Doing it All over

Chapter 3

The next day at school, nothing terribly eventful happened. I turned in all of my completed homework to some very surprised teachers and, having done that, they began to truly notice me for the first time. They began to call on me in class, seemingly pleased when I supplied them with correct answers to their inquiries. In the classes where I'd already made my new self known, things mellowed out. Mrs. Crookshank asked me occasional questions on various anatomical topics but there was no longer a sense of challenge in them. She stayed confined to the current subject at hand and called on me no more than she did the other favorites in her class. The disinterested students like my former self, she continued to ignore. My history teacher on the other hand, seemed almost afraid of me. She didn't call on me a single time but eyed me nervously whenever she was discussing a controversial topic about the Civil War that was being scaled down into black and white, good and evil for the 'tender young minds' she was instructing. I know she was expecting me to pop up with another mini-lecture to counter hers. But I kept my peace, remaining in my seat quietly, mostly lost in my own thoughts, knowing that there was nothing that she was going to teach ME about history.

That night was Friday night; the night that Mike's parents allowed him to use the car. He told them that we were just going to drive around downtown; cruising he called it. It was, I remembered, the same thing he told them every weekend and every weekend they bought it. What we actually did was drive to a secluded park near the falls where a kegger was being held. For two bucks a head you could drink all the beer you wanted.

The night was brisk, as it always is in Eastern Washington in late February, but the good weather was holding. The stars were out and a full moon hung in the sky, providing scant illumination to the darkened family picnic area.

The atmosphere was festive as we arrived, paid our money, and filled our first plastic cups with Olympia from the tap. Kids ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen were everywhere, lounging near cars, sitting on the picnic tables in groups of three, four, eight. Music blared from at least ten different car stereos and at least five different boom boxes, most of it conflicting with each other.

I took a moment to stare at the falls, watching the white, foamy churning of God knew how many millions of gallons of water rushing over the cliff. I could hear the roar of them even over the car stereos. It wasn't very far from this spot where Tracy had an appointment with destiny. An appointment that I sincerely believed I'd cancelled. I took a drink of beer in her honor and then joined the party.

I drank beer after beer, getting pleasantly buzzed. I took a few hits off of joints or pipes that were passed my way, increasing the buzz to blissful intoxication. I listened to the conversations around me, which, admittedly, were not terribly stimulating. The talk was of rock bands, cars, drug experiences, fights, who was a bitch, who wasn't. It was peppered with unnecessary profanity, particularly the word 'fuck', which was the favored modifier among this age group.

It was less than an hour before a girl named Stephanie found me. She was skinny and bleached blonde, but attractive. She was also a junior and nearly two years older than I was. She chatted with me for few minutes and then brought up the subject that had led her to me.

"I heard you and Debbie got a thing goin'?" She asked, taking a drag off her cigarette. "Is that true?"

"No." I answered. "She's just a friend of mine."

"A friend?" She giggled. "I heard you were more than friends. I heard she threw herself at you over at Raisin's house the other day."

"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, sipping from my latest beer.

"Lonnie." She said. "He said you were pretty smooth about it too."

I smiled at her, staring into her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about." I said. "Debbie and I flirted a little but nothing more than that. You know how rumors are around here."

"Yeah." She nodded, tossing down her smoke and crushing it under the toe of her tennis shoe. "I do. Some people just can't keep their mouths shut about things."

"Yep." I agreed. "But some people CAN."

Less than an hour later we were 'taking a little walk' into the wooded area around the park. We sat against a tree, watching the falls, the sound of the party distant in our ears. We started kissing, which led to my hands beneath her jacket and sweater, which led to me taking off her pants and eating her pussy on the cold, damp ground. I pulled two orgasms from her and then extricated a condom from my pocket. A minute later my pants were off, my dick was capped, and I was thrusting within yet another tight, teenaged pussy. After, we returned to the party, walking together as friends out for a nature walk, the discarded condom marking the spot of our indiscretion.

"Where have you been?" Mike, who was quite fucked up, asked me when I rejoined him.

"Oh," I said casually, "I was bullshittin' with some of the guys over there."

"Oh." He nodded, and then went back to his graphic description of the time he'd bagged a girl AND her sister at a similar kegger party. The rest of the guys listened respectfully to his tale. They then tried to top it.

I took a moment to be nervous about driving home with Mike as we twisted and turned along the levy road at high speed. I had no seat belt on; it simply wasn't done back then; and I was thrown from side to side as he drunkenly hit 20mph curves at around forty-five or so. But I took comfort in the fact that I'd done this dozens of times in my previous life without a second thought and nothing had happened then. I already knew that I was scheduled to live to at least thirty-two. In a way I was kind of immortal, wasn't I? Well maybe not immortal, but at least invulnerable.

I was cheered by this thought as we went on our way at 11:30 that night (we were both required to be home by midnight). That made being tossed from side to side by centrifugal force kind of fun. Even when the back end of the car slid a little on a sharp curve, bringing us dangerously close to the edge, I didn't get an adrenaline rush. I simply cheered Mike's skill with the car and asked him if he had any more weed on him.

Saturday was a good day. I woke up only slightly hung over from the beer, knowing that if I'd drank as much as I had the previous night as an adult I would have been nearly incapacitated the next day. God youth was great.

It was shortly after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away (my parents had no dishwasher, an appliance they would not acquire until shortly before I moved out) when the telephone rang. Tracy answered it.

"It's for you Bill." She told me, being very polite for Tracy. A cynical part of me informed me it was simply because I was doing a favor for her tonight and she wanted to stay on my good side. But a more hopeful part wondered if she was simply calming her attitude towards me a little.

"Hello?" I said, expecting it to be Mike.

It wasn't. It was Debbie. "Hi Bill." She said. "How you doin'?"

"How'd you get my number?" I asked her, knowing that I hadn't given it to her.

"Oh, I've got my sources." She said mysteriously. She then got right to the point. "My parents and my sister are going out of town for the day." A brief pause. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to, you know, come over?"

"To your house?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." She said. "If you're not doing anything else that is."

"Nothing planned." I told her, a smile forming on my face. "What time should I be there?"

I used my charms on Mom to score a few bucks off of her, though I had to endure one of her lectures as the price. Soon I was heading out the door. I stopped at a convenience store and bought another package of condoms. Twenty minutes after that I was in Debbie's house.

We didn't bother much with preliminaries. Less than ten minutes after my arrival we were in her bedroom stripping off our clothes. She begged me to eat her again like I had at Raisin's house and I teased her a little, saying I didn't want to break the LAW or anything. Finally I buried my face between those thighs and went to town. I then fucked her, after donning a condom of course. I then taught her the finer points of giving a blowjob, stopping her before I actually came in her mouth because I wanted to fuck her again. I showed her the female superior position and she caught on quickly, finding that if she rubbed herself in a certain way, she could bring herself off.

"See," I told her, after I'd finally blown my second load into the condom. "You can do that with any guy and you don't have to rely on his skill in order to get yourself off. As long as you can keep him from coming for the length of time it takes you to rub yourself to orgasm on his cock, you can be satisfied."

Her naked, sweaty body was collapsed across mine, her ample tits pushing into my chest. My hand was idly stroking her firm ass. "But how," She asked. "Do I keep them from coming? I haven't done it with many people besides you, but every time I have, the guy comes in less than a minute or so."

"Suck him off first." I advised her, knowing that I was making some future lover very happy. "Use those tricks I taught you when you were sucking me. Take the load and then demand he eat your pussy. Tell him he gets nothing else if he doesn't return the favor."

"Wow." She whispered, her tongue licking at the sweat on my neck.

"While he eats you," I continued, feeling myself stirring again already. God the wonders of youth! "He'll get hard again, but it will take him longer to come since he'll have just done it. You should be able to keep him active long enough to give yourself a good come." I patted her ass, rolling her over and beginning to kiss her again. "Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She breathed, thrusting her tongue at me.

