Men, Women & Children (23 page)

chapter

seventeen

“S
o, my V-card is gone,” said Hannah Clint to a shocked handful of Goodrich Junior High School Olympiannes. Among them was Brooke Benton, who said, “You had sex with Chris?”

Hannah said, “Yep. Last night in his room.”

Up until that moment Brooke had felt fine, even good, about where she and Danny had decided to take their physical relationship. She was happy that she had performed oral sex on him once, because it quelled some desire in her to match what her peers had done, to go as far as they had. And at that time, she knew only of Hannah Clint and the oral sex she had performed on an unnamed boy the summer before. But in that moment, as Hannah Clint divulged her news to the entire Olympianne squad—except for Allison Doss, who was still not back in school following her episode in the east wing girls’ bathroom—Brooke felt insignificant. Until that moment, she had been as experienced as any other girl at Goodrich Junior High School. Hannah had taken a step that Brooke hadn’t, and now stood in a place that Brooke didn’t.

As the other girls asked Hannah what it was like to have sex for the first time—wanting to know details about the intricacies of the act itself, the feel of a penis, if pain was involved—Brooke said, “She only had sex with Chris Truby. He’s gross anyway.”

Before Hannah could offer a rebuttal, Mrs. Langston entered the girls’ locker room and asked everyone to sit down. She said, “Before practice today, I thought I should mention that I got some news today about Allison. The first thing you should all know is that she’s going to be okay.” Mrs. Langston didn’t know the details of what had happened to Allison. Allison’s mother, Liz, had called Principal Ligorski and lied, explaining to him that Allison was having some complications with her first menstruation and would be out of school for the rest of the week. This information was disseminated to the rest of the faculty to relay to their students as they saw fit.

Mrs. Langston said, “Just like all of you, Allison is going through changes and having her period and her body doesn’t seem to want to cooperate like it should. So she’s going to be out for a few days and we’re going to need someone to take her place at the top of our pyramid tomorrow night.”

Mrs. Langston continued on, assigning another Olympianne to take Allison’s spot at the top of the pyramid, but Brooke wasn’t paying attention to anything going on around her. All she could think about was the fact that Hannah Clint had had sex before her, and that the sex she had was meaningless, with Chris Truby. It seemed to Brooke that, if anyone was supposed to be having sex, it should be her and Danny. The same feeling that had compelled her to perform oral sex on Danny before the first game of the season compelled her this time to start contemplating having sex with him. She didn’t feel any readier to engage in the act than she had when she and Danny decided to scale their physical relationship back, but it didn’t matter to her. It seemed to be a matter of principle more than anything. She considered Hannah a slut, like the caricatures of teen girls on any of the Tyra Banks shows she had seen. Her mind was made up: She would not be outdone by a slut.

C
hris Truby was in the cafeteria eating lunch with Danny Vance when word reached him, through Tanner Hodge, that the news was out that he had had sexual intercourse with Hannah Clint. Tanner offered his congratulations by saying, “Lucky fucker. How are those titties? You get your dick between ’em?”

Chris said, “No.”

Tanner said, “Faggot.”

Chris was trying to understand what was happening. To his knowledge, he and Hannah had engaged in what he considered a failed attempt at intercourse. He certainly hadn’t reached orgasm. He knew that Hannah had failed to achieve one of her own. He had engaged in no thrusting to speak of. His limp penis had been resting just inside the opening of her vagina for a few seconds. From the countless hours of pornography he watched, Chris knew that what he and Hannah had done was not sex. He wondered why she would have spread the rumor, and beyond that he wondered if this meant that she wanted to continue their attempts at a normal sexual relationship or if it meant that she was done with him. Perhaps she had realized that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted from him, decided to create her own reality in which she had gotten it, and used that as the reality she presented to their peers. In either case, Chris was happy to be known as the first boy in the eighth grade to have sex, and the fact that it was with Hannah Clint, the proprietor of the largest breasts in their class, would only serve to raise his status with not only the boys, but the girls at Goodrich Junior High School as well.

Danny said, “Jesus, man. That’s some big news. When were you going to tell me about it?”

Chris said, “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to kind of keep it on the down-low, you know?”

Danny said, “Sure. You can show me pictures of trannies fucking each other in hockey masks, but you can’t tell me you nailed Hannah Clint?”

Chris, easing into the lie a bit, said, “Look, man, I just didn’t know if she wanted everybody knowing, and I definitely need to hit that shit again, so . . . I was just protecting my investment.”

Danny said, “Oh, yeah, your investment.”

Chris said, “So when the fuck are you and Brooke gonna get down to business?”

