Amy 34: Cruel Summer free porn video

Amy 34: Cruel Summer Copyright 2015 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) 2015 Amy Komori. All rights reserved. Chapter One: The Pavements Are Burning When school ended so did our junior year. Summer began and it was time to pretty much just file away everything from the past and enjoy the heat and humidity, playing music together in Gina's garage, skating and going to see shows. Since our town also hosted a huge university, the population shrank a bit when all the college students exploded into all the directions of the compass. There were still summer semesters so not all of them left, but enough things got very summery and laid back and you could get near the stage at shows without always being caught up in a moshing maelstrom. One of the first things that happened, which was actually right before school let out, was my sister called and asked if I wanted to work part time at the sushi restaurant where she was making pretty decent money from tips. I pretty much just laughed at her over the phone. "So no, then, huh?" she said back. "Dude, we have plans this summer," I told her. "Silly Monkeying?" "That's part of it." Then I asked her if she was going to be around much. She said she might. She was painting up a storm and had a show of her own scheduled for late July. It was going to be at this gallery downtown, not far from the Mixer. My friends and I had crashed some openings there in the previous year. I could picture the brick walls and concrete floors of the main viewing space, and the carefully planned lighting that showed off even the shittiest of paintings we'd seen in the best of all possible ways. Then a horrible thought hit me. "This... it's gonna be all new paintings, isn't it?" I asked. Because there were about ten or twelve really embarrassing paintings of me in her oeuvre I sometimes fantasized about burning. Now it was Emily's turn to laugh at me. "Of course, Honey Bunny. No one wants to see you." I was so relieved I didn't volley her insult. "Cool." "The topic is furniture." "Furniture?" "Come to the opening and you'll see." "Of course I'll be at the opening." "What else have you got planned this summer?" "Oh, human sacrifice. The usual." "Is everything cool with you and Tam?" "Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?" "I hear things." "All I know is that there were rumors he was into field hockey players." "There were rumors..." "So he applied, basically." Okay, so we spent the next few minutes revisiting "I'm Amazed" by the Pixies. We were both competing with each other doing the opening dialogue or monologue. I could never get that straight, if Kim was monologuing and someone I guessed was Frank Black butted in, or if it was supposed to be that way. Improvisation, maybe. Whatever, I wished whoever that guy was had just let Kim do her thing and tell her story. It took a while for us to get our conversation back on track. Anyway, Emily heard things? That kind of took me aback after we both got through being Kim Deal enough for me to feel about it. First of all, who was doing the talking? And second of all, why me of all people? It made me even more nervous than I had been about possibly being on display in my various costumes in Emily's art show. So I had to ask, "What things have you heard?" Because it was true I'd had a near-miss with the Mixer's owner, Sorrel, and on Spring Break the cheerleader goddess of Delacroix High worked out her frustrations on my vag. Both our frustrations. It had been really fulfilling in a major way, surprising and sweet. The almost-was was known just to Sorrel and me as far as I knew, and the it-happened was something that both Heidi and I were keeping X-Files-level secret. Tam knew because she'd seen the whole thing and she was pretty much cool with it for reasons of her own she hadn't bothered to tell me. Other than that, I was pretty clean. "Just things," Emily said. "Someone asked me about you the other night." "No way." "Yes. Do you wanna know?" I couldn't say no and still have her tell me, so I just said, "Yes. Spill." "Janice Carter." "Janice Carter? THE Janice Carter?" "Do you even know who Janice Carter is?" "No, I do not." "She plays in Four Square." "Oh. That one band. The one I haven't seen." I'd read about them, yeah. No one from that band and mine had crossed paths as far as I knew, and while they'd been in print, I actually didn't know any of their names. Until now. "That one. We were at a party and she was like, 'Oh, you're that girl's sister, the one in the Monkey band.'" "Do tell." Plus, how did this supposed Janice Carter person and Emily know each other on a conversational basis without my having found out about it, even if I hadn't known who this mythical, amazing fairy from another dimension Janice Carter was? I knew my own sister, didn't I? Oh, and by "we," Emily meant the couple she was now half of with this new guy I also had yet to meet. They'd been going out for a month or so and weren't really serious yet but they were spending an awful lot of time together. "She just asked if you were seeing anyone." "How does she even know who I am?" That was also very confusing. Anyone who knew my name should have been someone I also knew by name. "Your Monkey band. You know Sorrel, Sorrel knows lots of people. That party you and your friends went to at Sorrel's? That was your debut on the scene in case you didn't know. And I know you kinda know." I did kinda know that, at least. It was something people might have been more comfortable I didn't, though. Even myself. Because I'd become aware in the past few months, practically from the