I went home mid-afternoon and fell fast asleep. My balls were aching in a very pleasant way; the way that tells you that they were happily overused. I'd taken a shower before leaving Debbie's house so I had little to do before my babysitting assignment that night. When I awoke I only had to put on fresh clothes, comb my hair and, of course, brush my teeth, expunging my mouth of the smell of teenaged pussy.

As I headed out the door Tracy was getting ready for her party. She was dressed in her tightest pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She smiled as I went by.

"Heading to Anita's?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "Have a good time tonight."

"I will." She said. "And thanks again."

"Anytime Trace." I replied, heading downstairs. "Anytime at all."

Anita was dressed in a red dress that showed off her natural attributes, her tits, nicely. Her chunky legs were covered with dark pantyhose. She saw me looking as I entered her house and blushed a little.

"You look VERY nice." I told her lecherously. "Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?"

She giggled like a teenager. "My presence is quite expected." She told me. "Besides, the kids are awake anyway."

I nodded. "Of course." I said, and turned to the kids, who were playing on the floor with a collection of Hot Wheels. They saw me and squealed, heading for me.

"But sometimes," Anita said thoughtfully. "A girl gets a little ill and has to come home early; say around nine o'clock."

"Really?" I asked, smiling, wondering if my dick could perform after my earlier session with Debbie.

"Really." She nodded and then turned to the kids. "Gimmee kisses." She told them. "Mommy's going bye-bye."

She returned at ten after nine, just after the kids had been put to bed. After brief inquiries about their health and well being, she walked over to me and took my hand. She traced her manicured nails over the back of it and then guided it under her dress, sliding it along over her nyloned thighs to the junction of her legs. I could feel dampness and musty heat emanating from her crotch.

"Do you feel how wet I am?" She asked, grinding her thighs together, pulling on my wrist to put pressure on her sensitive regions.

"Yeah." I nodded, my mouth drying a little.

"That's from thinking about you and all the things I'm gonna do to you tonight." She told me.

"Cool." I gasped.

"Why don't you take these pantyhose off of me?" She asked, kicking off her shoes. "I could use a little air."

I kneeled before her and pulled off her pantyhose, as requested, and, while she stood there before me, she threw the hem of her dress over my head. Her bare legs and crotch were directly before my face, the silky material of her dress billowing over my back. The smell under there was rich with musk; her pussy lips were oozing moisture. She widened her stance a little, spreading her legs and bringing her pussy near my mouth. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and pulled it forward, into her wetness.

I ate her to orgasm as she stood there, though her knees became quite wobbly as she came and she had to hold onto my shoulders for support. She then pushed me to my back on the floor and pulled my shoes from my feet and my pants and underwear from my body. She spread her dress around my hips and lowered herself onto my straining, very erect cock. Slowly she sank down upon me, engulfing me in her wet snatch and then pumping her hips up and down.

I must say that she gave me one of the best fucks I've ever had, before or after recycling. I wondered why her husband had divorced her. He couldn't have found someone better in bed. Better looking maybe, but not better in the sack.

I staggered home about ten-thirty that night and fell immediately into bed. My crotch was throbbing with the beat of my heart and my dick had a raw, used feeling to it. I had a smile on my face as I fell into sleep, thanking God for Mr. Li and for the fact that I hadn't been in a jovial mood that night and wished I was an Oscar Meyer wiener or something. Never in my life had I had so much sex in so short a period of time. And with three different girls too! My last thought was what tomorrow would bring.

It didn't bring much. My body was aching and sore. Since it was Sunday, the Lord's day after all, I spent the entire twenty-four hour period without leaving the house. It was a day of rest. There was school tomorrow.

The poor weather returned for Monday's walk to school. The temperature was in the thirties, the sky was cloudy and spat intermittent flurries of snow down upon Mike and I as we walked to school. Mike was telling me what a great kegger it had been on Friday and that I should have gone to the one on Saturday night as well.

"I'm tellin' you man, there was bitches everywhere." He proclaimed.

"Yeah?" I replied, brushing a snowflake out of my eye and pulling my hood tighter against the cutting wind.

"Fuck yeah." He said. "I met this bitch from Spokane High and we got all fucked up together. After a while we went off to the trees and she gave me a fuckin' blow job."

"A blow job huh?" I asked, as if interested, wondering if Mike had ever really been laid at all.

"Yeah," He leered. "She could suck start a Harley, I'm tellin' you. You shoulda come. I bet you coulda got laid too."

"I'm waiting for Miss Right." I told him.

He looked at me strangely for a moment and then, finally figuring it was a joke, started laughing.

I didn't laugh back and we walked on in silence. Mike bothered me. I knew the path that he was on but every attempt I made to even talk about steering him off of it had failed. I wanted to help him, to keep him from ending up a thirty-three year old loser living with his parents and never having held a job for more than a year in his life. Didn't he want to marry, have children, raise a family? Didn't he want what everyone else in the world did? Surely the life he would end up with was not what he desired, was it? But I had no idea how to even begin to steer him. His facade was of the tough, independent person, streetwise, never needing advice or help from anyone. How could you reach such a person? Especially when they'd spent their entire life as the superior member of the friendship. I was clueless and hoping that some answer would come to me. But the answer, for the moment, eluded me.

"Well look who's back." Mike said as we approached the school.

I looked where he was indicating and saw Richie Fairview standing with his cronies in their accustomed spot near the bike racks. The same spot where I'd engineered his downfall and his trip to the hospital. Even from this distance I could see he had a bandage on his nose. Though he had a heavy coat on I was reasonably sure that his chest was taped up beneath it. I'd felt a definite crunch when I'd kicked him the other day.

"Well well." I smiled, already turning that way.

"You gonna fuck him up again?" Mike asked, a little fear in his voice, but not as much as before.

"Only if he wants to go the hard way." I said, heading directly for him.

You have to understand that Richie was more than just Richie to me. He was the epitome of bullies, the sum of all large, stupid aggressors that had picked on me since grammar school. He encompassed bullies that would pick on me after Richie would eventually graduate or drop out or whatever. As a shy, easily malleable kid in school I'd been easy fodder for them throughout my school years. And they had left an impression that was deeper than I'd realized until I'd seen Richie on my first day back. Richie represented all bullies that had ever said an unkind word or had laid an unjust hand upon me. By besting him at his own game, I was besting demons that had helped shape my previous life. I intended to make him suffer, to bring him down as far as I could, to expose the lie that all bullies represented; that they were gods, unchallengable.

His friends tittered nervously as I approached, whispering some things to him, him nervously whispering some things back. The very fact that he was standing at the head of them despite his earlier defeat told me a lot. He'd undoubtedly told them that he was going to repay me for the sneak attack on him the first time. They were anxiously awaiting his revenge. I was pretty sure there would be no revenge. The Richies of the world don't generally think things through very carefully.

"Hey Dickwad!" I yelled directly at him when I was close enough. "How was the hospital?"

"Fuck you motherfucker!" He yelled, taking a few steps closer; again telling me volumes about his intentions. Had he been meaning to fight me, he would have waded right in. But he didn't. He took a few steps towards me, obviously hoping I'd cower and back down. When I didn't (and why he thought I would, after our last encounter is a mystery to me), he slowed down, his mind re-evaluating what his strategy was. In that moment I knew I'd won the confrontation.

"That's some pretty insulting shit you're talking." I told him conversationally, walking closer. "I suppose you think that your friends here are impressed by it." I shook my head sadly. "They're not. Talk is cheap faggot, action is where it's at. If you wanna impress your friends and restore your reputation as a badass you're simply gonna have to kick my ass. Isn't that what you told them you were gonna do?"

"I AM gonna kick your fuckin' ass!" He roared, taking a tentative step forward.

I laughed. "Are you now?" I asked. "Well go ahead and do it." I made a 'come-on' gesture with my fingers. "Kick my ass. Let's see you do it."

He stood still, his face fuming, infuriated with shame and anger. He wanted to, that was obvious, but he also remembered what had happened last time.

"I'm waiting." I said impatiently. "When are you gonna kick my ass? It's sitting here right in front of you. Start kicking."

He remained motionless, his body trembling with rage, rage I was oh so pleased to see. This was even more satisfying than besting him in the first place.

