Amy 23: Amy's Revenge free porn video

Amy 23: Amy's Revenge Copyright 2014 by Amy Komori The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2014 Amy Komori. All rights reserved. Chapter One: I Want the Getaway One super nice spring day, feeling kind of self-conscious about my buzzed head thanks to Ms. Green, the school psychologist who had called me to her office as if my having short hair was a cry for help, I decided to wear a knit cap to school. And that was a fucking mistake. "Hey, Spinelli," some boy said to me in the hallway as I was on my way to homeroom. First thing in the morning. I frowned. Spinelli was this kid from a TV cartoon, "Disney's Recess." I'd been called that a couple of times before, and I had this weird way of picking up nicknames like my favorite sweater picked up lint. So at first it didn't bother me at all. I kind of nodded at the guy and gave him this, "Haha, you're such a card" smile and just kept walking. The trouble was, some of the other people in homeroom started saying it independently of that first guy. And then someone in first period said it, too, just as I was throwing myself into the seat of my desk. It was starting to become the day's theme, and I had to put a stop to it, so I took off my knit cap and spent the rest of the period bare headed as usual. But it was too late. Word had gotten around and even Gina and Michelle called me Spinelli down by our lockers between classes. That was how Spinelli came to join the ever-growing list of things people called me other than my real name. To the skater kids, I was Ayumi, after an inline skater. To my sister, I was Honey Bunny. To my friends, I was Claudia. Other kids at school called me Mulan, who wasn't even Japanese, not that most of them knew the fucking difference. There were other names for me, too, most of them created by Heidi Fleegleman, my mortal enemy. Since I was kind of tomboyish and so was Spinelli, and because of the stupid knit cap which I threw into my locker planning to never wear it again, ever, the only people in my morning classes to say my actual name were the teachers. By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge. I met up with Sarah, Gina, Michelle and Dallas in the crowded hallway not too far from the cafeteria. "I'm kinda sick of this place today," I said sourly. Frowning up a storm. "The very next person who calls me Spinelli is going to get my foot stuck so far up their ass we're probably going to have to get married or something because they'll never be able to extract it. Let's go someplace else for lunch." Gina and Michelle nodded, and luckily for their asses and our future relationships didn't say Spinelli. Only Sarah and Dallas needed more convincing. "I just..." Sarah said, looking kind of distressed. That kind of hurt me, because I knew it was my fault she was so instantly upset. She was caught between wanting to stay out of trouble and wanting to do whatever her friends (especially me) did. "Is this really a good idea?" "Probably not," Gina said. "I mean, it's Sp-- Claudia's, so that tells you something." "I'm hungry and I don't want lunchroom tacos," Michelle said. "Are we having tacos?" I asked. Even though the shells were bound to be a little soggy, that was reason enough to back out of skipping lunch even if it had been my own big idea. I gave Sarah a quick glance and she was begging me with her green puppy eyes. "I don't think so," Gina said. "We're not," Michelle told us. "It's vegetable soup and peanut butter sandwiches." "Then why the fuck did you say you didn't want lunchroom tacos?" I asked in this huffy voice. "Because I seriously don't want lunchroom tacos," Michelle informed me with her eyes half-closed. "Or soup and peanut butter sandwiches." "Guys," Dallas said, "I don't think it's a good idea. Sarah doesn't want to, I don't want to..." "But we do want to," Michelle told her. "And that means that you secretly want to, too." "If you say so." "I do say so." Tired of listening to a lot of talk instead of actually doing anything, I snapped, "So it's settled. Let's go to Taco Bell." Then I just walked away from them, not sure if what I'd done was really cool and they were going to follow me, or if I'd just made a huge ass of myself. I didn't dare look back, but I could feel my body go all prickly and heat up like someone had turned on a burner. Another second and I was going to break into a sweat. They followed me. I started breathing and felt the temperature drop to something more comfortable. Getting out of the building was the easy part. You weren't required to eat lunch if you didn't want to. You could go to the library, or you could go outside and just hang out in this little grassy area. Sometimes when the weather was especially nice, we went out there and sat in the grass after we ate and just basked in the sun. No, the really hard part was dodging the teacher on lunchroom monitor duty and getting around the brick wall past the senior parking lot. It was just too bad the side doors had alarms, because then it would have been a straight shot across the street with your escape mostly shielded from view by the school building itself. So we had to keep our eyes open for teachers popping up by surprise as we strolled through the heavy metal doors and into the dazzling sunlight. A quick glance through the lunchroom windows showed no one looking our way. Yeah, someone in a classroom or the office might have been watching, but that was a chance we would just have to take. As long as we got our Taco Bell and made it back, we could deal with any post-lunch office visits. Around the brick wall we slipped, and now no one in the school could see us at all. Laughing and our hearts racing, we sprinted across the street in one big group, minus Dallas who was lagging behind as usual. We slowed to a walk and she caught up with us. "We did it," Sarah said in this amazed voice. "Fuck yeah," I said. Taco Bell was just a couple of blocks away on this big commercial street, no problem. We ate lunch and even Dallas was having a good time. But on the way back, Gina kept stopping us and looking around. She insisted we were being followed. "Do you think it's a teacher?" Sarah asked. "They spotted us leaving..." "No way," Michelle said. "Nobody is following us," I added. "I saw the same car just a minute ago I saw when we left school," Gina said. "Cars all look the same," I told her. We started walking again, and sure enough, this car came up behind us. Gina had just enough time to say, "That's the--" when the car came alongside us and these things came flying through the air. They exploded on contact, drenching all of us, even the near-misses. Water balloons, a whole flurry of them and then the car was hauling ass and running through the stop sign at the end of the street. "That was Heidi Fleegleman," Sarah said, shaking her arms and sending a rain shower of silvery water droplets flying. She'd gotten the worst of it. "I knew this was going to happen," Dallas said. "You knew we were going to get waterballooned?" Gina scoffed. Dallas rolled her eyes. She had a major