going to have to have a talk with my youngest sister. Most importantly, though, I thought that God would probably prefer that I throw up in my house rather than His.

Chapter 21

The look I got from Tanya on Monday morning, when I claimed my seat in Religion, was one of pure contempt. Well, fuck her. I had already gotten the same treatment for Jill the day before. You'd think that after I had saved her from another asshole, albeit a much richer asshole than the last one, Jill would be a little grateful. But no, as far as she was concerned, she wasn't drunk at all, and if she wanted to parade around half-naked in front of strangers, that was her business. She was perfectly happy to talk with me about anything else, but she made it clear that the party was off limits.

The rest of Monday morning wasn't any better. Mr. Anson had assigned yet another history paper. We could choose any topic from 1900 through 1920, probably the most boring stretch of American History. Then there was another surprise astronomy quiz, and I knew for a fact that I hadn't aced it. Cammie told me after class that Jeanne was still taking her casting badly, and I dreaded having to talk to her at lunch. Dad had told me yesterday at dinner that the tension wasn't helping Tiffany any, and that he didn't see what the fuss was about, anyway. After all, weren't they both going to be in the play? Who cared who sang what?

I had pointed out, in all innocence, that if Dave and I were on the same football team and I'd been picked to be quarterback, Dave would be understandably upset. After he finished laughing at the idea of my being a quarterback, Dad just said that was different. He also told me to tell Jeanne he wanted the whole family back at the dinner table tonight. I kept my response to myself this time, which was, first of all, isn't that your job? And second of all, if you think the tension is bad now, just wait until Jeanne and Jill have to share a table.

So if Tanya didn't want to talk to me, that was fine. If she didn't want to sit at our table at lunch time, and instead preferred the company of her yearbook buddies, that was fine, too. As it was, I spent the whole time I was in the cafeteria arguing with Jeanne about coming home. It finally got so uncomfortable that we had to finish it outside in the school courtyard.

"Jeanne, you're going to have to rehearse with her, right?"

"Not if I quit."

"You're not going to quit."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I know you. You're not a quitter. You're gonna go there and glare at Jill for the entire rehearsal, and when she misses a note or a line, you're going to get this little smirk on your face."

She flushed a deep red.

"I'm a better singer than she is," she insisted.

"That may be," I said, watching her eyes narrow as I said it. "Look, I don't know anything about singing. Let's say you are."

"I am."

"Okay."

"It's not okay. You think she's better."

"I don't."

"You do. You think Collins picked her because she's better."

"And you think he doesn't care about how good the team is," I answered her.

"It's not a team," she retorted. "We're not trying to 'win.'"

"I know it's not a team," I agreed. Sort of. But Coach Torianni didn't have anybody playing because of who they were, or what he had promised them. If he could find a guy who could actually field second base, Coach would yank Eddie in a minute.

"Look," I continued. "All Dad wants is to have you back at the dinner table. I'm sure you can ignore Jill just as easily as you ignored me when you thought I was a sicko pervert back in January."

She gave me a crooked smile, her face suddenly softening.

"We were pretty mean, huh? Of course, for all you know, you could have been a sicko pervert before Christmas, right?"

"True," I smiled.

"What happened to Tanya, by the way? Why was she sitting with those girls?"

"We had a fight," I explained.

"About what?"

"I don't know yet," I confessed. Although I did have a pretty good idea.

That afternoon we had another home baseball game. I didn't have any fans there this time. Jeanne and Jill both had play practice, and Tanya simply didn't come. There were a lot of scouts, though, just as there had been at my two-hitter last week. And I gave them a pretty good show. I couldn't pitch, with only three days off since my last game, but I went four-for-four at the plate, with a double and a home run. Just like last week, though, what we lacked was clutch hitting. As soon as someone made it to second base, we started hitting grounders to the infielders. Cary pitched a pretty good game, but we ended up losing again, this time by a final score of 4-3. We were now only a game above .500, a far cry from the team that won the state championship last year.

Jeanne did come home that evening, closeting herself in her room as soon as she made sure that Dad had seen her. She also accepted a ride in to school with me. But it was a strange trip, with her ignoring Jill in the back seat and Jill bubbling away to me as I drove. Lunch on Tuesday was fairly tense as well, particularly since it was Tanya's second day away from the group. Dinner on Tuesday was only bearable because of Dave's announcement that he was going to start taking courses at the community college the following week.

Finally, on Wednesday, Tanya spoke to me after class.

"We need to talk," she said soberly.

I nodded, and we walked out together to the courtyard.

"You went back to the party," she said simply. "Debbie came up to me on Monday morning and said 'Sorry you weren't feeling well, Tawny. But thanks for sending Trick back."

"And it's a good thing I did go back," I responded.

She furrowed her brow.

"You call that a good thing?"

"I call saving Jill from Paul Scholl a good thing, yeah. I call hauling her drunk little ass back to the house a good thing, yeah."

"I didn't see Jill there," Tanya said suspiciously.

"You didn't see anybody who wasn't wearing a top," I pointed out.

"You mean Jill was topless?" she asked breathlessly.

I slowly nodded.

"How did you know she'd be there?"

"I know my sister," I said, truthfully if somewhat unresponsively.

"Why didn't you tell me that?" she asked.

I shrugged.

"I was angry. You were the one who said you'd be available whenever I wanted," I said. "Then I go to this party and see all these girls with the guys on the team, and my girlfriend — excuse me, my friend — says she wants to watch a movie by herself."

"So you're saying you want sex every weekend?" she asked.

Of course I wanted sex every weekend.

"No," I answered. "I just think you're being awfully possessive for someone who doesn't want to actually be my girlfriend."

"I know," Tanya sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Unless you actually want to be my girlfriend," I said hopefully.

"You know, I actually do," she said after a long pause during which she stared off into space. "And my parents really like you. But I can tell that my mother still wants me to find a nice Jewish guy, preferably a doctor, and have Jewish babies."

"But the babies would still be Jewish," I pointed out.

Her eyes snapped back to me.

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"Research," I said. Actually, I had run across it in a magazine article. As long as the mother is Jewish, the kids are considered Jewish.

"I can't believe you looked that up," she leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. "I am so lucky to have you as a friend. But it still wouldn't be enough."

I almost asked if she meant it wouldn't be enough for her or her mother. But I stopped myself just short. She took my hand and we walked toward the cafeteria. Along the way, we passed Kirsten Aaron, and when she saw Tanya's gaze pass unknowingly over her, she winked at me and ran her tongue along her upper lip. I quickly glanced over at Tanya to make sure she hadn't seen that.

By that evening, Jill and Jeanne had at least reached a sort of truce. We had all learned by that point to avoid the subject of the musical. Tiffany had asked about practice on Tuesday night, giving Jill an opportunity to rave about the chemistry she had with her co-star. Jeanne had simply grunted in response to Tiffany's attempt to draw her into the conversation. That evening, though, Jeanne stormed into my room to fume about Jill's lack of attention to the hard work of singing. And yes, she had good chemistry with her co-star. Robbie Thomas was probably the best-looking guy in the senior class. Anyone would have good chemistry with him. I sympathized as best as I could, but the analogy to baseball kept coming back. Why would this Collins guy put Jill in the lead role if she wasn't the best one for the part?

It was my turn in the rotation for Thursday afternoon's home game, and I was pleased to see that my fan club was back, even if they weren't all sitting together. Apparently today's practice was just for the guys in the play. Jeanne had explained that they were going to need a good bit more work, since the chorus was girls-only. So the girls, with some significant exceptions, according to Jeanne, like I-knew-who, already knew how to sing. They only needed to learn the play. The boys needed to learn to sing as well. That, she claimed, simply made it even more imperative that the girls in the play, such as, for example, Jill, treated their rehearsals with more seriousness.

I could tell that the rift bothered Tanya. She spent the first three innings with Jill, but then when they began to attract a group of eleventh-grade boys, she moved down to sit with Jeanne and Cammie.

It apparently bothered me, too, because I had one of my poorer days. I let in a run in the top of the fourth. It wasn't a really big deal, because we were already ahead 5-0 by the end of the third. But there weren't any errors to excuse this one. I walked the first guy up, and the next guy sacrificed him to second. I hit the third guy, and the fourth guy blooped a single into left field that scored the guy from second.

So with only one out, and men on first and third, that baseball genius Matt Denton sauntered over from third base.

"Everything okay, Trickster?" he asked as he neared the side of the pitcher's mound.

"What the hell do you want, Matt?"

"Just makin' sure you're alright."

"Because we can't afford to have both you and me letting in runs?"

"That was a tough chance," he said defensively, referring to the last ball that had gone just over his outstretched glove. "I haven't made any errors."

"Yet," I snapped. "Don't worry, Matt. We've got a big enough cushion even for a team with you on it."

"Everything okay, guys?" Tommy asked as he trotted out to the mound.

"Fine," I said. "Everything fine with you, Matt?"

"Asshole," Matt muttered.

"Matt's fine, too," I smiled at Tommy. "Now let's strike these next guys out, huh, buddy?"

I struck the first two out, and I got the third to hit a pop fly to the infield. The ball was drifting toward third base, but it was my call as to who would field it. I screamed out Rabbit's name, and he easily made the play. Matt just glared at me as we walked back to the dugout.

We got two more runs in the bottom of the fourth, and four more in the fifth, giving us our first mercy-rule win of the season. Coach called me into his office after the game, though, to ask what Matt and I had been talking about.

"Matt wanted to discuss my pitching," I told him.

"And?"

"And I thought we should discuss his fielding instead."

"He did okay today," Coach said.

"Yeah, I know." He had only had one chance after his grounder, an easy play to second base to end the top of the fifth inning.

"You're the captain, Trick," he said. "You've gotta keep the team together, not push 'em apart."

I left after that. On the one hand, it was true. I was supposed to be the captain of the whole team. But on the other hand, of all the things Matt Denton ought to be worrying about, my pitching was the last thing on his list. I may have finally lost my no-Earned Run Average, but not by much. Still, I mumbled an apology on my way out of the locker room, and Matt mumbled something back.

Tanya and Jeanne were both waiting for me outside the locker room, and Cammie was waiting for Rabbit.

"Jill get a ride home?" I asked, trying not to look at Jeanne, but trying not to make it too obvious that I was looking at Tanya.

"Yeah, some of my classmates," Jeanne said heatedly.

"Sweetie, your boyfriend is a great guy," Tanya said.

"I know," Jeanne sighed. "I'm not jealous. I'm just..."

Jealous. Or just envious, maybe, that the same boys had never paid her the same kind of attention.

We didn't say much the rest of the way to Tanya's house, and nothing at all on the ride back to our house.

Things started to look up on Friday. Tanya pulled me aside after Religion and asked me if my house would be free this evening.

"No," I said. "Tiffany's off her pizza kick. Now she's just having Dad bring her fried chicken every other night."

"Yecch!"

"I know. On the other hand, that baby's just gonna slide outta there."

"Gross!" Tanya hit me on the arm.

"So your house is out, too?"

"Yeah," she said, her disappointment matching mine.

"Tanya getting a little horny?" I smiled.

"Actually no," she grinned at me. "But Tanya needs to make it up to her best friend."

"Bummer."

"Well, we could go out to the point," she said slowly.

"Chapman's Point?" I asked with astonishment. "But that's just..."

"An overlook. I know."

"But you said that you didn't want to, in the back seat of —"

"I know what I said," she stopped me with a finger to my lips. "Do you want to go or not?"

"What time shall I pick you up?" I asked with enough eagerness to make her break into giggles.

I stopped by her house at seven o'clock, so that we could go out for a bite to eat together. Mr. Szerchenko pretty much monopolized the conversation while I was waiting for Tanya to come downstairs, but it was pretty clear that Mrs. Szerchenko wanted to have a say as well. Finally, just as she had drawn a deep breath and was getting ready to cut her husband off, probably with a sharp elbow to the stomach, we heard Tanya thundering down the stairs.

"Sorry," she said breathlessly.

I looked at her, dressed in a pair of jeans and a ribbed yellow turtleneck.

"It was worth the wait," I said.

"Don't forget your coat," her mother said.

"It's actually pretty warm," I told her, a little selfishly perhaps since I was wearing a coat of my own. It didn't make any difference, though. Tanya was already headed for the closet. Mrs. Szerchenko leaned in to whisper in my ear.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 06



"I'll call you tomorrow," she said, giving me a quick nod as if I was already a part of whatever conspiracy she was planning. I nodded back, and hustled Tanya out to the car.

It turned out to be the worst sex of my life. Ever. Excluding, of course, all the times I didn't remember in tenth and eleventh grades. For one thing, we probably shouldn't have eaten at Carter's. Their hamburgers and fries are absolutely wonderful, but probably about as greasy as the chicken that Tiffany was wolfing down when I left the house. It left us both feeling a little bloated, a feeling that hadn't really left when we climbed into the back seat of my Civic at Chapman's Point.

Second, it actually wasn't that warm. Which probably explained why we were the only car parked at Chapman's Point. We threw our coats in the front seat, but we both kept our shirts on. And we both only pulled our pants as far down as we had to.

And finally, there was no way with my frame to get Tanya warmed up with my tongue. I couldn't manage to do that without opening a door, which would have made it even colder, and Tanya graciously told me, after we thought about it for a while, that it wasn't necessary. She did her best to blow me, but I found that I didn't like it as much from the side as I did from straight in front. I have no idea why. Maybe it was something to do with where the tongue and the teeth end up. She gave it a good try, certainly a better try than I gave her, but in the end it really wasn't that satisfying to either one of us.

So without really saying anything, we both sort of worked ourselves up, each with his or her own hand, until I sort of grunted that I was ready. She swung herself over me, but we found that there simply wasn't enough room for her thighs unless I slumped down like a couch potato cradling a bowl of Fritos. So instead, she swung around, this time facing away from me. That worked well, and I tried to reach around to finger her as she carefully bounced up and down on my lap. She only hit her head on the ceiling six or seven times before I came, probably the result of getting myself a little too ready. It didn't do anything for her, and she pulled herself off of me as soon as she felt me go soft.

"Well, that really sucked, didn't it?" she asked. Her voice caught a little as she said it, but I wasn't in a sympathetic mood.

"Yeah, I guess it did," I agreed.

"Trick, I'm sorry," she sobbed, burying her face in my shirt.

"It's fine," I said, uncomfortably throwing an arm over her shoulder and hugging her to me.

"It's not fine," she bawled more. "You just said it sucked."

"I was just agreeing with you," I pointed out.

That wasn't the right thing to say, either. It just made her cry even harder. Fifteen minutes later, when we had exhausted all of the 7-Eleven napkins that I hadn't managed to find when I was cleaning the car this afternoon, we decided that we would consider this to have been simply a bad experiment. One of the benefits of being friends with benefits was that we could be honest about the things we did and didn't like, and we agreed that car sex wasn't something that we had really enjoyed. Certainly, it wasn't something that we had any intention of repeating.

I dropped Tanya off around ten o'clock and headed home. I should have known that Friday wouldn't be any better than the rest of the week. The only way it could have been worse, in fact, was for it to have been Saturday.

Jeanne and Jill both had play practice that morning, so I spent the first couple of hours running errands for Dad and Tiffany. It wasn't until around eleven that I learned that Mrs. Szerchenko had called for me, several times in fact. I went upstairs to use my cell phone, and found that she had tried there several times as well.

"Mrs. Szerchenko, this is Patrick."

"Patrick, thank goodness you called. It's about tonight."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I don't want to ruin any of your plans, of course, but I was thinking how nice it is that Tanya finally has some friends and I was wondering if they would like to come over tonight for some cake."

"Cake, ma'am?"

"I couldn't help myself. She always says, 'Mom, I don't need a cake.' But you only have birthdays once a year, right?"

Birthdays? Fuck, what was today?

"Patrick, are you still there?"

"Sorry, ma'am, must be a bad signal here. I tell you what, let me make some phone calls and get back to you, okay?"

"Certainly. I apologize for waiting until the last minute like this, but I just thought it would be nice..."

"I think so, too, ma'am. I'll be in touch."

"Shit!"

I managed to wait until after I had pressed the disconnect button to voice the thought that had been running through my head for the last twenty seconds. The party was actually the easy part. Jeanne would be home from play practice in an hour or so, and she could call Cammie. If the gang could come, fine. If not, well, Mrs. S was the one who waited until the day itself.

In the meantime, though, there was the whole thing about a present. Tanya had gotten me a very nice sweater for my birthday. I opened the window, and yelled out to Tiffany, who was supervising Dad pruning the rose bushes, that I needed to borrow her car. She waved back. I ran downstairs to rummage through Tiffany's purse for her keys.

Once I got to the mall, I was completely stumped. There was always the Victoria's Secret gift certificate. But the chances of Mrs. S being there when Tanya opened the presents were pretty good. And the chances of her liking that particular present were probably pretty small. In the end, I got one of the perfume spritzer girls in Hecht's to recommend a nice perfume, and I was on my way out of the store with that when I nearly mowed down Cammie and her mother.

"Patrick," Mrs. Rowe said effusively. "How nice to see you."

"You, too, Mrs. Rowe. Cammie. Oh, jeez, Cammie. Tanya's mom called me this morning and wants to invite some people over for birthday cake tonight. Can you come?"

"Sure," Cammie said. "I suppose you want me to call up the guys, huh?"

"Yeah. I was going to leave a note for Jeanne before I came here but I kind of forgot. So, uh..."

"Jerk. What is it with you two and birthdays? I suppose you waited until today to get her present, too."

"Well, um, yeah."

"Mr. Thoughtful," Cammie smirked.

"I remember for Cammie's sixteenth," Mrs. Rowe interrupted, "you got her a very lovely pair of —"

"Mother," Cammie said in a voice fraught with warning.

"Well, I'm just saying it was a very thoughtful gift," Mrs. Rowe concluded.

"Yeah. Well, let's see," Cammie snatched the bag from my hand. "Perfume?"

"Well, maybe his girlfriend likes perfume," Mrs. Rowe smiled at me.

"She's not really my girlfriend," I told her.

"She's not?" Mrs. Rowe asked.

"Does she?" Cammie interrupted. "Does she like perfume?"

I was stumped. The Hecht's girl had assured me that all women liked perfume.

"What kind does she wear?" Cammie pressed on. "Floral? Spicy? Sweet?"

"Cammie," Mrs. Rowe said. "You're embarrassing him."

"Mother, Trick Sterling doesn't need any help from me for that. Come on."

"Me?" I asked.

"Of course you," Cammie said with disgust. "Tanya's never worn perfume in her life. Mom, I'll meet you at the fountain in half an hour."

Mrs. Rowe waved goodbye as I hurried to catch up with Cammie. Our first stop was Hecht's, where she basically read the perfume girl the Riot Act and made her refund my money.

"You are such an asshole," Cammie said as we left the store. "What is she wearing to the Formal?"

"The what?"

"The Senior Formal. May nineteenth. Oh God, you haven't even asked her, have you? Of course not, you're Trick Sterling. Girls all over school are probably waiting by the phone for you to call. Come on."

She dragged me into a very small jewelry store, where she finally found a very elegant gold necklace. She assured me that it would go with anything Tanya wore, whether she went with me or wised up and went with someone else.

"Um, thanks, Cammie," I stammered as she started to head off to the fountain to meet her mother.

She turned around quickly.

"You know, I'm glad Tanya's not your girlfriend," she said, pausing slightly before she went on. "She deserves better."

Yeah, and fuck you, too, Cammie Rowe.

She wheeled again and stalked off.

The party turned out to be very nice. I impressed Tanya and her parents by showing up at five o'clock — while the Yankees and the Red Sox were playing — with all the fixings for a steak dinner, the only kind of dinner I knew how to cook. At seven-thirty, Tanya answered the doorbell to find not only our gang, but also Tanya's yearbook buddies. All of them, I learned, had received a phone call from Cammie. I mouthed a "thank you" to her. She mouthed an "asshole" to me.

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of banging on my door.

"What?" I said sleepily to Jeanne when I pulled it open.

"Church?" she asked. "You have ten minutes."

"Is Jill going?" I asked.

"No," Jeanne looked down the hall, her lip curling into a sneer. "She says she didn't sin this weekend."

"Me neither," I nodded slowly. "Tell Cammie thanks again."

"Tell her yourself, Trick," Jeanne said, pulling the door shut.

Chapter 22

Monday's baseball game was against our arch-rival, McKay Academy, at their lush, nicely appointed home field. Coach Torianni reminded us that our league playoff game with them last year had been a nail-biter. Mo Perra's two-run homer in the eighth had been the only scoring in the game. This year, they were supposed to be even better, and their record going into the game was a league-leading 8-3. With Marshall standing in seventh, with a league record of 4-5, it was unlikely that McKay was thinking of us as their arch-rival. We were more likely just a slow possum on their road to a league title and the state playoffs beyond that.

I would have loved to have pitched, but it was Cary's turn in the rotation. He pitched very well through the first three innings, mixing just enough fastballs in with his wicked curveball to keep the McKay batters off balance. Jesse was home with a cold, so this was the first time Tommy had called one of Cary's games. I remember thinking that Jesse would be lucky to have a starting position when he got back if Cary kept pitching this well. Meanwhile, Matt hit a two-run homer in the second, and Cary bunted home another run in the third.