Danny was happy in his relationship with Brooke. He didn’t feel the need to match Chris or any of his peers in terms of their sexual experience. He said, “I don’t know. Whenever we get around to it, I guess.”

Chris, now fully embracing the new identity Hannah’s lie afforded him, said, “Pussy. Hannah and I just started hooking up, like, last month, and I already fucked her. You guys have been together for over a year.”

Danny said, “Yeah, lay off, dickhead.”

Chris said, “Touchy, touchy. My bad. Just keep jerking off every night. I don’t give a shit.”

Danny said, “Thanks.”

A
cross the lunchroom, Tim Mooney sat with Brandy Beltmeyer. It was something they each looked forward to daily. They considered the time they spent with each other during their lunch period to be the best part of their day. Tim said, “I think my dad is going to the football game this Friday, so he won’t be home if you think you can fake your mom out and want to come over and watch a movie or something.”

Brandy said, “I don’t know. I might be able to, but she hasn’t done one of her surprise inspections of my computer in a while, which always makes me hella nervous. I just like being there when she does it, so I can know what’s totally going on. If I’m not there, I’m always worried that she’s digging around through my stuff.”

Tim said, “Okay, cool, well, whatever.”

Brandy, “Uh-oh, it looks like somebody’s a little sad that he might not get to see me this Friday.”

Tim smiled and said, “Whatever. I could care less about seeing you.”

Brandy smiled and kissed him on the cheek. The kiss went unseen by Mr. Donnelly, the faculty lunch monitor. Displays of affection between students were officially limited to holding hands and hugging on campus. Anything beyond that could be grounds for suspension or, at the very least, after-school detention. Tim liked the fact that Brandy took pleasure in breaking this rule.

Brandy said, “Let me text my mom and see how she responds. If it seems like she’s busy with other stuff Friday night, then I’ll come over. If not, I probably can’t.”

Tim said, “Okay,” and kissed her on the cheek, which also went unseen by Mr. Donnelly.

After the lunch period ended, Brandy sent her mother a text message that read, “Lauren wants 2 know if I can C a movie w/her Friday.” Brandy’s mother, Patricia, replied with a text message that read, “Okay . . . as long as it’s not too late.” Brandy replied with a text message that read, “K, we’ll get tix for an early 1.” Patricia replied with a text message that read, “Okay, I love you.” Brandy replied with a text message that read, “U2.” She then logged into her Freyja Myspace account and sent Tim a message that read, “See you Friday.” Tim received a notification on his phone that he had a new message from Freyja just before his earth sciences class. He read the message and responded with one of his own that read, “Can’t wait,” before swallowing an Anafranil tablet.

chapter

eighteen

T
he Pound Squires maintained one of the worst football fields in the district. The grass, what little there was, was never mowed or managed. Most of the field had given way to large patches of dirt, which had turned to mud after a heavy rain the day before the Goodrich Olympians arrived as the visiting team in the eighth game of the eighth-grade season.

Some opposing players and coaches speculated that it was these substandard playing conditions that made the players on the Pound Squires football team more resilient and better than many other teams. It was accepted that they were not the most skilled team in the league, but they were easily the toughest, the most robust, and the players with the least adherence to the rules of football. Every opponent the Squires had faced that season left the game having suffered at least one season-ending injury among their players.

Danny Vance took all of these things into account as he took the field for the Olympians’ first offensive drive. His plan of attack was similar to what he had done in many of the prior weeks: a strong passing game designed to spread the defense’s secondary thin and allow for shorter pass completions for a series of first downs that would ultimately lead to a red-zone drive for a touchdown. This plan was set into motion and executed perfectly, yielding six first downs for the Olympians followed by an eight-yard touchdown pass to Chris Truby.

After a three-and-out offensive series from the Pound Squires, Danny took the field again, this time anticipating the shift in defense that usually came after he delivered a successful passing drive. Coach Quinn, anticipating the same thing, called a running play to Tanner Hodge to open the second Olympian offensive drive. The play was run for a loss of three yards as the Squires’ defense seemed to be adhering to their original run-protection defensive plan, sending their free safety in to blitz on virtually every play. Danny saw this, and when the next play brought into the huddle from Coach Quinn was the six-three-eight flip right, another running play, he called time-out and made his way to the sidelines to discuss something with Coach Quinn.

Since Coach Quinn had loosened his philosophy, allowing Danny to pass more frequently in the hopes of winning more games, he and Danny had developed a more cordial relationship. They were almost friendly. Danny said, “Coach, I don’t think they’re shifting for the pass. I think we should keep passing until they drop the safety back or show any sign that they might be playing pass protect.”