"Yeah." He finally said. "So you can rat me out and have me arrested or something."

"Oh please." I scoffed. "Having someone rat you out never bothered you before. Why don't you just admit it? You're scared of me. You wouldn't take a swing at me if I dropped my hands and closed my eyes, would you? It HURTS to get the shit kicked out of you, doesn't it? It's an experience you don't care to repeat, is it? You know that if you take a swing at me, or make any move at all towards me, you're gonna be riding in an ambulance again, don't you?"

"Fuck you!" He yelled, near tears now, on the brink of collapse.

I shook my head again. His friends were staring at him, nervous fear in their faces.

I spat, the wad landing on his shoe. "You fuckin' disgust me." I told him. "If you want to fight you come and find me." I said. "We'll have ourselves a fight. But keep in mind, that if you start any of your 'fuck you' and 'I'm gonna kick your ass' bullshit with me again, I'm not gonna be so generous. Like I said, talk is cheap. If you want some action, look me up.

If you don't want some action, keep your fuckin' mouth closed when you see me."

I turned my back to him and walked into the school, Mike in tow. I knew I had nothing to fear by turning my back to him. I knew it.

Lunchtime. In my previous life I'd always eaten pretty much alone since Mike had a different lunch schedule than I. But now I found myself the center of some attention. People kept coming up to me, just wanting to talk about this and that. I was becoming popular I realized, not sure I liked it. And again, I was thirty-two years old, not fifteen. The conversation I was offered was not terribly stimulating.

After only five minutes the combination of the cold and the endless litany of pussy stories, car stories, or drug stories drove me inside to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was the domain of the preppie students, those college bound overachievers. The air was warm and scented with the aroma of spaghetti. It was filled with the babble of conversations and the clanking of plastic trays on simulated wood grain tables.

I stood near the doorway surveying the scene, seeing the gathering of cliques at various tables, trying to find a place to sit down. Many of the students in there were those that were in my classes. They'd always ignored me since I wasn't quite one of them and I had no desire to strike up friendships with them now. With burrito and soda in hand I scanned around the room and finally locked onto a solitary figure sitting by herself near the back of the room.

It was Nina Blackmore, the future emergency room doctor. Like always, she was by herself, eating out of her tray and reading a book. Nina, in addition to being a high school classmate, had been a junior high and grammar school classmate as well. She'd appeared at our school when I was in the third grade, a new student from somewhere or other. That, in combination with a lisp that she'd had at that time had doomed her to the role of unpopularity. She'd been the butt of jokes since forever, although they'd been particularly bad in grammar school. Third, fourth, and fifth graders can be unusually cruel to kids who were somewhat different.

I myself was as guilty of this as everyone else. I'd done my time chanting teasing rhymes at her back then, deriding her, calling her ugly, making fun of her lisp in as cruel ways as fourth grade minds could conceive. Though she'd gone to speech therapy until well into junior high and lisped no more, the damage was done to her. She was an outsider, belonging to no clique, doomed to be by herself until probably college where she would show up the vast majority of her classmates by working her way into a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year job.

But even then the mark of her school years would be forever upon her. I would know her as a paramedic, would frequently transport patients to the emergency room where she was employed. She would have a reputation as a cold hearted, vindictive bitch among the paramedics and nurses that she dealt with. She was the kind of doctor that would question a paramedic or RN's every decision, no matter what the outcome of the patient. And she'd always reserved her most scathing comments for me. I'd always known that this was because I'd gone to school with her and had once, in grammar school, been one of her tormentors.

A typical example of her wrath is something that occurred nearly a year before my recycling, on a frigid January day. I'd been dispatched to a call for a child with seizures in a middle class section of the city. Child seizure calls are generally nothing that gets paramedics terribly excited. Usually the child either has a history of seizures or is having them because of a high fever. Seizures are not usually life threatening.

However, when I walked into the house that day with my partner and the crew from a Spokane Fire Department engine company, I took one look at the kid in question and knew that I was dealing with something more than a seizure call. The kid, who looked to be about ten years old, was lying on the carpet near the sofa. His skin was blue; as blue as a police uniform, and he was not breathing. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, bugging out. He was lying still.

There was a brief second of pause while we all clicked into 'this is really an emergency' mode. And then every eye in the room (except for the kid) turned to me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

"Start bagging him." I barked to one of the firefighters and she rushed into action, opening their bag and pulled out the equipment.

I kneeled down next to the kid and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but it was weak and very slow. What the hell was going on? I'd wondered, trying to think. Ten year olds did not just suddenly collapse and die from a seizure. There was something I was missing.

The mother was, understandably enough, absolutely hysterical but, while I opened up my airway bag and began setting up to put in a breathing tube, she was able to tell me that she'd heard a strange noise and had entered the room to find her son seizing on the couch. It had gone on for a considerable time and then he'd simply stopped just before we'd arrived. His breathing hadn't started again. She told me he had no known medical problems. He'd had no fever, had in fact been perfectly fine when she'd talked to him less than ten minutes before she found him seizing.

While I pulled out my breathing tube and a laryngoscope, a lighted instrument used to peer down someone's throat prior to placing the tube, the firefighter began bagging the child, forcing air down his throat and into his lungs. While she did this my partner had hooked the child up to our EKG machine. I took a quick glance at the reading. His heart was only beating thirty times a minute and was slowing further with each passing beat. What the hell?

The firefighter that was bagging seemed to be having trouble. "The air won't go in." She told me. "It just blows out the side."

Armed with that information I took another look around the room. The television was on, tuned to a cartoon show. A half-eaten hot-dog was sitting on a plate on the coffee table. The light bulb suddenly went off above my head.

"Was he eating?" I asked the mother.

"Yes." She sobbed, wringing her hands. "I'd just given him his lunch."

"Shit." I muttered, everything falling into place.

"Stop bagging him and let me in there." I told the firefighter. She stepped aside and I picked up my laryngoscope. Lying on the floor near his head I inserted the blade into his mouth and lifted the tongue out of the way. A lightbulb on the end of the blade illuminated his airway for me. It was blocked solid by a chunk of pink hot dog.

"Matt, give me the Magills." I told my partner.

He slapped a long set of forceps into my hand, an instrument designed specifically for removing foreign objects from airways. I'd never used them before, true choking calls are rare, but they worked just exactly as I'd been promised. I grabbed the chunk of meat and pulled it free, revealing his vocal cords and trachea behind it. I gave him a second to see if he would start breathing on his own. When he didn't, I picked up the breathing tube and slid it through his vocal cords. The firefighter attached her bag to the top of the tube and began forcing pure oxygen down into his lungs.

By the time I got the tube secured his skin had pinked up considerably and his heart rate had increased to more than a hundred. By the time we loaded him into the back of the ambulance his eyes were open and he was gagging violently, no doubt upset to wake up and find a large tube in his throat. By the time we got to the hospital I'd been forced to remove the tube and he was breathing well on his own. He was a little confused and dopey but awake and able to talk. When we brought him in to Nina's emergency room I was positively glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done, convinced that out of all the times I'd been needlessly called, for once I'd actually been NEEDED.

And what did Nina, the good doctor have to say to me after she heard the progression of the call?

"You're supposed to try abdominal thrusts on an unconscious choking victim before you resort to the Magills." She said icily. "Did you miss that part of the class back in ambulance driver school?"

She actually wrote me up for this, making me answer to our county emergency medical services authority. I was given a written reprimand in my file for failing to try a less invasive method of clearing the airway first. The medical director, to give him credit, was at least apologetic as I signed it. He mumbled something about how the ends don't justify the means and then explained that "certain doctors" seemed to have a problem with the whole world.

Though I'd been pissed at her, she'd after all turned one of the high points of my career into a disciplinary procedure, I'd understood even then that I was partially responsible for what had happened. I understood even better looking at her now in the cafeteria, sitting alone and reading a book while she picked at a plate of cafeteria spaghetti. After all, the experience with Richie was fresh on my mind. Had what she'd done been much different than what I'd done? We'd both attacked visible symbols of past torment. We'd both given in to basic human nature.

