by Barry Lyga
"Well, here." She thrust the phone at me. "Your teacher wants to talk to you."
I had the presence of mind to enhance my lie by saying, "Which teacher?" as if I couldn't possibly imagine which teacher would be calling me.
"Mrs. Sherman," Mom said, with a little eye roll, as if I were a bumbling idiot child, and in that moment, I was.
I took the phone. "Hi, Josh," Eve said. "Is your mom standing there?"
Mom had wandered back into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, but she was still pretty close by. "Yes."
"OK. I just wanted to say good night to you."
"Oh." I felt warm again.
"I can't wait to see you tomorrow."
My head swam.
"Now say 'OK, Mrs. Sherman.'"
"OK, Mrs. Sherman." I was a robot, operating each line of code as it came to me.
"Say 'Thanks.'"
"Thanks."
"Are you looking forward to seeing me tomorrow?"
I flickered to her lips, her tongue, then reached out to steady myself against the wall.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Good. I'm glad." She sounded like a kid on her birthday. "If she asks, tell your mother that I called to let you know that you left a book here, but that I'll bring it in to school for you."
"OK."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"OK."
"Good night."
"Good night."
She hung up and I went into the kitchen to put the phone in its cradle. "What did she want?" Mom asked.
"She, uh, I left a book at her apartment." Wow! Eve thought of everything. "She's bringing it to school for me."
Mom tsked. "Well, you're lucky she's looking out for you, Josh."
No kidding.
It took me a long time to fall asleep that night.
10
For the next couple of days, this is how it went: I would go home with Eve after school and we would spend an hour or so on the sofa, kissing. She taught me what she liked, training my lips and tongue, an education in when to thrust and be aggressive and when to tease, passive. Her hands roamed my upper body the whole time, tracing electric charges over my chest and stomach and back and shoulders. Everywhere she touched me felt supercharged. I put my arms around her, touching only her back, exulting in the glory of her body pressed tightly to mine.
After that hour, Eve would excuse herself to the bedroom while I sprawled on the sofa and played Xbox. It took a while, but eventually my erection would subside. My Xbox play suffered; I really sucked after a make-out session with Eve. I couldn't concentrate. I flickered like the images on the screen.
If George was working late, we would cook dinner together, like we were married or something, and have another brief make-out session on the sofa while dinner cooked, stopping with the buzz of the oven timer. Sometimes she unbuttoned my shirt or (if it was a pullover) pulled it out of my waistband and skipped her nails lightly across my chest, a sensation I can only describe as ... indescribable. (I tried running my own fin gernails along my chest at home, but it didn't feel remotely the same.) Then we would eat, clean up, and get into the car to take me home for the evening. We would stop up the road from my house out of range of the streetlights and nosy neighbors, for one last brief kiss. Then Eve would check me over for lipstick and general disarray and drop me off at my house.
I was getting home later now, but my parents didn't seem to mind. I lied to them and told them that I was doing my homework at Eve's, so they saw nothing amiss. Instead, I would set my alarm for early in the morning and do my homework then.
School was tough. I thought of Eve constantly, flickered regularly. It made it difficult to pay attention in class, and almost impossible in history, where Eve dressed down and acted like I was just another student. School had always been easy for me, almost intuitively so, and I was able to get by and keep the Streak going, but only barely.
Eve hated that there was no way for her to talk to me at home without raising my parents' suspicions. They had caller ID and also monitored my e-mail.
A couple of weeks before Christmas break, things changed again.
It was a Friday afternoon, and Eve seemed particularly aggressive, moaning deep in her throat as we kissed and clawing at my back through my shirt. The lights were off, the room lit by candles placed on the coffee table. As Eve pulled back from me, her face was a gorgeous painting, sections drenched in black, others lit in a flickery orange. She was gasping, and so was I. Her hand lingered on my belly, stroking gently back and forth. I waited for her to get up and go into the bedroom, like she usually did. Instead, she leaned in and nibbled on my ear (another thing I never would have imagined could feel good ... but did) and whispered, "You poor thing."
