Hold Fast (8 page)

I even got into taking up some of his habits. Every night I'd spend a good hour or so reading. I started with the mammal books, hoping that with so much each night I could read my way through them all.

The weekends came to be the worst part of it. Before, I used to be that anxious for the weekends to come that I could barely wait for the last bell to go on Friday. Now it was different. I was glad enough that school was over for the week. No matter how good it was, you had to be glad of that. But there was no real excitement to it when you knew that you'd be spending most of the next two days bored sick. I wasn't on any hockey team or volleyball team or anything, so once I'd been to the arena skating or down to the pool for a swim, then I'd be left with shag all to do during the daytime. Except maybe hang around one of the shopping malls. And who wants to be at that all the time.

The season it was had a lot to do with it. The fall of the year back home meant a lot of other things to me. I use to be in the woods a lot then, after rabbits. That was just about my favorite time of the whole twelve months.

I'd tell Curtis all about what I used to be at in the fall. He might agree with me on how good it was, but I could see he was only doing it to be nice. He didn't know no more about it now than the leg of the chair he was sitting on. But I couldn't get mad at him for that. He didn't grow up spending time in the woods. He wasn't that lucky.

We went to a scattered movie. When we could find one, that is, which didn't have a stupid R or X after the title. And they was few and far between. There wasn't a prayer, not a prayer, of getting in to see those kind by ourselves. As if they could show me something I didn't already know. Half the time all that was left was cartoons, or something else just as bad.

When we went out on the weekend nights, usually it
was only just to hang around Kelly's drugstore down at the end of the street. Some of Curtis's friends might be there. That didn't automatically make them my friends. And what some of them stood around and gabbed about anyway was enough to drive you crazy. I mean, who wants to be talking about homework on a Saturday night. I wish I could a said I had better things to do with my time, but I didn't.

Sometimes we didn't go out at all. Ended up staying home and watching TV. That wouldn't a been so bad if the army sergeant hadn't been there to jump down someone's throat at the first bit of noise he didn't like. It got so that most times I'd go downstairs and watch the black-and-white set rather than stay in the living room where the color one was and have to listen to him.

Sometimes we was lucky enough to strike a night when he was gone. And better still, some nights the both of them would skin out to the club somewhere and Marie'd be gone, and we'd be left home with the house to ourselves.

This one night that happened and I was bored sick all day anyway, so I got Curtis on the go to make a trip down to Kelly's and invite some people he knew from school back up to the house. I knew that if I left everything up to him, all that would get asked would be his computer-mind friends, so I made sure that some others got in on it too. Some girls. I didn't know any of them, but that was nothing. As long as they wasn't stuck-up, that was all that mattered.

I spose I shouldn't a gone and done it, talked Curtis into letting all those people into the house. He didn't go
much on it. What he had on his mind was the mess they might make. But I made good and sure no boots or shoes got past the porch. There must a been twenty-five people in the house by the time the last ones came through the door.

What they would a done was sit around all night talking and watching the hockey game on TV if I hadn't tried to liven things up a bit. I got Curtis to search out Marie's bedroom until he came up with some records. The fellow was mindless when it came to having a good time. I told him not to worry, they'd be all gone by the time his parents got back. Cripes, he wouldn't relax for a minute. All he kept doing was to go around saying to people, “Don't spill anything on the carpet, don't spill anything on the carpet.” Like that was all there was to think about.

Inside half an hour I had the whole place organized perfect. So many was in the kitchen making pizza, a couple was sent off down to the store to get some drinks, I had the TV off and the stereo on and the place moving like a teenage dance at the Legion on a Friday night. Well, not that much. There was a few stiff-necks who wouldn't get their arses up off the chesterfield. But as for the rest of them, old man, after the first few times, I couldn't put the records on the stereo fast enough. And the faster the music, the better they liked it. I had all I could do to find time to eat.

By eleven o'clock the party was top high. This Dolores someone or other was putting the makes on Curtis. Whata laugh! He might a had some fun out of it too if he hadn't been so darn worried about everything. Every five minutes he'd be looking at his watch.

Then, between one of the songs, we heard the front door open. It was like a ton of concrete came smashing down on him. Every bit of noise disappeared.

Marie trotted in, with a look on her face like she figured for sure she must be in the wrong house. You could hear all the breaths going out the one time. Only Marie, thank god. Curtis's heart took a hundred and eighty degree turn and went back down out of his throat.

He figured for sure we'd better call it quits then. I had to agree with him. So almost as fast as they came in, we paraded them all out again. One false alarm like that would be all we'd be lucky enough to get. So out they all went.

Then we had the job. How to get things back in shape. First we gave Marie a warning to keep her trap shut about what she'd seen. She wasn't even sposed to be home yet. We said it in a nice sorta way, so that perhaps she'd think about helping us with the dishes. No dice, especially when she found out we'd been using her records.

So it was all up to us to get the place spotless again. Curtis on the dishes in the kitchen. Me going like mad with the vacuum cleaner in overdrive. It took a lot of work and we was beat to a pulp by the time we got it all done, but inside forty-five minutes she was looking like new again. All except for this one spot of tomato sauce on the carpet. I rubbed it and rubbed it with a wet cloth till my arm was sore. Then I put the end of the coffee table over it.

We was in bed having the biggest kinda laugh about these two girls Dolores and Daphne when Curtis's parents got home. It must a been one o'clock before they came.

“See, Curtis, you dummy, I told you.” Not mad at him really, because it was a good time while it lasted. In fact, thinking about it, it was the only real bit of fun I ever had in that house.