Was it too late for Nina? I wondered, looking at her. Was the damage to her already done?

I took a deep breath and headed her way.

"Okay if I sit here?" I asked her when I arrived.

She looked up at me with suspicion plain in her eyes, perhaps wondering if I'd come to renew the teasing she'd been so familiar with in grade school. While waiting for an answer I looked at her, marveling over the power of suggestion. Nina had been called ugly since the third grade. It was an accepted fact among everyone that she WAS ugly. But the funny thing is, that she really wasn't. She was skinny and had small breasts; a late bloomer as I've mentioned before. Her face was without any make-up but it was smooth and actually sort of pretty. Her brown hair was unstyled but looked just like everyone else's hair all the same. She was called ugly and probably felt ugly because we'd all agreed back in third grade that she WAS ugly.

It was also assumed that she was dumb, a natural conclusion based on the fact that she never said anything to anybody. It had been assumed of me on my first trip through school too. Obviously she was far from dumb. One did not make it through four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency if one lacked intelligence. Could there be meaningful conversation here perhaps? I saw the book she was reading, 1984 by Orwell, a very deep book.

"Please?" I asked again, "I won't bite you."

Her eyes softened a little, as if to say that she was reserving judgment for the moment. "Sure." She finally said.

I took the bench across from her, setting down my food, drink, and napkin. "That's a good book." I offered, nodding at the cover. "I've read it quite a few times. Very thought provoking."

She nodded, not saying anything, keeping her eyes firmly on the page. Suspicion was radiating off of her in waves. Maybe it was too late, I wondered.

"Its also," I went on, "The most depressing book I've ever read. Is this your first time reading it?"

"No." She said softly. "I've read it five or six times."

"Then you probably know what I mean." I said. "I mean the thought that everything is controlled. Everything. The entire war is just a production to keep the masses from bettering themselves. The entire writings of history are rearranged on a regular basis to control the way people think. Even the resistance doesn't really exist. When you get to the point that they are captured and you find out that they'd been known about the entire time." I shook my head. "It's just a depressing thought, a depressing book.

But also one of my favorites."

She was looking at me now, confusion and a little curiosity shaping her features. "It's one of my favorite books too." She said carefully, as if expecting me to start laughing at her or speaking in a fake lisp.

"Have you ever thought," I said, "That all of that stuff in 1984 could actually be happening now? That we, as proles, wouldn't even realize it? I mean, think about it, with today's technology how hard would it be to re-write history, or to control the media, or to keep track of everyone?"

"Not very hard at all." She said, putting the book down for the first time. Careful interest was visible now. "Sometimes I swear that it's really happening to some degree or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm sure most intelligent people know that you can't possibly know what's REALLY going on, how things REALLY work. I'm pretty certain that they don't really work the way we're taught in government class though."

She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth. Strange I'd never noticed that before. Probably because I'd never seen her smile before. I wondered if anyone else had.

We continued to talk about 1984 and other books by Orwell. The only other one that I'd read was Animal Farm but she'd read them all. She explained the basic plots of them and the underlying message with animated clarity. Once she started talking to me I found her conversation intelligent and her insights well thought out. I almost forgot that I was talking to a teenager. Before I realized it lunch was over and it was time to head for the next class.

"Nice talking to you Nina," I told her with frank honesty as I stood.

"Thank you." She squeaked, her face blushing, her eyes confused.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." I told her and smiled. "It's nice to talk to someone who thinks like you do, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'll be here tomorrow if you want to, you know, talk some more."

"I'd like that." I said, giving her a wave and heading for the door.

I was cheerful as I walked alone through the crowded halls, making my way through kids in groups, heading for driver's education. I was thinking that maybe Nina could be softened a little bit after all, and I'd truly enjoyed talking to her. What was that they said, still waters run deep? It seemed that was true in her case. If only I could figure out a way to reach Mike. If only meaningful conversation could be the key to derailing him from his path.

My thoughts were sidetracked as I found myself walking behind Richie Fairview. He was with two of his cronies and was trying, in his idiotic way, to strike up a conversation with a group of cheerleaders that were walking the same direction. The cheerleaders were trying there best to ignore the trio of thugs and Richie, deciding to up the ante a little, began reaching for their skirts, trying pull them up.

At the sight of this all of my anger at Richie and bullies in general came flooding back. He didn't know I was behind him but he was about to find out. I kicked out my foot, catching his back leg just as he was stepping forward. He stumbled forward and crashed to the hallway floor, scraping up his elbows and hands and sending up a chorus of delighted giggles and laughter from the cheerleaders.

Richie rolled over and jumped to his feet in an instant, his fists raised, an obscene epitaph on his lips. And then he saw who had tripped him. He stopped.

"You oughtta be more careful asshole." I told him conversationally, continuing to walk by. "You can get hurt falling down around here."

I didn't look back at him, just continued to walk down the hall towards my class. Behind me the cheerleaders were still chuckling. I wasn't attacked from behind. I knew I wouldn't be. A smile was on my face as I found the right classroom and went about the task of learning to drive a car.

The next day as Mike and I entered the school there was no Richie Fairview positioned out front, nor were there any of his goon squad. It seemed they'd finally learned the lesson. So I'd succeeded in clearing out a threat to helpless freshmen and sophomores everywhere. Richie would probably fade into joking obscurity, I figured, robbed of his most potent weapon, his reputation. In a way I was somewhat disappointed. I had actually been kind of looking forward to another confrontation with the dumb slob.

Oh well, there were plenty more bullying assholes I could deal with. I was actually starting to see myself as some sort of superhero, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, battling the forces of evil, my very name revered by all. I wondered if I could force Richie to start paying back the kids he'd ripped off. I could picture it, ordering him to give a dollar a day to every kid he'd ever robbed. And if he ever gave them any shit, they could come to the GREAT BILLY for help and justice.

I was standing at my locker, Mike beside me, running these amusing thoughts through my brain when my instinct alerted me to danger. Perhaps it was my peripheral vision, catching just a glimpse of a dark figure moving towards me, maybe it was my ears, hearing the advance of a footstep, perhaps it was some sort of sixth sense, but suddenly all of the instincts I'd developed from my years on the streets told me something was coming from behind me. I reacted quickly, but not quickly enough.

I turned, raising my hands into a defensive posture just as Richie Fairview swung at me. I raised my arm to protect my head, automatically assuming that's where he would strike me. Because of that the blow that was aimed at my body struck home, hitting on my left flank and driving the wind from me. My first thought upon being struck was that it hurt, but that it wasn't that bad. I was still standing and it was time to play some catch-up.

His right hand pulled away from my body and prepared to move forward for another blow. I stepped forward and grabbed at his wrist just as he started the second swing. I caught his wrist neatly in my hands and started to pull it forward, intending to spin him around and push him against the lockers where I could batter his vulnerable back and kidney region. Maybe I could put the fucker into renal failure. But as I started the maneuver that would have put this plan into motion I looked down for an instant at his hand, the one I was holding.

The hand wasn't empty. There was a buck knife in it. The blade, which was about five inches long, was stained with blood.

The implications of this hit me immediately. I'd been stabbed in the abdomen! How bad was it?

Mike, noticing at about the same time as I did that Richie was playing for keeps, stepped behind him and threw his arm around Richie's neck, choking him, pulling him off balance. His other arm pulled at the knife hand, keeping it well away from me. The priority of the battle had just changed. The goal was no longer to beat the crap out of Richie, it was to get the knife out of his hands and end the confrontation as quickly as possible. I'd been stabbed!

I saw the best way to do it right before me. Richie, off balance and struggling against Mike had his legs spread wide in an attempt to keep his feet beneath him. I let go of the wrist, trusting Mike to keep the knife away from me and stepped forward, bringing my knee up into his crotch with all the force I could muster. I kneed him so hard that pain went shooting up my leg from my kneecap.

Richie squealed so loud that I'm surprised nearby windows didn't break. He began choking and gagging, the knife dropping forgotten from his hand, clattering on the cement floor of the hall. Mike, seeing the knife drop, kicked it clear and then let go of Richie, who dropped to the ground in a most ungraceful manner, curling immediately up into a ball. He began vomiting.