The pivotal moment in the game came in the bottom of the fourth, when their number three hitter sent a grounder screaming toward Matt at third. Everyone on the team held their breath. And we kept on holding it as the ball ricocheted off his glove, then off his knee, and straight up into the air. He managed to grab the ball with his bare hand on its way back down and looked immediately to first. He was just as surprised as the rest of us to find that he still had a play there. Tommy, who had hustled down the first base line to back up Mo and was probably the only guy on our team who wasn't watching Matt, told us that the batter had taken two steps out of the batter's box, dropped the bat, and then tripped over it. It didn't matter. It was still an out, and when we got back to the dugout, Cary made a point of high-fiving Matt.

After that, McKay seemed to lose a little of its focus. We ended up scoring three more runs to only two for them, and went home with a well-earned, if somewhat surprising, 6-2 league win. I had done my part, singling in a run in the fifth and scoring another run in the seventh after a two-out triple.

The day's real good news, though, came that evening, when I got a call from Uncle Ted, the UVA history professor. He said that Coach Rogers had told him about my interest, and that they were very interested in me. Uncle Ted had a friend with a small plane, and he was willing to fly up and fly me back down to UVA on Friday evening. I would spend the night at Uncle Ted and Aunt Helen's, watch a game and take a tour of the campus on Saturday, and maybe hang out with some of the guys on the team on Saturday night. Then the guy would fly me back on Sunday. It sounded great to me.

Jeanne and Jill were still feuding, of course. At least Jeanne was still feuding. Around nine o'clock she barged into my room to complain that Jill wasn't taking any of her rehearsals seriously.

"She shows up, sings her song, and then skips off to flirt with the guys in the stage crew."

"And she should...?" I asked.

"She should pay attention to everything else that's going on in the play, so she knows what everyone else is doing."

"So it is sort of like baseball," I smiled.

"Yeah," she said savagely, "and you know who she reminds me of?"

I shrugged.

"You," she stormed off again.

That threw me for a loop. Coach hadn't complained about my practice routine. It was true I probably didn't take as much outfield as the other outfielders did, but I had to get in my throws, too. So I wondered what she meant. I shrugged again. Maybe I would get a chance to ask her the following night.

On Tuesday afternoon, though, I suddenly remembered that I had a history paper due on Friday, something about the first two decades of the twentieth century. I spent the afternoon in the school library, and the evening at the public library. By the end I had done a little research and had, at least, decided upon a topic: Theodore Roosevelt's 1906 trip to Panama, the first time a sitting American president had traveled abroad. It was a nice, compact little topic, but it offered plenty of other stuff about the Panama Canal that I could throw in if it proved too compact.

Wednesday was another baseball game, a non-league match-up at home against Thorn River High. The game started off horribly and never got much better. After I struck the first batter out, the second guy hit a sharp line drive to Matt that skimmed his outstretched glove and deflected down the left field line. By the time Bobby could get to it, the batter was already on third base. I told myself that it was a tough chance, and I couldn't blame Matt for it. Rabbit would have had it easily, of course. The next batter grounded out to second, easily scoring the guy from third. We put two runs across in the bottom of the inning, but they had figured us out. One batter after another started to try to hit the ball to Matt. He actually handled most of them. But the ones he didn't cost us big. And I made it worse by trying to throw all my pitches to the first base side of the plate, hoping that the left-handed hitters would try to pull the ball into right field and that the righties wouldn't be able to get around on the ball fast enough to pull it toward Matt.

But that got me away from my kind of pitching, which involved mixing up my locations to confuse the hitters, and mixing my fastball with the occasional change to keep them honest. Once I got away from that, I was a fairly ordinary pitcher. By the end of the third inning, I had been charged with my second earned run of the game, only my third of the year. Matt had been charged with three errors that lead to four unearned runs, and we were in a five-run hole.

It turned out to be too much to overcome. I doubled and Mo drove me in, but our clutch hitting was still largely absent. It went in the books as my first loss of the spring. Afterward, I stopped by Coach's office to let him know about my upcoming trip to Charlottesville.

"You realize we have a league game on Saturday," he said.

"Yeah, I know. But Tommy's hitting pretty good, so he can catch and Jesse can take my place."

"In the outfield," he said. "Not as captain."

"Captain," I scoffed. "Those guys don't listen to me any more than they listen..."

"To me?" Coach smiled. "Trick, they listen to me. If I tell them to change their stance, they change it. If I tell them to run more laps, they run laps. But it's true, they're not gonna listen to me tell them they need to become a better team. That kind of stuff has to grow from the inside out."

"Yeah," I nodded. "I'll do what I can. But this UVA thing really means a lot to me, Coach."

"So I gather," he smiled. "I don't think I've ever seen you run as fast as you did that day when their coach was in the stands. He's got a pretty good team this year. Top ten. You'd be a good addition."

"Thanks, Coach."

Damn right, I would be. Plus they'd have a real goddamn third baseman playing behind me. I could play the rah-rah cheerleader from now until the end of the season, and it wouldn't change how many errors we made in the field. Or how poorly we hit when we were up at the plate.

Tanya and Jeanne had both been at the game, but they were gone by the time I got out of the locker room. That was probably a good thing. Between the game and the A-minus I had received on the astronomy quiz that Carruthers had handed back today, I wasn't in a very good mood. I spent most of the first part of the evening sitting on my bed, stewing about the lack of defense and run support. It wasn't until around ten o'clock that I remembered that I had only one more day to finish my history paper.

I stayed up until one, finishing the research on all the books I'd checked out of the public library. I started writing the next afternoon in my study halls and was most of the way done by the end of the day. Even so, finishing the last page, giving it a final polish, and typing it took me up until eleven o'clock.

I turned it in on Friday morning, put in my two cents in Mrs. Palmer's ongoing discussion of Captain Ahab, listened to Mr. Carruthers blather on about redshifts, and partook in a spirited debate in Religion on the book of Daniel.

Jeanne grabbed me on my way to lunch with Tanya and hauled me into an empty classroom.

"Do you know what that bitch is doing now?"

"Jill?"

"Of course, Jill."

"Well, I'm sorry, I just never heard you call your sister a bitch before."

That didn't faze her at all.

"Fine. I'm sorry," she said with a total lack of sincerity. "My lovely sister Jill has decided that she's such a little prima donna that she doesn't even have to come to today's rehearsal. And Collins, the stupid ass, says that's fine, I can just practice my part of the duet. Like Jill doesn't need to practice her part."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"What did you mean the other day when you said she reminded you of me?"

"I meant that you did exactly the same thing in tenth grade. You thought you were God's gift to Marshall High School."

"You mean I didn't go to practice?"

"Trick, I don't have idea whether you went to practice. What I do know is that you walked around just like Jill, looking down on everybody who didn't kiss your ass. Or suck your dick."

"But I don't do that now!" I protested.

"No, maybe Jill remembers you from tenth grade. Or maybe she's just making this up on her own. Maybe she doesn't even try to imitate her big brother any more. God, she makes me so mad. She's going to ruin the play for everyone."

"Because she can't sing?" I ventured tentatively.

"She can sing fine," Jeanne suddenly deflated. "I can sing better, but she can sing fine. She's just not part of the cast, you know? Maybe you could, like, talk to her?"

"I can talk about baseball," I said defensively. "I don't know anything about plays. Plus I'm going to Uncle Ted's this weekend."

Jeanne was staring at me blankly.

"He invited me down to tour UVA," I explained. "They're flying a plane up tonight. I'm gonna need the car to go to the airport.

She took a deep breath and sighed.

"Well, thanks anyway," she said. She pivoted and stomped off.

Well, fuck you, too, Jeanne Sterling. Who died and appointed me captain of the Sterling family?

As I followed her to the cafeteria, I remembered that Jeanne wasn't the only person that didn't know I was going to be away for the weekend. I had told Dad, and I had told Coach. I had completely forgotten to tell Tanya. Shit. And as I was turning over in my mind the best way of doing that, I nearly ran her over. Apparently, she had been waiting for me to finish with Jeanne.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 06



"God, I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know where I was."

Her look was much more serious than mine, so I quickly sobered up.

"Patrick, I know you wanted to get together this weekend to make up for last Friday," she began, a tear forming in the corner of her left eye. "But my grandma took a turn for the worse during the week, and I really have to go down to see her."

"That's fine," I said. "She's your grandmother. When do you leave?"

"Tonight," she said. "The plane's at seven."

My guy was arriving at seven-thirty.

"Can I bring you to the airport?" I asked.

She smiled and looked up and down the hall. With no one in sight, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek.

"You are so sweet," she said.

"When do you get back?"

"Tuesday afternoon."

"Wow. You're gonna miss two days of school."

She shook her head.

"Tuesday's one of those teacher service days, so it's only Monday. Gonna miss me?"

"Of course," I smiled.

Since I wasn't going to be at the game on Saturday, Coach had no objection to my leaving practice a little early. I raced home, showered, and threw a bag with a change of clothes in the trunk. I was at Tanya's house by five-thirty, and we put her suitcase in the back seat. We got to the dinky local airport half an hour later. I parked the car and she turned to me.

"I'm sorry again about the weekend," she said softly.

"That's okay," I assured her.

"Can I make it up to you?" she asked with a gleam in her eye.

"Sure," I smiled. "Next weekend's fine."

"Can I make a down-payment?" she reached over and traced her fingers slowly up my crotch.

"A what?" I coughed.

"A deposit," she grinned. "Or maybe you can make a deposit."

Without taking her eyes off mine, she unzipped my fly and begin snaking her hand into the hole in my shorts. Now that I understood what she had in mind, I looked around the parking lot to assure myself that nobody else was around. I pushed the seat back, pushed the steering wheel up, and pushed my pants and shorts down to my thighs. Her blonde hair tickled my cock just before her lips closed around it, and I sat back in my seat. It didn't take long, and when she sat back up, she made sure I saw her lick her lips.

"Next week you can open a checking account," she said huskily.

"A checking account?" I smiled.

"You can check out how I look completely naked," she grinned. "We actually haven't done that in quite a while. Thanks, Patrick. I should go."

"Thank you, Tanya."

I pulled myself back together and walked her to the security area. We shared a brief kiss on the lips, and I waved goodbye when she headed off for her gate. Just after her plane took off, I heard my name being paged over the loudspeaker system. Perfect timing.

It was dark when we arrived at the Charlottesville airport, but Uncle Ted and Aunt Ruth were both there to meet me, and we stayed up until nearly midnight talking. The next day we had breakfast at a local diner, and then they gave me a history teacher's tour of the Grounds. Jefferson, Poe — those kind of guys. Around ten, though, they dropped me off at Coach Rogers' office in the McCue Center. The coach himself took charge of me, giving me a tour of the facilities and introducing me to the players as they trickled into the locker room for the afternoon game against Clemson.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Ted joined me in the stands for the game, and then it was time for me to sample student life. Or student-athlete life, in my case. It started with dinner at the John Paul Jones Center, normally the basketball team's home court but tonight the site of a concert by Rod Stewart. A concert for which the baseball team was given the use of one of the private suites high above the arena floor. A concert that I watched with a comely young lady sitting in my lap, fetching sodas and munchies at the tiniest indication of interest on my part. She was a great listener, letting me blab on and on about my no-hitter, and letting me whine about the team's shortcomings. And she was funny, too, snapping off one-liners about the other guys on the team. Sign me up, boys.

After the concert, we headed toward a private house that served as the residence for a number of the guys on the team. A house where the young lady was now able to obtain us both beer instead of soft drinks.

"So," she said, seating herself in my lap once again. "I'm randy."

"Hi, Randy," I smiled stupidly, taking a sip of beer. In the harsher light of the house's crowded living room, she wasn't perhaps the beauty I'd imagined in the darkened suite of the arena. She had a nice smile, and lovely green eyes, but her nose was a little crooked and her jaw a little too square.

"It's not a name," she giggled. "It's an adjective."

My smile grew even bigger.

"I always welcome the new recruits," she told me, batting her long eyelashes at me. "Would you like a welcome?"

I couldn't smile any more than that. She got up and took me by the hand, leading me to a bedroom off the kitchen.

"So what's your name, honey?" she asked as her talented hands worked on my belt and zipper.

"Trick," I told her, sitting down on the bed with my pants around my ankles.

She dropped to her knees in front of me.

"I've never done a Trick," she smiled before leaning forward and taking my cock inside her mouth. She just stayed there for about ten seconds, and then I felt something tickling the sensitive skin around my cock. Something warm, something wet. They were tears. She was crying.

I reached down and lifted her off me by the chin.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," she sniffed. "It's just your name."

"Trick?"

"Yeah," she started tearing up again. "God, I'm sorry. It's not you."

"What is it?"

She didn't answer for a minute, studying my face instead. Then she appeared to come to some sort of decision about me and took a deep breath.

"When I said I've never done a trick?" she half-sobbed and half-laughed. "What a crock. That's basically how I stay in my house."

"Your house makes you, um...?

"My sorority," she explained. "And yeah, we have a relationship with the baseball team."

She had used her hands to put quotation marks around the word "relationship."

"And since none of them wants to date me..." her voice trailed off and she looked back down at my cock.

"Why don't you just quit?" I asked.

"Why don't you just shut up and let me finish," she said fiercely. She had a tight grip on my cock, and I really had no way of preventing her from bending her head once again, short of pulling her by the hair. She started sucking me with a fury, as if she were now determined to finish what she had started.

The door suddenly opened, and one of the infielders on the team popped his head in.

"Hey, sorry," he smiled. "I see you've met Sarah, Sterling."

I never heard him close the door, because her name was like a knife to my stomach. It wasn't the name alone, but the juxtaposition. Sarah Sterling. That was my mother's name.

"Sarah, stop," I said with no success.

I grabbed her by the chin again and pulled.

"Sarah, you have to stop."

"Why?" she asked with venom. "'Cause I'm too ugly to give you a blowjob, too?"

"No," I said. "You just have to. Look, I'm really sorry. It's nothing to do with you, but I have to go."

She started to tear up again.

"Seriously, I think you're great Sarah. I just have to go."

I stood up and pulled up my pants.

"Asshole," I heard her mutter behind me.

Actually, no. Not this time. Not anymore, anyway.

I found my way back to the Grounds and blindly wandered the campus for a few hours, alternately crying to myself and wondering what the hell had happened to me over the last three weeks. Jeanne, Tanya, Cammie, Matt — ever since my no-hitter, I had treated everyone of them less like a person and more like a tool, someone who Trick Sterling found useful or someone he didn't need. And Jill was apparently doing exactly the same thing.

Finally, around three o'clock, I fell asleep on the steps of a deserted building with a wide entrance.

"Young man?" I heard her voice before I felt her hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see the friendly, concerned face of a middle-aged woman bending over to look at me. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, thank you, ma'am," I said. "I'm sorry, I fell asleep. Is this your house?"

"In one sense," she smiled. "Would you like to come in?"

I looked around and realized that I had fallen asleep on the steps of the University's chapel.

"Come on," she said. "I'll make some tea. My first service isn't until eight."

"You're a minister?" I stood up and meekly followed her.

"Episcopalian," she said over her shoulder as she unlocked the door. "But I try to do a non-denominational service at eleven o'clock."

We sat and I told her a sanitized version of my life. She sipped her tea, she nodded wisely, and then she asked me to help her with the early service.

It was a sparsely attended affair. I counted twenty people when it came time to count out the communion wafers. So it wasn't until I was actually leaning forward with the chalice that I realized that one of the girls at the altar rail was Sarah. She was busy trying to dip the wafer in the wine, so she had no idea who was holding the chalice. It wasn't until I threw my robe at the minister after the service, in a nice, dignified way of course, and ran after her that she remembered me.

"Where the hell did you come from?" she asked, looking around wildly.

"Church," I nodded over my shoulder.

"You were in church?" she asked incredulously.

"I served your wine. Now can we sit down and talk?"

"What do you want?" her voice turned sullen.

"I want to explain why I left."

"I know why you left."

"I don't think you do. Do you remember when that guy came in and said, 'I see you've met Sarah, Sterling?'"

"Yeah?"

"My mom's name was Sarah Sterling. And after that, all I could think about was what a jerk I'd been for the past month. And here I was, letting a smart, nice, and yes, pretty girl give me a blowjob because she thought she had to."

"Kind of like me and Trick, huh?" she grinned. She walked over to a bench and sat down.

"Kind of," I said, joining her. "You know, you remind me of my mother a little."

"Great," she rolled her eyes.

"My mom was actually a very pretty lady," I said. "She died two years ago, at forty."

"I'm sorry, Trick."

"Patrick, actually."

Sarah burst out in laughter.

"You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you'd told me that yesterday," she finally said.

"Sorry. Anyway, my mom had a way of making everybody she met, at church or wherever, feel like they were the most important person in the world at that very moment."

Sarah just blinked at me.

"I felt that way last night," I told her.

I held up a hand as I watched her eyes begin to narrow.

"No, not then. At the concert. When you were telling me things and listening to me talk. About my stupid high school crap."

"It wasn't stupid," she said softly.

"Not to me," I agreed. "But probably to anybody other than you, Sarah, it would have been."

She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her cheek.

"Come on, Sarah, let's get some breakfast. You're last name isn't Sterling, I hope?"

"Cutter," she said.

"Well, let me buy you some breakfast, Sarah Cutter, and tell you some more about my mom. I like talking about my mom, you know?"

I told her a little bit more about me over breakfast, too, and she told me a little bit more about herself. We ended up exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and I promised that when I got to Charlottesville next fall, she would be the first person I would call.

"But not for a date," she said.

I was a little taken aback by that.

"There's this really cute guy on the lacrosse team who keeps looking at me in Chem class," she said. "The hell with the baseball team."

She really did have a nice smile.

I met up with my aunt and uncle again for lunch, and was flown back home in the afternoon. All the way there, I found myself thinking about Tanya. And the team. And Jill. And Jeanne. God, I had a lot to do. I hoped I had enough time to do it. The season was nearing an end, the dance was coming up, and the musical was right after it. Please, God, just let me know that it's possible. Just give me a sign.

I got to the airport and drove home to an empty house. I went up to the bedroom and pulled open the closet door to find a new shirt. The baseball tie that Mrs. Szerchenko had given me slipped off its hook and fell in a pile at my feet. I just stared at it. Honestly, I had been hoping for a better sign than that.

Chapter 23

I can see in my mind the sculpted image of President Lincoln on Mount Rushmore, the only one of the four looking westward. He sees a sign or a billboard. Maybe it says "TR Sucks!" or "Lincoln Rocks!" And he starts to smile. Cracks start to form on the rock face as his carved mouth slowly lifts into the smallest of grins. Little chunks of stone start falling off the face of the mountain, endangering people below.

I can see all of this because on the Monday following my trip to Charlottesville, I saw Mr. Smithson, my homeroom teacher, start to smile. He finally controlled himself with an effort, but his voice was still flecked with something not entirely unlike humor.

"That is probably the most hideous tie I have ever seen, Mr. Sterling," it rumbled through a stunned classroom.

"You think?" I smiled, fingering the yellow and blue monstrosity. "It was a gift."

His mouth twitched, threatening us all with a chuckle or, even worse, a guffaw. Once again, though, his stoicism triumphed.

"I'm glad to hear that," he said as the class started tittering.

Mr. Kennedy was similarly taken with the tie. Every time he looked back in my corner of the room, his lecture on the pernicious influence of special interest groups seemed to suffer. Finally, he just stopped and sat down on his desk.

"I hope you don't have an interview today, Patrick," he smiled.

"An interview, sir?"

"When I was in college, wearing a tie meant that someone had a job interview."

"No, sir. No interview. We have a baseball game today."

He raised an eyebrow.

"And you need to blind the other team when they show up?"

"No, sir," I smiled. "It's a sign of respect."

"For whom?" he looked quite puzzled.

"Morgan High, sir. It's an away game."

"Jesse and Hal don't seem to have the same respect," he pointed out.

"I'm sure they do, sir," I said. I knew full well that Morgan High hadn't won a game yet this year, and the last thing on Jesse and Hal's mind at the moment was respect. "But I'm the captain, sir. I have to make sure they know we respect them. You know, lead by example and all that."

"I see," Mr. Kennedy nodded before continuing in a patronizing tone. "You might want to pick a different tie next time, though. I'm not sure that one really sends the message that you want."

"No?" I asked, pulling in out to look at it. "Well, thank you, sir."

No kidding, butthead.

The tie got the same reaction the rest of the morning. It wasn't until lunch time that somebody said what everyone else had been thinking.

"Are you crazy?" Cammie asked. "They're going to think you're making fun of them when you walk off the bus."

I gave her my best offended look.

"This was a gift from Tanya's mother," I said self-righteously.

"Oh, God, Trick. I'm sorry," Cammie clapped a hand over her mouth.

"It is pretty ugly, though, isn't it? I actually don't plan on wearing it when I get off the bus."

"So all this shit about respect and all...?" Rabbit asked.

"Oh, no, I brought another tie for that."

"Then what's with this tie?" Jeanne asked.

"This is just to get the attention of my team," I explained. "I am the captain, you know. It's worked pretty well so far, too."

The table broke out in laughter.

"You are such an asshole," Cammie shook her head, smiling all the while.

"I know," I grinned.

When the bus pulled into the parking lot at Morgan, I was wearing a very conservative blue tie. Before anyone could move, I jumped up and took the two steps that put me at the front of the bus.

"All right. Listen up, guys."

Nobody had done this before, at least not this year, so the effect on my teammates was exactly what I had hoped for: paralysis.