talent for it, so it went over pretty well. "I meant, I knew something shitty would happen if we did this." Gina shrugged. "Well, I knew someone was following us. Whose car was that?" "Some junior or senior's, I'll bet," I said. "Fuck, we have to go back to school like this!" In fact, not only were we going to be sopping wet and obviously so for however many hours it took us to dry out, we had to trot back to school because bell-time was looming according to everyone's watches. Everyone was huffing and puffing, but we made it back just in time to slip in with the happier, dryer kids. We made for our lockers, which were pretty close together and in the hallway I could finally check out what everyone would see when we hit our first post-splash classes. It may not have felt like it at the moment, but I was pretty lucky I could kind of get away with being wet because of my short hair. If I was even luckier, no teachers would notice my damp shirt and pants. I sat kind of in the middle in most of my classes, so I wasn't under a lot of scrutiny anyways. But the others weren't so lucky, especially Sarah and Dallas with their long hair. And Sarah's was curly, so it was even more noticeable flattened and plastered to her head. Dallas looked like someone who had been bobbing for apples out of season. She even had black grit glued to her face where it had been wind-blown there during our jog. Only now there was zero time to even think about hitting the bathrooms and cleaning up. The first warning bell rang and we all split up. Dallas and I had art right after lunch, and Gina and Michelle had tennis class for PE. Sarah was an office assistant, so if any of us got nailed it was definitely going to be her. Dallas and I sat together and worked on a still life the teacher had set up for a while, and then he showed us some art slides and we had to take notes for our art identification quiz later that week, but we were both squirming and uncomfortable from our wet clothes and anxiety that at any second Sarah herself would appear with an office summons and we'd all get detention or suspension for leaving campus. Well, the other bright spot besides my hair was at least they didn't have the a/c cranked or anything. Otherwise we would have been shivering. Dallas and I hesitated at the art room door. "After you," she said. "Au contraire," I told her and kind of gestured with my head and eyes. "Fuck no," she hissed, seriously disturbed. "I'm not going in first. Not like this," I hissed back. "Just go," Dallas demanded. "You go." "Both of you go," Mr. Tanner, the art teacher said. He'd seen us having our little disagreement and sneaked up on us from behind. He waved us into the classroom. "The bell's going to ring and the door's going to be shut and locked..." Dallas and I surrendered to the inevitable and the first thing we heard was the buzz of everyone in the classroom noticing our soggy state. Mr. Tanner, who was this kind of thin, super-neatly dressed black guy (he had on a pink sweater vest and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows), gave us a long look from beside his desk. "What happened to you two?" We were trying to get back to our table but we had to stop and stand there like a couple of idiots. Inside I was seething with ferocious hatred for Mr. Tanner and Heidi Fleegleman both, even though most days I thought he was one of our cooler teachers and we joked around and all kinds of fun stuff in class. Every so often he had to show us he was in charge, too, otherwise we would have walked all over him and he knew it. "It was kind of hot at lunch so we..." I started, then realized I had no way to finish that sentence. I prayed Mr. Tanner would just leave it at that, and amazingly, he did. He kind of rolled his eyes in a manly mirror of Dallas' favorite gesture and that counted as permission to sit our asses down and work on whatever project he had for us that day. My momentary hatred for him subsided into this sulky resentment of my position in the world and authority figures in general, along with this growing feeling of relief. I felt positively glowy. We'd gotten away with it. Leaving campus. Coming back soaked. About the same moment we sat down to answer the roll and I was about to say something to Dallas about how cool we were for our little caper, some girl I didn't know showed up at the door. Mr. Tanner let her in. Even from where Dallas and I were sitting, we could see she was holding two office summons slips. Busted. Chapter Two: In the Haze Just as I'd feared, Sarah's hair let us all down. Her teacher asked her about it and Sarah slipped up. It didn't take them long to get the story out of her, water balloons and all. We were summoned. Sarah kept apologizing to us after school in Gina's garage where we gathered for some Silly Monkey practice. "Don't," I told her. "It's not your fault. We all know whose it is." "I'm leaning towards blaming you," Gina said. "Me?" "I seem to remember someone making this speech about how sick she was of being called Spinelli and foot and ass and how it would be better to eat lunch elsewhere." "Well, you better stop." "Or what? You're going to drip on me?" "You know what really pisses me off?" I asked everyone. "What?" Sarah asked back. "They didn't even ask who threw the water balloons." Gina said, "That's right. They didn't even ask." The whole time in the vice-principal's office, all anyone had wanted to know was if there had been anyone else with us when we left campus and where we went. None of us volunteered any more than Sarah already had, because none of us wanted to be tattletales or narcs or anything like that, but it never came up. You were hit by water balloons from God seemed to be the general thrust of the matter. We were also facing in- school suspension for three days, which was the minimum punishment offered. Whatever individual punitive measures our parents dealt us would be on top of that. In my head, I could still hear Mom's mild yet completely loaded, "Oh," when they made me call her and tell her what happened. She hadn't asked me to come straight home after school or anything so I had some time to kill before she killed me (possibly). Lena, who was in the clear and in no trouble whatsoever, looked up from where she was squatting and told me to get my ass over and take up the bass which she had just finished tuning for me. I hefted it and threw the strap over my head, the weight settling on my shoulder. Lena then uncased her own guitar and started tuning it while Gina messed around on her drums. She had this little key thing in her hand and she'd make adjustments, but all Sarah and I had to do was just stand there until both of them were ready. Well, I had to try not to bump the tuning pegs on the bass against the mic stand, a wall or Lena's head. My fingers twitched, anticipating the noise they were about to make. Sarah twisted her hair and thought her own little secret thoughts, mostly about bunnies or math tests. Or bunnies taking math tests. "Okay," Lena said, standing up from her squat. By then I was biting a fingernail and