I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.

"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.

"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.

"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?

"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.

"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!

"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.

"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.

"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"

"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"

"What are you… "

"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."

"But who… "

"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"

That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.

The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.

But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.

But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?

As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."

"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.

"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"

"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."

The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."

A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.

"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.

I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.

"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."

Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?

Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.

"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."

Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?

"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"

"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."

It took me a few minutes to come fully awake and they gave me some Demerol to take the edge off my various pains. A doctor filled me in. Apparently the knife had severed a couple of minor veins but other than that, had touched nothing important. My spleen, kidney, and lung were all fine. My large and small intestines were fine. I was, in short, very lucky, suffering little more than a flesh wound. I would be kept in the hospital overnight for observation and released the next morning. After a week or so of taking it easy, I could go back to school. He then suggested I stay away from knives.

"You're parents and your sister are outside." He told me. "But before they come in the police would like to speak with you for a few minutes."

"Okay." I told him, nodding, examining the catheter protruding from beneath the sheets with distaste. How long until they took it out?

The police officer was older. I didn't recognize him. Probably he'd retired before I made my debut on the streets of Spokane where I would, over time, get to know most of them on a first-name basis. He was wearing a uniform that would be changed in a few years and carrying a thirty-eight in his holster, a gun that would be exchanged for nine millimeters soon. He looked me up and down for a moment, his gaze telling me that he'd seen it all and heard it all. I was familiar with the gaze. I'd acquired it myself.

"So Billy," He said, opening a notebook. "Suppose you tell me what happened today?"

I knew what he was expecting. He was expecting me to say that I had no idea who had done this to me or why. That I hadn't so much as caught a glimpse of the person responsible. That I couldn't identify them in a line-up. In short, he expected me to act like a typical teenaged victim.

"Well officer Morgan," I said, reading his nametag. "I was stabbed by a kid named Richard Fairview."

"Really?" He said, looking at me.

"Really." I nodded. "He came up behind me at my locker and just as I turned around, he stuck a buck knife in my side. I fought back and managed to keep myself from getting stabbed twice. In fact, I kneed the motherfucker so hard in the balls that I think I dislocated my knee in the process."

Officer Morgan chuckled. "Well well." He said. "This is different. So tell me, why did Mr. Fairview stab you?"

"Because he's a piece of shit thug and I've been screwing with him for the last few days."

"Screwing with him?" He asked, making a notation on his pad.

"I'm sure you've got reports of his little trip to the hospital the other day." I said. "He's a shake-down artist at the high school, ripping off kids as they come in. Perhaps your department has had dealings with him before?"

"Oh yes." Morgan nodded, looking at me as if he was seeing an optical illusion. "We have quite a file on Mr. Fairview. Are you telling me you sent him to the hospital the other day? Because if you are, I think you might want to get your parents in here and have me advise you of your rights. What happened to the gentleman the other day was a felonious assault."

"He tried to rip me off." I said. "And when I refused to give him money he tried to assault me. I simply took defensive measures. Very stern defensive measures."

"I see." The cop nodded, looking at me now with something like respect. "Please go on."

"Well, after that I've been making a point to tease him every time I see him." I shrugged. "I guess I went a bit too far and he decided to take action."

"That's a delicate way of putting it." He said. "It's hard to believe a little guy like you did all of that damage to that big asshole."

"I know a little karate." I said. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." The cop said. "I ran your record and Fairview's record while I was waiting to interview you. Fairview has got multiple arrests for everything from assault to drugs to attempted rape. He's a pukebag in the making. You, on the other hand, come from a middle-class family, have no arrest record whatsoever, in fact you're not in our system at all. All of the witnesses, and there was a surprising amount willing to talk about this thing, say that Fairview came up from behind and struck you with the knife and that you were acting in complete self-defense. Your friend Mike confirms your story. Fairview's story is among the most ridiculous I've ever heard. He says that you attacked him with the knife as he walked by, he took it away from you and stabbed you in self-defense." The cop gave me a sly smile. "He's a couple of rooms over you know."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yep." Morgan nodded with satisfaction plainly visible on his face. "Don't tell anyone I told you but you seem trustworthy. The docs say he might lose those testicles, you got him THAT hard. Even if he don't lose 'em, it's doubtful that he'll ever have kids." The cop looked to the heavens. "Imagine that, that little shitbag won't get to breed more little assholes. Goddamit sometimes there IS justice in this fucked-up world." He gazed at me. "So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write up your story pretty much as you told it. But I would suggest highly that you profess ignorance to the little incident the other day. You're the only one that's told me about it. Even Fairview himself didn't mention it. So, to avoid complications, how about we just leave that little tidbit out of the story? Makes things much easier for everyone. You don't know WHY he attacked you by your locker, he just did. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed, fascinated by the way he was talking to me.

"Good." Morgan nodded. "I'm gonna charge him with assault with a deadly weapon. In light of his previous record he'll get a year or so in juvie. It goes without saying that he'll be expulsed from school. So congratulations hero. You got rid of one first class, A-number one dirtbag.

I might put you in for a goddam public service award."

He took another twenty minutes or so to interview me thoroughly about the incident. He thanked me again and then left the room. A few minutes later my parents came in with Tracy in tow. Mom looked as if she'd been crying. So did Tracy I saw. Even Dad looked as if he'd aged since I'd seen him that morning. I felt sorrow and shame for having put them through this ordeal.

"Billy?" Mom said, coming forward and stroking my hair.

"Yeah Mom?" I asked. "I'm all right, really."

She gulped. "This isn't because of, well, drugs is it?"

So that is how I spent the one-week anniversary of my recycling in a hospital bed. They kept me doped up throughout the night but I still found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to the fact that I'd been stabbed in this life but that I hadn't been stabbed in my previous life. The implications of that were starkly frightening. I was not invulnerable. All bets were off. I could just as easily be killed here as I could have in my own when. I could die before I turned thirty-two!

Since I'd come back and changed things from their natural order anything could now happen. Anything. The risks I'd taken so far now gave me the shivers. Riding in Raisin and later Mike's car without a seatbelt on with an intoxicated driver at the wheel. Playing games with dangerous bullies at school. Even playing mind games with my teachers. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have really thought that I was safe? Had I actually been thinking of myself as a superhero before Richie had struck me?

I made my second solemn vow since returning. I vowed that I would be careful. I was having too much fun to die.

"Are you SURE you'll be okay Billy?" Mom asked me for perhaps the fiftieth time. "We can still cancel our plans."

"No, no Mom." I insisted once more. "I'm healing up just fine. I get to go back to school on Monday. Really, I'll be fine."

It was Saturday night. I'd been home from the hospital for a week and a half, bored out of my mind, unable to leave the house or do much of anything besides lie in bed and let my wounds heal. Mom had taken off work to take care of me and had fawned over me for the past nine days. I had soup and sandwiches delivered to me in bed, I had sodas brought to me whenever I wished. I was surprised I was allowed to go to the bathroom by myself. I love my mother dearly, I really do, but after nine days she was starting to get on my nerves. Saturday night was the night of her company's annual awards banquet, an event that she and dad attended every year and would usually come home from in the wee hours of the morning in a cab they were so drunk. The last thing in the world I wanted was for them to stay home. I needed a little peace.

"Well," She said doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely Mom." I nodded from the couch. "Besides, Tracy's here." I nodded in my sister's direction. "If there are any problems, she can handle them."

"Yeah Mom." Tracy readily agreed, too readily some would say. "I can take care of him."

She seemed satisfied. She headed upstairs and began to get ready. Two hours later her and Dad were out the door.

"Thank God!" Tracy said once their car had disappeared from sight. "How the hell could you stand it having her home all the time?"

"Mom's all right." I said. "It's just parental authority that gets old."

She smiled, not bothering with THE LOOK. By now Tracy was used to my odd sayings. "Whatever." She said. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course." I told her, offended that she felt the need to even ask that.

"Cindy scored some killer buds." Tracy told me. "She's gonna bring 'em over and we're gonna get stoned while we watch Saturday Night Live. If you can keep your mouth shut, maybe she'll share with you."