time I started dating Tam and we turned our relationship physical, that certain people had opened their eyes to my presence. Sorrel, some of her friends, a couple of people at school. Most of them were girls or women and there were some guys. That freak Daniel was one. If I wanted to sound full of myself, I would have called myself something of an emerging scenester. I wasn't a hot pancake, tamale or some other kind of delicious food people compared other people to when they meant to compliment them in a dumb way, but I was more than lukewarm. I was getting the idea I was kind of desirable in a certain way inside certain circles and it had certainly boosted my self-esteem a lot. I'm officially a baby dyke, I thought and then I laughed. "What are you laughing about, weirdo?" Emily asked. "Private joke." "You have baby dyke sex rays." Startled! This time I laughed in a helpless way because I was so freaked out. "You fucking read my mind!" Emily just replied, "Don't use this information for evil, you little monster." "I won't," I told her in a singsong voice that was supposed to make her laugh at my obvious lie. Which was, in turn, supposed to convince her I was telling the truth. Instead, she was very serious and sounded a little angry. Because she was Emily and knew me better than anyone, she could see right through multiple layers to the real me inside, and that the real me was increasingly likely to take advantage. "You better not, Amy. I don't want you hurting someone." "God, Emily. I'm not Angelina Jolie." I was a tad upset at being revealed like that even if it was just over the phone. Emily made me feel naked, or at least my heart of hearts. "No, you're my sister and I want you to use your powers for good." "What power? The power of not having boobs?" Now she did laugh and I felt better. She was on my side again. Then she told me she had to go and I realized she wasn't alone on the other end of the phone. I was. After we hung up I thought about Janice Carter. That was... Intriguing. Chapter Two: Things I Can't Understand And not long after that, without my having met Janice Carter, school ended and we were free. I slept late a lot the first week and alternated between Sarah and Michelle Cho as my main hang-out partner. Like one day I'd be at Sarah's and we'd be cutting up magazines and catalogs to make scrapbook collages (we'd both gotten really hardcore into scrapbooking for some reason and I really didn't want that getting out, either, although I was just as obsessed as Sarah was and forever stealing my mom's magazines and catalogs and stuff and clipping things we could use then squealing over them with Sarah like we were those two chipmunks gathering nuts in those cartoons where there were two chipmunks... who gathered nuts) and listening to music and the next Michelle and I would be battling the woodpushers on the vert at the skatepark. "I'm going to visit my dad in Tulsa," Michelle told me one afternoon. "So I won't be around for the next couple of weeks." I frowned. I was kind of disappointed she was going to vanish. It bothered me. Maybe that was selfish, but I kind of needed Michelle around. She made things better. She didn't scrapbook. I thought it over for a bit, then said, "I thought you hated your dad." She winced. "No, he's my dad. I got stuck with a shithead for a father, but he's my shithead and I love him." "Is your brother going?" "Why?" "I'm interested in your life. I guess it comes with being friends. And since he's in your life, I'm interested in whether or not he's going.' Michelle's face turned practically demonic. My friend, from Hell. "Oh. I thought maybe you wanted him to stay so you could fuck him." "No." "Try a dick." "Grow one." "Dall likes the D. She's into girls but she's into the D, too." "Well, Dall can be into whatever she wants. I'm not... plus I don't want to have a conversation where you're using the expression 'the D.'" "D-D-d-don't mind me." "Is he going or not?" "Yes, he's driving us out there, stupid. I can't drive that far. If that's what you're thinking, then you're definitely stupid." "Okay. Was that so hard? I mean, the part not about me being stupid." "What? Was what hard?" She'd laid major emphasis on "what" and "hard," and I wasn't going to play with that. I just said, "Fuck you." Dodging hadn't helped in the least, which I should have expected. Michelle immediately came back with, "Fucking me is not the same as fucking my brother." "I'm not fucking either of you. Was it so... difficult... to give me a straight answer?" "Yes. Yes, it was." We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, looking pretty much like each other from a distance. Helmets on, black hair spilling out, brown tans, tank tops and huge jeans, armor, skates. I leaned in and kissed her cheek and she shrugged it away with her shoulder. "God, you are a lesbo," she said. "That was a friend kiss, for your information." "Not in front of the boys," she said. I'd kind of forgotten we weren't alone. I always enjoyed sparring with Michelle and she made the rest of the world go away. Basically, I loved her very much, but like a sister. That's when I realized I desperately wanted to go with her to Tulsa. To see Tulsa through her eyes and know what it was like for her. "I'm gonna miss you," I whispered. Sincerely. "Okay, I'm gonna miss you, too," she whispered back. "Why are you going?" "We have to reconnect. I want to. Things have been... you know... but I want him still in my life." "Oh." "Don't you miss your parents?" I sucked in air with a hiss, my whole body suddenly stiffening. Michelle looked at me like she'd just seen me hit by a car. "I-I'm