"I'm sure you all heard about me wearing this other tie today, and you probably heard why. First off, I'm sorry I wasn't here for the game on Saturday. Tough loss, guys."

We had been blown off the field.

"Right now our record is 8-7. Our league record is 5-4. If we want to make the league playoffs this year — forget the state playoffs — we need to do better over the next couple of weeks. And that means we have to start taking ourselves a little more seriously. Now, to me, that starts with taking our opponents more seriously. If we lose a game because they just played better than us, fine. If we lose because we didn't respect them, because we didn't understand that any team in this league is capable of beating us on any given day, we should be ashamed to call ourselves the defending state champions. That's all, guys. Have a good game."

I led the team off the bus to the locker room. I led them out of the locker room and onto the field. And then I led them to a 6-0 shutout of Morgan High School. It did help that Cary pitched a five-hitter. I could have pitched, but Coach wanted me available on Thursday for the rematch against McKay. But I did my part with a homer and two RBIs.

Probably the most important thing in the game happened in the sixth inning. They had a guy on first with two outs, and the next guy up lined a sharp single into right. I scooped it up, reared back, and unleashed a rocket toward Mattie at third base. Eddie, the cutoff man, was so surprised to see me throw it there that he ducked. That turned out to be fine because Matt, at third, was too stunned to tell him to cut it. Instead, Matt took it on a short hop and swept his glove down for the tag. He just stood there for a few seconds after that, taking in the sight of the umpire with his fist raised high in the air to signal an out.

"That'll teach 'em to make the third out at third base, huh, Matt?" I smiled as I went by him into the dugout.

"Uh, yeah. Sure, Trick."

I was also the first one to the bus after the game, and made the incredibly corny gesture of waiting at the bottom of the steps so that I could shake hands with, and thank, each guy on the team as he got on. Coach Torianni was the last one, and he thanked me before I could thank him.

"Well, we'll see," I smiled. At least step one was complete. Our second step, as a team, would come on Thursday, when we had a home rematch against McKay. They were probably going to take us a little more seriously this time, after we had given them a spanking on their home field.

My second step, as a person, came on Tuesday morning. With no school, and no practice, I was planning on devoting my day to Tanya, even though her plane wasn't due until three that afternoon. We had talked briefly on Sunday and Monday evenings by cell phone, but I really needed to see her in person. Jill gave me an opening that I simply couldn't refuse, however. With Jeanne still up in her room, Jill sat down to eat breakfast with me.

"So what was with that tie yesterday?"

"Did you like it?"

"Well, um..."

"Yeah, I know. Why didn't you ask me yesterday morning in the car?"

"'Cause Jeanne would have made some snippy remark, and we would have started fighting."

"True," I nodded. "Do you remember when I was like, twelve and you were nine, we went to this amusement park, and you and I were going to go on this ride together all by ourselves?"

"Yeah, sort of," she tilted her head and began twirling a strand of hair.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 06



"Do you remember what Mom said to us when we were in line?"

She shook her head.

"She said, 'Now make sure that when it's your turn, you're ready.'"

"She said that all the time," Jill laughed.

"Yeah, well, I just remembered it this weekend. And I realized that, even if I don't remember anything about being on a baseball team the past two years —"

Jill smiled at that.

"— I'm still the team captain. And I don't think I was really ready for that before. But I can't just give it up, so I kind of had to get ready. I don't have a next year, you know?"

"So the tie helps you captain?"

"You know, I think it actually did yesterday. All day long, the guys on the team kept saying to themselves, 'What's he wearin' that ugly tie for?' So by the time we got to the game, and I put on a regular tie, they were ready to listen."

"You gonna wear it again?" Jill giggled.

"Yeah, I think I will. Probably for the game on Thursday."

I could tell from Jill's face that she was lost in her memories of our mother for the next few minutes while I finished my cereal. I was very slowly rinsing my bowl off to put it in the dishwasher, awaiting the question that I knew she wouldn't be able to resist.

"So, of all the times that Mom said that, why did you remember that one?"

"Because that was the only time you asked the obvious question," I smiled, wiping my hands on the dishtowel.

"Which was what?"

"'What if I'm not ready, Mom?'"

"And what did she say?" Jill asked quietly.

"'If you're not ready, honey, it's probably not your turn.'"

I tried to keep the smile off of my face. I mean, I was talking about baseball, but I was really talking about us Sterlings. Damn, I was clever. I gave her a shrug and left the room.

I was at the airport by quarter of three. I had refused assistance from a smiling Skycap, although I did finally accept his offer of a free cart.

"Oh, my goodness!" Tanya shrieked when she saw the mountain of flowers that I had beside me. "Patrick, did you buy a flower store?"

"Sort of," I said bashfully. It was actually more that I didn't know how much you could get when you asked for three hundred dollars worth of flowers.

"How did you get them here?" she asked as I added her suitcase to the cart and we walked out to the parking lot.

"Actually, the real question is how I'm going to get them back in the car,"

It had taken both the florist and me to get them into the back seat of the Civic.

"I don't suppose you want to leave them?" I asked hopefully.

"Of course I don't want to leave them," she said with an astonished look. "What's the occasion?"

"Just missed you," I lied.

"I missed you, too," she said, her voice ringing with the utter sincerity that only made me feel lower.

On the way home, she talked about visiting her grandmother, and I resolutely avoided any discussion of my weekend. Instead, I talked about Monday's ball game, and the fun I had with her mom's present. When we reached her house, I grabbed her suitcase from the trunk and started to walk up the sidewalk.

"Ahem," she cleared her throat and I turned to see her standing by the car. "The flowers?"

"There are more in the house," I nodded toward the door. I walked quickly inside, stopping in the foyer where her mother had arranged the other flowers I had bought in various vases and pitchers.

"Mom?" Tanya yelled as she followed me in.

"They're not here," I told her.

"Really?" her whole face lit up. "You mean they left so we could —"

"Talk," I interrupted her. "We need to talk. Come on."

She followed me into the living room and sat down next to me on the couch, her face showing concern at the direction our conversation had taken.

"First of all, I don't want you to think I'm trying to buy your forgiveness or anything with the flowers. I just got them for you to show you how much you meant to me.

"Mean to me," I corrected myself.

"What have you done?" she asked softly.

I realized that I had been looking at my feet, and looked up at her eyes.

"Been an asshole," I started nodding. "For about the last three weeks."

"The no-hitter?"

"Yeah," I smiled. "I think I figured out what might have happened to me during that time I, um, can't remember."

She waited for me to continue.

"Okay, first of all, I didn't go back to the party to get Jill."

"I knew that," Tanya grinned. "You went back to check out boobs."

I stared at her.

"You're a guy," she shrugged. "And, according to you, you're really still only a 15-year-old guy. You're gonna do stupid things. You found Jill there, right?"

I nodded.

"But first, I, um..."

"Got laid?" she asked bluntly.

"No, I —"

"Got blown?"

"No, I wouldn't let her do that either."

"So what did you do?"

"I had a couple of beers, and then I kind of... I took my finger, see, and kind of..."

"Got her off?"

That was equally blunt.

"I didn't wiggle," I mumbled, looking at my feet again.

I heard a snort and looked up to see a twinkle in her eyes.

"Well, you're forgiven," Tanya giggled. "Stupid thing."

"Stupid thing number one."

Once again, she just waited.

"I went away this weekend, and I didn't tell you. I let you give me a blowjob in the car, which I know you really didn't like doing, but which you did because you felt bad about leaving me alone for the weekend. And I'd forgotten to tell you I was going away, and then I just didn't. I'm sorry."

"Where did you go?" she asked, her tone somber once again.

"UVA. My uncle knew a guy with a plane, and he picked me up right after you left."

"Patrick, I don't understand. Why wouldn't you want me to know you were going to visit UVA? Everybody visits their schools. I went to Cornell last summer."

"It's not that I didn't want you to know," I insisted. "It's that I forgot to tell you. And then when you told me, it was like, I didn't have to feel so bad about forgetting to tell you, because you weren't going to be around anyway."

"Patrick, you just have to learn to talk more. To communicate a little better. I would have understood about your forgetting. I might not have liked it, but I would have understood."

"There's more," I said. I told her about Sarah, and there was no twinkle in her eye when I finished that story. She just sat there, nodding slightly, looking at me, thinking about what I had said.

"So I wanted to say that I was sorry about everything that I did," I blurted out. "And I wanted you to know everything that I did, 'cause like you said, I need to do a better job communicating. I need to be an adult and not a 15-year-old. So I'm sorry, Tanya."

I looked back down at my feet and gave a little laugh.

"I also wanted to ask you to go to the Spring Formal next weekend. But I'll understand if you don't want to."

"Patrick," she said, her voice filled with anguish or dismay.

"I know," I said. "You're still my best friend, Tanya. I'm sorry I wasn't yours."

I stood up and walked toward the door.

"Honey, wait," I heard. I turned to find Tanya standing directly behind me.

"Patrick, I need to think about this a little. But do me a favor, okay?"

"Anything," I said.

She gave me a ghost of a smile.

"Don't ask anyone else until I say no."

I returned her smile and nodded.

"Thanks, Tanya."

"See you tomorrow, Patrick. Oh, and Patrick?"

"Yes?"

"No more beer, huh?"

I drove home, skipped dinner, and spent the rest of the night in my room. Step three hadn't gone quite as well.

Fortunately, Step Two paid off in spades the next day. Tanya said hello in Religion, but sat with her yearbook buddies for lunch. Nobody in our group said anything about it, which actually made it a little worse. I went through the motions at practice that afternoon, loosening up in preparation for my start against McKay the next day. It wasn't until I was leaving the locker room after dressing that the day changed. There, sitting on the bench in the hallway — sitting together on the bench in the hallway, and smiling — were my sisters.

I stopped in the doorway, nonplussed by the sight. Bobby Bunt slammed into me and bounced off backwards.

"Sorry, man," I said, giving him a hand up. "Just thinking."

"No problem, Cap," he said, slipping around me. "Ladies."

"Hi, Bobby," Jill and Jeanne chirped in unison.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Yeah, right," Jill said. "You and your little 'if you're not ready, maybe it's not your turn' speech."

"Yeah, that was really subtle, Trick," Jeanne said, practically bouncing up and down on the bench. "Thanks."

"So what happened?" I asked.

"You're right, I'm not ready," Jill said. "I'm not ready to be as dedicated as Jeanne is. Maybe next year."

"So you quit?" I asked. "Three weeks before the show?"

"No, she didn't quit," Jeanne said defensively. "She went to Collins and said that she wanted to be Liesl, and since I already knew all of Maria's songs, he didn't have much choice."

"So you threatened to quit?" I said.

"Maybe," Jill smiled. "What are you, a lawyer?"

"Nope," I leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. "Just a grateful, happy brother." I kissed Jeanne as well. "Time to go home, girls?"

Tanya stopped me after Religion the next day and dragged me down to the same classroom that Jeanne and I had been in the previous week.

"Nice tie," she broke the silence after we had sat down.

"You like it?" I smiled. "It was a gift."

"It's pretty ugly," she laughed. "I noticed a couple of the other guys on the team wearing ties today."

"Yeah, we're kinda dressing up now. So what's up?"

"What happened to Jeanne?"

"To Jeanne?"

"Last week she was miserable. I saw her in the halls today and she's laughing and giggling."

"She's Maria," I smiled. "You know, doe a deer, and all that."

"What about Jill?"

"She decided she'd rather be, um..."

"Liesl?"

"If that's the daughter, yeah."

"Why?"

"She just decided she wasn't ready," I shrugged.

"Nobody suggested to her that she might not be ready?" Tanya asked with a grin.

"You mean like Collins?"

"I mean like somebody Jill actually likes," her grin grew bigger.

"What makes you think that?" I shrugged again.

"I see somebody trying to fix everything in his life all of a sudden, and I think, maybe he talked to Jill."

"Could be."

"Could it be somebody I might be going to the Formal with?"

I stopped breathing and just stared.

"I thought so," Tanya said. She got up to leave. I was rooted to my chair.

"Oh, and Patrick?" she said as she reached the door.

I still couldn't talk.

"Get a room," she deadpanned.

"A room?" I choked out.

Usually, the Formal was held in the gym. This year, the redoubtable Margie Williams, the Chief, had set up a package deal with the Marriott in the big city, and the hotel had also made a bloc of rooms available.

"I might want to change clothes," she giggled. The door closed behind her. I slowly hauled myself to my feet. Was I a lucky bastard or what?

Now the only question was whether it would hold through the rematch with McKay that afternoon. It was going to be close. In the second, their cleanup hitter, a guy built like a refrigerator, sent one of my fastballs over the center field fence in the second inning faster than it had come in. Mattie played particularly well, at least, and when a ball was popped up to the left side in the fourth, I called Rabbit off and let Matt make the catch.

By the end of the fourth, we had a 3-1 lead. That turned into a 3-2 lead with one out in the top of the fifth when the same guy who'd jacked the home run earlier turned around on one of my change-ups and belted it over the right field fence. By that point, Jill and Jeanne and Sammy had joined Cammie and Tanya in the bleachers. They appeared to be as worried as Coach was. I was a little worried, too. If I put one more guy on base, Paul Bunyan would be up again in the top of the seventh.

I gritted my teeth and struck out the last two batters in the fifth. Then I struck out the first two in the top of the sixth, and got the third, a pinch hitter for their pitcher, to hit a weak grounder to Matt at third. I tried not to hold my breath, but Mattie scooped it up and effortlessly threw the guy out at first for the final out.

And then in the top of the seventh, I walked the leadoff hitter. My guys moved in for the double play, and the asshole stole second base. Tommy came trotting out to the mound, apologizing profusely.

"That's okay," I said miserably, nodding toward Mr. Muscles standing at the entrance to the dugout. "You can pitch to Paul Bunyan over there."

I was seriously rattled, and I hit the next guy with a pitch. Their number three hitter followed, and shocked us all with a perfect bunt up the third base line. Matt had no play on it, and the bases were loaded with nobody out. Tommy ran out to the mound again.

"Just keep 'em moving in and out," he said. "Don't keep puttin' 'em in the same spot."

"Uh-huh," I nodded, scuffing the dirt around the rubber with my foot. I knew that.

"That's what I do best," I pointed out. "In and out."

"Well, that's not what Tanya said," Tommy answered. "So I figured I'd better remind you."

He turned and ran back to the plate while I replayed Tommy's words in my head. When I was set on the mound once more, I was doing my best not to smile.

"Asshole," I mouthed as I looked in for the sign.

I'm sure Tommy was smiling behind his mask as he gave me the sign for the fastball. One finger. Usually not that one, though. I reared back and threw the hardest pitch I'd thrown so far that game. Paul Bunyan was way behind it. Strike one. I just missed the outside corner with the next pitch, and was low with the pitch after that. Angry at myself, I left the next fastball out over the plate, and he clubbed it one more time. We all stood and watched as it curved just foul down the right field line. Two balls and two strikes. I tried a change on the next pitch, and missed again. Full count. The Neanderthal smiled at me as I paced the mound. I had to throw a strike. I couldn't walk the tying run home.

I leaned in for the sign. Tommy put down three fingers. Three? Was he nuts? I shook my head vigorously. He put down three again, and I just raised my eyebrows. He called time and came trotting out.

"The curve?" I hissed. "Why don't you just call for a free pass and get it over with?"

"Just throw it," Tommy said quietly.

"Who's in charge here?" I asked.

"I am," he answered me. "That's why I'm the catcher. Throw the damn curve."

I threw the damn curve. And it bounced two feet in front of the damn plate, just like it always did. And the guy swung so far out in front of it, he could have started walking back to the dugout before Tommy had the ball in his glove. The bleachers erupted in cheers. I pointed in at Tommy and he pointed back at me. I easily struck the next two batters out and the game was over.

"Hey," I said to Tommy in the shower. "Nice call."

"Yeah," he smiled. "Nice listen."

"Asshole."

"Say, Trick, can you give me a ride home?"

I mentally toted up my potential passengers, Jeanne, Jill and Tanya, and said that I'd be happy to give him a ride. When we got to the car, though, I realized that I had forgotten to include Sammy.

"That's all right," Jill said. "We can all squeeze in."

I got in the driver's seat and Tanya sat in the passenger seat. I looked back to see Jill on Tommy's lap. Tommy was just sitting there with a stupid smile on his face.

"Everybody ready?" I asked before pulling out into traffic.

I was stopped at a red light when Jill piped up.

"So why'd you shake off the curve?"

I turned around to stare at her.

"Why'd I what?"

"Shake off the curve? The guy had tagged your fastball and your change. Why didn't you want to throw the curve?"

"Who are you? Jilly Zelasko?"

She giggled, and stuck her tongue out at me, wiggling a little on Tommy's lap. Jeanne Zelasko was the studio host on FOX's baseball pre-game show.

"Light's green," Jill pointed out.

I pulled into Tommy's driveway and got out to help him get his gear out of the trunk.

"Thanks for the ride," he said in a detached voice.

"No prob," I said. "Sorry about the crowding."

"Yeah," he grinned as he took a deep breath. "Smells like spring, don't you think?"

"Just go in the house, Narburg," I smiled at him.

Saturday turned out to be the most surreal day of the week, however. We had an eleven o'clock game at Turner High School, and damned if every single one of the guys didn't show up for the team bus in a tie. Donnie pitched for us, and even though we lost, 6-4, we actually made a very creditable showing. I once again stood at the bottom of the bus to shake hands with everyone after the game.

Because the game was early, I got home just after the start of the FOX Game of the Week. Jill was already there, watching intently. I grabbed a Coke and sat down next to her on the couch.

"So like, catchers are the smartest guys on the team, right?" she asked after the third inning.

"Some teams," I admitted grudgingly. "Why?"

"I just noticed that all these announcer guys are former catchers," she pointed out. "So I figure they must be pretty smart, huh?"

"I guess."

She spoke again after the fifth.

"So Tommy's pretty smart, huh?"

"Tommy Narburg?"

"Yeah, he's your catcher. He's pretty smart, right?"

"I guess. He's taking calculus, so I suppose he is."

She let that slide until the seventh inning stretch.

"So when is Tommy going to ask me to the Spring Formal?"

I stared at her for a few seconds before I decided to see if the question sounded any less ludicrous in my voice.

"When is Tommy going to ask you to the Spring Formal?"

It didn't.

"Yeah. When?"

"I think he's waiting for Paris Hilton to get back to him, but if she bails, you're his next choice. She may decide to go to jail instead."

She slugged me — actually slugged me — in the arm.

"Ow."

"That's not funny, Trick. I thought he was your friend."

"He is my friend," I protested. But it was funny.

"First of all," I said, "let's forget the when, and in place of you we'll substitute any girl at Marshall High School. And in place of the Spring Formal we'll substitute something with a little less pressure, like going for a hot dog. So we have the question, 'Is Tommy Narburg going to ask a girl to go for a hot dog?' And the answer is no. So —"

"Is he gay?" she interrupted.

"I don't think so," I said slowly. "Just a little shy."

All right, he was a lot shy.

"He likes me," Jill added.

"I'm sure he does," I agreed. "What's not to like? You have a" — stunning — "cute face, a" — bombshell — "nice figure and" — you smell like spring — "you shower pretty regularly."

"He had a hard-on when I was sitting in his lap," she said defensively.

I nearly spit out my soda.

"The Pope would have a hard-on if you sat in his lap," I pointed out. "But he wouldn't ask you to the Formal either. Sorry, kid. If you want to go to the Formal with Tommy Narburg, you're going to have to ask him yourself."

She sat back in the couch, a smile on her lips. The next day at church, the minister preached about the Sermon on the Mount, the one where Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I figured he must have been talking about the Tommy Narburgs of the world, so I added my own prayer. If by inheriting the earth he meant going to the Spring Formal with my sister Jill, Tommy was going to need all the help he could get.



A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



Chapter 24

On Monday morning, I was racing to my locker after English and before Astronomy to switch my books. Getting rid of Moby Dick alone would improve my posture for the rest of the morning. I quickly dialed the combination and jerked the locker open, only to have it slam close again. Tommy Narburg was standing right next to me. The locker door had apparently banged off his forehead. Despite the dazed expression on his face, it didn't appear to have done any damage.

"Tommy?" I asked as I returned to the lock.

"Your sister asked me to the dance," he said in an odd monotone.

"Oh, yeah," I nodded, opening the door more slowly this time.

"Is she, um, okay?"

"Okay how?" I asked.

"Like, um..."

"Like is she firin' on all cylinders? Has she gone off the deep end? Is she serious about going to the Spring Formal with Tommy Narburg, or is this just some big practical joke?"

"Yeah. All that."

"Tommy, as far as I know, she's dead serious. She's been plannin' this since Saturday afternoon. I told her you might not be the one doing the asking."

"No kidding."

"You did say yes, didn't you?"

He just stared at me.

"Thought so," I smiled. "Got to go to class, man. Hey, I'm gonna go rent a tuxedo this afternoon after practice. You want to come?"

Tommy broke into a big grin. He ambled off down the hallway, banging into other kids' lockers in a sort of classical random Brownian motion. I watched him for a while, and then ran to class with a big smile on my face.

Tanya pulled me aside before lunch.

"I missed you this weekend," she said simply.

"I missed you, too," I said. "It was good to have a weekend apart, though, so I could learn just how much."

"So, um, you want to sneak out back and maybe get a...?"

"Hot dog?"