I smiled, knowing that I'd made great progress with my sister since returning. I'd never even been aware that she smoked grass in my previous life. Now she was offering to get stoned with me. Sure, it wasn't exactly a blood oath of loyalty, but it was a start. "Suppose I told you I COULDN'T keep my mouth shut." I asked. "What would you do then?"

She gaped at me for a moment and then laughed. "You're an asshole Billy." She said, shaking her head. "Do you want to get stoned or not? I've never done it with you before, you should think of it as a privilege."

"It sounds like a plan Trace." I said. "And it is a privilege."

Cindy came over at nine o'clock. She was wearing the obligatory tight 501's and a sweater that accented her pert tits nicely. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled. My loins stirred at the first sight of her, my dick threatening to harden by visual stimulation alone. I'd found over the past week that, injuries aside, my libido was that of a fifteen-year old. I NEEDED to have an orgasm at least once a day. I seemed to go into physical withdrawal symptoms if I didn't. I'd jacked off so much there were actual abrasions on my dick. And Cindy had been a star player in many of the fantasies.

I was heartened by the fact that, after a quick greeting to Tracy, she rushed over to my spot on the couch and planted herself next to me. My dick stirred again as I smelled the scent of her perfume. It was heavy upon her skin but it was feminine and went right to my brain.

"You poor thing." She said with syrupy sympathy. "How are you doing?"

I smiled. "Everything that's important still works." I told her.

She giggled. "I guess Richie Fairview can't say the same." She replied. "Can I see where you got stabbed?"

"Sure." I told her, while Tracy stared in disbelief at her friend. I raised up my shirt, showing her the jagged wound. The stitches had been removed leaving only a healing line on my side. A similar wound, where they'd done the lavage, was just below my belly button.

"Ohhh." She crooned, looking at it. "You poor thing. Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad." I told her.

"Well here." She said, kissing her finger and then touching it to my bare skin, just atop the scar. "That'll make it better."

My flesh jumped at her touch, feeling the slight wetness of her saliva transferred from her fingertips to my side.

"You missed one." I told her, pointing at the surgical incision. She gave me another smile and then repeated the procedure for that one.

"Hope that makes them feel better." She said, eyeing the bulge in my sweat pants.

"It does." I assured her. "It really does."

Tracy seemed in shock as she watched her friend openly flirting with me. When they walked into the kitchen to fill the bong with water I saw a quick, whispered conversation that ended with Tracy glancing at me and then shaking her head in disbelief. I was in disbelief as well but fully prepared to take advantage of the situation. Why was Cindy acting this way with me when she'd treated me with quiet contempt before? I didn't really care but I was curious.

"You like to smoke buds?" Cindy asked me as she pulled a small baggie from her pocket.

"I LOVE it." I told her, staring into her eyes hard enough to make her blush.

Tracy looked at us uncomfortably.

She began loading up the bong, which I insisted, in the interests of safety, that we take out into the garage to smoke from. I knew that the smell of pot lingered in a room for hours and I'd recently learned very graphically that all bets were now off. I was being careful. The girls whined a little at my suggestion but finally agreed to it. So we got stoned amid my father's tools and boxes of motor oil, in the unheated garage where we could see our breath misting into the air.

"Now don't you feel safe?" I asked the two of them once we were back inside.

"If Mom and Dad come home unexpectedly now, all we have to worry about is pretending we're not stoned. We don't have to worry about them smelling it in the house."

"Mom and Dad never come home early." Tracy scoffed, taking a swig from a Coke. "You're just paranoid Billy."

"Tracy," I told her. "If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's to expect and plan for the unexpected. Sure, they probably won't come home early tonight, but it's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? If you work to eliminate all risks you'll usually be pretty safe. If you go through life assuming the worst will never happen, someday you're gonna get fucked." I stared directly at her as I said this and it was clear she got my message. Her arms broke out into visible gooseflesh and she trembled uneasily for a second.

"I guess you're right Bill." She allowed carefully, no doubt thinking about the conversation I'd had with her not too long ago.

"That's some pretty deep shit." Cindy said, scooting herself a little closer to me. "Is there anything to eat here?"

While Tracy was heating up some frozen burritos in the microwave, Cindy and I continued to sit on the couch.

"So where's your boyfriend tonight?" I asked her.

"You mean Jeff?" She shook her head and made a sour face. "I'm not going out with him anymore. He's an asshole."

"I could've told you that." I said.

"I made out with him a few times and he was telling everyone he was screwing me. Do guys really think that we won't hear about it when they say shit like that?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure what they think." I replied. "I think that 'think' is probably too strong a word for what they do. It seems to me that girls should stick to a general rule when deciding who they are going to, well, have fun with."

"Oh?" She asked perkily.

"The more a guy talks about having gotten pussy, the less pussy he's actually got. Now Jeff probably told you he'd screwed plenty of girls, right?"

"Oh yeah." She said. "As if that's going to impress us."

"Exactly. On the other hand, the guys that never tell pussy stories are usually the ones getting all the pussy. You see, they are smart enough to realize that discretion is the better part of valor. It's a pleasant cycle.

You don't talk about it, you get more of it, you get better at it. Your best lovers are gonna be those guys that have never told a pussy story in their life."

"Like you?" She asked, twirling a lock of her hair with her finger.

"Perhaps." I agreed. "But of course there's only one true way to find out how good someone is in bed."

"Really?" Cindy smiled. "And what is that?"

"Extensive personal research." I told her, letting my fingertip glide over the back of her hand. "Do you like to research?"

Tracy's return kept her from replying. She had plates of burritos and fresh cokes in her hands. Her eyes saw my fingertip caressing Cindy's hand and she shot another puzzled look at her friend. I could understand the source of her confusion. Cindy had always gone for the football player types. The good looking, rich boys from good families, and always older than her. Now she was shamelessly flirting with ME, her brother, who was not only not rich, not a football player, and not blessed with the rugged good looks of a Ken doll, but was two years younger than her as well. To Tracy it was probably as if the fabric of existence had suddenly developed a tear.

I got up to go take a leak (and to adjust my hard-on a little, it was bent at an uncomfortable angle). When I returned I could see that the two girls had been discussing something. Cindy was batting her eyes at me and Tracy was staring at me, as if she was seeing a completely different person.

When Cindy got up to go pee a few minutes later, Tracy waited until the bathroom door was closed and then turned to me almost angrily. "Do you know what Cindy told me?" She asked.

"What?" I said mildly.

"She heard that you screwed Steph Massie over by the falls last week. Is that true?"

"No." I shook my head. "We took a walk is all that happened. Talked a little. I was trying to get somewhere with her but she wouldn't go for it."

"That's not what Cindy heard." Tracy accused.

"Oh?" I asked. "And what did Cindy hear? And what does she care about Steph anyway? They don't exactly hang out together."

Tracy scowled at me. "Who do you think Cindy got the buds from you idiot? Everyone knows that Stephanie's brother is the biggest pot dealer in school."

"Oh," I paused, reaching back in my memory. Now that she mentioned it I DID remember that little piece of trivia. "Well, what did she hear?"

"Steph told her that you took her into the woods and gave her the best lay she's ever had." Tracy shook her head in disgust. "And believe me, that bitch has had quite a few lays. Did you really fuck her?"

"No." I said. "I didn't."

"Well why would she be telling people that you did?"

I shrugged. "She's just telling dick stories. You know how women are always doing that."

"Dick stories?" Tracy asked. "Girls do NOT tell dick stories!"

"Tracy," I finally asked. "What possible concern is this of yours?"

"What?"

"Why are you grilling me about this? What business is it of yours?"

"Because Cindy thinks you're some kind of great lover and she wants to, you know? That's why!"

"Wouldn't that be Cindy's business?" I asked.

"I just think she should know the truth." Tracy said indignantly.

"Okay. Tell her. Get her alone and tell her that I said I've never fucked Steph or anyone else. Tell her I'll deny fucking anyone, anywhere, at any time to my dying day. I'll go to my deathbed swearing that I'm a virgin." I smiled. "Maybe that will get her to back off."

