Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (9 page)

My mom was satisfied that our work was done, so she didn’t care what we did at that point. Since it was still relatively early—no, not relatively early, it was too damned early—we told her we were going back to bed for a while. She had her own things to do and didn’t seem remotely concerned, so we went back to my room, closing and locking the door behind us.

We shed our clothes and happily crawled back into bed, wrapping ourselves in each other’s arms. Bill rolled to his right and pulled me up tight behind him. I willingly complied, wrapping my arms around his body. We both had a strong desire to revisit our previous night’s explorations, but we both fell asleep almost immediately, albeit with two ample erections.

When we next crawled out of bed, we were both more rested and more sexually relaxed than we had been earlier in the day. There was still so much, so very much, we wanted to explore on the other’s body, but we knew that would have to wait for another day. With great reluctance, Bill and I dressed, and after a late lunch/early dinner, he got back into his car and left for home.

It was clear to me that he absolutely did not want to leave. At the time I thought that he didn’t want to leave simply because he wanted to stay with me. While that fact was true, I later learned that there was more to the story.

O
N
ANY
given week, Bill and I did not share that many classes. We usually spotted each other occasionally in the hallways or in the cafeteria, and of course in calculus, but otherwise our lives did not overlap. So I was very surprised—no, beyond surprised, shocked!—when Bill sat down at my lunch table where I had sat reading by myself. He gave me one of his patentable smiles and asked me quietly how I was doing. His smile deserved my best effort, so I smiled back at him and told him that I was good, but not as good as I had been before he left.

“Did you have any trouble getting home?” I asked him.

“No. The roads were plowed. The driveway at home wasn’t plowed so I had to park out on the road until I could get enough space cleared at the end to get my car in. Let me tell you,
that
was a royal bitch! The snow had been plowed in and weighed a ton!”

“I wish I had thought to go with you so I could help out,” I said.

“You did so much for me already. I’ll never be able to repay you for your generosity.”

“Sure you will,” I said with a smile. “Want to know how?”

“No, I think I have a pretty good idea.” Did he blush? I loved it!

Our conversation had to stop at that point. Bill and I ran in different circles in school. He, for one,
had
a circle. My mission in life was to keep my head down and be as small a target as possible. Others like me didn’t form circles. It really shouldn’t have surprised me when one of Bill’s buddies—acquaintances, as he later clarified—decided to sit with us. The guy looked confused as to why Bill was sitting with me, but he seemed to bask in the glory of Bill’s presence—take a number, buddy—so he went where Bill went.

The guy was joined by another and then another, and before long the table was full of jocks. Bill was a smart guy, and a couple of the other jocks were smart as well, but there were several who were definitely not high on the mental food chain. To them, sports was the only acceptable topic of discussion, mostly because that was their entire world, the only thing at which they excelled, and therefore the only thing they paid attention to and the only thing they could really talk about. Needless to say, I had little that I could contribute to the conversation. I was pissed, in all honesty, that these idiots had invaded my very limited time with Bill. But there was nothing I could say, obviously. They had him all the time—couldn’t they just back off and give me my precious few minutes with him? I wanted to scream at them, to rant, to rave, to chase them away, to kick them to the figurative curb. But I couldn’t, so I didn’t. I just sat there and, in my own variation on their routine, basked in Bill’s presence.

All too soon lunch was finished and it was time to head off to the next class. At least we got to head out of the cafeteria together. Bill whispered discreetly at me as we left, “Can I come over to your house tomorrow after school?”

“Of course. Absolutely. Yes!” I said, a tad too enthusiastically.

He chuckled, seeming to enjoy my enthusiastic response.

Somehow I got through the remainder of my day. My afternoons were usually easier for me than my mornings, partly because we had calculus, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course I had the added benefit of having Bill just a few rows over, although I really had to work exceptionally hard to keep from staring at him. All I needed was for some Neanderthal to see me staring at their number one jock and there would be hell to pay. No. Couldn’t risk even looking his way. Had to keep exceptionally focused on the teacher and my notebook.

The rest of the afternoon was endured, and then I caught the bus home. Homework never took me much time so I had the bulk of my evening free to watch TV, to read, or do something productive—I usually fought down such urges. Since my parents went to bed relatively early I had the house to myself for the bulk of the evening. I wanted to text Bill but hadn’t thought to get his cell phone number. I also didn’t have his e-mail address so I couldn’t even send him a message. Actually, texts and especially e-mails could be seen by someone else. Better yet, I needed to find some messaging website where we could set up a private chat. I made a mental note to talk with him about this when he was over the next evening.

And speaking of the next afternoon, getting through the eighteen hours between then and the next evening seemed to take absolutely forever. I don’t know if it was because I was super horny and couldn’t wait for the chance to get off in the company of my very own sex object, or if time did indeed slow to a crawl. Either way, it seemed like it took an inordinately long time to get to the point when school got out that afternoon.