"Trick," she blushed.

"Seriously, I would love to get a hot dog with you," I said. "Any other day of the week. But if you miss lunch today, you'll never forgive me."

"Why?"

"Oh, let's not spoil the surprise. Coming?"

Tanya let me drag her to lunch, where I waited fifteen minutes to drop the news.

"Oh, Jeanne, I'm gonna need the car after school today," I said quietly. "Me and Tommy gotta pick out our tuxes."

It didn't matter how quietly I said it. Conversation stopped.

"Tommy?" Rabbit said. "Why do you need a tux, Tommy?"

Tommy had evidently taken a vow of silence. At the very least, he was having trouble getting any words out through the grin that was frozen onto his face. I gave him a minute or so, and then answered the question.

"The Spring Formal?" I suggested. "On Saturday? That's what formal means, Rabbit. What were you planning on wearing?

"What's Rabbit wearing?" I asked a grinning Cammie.

"Who's Tommy taking to the Spring Formal?" Rabbit interrupted me. We were cutting Tommy out of the conversation completely now.

"He decided to go with Jill," I said in a tone that suggested that Tommy had finished weighing his choices and come to a final decision.

"Jill Peterson?" Cammie asked doubtfully.

"Jill Peterson?" I scoffed. "As if."

Everyone laughed at my impersonation of the annoying Ms. Peterson. That girl's voice could peel the paint off a bridge. And what her voice didn't get, her cursing would finish.

I watched the gang look around the cafeteria. I watched as their eyes settled on Jill Fairchild, an attractive eleventh-grader who, to the dismay of any number of guys, had been in a steady relationship with Amy Constantine since the ninth grade. I watched them consider whether Tommy was going to serve as Jill's pretend date, which they correctly discarded as completely unnecessary. Gay and lesbian couples were perfectly welcome at school functions, and the Fairchilds and Constantines were well aware of their daughters' attachment.

It was Rabbit who caught on first.

"Sterling," he clutched at his chest, "tell me he's not going with your sister Jill."

"He's not going with my sister Jill."

"Yes I am!" Tommy found his voice and blurted out.

"I know," I turned to him. "But he asked me to tell him you weren't. I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack."

"Wait a minute," Rabbit held his hands to his head. "You mean to tell me that Tommy Narburg is going to the Spring Formal with the most b —"

"Rabbit," Cammie warned him.

"The most young sister you have?" Rabbit paused only a second.

Cammie turned to Jeanne and Tanya.

"See, girls. That's training," she pronounced with a satisfied smirk.

"That's all right," Jeanne smiled. "I know she's the most beautiful girl in the school."

"Present company excepted," Rabbit offered.

"Nice try, pal," I muttered. Jeanne, Cammie, and Tanya just threw potato chips at Rabbit.

"No, seriously," Rabbit turned back to the main issue. "Tommy's going to the Formal with your sister Jill?"

"You do know he's right here, don't you?" I asked.

"Yeah," Cammie smiled. "And now we understand that sappy look on his face. So I doubt we'll be able to get him to talk any more."

"True," I said. "But he can nod. Going to the Formal, Tommy?"

He smiled and nodded.

"Takin' my sister?"

He nodded some more, blushing to the roots of his hair.

"Jill, right? 'Cause you're goin' with Sammy, aren't ya, Jeanne?"

"I assume I'm going with Sammy," she said icily.

Tommy was off the hook for the moment. Now it was Sammy's turn. He actually looked a little pale.

"Yeah. You're coming with us to the tux place, aren't you, Sammy?" I asked.

"Um, yeah, sure. Thanks, Trick."

"Well, I guess Jill and I will see what's left in the bottom of the barrel at the department store," Jeanne huffed.

At dinner that evening, Tiffany asked me where Jeanne and Jill had run off to.

"In Jeanne's room," I said. "Doing something with some dresses they bought. For the spring Formal."

"Why are they so friendly now?" Dad asked.

"You mean since last Wednesday?" I asked, getting a glare from Tiffany for implying that Dad hadn't noticed for that long. Which he hadn't. "They traded parts in the school play."

"Why?" Tiffany asked.

"Jill remembered something that my mom said," I told her.

"What was it?" Tiffany looked genuinely interested, as if it were only now occurring to her that she was going to be a parent any minute, and had better start figuring out how to do it.

"'When it's your turn,'" I quoted.

"'You better be ready,'" my father finished with a smile.

I smiled back at him. I was inordinately pleased that he remembered. I turned back to Tiffany. She too was pleased, probably not with Dad remembering as much as with the way we were interacting.

"And its corollary," I added, "which was probably more important this week. 'If you're not ready, it's probably not your turn.'"

"I hadn't heard that one," Dad said, still with a big smile.

"It was at that amusement park we went to. You and Dave were trying to see who could ring the bell on the Strongman thing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go check on the girls."

"When is the Formal?" Tiffany asked as I cleared my plate.

"Saturday night," I said. "Dave's visiting Liane so I guess you guys will have the place to yourselves."

I waggled my eyebrows at them. I wasn't sure how Dad would spend a free Saturday night with his own private five and a half foot tall bowling ball, but that was up to them, right?

"Actually," Tiffany smiled, "if I haven't given birth by then they're going to induce it on Saturday evening or Sunday morning."

"Neat," I returned her smile. "Well, gosh. We should be with you then."

"And take you away from your Senior Formal?" Tiffany laughed. "I'll be the evil stepmother for the rest of my life. If there's a problem, we'll call you. Otherwise, you can just come on Sunday afternoon."

"Okay," I agreed. "Say hi to little Brittany for us."

Jeanne had picked up a beautiful strapless dress. Jill, bless her heart, had decided on a more conservative look.

"Can you believe Sammy?" Jeanne said disgustedly. "Did he at least pick out a nice tux?"

"Yeah, but Jeanne..." I said.

Her attention caught by the tone in my voice, she stopped fidgeting with the dress and looked up.

"You want me to leave?" Jill asked.

"We're a family," I shook my head. "Secret, though, right?"

"Pinky swear," both girls said in unison as they held up their littlest fingers. I smiled. It felt really good to be the Sterlings again.

"Jeanne, I loaned him the money to rent the tux," I said. "And to pay for the tickets and a room. You've been to his house, right?"

"Oh, God," Jeanne had turned as white as a sheet.

"Yeah," I said. "That's why he hadn't asked you before."

She was beginning to tear up.

"God, how could I be so stupid?" she started sobbing. "I mean, I know he doesn't have a lot of money."

Her breath was coming in gasps.

"Sweetie, it's not the end of the world," Jill said. "You've had a lot on your mind recently. Just give him a kiss and a hug and don't mention anything about it again."

We finally got Jeanne calmed down and focused on the dresses again. We also agreed that she would use our car. Jill would be going in Tommy's car. After we finished, I called Tanya from my room and made arrangements to borrow her parents' car.

This week was the end of the regular baseball season. By now, we were all wearing ties to the game. Some of the guys even started wearing jackets. And we were taking care of business. We won the Tuesday game 4-2 behind a very strong performance by Cary. I went the distance in the Friday game, striking out 10 guys in a 6-1 win. We would still only be the sixth seed in the league playoffs, the lowest possible. We would have to beat the third seed and then play a rested second-seeded team in the semifinals. Top-seeded McKay Academy would no doubt await the winner of that game.

Saturday was the Formal. As we had arranged, Tanya drove over in her folks' car, and then I drove the rest of the way to the hotel. Once we checked in, Tanya laughingly insisted that we would have plenty of time for "that" after we got back from the dance. She needed to shower, and no, she didn't need any help.

By the time I was done with my shower, she was sitting on one of those little hotel chairs with a portable mirror sitting on the table. I stopped as soon as I saw her, because she was wearing the tiniest of lace white bras, a skimpy pair of lace white panties, white panty hose, and white high heels.

I was finally able to open my mouth.

"No," she giggled as she looked over at me.

"I didn't say anything yet," I protested.

"I know what you're thinking," she smiled as she returned to her task.

That was probably true.

Tanya looked lovely when she was done. I looked, well, probably a lot like every other guy at the Formal.

"What time does it start again?" Tanya asked.

"It starts at six," I said with a look at my watch. "Dinner's at seven. Dancing's at eight. It's now six-ten."

"Perfect. Five more minutes."

"But we're already late."

"Men," Tanya shook her head with a laugh. She spent the next five minutes making herself even more perfect, and we headed toward the door. As she exited, the door next to us opened up. Cammie Rowe and Rabbit Parker had the room next door. We smiled at each other, somewhat embarrassed at having been "caught" coming out of our hotel rooms. It did make me thankful, though, that Tanya had insisted on holding off until after the dance. Even then, I wondered how quiet we could be together.

We walked together in silence to the elevator, and still hadn't uttered a word as we boarded. Rabbit and I stepped to the rear, and Tanya and Cammie stood in front of the highly polished mirrored door. We all did what people usually do in elevators: stare at the numbers of the floors as they go down. But I did sneak a quick glance at the door. Tanya looked gorgeous, of course, in the off-white gown that was an odd but perfect match with her golden hair. In her high heels, she appeared to tower over Cammie, who was about four inches shorter anyway, and whose shoes added only an inch to her height. But Cammie was no less beautiful in the dark blue off-the-shoulder gown that she had chosen. The contrast between her gown, the white skin of her shoulder, and the jet black of her shoulder-length hair was almost mesmerizing.

It was mesmerizing, in fact. I was suddenly aware that her dark brown eyes were staring at me, almost laughing at me, in the reflection. She raised an eyebrow.

"You look very, um, nice, Cammie," I said.

I immediately flinched. I could already hear the patented Cammie Rowe retort, "You look very um-nice yourself, Trick. And your date is perfectly um-lovely."

"Well, thank you, Patrick" Cammie floored me with a genuine smile. "That's a beautiful gown, Tanya."

"And a beautiful necklace," Rabbit chimed in.

"Thank you," Tanya glowed. "Patrick got it for my birthday."

She turned to look back at me, and Rabbit and Cammie looked over as well.

"Well, actually, Cammie helped me pick it out," I said.

"Kind of like this," Cammie said to Tanya with a laugh as she fingered the lapis lazuli necklace that I hadn't noticed her wearing, the one I had given her in thanks for her help with my SAT test. "It's like we're using Trick's money to buy each other presents. Maybe after he gets drafted we can buy each other cars."

Tanya smiled back at her, but didn't answer. I was just as glad. I had never told Cammie about my dreams of going to UVA, and my need to ace all my courses, and I didn't want her to start giving me shit about it now.

The elevator door opened up and we joined our classmates in the ballroom. After a while, we were herded to our assigned tables for the dinner, where Rabbit, the dog, claimed the seat between Tanya and Cammie. The four of us chatted amiably through dinner, although I did talk to the stunningly beautiful girl sitting on my other side. To be honest, we didn't really have a lot to talk about. After all, Jill and I saw each other all the time. Every day, in fact. What's to talk about? We sort of had too much in common.

Eventually, Tanya and I found our way to the dance floor. Then she told me to ask Jeanne to dance. So I did my duty while she talked to Rabbit. Then Tanya told me I was obligated to dance with Jill, and that she was fine talking to Rabbit while Cammie danced with Tommy. And then she told me to ask Cammie to dance.

"Last time I danced with someone else, I got in real trouble," I pointed out.

"Guess you'll have to take your chances," she grinned at me.

I offered Cammie my hand and we made our way out to the dance floor.

"You know, it looks like my friend and your girlfriend are getting pretty friendly over there," she said after we'd danced for a minute or so. She nodded toward the table, where Tanya and Rabbit were still engaged in a very animated conversation.

"She's not my girlfriend," I pointed out with a laugh. "On the other hand, good luck to him."

"Good luck to her," Cammie said fiercely, emphasizing the 'her.'

"Hey, I didn't mean —" I started to excuse myself.

"Rabbit's a nice guy," she said.

"I know he's a nice guy," I agreed. "He's been my friend longer than he's been yours."

"What's the problem then?" she demanded. "You think your friend Tanya's so special that your friend Rabbit isn't worthy of dating her?"

"Why do you want your boyfriend to date Tanya?" I parried.

"He's not my boyfriend," Cammie insisted. "Answer my question. You think she's too good?"

"No, it's just that —"

"What?" she pressed me.

"She's Jewish," I said.

"So?"

"He's not an M.O.T," I confided in her.

"He is so an M.O.T.," she answered.

Wow. Cammie Rowe was something else. I was tempted to see what would happen if I insisted that Rabbit wasn't a kumquat.

"M.O.T. means —" I started to explain.

"Oh, fuck you, Trick Sterling," she cut me off again. "I'm smarter than you are. I know what an M.O.T is."

"But — but Rabbit's not a... I mean, I've been over to Rabbit's house for Christmas," I protested.

"His father's Catholic, his mother's Jewish," she explained, suddenly growing wistful. "He says he promised her he'd marry a Jew. That's why we're not, you know..."

Oh, my God, Cammie Rowe was in the same boat I was. I remembered now that Rabbit had told me, months ago, that they were just friends. Good friends obviously, if they were sharing a room, but not boyfriend and girlfriend.

"Then why didn't he ask Tanya out before now?" I asked when I finally found my voice.

"I guess because he didn't know she was Jewish," Cammie replied.

"I thought everyone knew," I'm sure my voice expressed surprise.

"Why?" Cammie chuckled. "Does she wear a sign?"

"No," I laughed. "'Cause that's the reason I broke up with Stephie van Carlen. 'Cause she called Tanya a Jew girl."

"Seriously?" Cammie asked, her eyes softening a little. "That's pretty cool. I didn't know that, either."

I shrugged.

"We just thought you finally realized what a bitch she was," Cammie said.

We danced the next dance as well, this time joined on the dance floor by Jill and Tommy, and by Jeanne and Sammy. Rabbit and Tanya were still talking. About halfway through, Cammie asked me what I thought we should do.

"About what?"

"Tanya and Rabbit. Look at them. They're half in love already."

"It'll mean giving Rabbit up," I pointed out.

"I don't own him. He already told me he was looking for a nice Jewish girl to come along."

We danced a little longer while Tanya's very similar words echoed through my head as if she had said them yesterday and not two months ago: So I'll be available whenever you want, okay? Just promise me that if I can't find a nice Jewish boy while I'm here, you won't start publicly dating some hot little shiksa. Well, I had reminded her about the first sentence recently. Maybe it was time to remind myself about the second one.

"Hello?" Cammie was saying. "Trick?"

"I'm sorry," I said, looking down at her with what I hoped was a smile. I swallowed hard. "What did you say?"

"I asked, 'how about you and Tanya?'"

"You know," I looked at the table with a wistful grin, "I really just want her to be happy. So how 'bout I go over and say, 'so, how you two Jews doin'?'"

Cammie laughed and hit my arm.

"Actually, hang on," I said. "I have another idea. I'll meet you back at the table."

I found Mrs. Jenkins, who was sitting with Mrs. Palmer at one of the faculty chaperone tables.

"Mr. Sterling," she said.

"Ma'am," I said, drawing up a chair. "Can I ask you something? That's a lovely dress, by the way."

Mrs. Jenkins could see a suckup a mile away.

"Um, do you know any Jewish, ma'am?" I asked, ignoring her glare.

Mrs. Jenkins looked at me coldly.

"Jewish is a religion, Mr. Sterling," she reminded me.

"Yes, ma'am, a religion," I agreed. "But isn't there some sort of, uh, language?"

There had to be some sort of language, what with the shiksas and the mitzvahs and everything. I mean, it couldn't possibly be some sort of private Szerchenko code that nobody else knew.

"Like Yiddish, Mr. Sterling?" she asked as Mrs. Palmer, sitting on her other side, started laughing.

"Exactly," I said. "Yiddish. Do you know any?"

"A little. Why?"

"I have two Yiddish friends," I began.

"Jewish," she said.

"Jewish friends," I corrected myself. "And they don't know each other is Jewish, see? So here's what I was thinking..."

I returned to the table armed with a little knowledge, usually a dangerous thing. I picked up my glass and raised it in the air.

"A toast," I said.

My tablemates picked up their glasses as well.

"L'chaim," I offered.

"To life," Tanya and Rabbit responded in unison.

They laughed and then they stared at each other. They talked some more and then they danced. It was hard to feel sorry for yourself in the reflected light of true love, so Cammie and I just sat back and watched it happen. At one point, when Cammie had left to talk to some of her volleyball teammates, Rabbit left Tanya shyly hanging around the doorway to the ballroom while he slid into a chair next to me.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



"Look, uh, Trick," he finally said.

"Rabbit, it's fine. If I'd known you were Jewish, I'd have told you about her much earlier."

He gave me a curious look, one that I was beginning to recognize by now.

"I didn't come to your bar mitzvah, did I?" I asked.

"My brother's," he told me. "Mine was the year we were away."

"Sorry," I said. "Forgot. Tanya will explain. Anyway, I think it's great. The two of you have my complete blessing."

Father Sterling was back in town.

"Actually, what I wanted was your key," Rabbit said.

"My key?" I asked.

"To get Tanya's stuff out of your room, and Cammie's out of mine," he said. "So Tanya and I can have some, er, —"

"Privacy?" I asked.

He nodded eagerly. I pulled out one of the two card keys from my jacket pocket and gave it to him.

"I've got another, so just slide it under the door. Have you told Cammie?"

"No," he looked around to try to find her. Then he looked over at the door, where Tanya was eagerly smiling at him. "Could you?"

"Could I tell Cammie Rowe that she has to change her clothes in my room? Are you serious?"

"Please? And make sure she gets home?"

"Just go," I pushed him out of the chair and waved goodbye to Tanya. See ya, Tanya Szerchenko. It was a bittersweet thought.

Telling Cammie was a little more on the bitter side. She was as happy for the new couple as I was, but she had already told her parents that she wasn't going to be home until morning, and she had no intention of disturbing them now. On the other hand, the thought of spending the night in a hotel room with me also held very little attraction. But after a check with the front desk, and with Jeanne completely unwilling to trade Sammy for Cammie, that was the only choice that we had.

Fortunately, the room had the two queen-sized beds. So, in strict accordance with instructions from Cammie Rowe, I entered the bathroom, changed back into my jeans, and got into the bed nearest the door. She entered the bathroom, and five minutes later knocked on the bathroom door. I turned out the lights, and covered my face with a pillow lest I inadvertently catch a glimpse of Cammie Rowe, in her pajamas, getting into bed. When she finally told me it was alright, I was allowed to sleep.

For a little while, anyway. Until we heard our next-door neighbors start up.

"Ooh, Joel," we heard Tanya say. God, what were these walls made out of, tissue?

I started laughing.

"Shut up," Cammie hissed. "What so funny?"

"Well, for one thing, who's Joel?" I tried to reduce my laugh to a whisper. "They already have a threesome?"

"Joel is Rabbit, you ass. I thought he was your friend."

"He is my friend."

"But you don't know his name. You don't know his religion."

"Oh, Joel, you're so big," Tanya's squeal came through the walls.

"Well, that's more than I needed to know," I grumped.

Now it was Cammie's turn to laugh. Softly, of course. God forbid that Tanya and Joel knew we were here.

"He was too big for me," Cammie said quietly. "We only really did it a couple of times."

"Thanks," I whispered. "That's a big help."

We finally managed to get to sleep, once they stopped vocalizing their feelings and turned to gasping and moaning. Then around two o'clock it started up again.

I couldn't help myself. I just started laughing again.

"Shut up," Cammie hissed.

"They're making me laugh," I gasped.

"They're making me horny," Cammie retorted, which put a quick end to my laughter.

We listened a little longer, and then I heard the rustle of Cammie's sheets. And then I froze, when I became aware of a presence beside the bed, and a hand snaking under the covers.

"Cammie? What are you doing?"

"What I'm good at, Trick Sterling," she gave a nervous chuckle. "Digging out balls."

She was good at it. Her hand was in my unzipped, unbuttoned pants in seconds, gently caressing me inside my shorts and working its way inside.

"Cammie," I warned her.

"I know," she said. "It'll just be once."

I pushed my pants off and she climbed on top of me. She was already naked, and she reached down to put me inside of her.

"Oh God, Cammie," I moaned, "that feels so —"

"Shut up," she hissed, a command that wasn't really necessary since she had put her hand over my mouth. "If you ever tell anyone about this, I'll cut it off myself."

I couldn't help myself this time either, so I was ready when she took her hand away from my lips.

"I thought you weren't that good at spikes."

She started to laugh, which felt incredible when it was transmitted through her body. I reached out and put my hands on her thighs, fully intending to continue the journey upward to caress her small but very lovely breasts. At least I assume they were lovely. I'd only ever seen her clothed before, and it was too dark to see her now.

She grabbed my wrists and slammed them down against the mattress.

"No," she said.

She began to ride me, up and down, milking me with her strong thighs. She began to whimper, incredibly weakly at first, so that I could barely hear her. And then finally I could hear a soft little "oh" with each exhalation of breath. Finally I couldn't take it any more. I brought my arms up, easily pushing past the half-hearted resistance of her own arms. I took her waist in my hands, a waist that seemed much thinner than it ever had in any of the clothing I had ever seen her wear.

And then I pulled her over underneath me. Other than a whispered, "Trick, oh God," she offered no objection. So when I centered myself over her, I began to control the rhythm of our coupling. She was amazingly tight, and I probably only lasted another five minutes. But it was enough, I think, to give her a climax. It was certainly enough to give me a climax, which we both knew because I pulled out and spurted it all over her stomach.