thinking about my mom and the scene we'd make when she got home from work. I snapped out of it, sniffed a little garage air (oil, gasoline, cut grass, Gina) and slouched into position. "What's up first?" Sarah asked. "Let's just warm up on something easy," Lena said. We ended up playing "I Just Want to Have Something to Do" by the Ramones a few times. I kept messing up on the "Wait now, wait now" part. Like one time I forgot about it completely and another time I did it backwards. Then, when I got it together, the pick I used sprang out of my fingers and I had to scramble to pick it up while everyone else kept playing and then I had to figure out where to jump back in, which took excruciatingly longer than it really should have. Finally, we played it all the way through to Lena's satisfaction, although she complained about Gina's not being able to keep the same tempo. She didn't say anything to me, which might have been a good thing or maybe because she was just resigned to my wandering attention span and clumsy fingers. What's the point of cursing the sun for going down, or water for being wet? Which brought me back to the current dilemma. I looked at Sarah singing her sweet heart out, Sarah who had never been in any serious trouble at school in her life, and I wanted to cry. At dinner that night after I showered and changed, it was just Mom and me as usual, but we didn't talk a whole lot. It was awkward. I wanted Mom to talk to me, but I was scared of what she'd say, so I didn't offer a whole lot. We just ate baked chicken with these noodles, salad and green beans to the soundtrack of forks on plates and ice clinking in glasses. Finally, Mom said, "So what was the verdict?" "The verdict? Oh." I winced. "It's three days in-school suspension." "Suspension." "But in-school. I have... a form you have to sign..." I let my voice trail off. I was so exhausted from the whole meal ordeal and having let Mom down almost as soon as she'd become my mother. "You'd better go get it." I padded quietly back to my bedroom in my socked feet and dug around in my little backpack. The suspension slip was folded inside one of my textbooks. I took it back to Mom and she read it as if it were some kind of legal brief. All she said was, "Okay," and she asked me to get a pen off her desk. She signed the slip and I took it away and put it back in the book. Then I came back and to ask her if she wanted me to do the dishes, but I could already hear the water in the sink running. Mom must have heard me, because she said loudly enough for me to hear where I was standing, "No hanging out at Gina's after school for two weeks. You are to come straight home and study." That seemed fair, so instead of offering to help with the dishes, I went back to my room and called Sarah. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. And Sarah was still distraught, putting it mildly. "I'm so, so, so sorry!" she said, her voice really wavery. "How much trouble are you in?" I asked. It hurt that she was still apologizing so much. I had to get her off that and onto something else. "I'm grounded." "Yeah, I kinda am, too. This sucks." "For how long?" "I was going to ask you." "A month." "A month? Mine is only two weeks." "What is in-school suspension like?" I thought for a moment. I had no idea. Why was Sarah asking me? She knew I'd never been suspended. At least, she should have known. I told her we'd find out the next day, which was when the punishment started. Before we hung up, I said, in this little voice, "I'm really sorry, Sarah." "What? Why?" "It's my fault you got suspended." "Oh." We were both quiet for a little bit after that while Sarah processed the information. Up until that point, I doubt she'd even considered any of this to be remotely my doing. It had been a lightning strike or a plane engine dropping out of the sky onto her perfect school record and shredding it, then burning the shreds to ashes. "Sarah?" "Huh?" "Just checking to see if you're still there." "I am. I just... it's not your fault. It's mine. My stupid hair." "God, dude, stop saying that. Your hair wouldn't have even been wet if I hadn't decided we needed to skip lunch." "But Heidi and her friends were skipping lunch, too, and they're the ones who threw the water balloons." "Yeah, but I--" "Don't you think it's kinda unfair they didn't get in any trouble?" Yeah, I'd thought about it. I'd thought about it off and on all afternoon. It was unfair. Those water balloons didn't spontaneously generate. They were thrown by other students breaking the exact same rules we had broken. I told Sarah, "Yeah, I do think it's unfair. And the more I think about it, the more I think it's not your fault or my fault at all." "Well--" No, I wasn't letting this go. Sarah had stirred my sense of outrage. "Let's put the blame where it belongs, okay? It's Heidi Fleegleman's fault. And her friends. They didn't have to bombard us. And they were off campus, too. How did they get back and just carry on?" "Same way we did?" "Well, probably." By the time we hung up, I wasn't so much feeling bad for Sarah and her spoiled permanent record as I was pissed off at Heidi and company. And they had been in a car. It wasn't that hard to sneak a car in and out of the senior parking lot. You couldn't really see it from the main building, and even from the few places you could, what you saw depended on where the car was parked. And also on looking up at just the right time. On the other hand, Heidi was pretty popular with some of the teachers, too. It would have been just like them to cover for her mild rules infractions while bearing down on the rest of us. I seethed all night at the injustice of it all. I burned with anger. I lay in bed staring into the dark at all the swirling shapes your mind imagined to fill in the absence of light and I knew even though we had lost this battle in the war with Heidi, I was going to do something about it and get back at her even if it took me the rest of this school year and into the next. I had no idea how or what I was going to do, but I pictured us suddenly as two trains. And if I was a train, and she was, too, then all I had to do was deliberately switch myself onto the Heidi-train's tracks and set us up for a big collision. I was determined to do just that. Also, I felt like I owed it to Sarah and her permanent record. Chapter Three: In the Maze Okay, with in-school suspension, you checked in with the office and then instead of to your homeroom, you went to the suspension room. Which was just another classroom. Sometimes it held more kids, sometimes not so many. At this particular point, it held three members of Silly Monkey, plus Michelle Cho and Dallas. Just our little group. The guy in charge was Mr. Ellerbee, or, as most of us knew him, Coach Smellerbee. He was one of the football coaches and he taught American government or civics or something, but no one I knew had ever taken one of his classes. He was actually nice to us. Not like buddy-buddy or anything, because we were being punished for the least cool school infraction ever. I mean, we didn't even