He Means Nothing to You

For Channy, who taught me that being softhearted
doesn’t necessarily mean giving up.

STEVE

“No, stop laughing. I’m not done with the joke yet. Come on you guys, this is serious stuff here.”
They didn’t stop laughing. Not a one, except Damon of course. Damon never said anything, just sat there, staring off at nothing in particular. Poor guy. I wondered what went on his head.
“Ok, we’re sorry Steve. Please continue with the joke,” Tom said as he wiped a tear out of his eye. He had been laughing at me pretty hard. I didn’t let them know it bothered me, but it really did sometimes.

“Well, so anyway… where was I?”

They started up laughing again. Inwardly I sighed. Outwardly I smiled and took it. I guess what I had set out to do worked, just not in the way I would have liked. Sometimes I wished they would laugh with me for once, instead of at me.

“Oh boy. Hey, what are you doing Friday night Freddy ol’ pal?” Tom asked. Tom was always asking what people were doing. He was kind of like our leader. If you saw the bunch of us together – Tom, Freddy, Linda, Damon, and I – you would have known immediately that Tom was the one who made most of our decisions. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. Most of us didn’t care either way, so we just let Tom decide for us.

“Me? Oh, I don’t know. I have a test I have to study for.”

“Whatcha got?”

“Geometry.”

“Oh man! You always have a test in that.”

“I know.”

“Why does she always give you homework?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she likes our class very much.”

Linda stepped in with, “But you know she likes you.” A sinister smile touched her lips as she eyed her audience and prepared to go in for the kill. “He’s her favorite student. He’s the only one who’ll do the ‘extra credit.’”

They laughed again. Not at me this time, but it was still at someone. Why couldn’t they just laugh like other people? Why did it always have to be at someone?

“Yeah, and you would know all about doing ‘extra credit,’ wouldn’t you Linda?”

“At least when someone asks me, I’ll know how to do it!” Linda replied quickly, angrily.

They stopped laughing. Someone was hurt and the tensions had risen. Depending on the next statement, there may have been a fight. Fortunately for all of us, Linda was a very smooth talker. I guess a girl would have to be, hanging out with a bunch of guys all the time.
“Well, when you’re as good at it as I am…”

“Alright, knock it off! You want to bring the teachers over here and get us all in trouble?” Tom really was our leader. I felt bad when he laughed at me, but I knew that he’d do anything for me. Anything.

“What I was getting at was I wanted to see if you wanted to come over to my place Friday, Freddy. Nobody’s gonna be home for a while and I thought we could watch a movie or something.”

“I don’t know man, I really should study.”

“Oh come on, you can do it later. It’s not like you’re not going to get an A in that class anyway. Come on. You guys want to come over to my place tomorrow?”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

“Well, if Steve is going, I’m going. I just can’t stay away from that big pile of man muscle over there,” Linda said with a wink to me. I knew she was kidding, still, I couldn’t help but think about it. She was a girl! A girl had called me a “big pile of man muscle.”

Freddy sighed.

“Alright, alright. I’ll go.”

Poor Freddy, he really was kind of an outsider, a nerd. Tom was always telling him what to do and Freddie went along like he didn’t have a choice. Linda wasn’t kidding when she said he was the Geometry teacher’s favorite student, he really was. It’s not favoritism or anything, he was just the only one smart enough to follow along.

“Damon, you want to come along?”

Tom made every effort to include Damon in the group, it just never really worked out. He was quiet all the time. He never ate his food. He never laughed or cried or did anything with us. He just sat there. I didn’t even know how he joined up with us. It’s not that I cared, the guy didn’t even do anything, so how could he piss me off? It was just weird.

“Yeah, Damon’s coming. He told me so earlier,” Tom said.

We all chuckled a little bit.

“Alright, everybody meet me at my house around… 6. Ok?”

“Aiight, see you at 6, dude.”

“Steve, you wanna come over to my house after school?” Linda asked.

“Sure! What are we going to do?”

“Some… extra credit,” she said with a smile as she left the room.

Tom “oohed” and Freddy’s face got red because he knew it was a crack at him. They all got up and left, all except Tom, Damon and I. I was still thinking about what Linda said. Damon? I don’t know about him. He was watching Tom with a weird look. Almost like he was interested in what was happening. “Man muscle,” a “big pile of man muscle.” Linda was very beautiful. She didn’t mean we’d do anything when I went over to her house. Just like she didn’t mean anything by calling me what she did. I just wish she wouldn’t say things like that, just like how I wished the guys wouldn’t laugh at me anymore. Wishes that will never be granted.

I’ve always thought that women were a little too anxious to play with men. I mean, take Linda for example. That day she was wearing this dress that was made out of cloth that you could see right through. It was thicker in her chest area, but I could see her white underwear just plain as day. Just like the “man muscle” thing. I would never say this out loud, but I think that is how some women get into trouble. I’m not saying that if a woman gets raped, her dress had anything to do with the guy not stopping. I guess I’m just saying that women should be more conscious of what they do to men. If you give a monkey a gun, and he shoots someone, you don’t blame the monkey.

“Tom,” I said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“What was that all about, with Freddy and Linda?”

He cringed, almost as if I had hit him. For a moment I didn’t think he was going to answer.

“It’s… a long story,” he said as he got up and left.

I looked over at Damon one last time before I left. He didn’t look at me, just stared at the empty space Tom had left. He just stared at nothing.

“You know Damon, we are a lot alike. We both never say what’s really on our minds.” I stood up and slung my book bag over my shoulder. “Maybe we could learn a lesson from each other.”

FREDDY

I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have noticed if those guys hadn’t said anything. The Geometry teacher was wearing a really short gray skirt. Not as short as some girls wore, but it seemed to be short to me. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for her to wear a skirt, or even a short skirt. I just couldn’t help but to look at her legs that day. Everything below the middle of her thighs was perfect. Her legs were lean, muscular, tanned, shapely, smooth and inviting. Everything about her was sensual, not just her legs.

She wore makeup, but you couldn’t tell unless you were thinking about it. Hell, the only reason I thought about it was because I was imagining what it would be like to kiss her at that moment. To have my hands move over her face and body. I thought how easy it would be to stand up and walk over to her as she was attempting to teach the class about triangles. She’d sense someone coming up to her and she’d turn around. “Frederick,” she’d start – she always called everyone by their given names. It never failed to turn me on just the slightest bit. “What are you doing out of your seat?” I’d smile out of the corner of my mouth and just look at her. Trying to instill my desire into her through my gaze alone, before responding suavely, “Well, Mrs. Larken, I’ve been watching you all day, and I’m pretty sure you’ve been asking me to kiss you the whole time.” She’d blush and try to deny it. She was a married woman after all, but I’d be able to see the lust and the unadulterated thrill of doing the “wrong thing” in her eyes. At this point I’d put my left arm to her back, just above her perfect butt, and pull her to me. There’d be a moment of hesitation before the ravishment, as if we were subconsciously debating which one of us would seduce the other. Then, when we came to an agreement, we’d both kiss each other while our hands explored and groped the other’s body.

“What theorem would we use to solve the hypotenuse of this right triangle?”

I blinked myself out of my fantasy. She was still in front of the class teaching and I still wondered what that kiss would feel like.

“Frederick, answer that question.”

She had said my full name again. I wonder if she knew how many teenage males in the class prayed on a daily basis that she would not call on them to come to the board to draw something for the class. It had taken me this long to finally realize it. I was able to see their point before, but I had never experienced it.

“The Pythagorean theorem, ma’am.”

She smiled, though I don’t know if it was because I was right and she knew that no one else would have been, or because I had said “ma’am.” I thought, perhaps, that her smile could have been because she knew what was going on in my head, and the guilt I felt. Those guys really did a number on me coming up with those perverse thoughts at lunch that day. It was Linda mostly, which shouldn’t surprise me. She is as much, if not more than, the flirt we thought Mrs. Larken was. I don’t know why they had to put me on that train of thought. They didn’t think I was capable of being sexy and that I couldn’t turn someone on like Linda and Mrs. Larken seemed to be able to. They were wrong. I was just as dirty-minded as they were, I just didn’t let the whole world know about it. I had thoughts of things that I would have liked to have done to girls back then. How did J. D. Salinger put it? Something about doing “crumby” things with girls. Drinking wine, club sodas or something, then spit them into a girl’s mouth while you both were in a hot tub. I had “crumby” thoughts too. I knew that Linda would never stop taunting me with her body. I could think of a lot of crumby things I’d have liked to have done to her. Tom did a good job with stopping us at lunch, we were getting out of hand.

LINDA

That day had been a drag. If it weren’t for me hanging out with my friends at lunch, I wouldn’t even show up to school. It was boring I guess. I was bored as hell most of the time and I could have been some kind of genius. I heard that if a child is bored all the time in school that they are probably a genius or something. That would have been neat, being a genius. All you do is sit around and do math and stuff like that. That’s not so bad I guess. It beats the hell out of being bored all the time.