"You could have cum inside of me," she said softly when I finally started to push myself off of her. "I am on the pill."

"No, I actually couldn't."

I don't know why. It just would have been wrong. If I had done that, we would have been making love. As it was, we were just two horny kids helping each other to get off. That was the way that Cammie appeared to want it, and that was fine with me.

She got up and went into the bathroom to clean herself off. And then she got into bed and fell asleep. The other bed.

Cammie insisted on leaving the hotel at seven o'clock in the morning so that I could drop her off at home before her father got up. I simply shrugged and toted our stuff — my tux, her dress, and her giant makeup bag — down to the Szerchenkos' car for the trip home.

It wasn't until we neared her house that I finally decided I had to say something about what had happened.

"So you want to, um —"

"No," she cut me off.

"No what?

"No, I don't want to do anything with you."

"But Cammie," I said. "Last night was... It was incredible."

She turned to me with a tear-stained face.

"I know it was incredible," she spat. "I've known it would be fucking incredible since the fucking eighth grade, asshole."

"But —"

"Shut up, Patrick Sterling. Just shut up. Do you know how much it hurt me when we broke up? Do you know how many days I cried? Do you know how long it took me to even make friends with Jeanne again? And then my mother was all, like, 'I'm sure it'll work out, honey.' Yeah, right. Like I'd ever put myself through that again."

I opened my mouth to answer, but Cammie was on a roll.

"And then yesterday, you were just like the boy that I fucking fell in love with. The Trick Sterling that I broke up with would have cut Rabbit off at the knees. But you just gave him your best friend because you knew that they'd be happier together."

"Well, so did you," I protested.

"Shut up," she hissed again. "Pull over here."

"But your house is just down the street."

"I know where my house is, you ass. I'm not taking any chances on my dad being up. Thanks for the ride."

She got out, took her stuff from the back seat, and slammed the door shut. I watched her walk down to her house, and then went back to mine.

I was a little surprised to see Tommy's car outside the house. Okay, I was shocked. Not so much at Jill, of course. She had been active for a while. But Tommy?

I opened the door to find him standing at the door to the basement, looking down the stairs toward Dave's room. He was still wearing his rented pants and shirt, carrying the tuxedo jacket. He turned toward me with a dazed expression.

"That's where it is," he said, looking behind me toward the blue sky of the morning. I could hear giggling coming from the upstairs hallway.

"Where what is?" I asked him.

"The front door." He stepped around me and barely made it down the front steps.

"Are you okay to drive?" I shouted after him.

He waved his hand in the air. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'll just fly home.

I sighed and went back in the house.

"I can't believe that you're letting him leave in that condition," I directed my shout upstairs.

"He didn't drink a thing," Jill said defensively.

"He's drunk on you. Tommy's a new man today."

"We borrowed some of your condoms. Three, I think."

"Thanks for sharing. Keep 'em."

"Thank you for sharing," she giggled. "I was afraid they weren't going to be big enough, but they stretched okay."

"Thanks for sharing that, too."

What was I, the locker room shrimp? True, nobody showered with an erection, but I didn't think I was that small.

Jill giggled again, and in a few minutes I heard the sounds of the shower. I made us both breakfast, and we sat and talked about how much fun the Formal had been. Jeanne breezed in just after ten, and she and Jill started talking as if I weren't even there. After about fifteen minutes, though, there was a lull in the conversation and Jeanne turned to me.

"So, um, I'm sorry about last night," she said.

"Sorry about what?" Jill asked.

"About Tanya and, um, Rabbit," Jeanne said.

"What about them?" Jill still looked confused.

Jeanne looked at me.

"It's not like it's a secret," I laughed. "Tanya and Rabbit spent the night together."

"You're kidding!" Jill was floored.

"Yeah," Jeanne said. "I saw 'em at breakfast."

"I think they'll be really nice together," I smiled.

"And you don't care?"

"It's not like she was my girlfriend. I'm sure we'll still be friends."

"So you were alone last night?" Jill asked.

Jeanne had a very small smile on her face.

"No," I said. "Cammie had to have somewhere to sleep, so she was in the other bed."

"You and Cammie?" Jill's face lit up.

"No," I said. "She just slept there. She made me sleep with my clothes on."

"Bummer," Jill laughed. After that, she and Jeanne returned to discussing their evenings.

I waited until just after noon to drive the Szerchenkos' car back to their house. Dad had called just before I left and asked us if we could come to the hospital around two. His voice was almost trembling, but he assured me that both mother and baby were fine. He just wanted us all to come in at two to meet our new half-sister.

Mrs. Szerchenko emerged even before I brought the car to a stop.

"Didn't you forget someone?" she asked as I walked up to give her the keys.

"She's not here?"

"Why would she be here if she's not with you?"

"Um," I desperately tried to think of a good reason, without any success at all. It was time to bite the bullet.

"She found someone else."

"You broke up?"

"Well, there really wasn't anything to break," I pointed out.

"She just left you there and went off with some other boy?"

"Yeah, pretty much," I nodded.

"I can't believe this," she clutched at her heart. "You bring her to the dance, and she meets another boy —"

"Actually, no, she'd met him before," I interrupted her. "He was here for her birthday."

"He's a friend of yours?" she was shocked.

"Yeah, he's the shortstop on my team. Rabbit? Tall kid, skinny?"

"The boy with the nice curly dark hair?"

"That's him."

"I need to sit down."

"Me, too."

We both took seats on the porch swing.

"You seem remarkably composed about this," she said suspiciously.

"Well, we were just friends."

"With benefits," she added.

"With benefits," I agreed. "No more benefits for me."

"So what does she see in this — Rabbit? — that that she doesn't see in you?"

"Oh, come on, Mrs. S," I laughed. "I think we both know the answer to that one."

I did. She still didn't.

"Is he smart?"

"Are you saying I'm not?" I did my best to look shocked. "I think I'm hurt, Mrs. S."

"No, no, no," she started to get flustered.

"Come on, Mrs. S," I let her off the hook. "What's the only reason Tanya isn't dating me?"

Her eyes widened.

"He's a... he's a -?"

"Jew," I nodded. "A member of the tribe."

"Oh my," she started to fan herself with her hand. "Why didn't he ask her out before?"

"I don't think he knew you were Jewish. You should advertise more. You know, a little sampler for the wall that says 'Next year in Jerusalem.' Something like that."

She whacked me on the arm.

"Excuse me, I have to tell Sol," she said, hurrying into the house.

The Parkermobile pulled in as soon as she left.

"Sorry," I shrugged as they exited the car. "I thought you'd be here before now. Jeanne said she saw you at breakfast."

I looked back to make sure Mrs. Szerchenko hadn't come back.

"What did you do, go back to the room after? Use the extended checkout option?"

It was very gratifying to see Tanya blushing that deeply. Mrs. Szerchenko popped out onto the porch just then. Without waiting to be introduced, she grabbed Rabbit by the ears and pulled him down for a kiss. Then she brought him into the house to meet Sol.

"Have fun, Joel." I shouted after them, drawing out the name Joel.

"You heard, didn't you?"

"Ooh, Joel, you're so big," I mimicked her voice.

"Patrick, I —"

"Tanya, I think it's really great. You'll still always be my friend. Right now, though, I need a ride home. I have a new baby sister to meet."

"So how was Cammie?"

"Cammie?"

You and Cammie did spend the night together, didn't you?"

"In separate beds," I agreed.

"Patrick," she looked exasperated. "That was the whole point of giving you to her."

"Giving me to her?" I asked. "I gave you to Rabbit."

"Only after I'd made you dance with Cammie," she laughed, "and you realized that Rabbit and I were both Jewish. For which I'm very grateful, by the way."

She stood on tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

"But why would you give me to Cammie?" I was feeling a little dazed.

"Because you love her," Tanya said.

"How do —" I started. "Why do you say that?"

She just laughed. Tanya could read me like a book.

"You needed Cammie's help to pick out my necklace, and picked out hers on your own? When I thought that it was a terrible present?"

"So?"

"So you still have feelings for her," Tanya insisted.

"Yeah, she has feelings for me, too," I said sarcastically.

"She was wearing the necklace, wasn't she? Honey, you and I are just friends. She's your girlfriend."

Tanya left me standing there while she went in to get Rabbit. She was able to drag him away, but only with the promise that he would return as soon as I was jettisoned at the closest bus stop along the way. Rabbit and I both assumed they were joking, and he drove me all the way home. We spent the whole time talking baseball, right up until he pulled into my driveway and stopped.

"You treat her well," I smiled at him.

"I love her," he said simply.

That was good enough. I got out of the car and sent him back toward his future.

We arrived at the hospital just after two, and Dad was waiting for us in the waiting room at the maternity ward. He looked even more nervous in person than he had sounded on the phone.

"You sure she's okay, Dad?" I asked. "Is there something you're not telling us?"

"She's fine," he assured us. "I thought you could go in first, Trick, and then Jeanne and then Jill."

"Okay," I said. Whatever.

I knocked on her door and Tiffany told me to come in. She looked very beautiful there in her bed, her little girl asleep on her chest.

"Hey," I said quietly.

"Hi."

"So this is little Brittany?"

"We haven't actually named her yet," she said slowly. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."

I sat down in the chair beside her bed. This was much more serious than what I had been expecting.

"First of all, I want to apologize, Trick. When I married your dad, I think I admired him more than I loved him. And I had a bit of a crush on you. You kind of reminded me of this guy I dated in high school. I'm really glad now that I didn't do anything about it. But I hope that I didn't creep you out too much."

"No, no," I assured her. Except maybe for that bit on Christmas where she had told me she wished it was my child she was carrying. But we didn't have to mention that again.

"Good," she smiled. "Anyway, I really do love your dad now. I love being in your family, too. At first, I was like really jealous of your mom, because it was clear to me how much your dad loved her."

I smiled.

"But you know, the two best times in our house this year have been when your mother was there."

"She was there?"

"I don't know. Her spirit was there. Do you remember that snowstorm when we came home and found you and Jeanne and Jill all laughing together?"

"Uh-huh."

"I found that Jill had cleaned up her room, and she said that you had reminded her about her mother, and how neat the house always was."

"Yeah," I smiled. "That's true."

"And then this last week, when you and Jeanne and Jill were all friends again and driving to school together and going to the dance together."

"'Cause of what I said to Jill about Mom."

"Yeah," she said. "And I realized that your mom must have been a pretty special person to be able to keep that much love in this house after she was gone."

"She was," I said.

"So I was thinking of how much I'd like to try to do that, too, now that I'm a mom."

I smiled again.

"So first of all, I'm taking your father's name. Your family's name. I kind of really didn't want to do that before, to be Mrs. Sterling."

"No kidding. Tiffany Sterling? You sound like a —"

"Gold digger," she finished the sentence. "I don't care. I want to be a Sterling."

"Welcome to the family."

"Thank you," she said sincerely. "And I told your dad that I wanted to name the baby something other than what we had planned, and he said I had to ask you guys."

"Tiffany," I said, "you guys can name the baby whatever you want."

"Even Sarah?" she asked, a tear forming in her eye.

"Sarah Sterling?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

She just nodded. The baby, meanwhile, had woken up.

"Do you want to hold your half-sister?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Call the waiting room. Ask them all to come up."

I walked around the room with the baby in my arms until Jeanne, Jill, and Dad pushed through the door.

"Girls," I said. "I want you to meet your new sister, Sarah."

They cooed in unison as they stepped toward me. That was the last time I got to hold the baby that afternoon. As we were leaving, Tiffany called to me just as we reached the door.

"Trick, will you do something else for me?"

"Sure, Tiff."

"That picture of your church that was hanging on the wall?"

"Yeah?"

"That meant a lot to your mom, didn't it?"

"It was her favorite place," I smiled. "Other than home."

"It's in the hall closet," Tiffany said. "Will you put it back where it was?"

I was honestly speechless.

"Trick?" she asked again.

"Patrick," I said haltingly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Mom never liked the nickname 'Trick,'" Jeanne told Tiffany, wiping a tear off her own cheek. "I'll make sure he does it."

What an amazing day. God had taken something away but He had given me something new. Mrs. Jenkins always used to say in Sunday school that He worked in mysterious ways. Damned if she wasn't right.




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



Chapter 25

The following Monday marked the beginning of the last month of classes. Apparently that was the signal for our teachers to tell us their plans for the end of the semester. In Government, Mr. Kennedy, bless him, said that our final would be on Tuesday, June 12. If there was one thing I loved, it was Mr. Kennedy's government tests. Mr. Anson's history class would also end with a test, on Monday the 11th.

Mrs. Palmer had no intention of letting us getting away with something as simple as a test. Instead, we would have a final paper. That paper would be due on Friday, June 8.

"You have two options," she announced. "The first is that you can revisit the paper you wrote at the beginning of this class on Mr. Melville, where you discussed one fact from Melville's biography and how it influenced his writing. Now that you have read some of his work, you can let me know whether you were right or wrong."

"And the other option?" Missy chirped behind me.

"The other option," Mrs. Palmer said, stepping forward with a stack of Xeroxed papers that looked depressingly familiar, "is to do the same exercise with Mr. Sterling's paper. I passed it out early in the semester, although I doubt that many of you saved it. Even though it was probably the best piece of writing most of you saw all year. So here's another copy. Mr. Sterling?"

I could feel the glares behind me as I put my hand back down.

"What's my other option, ma'am?" I asked.

"Your other option, Mr. Sterling?"

"Other than using my own paper, ma'am."

"Your other option is an F, Mr. Sterling."

That set the whole class laughing. I just nodded.

Mr. Carruthers had already informed us how our final grade would be determined: partly by the quizzes but mostly by our lab notebooks and our final reports. The notebooks were due at the end of the last lab, this coming Wednesday, and the final reports on June 11.

Astronomy class, of course, was also the first time I had seen Cammie since I had dropped her off in the street after the Formal. She resolutely refused to look at me, and instead stared straight ahead for the entire class. So as the bell was ringing, I leaned toward her and said, not in her ear as much as it was so softly that nobody else could hear it.

"You know, if you act like this at lunchtime, they're gonna know something happened."

"What do you mean?" she said savagely.

"Well, Jeanne knows you slept in the same room as I did," I pointed out.

"You told her?"

"You told her. When you asked to switch rooms with Sammy. You told her there were no other rooms and you couldn't go home. What else was she gonna think you did? Sleep in the lobby? I told her we were in separate beds."

"We were in separate beds."

"I guess. For sleeping."

She glared at me as we started to make our way out of the classroom toward our next classes.

"Anyway, if you don't act exactly like you did last week," I continued, "she's gonna think we did more than that."

She continued to stare at me as I walked away.

Religion was almost as bad. Tanya kept staring at Mrs. Jenkins as she informed us that the final exam would take place on Friday. June 8. It would include an essay portion covering the entire year, and a short-answer portion covering the last third, on the prophets.

"So you wanna talk?" I asked Tanya when class was over and we started walking toward lunch. "I mean, we're still friends, right?"

She stopped and looked at me.

"I feel like we've just abandoned you," she said sorrowfully. "My parents adore Rabbit. It's like you were never there now."

"Oh, I think we both know exactly where I was," I smiled and nodded my head.

Tanya flushed a dark red.

I felt a twinge of pain when I entered the lunch room and realized that the seats that were awaiting Tanya and me were no longer together. Instead, Cammie had given up her seat for Tanya, and had apparently pushed Tommy into the seat next to me. So now I couldn't even look at her during lunch without appearing obvious.

The main topic of conversation, of course, was Tommy. He had looked very nice in his tuxedo, and of course everyone had admired his date. But he was a gentleman, insisting that after the Formal he had simply taken Jill home. He said not a word about his not having left for another seven or eight hours after he got there. It was a prudent decision. If we won our first league playoff game that afternoon, I would be firing fastballs at him on Thursday. Those protectors work well, but they're not perfect.

Despite our record and our sixth seed, the rest of the league was well aware that we were the defending state champions. And because we hadn't played the third-seeded team, Hillside High School, this year in league play, they were a little nervous about facing us. We exploded in the top of the third inning for four runs, including homers by Mo and Matt. But Cary didn't have his best stuff, and after five innings, the score was tied at 6-6. Then Eddie, hitting ninth, singled to open up the sixth. He was erased at second by a force out on Bobby's grounder to short, but they weren't quick enough to turn the double play on Bobby at first. Rabbit smoked the very next pitch right over second base, and we had runners on first and second with only one out. I stepped to the plate confidently, having already doubled in the four-run first, and having singled in a run in the third.

But I couldn't handle the curve. After working the count to 2-2, I popped up weakly to the left side of the infield and threw my bat on the ground in disgust. I watched in amazement as the Hillside shortstop closed his glove a fraction of a second too quickly The ball bounced off the closed glove and headed for the outfield, the shortstop and the third basemen in frantic pursuit. Bobby and Rabbit both took off. By the time the shortstop picked up the ball, he had no play on Bobby at all because the third baseman was standing next to him in the outfield. Instead, Bobby turned for home. Rabbit was already cruising into second base. The shortstop looked over at me standing at home plate, watching the play unfold, and with a big grin on his face, heaved the ball toward first. The Hillside first baseman scooped it out of the dirt, and the first base umpire screamed that I was out. Yeah, no fooling.

The first baseman threw home, and Bobby had to retreat to third. Mo struck out after that, and the inning was over. Throughout the rest of the game, I was getting dirty looks from various guys on the team, as if they were really disappointed that I had popped out. It surprised me a little bit. We had pulled together as a team recently, and it was kind of hard to believe that the guys would blame any one player for not getting the job done, even if we had had a runner in scoring position.

It wasn't until after we had won the game, scoring the winning run in the top of the seventh and then holding off a desperate Hillside rally in the bottom of the inning, that I realized that they were mad about something else entirely. As I stood at the bottom of the bus steps to offer my now-traditional post-game congratulations, Bobby Bunt muttered something as he approached me.

"Sorry, Bobby, I didn't quite catch that," I said.

"I said, nice base-running, Sterling. If you'd run out that pop-up, we would have had the bases loaded with one out."

He pushed past me onto the bus, taking a seat in the back with Hal.

"Can I say a word to the team, Coach?" I asked as Coach Torianni brought up the rear.

He smiled and nodded.

"Listen up, guys," I said. "Apparently some of you are upset that I didn't run out the pop-up, and I just want to explain why. Some of you probably remember that at the beginning of the year, Coach went over the infield fly rule with us. The one where the batter is automatically out. Guys, that was it. Runners on first and second, less than two out, a pop-up to an infielder. I was out as soon as I hit it."

"But he dropped it," Bobby said from the back.

"That's why the rule's there, guys. So if he drops it on purpose, they can't get a double play on the runners who are staying on their bases."

I watched comprehension dawn on a couple of faces. Bobby still wasn't happy, though.

"But he didn't call it," he pointed out. "He's supposed to call out 'infield fly, batter's out.'"

"He is," I agreed. "But it's an appealable play. And you can be damned sure that if he had picked up the ball and tried to force out Rabbit at second before throwing to first, I'd have been there screaming that there was no force play. Coach would have been right behind me, right?"

I looked behind me to see Coach grinning and nodding.

"And yeah, I know. Maybe they didn't know the rule either, and they wouldn't have appealed. There probably are coaches out there who don't. Maybe we could have had the bases loaded. Maybe you want to be on a team that can't play by the rules of baseball. I don't. I think baseball's the greatest game there is. I think that all of its rules have a reason. I don't want to win unless we can win under those rules. Any questions?

Rabbit raised his hand.

"So should we run there or not?"

I smiled.

"If he catches the ball, it's a tag-up play. If he drops it, you run if you know you can make it to the next base ahead of the tag."

I took a seat next to Rabbit and thanked him. He gave me a little grin and went back to his calculus textbook.

Jeanne knocked on my door a little after nine that evening.

"So," she gave me a big smile.

"So what?" I asked.

"So you and Cammie?"

"Me and Cammie what?"

"You and Cammie hooked up."

"Who told you that?" I demanded, my eyes widening in surprise.

"You did."

"I did not. When did I tell you that?"

"Just now," Jeanne giggled. "When you said 'who told you that?' instead of 'we did not.'"

"Very funny, Jeanne Sterling," I said soberly. "If you tell Cammie I told you, she's gonna castrate me."

"Well, you really just confirmed it," Jeanne sat down on my bed. "She's the one who told me."

"I'm quite sure she would have done no such thing," I insisted.

"Not so anybody else would know," she smiled at me. "But I'm her best friend. I could tell something had happened from the way she was treating you at lunch."

"She was ignoring me at lunch," I protested.

Jeanne smiled and leaned forward as if she were about to let me in on a great feminine conspiracy.

"After you broke up, she used to absolutely hate you," she said. "Her father still does hate you actually. But then this year, after you changed, she started looking at you a little differently."

"She still calls me an asshole every chance she gets."

By now I was interested enough in this conversation to put down my book.

"Yeah," Jeanne laughs. "But it was sort of like you had become just another guy at the table. But I could see the way she looked at you today when you weren't looking."

"How?" I prompted her.

"Like you'd gotten under her skin again."

"And that told you that we'd hooked up?"

"Either that or you'd done something really stupid again. And if you'd done something really stupid, she would never have even come to lunch. So something else obviously happened."

"Uh-huh," I agreed, reflecting that I had no chance when it came to understanding women. "You still can't say anything."