get cool credit for having been off campus so we were no better than dorks who got caught being stupid. But Mr. Ellerbee didn't treat us like prisoners, just like regular students. What did we do all day? Boring worksheets. Every period, we had a different worksheet. They were way below our academic level, too, as if Mr. Ellerbee hadn't been prepared for this weird mix of honor students like Sarah and AP class-takers like the rest of us, except for Gina. We weren't allowed to talk at all so the day just creeped by, except for lunch period where we had to sit at the same table (where everyone could gawk, but that happened to anyone who ended up suspended in school and not just my friends and me) and we were free to gab. Apart from the momentary joy of getting to cut loose at lunch, I spent my three days daydreaming, pretending to be amused by Mr. Ellerbee's occasional attempts at humor and feeling generally confused and bored. Oh, and there were the meetings with my good friend, Ms. Green. The first two days, I sat in front of her desk slumped in the chair and glaring at her with all the sullen Amyness I could muster. Anything I told her, she was going to use to learn about me and what was going on inside me and that was the last thing I wanted anyone doing other than the people I chose to share with. Friends and family. In so many different ways, Ms. Green kept telling me she was there for me, she would try her best to understand what I was going through. She worked hard to build trust, but I could see through all her gambits and strategies. They only made me angrier, as if she thought because I was a teen and a girl I was somehow stupid and easy to fool with transparencies. Even if I hadn't had all that Martin experience packed away inside my ever-changing mind, I still would have known what she was doing. It didn't take anything from him to help me. Just being Amy was enough. Finally, on the last day of our suspension and our third and final session together related to it, she flat out told me, "It really bothers me that you won't open up to me, Amy. I sense a great deal of mistrust and suspicion from you, and that's really problematic. I'm not trying to make you do anything you don't really want to do. I just truly think you're trying to tell us something and you're not sure how." She looked at me so openly and even kind of helplessly. It wasn't her school counselor look. It was the look of one woman to another, desperately appealing directly to me not as a student or a kid, but as a person. Ugh. How could I not? I sighed and shifted in my seat into a more conversational pose. Blatant honesty and vulnerability were apparently my twin weaknesses. Ms. Green relaxed, too. "I'm not trying to tell you anything," I told her. "I'm just... I don't know." "You don't know what?" Okay, so I had been right on the verge of telling her I was gay and in love and all that, but even though at that moment I'd wanted to, in the next I just couldn't. I couldn't become That Girl, even if my That Girlness would never leave the counselor's office. But all this other suspension shit was still looming large enough it gave me my out. I felt vaguely like I was letting both Ms. Green and myself down at the same time, but it wasn't as if this wasn't a totally legitimate concern as well. And there would be another day for self-revelations. The two of us weren't through, not by a long shot with two more years of high school still ahead of me. I was quiet for a bit, then I said in this soft little voice with my eyes to one side because I didn't want to see Ms. Green's face, "It's just... there are a lot of other people who leave campus, too." Then I looked at her. What I hadn't wanted to see happened right before my eyes. Ms Green's face changed. She went back to being School Counselor Green, which demoted me back to Kid Student Amy, without even the dignity of being addressed by my last name and an honorific. "Of course there are. But what other people do shouldn't have a... a bearing on your behavior. You can't control what they do. You can control yourself, though." "No. I mean, do you think we threw water balloons at ourselves?" "I don't think-- What do you mean? Water balloons?" "I mean how come no one ever asked us about how we got so wet? People threw water balloons at us. People from this school who I haven't seen in the stupid suspension room." "What's this about water balloons?" That kind of threw me. I didn't even know what to say for a moment. My mouth went open and I kind of hitched, like a skipping record trying to find the groove. I managed to say, "That's how we got so wet." "Water balloons?" Oh my fucking god, she didn't even know how we got caught! I yelped, "Yes!" "Would you tell me who threw them?" That shut me up. I wasn't about to tattletale. I wanted revenge on Heidi, but not like that. I slumped back down in my chair, thoroughly disappointed with Ms. Green. She was the one who had let me down. I think she sensed it, too, because the rest of our conversation was kind of vague and she stammered a lot. When our session ended she actually looked as relieved as I felt. I left Ms. Green's office and there was Gina in all her freckled hotness leaning against the wall outside, next to a framed photograph of Delacroix High during its construction phase. She had on a puka shell necklace like mine and this green ringer tee with a navy blue collar. She was smirking at me. "How'd it go?" she asked. I rolled my eyes. My little heart went pitter-pat. I walked away as quickly as I could and practically ran back to the suspension room. Chapter Four: We've Got to Get Out, to Get Out the Hell Out Our three-day exile came to an end, and a couple of weeks after that, my mom told me I was no longer grounded and I could go wherever I wanted after school. I mean, within reason. One day after school, Gina and I decided to go over to her house and hang out. Didn't have a plan, maybe swim a little, maybe try to write a couple of songs. I tried to talk Sarah into it, but she was into this "being extra good" phase, trying to make up whatever ground she felt she'd lost with the teachers over the suspension. Every day after school, even though her mom had lifted her punishment, too, Sarah felt bound to go straight home and spend all afternoon studying. She wanted all A's. A single B would bring on the waterworks. Dammit, though, she always made good grades! The teachers adored her! Why did school have to become a priority when I wanted her to do something else? So Gina and I decided to go it alone that day. I have to admit when she invited me over, my hopes started sailing. It was totally unrealistic. For one thing, I knew full well this was a friendship invite, not likely to lead to some unexpected admission she felt the same way about me I did about her. For another, Gina was straight. She liked guys. She didn't spend a lot of time talking about them or anything, but she was definitely into this one guy at school and it was kind of an open secret. Still, my heart couldn't help but act like an idiot, beating away and bouncing