I wondered what was wrong with Steve. He’d been down for a while. I told myself that I’d have to remember to ask him when he came over that night. I hoped it wasn’t anything serious. He was a quiet person, not like Damon, but he just never said what he really felt. I think he thought we all didn’t know what he was thinking, but we did. I did at least. I could see it in his eyes. He hated and loved Tom, all at the same time. It was a complex relationship when you think about it.

“Linda, can you give us the answer please?”

“Uhm… 42?”

“Yes… that is correct.”

Ha! I didn’t even know where that came from? The teacher always tried to pick on the people who he knew, or at least thought he knew, were not paying attention. I was giving him about 20% of my brain, which was usually enough to answer any question he threw at me. That one was just pure luck though. I told myself I’d have to remember to thank Douglas Adams for that one.

“I hoped Steve brings a towel tonight.” I thought to myself with a smile.

That was about the time I saw James and Damon walking by, although I wouldn’t describe it like that. Damon was all but pulling James along forcibly by the arm. I don’t have enough information on what was going on to call it anything else. It was kind of cool to see, regardless of the situation. Maybe it was just a distraction for me.

STEVE

That day had been the longest day of my life. I think it may have something to do with how I’m going over to Linda’s after school. It wasn’t fair of her to invite me at lunch so that I’d be thinking about it all day, which I think she knew. Maybe that’s how she wanted it, teasing me again. Then she didn’t give me a straight answer when I asked her what we’d be doing. I couldn’t figure out what she had planned in that dastardly mind of hers? I couldn’t help but wonder if I knew people as well as I thought. I didn’t know Damon at all, Tom kept making fun of me, Linda kept taunting me with her beauty and then there was Freddy. I think he, if anyone, was exactly the same inside as what he presented to the world. There really wasn’t much to him, otherwise he would never have let Tom run his life the way he did.

It was about that time that I saw Damon and James walk down the hall together. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like they were holding hands. That, in itself, was enough to make me think that I didn’t know Damon – or else I was going crazy. I mean, Damon hated James. We all did in a way. I shrugged it off and decided to find out more later.

I watched the clock like a vulture eying a sick elephant during my last class. It was like time was taunting me the way the second hand moved so slowly from one line to the next. Twitch, stop, twitch, stop, twitch, stop… twitch, stop… pause… twitch, stop. It was ungodly and soon my pulse was synchronized with the clock. I could feel my heart beating in time. Then, either my pulse sped up or the clock slowed down, because my heart was beating twice between each second.

My mind could not help but wander to the dress that Linda was wearing. I wondered if she knew how beautiful she was. It would be hard not to notice I guess, but she never really flaunted it as much as some girls did. Some women you see wearing these tight shirts that show off their breasts, and tight pants that draw attention to their asses. Linda didn’t do anything like that or at least I didn’t think she did. Maybe she did but I just didn’t want to put her into the category of the flaunting people.

The first time I saw her was at the swimming pool last summer. She was wearing a two piece bikini. All the models I had seen in Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood were nothing compared to her. I could not control my body at that point. My friends and I were playing a weird form of tag where, if you were tagged, you had to get out of the pool and sit for 5 seconds before coming in to tag someone else. I was too busy watching this unknown person, who filled out a bikini like no other woman I had ever seen, to realize that I was standing still. Let’s just say that I was not willing to get out of the pool and the game was canceled at that point.

The bell, signifying that class was over, interrupted my very pleasant memory. “At last,” I could not help but think. It had been such a long day.

I walked out to the main hallway in front of the office. That is where our group always meets after school. We were all lucky enough to get lockers near there. I didn’t have to go to my locker, so I just waited for Linda. Minutes passed. 10. 20. She did not show up. The mass of students was thinning to next to none. Maybe she was not going to show up at all. That would be just like those guys to pull a joke on me like this. It wasn’t funny this time, not at all. “Tomorrow I am going to have to have a talk with them,” I told myself, “Tomorrow I would set them straight.

“Were you worried?” I heard a voice say from behind me.

I turned around quickly to see Linda standing there, still in her see-through dress, holding her coat draped over her arms that were hanging parallel to her waist.

“Me? Worried? No. I knew you’d show up.” I was such a liar.

“Yeah, well, I was going to ditch you, but then I decided that you were too much man to just let go.” She said, real seductively, as a smirk crossed her face.

“How very thoughtful of you.”

“Well… are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here. I’ve had a very bad and very long day.”

“Hey, speaking of bad days, did you hear about Damon?”

“No, what happened?” I asked as I started to walk to her car with her at my side.” I saw him and James walk by my class, but I didn’t get a chance to see what was going on.”

“He twisted James’s arm and walked him into the office.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, really! I heard it in the halls. Then, I guess the principal saw that Damon was wearing a shirt with an upside-down cross on it and asked him to turn it inside out. Damon just walked out of the office and went home.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, and he never said anything the whole time,” she said as she looked up at me because she was quite short. Not real short, just cute short.

I looked down at her looking up at me. Something passed between us. I don’t know what it was. It was almost like a small bolt of electricity or something. I think she felt it too.

“Where is your car?” I asked to break the awkward silence.

TOM

The phone. I tell you, phones are great sometimes and other times I wish they weren’t even invented. It was like 3 AM, and I couldn’t just let it ring. It could have been nearly anyone. Parents checking up on me, or grandparents, or maybe someone died. It could have been nearly anything. Maybe some wacko looking to get his jollies off waking someone up. It took me about one ring to figure out what the hell was going on, two rings to decide if I should answer it or not, two more rings of cussing and stumbling over things in the dark and another ring to bring the operation of this complex invention to memory before I answered.

“Hello?”

“Uhm… hi. Tom?”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“This is Damon.”

Damon… Damon… Damon… no name recognition power presented itself at 3 AM, so I said something really intelligent.

“Damon who?”

“Uhm… the Damon you hang out with at school.”

“Damon! Holy shit man! I’ve never heard you speak. What’s up?”

“I… I need someone to talk to.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Look… can we do this in person? I know it’s late, but I really don’t have anyone else to converse with.”

“Yeah, no problem. Where are ya at?”

“I’m at my house. Can we… do this at your house? There are some… things here that…”

“Yeah man, no problem. Just come on over. Let yourself in.”

“Ok. Bye. And Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem dude.”

I looked at the phone before hanging it up. It wasn’t grandparents or parents, just Damon. For a moment I wondered what was at his house that would lead him to want to come to mine. The sole fact that my parents were gone did make this an ideal place to be safe, but what was there that he was escaping from? Something that he felt that he couldn’t trust or that he feared?

It took me a while before I realized that Damon would be at my front door any minute and I was still in my boxers, so I went into my room and got dressed. I put on the same thing I wore that previous day at school. I’m a morning dresser. Some people put out their clothes the night before and arrange and coordinate them and all that. Me, I just put on whatever I feel like. If I don’t want to be noticed I’ll use a black attire. If I don’t want to be messed with I’ll use a rebel attire.

I stood in my room for a few minutes, just busying myself doing odd things, hoping that Damon would show up soon. He did not so I sat down at my computer to check my e-mail. I didn’t really have anything of any importance – mostly people trying to sell me things or tell me about joining some club. That’s the way life is. It always seems that someone is trying to sell you something or get you to join something. Nobody is worse at it than the government. The military and navy are always sending you crap right when you get into high school. I’m not against the military, but they need to calm down a bit. I did have one letter, however, from a friend of mine from California. I have friends all over, Canada, Europe, Britain, Australia, etc… It is ironic how I can have friends from all of these countries. People I can tell almost anything I want and not many friends in my own home town. The e-mail was my friend’s way of telling me what was going on in her life – mostly bad. It didn’t bother me too much. I think I’d make a good shrink, I’m always listening to people and interpreting their dreams and all that. It never really bothers me. I guess it’s like watching movies. You know the movie isn’t real so it doesn’t bother you. I know that my friends have problems, but they aren’t mine, so it doesn’t worry me so much. That probably sounds pretty cold and selfish, but it is how it goes I guess. At least I listen.

I sat at my computer for a few moments after I had finished reading the message. I suppose it would have looked neat to anyone who would happen to have been in the room at that time. The monitor cast a dull, white glow on my face and eyes in an otherwise dark room, giving me a glow of sorts. I wasn’t really thinking of anything in particular, just thinking. It was then that I heard a knock at my door.

I figured it was Damon knocking, even though I told him to let himself in. I guess he wasn’t one of those types of people. There are just certain people who don’t do things for themselves, even if you tell them to. I shut my monitor off and walked to the front door. The rain was coming down in sheets and had made Damon’s black hair fall into his face and eyes. He was looking at the ground, somewhere around his shoes. Slowly, his eyelids raised to my eye level and his dark brown irises were staring at me, but from somewhere far away. His eyes looked almost vacant and they instantly sobered my soul, as if Damon was just a shell, containing something dark and sinister. We stood there for a moment, neither of us moving or knowing what to do next.