sorry," she said in a shaky voice. Apologies from Michelle Cho were rarer than diamonds. "It's okay," I told her when I'd recovered enough to speak. As far as my friends knew, I was this orphan cousin of the Komoris, and had become Emily's adopted sister. From Cali with tragedy. It was a taboo topic, but we'd been talking of intimate family things and so Michelle had slipped. She wouldn't suspect the real reason for my reaction was this subject was sore because my birth parents were very much alive. Well, one of them was. My birth dad had passed away in the spring, just after my friends and I had gotten back from the beach. We saw the obituary in the paper. I missed a Friday of school as I cried for three days straight. Luckily, it had been over a weekend. I must have cried it out because I was able to pull it together and on Monday I just got on with being a girl. "Will you take me to Tulsa sometime?" I asked Michelle. "Why would you want to go to Tulsa?" "I've never been." "You'll get to Disneyland someday. I mean, if that's your big dream." To be honest, having asked Michelle in all sincerity to take me to Tulsa embarrassed the fuck out of me and I hoped she would just forget it, even though at the same time, I hoped someday we'd go together even if it was a stupid idea. She didn't make fun of me over it, though, which was a relief. Instead, we grabbed each other's arms and helped each other up. Noise surrounded us, and guys. With Michelle by my side, I figured I could handle anything they threw at me. Anything life threw at me. But she was going to Tulsa. I had to concentrate on skating but in between sets I thought about Tulsa. Tulsa. What was it like? What was being from there like, if you were Michelle and not me? And you moved here and met me? And I thought about Michelle and her dad. She'd told me lots of negative things about him over the years, how they'd ended up with no money, and here she was abandoning me and our summer and running to him. Well, not abandoning me. Was I really that stuck on myself? Maybe. I just ached to have my friends around me. I felt safe with them at a time when I was increasingly pushing the limits of my life and finding out what I was capable of. This didn't lead to me doing my flatspin or trying to grind a hand rail down some concrete steps, though. I just watched Michelle skate, her slender body hurtling down the side of the vert. Shiny brown. She glistened. She blurred. My second self in a way. Almost as close to me as Sarah, my closest of the close ones. I wanted inside Michelle's mind. What must she be thinking about that trip? What were her feelings about her dad? What the fuck was a dad, anyways? People hurt you. Parents hurt you without even meaning to, while trying to help you. Everyone was kind of selfish in a way. I was super-selfish. More and more I did whatever the fuck I wanted. Did Michelle need my help? Could I help her? What was I supposed to say to her or do? I didn't know. I frowned again and again. I felt mixed up. I wanted to hold Michelle for a while and tell her everything was fine, everything would be fine. It wouldn't, but that was life. It would be fucked up, but also it would be fine. I didn't know what I wanted. I wasn't sure if it was Michelle I wanted to hold and coo soothing things to, or if it was me. Tam came to me in my thoughts and I finally smiled and then it was my turn to drop in again and I skated away the confusion. Chapter Three: It's Too Close For Comfort About a week later, on the very same afternoon Michelle took off for a rendezvous with her father way out in Oklahoma, Sorrel showed up with her girlfriend, Frieda, to Silly Monkey practice. We'd all gotten used to their visits. I mean, Tamara was almost always there, so why not have an entire audience? "Is everyone happy today?" Sorrel asked, while Frieda, as usual, scowled at me for that past transgression I really wanted to forget. "Amy's not," Gina said. I shot her a look that told her to shut up. I wasn't in the mood to be a topic. "And what's wrong with Amy-chan today?" Sorrel asked. She'd been calling me that for a few weeks now. I was bummed about Michelle, and Sarah knew it, but I didn't feel like talking about it or much of anything to do with me anymore. "I might be pregnant," I lied with the most absurd thing that first came to mind, and gave Gina another look, this one all dark and narrow-eyed. "Well, maybe this will help," Sorrel said, blithely batting aside what I'd said in pretty much the same spirit in which I'd said it. "Paige wants you guys to contribute a song to the compilation CD we're putting out. You know, unsigned girl bands. We're going to give it a push and try to get some college radio play." "Fuckin' A!" Gina said. My mood lightened enough that I gave her a high five. Sorrel told us it would all go down at this little recording studio just outside of town. We were supposed to have several songs ready, and Paige would pick two for us to record. Pretty simple, really. But it'd be our first real studio experience, and we stood a pretty decent chance of getting some national play. Which meant, according to Sorrel, some shows out of town, which was something we'd really wanted to do ever since Cream Corn Superstar got back from LA with a billion stories about how cool it had been. Most of which turned out to be exaggerations and lies, but they had met Johnny Depp, which got Lena all out of breath, because she really had a thing for him. Frieda had to get to her boxing class, so she and Sorrel said their goodbyes. I smiled sweetly at Frieda, and she barely flexed her lips response. But talk about muscles. She