That party made me another few friends in St. Albert. They all kept asking when was there going to be another one. But the ones I got along with best at school was still the bus crowd. When October came, Gerard started bugging me to come out to Simon's Bay and stay at his place for a weekend. It would be a real chance to get out and spend some time in the woods like I'd been itching to do all along. The only thing was, I had no way of getting there.

Brenda was the one who came up with the dandy solution. Her father worked as a mechanic in St. Albert. He drove back and forth every day. I could go out with him on Friday evening and come back again early Monday morning when he drove back into work. She could get it all set up, she said, no problem.

Of course, I wanted to spend the weekend at Simon's Bay really bad. But after Brenda came and said she could fix up the transportation part of it, then it was like it got to be her invitation, not Gerard's any longer.

By that time she had been in the picture for about two weeks. If you wants to know the truth about who she was
— well, to put it simple — Brenda was the first girl I ever really had the hots on.

There was no big lot to the way we met. She didn't come running out of a grassy field in slow motion, ready to sling her arms around me. She was Gerard's cousin, and somehow she was there pretty often when we got together, hanging around the corridors in school. I could see it right away — not just that I liked her the first time I seen her, but that she really liked me. You can tell that in a girl a mile off.

I was never much of it until the last year or so when it came to dealing with females. It's not that easy. There's a lot more to it than I figured. You can't expect to leave them on the other side of the room anymore. Suddenly they're right up close to you and you got to look them square in the eyes.

What I seen when I looked at Brenda was pretty good, I got to say that. I won't go into any of the details, but see her in a dress like she was at the first school dance, and I tell you, you wouldn't ask no questions.

She was pretty nice all right. The only thing about it was that she was taller than me, even with the boots I had on. Damn the hormones, or whatever they're called. I mean, that's when you could really use height, when you're dancing the slow ones with a girl. I couldn't give a darn any other time. But at least you wants to come close to being even when you're there together on the dance floor. We wasn't the only ones like it, thank god. But it's still the shits, no matter how you looks at it.

I tried to forget about that part. If she didn't mind, then I sorta didn't. It never stopped me from having a good time. That's one thing about me now, there's not
much problem in the asking part of getting girls to dance. I use to be like the guys you'll see who comes to a school dance and sticks in the corner all night or are all the time going outside for a smoke. They just haven't got the nerve to ask a girl, even when they're all dying to be asked. But sure once you've done it a few times, then there's shag all to it. I still ain't so hot on the slow ones myself. But I'm getting better at it. With your arms around someone like Brenda, then you tries to learn fast.

As it turned out, during the first school dance I spent practically the whole night with her. Hardly danced with any other girl. And I didn't mind that one bit. After all, she was really something, like I said.

Ay, don't get me wrong. She didn't have me twisted around her little finger. I could a been dancing with all kinds of other girls if I wanted to. Or not danced at all for that matter. It's just that sometimes you sticks with one, and that's easier. And I did get a few great kisses out of it too. Before she got aboard the bus for home. She was no slouch when it came to that, either.

That night, after I came in the house and went to bed, I got to thinking a lot about what happened. Cripes, I thought, what am I getting myself into? Did I really want to get tied onto this one girl? I felt like that was the way it could turn out to be if I let it. It was awful tough to have to decide when you never ever came up against a problem like that before.

After a while thinking it over, I began to fall off to sleep. I was tired, but what kept me half awake was all these wild thoughts that started running around in my head about me and Brenda. Some of them was just about
as private as you can get. And my hands under the covers didn't exactly do much to stop them. No need to say any more than that. It'd only get me embarrassed.

When I woke up the next morning all I could feel was my underwear wet and sticking to me. Make no wonder, considering the dream I had after I went to sleep. It didn't bother me much. I knew what was going on and it happened before, anyway. The worst lousy thing was the stains it made. Thank heavens for the guy who invented printed sheets.

I don't like to say it, but sometimes sex and all that goes with it can scare the shit out of a guy. I mean, I'm normal and all that, but you hardly knows what to do sometimes. I've been feeling it more and more over the past few months. I'm getting more erections than I've ever had before, especially when I wakes up in the morning. Just guaranteed, guaranteed to be hard, especially if I've been dreaming. Erection — that sounds pretty scientific. That's a word I picked up in a film we had in guidance class a couple of years ago. Us fellows started using it all the time after we had the class. Just for a laugh. I knew most of what they showed in the films anyway, but I'm glad I seen them because the way they showed it sorta tied everything together. And now I knows all the goings on with regards to females too.

But still, like I said, sometimes sex can scare the shit out of a fellow. The thing is — you've got all this information plus you knows what you feels like yourself, and then you got to figure out how to go about dealing with it. And then again, just how much of it have girls got on their minds.

Sure, you can carry on a lot. Take a gawk at all the sexy magazines you can lay your hands on. Tell dirty jokes. Fire around comments. The fellows our age, the way we talks among ourselves, you'd think we was already all a bunch of sex maniacs.

But actually being with a girl, all that is different. If you really likes her, you don't go on with all kinds of dirt because she's liable to drop you faster than she would a stick of dynamite. It's just that it gets to the point where you're not sure what you should be saying to them or what you should be doing. These days it almost makes you wonder whether or not you're normal if sex is not on your mind all the time when you're alone with a girl.

Well, as far as me and Brenda was concerned, there wasn't chance enough for it to become much of a problem. We wasn't together long enough for that. As you probably guessed, I didn't make it out to Simon's Bay to stay for the weekend like I wanted to. And the way I got turned down loused up my life in the house even more than it was already.

I talked it over with Gerard and Brenda, and that afternoon when I went back to the house I asked Aunt Ellen if I could go. I told her who Gerard was, how everything was all set, what time I would be going and getting back, all that. She didn't say yes or no. All she would say was that I'd have to ask the army sergeant first. I might a known.