“I am sorry to get you up at this hour,” he stated flatly as droplets of water fell from the straight hair in front of his face. “I probably should have just dealt with this stuff on my own. In fact, I had my mind set to take that course of action about half-way over here, but then I decided that I had already woken you up and you expected my arrival…”

“No, it’s all right man. Don’t worry about it. Go ahead and get comfortable. You want something to drink?” I said after I broke out of the shock and moved out of the way so that he could come in.

“No,” he said plainly. “I won’t be staying long. I just need… to get a few things out of my head.”

“Alright. I’m going to have a Dew. I’ll be right back. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
“I am all wet.”

“Don’t worry about it, the furniture won’t melt. And don’t worry about your shoes. Just… make yourself at home.”

I couldn’t come up with anything else to say. It was like talking to a brick wall that threatened to fall over on top of me. He was in some sort of real trouble and I didn’t know if I could handle releasing it into this house. Going to get myself something to drink was mostly so I could go away and collect myself before I went back into the fray. I thought to myself that it was going to be a fairly long night. I don’t know why I thought that exactly, but I did. I felt bad about it too, I mean, I desperately wanted to be a good friend to Damon and listen, but it was very late and I didn’t know if I could take what he was going to say. It’s different when you are looking straight into the eyes of the victims instead of reading their typed, pixilated words on your monitor.

As I got a Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator, the light inside cast a glow on me like I was some sort of angel or something. I looked down behind my feet to see the beginning of a long shadow that was cast into the dark kitchen. I was no angel and if I was I had the darkest shadow of any of them. I walked back into the living room where I found Damon sitting on the floor. I was about to say something about it, but I decided I had better not because where ever he was comfortable was fine with me. As I sat down in a chair next to him, his eyes lowered to the ground. He was wearing something that looked like he had just thrown it together but, the more I looked at it, I realized that it was what he had worn when I saw him at lunch. Presumably it was what he had worn all day. During lunch I didn’t find what he wore odd for him, even the upside down cross didn’t throw me.

“What on your mind?” I asked as I threw that idea out of my mind and decided to focus on the job at hand.

“I’ve been thinking about… there is… it’s hard to talk about.”

“Just let it out man, I’ll listen.”

“Alright. Uhm… ok, on my way home today I saw a sign. A billboard, you know. It was all black with white words. In big type it said, very simply, ‘God Saves.’”

“Yeah, I know the one. They just put it up a few days ago. Over on 16th street, right?”

“Yeah,” he said as he looked up at me briefly, then back to the carpet. “So I saw that while I was walking home and- did you hear about what happened to me today?”

“I don’t think so, what happened?” I asked as I adjusted my position in my chair and took a drink from my pop.

“I was wearing a shirt with- well, this shirt. An upside-down cross, right? Well, the principal tried to make me turn it inside out. I wouldn’t have had too much of a problem with that but when you turned an upside-down cross inside out, it didn’t become a regular cross.”

This idea was very ironic to me. At first it didn’t seem right, then, the more I thought about it, I could visualize the concept. Regardless, I told myself that I would look into it later. “So what’d you do?” I asked.

“I walked out.”

“Walked out where? Out of the office.”

“No, I walked out. I suppose they thought I was going to my locker or something like that.”

“You walked home?” I asked, exasperated at such an act.

“In a way,” he said with a glance and a small smirk.

“What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”

“Well, I was going to my locker… but I got lost and, the next thing I knew, I was at home.”
I chuckled. It was a mistake, I know, but I couldn’t help it. He was trying to lighten the mood and I shouldn’t have let him. If we got into a joking conversation, we’d never be able to talk about what was bothering him.

“So what about this sign?”

“Yeah. Well, this sign, I was walking home and I just stopped right in front of it. It was like the sign was made just for me or something. I attempted to avert my attention, but this damn sign just held onto my eyes and wouldn’t let go. And I couldn’t help but laugh at it. I laughed at a sign today.”

I could start to guess where he was going with that thought. If the upside-down cross on his chest wasn’t enough, it was the atmosphere that was created anytime we got next to a church. The karma or aura that he put out was nearly enough to chill someone to the bone. He hated churches. I found myself starting to hate him. Don’t get me wrong, I was all right with him hating churches and religion, but it pissed me off, the double-standard he held. It was fine for him to wear an upside-down cross on his shirt to show his beliefs, but he frowned on anyone else for having a normal cross on their shirts or a necklace.

“‘God Saves.’ That’s all it said. Where is God Tom? Where is he when I need him?”

My hate started to melt into something between fear and worry. Just as the ice daggers, that were starting to form in my eyes, were beginning to melt. Now I felt like the hypocrite. I blinked my eyes a few times, mostly to get the moisture out of them so it would not look like I was crying, but also to clear my conscience. I knew he was going to ask me questions that I would have no answer to.

“God is inside of us,” I said.

“Maybe God is inside of you, but the inside of me is full, my friend.”

I sighed slightly. I did not want this to turn into a debate about beliefs. A person would have more luck arguing with a glass of water why it’s wet.

“And what right do they have to post a sign like that?”

“A sign like what?”

“The ‘God Saves’ one. What right do they have?”

“Why shouldn’t they be able to post that? If people want to pay money to say-”

“To say what? To spread their belief? To convert the less fortunate? I doubt it.”

He was going too far. I did not know how much more I could take.

“It’s just ironic Tom. This country has no freedom anymore. It was founded by a bunch of people who were fleeing religious persecution.”

I closed my eyes for a moment to try and hold back my frustration with him.

“In founding this country, in the name of freedom of religion, they have doomed others to be trapped in the religion they formed.”

I curled my fingers into tight fists.

“Big corporations are religions now, my friend. They hire new recruits to be ‘born again workers.’ Managers are the disciples; chairmen the gods. You know why?”

I clenched my jaw and ground my teeth over one another.

“Do you?”

I heard a pounding in my ears, almost to the point where I could no longer hear him.

“Because-”

My eyes shot open.

“-we-”

My fists were so tight that I could feel blood coming to the palm of my hands where my fingernails had dug into the skin.

“-are-”

My jaw was set, poised to strike.

“-hypocrites!”

“You are the hypocrite!” I snapped. I could no longer see him, I could no longer hear him, and I did not want to feel sorry for him anymore. My heart was pounding in my ears. Every muscle in my body was flexed and twitching, anxiously awaiting action. It wasn’t until I felt the cold spit on my burning hot chin that I realized what I had done. I brought up a clenched fist to wipe my chin. I could not believe I had shouted so loud and talked so harshly that I had spit all over myself. The fist paused in front of my face. I tried to release it, but I could not, the muscles were locked. Without even looking at Damon I went into the bathroom.

STEVE

Her basement smelled like the locker room that you were supposed to shower and change in before you went into the indoor pool at the rec. center. I guess they both use the same type of water or something. I probably won’t ask her about it. It was weird, in a way, since the locker rooms in all of those places were like the high school shower rooms, just with older and younger people thrown into the mix. I never have been able to figure out the significance of getting naked and showering with a bunch of people you may or may not know. There are only two places that I can think of where a person does this on a halfway regular basis: high school gym class and prison.

“Did you bring a towel?” a voice asked from behind me.

I turned around to face the voice and found Linda standing in the doorway to the room I was in. She was wearing a white robe around herself and had her hair drawn back into a ponytail.

“No. I didn’t know that I was supposed to. Did you tell me to?”

“No. It slipped my mind I guess. That’s all right though, I have one here. That should be enough for the two of us.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, worried.

“Have you ever been in a hot tub,” she asked as she walked past me to a large, rectangular box. It’s stood a couple of feet high and must have been about 6 feet long and 5 feet across.
“One time,” I said as my eyes followed her to what must have been her hot tub. “I was in the hot tub at the rec. center with this old lady. It was weird, to tell you the truth. She had this skin that was just hanging from her bones. I thought I was going be in the hot tub with a bunch of chunks of skin floating around.”

In the middle of taking a leather cover off of the rectangular box, she looked back at me with a disgusted look on her face. I guess that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. It was the truth though. Some people just can’t take the truth.

“Well,” she said as she continued to take the leather top off, “I hope this will be more pleasurable for you.”

“‘Pleasurable?’”

She looked at me with a smile and came around to my side of the hot tub and stopped. It was then that I realized why she was wearing a robe and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Yeah, you know, pleasurable,” she said as she started to undo the knot in the strings of the robe. “A hot tub is supposed to take all of the stress out of your body and let your muscles relax.” After undoing the knot she turned around and slid out of the robe. I watched it fall to the ground before I turned around. I had thought that she would be wearing a swimming suit under the robe. I heard the water almost sigh as her body eased into its grasp. “The only way to do this is to be completely- Steve, what are you doing?”