wasn't huge, but she was cut. And hard like the maplewood neck on my bass, Green Destiny. "What's really got you buggin'?" Gina asked me when all was clear. "I got in one little fight and my mom got scared, so now I'm moving in with auntie and uncle in Bel Air," I told her. "Michelle went to Tulsa today," Sarah told her before the sudden appearance of Will Smith in our midst could have an effect. "What is this, 'National Talk for Amy Day?'" I said. Sarah turned red. "What about Michelle?" Lena asked. "She went to see her stupid dad in Tulsa," I told her. I wished I were in Tulsa. "Are we going to practice, or is this an intervention all of a sudden? I miss her. Now I have to skate alone. End of discussion." But it wasn't. After practice, Sarah and I went downtown, and all she wanted to talk about while we drank our Starbucks iced tea in the thinning daylight was our future. After all, in the fall we'd be high school seniors and it was time to apply for colleges and all that good stuff. Sarah was really into this, just chattering away about how important it all was and how you had to do it as early as possible. She and her mom had a lot of college literature already. And the SAT. She'd been practicing and was considering taking a prep class and wanted to know if I'd be up for it, too. This time, Sarah was too sweet for my own good. "Stop being all mom-like," I said. "I'm not!" Sarah protested. Then she looked horrified. "Am I? I am! I sound just like my mom..." "Fehgeddaboudit," I said, like a little mobster. "It's cool." "I just thought we were going to room together and all," Sarah replied. "I mean, when we start college next year." "Dude, that's almost two whole years away." "No, it's not. It's not even a year and a half. September to May, then part of the summer and we'll start in August. Thirteen months, maybe? Fourteen?" "To me, fourteen months might as well be two years. I think time passes differently for us. I mean, you're a year older than I am. When you get older, time passes more quickly." "I forgot." Then she realized I was kidding with her and she smiled. I sipped on the delicious coolness of my tea in silence, and just watched the college students as they passed. Summer or not, it seemed like at that particular moment the town was still packed with them. Then I smiled back at Sarah. "Since when did we talk about rooming together?" I asked Sarah, with this goofy, affectionate warmth welling up inside and making me mushy and sentimental. "If... if you don't want to-" "Of course I want to! You're my best friend! I fucking love you!" I shouted. This group of people sitting near us actually applauded. Sarah cringed and sank in her chair. But I could tell she was happy. I promised her we were going to the same university and we'd room together, and told her I was going to consider taking the SAT prep class with her, which sent her into chatterbox-mode about where it was held and how much it cost and all kinds of details that just washed over me in a wave of pure Sarah love. I found it so easy to control Sarah's moods, and because I really did love her, I enjoyed making her all spazzy-happy. She'd go from quiet (not as quiet as Lena, though) to chipmunk-talky, and wouldn't make much sense. But what she lacked in coherence, she more than made up for in enthusiasm. We walked back to her car, and found that once again, she'd locked her keys inside. We had to call her mom to come get us. While we waited, we talked to some guy who'd come to one of our shows and petted his little mutt dog. It was one of those trembly ones, and it had these insane, bulging eyes. Sarah talked to it like a mother to her newborn. The sucky thing was, when we started to get into the car, Sarah found a note on the windshield. "Is this a ticket?" she asked. She looked scared. She lived in mortal fear of getting a ticket. I wasn't even sure if she knew exactly what getting a ticket even meant. As smart as she was, she had these bizarre gaps in what she knew. Like one day in history class it had come out she had only the vaguest idea what WWII was, for example, and even I knew that shit. This one guy started really making fun of her until the teacher made him stop but by then the whole class was actually on Sarah's side so she didn't get too upset about the whole thing. Still, it was weird. I squinted at the paper on the very off chance it might be a ticket of some kind, then walked around the car to have a closer look. "I don't think so..." Sarah unfolded it. She gave it a quick glance and declared, "It's not." "What does it say?" My first thought was it was some kind of invitation to a show, either a band or some artist we knew or even didn't know. People were always trying to be clever on how they publicized themselves. Sarah's freckles paled as she read more. "I-it's for you." She handed it to me. All squared-off folds. Not a ticket, and not an invitation to anything anyone would want to go to, anyway. Someone had left a note on the windshield, all right. And that someone was Daniel. The note was part apology, part set-up for some future conversation he wanted us to have. That scared the shit out of me, because for Daniel to have known we were downtown, it meant he'd probably followed us at some point. That was the only thing I could think of. He'd seen Sarah's car before, but would he have associated it with her or not? I didn't think so. So following. And following was the next best thing to stalking. "Ffffuck," I said and dropped the paper like it was scalding hot. It fluttered to the sidewalk and settled on my shoe, so I gave it a kick. Our original plan had been for Sarah to