away inside my chest and my last classes of the day were spent dropping my pencil and acting like a space case whenever a teacher called on me. After the last bell, I tore out of the classroom and did my locker business, dropping my books and generally behaving like Sarah at her most Sarah-like. Oh fuck, she had infected me, was in my DNA now after all these years of closeness. I told myself to calm down. But when Gina sneaked up behind me and goosed my ass, I almost peed in my pants. "Holy fuck, Claudia," she said. "What's up with you?" I laughed nervously. "I just had one of those days." "Heidi up your ass?" Why would she think that? I mean, that if I was acting kind of nervous or distracted it was because of Heidi? It hit me that she thought I was afraid of Heidi. Well, I was. But I didn't want anyone, especially not Gina thinking I was. I shook my head no, feeling mildly annoyed, but also very electric at Gina's closeness. "Let's go," I said. We had to take the stupid school bus like a couple of losers. The day was done. No one had anything on us. We could have just strolled out the front doors to the bus stop. We could have left the school together like the best pals we were, without giving a shit about anything or anyone. We did it like spy girls, though. "Crrchh, looks like the coast is clear," I said into an imaginary headset. I crouched in the hallway, peered around the corner. "Bzzt. Roger that," Gina replied, hands on my shoulders, leaning over me. "Execute Plan Alpha-Bravo-Charlie." "Plan ABC? Couldn't you come up with a better name?" Gina just snorted. Of course not. How stupid of me. If she could have, she would have. The extra clowning gave Dallas time to catch up with us. She looked tired, pale like she'd been overexposed in the photo lab, and hadn't been sleeping because she was working on this thing where she painted trashcans to look like celebrities. That's what she had used her time in the suspension room for. Artistic inspiration. Once we were freed, we barely saw her because she went into a creative frenzy up in the art classroom. Mr. Tanner was super into the whole thing, too, so he was helping her as much as she'd let him. "You guys doing anything?" Dallas asked, but she knew, because she'd already talked to Sarah. So she invited herself. With Dallas there, our spy game was over, and we reverted to ordinary girls again. So we just took off, the three of us. Gina and me in tees and pants, Dallas in a black sweater and long skirt. Dallas brought up the rear, our benign vampire friend. The big yellow bus was sitting there idling and we climbed on and found a couple of seats. Gina and I plopped into one together, and Dallas took the one in front of us. There were a few other students making noise until the bus driver told everyone to pipe down. She was this broad-shouldered woman with a wide, thin mouth like a gash and this thick linebacker's neck. Her arms were huge, but not nearly so big as her boobs, which dwarfed her head. We'd ridden her bus a few times before, and usually she was pretty nice. Sometimes she'd talk to us nonstop about her daughter who was taking nursing classes. Only when she talked she talked at you, rather than with you. So whenever we were forced to bus it home, we tended to sit near the back away from her conversational range. Like today. She gave everyone a once over with her eyes, then settled into the driver's seat and stepped on the gas. "We're off," Gina said, and started giggling. It was infectious, or so I thought. I laughed along with her to the conspicuous silence of Dallas, her eyes peering back at us from just over the seat back. Her fingers appeared. Who stopped in front of us, at the first traffic light? Why, none other than Heidi Fleegleman and her cheerleader girls, Tara and Heather. But the girl driving was a senior on the squad. Curly brown hair. Her name was Beth Endicottsomething or other. Even though I didn't know her very well, I'd always had the impression she was pretty nice but getting a good look at her and the rest I now knew it had been her car the day we got assassinated on the way back from Taco Bell. So she went on my shit list with the others. They were all wearing their boring Gap sweaters: green, blue, orange and pink. "Check them out," Gina said, "The same stupid car and everything." So Gina had been thinking along the same lines. So much the better, as far as I was concerned. Looking at them and the car was like a flashback made solid. I could picture the water balloons in my head, and the haughty asshole attitudes of the vice-principal and teachers we'd had to deal with afterwards. Heidi and everyone had gotten away with it. Gina dismissed them with this little psshhh noise, but I wasn't about to let it go so easily. "I know. I wonder where they're going," I said. Dallas scooched over to the window to take a look. She disapproved of cheerleaders, but didn't have the deep-down soulful hatred for them Gina and I had. Disinterested, she settled back in her seat and I could hear her getting something out of her bag. From the way her head bobbed I figured she was doodling in her sketchbook. "Wouldn't you love to do something?" I asked Gina. "I mean, something to get back at them? Something to really fuck up their shit?" Gina just grinned and nodded. Of course she did. "It's too bad we can't spy girl the fuck out of them," I said. "Like, follow them and when they least expect it..." I had no idea what this "least expect it" surprise would consist of. It didn't really matter since we had no idea where they were going in the first place. "They're going to Beth's," Dallas said, and both Gina and I kind of snapped to attention. "How do you know?" Gina asked. "They go to Beth's every day after school to lay out at her pool," Dallas told her in this annoyed voice. "Okay," I said, "but how do you know that's what they're doing?" "I heard. People talk," was all Dallas offered by way of explanation. She sounded put out about it, too, which made me wrinkle my nose and stick out my tongue for a second. Well, I hadn't heard. The cheerleaders didn't see us looking down at them from the bus windows, and when the light turned green, the girl driving gunned it and blew through the intersection, hit a dip hard and almost went airborne. Out of sight before they even knew we'd spotted them. But I kept thinking about them and what they did to us. "Okay, they're today's project," I decided for the three of us. "Yeah," Gina said. "I'd so love to fuck Heidi up." That's why she's my girl. "Then that's what we shall do, my little apprentice," I said in an evil voice. Little apprentice? I don't know where the hell that came from, but I always called her that whenever we schemed, even though Gina was a good two inches taller than I was. "That's what we shall do." "Oh god," Dallas moaned from in front of us without even looking up or back. "Why don't we go do something constructive for a change?" "Because Amy and Gina want to do something destructive, instead," I told her. Dallas didn't take much convincing to go with us, actually. To be