I closed my eyes as I knew the question was coming, but I had no answer ready. “Uhm… you are… I was just… I didn’t want to- well, I mean, I did want to, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“Steve,” she said calmly.

“Yes?”

“Turn around.”

My mind knew what those words meant, and I desperately wanted to, but my muscles would not cooperate with me. I must have stood there twitching for a full minute before she realized that I wasn’t going to turn around.

“Steve,” she said again, calmly.

“I… I can’t.”

“Steve.”

“I mean, don’t take it personally – I really want to – but I just can’t. It’s not right. We are just… I mean… what if-”

“Steve.”

“Yes?”

“Listen to me Steve.”

“O.k.”

“It’s all right. You can turn around. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“But… you are naked.”

She giggled softly.

“Yes, Steve, I am naked. But, in a hot tub, you really should be naked to relax.

“But… the old lady wasn’t naked.”

“Well, no, I would hope not because that would be gross,” she said with another giggle.

Resolutely, I set my jaw in determination. My eyes narrowed and my hands stiffened at my sides. I WAS going to turn around. She wanted me to, my body, mind and soul all wanted me to. It was destiny.

“This is it,” I thought, “this is where everything I have learned has to come into play. I must remember all of the female anatomy that I can muster so that I am not surprised by anything. I must call to mind all the curves and silken visions of the women in every magazine I have ever seen so that I will not gawk at her. I must treat her with respect and silent admiration.”
I took a deep breath, as if after turning around meant that I would not be able to breathe again. Through extreme control and concentration I was able to move my right foot slightly behind the rest of my body, resting the weight of my leg on the ball of my foot. In one fluid motion I shifted small amounts of weight to that foot, rotating it slightly as the rest of my body followed suit. When I had turned completely around I saw her in the hot tub, watching me intently. She had rested her arms across the top of the hot tub lowered her chin to one forearm. Eyes that seemed slightly amused and slightly flattered registered nothing but interest when their gaze met with mine.

“Very good,” she said as she raised her head and moved her hands to behind her head, “but now you have to remove YOUR clothes.”

“My-” I said just as my voice decided to crack. I cleared my throat and started again. “My clothing?”

She merely nodded as her hands came back to their original place on the hot tub, and her chin back on them. Her hair fell about her shoulders. Apparently she had undone her pony tail. I had never seen her so beautiful. Maybe it was the fact that I KNEW she was naked in the tub and maybe it was the fact that being naked only increased the power she had over me. I knew that I had to maintain control and keep my teenage body in check. It was becoming increasingly difficult with each passing second and I kept telling myself she was just a friend.

After a moment of hesitation, I started with my socks, taking each one off as slowly as possible to give myself time to formulate some kind of argument against doing what I was doing. Being rid of the socks I didn’t know what to take off next. It was as if we were playing strip poker and I couldn’t stop losing. Removing my pants would only lessen my ability to hide my arousal, and I wasn’t comfortable enough with myself to take off my shirt on a whim. Realizing that I had a watch, I took that off and added precious few seconds to my time. It had come down to shirt, pants, and boxers. I felt like I was on show at some perverse striptease. Worse yet, I liked it! I WANTED her to see me; I wanted to see her. I wanted to kiss and hug and feel her in my arms, to comfort her and tell her of my secret love for her, to unburden myself from this hiding under euphemisms and flirtations.

It seemed like minutes, hours even, that she left me standing there in a shaking, quivering puddle of fear and excitement.

“Are you going to take the rest off?”

I nodded as quickly as each muscle in my neck would allow me, which was not very fast. I remember stepping out of my body and looking at myself from the front. I nearly laughed at the look on my face. I was like a frightened animal mere moments away from being run over, nodding to some unseen force as if it knew and accepted its fate. I kept nodding until I stepped back into my body with this new-found realization of how stupid I looked. I blinked a few times, pursed my lips and then drew them back tightly against my teeth. I took off my shirt with one sweeping motion. Though my ego would like to think that she was struck by my manly physique, the quick blink and startled look on her face was probably just that, startle. I was instantly aware of how cold her basement was. Before I had assumed that I had simply lost all the blood to my face and neck (and, perhaps I did), but now I knew that it was not only me. I looked down at my feet to see that I was standing on triangular and rectangular tile set in an interesting pattern. Absently I raised one foot off of the tile and then the other to make sure that the tile was the reason they were cold.

“Steve?” she asked.

I looked back up at her blankly.

“Steve, am I going to have to take the rest of your clothes off myself?”

I gave her a peculiar look out of reaction more than conscious thought. It was almost as if her words weren’t English, like she had asked me a question in some other language that I could not comprehend. I listened to the words again in my head and still could not discern a meaning.
“I’ll do it,” she said as she moved her arms from their resting position to a posture where they could raise her weight up on them. After putting them into position she stopped, waiting for some sort of acknowledgment from me. Again, more out of reflex than effort, I started forward with both hands to stop her.

“No! I’ll do it. Just… just don’t stand up.”

She put her arms back down so that she could rest her head on them. I closed my eyes, partially to gather myself and partially to try and forget how much of her body I had seen when she moved her arms. Keeping my eyes closed I removed the rest of my clothing. Before I had time to ask myself what I was doing and to reason out the pros and cons. I got into the hot tub with her. It was a hot tub that was actually made for two people, but I felt cramped in it. As I got in she turned it on and moved to one side, probably sensing that I was uncomfortable with the closeness of our naked bodies.

It took me a few moments to actually feel the sensations that were occurring all around me. First off, the water was very warm. It was like being in a bathtub while it fills up with water that you think is not quite hot enough. For some reason you are forced to get out of the water, being cold and wet for some amount of time before being able to get back into the water and feeling like it’s the perfect temperature. Secondly, the water was very wet. That sounds dumb, but that’s the only way I have to describe it. It was as if the warmness and wetness got into my body and coaxed it to relax. It released all the tension of being forced to strip. Not to mention the stress of being in a warm and wet place with a very attractive, naked girl.
I let myself recline, almost allowing my body to melt into whatever form my half of the hot tub offered. I was extremely careful of only being in my half of the hot tub. I didn’t want to accidentally elbow Linda in some sensitive spot. It wasn’t that the tub was small or that I was particularly large. I think I was just overly cautious about inadvertently groping her. My hands were locked together at the level of my knees so I could relax without losing control of their placement. It didn’t matter much though.

I don’t know exactly how long it was between getting into the tub and her touching me for the first time, but I do know that I damned near jumped right out of the hot tub. I thought it was my fault at first, that I had lost control for a moment and let my arm follow the current of the water over to her body. It wasn’t really a touch, more of just a caressing. Her hand had drifted over to my right wrist, which was only partially submerged and resting on my knee. And I don’t think it was the touch itself that shocked me, but the nearness of the touch to my crotch. Seeing as how my body was attempting to create a W shape, with my upper body creating the first straight line for the letter, then following the path completely except for that last upward line that would have been past my feet.

I stiffened at the first nerve impulses of the touch. It was so different from the sensations that I was getting from the water, so seemingly physical rather than spiritual, that it caused my body to involuntarily go into the beginnings of a defensive action. She grasped my wrist more firmly. More than the simple touch, and whispered to me that it was all right. Alright? That didn’t make my body feel the need to relax. The hot tub wasn’t just a place for relaxing anymore. It seemed in my mind to take on more of the purpose of a blanket during lovemaking. Merely a means for keeping the participants warm.

“Wha- what are you doing, Linda?” I asked as bravely as I could. I knew what she was doing. I think I knew what she wanted the whole time. I also think I wanted it as well.

“I’m trying to get you to relax,” she whispered seductively over the sound of the churning water. “This won’t be fun for either of us if you tense up each time you are touched.”

“But what… what…” my mind raced for reasons not to do what we were about to do. I couldn’t come up with anything substantial. Maybe it was just my body winning the battle with my mind. There isn’t a teenager out there who doesn’t have urges to have sex. Many of them, at least the ones who decide to wait until marriage for whatever reason, just come up with better excuses than others why not to: diseases, unexpected/unwanted pregnancies, what will come in the morning, respect, trust, morals, expectations of parents or relatives, etc… I had no choice then though, I had to say something. So, I said what seemed to be the best reason not to.

“This is my first time!”

She stopped for a moment, as if she was shocked. Her hand, which was moving from my arm to down my thigh, paused just below my knee. Then, as if coming to some kind of reasoning that it must be a fluke that I haven’t had sex yet, she said something that ended up being her own undoing.

“So?”

“You mean… this isn’t your first?”

She nearly laughed.

“No, Steve, this most certainly ISN’T my first.”

TOM

With some effort I was able to turn on the faucet. I decided that hot water would be the best for getting my then spasming muscles in my hands to release, even though it would do nothing for the bleeding. I let my hands be soothed into relaxation by the warm water that was running down the drain a muted shade of red. Finally, I was able to release the fist and it was only then that I saw exactly how deep my nails had bitten into my skin.