Bill hadn’t sat with me at lunch again that day, which I hated but knew was probably for the best. I knew that every joy came with some cost, and in high school those costs could be real killers. We were too close to getting free from this place to risk exposure at this point. No. As much as it pained me, and it did pain me, I knew it was best to keep my head down. And hope that my little head stayed down as well—whenever he popped up I knew that my bigger head had trouble keeping me on a safe, even course.

We had grabbed thirty seconds in the hallway in midafternoon to confer. Bill was still planning to come over to my house if I was still interested. Still interested? Was the man having psychotic delusions or something? Of course I was still interested. But in true surly high school fashion I tried to downplay my enthusiasm, giving him just an ultra-short smile that told him my true feelings.

I took the bus home from school. Bill left separately—were we being too obsessive? Too careful? Who knew? We absolutely didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves. There were always people watching everyone do everything, it seemed. People observed changes in behavior. We didn’t want to give anybody any reason to question anything, so we did the “travel by different cars and wear disguises” routine. Well, no disguises actually, other than surly teenagers, but that wasn’t so much a disguise as a well-worn costume.

Fortunately, my mom was out for a regular weekly church meeting and my dad wasn’t home yet, so Bill and I beat a hasty retreat to my bedroom and pounced on each other. Before anyone got home, we quickly dressed and moved out to the living room to make some pretense of studying calculus.

Bill stayed for dinner, and we got a few more minutes in my room before he had to leave. We used the time to try to lick each other’s tonsils, and I think we did a pretty respectable job, all in all. When it was time for him to go, I hated having to say good-bye. I stood in the basement doorway as his car drove down the driveway and out of sight.

Damn! I had forgotten to ask him about his cell phone number and e-mail address. Ugghh! I really had to make a list for the next time, since having some way to keep in touch with him between our rendezvous would help a great deal.

A
ND
so we fell into a bit of a pattern. Bill had basketball or track practice three nights a week after school, so we couldn’t get together every night, but on the two nights when he wasn’t obligated to something already, he came over to my house. On Tuesdays my mom was usually out, but she was always there on Thursdays so it was more difficult for us to have any intense personal time with her always popping up to ask a question about whether Bill liked a particular food or wanted his steak rare, medium, or well done. I wanted to scream at her after one particularly poorly timed interruption.

I finally remembered to ask Bill for his cell phone number and e-mail address and was shocked to hear that he didn’t have either. Was that even allowed? Was a teenager in America allowed to be seen in public without a smartphone—or even a dumb phone? And even my grandmother had an e-mail address. What was with that? When I pushed him on the issue, Bill told me they didn’t have a computer at home, that his dad wouldn’t allow any of his hard-earned money to be wasted on something he didn’t understand. His dad sounded like a real winner.

I had both a desktop computer and a laptop computer. Actually, I had two laptops since I had gotten a new MacBook Air for Christmas the previous December. And there was nothing at all wrong with my previous laptop. It was bigger and weighed more but otherwise it worked fine. I started to wonder if I should give it, or loan it, to Bill so that he could have Internet access and be able to e-mail me and keep in touch when we weren’t able to be together physically. But I didn’t know how he could get Internet access from way back in the hills where he lived. If his dad wouldn’t even allow a computer in the house, he certainly didn’t sound like he would be eager to pay for Internet access. I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t buy it for him. Not to mention the entire issue of how to get it past Bill’s dad without him seeing and questioning.

After mulling—no, stewing—over the problem for one night I had an idea, albeit not a perfect one, but an idea nonetheless. Like every other teenager in America—aside from Bill, that is—I had a cell phone. Actually, so did my dad and so did my mom, although she didn’t carry hers and didn’t ever use it. To the best of my knowledge, hers still sat in its original box in the closet. Dad had only gotten three phones with three lines because he got a package deal that he thought was a good deal. It probably wasn’t, but at the moment, I didn’t care because it gave me an option I didn’t have previously.

That night after my parents went to bed, I went to the closet in question and found what I was after. As I had expected, I found the box, still in the bag from the store in fact, with the phone completely untouched. Taking it to my room I opened the box. The phone was identical to the one both my dad and I carried and used. I just didn’t have that many people I needed, or wanted, to call, so I used mine more for games and Internet access from school.

A few hours on the charger and the third phone was powered up and good to start doing all kinds of phone stuff. I tested it out to be sure I had the correct number for the phone. I hoped that the ringing didn’t wake up my parents, even though I caught it very quickly and silenced it almost immediately.

Even though by that point it was getting late and I needed to get to bed, I poked around the Internet a little bit to find a good, innocuous place to set up basically a couple of dummy e-mail addresses. I chose absolutely generic, nondescript addresses, something with seemingly random characters and letters at whatever domain name I found first. I set up a simple password for each and wrote a simple text file with the basic information on how to access the account. I also programmed my cell number and home number into the phone but also gave them utterly nondescript identifications, something like Nv1967a, which to the best of my knowledge had no relevance to anything real. It wasn’t part of anybody’s address. It wasn’t part of anybody’s birthday. It wasn’t anyone’s name. If the phone fell into enemy hands, I wanted to be sure that both Bill’s and my identity would be safe.