Coach Quinn had trusted Danny in the games leading up to this one, and as a result the Goodrich Olympians hadn’t lost another game. He had no reason to doubt Danny in this situation. Coach Quinn said, “Sounds good. One-four-two fly left?”

Danny said, “Yeah, that should work,” and ran back to the huddle, where he relayed the new play to the rest of the team.

Danny took the snap, dropped back four steps, turned his head to the left to check Chris Truby, his primary receiver, and was sacked by the Squires’ defensive tackle. In the huddle, Danny asked Randy Trotter if he missed his block assignment and Randy explained that it had nothing to do with his block assignment. He claimed that one of the Squires’ defensive linemen had tripped him, allowing the defensive tackle to make his way into the backfield unhindered. The trip went unnoticed by the two referees officiating the game. Danny assumed this type of illegal play was a major component of the strategy the Squires had employed in most of their victories.

He attempted another pass play, which resulted in an incompletion due to blatant pass interference that the referees failed to call. Danny knew that the referees who oversaw eighth-grade football games were far from NFL level, but he was surprised that they’d missed what he considered an obvious pass-interference call. He assumed that the Pound Squires would continue to play in this manner and hope that the referees would miss more calls than they would see. He decided to call a run play, which resulted in a gain of two yards and brought the punting team onto the field.

The Pound Squires were able to score a touchdown and an extra point on their next drive. The fact that every member of their offensive line was holding on almost every play was a large part of the reason for their successful drive. They were penalized for the act only twice in a drive that consisted of eleven plays.

As the game reached halftime and the Pound Squires headed to their field house, leaving the Olympians to occupy their own sideline, the score remained seven to seven, and Danny Vance was having a difficult time seeing how exactly he could secure a victory against a team who employed illegal tactics to such a degree and seemingly without penalty.

As the team came together and each player took a knee around Coach Quinn, who was delivering a speech about the necessity of ignoring the Squires’ gross misconduct on the football field and continuing to play a clean game, Chris Truby was staring at Hannah Clint, who was cheering roughly twenty yards away on the same sideline. He hadn’t talked to her since the entire school had fallen under the impression that he and she had engaged in sexual intercourse. It was clear to Chris that Hannah had spread the rumor, but it was unclear to him why she would have done it. He had thought about sending her a text message, but thought better of it, content to live the lie that he was more sexually experienced than he actually was. A text message probing into the purpose behind the exaggeration might bring it all tumbling down. Still, Chris liked Hannah and didn’t want their relationship to end. As Coach Quinn shifted topics in his half-time pep talk and began outlining various techniques for the defensive line to overcome being held on every play, Chris decided to let Hannah make the first attempt at any further communication between them.

Brooke Benton watched her boyfriend, Danny Vance, as he knelt in front of Coach Quinn. She found him attractive and she even felt that her love for him was genuine. These things alone were not enough to compel her to overcome her certainty that she was not ready to have sex with him. But as she looked at Hannah Clint cheering next to her with a smile on her face, Brooke thought she looked older, more adult than the other Olympiannes. It was something Brooke wanted for herself. She began to convince herself that she needed to have intercourse with Danny as soon as possible.

B
randy Beltmeyer said good-bye to her mother and father, got on her bicycle, and rode away from her house toward her friend Lauren’s house. She continued on this path for a few blocks, until she was out of what she considered her mother’s range of surveillance. Then she changed her course and headed to Tim Mooney’s house. She was excited to see him.

Brandy’s mother, Patricia, had become increasingly suspicious of the amount of time her daughter was supposedly spending at her friend Lauren’s house. She knew them to have been close friends since early childhood, but it seemed that Brandy was spending almost twice the amount of time with Lauren that she was used to.

After Brandy left, Patricia logged on to her computer and opened her Spector Pro keystroke logging program. Spector Pro was Patricia’s last line of defense when it came to knowing everything her daughter did online. Up to that point, she hadn’t felt the need to use it. She was under the impression that her daughter was open and honest about all her online activities, and their weekly Internet checks had seemed satisfactory. It was only the increased time Brandy was spending away from home that had made Patricia curious enough to access a Myspace, Facebook, and iChat summary report of her daughter’s computer through Spector Pro. The summary report was long, and Patricia was tired of looking at a computer screen all day. She opted to print out the report and review it for any anomalies as she and her husband watched
American Idol
.