“I’m a fool,” I thought as I got out some gauze to wrap around my hands. I don’t actually remember if I said it out loud or just thought it. I guess it really doesn’t matter, but I was so flustered by Damon saying what he did. It wasn’t so bad in its own, it was just that I went from being sympathetic to his plight, from that to being angry at the hypocrisy he was spouting. Sure, the Pilgrims and those people were fleeing religious persecution, but they didn’t doom anyone into their religion. Most people chose for themselves. My parents had always been Catholic, and so was I It was all I knew. He damns people for talking about their religion calling it an attempt to “recruit the less fortunate,” but the man wears upside-down crosses and Nietzsche shirts all the time. Where was the difference in the two?

“‘God is dead’,” I thought, “God isn’t dead, just forsaken.”

It was about that time, after I had only my left hand completely wrapped in gauze and beginning to bleed through, that I heard my door shut. It took me a couple minutes to figure out what that meant before I rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the light on and my first aid on the sink top.

“Damon!” I yelled, even though it seems frivolous now. I knew he was gone, walking in the rain to wherever he chose to go. I looked at the place where he had sat on my floor, as if I had to reassure myself that he was in my house by looking for a slightly wet spot on the carpet.
“What to do? What to do?” I thought out loud. I wasn’t wearing any socks or shoes, but I decided to run out and see if I could find Damon before he got too far. He had just left and I hoped he wouldn’t be far off. I thrust my front door open and ran outside, absently leaving the door open. Forgetting that we had a front porch with a two-step drop-off, probably because of my lack of sleep and the lateness (earliness?) of the hour, I fell onto the ground. I raised myself up off the ground in a push-up position and I started to run again. It was then, through the endorphins and adrenaline that I had running through my system, that I realized I had a pain in my ribs. I held myself up with my legs and one arm, like the position a track runner takes before taking off, and moved my right hand to the pain on the left side of my body, bringing it in front of my face I saw blood, more than just the fingernail cuts had produced. My hand was in front of my face and the rain kept falling. I hadn’t noticed the rain until then and it made the blood spatter. It ran and puddle in the few minutes from my hand being at my ribs. Looking past my hand I noticed the dark figure of Damon making his way home. I stood up and headed towards Damon while limping and tried to call his name. I tried to get his attention, but couldn’t seem to create the words. For every one of my faltering steps, I seemed to gain two on Damon who, apparently, wasn’t in any hurry. When I finally caught up to him, I put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to turn around.

“Where are you going?” I yelled. I didn’t mean to yell, and I didn’t even have to yell to get my voice over the down pouring of rain, at least, not as loud as I did. I guess I wasn’t sure if my voice would be with me.

He looked at me, past me, with the same vacant eyes that had been on my doorstep only minutes ago. His body turned like he was going to ignore me and continue on it’s way, but I grabbed his should with my left hand, keeping my right to my ribs. I guess, thinking back, that I really didn’t grab him so much out of force, but need. I would have fallen flat on my face if I hadn’t had him to lean on. I guess I was losing quite a lot of blood. He must have noticed because he moved to my side and put my arm around his neck, his arm around my waist, and led me back to my porch. I limped all the way, even though I hadn’t hurt my leg, it just seemed like the thing to do. We got to my porch and he let me literally slide slowly out of his grip so I could sit there and catch up with myself. I looked up at him, with his black hair falling into his eyes again. His eyes were no longer empty and cold, but hinted at sympathy. I checked myself all over, knowing about the cuts on my hands and side, but my inspection also found that I HAD cut my leg. The jeans I was wearing were torn about my left shin and I could see a growing spot of red soaking through the material. I had fallen on a branch that had come down in the storm. Ironically enough, someone – I don’t remember who – told me that I had injuries like Jesus. I don’t know how true that was, because I didn’t end up saving anyone that night.
“Come on Damon, I’ll take you home,” I said as I started to stand up. I didn’t get very far before I passed out.

The next thing I remember was that I was sitting on the counter top of my bathroom, the same bathroom I had attempted to mend my hands. I looked around and noticed that my left arm was up in the air. It seemed odd to me that my left arm would be in the air, obviously defying the gravity of my bathroom, so I tried to put it down.
“Don’t move.”

I started. For the smallest moment, though I wouldn’t admit this to anyone in person, I thought my arm had talked to me. After looking around a bit more I felt that a hand was holding my wrist in the air and that a head of black hair was down around my belt line. I also realize that I wasn’t wearing my shirt anymore.

“Damon,” I said worried that I was being molested in some way, “what are you doing?”

“Don’t move,” he said again. “I’m mending this wound as best as I can.”

It was then that I felt the first pang of pain. I sucked in air through clenched teeth and involuntarily tightened all the muscles of my chest and arms.

“Don’t move.”

“Sorry,” I said through the last remnants of the cloudiness and haze associated with losing consciousness. “What are you doing? I mean, how are you fixing me?”

“Super-glue,” he said simply.

I still had too much cloudiness to make much sense of that, but I decided it’d probably be better if I didn’t know.

“Why didn’t you tell Steve about Linda and Freddy?” he asked me out of the blue. The question took me by surprise. I wondered what he knew about Linda and Freddy?

“Why do you ask?” After he didn’t say anything, I decided to continue. “I don’t feel that it’s my place to tell people what I think about Linda. I decided a long time ago to let them make up their own minds about her.”

“But you would know better than any of the others… except Freddy of course.”

“God, he knows!” I thought. But I still wasn’t going to give away any more information about myself than I had to.

“Yeah, but even Freddy doesn’t really know Linda.”

“Well, of course not, he never let it go far enough.”

“Alright! How do you know these things?”

“I listen.”

“Bullshit! How do you know?”

He stopped what he was doing and looked up at me.

“I don’t. Freddy openly looks at Linda the same way we all look at her when no one is looking. He visualizes the same things we all think about in those guilty hours of night. She sees him do it and she lets him. There is obvious tension between them. Add all these together and you have something.”

“What do we have Damon?”

“I’m not sure, but one thing I am sure of is that you know. You glare at me, but you DO know, not only in memory but in the heart.”

I sighed. He kept looking at me until I started talking again, then he went back to his work.
“Linda asked Freddy for help in Geometry because she can’t do it. She got all the answer in Algebra for a price and hoped to get the same deal from Freddy in Geometry. He agreed at first, but when it came time for Linda to ‘pay up,’ Freddy wouldn’t let her touch him. He had some moral issue or- or whatever stops us from doing things that we think are wrong. Linda was fine with getting the answer for free until Freddy informed her that since he was giving her help that he expected her to actually LEARN it. She didn’t want to do that and ended up dropping the class, which screwed up her credits. She’s been mad at Freddy ever since.”

“And you?”

I closed my eyes trying to hide the hurt. I don’t know why I was trying to hide it since Damon was intent on sewing me up. I think I was trying to hide it from myself.

“Linda was… Linda was my first. I wasn’t hers, but she was mine. I thought it would be something special. I heard wedding bells every time I saw her, I saw my children in her smile, and I wanted to graduate high school, get my piece of paper from college, get a good job, and live the rest of my life with her in… in bliss. She didn’t seem to share my vision. She said that she did in the beginning, but I think that was because she wanted to keep me happy so I’d keep loving her; physically. When she got tired of me, she found someone else, but she didn’t bother telling me. I found out,” as I stopped and cleared my throat because my voice was beginning to crack in my attempt to hide the pain, “I found out by snooping in her journal. A bunch of my friends told me that the thought she might be cheating on me. Outwardly I pushed it away, but it ate me up inside until I was finally driven to invade her privacy.”

I had to stop there otherwise I would have cried. I probably could have pushed it off as the pain from my cut, but we both would have known the truth, regardless of if either of us would have admitted it.

“I wasn’t serious,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“You aren’t really using Super-glue?” I asked and bent over to look. A quick stab of pain put me back into my original position.

He looked up at me. “Don’t move.”

“Sorry.”

“No,” he said, going back to his work, “I wasn’t serious about the whole God thing. I was just testing you.” He looked up at me then went on. “I wanted to see how you would handle me telling you something that you probably didn’t want to hear.”

“Oh… uhm… how’d I do?”

“Not bad, I suppose,” he said as he turned his attention back to his work. “I guess it was wrong of me. As the situation seems at the moment, I feel like I broke the Hippocratic Oath,” he chuckled. I didn’t get it. “Anyway, I apologize. It wasn’t fair of me. While those things bother me, they’re really not why I’m here tonight.”

“Then,” I started hesitantly, “why are you here?”

“I don’t want to live with what I live with everyday.”

“Shit,” I sighed, though I only meant to say it to myself. He looked up at me and I told him that whatever he had just done had really hurt. It was a quick save, but I don’t think he bought it. Regardless, he finished fixing me up. He let go of my wrist and began washing my blood off his hands, refusing to look at me the entire time. I moved the hand that was in the air to my cut on my ribs, only to see that that hand was wrapped in gauze too.