honest, she never really did, she just had to make things a little harder than they needed to be. I started thinking of little schemes. They all seemed dumb and childish. Well, except for the grandiose, impossible ones. The one I settled on was pretty stupid, but unfortunately, it was the best I could do. But even after having spent part of a bus ride on it, I could tell it had major holes. The biggest hole was how we were going to get from Gina's to wherever it was Beth lived. I asked Gina if she was willing to steal her mom's car again. "No fucking way," she said immediately and so sharply it brought little stinging tears to my eyes. I blinked them away and hoped she hadn't noticed. But my feelings were hurt. I tried to ignore that and focus on the problem at hand. Walk? What if Beth lived out in Piney Ridge? It would take all afternoon to walk there, it was too hot to even consider it, and then we'd be vulnerable during the escape phase. I started to slump down in my seat from the hopelessness of it all. Just when I was going to say forget it and my mood went all storm cloud dark, Dallas said, "I can ask my brother to drive us." The clouds dissipated. Sunlight broke through. We were at the stop nearest Gina's. Chattering excitedly about everything but what I had in mind, I led Gina and Dallas off the bus and down the street. I was happy. So very happy. Chapter Five: I Feel a Chill Go Down to My Feet It turned out Beth's house was out in Piney Ridge after all. We found that out from Gina's phone book, where Beth's doctor father and doctor mother had their names listed. The Endicotts. There was this brief moment of nail-biting suspense as Dallas called her brother to see if he was available. He wasn't too enthused about doing this for us because he had made plans to spend the afternoon with his boyfriend, but Dallas called in some favors and he agreed to do his brotherly duty. "What are we getting him into?" Dallas asked after she hung up the phone. "Nothing," I lied. "Tell me." "We just need him to take us to a grocery store for a minute and then out to Piney Ridge. He can wait for like five minutes, then drop us off back here and he's free to go gay it up with his boyfriend all he wants," I explained. "Grocery store?" "You'll see." "Oh fuck, Amy, I don't even want to see. This is so stupid." "She's out!" I'd leaped up from the kitchen chair where I'd been sitting and pointed my finger right in Dallas' face. Then I pointed at Gina and said, "And you're out, too. And I don't think I'm in, either. No gang!" "I saw that movie, too, Amy," Dallas said. I sat back down. "Okay, it's stupid. So is hitting a bunch of people with water balloons." "Well, you did break her nose." "I didn't break her nose. I bloodied it. That's all." "Yeah, but where does it all end? She does some shit to you, you do some shit back, she does something, you do something. What's the point?" "The point is payback." Dallas rolled her eyes. "Okay, you're the boss." "I am." That killed the conversation and I was feeling not as enthusiastic anymore. Dallas had such a way of killing a mood. Killjoy. We all just sat around in Gina's kitchen not really talking at all while we waited for Dallas' brother. He showed up in about ten minutes. His name was Kyle, and I remembered the first time we met him Gina was disappointed because he didn't look or act the way she thought a gay guy should, which was all sassy or whatever. Like out of a movie. Kyle was blonde and pale like Dallas, but a bit more robust. He was kind of chubby, actually, in a pleasant way and not bad looking at all because of it. He was also mega-smart and pre-med at the university and sometimes he wrote these columns on LGBT issues for the student paper, complete with his smirking little photo at the top. The letters the paper printed after one of his columns were always hilarious, too. Kyle had a way of really pissing off Christians and conservatives, this ability to push their buttons in his writing that would inevitably stir up a huge shitstorm of a response that only made his points look all the more attractive as far as I was concerned. To me, the only remotely stereotypical gay stuff about him besides his love for guys and cocks and stuff was he had this really clearly enunciated way of speaking and he was easily the most sarcastic person I had ever met. I thought he was much cooler than Dallas, and even Michelle liked him so much it was almost as if she had a crush on him. "So," he said as we climbed into his Honda, "what are we up to? What are you getting me into this time, Amykins?" Gina snickered, and I just said, "Drive us to the nearest fucking supermarket and keep your stupid trap shut, asshole." "Kroger's it is, then," Kyle said happily and stepped on the gas. After Kroger's, I told Kyle where he needed to take us. Once there, he parked his car about a half block from Beth's house, which turned out to be not so far from where I knew Heidi lived. And my old friend Willis Wallace. We were in the world of the upper middle class, the highly-paid professional types. They lived in Piney Ridge, a lovely spread out subdivision with picturesque curving roads minus curbs, large front yards full of trees that pre-dated development and all these sprawling houses, backyard privacy fences, paved alleys. Gina and I got out of the car. We both had plastic bags and in the bags were two dozen eggs in cardboard boxes, Rolly Farms brand. They even had a slogan, a jingle in all their radio ads: "Roll on over to the best, Rolly Farms." Sung by a bunch guys whiter than Jim Nabors' ass in wintertime. Dallas got out after talking to Kyle for a moment, making sure he would await our triumphant return so we could make a quick getaway. "You can wait here," I told her. I hoped she would. "No, I'm here," she said. "I came this far. I'm going all the way." I led us to the paved alley and we became spy girls or ninja, moving fast on the balls of our feet, slightly hunched as if somehow that would prevent anyone from seeing us. That we were making ourselves even more conspicuous or suspicious crossed my mind, but then I was caught up in the moment. Splashes and shouts. Delighted squeals and laughter. Our targets. We couldn't see over the fence, so I very gently pulled the gate open as far as I could before the latch caught, and we peeked through. "There they are," Gina whispered, being redundant. Oh man, they were in bikinis, chilling on towels poolside. Obviously, they'd been horse-playing, because the water still sloshed and sparkled. And I'd missed it. Still, it was pretty cool seeing their bodies. So that's what Heidi's stomach looks like, I thought. Kind of firm and soft at the same time. I remembered punching it at least once the first time we fought, right before she pinned my arms. The more I stared at her tan little tummy, the more I compared it to mine. Mine was pretty taut, too. Maybe even more so. But I was so not stacked like Heidi. If I'd been in there, I would have looked like a boy in a swimsuit, a very skinny boy. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about that anymore. Then I looked at Dallas: pale as a med-school cadaver and sometimes as lively. I got pissed with myself for even being with Dallas, for being short and skinny, for having to deal with Ms. Green's condescension and every little slight and hurt daily life at Delacroix dealt out, and I needed to take it out on someone. With a fierce grunt, I knelt, put my bag on the pavement, pulled out an egg carton and opened it. When I stood, it was all bombs away! The white eggs looked so out of place as they flew towards the cheerleaders. Picture four happy girls in bikinis. They skip school for a dip and some sun, not a care in the world. The girls laugh, talk of football players and expensive consumer goods. The blue sky above, the green lawn below, behind them the terra cotta bricks of Beth Endicott's house. And then, in startling contrast, an incongruity (if I may be so bold) appears: one after another, small white oblong shapes soar towards them. Attack of the poultry grenades. Gina lobbed them, I lobbed them. Dallas took it all in, almost becoming something other than bored for a change. The eggs exploded all around the girls, yellow splashes. Some blooped into the pool. A direct hit on Tara's ponytailed head. Heidi's arm rose, an egg smashed into her elbow. Then one of mine caught her right in the face with a beautiful, yolky burst. Their screams made me feel like a little goddess as we ran. And down the alleyway, an echoing, rage-filled roar: "Amy Komori! You are so fucking dead!" Chapter Six But It's Too Mushy, Too Mushy Back at Kyle's car, all of us out of breath. Couldn't run another step. None of us could talk. Then we started laughing, hysterical laughter. "Oh man, oh man," Gina cackled. "That was fucking awesome!" Her freckles flared. "It was pretty cool," I agreed. Then my stomach churned and I puked a little sour-sweet something or other into my mouth and almost passed out. Too hot for running, even with my skater's stamina. "Amy?" Dallas, all concerned. "I'm okay. But let's get the fuck out of here." Kyle dropped Dallas and me off at my house. I wasn't sure why she'd come home with me instead of getting Kyle to drive her back to her own place, but she was with me and I just had to deal with her alone now. We hadn't said a word all the way back, just looked at each other and cracked up. The sights and sounds of our little raid played out like a slide show in my mind, or maybe that Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. Tender young cheerleaders cut down in the prime of life. Heidi's mouth a perfect circle, then sploosh! My mouth tasted pretty nasty, though. I wanted to go inside and brush my teeth and just be alone in the frigid AC air and let my eyes relax from the poolside glare. Dallas followed me. I hit the bathroom and took care of that nastiness, then we both went to the living room and I sprawled out on the sofa, leaving the floor for Dallas. She didn't complain or anything. She just plopped herself down on the carpet and crossed her legs, with one elbow resting on a sofa cushion next to me, her chin perched on her fist. My mom was still at work, or maybe running late afternoon errands, so we had the place to ourselves. We talked for a while. But it felt really weird to be alone with Dallas without Michelle being around to moderate. While I just kind of zoned out and thought about the day's events, Dallas went off on her most recent celebrity trashcan, the Jennifer Anniston Nosejob Memorial Garbage Receptacle. This drawn-out theory about how it was obvious Jennifer Anniston had rhinoplasty at some time. I didn't know, I didn't care. I never watched "Friends," and neither did Dallas, for that matter. So I interrupted her with a total non sequitur, just to see what she'd say. "I wish everyone would stop giving me nicknames," I said in this sighing voice. So we talked about that for a while. Why did people always tell me I look like other people? Spinelli, Ayumi, Pocahontas, Michelle Kwan, even Connie fucking Chung once and ever since "Powerpuff Girls" started on Cartoon Network, I'd been Buttercup more often than Amy at the skatepark. And no two of those people look anything alike. Some of them just happened to be Asian like me, was all, and everyone just assumed Buttercup was. My hair had kind of looked like hers before I had it buzzed. "Why do you think you have so many nicknames?" Dallas asked. "Because people in this town are fucking racists." "I'm not. Gina's not. I can't think of anyone I know who is. I mean, really, who do you know who's a racist?" "Ashleigh Bodine. I wonder where she was today. At a Klan rally?" "She doesn't count. She's a cheerleader." "That's right. Cheerleader's aren't people." "You know what I mean." "Don't forget Tara. Gina nailed her pretty good. Right in the melon." I was flat on my back, and, up to that point, Dallas had been kind of just there, in my space, just a friend. Now, though, she leaned over kissed me. It surprised me, but even more surprising to me as I lie there with Dallas' lips joined to mine was I didn't really mind it. I hadn't wanted to kiss her, hadn't even thought about the possibility of a kiss. I was just kind of like, Oh fuck, it finally happened. It was also my first official kiss kiss. Like not playing around. A kiss with romance about it, even if it was just attempted romance. Which sounded like a crime to me as my brain coined it. Attempted romance. You are sentenced to being kissed repeatedly by the person you're not into, while the person you're into gives her kisses to someone other than you. I didn't object, didn't tell her not to do it. At the same time, I didn't really kiss Dallas back, though, so she stopped. She pulled back, I felt the pressure of her lips lift off mine and I no longer had to look at her face cross-eyed. Neither of us moved for a while. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel about it, and my heart had stopped then restarted. And then, just as abruptly and silently, Dallas pushed up my shirt and slowly, oh so gently traced her finger in a tickly spiral around my little round inny. Her other fingers joined in as her hand moved in ever widening circles, brushed my pants and ran along my ribs. Now I closed my eyes. I wasn't sure what Dallas had in mind, or how far she was going to take things. It felt kind of nice, just sort of pleasant at first. For as long as I could remember, even before I was a girl, I'd always loved being gently touched like that. Only I was just about to ask her to stop when her hand drifted south, like below the equator south and she popped my pants button, tugged the zipper until it ran smoothly down its teeth. Open sesame. She started pressing the heel of her hand into my crotch, kind of massaging it and finding my little button there consistently and thoroughly. Then she started using her fingers on my slit through the cotton panties. Involuntarily, I let out this little noise, then bit my lip to keep from doing that again. Holy fuck, she was an expert at this, I realized. Now I knew I had to make her stop before I popped. But the