"Okay. So how was it?"

"Jeanne," I protested.

"Yeah, I thought it would be," she smiled.

Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"How long did I date Cammie?"

She got a little grin on her face.

"Let's see, you kissed her at Christmas, and finally got up the nerve to ask her on a date in June, I think. You didn't break up until the next year, like March."

"After baseball season started?"

"Oh, yeah. That's when you became Mr. Bigshot. Oh my God, you don't remember breaking up, do you?"

I shook my head.

"I have a good idea how much it hurt her," I said. "But no, I don't remember it at all."

"So you're, like, still in love with her."

Tanya had said the same thing, but I hadn't put it in the context of my "memory loss." The last thing I thought about before I went to sleep on Christmas Eve last year was how much I was looking forward to Cammie Rowe — chubby, metal-mouthed Cammie Rowe — coming back from her trip. Jeanne's statement — not a question but an affirmative declaration — was like a physical blow.

"Well, you're going to make Mrs. Rowe very happy," Jeanne continued after it had become apparent that I was completely speechless.

"Mrs. Rowe?"

"She always thought you were meant for each other. She probably still has all the china patterns that she picked out for your wedding."

"Are you serious?"

Jeanne just smiled. Finally, with a very affectionate look at me, she pushed herself off of my bed.

"Thanks for the chat, big brother."

"Seriously," I reminded her. "Castration."

She just giggled and left. I looked down and thought I should go out and find somebody to have sex with. It might be my last chance.

But I was still intact on Thursday, when we traveled to Park Forest for our next playoff game. Park Forest was the second-seeded team, and had been given a bye to the second round of the playoffs just like McKay Academy. They had their number one pitcher ready and we had ours.

I gave Tommy a little grin just before we took the field.

"What?" he asked.

"Arm's feelin' heavy again, Tommy," I said, turning it in a slow windmill.

"Well, goddamn, let's get this game started."

By the end of the fifth inning, I had struck out ten batters. Two more had grounded out to Rabbit, and Eddie had made a flawless play on another. Mo made a beautiful catch of a foul ball for another out, and Hal made a flat-out dive in the bottom of the fifth on a blooper that I had been sure would drop in for the first hit of the game. It hadn't. There had been no hits, no walks, and no errors. The guys had started ignoring me just like they had during my no-hitter, but I wouldn't let them this time. I joked with each of them, threw bottles of water, and did my best to keep everybody loose.

By that point, we were only leading 1-0, on a home run in the third inning by, of all people, Tommy Narburg. Other than that, their pitcher had shut my team down almost as well as I'd shut his team down. In the sixth inning, I started to get a little tired. Fortunately, the first guy up went after the first pitch. He sent a liner toward first that looked like it would be well over Mo's head, but the big guy made an awesome leap, climbing the ladder to rob the guy of at least a double into the right field corner. The next guy also went after the first pitch, an easy grounder that I scooped up and tossed to Mo. The third batter was a little more patient. He took the first two pitches for strikes and swung at the third, a long fly ball that Bobby hauled in just short of the left field fence. Park Forest was down to its last three outs.

We went quickly in the top of the seventh and I took the mound. I was starting to get a little nervous myself and threw the first two pitches for balls.

"Hey," Matt Denton suddenly appeared beside me on the mound.

"What?" I asked anxiously.

"Just let 'em hit it. We got your back."

I stared at him for a few seconds. Did he not realize that every batter represented the potential tying run? That having my back didn't do a lot of good if one of these guys took me downtown because I left one out over the plate?

"All right, Matt," I smiled. "I'll make sure they're all grounders."

I started throwing them all low. Unless they were good golfers, there's no way they were gonna put one out of the park. Or even out of the infield, if I did my job well. The first pitch was a swinging strike, and the next one was hit straight to Rabbit. One down, two to go.

The second batter let the first two pitches go, but one caught the lower outside corner, and the count was even at 1-1. The next pitch was just a little lower and just a little further outside, and he couldn't get around on it. He hit a soft roller down to Mo, who came down the baseline, picked it up, and tagged the guy out. Two down, one to go.

I realized now, as I looked into Tommy to get the sign, that this batter was probably even more nervous than I was. He might have been the potential tying run, but he was also the potential last out of the season for his team. With that little bit of knowledge, I reared back and blew a fastball right past him for strike one. Tommy called for the change on the next pitch, and he swung so early he almost had time to reset himself and swing again as if he were in a cartoon. Strike two. I burned the next two pitches, trying to tempt him to swing at balls further and further outside of the strike zone. He was getting more and more frustrated as he fouled both of them off. Then I threw the next pitch inside, and he took another mighty cut at it. This time he got a little bit of the bat on the ball and it headed weakly toward the shortstop. It was such a weak shot, in fact, that I had a play on it myself. As a lefty, my follow-through brings me to that side of the plate, and I eagerly stretched my glove toward the ball.

I don't know what I tripped on: a blade of grass, a bump in the mound, my own feet. It didn't matter. I simply stared in horror as I felt myself falling toward the earth, and as I watched the ball tick off the end of my glove. It would have been an easy play for Rabbit if I hadn't touched it, but now I had redirected it toward third base, and Matt, moving toward his left, suddenly found the ball trickling off toward his right.

It's still hard for me to believe that I saw Matt Denton, E-Five as some of the guys called him behind his back, arrest his forward motion and bend his body backward far enough to pick up the ball with his bare hand. Standing that off-balance, with no time to set himself, there was no way his throw should have made it anywhere near first base. But it was close enough. Close enough that Mo Perra, who later told me that now that he knew how much it hurt, he would never try to do a split again, could get his glove on the ball and keep his foot on the bag. It all seemed to go in slow motion — the ball leaving Matt's hand, bouncing once and settling into Mo's outstretched glove, and the umpire behind him throwing his fist into the air to signal the end of the game. The end of a perfect game.

My team carried me off the field. They carried me out of the locker room to the bus. I insisted on my new ritual, though, and when Mo came by he handed me the ball. When Matt came by, I handed it to him.

"But this is yours," he looked down at it in shock.

"Well, it's really the team's," I said. "And look how many guys here are going to be graduating this year. I think next year's team's gonna need a little inspiration."

"But..."

"So I'm giving it to the captain. He can give it back to me next summer. Heads up play, Mattie. Thanks a lot."

We actually hugged, right there at the steps to the bus. Then the guys still in line started making fairy jokes so we parted company and I finished shaking hands.

We got home around seven that evening. I had already told Dad that I wouldn't be home for dinner, and after I got a bite at the Burger King, I headed back for the school. The auditorium was only half full. The Friday and Saturday night performances of The Sound of Music would probably be much better attended, so I was glad I had already bought my tickets for those shows.

"Patrick!"

I was walking down the aisle and quickly spotted the source of the cry.

"Hi, Mrs. Rowe, Cammie. May I sit with you?"

"Please," Mrs. Rowe smiled.

I sat down on the other side of Mrs. Rowe from Cammie and leaned forward.

"Thank you very much. How come you're not in the play, Cammie? You have such a nice voice."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



"Thanks," she said, somewhat sullenly.

"Cameron," her mother said, "he asked you a question."

Cammie looked over at me and grinned a bit.

"Grades," she said. "I have a horrible lab partner this year in Astronomy, and I have to do twice as much work."

"Oh, dear," Mrs. Rowe said. "How come you never mentioned this before? I would have spoken to Mrs. Sparks on the school board."

"I worked it out, Mom," she told her mother with a wicked smile that was solely for my benefit.

"Okay," Mrs. Rowe said doubtfully. "So how was the game, Trick?"

"One to nothing," I said. "Hammerin' Tommy Narburg homered. That boy's doing something right. How did you know we had a game, Mrs. Rowe?"

"Well, Cammie told me, of course," she said.

She turned back to her daughter, who suddenly noticed Tanya and Rabbit walking up the aisle and insisted that they join us. Tanya claimed the seat next to me and gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Isn't it neat?" she leaned forward to speak to Cammie and her mother.

"What?" Cammie asked.

"Patrick," Tanya squeezed my arm. "His perfect game."

"A perfect game?" Mrs. Rowe said. "What's a perfect game?"

"It's just like an A-plus," I smiled at her. "Sort of like what Cammie's gonna get in Astronomy despite her lab partner."

The lights went down just then, preventing me from seeing Cammie stick her tongue out at me. But I knew she had done it. If her mother hadn't been there, she would have called me an asshole, too.

Jill was excellent as Liesl, although the completely natural way in which she claimed to be "Sixteen, Going on Seventeen" gave me pause. She wouldn't even be going on sixteen until next Friday night. And yet as wonderful as Jill was, she came nowhere near matching Jeanne for the sheer effervescence of her performance. Jeanne sang like she was truly happy, and knowing her as I did, I was quite sure that she was.

I drove them both home after the performance, and they never stopped singing the entire way home. Fortunately, nobody wanted to wake Sarah or Tiffany up, so my time at home was blessedly quiet.

On Saturday I found myself in the mall. Ostensibly I was there to get something for Tanya, something that said "you're okay, kid," without saying "let's hit the sack." She had given me back my friendship ring on Friday. Rabbit hadn't actually said anything, but she could tell that it made him uncomfortable for her to be wearing it, so she wanted me to have it back. I took it back to the jewelry store, and they were more than happy to give me half of what I had paid for it.

As I walked the mall, though, I found it nearly impossible to pick something new out for Tanya. Because everything I looked at caused the same questions to pop up in my mind. I wonder how Cammie would look in this? I wonder if Cammie would like this?

Finally, feeling a little bit dizzy, I sat down on one of the benches in the center of the mall. The one, it was true, with the view of the Victoria's Secret store. Maybe I should just go ahead and get the castration over with. I saw this, Cammie, and I thought of you.

I was actually starting to feel a little bit better. I was a little distracted, though, by a brunette who was standing with her back to me looking in the window at a tan bra and panty set. From the back, it appeared to me that she had the perfect figure to make it work. Tall with very nice curves, and very long auburn hair. I watched her look at it for a while, and then start to walk away. And then she stopped and stood in front of it again. And then she took five steps away. And then she walked back. And then she turned around, and I burst into laughter.

"And just what is so funny, Mister Sterling?" Rachel Carter demanded, having covered the ground between us in a few short strides. She stood there, her arms crossed in front of her chest. "You think I would look funny in that outfit?"

"No, ma'am," I said, suddenly sober again. "I think you would look incredible. It was your indecision I found, um, humorous."

She tapped her foot on the ground, looking back at the store window over her shoulder.

"So you gonna buy it or are you just gonna stare?"

She looked back at me, her face a bright pink.

"'Cause I think it would look pretty darn nice," I added.

She was now almost red.

"I'm thinking I should start dating again," she said, suddenly wheeling around and sitting beside me on the bench. "It's hard."

"I'm sure it is," I nodded.

We spent the next hour sitting there while she told me the story about her fiancée. We cried, we laughed, we held hands together. It was particularly poignant when she explained that he had been a graduate student at the University of Virginia. That, she explained, was why she had been so willing to help me when I had wandered into the office on the day after Christmas.

And then, very shyly, she turned to me and asked if I would like to have dinner with her, at her house. I looked into her eyes, trying to make sure that I knew what she was asking.

She leaned into me, her eyes dancing now.

"'Cause I think we could have a lot of fun together."

I just smiled at her as she traced a finger along my arm.

"I would, and I wouldn't," I finally said.

She looked a little disappointed.

"The old Trick, the one that did Ms. Torianni and all those other girls in the high school and elsewhere," I said, "he would have done you in a minute. The new Trick is a little different. The new Trick is the one that you danced with, the one that you celebrated his SAT score with."

"That's the Trick I like," she said quietly.

"Yeah, and that's the Trick that now wants love to go with his sex," I smiled. "And I do love you, Rachel Carter, just not like that."

"I heard you broke up with your girlfriend last weekend," she put a hand on my knee in sympathy.

"Yes and no. She wasn't really a girlfriend, so we didn't really break up. But it did hurt. I don't think I really did love her."

"That's too bad," she murmured.

"On the other hand, I am in love now."

"Already?" she giggled. "You're a very fast worker, Patrick Sterling."

"Well, she doesn't love me, but I'm working on that."

"How can she not love you?" she took my side immediately.

"Who knows? Women. Still, what I would like to do, Rachel Carter, is to take you to the dinner I owe you, and then to the theater."

"The theater?" she laughed.

"The Sound of Music," I told her. "Starring Jeanne Sterling and Jill Sterling. This will be my third night, so if I start singing along, just elbow me in the ribs. Shall I pick you up at six for dinner?"

"That would be very lovely," she said, kissing me on the cheek. Then she got up and walked into the Victoria's Secret store with just the tiniest look back over her shoulder. She'd be wearing them, too, the bitch.

Heads turned as we entered the auditorium. I was dressed in my best suit, a freshly pressed shirt, and a nice, conservative tie. Rachel Carter wore a flower print dress that swished back and forth around her beautiful legs as she walked. She held my arm as we walked down the aisle and found two seats. We had enjoyed a very nice dinner at the town's best Italian restaurant, and I had happily given her the other ten-dollar show ticket that I had bought when I thought I would be attending with Tanya. It was another incredible performance, and when Jeanne took her bows, the last of the year in her starring role, she found me in the audience and waved. I waved back. And then I watched her being applauded.

There is a prayer that goes something like, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." In church the following day, I asked God to give me a prize. I didn't care what, a plaque or a nice trophy or something. I had turned down Rachel Carter. From any objective point of view, that didn't require serenity, courage, or wisdom. Most guys would consider it rank stupidity.

Chapter 26

The news that I wasn't going to get the grades I needed to be admitted to the University of Virginia was just sort of slipped into the middle of the week, like a piece of paper you find in a book that you picked up in the library. On Monday, we had another quiz in Astronomy, and I was stoked when I handed it in. As far as I could tell, I nailed every question on it. Cammie was happy, too. We were both pleased. Until lunch, anyway.

"Do you know any sports couples?" Jeanne was looking around the cafeteria as she threw the question out for discussion by the table.

"I'm not sure I even know what a sports couple is," I said doubtfully.

"It's a couple where both the guy and the girl lettered in sports," Jeanne said, turning back to us with a frown. Apparently she had been unable to locate any.

"First of all, no," I said. "And second of all, why?"

"Because the sports banquet is next Saturday," she said.

I actually knew that, because Coach had said that he would pass out tickets after the game today. I didn't see how that answered the question, though, and apparently my confusion showed on my face.

"Oh, you remember," Jeanne said to cover up the fact that I didn't. "All the athletes get one ticket, and they each get to bring a guest. Last year, Rabbit went with Cammie, so he gave me his ticket so Jill and I could go. Of course, that's where Jill met Andy. Who are you going with, anyway?"

"I don't know. I was thinking of Mrs. Jenkins."

The whole table turned to look at me.

"Our Sunday school teacher?" Jeanne asked incredulously.

"Yeah. She's also my Religion teacher. I thought it would be fun. You know. People would talk. But our final's that week so she might think I was sucking up. You can come with me."

"I was kind of hoping to go with Sammy," Jeanne blushed. "Jill will be going with Tommy, I assume."

We all looked over at Tommy, whose face still hadn't lost its stupid expression. Like me, he had been to the play each night last weekend. And then he had accompanied Jill to the cast party.

"And I assume Rabbit's taking Tanya," Jeanne said as the two lovebirds gave each other sickening smiles. "Who are you going with, Cam?"

"Nobody," Cammie said. "I'd give you my ticket but Liz said I had to show up."

"Well, sure. You have to dance with Trick."

Cammie flashed me a look that said she would rather dance with a fish.

"Wait a minute," Jeanne was getting excited. "Maybe you could —" 

"No," Cammie said.

"You haven't even heard it," Jeanne protested.

"Maybe I could go with Trick. No."

"Trick wouldn't mind, would you?"

"No," I grinned. "People would talk even more about that."

Cammie glared at me. I smiled back.

"Oh, please?" Jeanne looked at her friend.

"You can come with me," Cammie said. "And Sammy can go with Trick."

"No. That kind of talk I don't need," I shook my head.

"Besides," Jeanne said earnestly. "I'd still end up sitting next to Sammy and you'd end up sitting next to Trick. You know you're gonna have to dance with him. 'Cause you know you're both going to be athletes of the year again."

I smiled again. Cammie glared again. She looked back at Jeanne.

"I'll think about it," she sighed.

"Thanks," Jeanne said. She turned to me and, out of Cammie's sight, gave me a big wink. It was all I could do not to laugh. I wondered if she really wanted to go to the banquet at all. I was a very lucky brother.

Tuesday afternoon was our rematch against McKay Academy for the league championship. It had been hard beating them once, and harder beating them twice. Nobody had any real illusions about the third time being the charm. And the news the Coach gave us after we had boarded the bus didn't help our confidence. Cary had stepped on a nail over the weekend and was going to be lost for the rest of the season.

By my calculations, that was maybe three hours away. A half hour bus ride, half an hour to change, and a two-hour game that either Donnie or Steve would be pitching. Season over.

That didn't stop us from having fun, though. Carl Thomason was pretty much the last guy on the team. He would pinch hit and play left field if the game was completely out of control. He had apparently spent his time watching all the rest of us, and decided that this was the time to show off his impersonations. There were guys rolling in the aisle when he did Coach. He saved me for the very end, standing up in front of the bus as it rolled to a stop in front of McKay Academy.

"All right, men. Remember, this is a team game. And we're a team. You can tell that because we all wear the same uniform. Except me, mine has a "C." And a different number, of course. Anyway, we win as a team, we lose as a team, we eat as a team, and we crap as a team. But we're a team. Even if you are doing my girlfriend, Jo-el. Now, men, we have to remember this is a game with rules. Lots of rules. Don't try to remember them all. It'll just give you a headache. Just remember that with men on first and third and less than one out or more than one out, but not one out, a ball hit to the shortstop means that the man on third has to click his heels together three times and say, out loud, 'there's no place like home, there's no place like home.' And then you'll be home. And that's good for us. So are you ready, men? Who's with me? Let's goooooo."

We all followed Carl off the bus, screaming at the tops of our voices. The McKay Academy team was already walking out to the field, and the sight of twenty screaming guys wearing ties was no doubt a little unnerving.

It was apparently unnerving enough that their pitcher hung a curve to Mo in the top of the first, letting him drive in Bobby from first with a two-run homer. And that only further set him off. In the fourth, he left a fastball out over the plate, and I crushed it. It barely missed a Volvo in the parking lot beyond the left field fence.

Donnie, meanwhile, was throwing the most effective junk of his life. Having prepared for Cary's curve and my fastball, the McKay hitters had no idea what to do with a fastball that came in as slowly as Donnie's did, or a slider that always threatened to break across the plate but never quite made it. They got their hits, but never enough of them in a row to do any real damage to us. By the end of the fifth inning, we were ahead 5-2, and the McKay coach was getting worried.

Our coach was getting worried, too, although for a different reason. Donnie was done by the top of the sixth, walking the first batter on four straight pitches. That left it up to Steve, and his first pitch, to my old friend Paul Bunyan, came down in the next county. After that, the other guys were starting to look worried as well.

"Matt!" I screamed from right field.

He looked out at me, and I motioned toward the mound. He pointed at the pitcher and raised his eyebrows, and I motioned again, doing my best to scowl at him. Matt obediently strolled to the mound to have a word with Steve. As far as I know, Matt had been to the mound only three times that season, and I was hoping that he would remember the last time and not the first or the second.

The next pitch was grounded to Rabbit. One out.

The next batter stroked a single to right field. I fired it into Eddie on second to keep him at first.

And the next batter hit into a textbook 5-4-3 double play. Third to second to first. Denton to Cooper to Perra. One more inning to go. We were clinging to a 5-4 lead.

Coach sat down next to me while Eddie was hitting and asked me quietly if I could pitch the last.

I looked at him and gave him a grin.

"Nah," I said, in as loud a voice I could. "Steve'll finish it off."

He returned my grin.

"Hear that, Manzilla?" he yelled toward Steve. "Sterling wants you out there rather than him."

Steve's eyes grew wide. Eddie finished striking out to end the inning. I ran past Steve and clapped him on the shoulder. And he struck out the side. None of us could believe it either. We stood there in the field while Steve and Tommy started celebrating our second consecutive league championship all by themselves. Finally we wised up. And then we all started running toward them.

Mr. Carruthers returned my astronomy lab notebook on Wednesday morning. Cammie, sitting next to me, looked over at it and gave me a smile.

"A-minus. Good job, Trick."

I was numb, sitting there in a sort of hazy fog. Finally, though, I managed to stammer out a "yeah," as I glanced over at Cammie's A-plus.

"Hey, I'm the scientist," she said breezily. "Speaking of which, are you busy on Saturday night?"

"Huh?"

"I'm was going to borrow a telescope and make a few last observations," she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "I need somebody there to help."

"Somebody?"

"All right, you. I need you. You're my frickin' lab partner, and you already know my whole system. Happy?"

She gave me a look that managed to convey more emotions that I would have thought possible: a dare for me to say no; her ambivalence about asking me in the first place; and there, in the back of her eyes, maybe just a tiny bit of hope that I'd agree. Of course I would.

"I'd be a little happier if you'd talk to me now and then, instead of pretending like I didn't sit next to you in class or at the same table at lunch."

"I'm sorry. It's just —"

Mr. Carruthers had finished passing back the lab books and begun his lecture. So I never got to find out what it was that was just —.