“Damon.” He turned off the faucet and was about to wipe his hands on a towel, but decided against it and just rubbed them off on his pants. Then he turned to face me. The vacant eyes were back. But this time was different. It was almost like they were simply a front and something else was trying to peek in from behind the cold irises.

“I consider you a friend, Damon.”

“Can we-”

“-and I don’t want you to die.”

He sighed. I don’t know if I said the wrong thing or what, but I didn’t get any reaction other than the sigh.

“Can we go?” he asked plainly. I sighed. “Can you drive me home?”

“Yeah. I can drive you home,” I said trying not to show that I was frustrated.

STEVE

I left her house incredibly late. I didn’t even know exactly what time it was except that it was well past midnight. I had been there too long and found out too many things. It had stopped raining about half-way into my trip, which was a welcome sight. I was still cold and miserable. I was still cold and miserable and the cold wetness was so different then the warm wetness I’d left not twenty minutes ago. Sometimes I think there is a God, and that he has a really fucked up sense of humor.

In the distance I heard what sounded like a cross between a cymbal crash and someone stepping on an empty pop can standing upright, then a long and drawn out wail. It took my brain a moment to come out of its depression and realize that the wail was an unending car horn blaring. It took only a few more moments to realize that the sound that came before it was probably a wreck of some kind. I don’t know exactly what drove me to go towards the sound of the crash because it wasn’t on my way home. I couldn’t have helped with CPR because the only training I’d ever had was the few minutes they gave us in PE with that “Annie” doll. It always bothered me that the doll was only half a body and they still called it “life like.”

When I was still three or four blocks away from the scene of the wreck, I found it odd that the lights in everyone’s homes were still off. It was like they hadn’t heard anything at all. Maybe they hadn’t, but I had heard it seven blocks away. You’d think that someone, even just ONE person, would have dialed 911 by the time I got there. It’s funny how the mind works when you really think about.

As I neared the accident I saw only one car. The front end was impaled through the middle by a street light. It was facing me, so I couldn’t tell how far the metal pole had actually gone into the car until I got closer. Before I got close enough to tell that, I saw the body. It was nearly a whole block away from the car. My first thoughts were that it was a pedestrian who was unlucky enough to get hit by the car before it hit the pole, or had even seen the car coming and went to hide behind the pole itself. As I neared it – though I slowed up considerably without thinking – I realized that it wasn’t even a real body. It was the size of a person, a young adult maybe around my age, but it wasn’t real. It reminded me of a GI Joe action figure that had accidentally been left in an infant’s crib, then discarded, or accidentally vacuumed up. It seemed to be missing an ear and part of the paint that would have been the rest of its black hair. Its limbs were pointing this way and that – like the action figure, unfeeling and stiff limbs – none of the positions could have ever been achieved by a real human. It was laying face down and, as I said, its right arm was nearly completely behind the rest of the body and pointing nearly directly upwards, except for some joint that had accidentally been added by the manufacturer between the elbow and wrist; and that pointed back to the car. Its other arm was straight, and pointing straight at me, but it had been turned by the child who played with it so that its thumb was on the opposite side as it should have been. I nearly laughed at such a comical pose. It wasn’t real. Real humans live and breathe, they don’t just lay there when their arms and legs are bent up and broken. This one did though. This was a toy. I think I did laugh, but it was interrupted by a sudden wave of nausea. I unconsciously turned around and bent in half, putting my head between my knees. I thought I might fall over from this precarious position I had put myself in, but I didn’t.

I don’t know how long I stood there worrying about nothing but breathing and not thinking about the toy bleeding in the road. I don’t know if it was some morbid fascination or some unknown human instinct to help, but I slowly walked over to the car, avoiding looking at the action figure. I saw as I got closer that there was extensive damage on the back of the car as well as the pole sticking out of the front. It was like it had been hit from both sides. The light had been forced nearly in to the front seat of the car, forcing whatever mechanical devices that were under the hood to ooze onto the street. Though it was hard to see through the extensively cracked glass of the windshield as I neared, I could see a figure. It, like the GI Joe figure, wasn’t moving when I got to its door. The victim’s face was covered with still-flowing blood. I was halfway into saying “are you ok” when I realized who the victim was.

“Tom!” I screamed. Apparently someone heard me, because I heard the sirens of the ambulance in the distance at that point.

FREDDY

“Don’t go in there.”

“Why not,” she asked, either faking that she was hurt, or actually being hurt. I didn’t care either way. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to let her go into the waiting room with Steve. I wasn’t going to let happen to Steve what happened to me.

“Because no one in there wants to see you.”

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you being like this? Are you STILL mad at me?”

I glared at her with as much self-control as I could muster. I didn’t tell her than my whole day had been nothing but one erotic venture through another.

“Steve’s in there. He doesn’t want to see you. He’s talking to the police, and he has enough on his mind already without you being in there to screw with him even more.”

“Well, maybe I could-”

“Look,” I interrupted, “my parents only called you because they know that you’re a friend of Tom’s. I didn’t want to let them, but what was I going to say?”

“So they don’t…”

“No, they don’t know,” I said and looked around. I don’t really know why I looked around. It was nearly 6 AM and there wasn’t anyone else in the hospital who would have heard – or cared – anyway.

I got the call from Steve’s parents about half an hour before Linda even showed up. I didn’t find out if they knew about what Steve and Linda were doing, but I doubt they knew. You just can’t tell your parents some things. I had thought about how to tell my parents about Linda for nearly two months. “Mom, Dad, I want to tell you something. See… I was going to help out this girl that the guys started hanging with. She asked me for help in Geometry and I was happy to help her, but then she tried to seduce me. She actually thought that she could ‘repay’ me by having sex with me.” It really didn’t make much sense. I just gave up.

We both stood outside of the waiting room and watched Steve through a window. He was crying and slumped over, nearly into the fetal position. They were asking him questions. The usual stuff: why were you out so late, what’d you hear, what’d you see, what’d you do when you got there, why’d you go in the first place, who’d you touch.

“How is Tom?” she asked after a few moments. We were still watching Steve. He looked over at us a few times, then put his head back into his hands. I think it was from seeing Linda so soon after learning about who she really was underneath the layers of beauty.

“Not well,” I stated simply, still looking at Steve. “They haven’t said much, but it doesn’t look good. From what I heard Steve say, he was pretty messed up. He was wearing his seat belt, which was good, but it really didn’t do him any good since he was rammed from the back by the drunk driver.”

“A drunk driver?” she asked loudly, looking over at me. “I didn’t know the guy was drunk.”

“Yeah. The bastard lived just long enough to tell the ambulance crew that he was trying to outrun a monster truck that he thought was following him.”

“God…” she whispered as she looked back at Steve.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at her. I remember the thoughts of how beautiful she looked going through my head. My visions of her being some kind of demon were melting before my eyes with this showing of concern.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve look up at us again. I wondered what he thought, seeing the two of us looking at each other without the hating or mocking faces we usually wore. This time, though, he didn’t put his head back into his hands. He looked at us so long that one of the officers walked over to the window and let the blind on the inside fall down between us. The sound of the quickly falling blind made us both jump – either that or the menacing look the officer gave us both before the blind fell. We stared blankly at the blind for a few moments, neither of us knowing exactly how to proceed. Before, when the two of us were together, there was always someone else from the group to turn our attention to so that we could ignore each other. Now that we were left alone, naked of any escapes, neither of us wanted to make the first move.

“Freddy,” she said finally, taking my hand in hers, “I’m sorry. I… I thought you knew what I meant to do. I’m sorry for making fun of you. I’m sorry for poking fun all the time. It… wasn’t right of me.”

I looked down at my hand in hers, feeling the warmth and the invisible and involuntary shaking of them. When I looked into her eyes they were red rimmed. It could have been from the lack of sleep, the worry she may or may not have been feeling, or that she was almost ready to cry. I looked at her with an indifferent face, stone cold.

“You’re not apologizing to make me feel better. It’s just so you can appease your own guilt,” I said and took my hand out of her grasp. “Besides, let’s be more worried about our two friends, one of which may not make it through the morning.” With a quick glance at the waiting room where Steve was, then a nod down the hall to the emergency room that Tom was in, I left her standing there in her own thoughts. There wasn’t much else I could have said to her to make her more sorry, and I knew that. I just left. Before I got too far down the hall I stopped.
“We have class in a few hours,” I said to her over my shoulder. “They aren’t going to cancel and my parents won’t let me stay here. They told me to tell you that you could ride with them if you wanted.”

LINDA

About two weeks after Tom had first been taken to the hospital, Steve wanted those of us left, to get together and talk at the hospital. We were to meet him in a certain waiting room and no one knew what he was going to say. We all thought that it was going to be something totally different from what it turned out to be. Steve had been hounded by the cops. They knew as well as everyone else that he wasn’t responsible for anything that happened, but they just couldn’t let him go to grieve on his own. It had taken him a full day to find out that the other person in the car with Tom was Damon. Damon was thrown completely from the car and was dead before the ambulance even arrived. Though Steve didn’t tell me, I heard that he saw Damon’s body crumpled in the road.