drive to her house and I'd walk home (because she was kind of weirdly paranoid about turning left, super safety-conscious Sarah kept her driving to a minimum and she was only allowed one passenger at a time), but Sarah blurted, "I'm driving you to your house." I nodded and got into the car as quickly as I could. By the time I was trying to buckle up, my hands were shaking so much Sarah had to reach over and do it for me. Then we looked at each other. Since I was buckled in now, I couldn't do it, but Sarah quickly looked in the back seat. No one was there. I could tell by her relieved expression. Then we looked at each other and she locked the doors. Now we both felt a little safer and I was starting to calm down, but I hadn't felt this hunted since I first changed, and these little punks at the mall used to say crude shit to me, my first initiation in one of the many hassles girls have to put up with. That felt like a million hassles ago. Chapter Four: I Got To Get Up and Go The first thing I did at home was call Tamara and tell her about the note. She played it cool, but concerned. "I saw him the other day," she told me. "He looked like total shit." "Yeah, Gina saw him, too." "Has anyone been... like... calling and hanging up? Anything like that" "Not that I know of. My mom hasn't said anything. No boiled bunnies or anything, either." "Gross. At least you can joke about it, but I don't know. I'm kinda thinking you should call the cops or something." For whatever reason, I didn't really want to do that. Or have to do that. This was annoying all up and down. How could one person put another through something like this? Selfishness? Just plain craziness in the head? While Tam and I talked and I tensed and untensed, I peered through my blinds. All I could really see was my own face reflected back at me, but when I found some shadowed dark spots I could actually look through, I thought the street seemed empty. When headlights appeared around the corner, I almost shit my pants. But it was just our next-door neighbors coming home from the store or something. "Are you gonna call the cops?" Tamara asked. "I don't know. Shit! I don't want to be stalked. God, what a fucking asshole." That wasn't the end of it. Actually, it got even worse all at once. Notes began showing up in our mailbox, in envelopes addressed to me but never stamped or endorsed or whatever they did to real letters at the post office. The first one I met with a quick inhalation of warm, summer air. It was in with our bills and an Alloy catalog for me, of all things. Smiling girls who wanted me to wear their clothes and who had no inkling of what they'd been nestled up against. A white envelope with his handwriting. And with no return address. I glanced around but our street was just sunny and deserted as usual. But he'd been there. The envelope was proof, but his icky presence was like this miasma around the mailbox and I was inside it. I tried not to give anyone watching the satisfaction of seeing me run, but I skittered back into the house and locked the door behind me. The garage door was down, wasn't it? I was pretty sure Mom had put it down when she left that morning, smiling at me and telling me, "Honeybunny, have a sweet day!" After checking and seeing I was right after all, I tossed the bills aside and took the catalog and stalker message to my room. A quick look out the window showed nothing amiss. Green lawns, brick houses and trees, over them looming these tall puffy columns of clouds. I opened the envelope and pulled out the paper. Notebook paper. This first letter I read was pretty normal (but still incredibly creepy), just this chatty thing I kind of skimmed and concluding with a long paragraph of apologies, but the notes after became intensely desperate in a progression that sickened me and just vampired all the strength out of my muscles. They fucking made my bones hurt. My bones! In the second one, Daniel wanted me to at least call him, which I wasn't about to do. Then, in the third one, he just plain wanted me, because we were perfect for each other. It was fully of all this flattery that didn't quite come off. Like how would he even know such stuff about me, and most of it wasn't true. It was just him projecting. In the fourth one, he'd obviously realized the apologies and pleas weren't working, so he got angry, and threatening. I was a cock tease. He actually used that phrase. It wasn't so much what he was accusing me of that set me off. That part of it was so farfetched and stupid I couldn't even relate it to me. It was that he had that kind of opinion about anyone. And that I was totally fucking sure I'd done nothing, absolutely nothing, to make him think I had ever been remotely interested in him. Saying it was unfair was understating it a bit, I thought. So it hit me really hard, but not in the way he'd intended. Still a damaging blow, though. That was the last Dan-note I read. I got two more, then nothing for a week. The last two I left in their envelopes despite a burning, kind of sickly curiosity about what they contained. Finally, after dealing with it became too huge for me to handle alone, I gave all the notes to my friends at practice. Gina blew a circuit and flat out wanted to kill the guy. Sarah and Lena agreed with Tam and wanted us to go to the police. I wanted to kill the guy, find someone to blame it on, then go to the police. Well, not really. "Don't mess around, Amy," Sarah warned me. "This is bad. It's really bad. Wow..." "Dude, he's a fucking freak!" Gina growled from behind her drums. I glanced out the garage door. Tamara was out there, cigarette in hand. But I saw her turn her head to look up and down the street. Still protecting me. Ugh. She smiled at me, all coolness and nonchalance. Any other time, I would've been pissed. But this time was different. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I was scared. Even as a little toughie and all, I was just that: little. It came crashing back on me just how vulnerable females are in our society. And Daniel was a big guy. He was tall and muscular. How tall was he, even? More than a foot taller than I was now, and probably close to one hundred pounds heavier. Well, maybe not quite that. I didn't think he was 200 pounds or anything like that. 190? 190 pounds of stacked rocks. That was the Friday before our recording session, and I spent that night with Tamara. Her parents were on their way out of town so her dad could visit a buddy from his Marine days. Her father was huge, which is where Tamara got her height. Her mother was this little Vietnamese woman who plied me with food. The woman was always cooking. "You so tiny," she told me, and forced me to try these steaming fried dumplings she brought in on a plate. "You come more often and I feed you. Make you fill out, drive boys crazy." Actually, this scene happened every freaking time I visited. I'd always eat what she gave me, and Tamara'd tell me her mom didn't mean anything by it, and I'd say I thought her mom was cool. Talk about tiny: she was shorter than I was, and the first time I met her, I fell completely fell in love with her in a daughterish sort of way. Tamara's dad, on the other hand, made me nervous as hell. I guess he sort of spoke to the buried Martin parts of me, because he was about the manliest dude I'd ever met. I always felt vaguely traitorish around him, like I should be all hairy and doing pushups. He was totally polite, but loud and confident, and he called me "Short Stuff," "Short Round," anything but Amy. Tamara tried to get me to trade wisecracks with him, but I was always way too intimidated. Tamara told me more than once that really surprised her, because she'd always thought her dad and I would really get along, since we were both smart-asses and had these bold, outsized personalities. "I think his is just the right size, actually," I told Tamara. "He's fucking huge!" I always turned into a total Sarah around him, and I was always glad to get into Tamara's room, which was her private refuge and off-limits to family members unless they knocked. Everything was done by the book at Tamara's. After her parents left (I had tickly butterflies in my stomach the whole time), Tamara and I studied for a while. Sure, we could've gone out to any number of shows. Even though it was summer and only the Maymester students were still around even though we were well out of May by now, every band in town (except Silly Monkey) had a gig that night. And there were so many parties that even Frieda told me about one, and she hated my guts. But what I really wanted to do was play. Tam made me earn my fun, though. She really put me through my paces. Here's the thing: I was the boss of Silly Monkey and my friends, but Tamara was the boss of me. It's not as if she told me what to do. It's just I could just let go around Tamara, and be her kitten because she put me in touch with my heart and my body. The heart part meant whenever I was with her, I felt like 200 percent more girl than when I was with anyone else, or alone. Like this whole other side of me came out to play, and she was just as real and vital as my more public self. And it felt really good to let it out. In some ways, I was my true self, like in totality, when I was alone with Tam. Sarah made me feel kind of girly, Michelle and Gina made me feel butch and smart-ass, but Tam made me feel open and free. Like I didn't have to be such a toughie all the time, that I could be as vulnerable as I liked... if I wanted. As far as the body thing went... Well, it's not as if Tam had been like super experienced before we started doing it. She had been with a couple of girls and a guy or two but in fleeting ways. But even that limited experience was way more than I'd ever had. I couldn't count my Martin time anymore as far as I was concerned, and I wouldn't have wanted to. Doing it with a dick was just kind of an obscure mood way off somewhere. Like any of my friends, I might idly wish I had a dick or joke about it, but it wasn't anything I cared about at all, really. When I even dreamed I had a dick, it was as a girl. A girl with a dick. But my vaginal experiences had been just learning how to rub it against things or how to stroke myself. I mean, I was a person. I'd get horny like anyone and then I'd get off somehow, like with the shower head or against my pillow, or I'd finger myself, or gently tickle my clit, or even mash the heel of my hand into the softness down there until my breathing got all funny and I'd come in little earthquakes, tidal surges and waves of love. Stuff like that. I'd never even really put anything up inside me, although I heard rumors of girls at school getting off on all kinds of crazy shit. But we just laughed at that, or else sometimes if it was a rumor about someone we liked, we got pissed. In short, I was a total novice. I'd been only with Tam and with Heidi. But Tam was teaching me things without even realizing it. I supposed I was teaching her a thing or two, as well, but together we were exploring and learning so much about our own bodies. We were finding the stuff we liked, the things I imagined we'd be doing more and more as we grew up. Ideally with each other, but realistically, with later partners. We were probably just kidding