Tracy opened her mouth to say something and then stopped, staring at me, her mind turning over what I'd just said. Her exasperation with me slowly turned into something else. It was the same change of expression I'd seen on the cop's face in the hospital. The expression became one of respect.

"You see Trace." I continued. "I might TRY to get somewhere with Cindy tonight. I might even get her to come to my room with me. But I won't get anywhere with her. Even if we're up there for an hour. Even if Cindy comes down and tells you I fucked the shit out of her, that I was the best lover she'd ever had, it would only be a lie. I will never get anywhere with anyone to hear me tell it. I guess I'm doomed to just keep trying forever and ever."

"Wow." Tracy whispered, in awe. "Do you know anyone else like you?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, no." I replied. "All of the guys I know get pussy all the time. I should know, they tell me about it."

"A shame." She commented as the bathroom door opened and Cindy emerged again.

"Have you guys been talking about me?" She giggled, seeing the serious expressions on our faces.

"No." We both answered together.

"We were just talking about brother/sister stuff." Tracy added.

We went out to the garage and smoked a few more bowls. When we resumed our places on the couch, Cindy proclaimed she was cold and asked if there was a blanket we could cover up with. Tracy retrieved a large blue comforter from the linen closet and threw it over us. Under the cover of the cover I went to work.

While we watched TV my hand found its way to the tight denim of Cindy's leg.

I caressed it for a few minutes and, when she didn't object, began to slide it upward. My fingers slowly traced over the material between her legs and continued to the waistband. I deftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of her jeans and slid my finger in the gap this created, the pad of my finger touching the soft skin of her lower stomach. She settled into the couch a little more, opening her legs for me.

I undid the rest of the buttons and slowly slid my hand into her jeans, my fingertips gliding over the silky material of her panties, staying on the outside of them. I probed further down while she spread her legs even wider. Beneath my hand I could feel the cushion of her pubic hair and, further down, the outline of her lips and dampness seeping through the cotton. I found the spot just below her clit and began to apply pressure, rocking my hand back and forth.

Though I kept my eyes on the television and my face expressionless, I heard definite change in Cindy's breathing pattern as I caressed her. I wondered if she'd ever been stimulated like this before. Probably not. The first instinct of a guy when getting his hands down a girls pants is to drive his finger into the pussy and thrust it back and forth. Now there's a time for doing that of course, but the beginning stages of foreplay are not it. Females like a slow build-up to passion, a gradual rise in excitement.

Cindy's hand came sliding across my lap. Her fingers closed around the bulge of my cock through my sweat pants, feeling the length. She gave a little coo as she felt me and I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. She was, to my pleasant surprise, pretty good at what she was doing. My dick was straining, eager for release and the touch of a female hand upon it felt heavenly.

Next to us, Tracy continued to stare at the television, either oblivious to what we were doing or pretending to be. It didn't really matter. I slid my hand upward a few inches and then let my fingers slide beneath the waist of Cindy's panties. My fingertips felt soft, feminine skin and then kinky, curly hair. I continued downward, having to push harder now, until my fingers were sliding across wetness and slippery warmth. My middle finger curled downward, sliding between an unseen set of lips that gripped eagerly back.

"Ahhh!" Cindy uttered, jumping a little at the contact.

Tracy glanced over at her, a knowing expression on her face. "You okay Cindy?" She asked sweetly.

"Yeah." Cindy answered, a little breathlessly. "Just a, Oooh," She shivered a little as I began to move my finger, "A hiccup."

"I should get those kind of hiccups." Tracy commented and then went back to the TV.

Soon her hand crept under the waist of my sweats and was digging through my underwear. Her cool, soft fingertips closed around my shaft and began to glide up and down. It felt great, to be gripped by a hand other than my own, but she was doing it with such enthusiasm that the comforter was noticeably rising up and down. Tracy couldn't have helped but see it, though she said nothing and pretended not to notice. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist and forced her to slow down a little.

I continued to finger her, feeling my hand get wet from her juices, feeling her jack my aching cock up and down. I was trying to think of a way to get her up to my room when I received help from an unexpected source.

"TV sucks." Tracy suddenly proclaimed. "It's more than an hour until Saturday Night Live comes on. Let's listen to some music."

"Uh, okay." I nodded, not caring if she wanted to put on a polka album at that point.

"You just bought the new Foreigner album a few weeks ago, didn't you?" She asked me.

I looked at her. Had I? I supposed I had if she'd brought it up. "Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Well why don't you go up and get it for us?" Tracy asked. "I've been dying to hear it."

"Uh, why don't you go get it?" I asked.

"I don't want to go in your room." Tracy explained, smiling. "How about you get it. Maybe Cindy can go help you look for it. She can pick out some of your other albums that she wants to listen to later." She turned to Cindy. "He's got a great collection."

"Okay." Cindy said immediately, her hand shooting out of my sweats so fast it was like it had never been there. She extricated my hand from her pants and buttoned back up, making no particular effort to hide what she was doing from Tracy. When her pants were fastened she stood up. "C'mon Billy, let's see your albums."

"And take your time." Tracy said. "Look at them all REAL carefully while you make your decision."

"You bet." Cindy said, heading for the stairs. She looked over at me, "You coming Billy?"

I looked at her seductive smile and started to rise, stopping when I realized that my sweats were probably poking out before me.

"Well Billy?" Tracy asked, looking at me. "Are you COMING?"

I looked in my sister's eyes and saw only amusement there. "Yeah." I said, throwing off the covers and standing up. Tracy's eyes dropped to the tent at my crotch.

"Looks like you dropped something in there." She smiled. She then gave me a meaningful look. "You owe me one." She whispered.

"I suppose I do." I agreed and then headed for the stairs. "Even though I won't get anywhere."

Cindy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She took my hand in hers and led me to my own bedroom. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean it up.

Had it been its former self, the encounter might have ended right there. We entered and she closed the door behind her, she then turned to me. Despite her aggression, her eyes were showing nervousness; her body trembling a little.

"You're very beautiful." I told her, my eyes roaming up and down her form, knowing that I'd be kissing it and tasting it soon.

"Thank you." She said softly. "I can't believe I'm up here with you."

"Do you want to leave?" I asked.

"No." She said, stepping forward, putting her arms around me. I returned her embrace, already giddy at the feel of her against me. She leaned her mouth towards me. "I want to stay."

Knowing I had a reputation to live up to now, I gave her my best. I was helped by the fact that she was a girl I'd often dreamed about, both in my first trip through school, and after my return. I stood near the door with her for more than five minutes, just kissing her, letting her taste my tongue, letting me taste hers. She was a good kisser, much better than I'd expected, although not quite as good as Anita. But she excited me more than Anita, aroused my hunger more. As I began kissing her neck and her ears and undoing the ponytail to let her blonde hair cascade free, she put her hands into the front of my sweats again, grasping my cock, fondling it urgently.

"Come on." She said eagerly. "Let's do it!"

I nipped at her nose and then planted a soft kiss on her eyelid. "Patience." I told her. "This is an experience to be savored." Little did she know that it was taking all of my willpower to keep from throwing her to the bed, stripping her pants off, and pounding away like an animal.

Instead I led her to the bed, or she led me I guess since she refused to remove her hands from my cock.

"Do you want me to blow you?" She asked, kissing on my face, squeezing my cock.

"Sure." I nodded, kicking off my shoes. Although I hadn't planned on that, I certainly wasn't going to refuse it. And if she could make me come it would give me more staying power for my later work.

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of the bed, dragging my sweats and underwear down as she went. My cock popped free, slapping her across the cheek as it was liberated. She giggled and then slowly ran her tongue up the shaft from the base to the head.

"Ahhh." I groaned, pleased at the sensation. I was even more pleased when she took me into her mouth and deep throated me, her lips slowly sliding down until they were nestled in my pubic hair. With exquisite slowness she pulled back up, applying suction as she went. "Goddd." I breathed. "Where did you learn that?"