Steve had left a note in my locker at school, because we didn’t sit together at lunch after the car wreck. I think it went deeper than the fact that Tom was gone. Tom was like the sun that kept us, the planets, in orbit, but there was something more. Even now I wonder if I was the factor that was breaking each of us apart. Aside from Damon, I had some sort of past with all of them. Tom and I had gone out for quite a while before I had to move on. I tried to strike a deal with Freddy that, apparently, wasn’t as good for each of us as I thought. I’ll never now why Steve and I didn’t work out. I was beautiful, we both knew it. Why couldn’t we have just made love? Why did he always have to think so much? I didn’t know if meeting with those two would be a good idea and I didn’t really feel up to taking the blame from two people at the same time.
I put on my pair of black jeans, a white T-shirt, and covered it with my brown leather jacket. It wasn’t cold enough for a jacket, but there was always something about that jacket that made me feel safe. It was like a security blanket.

When I got inside the hospital no one looked at me as if I was strange. Most of the people who worked there knew to expect us since we had shown up nearly everyday since the accident. I kept my eyes low and walked to the waiting room where we were supposed to meet. I stopped outside the door to argue with myself whether I should actually go through with this or not. I’m not sure what aspect gave the winning side the more compelling argument, but I walked inside. Steve was there already.

“Freddy should be here any minute,” he said.

I nodded absently and sat down in the opposite corner of the room. I wanted to be next to Steve, but if what Freddy said was true, he didn’t want anything to do with me. Part of me was forced to believe that because we had not seen each other at school. It seemed he was avoiding me. Another part of me wouldn’t have anything to do with that theory since I was invited to take part in the powwow.

Steve paced the room while waiting for Freddy. He had something serious to say to each of us. I only wondered what it was and how much it had to do with me.

Freddy walked in and quickly scanned the room. Our eyes met for the smallest amount of time imaginable before we both averted our gaze. Mine went to the floor directly in front of my feet while I assumed his went to Steve as if to ask why SHE was here.

“Thank you for being here Freddy. I know you didn’t want to come.” Freddy sat down near the door of the waiting room, forming a nearly perfect triangle between Steve and I. “I don’t really know how to start this, but something has to be said. Tom talked to me the other day.” He paused as he looked from Freddy to me. “I assume that Tom talked to each of you as well.”

“Yeah,” Freddy said, “he talked to me a couple days ago. It was probably the same day, but neither of you guys were there and I thought it was kinda weird.”

“Then he said the same thing to me as he did to you?”

Freddy leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands that were being supported by his elbows on his thighs. At that moment it felt like the air just stopped moving. Like it wasn’t there. I guess it was like in that Indiana Jones movie, when he’s pouring sand out of a bag so it’s the same weight as the idol he’s going to try and steal. Each of the guys stared at each other, weighing each other and trying to find out how much the other knew without giving anything away.

Freddy’s chin started to quiver. He opened his mouth to say something, but it didn’t get any farther than his throat. I looked at him just in time to see his eyes close and a steady stream of tears flow from each. My attention went to Steve as he lowered his head and nodded slowly.

“That’s a yes. I didn’t know if-”

“How could he?” Freddy yelled.

“He can’t walk Fred. He’s nearly completely paralyzed and they don’t think that he’ll ever-”

“But he’s still Tom! He’s still a person! Even if he can’t walk,” Freddy sobbed. I looked back down at my feet.

“I know that just as well as you do, but we can’t do anything about it. You didn’t…”

“No! Of course not. I wouldn’t- I couldn’t do that. Not to Tom.”

Steve sighed again.

“I couldn’t either.”

They both sat silent except for Freddy’s sobs and sniffling. He stood up and got a Kleenex then sat back down while Steve and I were flashing our attention at him. I think we both thought he was going to walk out on us. Freddy blew his nose and worked to go back to a normal breathing pattern. It’s something we all try to do but is almost impossible after crying. It was several minutes before anyone spoke again. When they did, they found that they were not much farther away from the beginning than when they started.

“So, what are we going to do? I mean, do we tell someone?”

“Who? His parents?”

“Well, yeah. Why not?”

“What are we going to say Steve? ‘Uh, yeah, Tom’s mom, you’re son asked me to help him kill himself because he doesn’t want to live if he can’t walk.’ That just doesn’t work!”

“Look, don’t yell at me. I’m just as afraid as you are. I don’t know WHAT to do. That’s why I called you guys here.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. What CAN we do?”

“Well… I guess legally-”

“Legally Steve?”

“I’m just trying to get something started. We should look at this from all angles. We’ve already covered the moral issue. We all think it isn’t right and we won’t help him, but there are other issues at stake.”

“Wait,” Freddy said suddenly.

“What?” Steve asked as he looked around. “What?”

“You said, ‘we all think it isn’t right.’”

“So?”

“So… did you- do we know that not all of us will help him?”

I rubbed my hands together nervously. I knew where this was going. I knew what Freddy was insinuating and that Steve hadn’t caught onto yet.

“Linda,” Freddy said slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “Linda, look at me.”

I ground my teeth together slowly in hopes that they both would just forget that I was in the room. I would have been more than happy to have stayed in the background for the entire conversation.

“Linda?”

I shot my eyes up at Freddy, then flicked them to Steve, still rubbing my hands together.
“What? Steve? Freddy? What do you want to know? What I said to Tom? You want to know if I agreed to help him – if he even asked me? Yeah, he asked me!” My gaze went to each of them with biting intensity. I didn’t even see their faces anymore, only eyes with the edges blurred red.
“Well?” Steve said impatiently. I fixed my stare on him.

“Tom would have done anything for you! ANYTHING! For you too,” I shot over to Freddy, “and you won’t help him when he needs it – the ONE time he needs it?”

“It’s not our place to play God,” Freddy said.

“Oh fuck God! This is your friend. You would let him die a slow, pitiful death in that bed wouldn’t you? He’s 17 years old! He could live another 100 years-”

“Maybe in that time they’ll find a cure.”

“That’s a possibility, sure, but what if they don’t? What if it were you Freddy, or you Steve? What if you had to look at the same tile ceiling for 100 years? Or even 50? Damnit, even a week! That’s all you have to look at. Here’s your day: wake up either from a nightmare or some nurse coming in to take your blood pressure at 6 AM, watch TV for a little bit, be fed your breakfast, which is a white liquid, through a tube because they don’t want to run the risk of having you choke, watch TV some more, count holes in the tile, a nap interrupted again by a nurse doing something simple, TV, your catheter probably falls out about then so someone has to come and re implant it, holes, TV, food from tube, TV.”

“You’re being a little over dramatic Lin-”

“Am I Frederick? Go ask Tom. I did. I wanted to know. He told me. That was his day, those are his words, not mine.”

Freddy lowered his head. I think he started to cry again. Steve just stared at me in open-mouthed disbelief. He couldn’t argue, and he knew it. I could see in his eyes that he was thinking over what possibilities he DID have though. I grabbed my things and quickly stood up to leave. I was only a few steps from the door when I decided to say one last thing on my way out.

“Oh, and one more thing. If either of you is thinking about telling someone about what Tom said, don’t. Tom WILL find a way to do this, with or without me. He will whether you tell or don’t. You know it’s true, and it can either be me or it can be some stranger. Tom may be able to persuade. If you won’t help me help him, then I say fuck you. Fuck the both of you. He was your real friend – one of your only friends – and this is how you repay him.”

TOM

“Are you getting this?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok. Wow, where do I begin? At the beginning, I guess. Are you ok with this?”

“I…”

“If you’re not, you don’t have to do it you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We can just set up the camcorder.”

“I know.”

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Alright then.”

She sits down and places the laptop computer in her lap. It is a thin miracle. Originally the idea was for a pad of paper and a pencil, but it was decided that typing would be faster. It’s also an appropriate medium for my final thoughts.

Out of the corner of my eye I look at her. The chair could not have been very comfortable. It’s as if the hospital was trying to hint that they didn’t want you to stay any longer than you had to, but she looked at peace. It was more than I had hoped for. I know it could not be easy for her, doing what she is. To tell the truth, I don’t know why she ever agreed in the first place. Pity? Perhaps. Responsibility? I hope not. I will have to remember to ask before this day is over – before the deed is done.

She rubs her hands out of nervous habit. I had seen her do it before but I knew that this time was different. I remember the first time I saw her, she was stunning. She still is. She’ll make some lucky man very happy some day. Maybe I could have been lucky.