I liked the way her voice went husky and breathy when we were alone.
"What do you mean?"
"I think I've been torturing you. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."
"What?" My head was spinning as her tongue found its way into the shell of my ear, flicking lightly, sending sparks down into my brain.
"It's so selfish of me," she whispered, and her hand moved farther south. When she touched my belt, I hitched up a breath and jerked involuntarily. "Shh! Shh!" she said. "It's OK."
"I'm sorr—" I started to say, but then her hand went lower, touching me through my jeans. Oh, God! She knew! She knew I had an erection! I wanted to melt away from embarrassment then and there.
"Don't be sorry. What are you sorry for?" It had to be a rhetorical question, because she shoved her tongue into my mouth just then and I was helpless as she found my zipper and pulled it down.
If I'd thought that the feel of her tongue on my ear or her nails on my naked chest were phenomenal, then I had absolutely no idea what to expect and no way to be prepared when her hand slipped into my fly. There was nothing tentative about it—her fingers didn't brush against me gently, they sought me out and grabbed. I groaned into Eve's mouth, was greeted with a groan in return.
It only took a few seconds for her to navigate the fly of my boxers and then her fingers were on me directly. I saw explosions of light against my eyelids as my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Before I knew it, she had me out in the open and broke our kiss.
I looked at her as she looked down into my lap. "Well," she said. "Well."
And started to do to me what I had been doing to myself two, sometimes three, times a day. Only it was so much better.
"Can you..." She stopped. Stopped talking, that is.
"What?" I was shocked I could even speak.
"Never mind," she whispered. "I want to be surprised."
I didn't understand, but seconds later I didn't even understand how to breathe as a kaleidoscope of stars exploded behind my eyes, leaving fire trails like bottle rockets.
Eve giggled a little and murmured something that sounded like, "That answers that." She kissed me on the cheek and went to the bathroom to wash her hands. I slumped on the sofa in something like shock until I heard her open the bathroom door and close the bedroom door. Then I went to clean myself up and straighten my clothes.
When I emerged, Eve was still in the bedroom, so I turned on the Xbox. Even though my play wasn't as good, I made up for it in sheer hours—I was kicking ass in the game because I was playing it so much, and I had promised George that I would get to the end before Christmas break and show it to him.
Eve came out of the bedroom a little while later. She looked at the TV and at me with the controller in my hand, sighed, and said, "Men," then kissed the top of my head in a way that was creepily like Mom. I pushed it out of my mind.
I heard her rummaging around in the kitchen. "Do you want me to help?" I shouted.
"No, that's OK, honey. Keep playing your game."
Usually only Mom called me "honey," and I hated it. But I liked it when Eve said it because she didn't have to say it.
I played Xbox until George got home. Eve came out of the kitchen to greet him with, I noticed, a dry, brief peck on the che
ek. Did she ever kiss him like she kissed me? I thought about it—I had never seen my parents kiss like that, either. Maybe...
Maybe what? I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I knew married people had sex because I'd heard my parents. But they didn't seem to kiss a lot. And Eve and George weren't kissing. Maybe they didn't have sex, either?
George took off his coat and kicked off his shoes, then joined me in front of the Xbox. "How's it going, bud?"
"Fine. I got into the pyramid." I didn't let my eyes waver from the screen.
"Excellent!"
My manners kicked in. "I can stop, if you want to play."
He shook his head. "Nah. I've been playing games all day. My thumbs are killing me. I'll just watch."
The three of us ate dinner together at the little table in the corner where the kitchen met the living room. George talked about the games he'd tested, some of which sounded really cool, although I discovered that he also had to test games for little kids, which sounded boring.
On the way home, Eve drove with one hand; we held hands over the armrest.
"Did you like tonight, Josh? Please tell me." She pouted.