I continued through the rest of the week in a kind of numb disbelief. I had been focusing on my grades for the last five months. Now, with a B-plus average on the quizzes and an A-minus on the lab book, there was no way I was going to get an A-plus in astronomy. And without that, there was no way I was going to get into the University of Virginia.

I found, though, that I couldn't help but keep working. I was spending my evenings with Moby Dick opened in front of me, trying to glean its origin, if any, in Melville's childhood illness. UVA or not, I was just as much a nerd now as I had been in ninth grade.

On Saturday, I settled in at the public library to do my first draft. I was working hard enough that I didn't realize that the library had closed for lunch until Lynn Edwards pulled out the chair across the table from me.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Oh, hi. Sorry. I guess I was concentrating a little too hard, huh?"

"You remind me of the old Trick," she giggled. "The one who used to come here and bury his nose in his books."

"Yeah, me, too."

She reached out and traced her fingers lightly across my hand.

"Of course, the new Trick was fun, too."

I froze in place.

"But I thought you and, um, Bob were going out."

"We were. Not any more. I'm leaving."

"Leaving?"

"I'm going to New York City. This Friday. I was going to call you today to tell you and here you are. You know, I've always wanted to be a writer, and I just decided if I don't give it a try now, I'm never going to. I just need to get away for a while and concentrate on writing, and one of my college roommates has an opening in her apartment."

"Wow."

"Bob has his life here. He's going to make partner next year. It was good, but we were never going to be together forever."

"Sorry."

"I'm not. I had a blast. Thank you, Trick."

"Sure."

"So do you, um, want to say goodbye?"

She batted those big eyelashes at me. I reached for my wallet and opened it up.

"You know, I do have a condom," I pulled it out.

She blanched. It had been nearly five months since she had told me that if I ever showed up with a condom she'd let me fuck her in the ass, but she remembered it just as clearly as I did.

"Trick, I, um..."

"That's okay. I think I'd rather say goodbye just like this."

"Just like what?"

"Just sitting across from you here, having you tell me about your dream of becoming a writer."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



That was all it took. Her ambitions, her dreams and aspirations - everything poured out of her over the next hour. We shared the tuna fish sandwich that she had brought for lunch, and I told her about our baseball season, and how I thought I had turned into a real team captain. We said goodbye with a long, tender kiss that made my groin ache.

Cammie picked me up around nine o'clock that evening. As I sat waiting on the porch for her, I had decided that the three-step process that I had begun when I had returned from my visit from the University of Virginia wasn't all I needed to do to make amends. This time, though, what I needed to amend was not from the three weeks after my no-hitter, but from the three years before I woke up on Christmas Day. I had a fourth step.

"Cammie," I said as soon as she had parked the car at Lemmon's Park. "Before we set up our stuff, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am."

"For what?"

"For hurting you as badly as I did. I don't think I knew before last week, on the way home from the Formal, just how much pain I had caused you. I was Trick Sterling, the king of the world."

"Trick, I —"

"Shush," I silenced her. "I need to finish. You're a really great girl, Cammie Rowe. You need to have somebody who will tell you that every day. And I can't help but think that the reason you don't is that you're afraid to get close enough to somebody who will. Because you're afraid that he'll hurt you just like I did."

I could tell she was looking at me, but in the quickly growing darkness of the parking lot, I couldn't really see her face.

"So all I want to say is, when you get to Albania next year, let yourself fall in love. Don't let a high school jerk prevent you from finding him."

I reached out and found her hand on her lap. She put her other hand on top of mine and gave it a squeeze. I could feel her tears dropping on to my skin.

"Thanks, Patrick," she finally said with a sniff.

"But as for Albania," she said ruefully.

"Have you heard yet?" I asked.

"Not yet," she sighed. "I think I may have to go to my safety."

"MIT? Cal Tech?"

"Asshole," I could hear Cammie grinning in the dark. "Come on. Let's go."

We hiked to where we could see her star low in the western sky. I carried the telescope that she had borrowed from the school and she brought her notebooks and papers. Finally, she pronounced herself satisfied with the view and I extended the legs of the scope.

"These little scopes are harder to set," Cammie said, "so you look and tell me when I've got it centered properly."

I did as Cammie requested while she made some minor adjustments.

"Whoa," I said. "Looks like you get a bonus."

"A what?"

"A bonus star. One that wasn't there last time."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's another star there. That's a little odd, huh? Maybe it's a spaceship from Planet Xenon Four."

"Yeah, like you'd know if there was an extra star there," she scoffed. The real Cammie was back.

"Hey, lady, I stared at that grid of yours for three frickin' hours last time," I was getting pretty defensive. "I think I know when something doesn't belong."

"All right, I'm sorry. Let me see."

Cammie replaced me at the scope.

"I don't see it," she finally said, sounding a little put out.

I checked her grid with the little penlight she had brought out.

"C-16," I smiled at her in the darkness. "Right next to the rest stop on the interstate."

"Fuck. There it is," she said, completely ignoring my humor. "Damn. I could have looked for hours and not seen that. How did you see that?"

"Ted Williams had 20/15 vision," I pointed out.

"What?"

I could tell she had turned to look at me from the change in the tone of her voice.

"Ted Williams? Last major leaguer to hit four hundred? He had 20/15 vision. He used to say he could see the stitching on the ball."

"Asshole," she murmured, quickly losing interest in Ted. "Holy shit. I think it's a comet."

"Not a spaceship?"

"Trick," she sighed as if she were talking to a five-year-old. "You have to report it."

"I don't really think the police are gonna care if there's a comet."

"Not the police, the IAU."

"The...?"

"International Astronomical Union. Here."

She grabbed the little flashlight to illuminate her purse, and produced a card with the organization's phone number.

"Ooh, look at you, little junior woodchuck member of the International Astrologers Union," I snatched the card from her hand. "What are you, some sort of little Brownie scientist?"

"Astronomers, asshole. Look, are you gonna call or not? The rules say if you're the first to sight the comet, it gets named after you. But you have to be the first to report it."

"Sure," I said. "Rules are rules. I love rules."

"Let me get you the coordinates," she said with a note of disgust.

I pulled out my cellphone, but we were too far away to get a signal. At Cammie's insistence, I left her there and drove back toward town. When I returned, she was waiting expectantly for me.

"Well?"

"I just got a machine. You know, press 1 if you sighted a comet, press 2 if you found a meteorite, press 3 to report the explosion of the sun and the imminent destruction of life on earth. I was really tempted on that one."

"Trick," she hissed a warning.

"So I answered the questions. Name, date, time, coordinates. You really think it could be Sterling's Comet?"

"Comet Sterling," she corrected me gently. "Trick, that would be so cool."

"Yeah, I guess it would," I agreed.

We settled back into our observations for another hour, until she finally announced that she was done. We packed up the equipment and hiked back to the parking lot, where Cammie drove me home.

"Trick, do me a favor," she said as she pulled in front of my darkened house. "Tell Jeanne she can have my tickets. I'll go with you."

"Oh, sure. Now that I'm a famous astronomer."

"No, now that you're not so much an asshole."

"Good enough," I nodded after no thought at all. "It's a date."

"It's not a date."

I told her that I would pick her up at seven-thirty. She told me she would be driving herself there and would meet me in the lobby of the school. I insisted that I would pick her up at seven-thirty, and she told me she would be long gone when I got there. I smiled. She glared.

I told Jeanne the next morning on the way to church. Where she sat with Cammie in the front row. I was unwilling to join them on my own, and I hadn't been invited. So I contented myself with childishly sticking my tongue out at the back of Cammie Rowe's head. That was apparently a little disconcerting for the minister, who faltered a little bit during his sermon. Whatever. I'd just add it to the sins I'd be confessing in a couple of minutes.

Chapter 27

By now, the last full week of school, we didn't really practice much baseball after school. We would get together for about an hour, maybe do a little running and stretching. We pitchers would throw a little to loosen our arms. We'd take a little BP. We would laugh and talk over our favorite parts of the season. The state championship tournament began tomorrow, against Crest View High School, a school from about an hour and a half south of us. They were supposed to have an excellent pitcher, and were one of the top-hitting teams in the state this year. We had me, and we could hit pretty well most of the time, but we were all aware that this could be our last game.

Coming up to bat in the top of the sixth inning, we were behind, 2-0. I had walked the leadoff batter in the bottom of the fourth, and the next guy had taken my fastball out of the yard. A very good hitting team, indeed.

But not, as it turned out, particularly well-coached. With one out, Bobby had singled. Rabbit had bunted the ball down the third base line, and their third baseman had just missed it when he went to scoop it up for the throw. Only a heads-up play by their shortstop had kept Bobby from scampering to third.

With the count at two balls and two strikes, I got the curve, and once again I couldn't lay off. Once again, I popped it up to the shortstop. This time, the umpire behind the plate called out "Infield fly, batter out."

And it had no effect at all. I watched in shock as their shortstop pretended to drop the ball at his feet. He let it bounce, scooped it up again, stepped around Bobby to put his foot on second, and threw to first. With a huge smile on his face, the first baseman planted his foot nearly on top of Rabbit's, caught the throw, and rolled the ball toward the pitcher's mound. The whole team ran off the field.

I was still standing at the batter's box, Mo was in the on-deck circle, Coach Craig was still at third, and Hal Stonerider was in the first base coach's box. All of us were paralyzed. Finally, I realized that if we just kept standing there, somebody on the Crest View team would figure out what the umpire had meant when he called me out on the infield fly. There followed perhaps the slowest play in the history of the game of baseball.

"Rabbit," I yelled out to him as I slowly started making my way to the dugout. "Which glove is yours?"

Rabbit started to walk toward second base, and I saw him nod to Bobby to start heading for third, as if he were walking toward the dugout.

"It's the Spalding," he yelled back to me. "Derek Jeter."

"Mine's the black one," Bobby yelled as he started down the line from second to third. He was walking with his hands on his hips as if he were just a little disgusted that no one had yet run out with his glove.

No one had emerged from the dugout at all. As Coach Craig, Hal, Mo and I slowly began walking there, everyone in the dugout was pretending to look for the gloves.

"Where did you leave your glove, Bobby?" Donnie yelled from the dugout.

Bobby was nearly at third by now, with Rabbit about half way from second to third. The umpires were watching us intently, and they were the ones who finally gave it away. The Crest View catcher had taken off his gear and emerged to lead off the bottom of the sixth, and he glanced at the umpires, Bobby and Rabbit, and the team in the dugout.

"Shit!" he screamed. He dropped his bat and raced toward the mound. Bobby took off for home, with Rabbit right behind him. Bobby made it easily, but Rabbit wasn't quite as fast. The catcher actually had a play, but Rabbit executed a perfect slide to the outside of the plate, just out of the poor guy's reach.

We were laughing so hard we could barely congratulate each other on tying the game. Mo was laughing so hard that when the Crest View team finally returned to the field, more than a little angry, he struck out on three pitches. Then the Crest View team struck out on eleven pitches in the bottom of the sixth.

Neither team scored in the seventh, and we found ourselves in extra innings. Coach had offered me a chance to come out, and I had declined. It was my game, and unless it went to twelve or thirteen, it was mine to win or lose. I was clearly getting tired, though, and after we failed to advance Jesse from first in the top of the eighth, I walked the leadoff batter for Crest View on a 3-2 pitch that could have been called either way. The next guy up pushed a perfect bunt up the third base line, and Matt was lucky to get the out at first base. So Crest View had a man on second with only one out. The third guy up was their leadoff hitter, and he hadn't touched me all day. But with the count at 2-2, he tapped a weak little roller toward third base. It would have been a relatively easy play for Matt, at least at first base. But I dove for it, hoping to throw the guy out running to third. And once again I watched in agony as the ball ticked off the end of my glove.

There was no chance for Matt to save me this time. The ball trickled across the third base line as the runner rounded third. Matt made a tremendous effort to reverse course and scrambled after the ball. But by the time Tommy caught the ball, the Crest View team was already celebrating their win. I just lay there on the ground, trying to blink the tears out of my eyes. Rabbit came over to help me up, and we lined up to shake our opponents' hands.

Coach pulled me aside before I got into the showers to tell me that I had nothing to be ashamed of, that the team was only in the playoffs in the first place because I had picked them up and carried them there.

"Sure, Coach," I grinned. "Thanks."

I was the last one out of the showers, though, and found the locker room completely deserted. I found out why when I finished dressing and headed toward the bus. There, lined up to shake my hand, was every member of the Marshall High School baseball team. Rabbit was first in line, Coach Torianni was last. The best, though, was Matt Denton, who simply said, "nice job, cap," as he shook my hand.

Still, it was a silent, almost depressed bus. Until Carl Thomason piped up from the back in a perfect imitation of Donnie's tenor.

"Where did you leave your glove, Bobby?"

That started us laughing again, and pretty soon we were trading stories about the season. We were still joking with each other when we pulled into the parking lot to find Jeanne, Jill, and Tanya waiting for us.

"So you won?" Jill asked Tommy.

"Nope," he said, watching their faces fall. "But we didn't really need to. Want a ride home, Jilly?"

She climbed into his car, Tanya got into Rabbit's, and Jeanne drove me home.

I spent Tuesday night as I had spent the night before, and the night before that. Mrs. Palmer was a demanding teacher, and even if I wasn't going to get an A-plus in Astronomy this semester, it was for damn sure that I was going to get one in English. When I finished it late Tuesday night, I was pretty pleased with myself. If Mrs. Palmer thought that my first paper had been an excellent piece of writing, just wait until she got this one.

Wednesday and Thursday nights were devoted to Religion. For the most part, at least. There was a band and orchestra concert on Wednesday night, so the Sterling kids had to attend that to cheer on Sammy, who had a solo. There was a chorus concert on Thursday night, so the Sterling brother and sister had to attend that to cheer on their other sister, who also had a solo. Jeanne was thrilled when Dad and Dave also showed up at the concert.

I did a lot of studying during my study halls on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. And after I got back from the concerts, of course. Although on Thursday there was the added distraction of the major league baseball draft. When we returned from the chorus concert, Tiffany told me that I had gotten twenty calls so far, one from the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had drafted me with the fourth pick, and all the rest from agents eager to have me sign up with them. Eventually, she said, she just changed the answering machine message so that it gave out my cell phone number, and then she had just stopped answering the phone.

I thanked her, and then excused myself to go study. Dad and Tiffany traded looks, and Dad cleared his throat.

"If you'd rather go to college, son," he said, "I'm sure we can find the money."

I stared at him for a few seconds, and then just thanked him as well.

I very proudly handed my paper in to Mrs. Palmer as she walked around collecting them on Friday.

"Decided not to take the F, Mr. Sterling?" she asked with mock acerbity as she took my paper.

"Tough call, ma'am," I nodded. "But I figured since I set a personal best for class attendance this year, I might as well finish the game."

"Indeed. Ms. Josephs, another paper based on Mr. Sterling's thesis, I see. You should be pleased with yourself, Mr. Sterling. You appear to have attracted half the class to your point of view."

Flushed with success in my English class, and cognizant of the sheer effort I had put into studying, I was confident when I walked into Religion for the test the following period that I could handle anything that Mrs. Jenkins could throw at me. Isaiah? Knew it. Amos? Knew it. Jonah, Micah, Malachi? Knew 'em all. And those older historical books? I knew them, too.

The test only bruised my confidence a little. I was in doubt about one of the short answer questions, about the book of Daniel. Daniel. Damn! I didn't spend long enough with Daniel. And then the sweeping essay question that concluded the test cost as much sweat and blood and toil as I could bring to bear in a fifty-minute class. Tanya and I both looked at each other with relief when that test was over. I was effectively done in two of my classes. I would finish polishing my astronomy report tonight, study for the history test on Saturday and Sunday, and memorize everything I could about the American government on Monday night.

In the meantime, though, I still had to get through lunch on Friday. Everyone congratulated me on the draft, and then the talk turned to colleges. Tanya would be going to Cornell, and Rabbit to Colgate. Tommy was going to be going to Williams College, and Sammy had received a full scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Cammie still hadn't heard from R.P.I., and shortly after graduation would probably let her backup school know that she'd be going there instead.

"Which is where?" I asked.

"R.I.T.," she said.

"In Rochester?" Sammy brightened up.

Cammie nodded.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Didn't anybody apply to colleges that aren't along the New York State Thruway?"

"Cornell is in Ithaca," Tanya pointed out helpfully. "South of the Thruway."

"And Williams is in Massachusetts," Tommy chimed in.

Still, even with the prospect of a multi-million dollar signing bonus, which the morning paper had assured me was the going rate for top-five draft picks, I felt strangely out of place in my own little crowd.

I was at the mall again on Saturday. I walked into a jewelry store, instantly spotted the two earrings that I wanted, and had them in my pocket in less than five minutes. On the way out, I saw Rachel again, sitting on a bench across the mall.

"Hey, beautiful," I yelled out.

She looked up and gave me a big smile as I walked toward her.

"Jeez, one trip to the men's room, and you're already trying to find a younger guy," said the guy who came up behind her.

We glared at each other like dogs getting ready to fight over the same fire hydrant.

"Mr. Hastings," I said cautiously.

"Mr. Sterling," he answered with equal care.

I was the first to smile.

"Well, this is so great," I gushed. "I'm happy you called her."

"Are you going to find me all my dates?" he grinned.

"No, this is it," I said. "So maybe you had better try to make this one last, huh?"

"Maybe he'd better," Rachel said, taking his hand as she stood up. "And thank you, Patrick Sterling."

She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I'd gotten a lot of cheek action in the last couple of weeks, and it was getting just a little frustrating. Still, as I watched Rachel and Bob walk off, hand in hand, I reached inside my pocket and felt the earrings that I had bought. Maybe I'd at least get another cheek kiss tonight.

I pulled into the Rowe's driveway a little before seven-thirty. Mr. Rowe was sitting on the steps of his house, and started glaring at me as soon as I stepped out of the car. I was dressed to please, or at least to please Cammie's mother, in a sports coat and khaki slacks, and my most conservative tie.

"Can I help you?" he asked gruffly as he stood to bar my way.

"Sir, I'm escorting your daughter to the sports banquet tonight, and I'm just here to pick her up."

He gave me an odd look.

"Did she know you would be coming?" he asked.

"I told her seven-thirty," I said. "But before I knock on the door, sir, I just wanted to apologize to you."

"To me?" he started.

"I've already apologized to Cammie, sir. I was stupid. I was rude. I was arrogant. I've told her that, too. I was just too full of myself to see that I had found the best girl in the world back in tenth grade and let her slip out of my hands."




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



He looked at me for a long time, and I tried to make the sincerity on my face match the sincerity with which I had delivered my little speech.

He finally sat back down on the steps and nodded to the step next to him.

"Her mother seems to like you," he said, staring off into space.

"I appreciate Mrs. Rowe's good wishes."

"I don't want my daughter to get hurt like that again."

"No, sir. I would never hurt her like that again."

"What makes you think she'll ever consent to go out with you again?" he chuckled.

"Nothing, sir. Although she is letting me take her to the sports banquet. That's a hopeful sign, sir."

We sat there in silence for a little while longer.

"Cammie tells me that you discovered a comet," he said suddenly.

"Well, apparently I saw a comet," I agreed. "Although it was Cammie who pointed out it was a comet. I was hoping for a spaceship. But I don't know yet about the discovery part."

"Seriously? It's been a week. I thought she said you had to give them your e-mail. Shouldn't you have heard by now?"

"Actually, I gave them Mr. Carruthers' e-mail address. Our astronomy teacher."

"Why?"

"Well, put yourself in my shoes, Mr. Rowe. If I go in to Mr. Carruthers and tell him I discovered a comet, he'll say, 'uh-huh, sure Trick.' And I could probably even fake up an e-mail."

"But if he gets it directly..." Mr. Rowe smiled.

I smiled back.

"Daddy, have you seen my car keys? I can't find them anywhere."

Cammie was still in the house, her voice growing louder as she walked down the hallway that led toward the porch. We both turned as she appeared in the screen door. She was absolutely beautiful, in a red and white knit dress. And, I was very pleased to see, a lapis lazuli necklace.

"Trick," she pushed the door open and finally saw me standing there.

"You look lovely, Cammie," I smiled.

"I thought I told you — oh, never mind. Let's just go."

I pulled the box out of my pocket.

"I brought you some earrings."

She stared at the box and slowly opened it.

"They go with your necklace," I said.

Both her father and I watched her hand rise up to finger it.

"They should match," I pointed out helpfully.

She stormed back into the house, but returned in a minute wearing them. Mrs. Rowe joined her husband on the porch to wave goodbye to us.

"I can't believe my father didn't kill you," Cammie said when we were finally on the way.

"He seemed very reasonable," I said.

"It's still weird," she said. "And I told you I was going to meet you there. If I'd found my car keys I would have already been gone by the time you got there."

"I would have had to give you the earrings at the banquet, then," I smiled.

"Oh, wipe that stupid grin off your face," she said. "Just because I'm wearing your gifts doesn't make me your girlfriend, Trick Sterling."

"Oh, I know that," I nodded sagely.

"So why did you come?"

"I wanted to apologize to your dad. Like I apologized to you. For hurting you. Jeanne said he took it much harder than your mom."

"Mom," Cammie scoffed. "My mom and your mom were this close to booking the church."

She held up her finger and thumb a millimeter apart.

I smiled.