"You like that?" She said, planting little kisses. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

She took me back in her mouth and began to bob up and down on me. Her hand locked around the shaft and began to jack with the rhythm of her head. Her tongue swirled round and round, wetting me and sending saliva dripping down into my hair, her mouth applying a pleasant amount of suction. My hips began to rise and fall immediately from the bed. My god it felt good. This seventeen-year old girl KNEW how to give a blowjob. I would put her up against a twenty-year whore in that department.

She slurped and sucked and made little grunting noises for only a short time before the first orgasm came straining up my spine.

"I'm gonna come Cindy." I warned her, in a voice that wasn't steady.

"Mmmmm." She moaned around my cock and picked up her pace.

I began to ejaculate a large, pent-up load into her mouth. Her hand continued to jack at me throughout it and her mouth sucked my come from the head. She gulped and gulped, swallowing every drop. When she pulled her face from my crotch, my dick was wet and shiny but clean as a whistle. She smiled up at me, licking her lips.

"You're not the only one who has some talent you know." She said, standing and pushing me back onto the bed. "Now what are you gonna do to repay me?"

"I'll think of something." I said, pulling her face to mine and putting my tongue back into her mouth.

I pulled off her sweater and then her bra, baring her gorgeous breasts. There is something sensuous and indescribable about a set of tits that belong to a seventeen-year old. They are so fresh, so firm, so visually stimulating. Could there be anything on earth more appealing? I had to taste them so I rolled her over on the bed and took one into my mouth, working the nipple, teasing it, making her sigh in pleasure. I worked on the other nipple for a while and then stood and reached for her waistband.

She watched me, her face flushed as I unsnapped her jeans and pulled them from her body. Her legs were long and lean, smooth to the touch, with just a few light hairs on the upper thighs. Her panties were dark red with white polka dots. The crotch of them was darker red, made so by the wetness that had soaked in there. I ran my index finger up and down her spread legs a few times, relishing the feel of that soft skin, that youthful skin. Finally I continued to her crotch and hooked the finger through the elastic of the panties. My knuckle was against her lips, feeling damp heat. I tugged and she lifted her hips, allowing me to drag them free and off of her body.

I couldn't have imagined a sexier looking vaginal area. Her pubic hair was blonde, only slightly darker than that on her head. It was sparse, revealing two very swollen lips and one very erect clit. I don't believe I've ever seen a finer one.

"You like what you see?" She asked me, opening her legs more, obviously knowing that her crotch was one that men dreamed of.

"Very much." I said, picking up her legs by the calf and placing them on my shoulders. "I think I'll eat it."

"Ohhh." She moaned as my head went forward.

Though she was a teenager, her smell was of a woman. Sharp and musky, dripping with pheromones. My dick sprang back to life as her odor hit me. Her taste was tart as I slid my tongue between those pouting lips and plunged it in. I drove it in and out, drinking from her, enjoying my feast, feeling those soft blonde hairs tickling my nose. When her crotch began to rise and fall and her fingers began to pull strands of hair from my head, I attacked her clit, taking it between my lips. She screamed as she came in my mouth.

When her gyrations stopped she hooked her hands into my armpits and pulled on me. "Fuck me!" She commanded.

"I want to eat you some more." I told her, trying to pull back.

"Fuck me!" She growled. "Fuck me now! And then, after you come, I want you to eat me again."

So she had fantasies. But I imagined it would not be as enjoyable as she imagined since I intended to wear a condom. "I need to get a rubber first." I told her, trying to get up.

Her strong arms pulled me back down. "I'm on the pill." She told me. "Now fuck me! And then eat me!"

"Are you REALLY on the pill?" I asked, hesitating.

"Yes Goddamit!" She whined, "I've been on it for a year now. Now fuck me Billy! Fuck me now! Get your ass up here!"

I figured, through my haze of lust, that she probably wouldn't lie about that. So I climbed aboard, sliding up her sweaty body and putting the head of my dick against her wet lips.

"Do it!" She yelled, putting her legs around my ass and pulling with them. "Fuck me!"

I thrust forward into her tight slit, going in in one smooth, gripping motion. We sighed together as our pubic bones met.

"Fuck me hard!" She panted, thrusting her hips up at me. "Come on!"

I fucked her hard, pounding into her body and establishing a rhythm that got my heartrate well into the aerobic exercise category. Sweat began to form on my face and drip onto hers. When the droplets landed near her mouth she would lick at them. She kept chanting "yes, yes, yes, fuck me" as my cock assaulted her tight pussy, making wet, squishing sounds and pouring her juices out onto the bedspread.

I angled upward with my thrusts, making the shaft rub forcefully against the top of her vagina, where the clitoral nerves were. I made sure my pubis ground into hers with each thrust, which served both to pleasure her, driving her towards orgasm and served to pleasure my cock. I squeezed her tits, tweaking the nipples, I felt her tight ass as it moved beneath me, I gave her my fingers, allowing her to suck on them. I felt vague pain both in my side and in my stomach as my wounds were stretched and pulled by my frantic action but it was unimportant, overridden by the pleasure her young body was giving mine.

She came again, screaming into my ear and then biting down on the lobe. I was right behind her, pumping out another load into her gasping chasm.

My thrusts had barely stopped before she pushed me downward. "Now eat me." She said. "Please? Eat my pussy now that you've come in it. Please?"

Obviously this was a long-held fantasy of hers. Though she had definite experience, I doubted she had ever gotten someone to do THIS act for her before. Teenagers and even college age men would be disgusted by the very thought. Hell, most fully-grown and matured men were. Though it wasn't one of my favorite activities, it wasn't repulsive either. It was something I'd done before (I'd found that many women shared Cindy's fantasy of having sperm licked from their vagina). My motto had always been do whatever it takes to insure future copulation. I gave her a smile and then slid down her body. I spread her sweaty legs wide and looked at her pussy. It was drooling juice and sperm, oozing it onto the bedspread. I hesitated just to make her ask again. I didn't have to wait long.

"Come on?" She begged. "Do it, please?"

I lowered my head and went to work.

It took her only a short time to come again but still I ate her until yet another orgasm came through. I then rolled over onto my back and pulled her on top of me. With a few adjustments her pussy was soon clamped down on my cock once more and I was thrusting up into her. She didn't want me to come in her pussy again though. Instead, she pulled herself off of me and took me into her mouth once again. She put her impressive blowjob abilities to work and soon I was blasting another load down her throat.

She crawled up onto my body and collapsed atop it, kissing my cheeks and my lips. "God o'mighty." She proclaimed. "That was the best sex I have ever had. Stephie was right about you."

"Stephie?" I asked. "Do you mean Stephanie Massie?"

"You know damn well who I mean Billy." She smiled, nuzzling me a little. "She told me you could eat a pussy like there was no fuckin' tomorrow. And goddam if you can't."

"I certainly wouldn't know how she would know that." I told Cindy.

"You're full of shit." Cindy told me affectionately. "She gave me every stinky detail. You fucked the shit out of her."

I shook my head, smiling a little. "Nope." I said. "I most certainly did not. She let me kiss her a little but she wouldn't let me do anything else."

Cindy stared into my eyes, trying to read what was behind them. "Are you for real?" She finally asked.

"As real as I can be." I said, sitting up. "But you know what? You and I didn't do anything either."

"We didn't?"

I shook my head again. "Nope. We looked at records, I tried to put a move on you, and you shot me down. Hell, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

She looked at me grinning. "I guess I can't."

"But if you're ever with groups of girls and you want to tell them some dick stories about how Tracy's little brother ate your pussy until you screamed, or about how he fucked you until you clawed marks in his back, or about how he licked his come out your still-twitching cunt afterwards," I licked my lips. "Well, there's not much I can do about that now, is there? I'll deny it of course, but you know how girls love to listen to those dick stories? Hell, people believe everything they hear, don't they?"

"I guess they do." She said teasingly. "But I'm not that kind of girl. Suppose I promised to keep my mouth shut about what happened here today?"

"Oh I don't expect you to." I said. "I guess I'll just have to live with the reputation your lies will give me, won't I?"

"I guess you will." She said, giggling now. "It's a tough life, isn't it?"