Boy Toy (15 page)

God! If she knew
what
I was daydreaming about...! I turned my attention back to the test and finished it. I hated the way she'd said "little girlfriends."

I handed the test to her. She thanked me and looked at the clock. "It's still early, Josh. Your mom won't be home yet."

"I know."

"How about this—let's go back to my apartment and I'll get the next test. You can do it right away. We'll get ahead that way."

"Sure."

On the way to her apartment, I said, "I don't have any, you know. Girlfriends."

"What do you mean?"

"Before. During the test. You said about my 'little—'"

"Oh, Josh!" She laughed. "I was just teasing you. Don't take everything so seriously."

"But—"

"And besides, I can't believe you don't have a girlfriend. What about Michelle?"

"Michelle
Jurgens?
"

"Yes. She's cute, don't you think?"

"Michelle likes Zik."

"Oh. Well, who's that other girl I always see you hanging out with? Rachel?"

"Rachel's just my friend. And a really good baseball player."

"Good for her." She looked over at me. "Don't worry, Josh—there'll be plenty of time for girls."

I wasn't worried. Not particularly.

"You're a good-looking kid. And you're very mature and respectful. Just wait until you get to high school—the girls are going to love you."

Well, that was nice to hear.

At her apartment, she rummaged through a stack of papers on the coffee table until she found the one she wanted. It was a really short, really easy questionnaire about my reading habits. I had done something like it on the first day for her, so I couldn't figure out why she wanted me to do it again. But she kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen, returning with her glass of wine, so I didn't ask questions. She sat across from me in a chair, her legs tucked up under her, and leafed through a book while I answered the questions and sneaked the occasional glance at her exposed knees.

When I finished, she unfolded herself from the chair (giving me a quick and painful glimpse of the inside of one thigh, down low near the knee) and put the questionnaire on top of a stack of papers. It was still early.

"Do you want to play Xbox to kill time before I take you home?" she asked.

Duh! I scrambled for the controller while she went back into the kitchen.

There was already a game in the machine—I checked the empty box on top of the Xbox to see what it was. "Is it OK if I play the one that's already in here?"

She came back from the kitchen, her wineglass refreshed. "I don't see why not. Just don't save over George's game or he'll get all huffy."

Well, I could understand that! "But..." I showed her the box. I figured I should at least ask. The game was rated M.

She read it: "Blood and gore. Strong language. Violence." She sighed. "Probably nothing worse than you've seen on TV, right? Just don't tell your parents, OK? Our secret."

I mimed turning a key over my lips and then tossing it over my shoulder. She laughed and settled back and I switched on the Xbox.

That's how it went for a little while—I would stay after school and, if it was an early test day, Mrs. Sherman would drive me back to her apartment. I would switch on the Xbox and settle in to play while she sat nearby, shoeless, sometimes in a chair, sometimes on the sofa, grading papers and occasionally egging me on when I did something stupid that got my character killed on-screen. Her toenails went from pink to naked to a funky electric blue to red and then back to pink. She must have spent a ridiculous amount of time on them.

After a few days of this, we just skipped the school part altogether and went straight to her apartment. It was easier to do the tests there, she said. Quieter. No distractions. I filled out surveys, answered interview questions, told her about how I learned to read, about my school experiences. She carefully noted everything I did, took notes, filed everything.

I have to admit that I had some more wet dreams and it got pretty embarrassing. I'm pretty sure Mom had to realize, since I was putting my pajamas in the laundry a lot more often than usual. But she didn't say anything, so I didn't say anything.

I got to see more of the apartment—after all, my bladder couldn't hold out forever. I went down the hallway to the bathroom and resisted plundering the medicine cabinet. But I did get a quick peek at the bedroom on my way back—nothing to write home about. Just a bed, some furniture, and some more of that cool artwork on the walls. I liked the artwork and I told her so.

"Really?" She seemed surprised. She was in the kitchen, pouring the last of a bottle of wine into her glass. I grabbed a Coke from the fridge. By now I was pretty comfortable here. On a couple of nights when my mom and dad had to work really late, I even ate dinner with Mrs. Sherman and George. (He wouldn't let me call him "Mr. Sherman." "I'm not your teacher, Josh. And besides, you can kick my ass on half these games. I should be calling you Mr. Mendel.")

"Yeah. It's cool. I've never seen anything like it before." As if I had extensive art experience! But I was feeling quite grown up. Mrs. Sherman treated me like an adult, not like a kid, and it was just the two of us hanging out in her apartment, like friends. George wouldn't be home for a while yet.

"That's because it's original," she said. "A friend of mine from college paints them."

"Really?" I wandered into the living room and stood before one of the bigger paintings. I had never seen
real
art before, art that someone actually painted. Except for a field trip to the museum, but that didn't count.

"Yes." I almost spilled my Coke—Mrs. Sherman had come up right behind me, her bare feet silent on the carpet. "She's really talented. We roomed together junior year and stayed in touch."

And then...

I don't know why.

She put an arm around my shoulders. "What do you like about the art?" She sipped at her wine.

But...

Her boob ...

Her
breast
...

Was just
resting
against my shoulder!

I could
feel
it, the side of it! Her breast lay there, heavy against me, yielding just slightly. My vision swam—the riot of color before me didn't help. My lungs, suddenly tight, had trouble getting air. And when I
did
breathe in, I smelled...

Strawberry.

And wine.

"It's chaotic," I said in a whisper, because a whisper was all I could manage. Her
breast.