"What are you smiling at?"

"Just remembering my mom," I glanced over at her. "She'd probably be pretty happy right about now."

"Your mom would be fucking ecstatic," Cammie said. "I miss your mom. That was neat about your new sister."

"Yeah, I think Tiffany and Dad are going to be pretty happy."

"When I was over there for dinner, I didn't get the sense that you guys got along real well."

"People change," I shrugged.

"Don't even think about it, Trick Sterling," she said after a while.

But I had heard that before.

The sports banquet featured lousy food and even lousier speeches by the members of the athletic department. If there is one group of people that should not be encouraged to take up public speaking, it's high school coaches. Finally, after we were done naming all the lettermen in all the various sports, Bob Hutchison, the athletic director, stood up.

"And now, boys and girls, I won't say that this is the moment that you have all been waiting for, but it is at least the moment that you have all been expecting. This is the first year that we have ever had a repeat of both the female and male athletes of the year. Our female athlete of the year, once again, is the star of the Marshall High School volleyball team, Cameron Rowe. And our male athlete, again, is her date —"

"Her date," I whispered.

"God," Cammie groaned.

"— the star of our baseball team, Trick Sterling. If we could have them both on the floor for our traditional dance, please."

We had to dance to Queen's "We are the Champions." Cammie had a thin smile plastered on her face. I had a big grin plastered on mine. But at least she wasn't making an effort to actually push me away.

"This is nice," I said.

"It's okay," she agreed.

"We were a little farther away last year." I remembered Jeanne having told me that you could have fit another person in between us.

"You're a little less of an asshole this year," she smiled.

We danced just as closely as we had danced at the Formal. Just maybe not as closely as we had danced after the Formal. When we were done, we went back to the podium to accept the little trophies that went with our titles, and then returned to the table where Jeanne was sitting there beaming at us.

"Don't push it, Jeanne Sterling," Cammie warned as she sat down in the chair I held out for her.

"I don't have to push it, Cammie Rowe," Jeanne stuck her tongue out at her best friend as I reclaimed the seat in between them.

The waiters — actually, the cafeteria staff — brought our dessert. As we finished, I asked Cammie if she wanted Jeanne and I to pick her up on the way to church tomorrow.

"Thanks," she said, "but I'll find my keys tonight. You don't need to bother."

"It's no bother," I insisted. "If you find them, just give Jeanne a ring. Otherwise we'll stop by on the way."

She could see nothing wrong with that, and we stood up to leave. Then Cammie spotted Liz Torianni. As she went over to talk to her, I leaned down to talk to Jeanne.

"Do me a favor?" I asked.

"Sure," she said.

"Call Cammie's mother," I told her.

"Her mother?"

"Tell her to keep the keys hidden until tomorrow morning. Cammie's gonna let me take her to church if she still can't find her keys."

"Her mother?" Jeanne asked again as she started laughing.

"You don't think I'm stupid enough to try to do this all by myself, do you, Jeanne?"

She was laughing even harder as I headed for the lobby to meet Cammie.

Oddly enough, Jeanne never got that call from Cammie on Sunday morning. So we picked her up on our way to church. We all sat in the front row together. Me, Jeanne, Jill, and Cammie. Actually, the order was Jill, Jeanne, me, and Cammie, which worked out even better. I was particularly thankful to God that morning, and asked him only to help me avoid being an asshole for just a little bit longer.

Chapter 28

On Monday and Tuesday I took my tests in American History and Government, respectively. I studied hard, and I walked out of both classrooms happy. Lots of short answer questions, lots of multiple choice.

Wednesday was the last official day of classes, and nobody really expected to get anything done, particularly not in the senior classes, where the grades had been turned in to the office on Tuesday afternoon.

It wasn't a big surprise, then, when Ms. Carter came on the loudspeaker and asked everyone to assemble in the gymnasium. We were seated by class, the seniors and sophomores on the right, the juniors and freshmen on the left. In the middle of the gym were about fifty seats, which were occupied by the faculty, and in front of them was a makeshift stage with a podium and three folding chairs.

Mr. Peterson took the seat on the podium on the far right. When everyone had settled down, he walked up to the podium and turned on the microphone.

"Can everyone hear me?" he said with surprising enthusiasm.

"Yes," we all droned.

"Good," he said. "This is a very special assembly to celebrate both academic and athletic achievement. First of all, I would like to have Trick Sterling and Cammie Rowe join me here on stage."

Cammie and I made our way down to the floor and then up to the stage. I offered her the middle seat, the one right behind the podium, and took the left-hand one. Looking out, I noticed Ms. Carter standing at the back of the gym, next to my brother Dave and my dad, along with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill. I smiled and waved. Next to them were Cammie's parents.

"Who are you waving to?" Cammie hissed at me.

"Your mom and dad," I whispered back.

She leaned over toward me to look around the podium and I watched her eyes widen in surprise.

"I think your dad likes me," I said.

"I think not," she said.

"Haven't you told him you're my girlfriend?" I asked.

"I'm not your girlfriend."

"Can I have your attention again, please?" Pete was asking. "I'd like to start with two very special athletic awards. The state association is a little late on one of these, some sort of computer mistake, apparently. They, uh, asked me to apologize to you, Ms. Rowe. Nonetheless, I am very proud to announce that Cammie Rowe was selected to the All-State volleyball team for 2007. Liz?"

Liz Torianni walked up to the stage with a trophy and climbed the steps to give it to Cammie. The school photographer had them pose together for a picture, and Liz went back down to join the faculty while Cammie took her seat. We then went through the whole thing another time when I was named to the All-State baseball team. Coach came up for the picture-taking session, and then the photographer asked Cammie and I to pose together.

"Pretty special, huh?" I said through my teeth as we stood there smiling.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Us here, together, winning these awards," I said. "Look how much your parents are enjoying it."

I lifted the trophy in salute to my guests, and Cammie uncomfortably did the same.

"If I could sort of segue into the academic portion of the program..." Pete began when we were back in our seats.

Cammie and I both stood up to leave.

"No, no, no," he said as he looked around and saw us. "You guys sit back down. First of all, I'd like to announce the valedictorian and salutatorian of the class of 2007. I won't bring them up here, because you'll be hearing from them on Saturday. I am pleased to announce that the top grade point average in the class was earned by Sammy Houghtaling."

Amid the applause, there was a whoop from the junior class that had everyone laughing.

"And the salutatorian," Pete announced, "is Tommy Narburg."

Another round of applause, another whoop, this one from the sophomore class.

"The Sterling girls apparently like those brainy guys, huh?" Cammie whispered to me.

"All us Sterlings value education," I said with a grin.

Pete leaned back to the microphone.

"I would like to point out that in third place, barely out of second, was Cammie Rowe."

"See?" I told her.

She shot me a dirty look.

"Now before I get on with the most unusual part of the program," he said, "I want to tell you about something else unusual that happened today. I was coming out of my office and I heard Ms. Carter swearing. Now to tell you the truth, people, I don't think I've ever heard Ms. Carter swear."

I had to suppress a laugh. I'd be willing to bet, given the proper incentive, Rachel Carter was capable of some language that would surprise him. I lifted my head and saw Rachel standing at the back of the auditorium, turning beet red.

"So I asked her what was the matter," he continued, "and she told me a really remarkable story about the Trickster here. About how he wanted to boost his grades to get into the University of Virginia, and how he needed five A-pluses this semester to do it."

He looked at me and smiled before he turned back. I glanced to my left to see Cammie starting at me, a puzzled expression on her face.

"She was upset, you see," Pete said, "because she'd just seen his report card, and he only got four. One A, and four A-pluses."

Even though I knew it was coming it still caused a little twinge. Well, hell, it had been a good try. I gave Cammie a little half-smile.

"But I think, people, that with just a little persuasion, we can get him what he needs. Don't you?"

Ms. Carter's look had turned from one of embarrassment to one of horror. I found it a little hard to believe myself.

"Let's see, an A-plus in Government, an A-plus in History, an A-plus in the Honors English Seminar, and an A-plus in Astronomy. Mrs. Jenkins, can't we prevail on you to give Mr. Sterling an A-plus in Religion, and send this young man to the school he's dreamed about attending. What do you say, huh? What do you think, boys and girls?"

Mrs. Jenkins was in the center of the group of faculty, sitting next to Mrs. Palmer. She looked miserable. Pete had started rhythmically clapping his hands, and a good number of the students in the gym were joining him. Pretty soon small pockets of them — jocks, mostly — were starting to stand up and clap. I picked out Tanya and Rabbit, sitting next to each other. Rabbit stood up and Tanya yanked him back down by his belt. Uh-oh, their first argument. I couldn't help but smile.

"Excuse me, Mr. Peterson," I stood up and tapped him on his shoulder. "May I speak?"

"Sure, Trick!" he boomed.

I smiled and edged my way between him and the microphone.

"Sit down!" I roared.

The people who were standing quickly sat down.

"And shut up," I said in a more reasonable town of voice.

"You know," I looked around at the trophy I'd left by my chair, "that's a great award. All-state pitcher. I'm very proud of that. I'm gonna take that and put it on my shelf at home. But I have to tell you my teammates helped me, especially Tommy Narburg. In every inning of every game, Tommy told me which pitches to throw, Tommy told me where to throw 'em, and Tommy caught 'em and threw 'em back. The ones that didn't get hit, anyway."

That got the expected laugh.

"So I am proud of that award, even if I didn't do it all myself," I went on. "On the other hand, if I go home next week and get a report card with four A-pluses and one A, I'm gonna be damn proud of that. Because I will have done that all by myself. I worked hard for that A-plus in government and that A-plus in history. I worked damn hard for that A-plus in English."

Mrs. Palmer was beaming at me.

"And I worked my butt off in Astronomy," I said. Although an A-plus, to be honest, seemed a little high. I mean, what did he have left to give Cammie, who was, as she had pointed out, an actual scientist?

I turned around and gave Cammie a little shrug. Then I turned back and saw Mr. Carruthers smiling before I found Mrs. Jenkins again.

"But I messed up that final in Religion, didn't I, ma'am?" I asked. "I should have gone into a little more depth on that last essay, shouldn't I?"

She was nodding, and smiling.

"And I missed one of those short answers, too, didn't I?" I continued. "Daniel's friends, from the book of Daniel."

Mrs. Jenkins nodded again.

I snapped my fingers.

"Meschach," I yelped. "That was it — Shadrac, Meschach, and Abednego. Damn it. What did I put?"

Mrs. Jenkins had buried her head in her hands, her body shaking as if she were sobbing.

"Seriously," I asked, "what did I put?"

Mrs. Palmer tilted her head in and shared a whisper with Mrs. Jenkins. Then Mrs. Palmer leaned back and started laughing, a raucous "ha, ha, ha" that echoed off the walls of the gym.

Shit. Suddenly I could see the answer I had put down as if it were right in front of me.

"I put Rorschach, didn't I?" I asked. I had identified one of the biblical Daniel's friends as the Viennese psychiatrist who had invented the ink-blot test.

I had to admit that it was kind of interesting to see who laughed. About half of the faculty had joined Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Jenkins. I could see Liz Torianni laughing; Coach Torianni, sitting next to her, looked a little mystified. A few students — Tanya, Rabbit, Sammy, and Tommy among them — started to laugh as well. I heard a thud behind me and turned around. Pete gave me a sort of shrug. I turned the other way, where Cammie Rowe had fallen off her chair and was holding her sides.

"Oh, just get back in your chair," I pointed to it, making her laugh even harder.

I turned back to the audience, which finally quieted down.

"I did a lot of preaching to my teammates this year about respect," I said. "About respect for the game of baseball. Its traditions, its values, and its rules. And I have to tell you, Mrs. Jenkins, that if you change my grade —"

I gave Tanya and Rabbit a little smile before I gestured at the general student body.

" — because those pinheads want you to, or because this pinhead wants you to —"

I jerked a thumb back at Pete.

"— then I'm gonna lose a good deal of the respect I have for this institution, and its traditions, and its values, and its rules. Since I've been here at John Marshall High, I've learned that you can bend some rules."

I smiled at Mrs. Palmer.

"But you can't start breaking them. And one of those rules says that you don't get an A-plus on your final unless you get everything just about perfect. I wasn't just about perfect in your class, Mrs. Jenkins. But I worked hard. I earned that A. Don't you dare take that away from me."

I walked back to my seat, and the applause started again. When I sat down and looked up, I saw that the whole faculty was now standing. Rachel was standing. Well, to be fair, she'd never actually been sitting. But she was applauding wildly, tears streaming down her face. Tanya was standing, and dragging Rabbit to his feet with her. Sammy and some of his band friends — most of his band friends, actually — were standing. I just smiled and waved. It didn't last long; the faculty and the band weren't that big. 

"Uh, thank you, Trick," Pete said, a little chagrined. "Finally, I'd like to ask Mr. Carruthers to come up here."

Mr. Carruthers mounted the steps and took Pete's place at the microphone.

"Thank you, Tony," he said nervously. "For those of you who don't know me, I teach physics here at Marshall, and this year I also taught an elective course in Astronomy. Mr. Sterling and Ms. Rowe were among my students. And yes, you did work hard, Mr. Sterling, although perhaps not quite as hard as Ms. Rowe. In fact, when I totaled your tests and lab grade and final report, I was set to give you an A-minus. But I remembered that at one point your classmate Mr. Collins, asked me, in jest of course, if I'd give an A-plus to a student who found life on another planet, and I assured him that I would. At the time, I thought to myself, I'd give an A-plus to anyone who can find another planet. Heck, I figured, very generously, I'd give an A-plus to anyone who could find a comet."

Cammie reached over and put a hand on my arm. Her face was glowing with nothing but happiness for me. Mr. Carruthers pulled a piece of paper out of the hideous orange-colored jacket that he was wearing.

"I received this e-mail last Wednesday from the International Astronomical Union. I have to say that I was a little disappointed that nobody mentioned this in their final reports."

He turned around to give us his best dirty look, a sort of cross between a smile and a glare, and went back to his e-mail. Cammie was nearly bouncing up and down as Mr. Carruthers started reading.

"'This will confirm the comet sighted at Right Ascension seven hours, forty-four minutes, sixteen point seven seconds and Declination plus twenty eight degrees, two minutes, fifteen seconds on Saturday, June 3, by Cameron Rowe and Patrick Sterling. Further analysis of the comet by our staff indicates that Comet Rowe-Sterling will become visible to the naked eye during the early morning hours of the second week in August.'"




A Stitch in Time Pt. 07



The applause for that was thunderous. Nobody had done that before. The faculty stood up, the student body stood up, and I looked over at a stunned Cammie Rowe, who had stopped bouncing pretty much right when she heard her name. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her up after me.

"Why?" she whispered.

"It's kind of like baseball," I whispered back as we sat back down after acknowledging the applause with a few waves. "We're a team. It was your star, your stupid grid, and you were the one who borrowed the telescope. I certainly couldn't have done it without you."

"But what about the rules? You were the first one to see it."

"Rules?" I grinned. "Rules don't apply to girlfriends."

"I'm not your —"

"Hush," I said.

Mr. Carruthers had started speaking again, and it was my turn to put my hand on Cammie's arm.

"I have a former college friend of mine employed at the IAU, so I e-mailed him back to confirm it. And when I got that, I e-mailed another friend of mine at a college in New York State that had had the utter gall to put Ms. Rowe on its wait list, despite my recommendation."

He got a nervous laugh from the audience for that. He pulled a second e-mail out of his pocket.

"I told him that I was sure that Caltech would love to number the discoverer of a comet among its incoming freshman class," he continued. "I got his return e-mail today, and he informs me that the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute would also love to number Ms. Rowe among its freshman class, and is willing to offer her the Cushing Scholarship, for a student who has performed unparalleled original work in the physical sciences. Ms. Rowe?"

He turned around to hand the e-mail to Cammie in the midst of the renewed applause, but found her chair empty. Ms. Rowe had already knocked me to the ground.

In between kissing my face, she spoke those twelve words that any suitor longs to hear.

"It may take Daddy a little while to come around, you asshole."

I shrugged, as best I could in a prostrate position.

"But I love you, Patrick Sterling," she said, burying her head in my shoulder.

"I love you, too, Cammie Rowe," I said.

****************

Sammy Houghtaling was a great trumpet player, but as a public speaker he left a little to be desired. His valedictory address at Saturday's graduation was a halting speech, filled with platitudes about growing older. Jeanne wasn't the only one in the audience cringing in sympathy.

Then Tommy Narburg got up and gave a hysterical speech in which he pointed out that a valedictory was simply a farewell address — vale being Latin for farewell and dictory meaning address. Then he pulled out a watch and said that he intended to speak for a minute longer than Sammy, which made him the real valedictorian of the class.

Sammy reclaimed the microphone, and we all held our breath, waiting for a fresh disaster. But he had his trumpet with him, and leaned forward into the microphone. I had forgotten that Sammy was also scheduled to do a trumpet solo at the ceremony.

"This is Perpetual Motion," he said.

He launched into a five-minute solo. I swear he never took a breath for the entire time, and when he was done, the rest of us just exhaled, as if we had all been trying to hold our breaths until he finished.

He took advantage of the silence to lean forward to the microphone one more time.

"Valedictorian," he pointed to himself with a smile as he looked out at Tommy.

Tommy was the first one to jump to his feet and start applauding. Well, the first one after Jeanne.

****************

I drove Jeanne and Jill to church the following day, and naturally sat in the front row next to my girlfriend. After church, I was stunned at the size of the crowd waiting for us outside the church, even if I was responsible for them being there. It included, I was very happy to see, not only Dave and Liane, but also Dad and Tiffany, with little Sarah sleeping peacefully in Tiffany's arms. Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill were standing right next to them.

"What's going on?" Jeanne gripped my arm as she saw the assemblage.

"Come on," I motioned her and Jill over to where the minister was waiting.

"Patrick," he said. "Would you like to say a few words?"

"Thank you, sir. This week will be the second anniversary of our mom's death, and I want to thank the Vestry for giving us permission to plant this tree here in her memory. It's a weeping willow, her favorite."

Jeanne and Jill were already in tears, and I was going to be joining them really soon.

"It will have a plaque on it that says, In loving memory of Sarah Anne Sterling. 1965-2005. May — may, I'm sorry..."

I handed it to Jeanne, who handed it to Jill, who gave it to Dave, who got about as far as I did. It came back to me, and I gave it to Cammie, who couldn't do any better. Finally, my best friend, Tanya Szerchenko, reached for it. She was crying, too, and I couldn't help but wish, as I heard her read it, that my mother had been able to meet her.

"In loving memory of Sarah Anne Sterling, 1965-2005. May God bless us all with her ability to love her neighbor as she loved herself."

****************

August, 2007

"Wake up," she hissed.

"What time is it?" I groaned.

"Two o'clock."

"In the morning?"

"Of course in the morning, Patrick. Look."

We looked up into the sky, and there it was. Comet Rowe-Sterling, blazing in the eastern sky.

"Wow!" we both said at the same time.

We were lying naked on two sleeping bags in Lemmon's Park.

"Oh, look, Patrick, a shooting star!"

"Who cares about a shooting star? There's a frickin' comet up there."

"But it's a shooting star. You have to make a wish."

"Oh, no. I'm not making any wishes."

"Why not?"

"I already did that once this year, and look what happened."

"What?"

I ticked the reasons off on my fingers in the darkness.

"I almost got thrown out of school. My face is scarred for life. I almost got arrested. I almost turned back into an asshole."

"You threw a no-hitter and a perfect game," she countered. "And you managed to wiggle your way into UVA. I still haven't figured that one out."

"Hey, you think after Tommy posted that video of my little speech on YouTube that they were going to turn me away, even with a 2.7434 average? I did get a 1970 on my SAT, you know."

"Yeah, no fooling," she laughed. "Anyway, your brother is happily dating your ex-girlfriend, your sister is happily dating the valedictorian, your little sister is happily dating your catcher, and you got to have the two hottest girls in the senior class."

"Well, when you put it that way..."

I did have a wish, though, come to think of it. I was really hoping that this wouldn't be like one of those movies, where a guy's guardian angel, or the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows the guy what his future would be like if he doesn't change, and then returns him to where he started. Because I really didn't want to go back.

I didn't think it would happen, not now anyway. The time to return me would have been after the assembly, or after the church ceremony. And that had been two months ago. On the whole, I found that I didn't mind losing the three years between my freshman and senior years of high school. I didn't think I could do any better than I had done now. And I knew for damn sure that Tommy Narburg couldn't have done any better.

"Why so quiet?" she asked.

"Sorry," I smiled in the darkness. "Just thinking. So what did you wish for?"

"I can't tell you. It's bad luck."

"So how will I know if it comes true?"

I felt a soft hand bump my thigh and then wrap itself around my cock.

"Ooh, look," she said as she felt it grow and stiffen. "It's already coming true."

"You didn't need a star for that. I'm gonna make that wish come true for the rest of your life."

She moved up to straddle me.

"You know, I'm naked and wet. You're naked and hard. What do you say we just skip the foreplay and get down to the real play?"

She held me in place and sank down on top of me, making both of us groan with pleasure. She was tight, and wonderful, and perfect. Ten years from now, when we had a couple of little Rowe-Sterlings running around underfoot instead of one big one shining overhead, she probably wouldn't be quite as tight. But she would still be wonderful. She would still be perfect. She would still be my Cammie.

THE END (thanks for reading)