ourselves, but it fucking felt good. Tam made me enjoy being a woman in those moments. Okay, I thought of myself as a girl, but when she made me feel I was just a body, when I was hers and she was mine, when we were actually two bodies joining into one, I felt womanly. Like part of the whole woman deal, this entire line from whoever had been the first up to me and then whoever came after. It excited me every time and sometimes I craved it at the oddest moments. Like when I was eating cereal at home in my pajamas, or when I was playing bass at Gina's and I'd get kind of shivery and then have to compose myself even while I sang a secret song of love to Tam. Or there'd be some kind of like smooth legs shaving cream commercial on with flawless skin and I'd feel my own skin embracing me. It wasn't flawless by any means. Skating scars and the occasional pimple and all that, but I'd become aware of myself. Sometimes it would be a bad feeling, like body image bad, but sometimes it would be that warm surrounding sensation Tam gave me when we had sex. And I'd feel right. I'd feel this is Me. If Sarah or Michelle ever heard me purr when Tamara stroked me just right, and talk in a little girly voice when I asked her to do things to me, it would've changed my image instantly. Tamara never even hinted at it when we were around the others, and even my sister Emily had no idea. I figured if anything, they probably imagined me taking charge all the time. And yeah, I initiated a lot, too. It's just a lot of times I ended up with Tam wrapped around me. Maybe because she was so much taller. That night, Tam held me for a long time when we were finished. We'd started off on the kitchen bar, and left most of our clothes out in the hallway. Now Tamara wrapped me up in her long, slender arms and kissed me whenever she felt like it, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it, even if I'd wanted to. "Will you marry me?" I asked her in a soft voice. "Of course I will," she told me. "Can I wear the tux?" "No. We're both going to wear wedding dresses." "But I wanna wear a tuxedo." "I wanna look like a black Gwen Stefani from that 'Simple Kind of Life' video." I didn't much care for No Doubt or Ms. Stefani, but that video had kind of given me more than a few girl boners. Not as many as Tam had. The song was kind of tasty, too. It was one of those things I couldn't help but like while hating myself for liking it, but somehow hearing Tam bring it up like that, like she didn't give a fuck what anyone would say or what they cared about made me feel better. Also, Tam in a wedding dress. Of any kind. I just kind of made a sound like, "Ooh..." I was almost asleep at that point. The bed and Tamara's warm, moist flesh put me in a hypnotic state, and everything seemed peaceful and womblike. She put one hand on my soft belly and I could feel its weight there as I breathed. I murmured for a while about our wedding and how we'd live with all our friends in a big, Victorian house like Sorrel's, and Tamara agreed with everything I said. When I woke up, we ate a bowl of cereal each together and just kind of chatted happily but kind of tiredishly together. It was like we'd accomplished something. I was a little embarrassed about some of the stuff I'd said at the end, but Tam never mentioned any of it. We didn't talk about what we'd done the night before. Mostly, she quizzed me on the recording session and kind of helped me focus on that. When we were done and I was dressed, Tam drove me back to my house. I checked the mailbox, but it was mercifully empty, and I waved at Tamara (she was wearing a fuzzy bathrobe and matching slippers with googly eyes) and felt all happy inside. About halfway up the walk, I had another lightning flash of all the stupid stuff I'd said before I dropped off to sleep and wanted to shoot myself. Inside my room, I popped in one of my Breeders CDs, but I barely heard it because I kept mentally berating myself for being such a softy with Tam. Then with the music blasting--Mom wasn't at home--I showered and got dressed and got my stuff for the recording session. Sarah came by to pick me up right on the dot. Fortunately, this Paige chick was a real blast and a motormouth, so once at the studio (in a ranch-style brick house down a lonely, country highway), I barely had time to think about anything. Chapter Five: Leaving Me Here On My Own Paige looked so nerdy she was cool, like a female Elvis Costello. Black framed glasses, large dark eyes, blue oxford shirts. She was probably in her late 20s. We played five songs, and Paige gushed. Mostly about Sarah and Lena, who were the real musicians in our band. But if that meant Gina and I were along for the ride, we were completely down with it. "So, you girls have a particular favorite?" Paige asked in her lispy, librarian-type voice. "I like 'Sunny Bedroom Window'," Gina said, immediately. 