Patricia read through the first few pages of the summary report finding nothing out of the ordinary. There were several iChat conversations with Lauren, several Myspace and Facebook messages sent to Lauren and other friends, and several school-related e-mails to and from teachers. Intending to peruse the entire summary eventually, Patricia set the stack of papers down on the coffee table when she heard Ellen DeGeneres make a particularly humorous comment, deciding to devote her full attention to the show for a few minutes. After watching the show to completion and falling asleep in her chair next to her husband, who was asleep in his own chair, Patricia woke up and went to bed, leaving the unread summary report on the coffee table.

Brandy arrived at Tim Mooney’s house unaware that her mother had a printed copy of every website she had visited in the past two weeks, every username and password she used to access those websites, and every keystroke she had typed to compose messages or chat conversations on those websites. Tim was playing
World of Warcraft
when she came in. Since beginning his Anafranil regiment, he had found that
Warcraft
was a more enjoyable game than it had been without the effect of the drug. He had begun to feel he had almost no control over any of the occurrences in his life. His mother’s remarriage, which was taking place in a state he had never even visited, to a man he had never met; his own relationship, which could exist only through deceiving the mother of the girl he was involved with; his father’s growing impatience with his decision not to play football—these were all things Tim felt he had no control over. But when he logged on to
World of Warcraft
, he found some comfort in the fact that he knew every square inch of Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend. He knew every detail of every boss encounter in every instance. He knew the relationship he maintained with each of his guildmates, and he knew those relationships would never change. There would be no surprises when he played; there would be nothing beyond his control. He spent more time playing and interacting with his guildmates than he had in the past, using any stray ten minutes or more to log on and complete a daily quest or just check the auction house for anything that might be of interest, which is what he was doing when Brandy arrived.

Tim told his guildmates good-bye when his doorbell rang and logged off after the first two comments appeared in guild chat in response to his departure, reading, “Is your mom’s pussy stretched out from that nigger she’s marrying yet?” and “What about her butthole? Niggers love butthole.”

Tim and Brandy spent the night watching an episode of
Locked Up Abroad
, which they both found enjoyable. During the course of the episode, Brandy said, “I don’t know if this is totally off-limits or whatever, but why does your dad go to the football games if you’re not playing anymore?”

It was in that moment that Tim realized that he had never asked himself this question. He knew the answer. His father wanted him to play football, wanted things to be like they used to be, so badly that he maintained his normal pattern of behavior, ignoring the obvious changes that were happening around him. Tim said, “I guess he likes football. He’s friends with some of the other dads, I guess.”

Brandy said, “Oh. It just seems weird, you know?”

Tim said, “Yeah. I guess it does.”

After the episode of
Locked Up Abroad
came to an end, Tim turned off the television and kissed Brandy, who was happy to return the kiss. They continued to kiss and hug for the next thirty minutes without removing their clothes or elevating their physical interaction to a level that included anything beyond kissing and hugging. This made them both happy.

D
on Truby was far less inebriated than he usually was at the beginning of the second half. He knew that he was generally a happier person as a result of having a sexual relationship outside of his marriage. He wanted to tell Kent and Jim about Angelique Ice, about the new life he was leading, but he knew it was potentially dangerous to let anyone know about his infidelity.

Jim Vance had scheduled his vasectomy to occur two weeks later, choosing to wait until his son’s regular football season had concluded, not wanting to risk any complication with the surgery forcing him to miss a game. Looking for some support in the matter from his friends, he said, “So, I’m getting a vasectomy in a few weeks.”

Kent Mooney said, “Ouch.”

Don Truby said, “She finally broke you down, huh? Getting the old nuts cut. I’d do it, too, if I had a wife forcing me to do it, I guess.”

Jim said, “She’s not forcing me. We’ve talked about it for a long time and it seems like the best thing to do.”

Don said, “Yeah. I bet you’ve talked about it. Did the conversation go something like this—‘If you don’t get your balls chopped off, I’m never fucking you again’?”

Jim couldn’t help but laugh. Don’s recounting of the conversation wasn’t too far from the truth. Kent said, “I don’t know if that’s something I could ever do, honestly. Just the idea of it is . . .”

Don said, “Well, you might want to get over that unless you want to have a kid with Dawn Clint.”

Kent said, “Well, we’d have to have sex first.”

Jim said, “How long have you guys been dating?”

Kent said, “I don’t know, maybe a month or so.”

Don said, “And you haven’t fucked her? I had no idea what a pussy you’d become.”

Kent said, “I’m working up to it. We’re going out tomorrow night. It’ll probably happen then. I just haven’t been ready, exactly.”

Don said, “Like, you can’t get a hard-on?”

Kent said, “No, emotionally ready, you jackass.”

Don said, “Wow. You’d be less of a pussy if you just had a limp dick.”