"Wow," she said, and pulled me tight against her for a brief, glorious moment. Her breast just
smashed
against me for that instant and my throat tightened and I was
rock hard
in no time flat, near to hyperventilating, and then she pulled away. "That's a really, really amazing viewpoint from someone your age, Josh. I mean ... That's exactly the point of this series: chaos." She looked over at me shook her head. "You know, I have to keep reminding myself that you're only twelve. You look and act much older."

Right now, I was just acting like I had to turn away from her; if she looked down, she would see ...
everything.

I held my Coke can strategically to block her view and started to head back to the Xbox. "Thanks." It seemed inadequate, though. She was telling me I was a grownup. Or close. That I wasn't like the other kids in school. I knew that already, of course. My grades. Teacher comments over the years. Even my focus in baseball, which coaches had always called "beyond advanced." Mom and Dad used to worry that I wasn't having enough fun, until I convinced them that working hard in school, on the diamond,
was
fun for me.

Just wait until you get to high school—the girls are going to love you.

You're very mature.

You're a good-looking kid.

I sat in front of the TV and prayed that she wouldn't sit where she could see my lap, but she did. I held the Xbox controller there and unpaused the game just as a dinosaur came on screen and made the controller vibrate with the shaking of its footsteps.

"Does that
vibrate?
" she asked, as if discovering this for the first time. How could George play all these games and she still have no idea about it at all?

"Um, yeah." And, in fact, it was vibrating against me right now, and I wanted very much for it to stop.

"Let me see."

I handed over the controller, leaning in such a way as to conceal (I hoped) my lap. She took the controller and jumped a little at its vibration, then laughed and said, "No wonder George likes this one," before handing it back immediately.

I sat there with the controller and an erection and my eyes locked on her left foot and its pink toenails. "You can..." God, my mouth was dry even though I'd just drunk a Coke. "You can play if you want."

She laughed again. "God, no. That's OK, but it's sweet of you to offer." She got up (quick flash of thigh again) and ruffled my hair on her way back to the kitchen.

On the screen, my character was eaten by a dinosaur, with much gnashing of teeth and squirts of blood and dino spittle.

I reloaded the game and played until it was time to go home. That night, I lay in bed and replayed the breast, the pull closer, the toenails, the hair-ruffling over and over in my mind. To my shame, I had to change my pajamas before I even fell asleep.

At lunch and during recess, I'd let Zik in on selected details. There were some things I just couldn't tell him, even though he was my best friend. I told him I got to play M-rated video games, that I'd seen the bedroom and bathroom in the apartment, and that Mrs. Sherman thought I was very grown up and mature for my age. (This last sent him into a paroxysm of air-smooching and self-hugging, accompanied by "Oh, Josh! Oh, Josh!" until I beaned him with a dodgeball.)

In early December, we got hit with more snow. Nothing like the near-blizzard that shut schools down a few weeks earlier, but just enough to make it a pain in the ass to drive and walk. When we got to Mrs. Sherman's apartment, the sidewalk was covered. She made us hold each other for support, sliding an arm around my waist, and I decided that needing to lean on someone wasn't such a bad thing. I put my arm around her waist in turn, aware of how close to her breast and hip my hand was, midpoint between two things I wanted to touch
very
badly. On the other side, her breast and hip pressed against me, making me dizzy, the very opposite of what hanging on to each other was supposed to accomplish. I was glad for the long winter coat that hid my hard-on, and the slippery stairs that made it OK for me to walk a little funny.

At the stairs, I started counting, my usual routine, ticking off the first six steps in my mind, then a half-turn on the landing, then one (seven) two (eight) three (nine) four (ten) five (eleven) six (twelve)...

"Don't go so fast," Mrs. Sherman said, laughing. "I'm an old lady."

"You're not old, Mrs. Sherman."

"That's sweet of you, Joshua." For some reason, hearing her use my full name made me feel ... adult.

I don't know why. When my mom used it, I was usually in trouble.

But Mrs. Sherman didn't come down hard on the word, didn't draw out the end of it. She said it...

I don't know. She said it like she said "George."

Once inside the apartment, we enacted our latest ritual: I would go to the kitchen and pour her a glass of wine and get a Coke for myself. She would disappear into the bedroom while I was doing this and reappear shoeless, usually with a button or two unbuttoned on her blouse.

We sat in the living room and she quizzed me on some general knowledge-type questions: current events, terrorism, things like that. Then I was free to play Xbox. I was doing much better in the game than George was, but then again, I had more time to play it. He had to test a bunch of games at work; I could focus on this one.

Mrs. Sherman sat nearby in the living room, grading her papers or reading a book while I played. She never asked me to turn the volume down.

After one particularly loud dino-roar and explosion, I looked over at her to see if I was bothering her. What I saw made me dizzy and rock hard all over again. Mrs. Sherman was sitting on the sofa, leaning back and reading a test paper. It wasn't just that by leaning back her breasts pushed up and strained against the material of her blouse. No. It's that her legs were slightly apart, and thanks to the reflection in the glass-topped coffee table, I could see...

I could see.

Right up her skirt.

Right up to her
panties.

At least, I
think
they were panties. There was almost nothing there, just a strip of shiny black material. I thought I would explode. I was like an animal trying to cross the highway, caught halfway, terrified by the loud sounds and zooming metal things but unable to move for all that fear. I couldn't make myself look away, but at the same time I knew I
had
to look away, that at any moment she could look down or look over at me and see me doing this, doing this horrible, horrible thing.