'Sunny Bedroom Window' was sort of up-tempo, and Gina got to really thwack the drums. Plus, it had at least two curse words in it, which, as we all knew, would really impress the kids. "Sounds good to me," I said. "What about 'That Terrible Monday?'" Lena asked in a barely audible whisper. It was so weird seeing super-pro that nervous. She was very into this and it was really making her act all flighty and shaky. Gina and I were amused. "Sounds good to me," I said. "Would you do me a favor?" Paige asked. We nodded, so she asked us to play "Cannonball," this song we'd written about a fat kid who takes the plunge into the deep end of the pool. I think it was a metaphor for taking chances or something, which was funny because Sarah rarely took any. It wasn't really one of our favorites out of the new batch. But it was sort of mildly rocking in a wimp-folk, Lisa Loebish kind of way, and Paige said we could record our pick after she got that one down. We spent part of the morning rehearsing and tuning while Paige and the engineer arranged the mikes and set our levels. We didn't even start recording until around lunchtime. First, Gina and I played our layer together, then Lena played alone, which was cool because the rest of us got to listen to Lena just absolutely kick ass on the guitar. After that, Sarah sang the vocal track. She screwed up about a million times from nerves, and kept apologizing, but Paige was so laid back about everything. She told Sarah everything was fine, and that she could take her time. Gina made a smart-ass comment about time being money, and Lena whispered something about studio rental to me, but I didn't say much. I just wanted to drink in Sarah, my best friend ever. When she sang, she was easily the most beautiful girl in town. Not that I was attracted to her or anything. But it just made me all happy and silly inside to watch her blossom the moment she opened her mouth and her lips formed the first syllable of the words. It's like she turned completely into a different person. Which was something I knew a lot about. When she finally got through the song, she smiled and did this exaggerated forehead wipe. Everyone told her how awesome she was, and she blushed madly, all sorts of reds and pinks, like one of those color-changing squids you see on the Discovery Channel. After that, we noodled for a bit. Paige told us not to worry about time, because she had the studio all day, and it was free for her anyway, thanks to all the people in town she knew. So we played a bunch of punked-out covers that I liked to sing. Not that I could really sing at all. What I could do was shout with the best of them. Lena and I switched instruments, because I couldn't play bass at all when I did vocals, but I could strum. She fuzzed up the guitar and we sounded pretty hardcore, except we played stupid crap, like a version of the "Sesame Street" theme we worked up once when we were drunk. To finish out our clowning around, we did a very bad version of the Who's "I'm A Boy," which was the first song I learned on guitar after I went all vaginal. Of course, I used to sing it bitterly when no one else was around. Now I just sang it off-key and with all the Amy energy I could muster. Which was a lot. Finally, we laid down "Sunny Bedroom Window," and that was that. Paige thanked us, and the engineer guy asked for Gina's phone number. She gave him a fake one. He seemed really happy but inside I was kind of laughing at him in a mean way. I mean, he had no way of knowing the number was fake, but how smart do you have to be to figure out when someone isn't that into you? And how blind would you have to be to miss the massive note under Sarah's car's windshield wiper, blazing like a square of white fire under the sun? Somewhere in the Ray Charles Retirement Village vicinity, or near the city of Jose Feliciano. "Dammit!" I shouted when I saw it, and whirled around with my eyes stinging so I wouldn't have to look at it. I wanted to cry, but not in front of my girls. "That fucker!" Gina screamed, and ran past me. She grabbed the note and thumbed through it. "Ten pages! Ten fucking pages!" "Why hasn't anyone seen him put the notes on your car?" Sarah asked, her voice a bit whiny with fear. Fear for me. "Because he's one sneaky-assed mo-fo, that's why," I told her. Once we were alone in her car and I knew I could be myself without worries, I sank down in my seat and got all broody and moody. Frowning, not wanting to talk. Sarah didn't say anything to try to make me chat or to make me feel worse. Some of what was inside me was frustration and some of it was just plain being freaked out and scared. But I didn't blubber. I told myself I wasn't going to cry again, ever. And all those girly things I'd said to Tam the night before didn't bother me as much now, because I had a lot more on my mind. Michelle was off in Tulsa trying to reconnect with her dad when I needed her here to skate with me. By the end of summer, Silly Monkey was going to be on a real cd, probably on college radio. In the fall, I'd be a senior in high school. After that, college. Then I'd have to figure out what I was going to do with this life. Who I was going to be when I was an adult. If I lived that long. Because of a fucked up asshole going psycho-stalker. I knew for certain I was going to have to call the police after all. Daniel wouldn't give up and just go away, and even if he did, he'd fix his gaze on someone else and she'd have to go through this, too. Or worse. Maybe the same worse that lay ahead for me if I didn't fight back somehow. But it sucked knowing I'd have to go through this whole thing where they'd somehow make it seem like I was the one to blame. Even if they were sympathetic, it would be skewed that way. You must have done something, given him some kind of signal. What did you ever say to him? What do you think you might have done to make him so interested in you? I loathed the thought of it, dreaded it more than anything. Guys affixing blame on you. Explaining shit to you like you were stupid or something. "Fuckin' A, dude," I muttered. Mentally, I was composing my dialogue for the phone call I was going to make as soon as I got home. I was going to make Sarah stay for it, too. She would. She'd be right beside me all the way, so I at least had that going for me. I took out a Camel Light and lit it. Oh yeah, it was going to be a fun year. The End