"Yes." Deep down, though, I felt bad. Bad that I'd made her do it. Guilty that she'd felt compelled. Guilty for making a mess, of all things.
"Good. Look, this went farther than kissing, you know. I wouldn't just lose my job if this got out. I would go to jail. You don't want me to go to jail, do you?"
"No way!" I was getting tired of her constantly reminding me not to tell anyone, though. Of course I wouldn't tell anyone. I wouldn't do that.
"I'm going to miss you this weekend, honey."
"Me, too."
She sighed heavily. "Maybe I could buy you a cell phone or something?"
"My parents would wonder about that. I'd have to hide it."
"I figured that," she said, exasperated. "You'd have to leave it off at home, but you could go outside and call me, right?"
"I don't know. During the day, maybe. But it's getting—" I didn't want to continue. As the weather got darker and colder, my parents wouldn't let me go out as much at night. But I didn't want to advertise that I was a freakin' baby. "Maybe," I said.
"I'll think about it," she said, chewing her lip.
We had our usual make-out session in our usual secluded spot and then she dropped me off.
Mom and Dad were arguing when I got home, so I just slipped into my bedroom. They were fighting about money, which bored me, so I tuned them out. It was a good hour or so until Dad poked his head into my room and asked, "How long have you been home?"
"A little while. Mrs. Sherman brought me home."
Dad frowned. "You should have told us you were home. It's late. You should eat something."
"I ate already."
"OK."
I heard the front door close. "Where's Mom going?" Dad's eyes narrowed. He didn't answer. I thought maybe he didn't hear me. "Dad, where—"
"Shopping," he said, and left.
11
As always, Zik was my font of knowledge for all things sexual. He eavesdropped on his brother and father all the time, got to watch Kevin Smith movies on cable at home, and had that nigh-endless supply of fresh nudie magazines to consult. I bugged my parents until they drove me over to Zik's to spend the day. I told them we were going to play baseball with some other guys, despite the cold.
Zik and I spent the day out of the house, wandering his neighborhood. Anything to stay away from his parents. It was freezing outside, with a bitter wind, but we just jammed our hands into our pockets and roamed up and down the streets.
I didn't specifically tell him anything about Eve and me, just sort of made some calculated, seemingly random musings, and learned that I had been the recipient of my first "hand job," which sounded exactly like what it had been.
At dinner that night, Mom said, "You're awful quiet, Josh."
I shrugged. Only on the weekends did we all sit down as a family for dinner; we did it so rarely that it felt awkward and wrong somehow. I wasn't the only one being "awful quiet." Mom and Dad barely said a word through the whole meal.
"Is everything OK?" she asked. Dad was just watching the whole exchange like a prison guard or a scientist. I shrugged again. I figured that if I just gave her nothing, she'd get bored and give up.
Instead, she flicked her eyes to Dad, who nodded. Mom took a deep breath. "Josh, honey?"
"Don't call me 'honey,'" I said in the lowest growl my adolescent voice had ever mustered. I don't know where it came from, some deep, secret place low down in my heart or gut. But when I heard "honey" now, I thought of Eve and her lips and everything else, and the thought of that and my mother's voice and—
I just couldn't handle it.
Mom was taken aback. It was as if she'd gone to pet a cat and been snapped at by a wolverine. "OK," she said after a moment. "Josh, do you..."
And I knew, in that moment, what had happened. Someone had seen me kissing Eve in her car and told Mom. I was about to get into more trouble than any human being had ever conceived of.
"Josh," she said, starting again, "do you want me to quit my job?"
Huh?
"So that I can be here when you get home from school? So that you can come right home and not have to spend so much time with your teacher?" She was unsure, tentative, and I wasn't used to hearing my mother like that; it definitely got my attention.
But ... give up Eve? Unlimited Xbox? Give up being treated like an adult and not a child? Was she nuts?
"No, Mom. Everything's fine."