more she did it, the more I started getting off on it and the less able I was to say anything, much less ask her to stop bringing me into a state of wet excitement. Which she was definitely doing. My breathing deepened, my mouth dried up and my heart began beating faster. My entire world became Dallas' fingertips, my nerve endings zinging all over from their gentle tickling, my body starting to warm, my tummy fluttering and this definite moistness starting to happen. I could feel it every time Dallas' digits moved my undies, a cool damp touch from the wet cotton. My toes curled without me even telling them to. My eyes opened wide at the same time. I saw Dallas with her own eyes at half-mast, this faint smile on her lips. Then Dallas just... quit on me. I felt so stupid and vulnerable with my shirt all bunched up, my bellybutton exposed, my pants half down, a wet spot between my legs. I was definitely trembling, and there was no way Dallas couldn't notice that or the way I was clenching and unclenching my muscles, just trying to intensify the way she'd made me feel, trying to go for it against my better judgment. My body was wide fucking open to her and what it wanted for me would have been obvious even to someone stupid like Patrick. And so were the silly orange cotton panties I had on, with a fucking pink and blue cupcake on the front, ingeniously labeled "Cupcake." They seemed like a good choice when I put them on that morning, mainly because I didn't expect anyone to see them. Or to make me baste them in my juices or whatever. "Oh." "Oh, what?" Dallas toyed with the elastic waistband. "These are so cute." I hated those panties. I said, in all sincerity but in this cutesy little girl voice, "They are fucking not." I looked down at myself, felt ridiculous. A living landscape, in miniature. Sunlight gleamed on the low hill of my belly with my navel a dark shadow on top, and then a valley that gently sloped down to Cupcake Land. Half naked legs down to my pants that made me feel as if I'd been tied up at the knees, possibly by an insane dwarf. My nerves were kind of frizzing, I was still squirming all over, and I wanted Dallas to do what she so obviously wanted me to ask her to do, which was go under the waistband and start fingering and playing with my vagina for real. I didn't want to ask, but if I let her start up again, I'd have an excuse to give in and just let her fuck me. And if she'd gone ahead and just jerked off my pants and pulled down my underwear, yeah, I'd have let Dallas jump my bones, or else jumped hers. She could have fingered me or rubbed me or even eaten me out and I would not have been able to resist. Instead, she left me looking dumb and I knew I shouldn't, couldn't, wouldn't go through with it. We'd been holding hands, ready to dive into the deep end of the pool together, but now I knew I wasn't ready to drown in the moment. Not with Dallas. "I don't know, Dal," I said. "Why not?" Instant hurt. The smile vanished. "I just don't feel like it, that's all." "You seemed to feel like it as far as I could tell." "It felt really good, yeah, but I mean... Not now. Not with you." "Even if it's... like... no strings attached?" My body was tingling all over and it was like, Oh fuck yes, go for it. My brain, which knew better, forced me to shake my head. "I can't. I'm really sorry. I just can't." Dallas took a deep breath, then stood. She didn't walk away, just stood there with her shoulders slumped. I lied there silently, hoped she'd just leave. I didn't know what to say. I didn't pull up my pants or fix my shirt. I watched my shiny belly rise and fall. "Not with me, huh?" she asked. "Not at all?" "I guess," I said. My eyes half shut, eyebrows raised. Cool Amy, nonchalant. "You don't think of me that way, do you, Amy?" I thought about what to say, I really did. Several amazing speeches came to mind, and anyone of them would've led Dallas on a little, spared her feelings for just a few more days. But in the end, I would have had to hurt her like I did Patrick. Guillotined her poor little head off. That wasn't who I wanted to be. So the truth popped out: "No." Dallas sighed. I sat up, clumsily struggled to pull up my pants. It was harder than it looked, up on my elbows and not really able to get any leverage. I wasn't looking nearly as cool as I would have liked. "Look, Dal," I said, kind of in a strangled voice as I fought my pants and talked to them at the same time I was trying to explain myself to her. "I... feel terrible. Fuck, dude. Fuckin' come up already. I don't know how to make this easy." "I'm just mixed up right now," Dallas said. She looked down at her hands, twining and untwining her fingers. "I was hoping if I could... show you what I can do for you, then maybe we could build something." "But we can't. We're friends." "And you like someone else." "It's not even that. It's that I don't like you that way." "I get it. I probably should get going," Dallas said. "Can I call my brother to come get me?" "Of course." I finally had my pants on and I was up and off the couch. I was feeling a little trembly, trying to act normal, as if we'd been doing homework instead of this friend of mine putting her best moves on me. Dallas gave me a sad little smile. "There's one in the kitchen," I told her. She left me standing there and I heard her dialing and talking to Kyle, who was now more than a little pissed at her for asking him for two chauffeur jobs in one day. "Do you want some Coke or something?" I asked her when she came back into the living room. "No thanks." "You want to listen to--" "If it's okay, I'll just wait out front. I kinda... need not to look at you right now." "Oh." She got her bag and stopped at the door. "I think I'm in love with you." "Oh." "I just want... I want you to know that. I want us both to know I said it. I know you love Gina, but I don't care." "What makes you--" "I'll see you in art class, Amy. Just... like maybe we shouldn't talk for a while, though. Is that okay?" I nodded. Dallas went out the door. Just like that, we'd broken up. And we hadn't even been together. I wanted to ask someone to make sure that was the end of it, the way I'd put a stop to the Patrick mistake. But who could I ask? God? Jesus? Buddha? The Seven Lucky Gods of Shinto? Satan? I didn't think I was too high on the list of any of those. They wouldn't listen. Life's so fucking strange sometimes, I thought. Imagine losing something, and you were never sure you'd even had it. I felt lighter, not in a relieved way, but as if I'd become a hydrogen balloon apt to burst into flames and burn the shit out of the kid holding it. After standing there like a dumbass in our living room until Kyle finally pulled up and Dallas went away, I walked back to my room, undressed with my heart pounding and adrenaline flowing, got in my bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I rolled over on my side, curled into a little ball and hugged myself. When Mom came home, I'd tell her I was sick and didn't want to eat. I'd even miss school the next day. Anything not to have to see Dallas or Heidi.