The room grew quiet as I gathered up all the courage I had. I let my eyes go back to the ceiling that they had been looking at for over four weeks. The holes in the tile, I don’t know how many times I’d counted them. More than I’d care to admit. More than any human should be forced to.
I clear my throat, more out of habit than necessity. The words flow into my head but I don’t know where to begin or end. I only what I want to say in the middle.

She positions her hands over the keys just as I close my eyes, half in thought and half in pain. The truth would come out this night. There would be no more holding back. There was no longer any point to holding back. Just as there is no room for sympathy in a will, there is no room for lying in this type of letter.

I open my eyes again to the ceiling, but I don’t see it. I picture the intricate movements her fingers will make as she transforms my words into bits of information to be distributed.

Depressing the shift key with her left pinky finger and pressing the apostrophe with her other, hitting the m key, letting up on shift, hitting a, n, y, etc…

“Many of you will not agree with what I am doing – with what I have done…”

LINDA

I finished his last sentence and waited for more. My fingers loomed above an already pummeled keyboard waiting to strike again. I hadn’t even been consciously listening to what he had been saying. It was more like I was a machine that took the words from a person and put them onto a screen without actually being a person myself, but simply a program. He didn’t add another word though so I saved the document onto the hard drive of my laptop and closed it up. I knew what I was expected to do next and I set to my task without letting either of us have the time to turn back.

I stood up from my chair and pulled the clip off of his finger that measured his pulse and stuck it on mine. It went into an alarm for a moment which was something we both had expected and talked about. No nurses or doctors came in to see what happened. They were probably used to those things slipping off, which is what we counted on. We didn’t expect anyone to remember that the blip on the screen at that particular moment couldn’t move below his chin. We hadn’t formally discussed what we would say to whatever unlucky doctor or nurse that may have came in to check on him. I guess he couldn’t be blamed and I would just say that I had bumped it when I went over to hug him and decided to put it on my own finger quickly so I didn’t alert anyone. I don’t know if that would have worked or not.

He watched me intently as I took the tube that led from his IV to his left arm and bent it in half, stopping all liquids from entering his body. Then I took a pair of scissors out of my pocket and cut the tube above my fold. He had told me to be sure to fold the tube before I cut it. He said that the human body had dozens of different vacuums and that if I didn’t fold the tube before I cut it, I’d likely to be holding something very similar to a vein outside his body. I didn’t understand it fully, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. I left nearly three inches of tubing between the fold and the cut. I would have folded the end that led out of the IV, which was now separate from the tube I was holding, if I had enough hands. He said that it wouldn’t matter anyway; that no one would care about a small puddle of IV contents on the floor.

“Linda,” he said softly. I heard him, but it didn’t register as I thrust the tube which led directly to the vein in his arm to him, being sure to keep the fold closed as solidly as I could.

“Linda,” he said again, only a little louder than the last. “Why didn’t we ever stick together? Why couldn’t we make it work?”

“Tom, I- you know why. You know what happened.”

He chuckled at me. He was looking at me out of the corner of his eyes since he couldn’t move his head. It was odd to see him like that. It seemed like his eyes were the only part of him that was actually alive. It was then, at that very moment, that I realized why he wanted to do what he did.

“Yes, I remember what happened. But… I guess what I really want to know is if you really loved me.”

“I said I did.”

“I know you said it, but I want to know if you really meant it.”

“Tom-”

“-And, whatever the answer is, just tell me. There isn’t any point in dragging this out any longer. If you didn’t love me, just… just tell me. Don’t feel guilty or embarrassed, I just want to know. I just want to go to wherever I’m going and know the truth and know that YOU told it to me.”

“Tom, I-” I stopped. I had told myself that I would be strong for Tom and that I wouldn’t break down. I had done well all through the letter, and I had finished the physical part of my task. Even when he was telling me what it meant and why what he did could kill him I didn’t cry. If he would just have taken the tube in his mouth I could have gotten out of there without crying. I probably could have made it nearly all the way home without crying. But he didn’t take it.
I fell to my knees at the side of his bed, nearly losing my grip of the IV tube and cried. It was the most powerful and draining cry that I had ever had and it is currently only surpassed by the fit I had at Tom and Damon’s funeral. I felt Tom’s hand come to rest gently on the top of my head.

“If I could move, I would try to comfort you. I would want to kiss you, but I’d have to settle for a hug.” I felt it, I actually felt his hand, and it made me cry more. “I’m sorry Linda.”

Those words hit me somewhere deep inside of me. It was like an arrow that passed through my skin without me knowing, lodging itself into my chest somewhere. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. All I could do was think.

“Sorry for what?” I asked myself angrily. “Sorry for making me cheat on you? Sorry for being one of my only friends before, and my best friend after? Sorry for letting me hurt you? Sorry for making me… for having me help you give up?”

“I’ll call a nurse,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I’ll call a nurse and tell her what I had tried to do. I’ll say that it wasn’t Linda’s fault, that she was just being a friend.” I think it was then that he realized that he couldn’t even go through with this simple act. It was like someone put a big sign in front of his face that said, “You can’t move, remember?”

My fit of crying had stopped enough so that I could stand up without fear of falling again. When I did stand up though, I got very light-headed and put a hand on his bed to steady myself. When I felt that I had grabbed onto something very cold to steady myself, I immediately thought that I had grabbed one of the metal rails on the side of his bed. After I looked down, though, I snatched my hand away, repulsed at what I saw. I left a hand-shaped white mark on Tom’s arm. It was so cold, so deathly cold. Tom saw the whole thing and closed his eyes to keep from crying.

“Now you see?” he asked me with his thoughts, opening his then red-rimmed eyes. “Now you see why. I won’t ever use that hand again, or the arm, shoulder or neck. I won’t use my leg. I also won’t ever get to use the limbs on the other side. All I am now is a set of eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and a bunch of organs, of which only a few will actually ever be used again.” I realized that my hand was still up in the air as he said those things. I don’t know where what I perceived to be his thoughts ended and where his actual words began. He looked at me questioningly. I lowered my hand and regained my composure, but he still looked at me looking for an answer. I merely nodded, it was all I could muster. He nodded slowly too, then asked me to put the tube in his mouth, making sure that he was biting down on the fold so it didn’t slip open. I did it and took a step back.

“Yu’el want ta turn aroun. Thish… woun be preddy.” he said, the tube in his mouth making him sound drunk.

I nodded slowly as I turned my back to him, absently positioning the hand with the pulse clip on it so I didn’t pull the cord out of the machine. I thought about all the times we had spent together and all the fun we had, both when we were going out and after. Sometimes we’d just sit and talk while the radio played lightly in the background.

Behind me he took a deep breath. I could have sworn that I heard him say, “I love you Linda,” still with that drunken slurring caused by the tube. I was about to turn around to ask him why, but then I heard a sound like someone blowing up a balloon.

The person behind me was having trouble with the balloon, like they hadn’t stretched out the rubber of it first. A beeping was also there. I hadn’t noticed, but it had been there the whole time, even when I was typing. Before it was a calm, steady beeping, but now it resembled the alarm on a digital wristwatch.

“Tom,” I whispered. I couldn’t even hear myself over to beeping and blowing. I tried again, but my voice wasn’t letting me overcome the sounds that were gathering all around me.

As unexpectedly as the blowing had started, it stopped. There was silence except for the beeping, which had slowed a bit more. I was afraid to breathe as if it might break the silence. Then there was a grunt, the sound someone makes when they are punched in the stomach but are able to flex their abs so it doesn’t knock all the wind out of them. Then came another grunt, like the first, only a little more painful, then a thrashing about. I took a shuddering breath and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look behind me, but there was a part of me that DID. A part of me actually wanted to stop what was going on. I would have been too late.

The thrashing took a couple seconds, I only know this because I only had time to take a few more breaths before it was over. I lowered my head and listened to the beeping, now steady as it had been when I was typing. Soon, even the beeping faded into the recesses of my consciousness. I looked down at my hand, the hand with the clip on the finger, and just stared for a few moments. We had, my mind thought ironically, shared a heartbeat for a few moments. I was finally able to give my heart – my whole heart – to someone.

“I’m sorry too Tom,” I whispered as I stood there with my back to him. I took the clip off of my finger. “I’m sorry I loved you.” The clip fell helplessly to the ground. I had already reached the door when it hit, an incessant beeping filling the room. I put my hand to the door handle, feeling how cold and rigid it was, and was tempted to look at Tom. I even went as far as to turn my head slightly in his direction, but I couldn’t go the rest of the way. I’ll remember Tom as he was, I decided. I’ll remember Tom as he wanted to be. At that I left, passing doctors rushing to his room.

The security of the hospital detained me only a few hours. Since Tom’s parents didn’t want to press charges, and the hospital really didn’t want to try and press charges on a minor, or get involved in some sort of Supreme Court battle on the right to die, I was free to go with only my “own guilt to punish me.” That’s what one of them said anyway.

I walked out casually, almost hopefully, humming a tune that makes me cry even to this day. At the time it seemed like a song of hope.