"You've been quiet lately." Dad jumped in. "Spending a lot of time alone in your room. More than usual."
"Yeah, but—"
"I want you to think about what your mother said very carefully," Dad said. "Very carefully."
"I know, Dad. But I'm fine. I just ... I just have a lot more homework this year, that's all."
I don't know where the lie came from—my homework was no more burdensome or difficult than it had been the previous year, and spending time with Eve instead of doing my homework in the afternoons hadn't made much of a difference. I was used to cramming in my homework after baseball practice two seasons a year anyway.
But the lie worked. Mom's maternal instincts came online. "Are they giving you too much work? Should you cut back on one of your academic classes?"
"He's not cutting back on a class," Dad told her. "That's stupid. He can't just change his schedule. This isn't college."
"If my son is having trouble, we'll talk to the principal and—"
"They aren't going to—"
"Guys!" I said. They stopped bickering. "It's no big deal. Really. It's just tougher, that's all. I saw my progress reports the other day and I'm still getting straight A's. I just have to work harder for them, that's all."
We finished dinner in a chilly silence, Mom and Dad barely looking at each other.
***
It was a long weekend and, for some reason, the phone rang a lot. Caller ID said "Caller Blocked," so no one picked it up, but Mom became increasingly annoyed at the constant ringing. Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, I picked up the extension in the basement just to find out who was bothering us.
"Hi, Josh," Eve said.
I checked my surroundings; no one was around and the basement door was shut. I would hear the creak of the steps if my parents came down and have time to hang up.
"Have you been calling all weekend?" I asked.
"I blocked my cell phone number," she said, "and figured I'd just hang up if your parents answered."
"You've been driving my mom nuts." I meant it as a scolding, but halfway through I started giggling. Eve laughed, too.
"Oh, well," she said.
"Why did you call?"
"I just missed you. I wanted to hear your voice."
That didn't make any sense to me. She just wanted to hear my voice? Now what was I supposed to do? What if I didn't have anything to say? Was I supposed to just say random words so that
she could hear me?
"Do you miss me?" she asked.
"Sure."
"That's nice. I like to hear that."
"I miss you," I told her.
"You can be very literal-minded, Josh."
"I was making a joke."
"Look, you have my cell number, right?"
"Yep." I had written it down for my mom, and once I write down a number, it pretty much sticks in my head forever. I used to think everyone was like that, which made things weird because I would get frustrated at people, thinking they were lying to me or being stupid by pretending they couldn't remember the number of strikes in the previous night's game or the page number of a homework assignment or the answer to the third question on last week's math test. Eventually, though, I learned that not everyone had my memory, poor suckers.
"Well, call me whenever you want, OK? Unless George is around, I'll pick up. Leave me a voicemail if I don't."
"OK."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"OK."
She paused, like she was either waiting for me to say something or for herself to say something that she hadn't settled on yet. And then: "Sweet dreams, Josh."
I shivered.
It was the week before Christmas break. I went to Eve's every day after school, as usual, and for the first few days, we had our usual make-out session, now bolstered by the mind-blowing hand jobs that I replayed each night at home.
Over the weekend, Eve and George had decorated for Christmas, and the apartment was adorned with holly and wreaths. The living room had sprouted a Christmas tree, and Eve turned off the lamps so that only the glow of the tree's lights lit the room.
"It's going to be a whole week," Eve said Wednesday night, pouting at the calendar as I zipped up. "Actually, more than a week."
The next day, on her sofa, she did something different. She fished me out of my fly and then, to my astonishment and complete disbelief, leaned down and took me into her mouth. I thought my eyes would melt out of their sockets.
When she was finished (and I was finished), I lay half on and half off the sofa, my body limp and weak, my ears ringing. Eve disappeared into the bedroom for a while, and when she came out, I was still lying there, my pants open, in shock, flickering in and out of the present as I relived moments that had just passed. She slipped next to me on the sofa and slid her arms around me, holding me, her lips pressed to my hair.
