Somebody Love Me (Journeys) (2 page)

Of course, I was thrilled he'd taken me to see his secret hang out, but scared about getting caught at the same time. We'd had a police officer come to our school and talk about the dangers of drug use, so I knew it could be bad. What did it mean that he'd shown me his private hangout today? Did he want to introduce me to drugs?

"What are those guys doing in there?" I asked in a stage whisper as I walked beside him, trying my best not to act nervous but cool instead. I wanted to verify my suspicions without sounding nosy.

"Buying weed.
But you're too young for that, so don't even think about it."

"Hey, I'm fifteen. That's old enough to know what I want." But it was kind of sweet that he wanted to protect me.

"Whatever you say, babe, but you're not getting it from me. Listen, I want you to meet some of my friends. Don't say anything, especially about your age. Just smile and everything will be fine." Fish squeezed my hand and peered down at me with that intense look in his eyes that gave me goose bumps.

Oh, be still my thumping heart. I'd do whatever he wanted just to be near him.

I studied him a moment and didn't sense any evil intentions, so I trusted him and followed his lead. Since he always said he was trying to protect me when he kept me out of his business, I thought he loved me.

He was so nice to me and always made sure I was comfortable with everything we did. I had to admit I was proud to be with an older guy who had a lot of friends. Plus, he was the best-looking stoner I'd ever known. I hadn't experimented with drugs yet. Most of the people I knew from school were ahead of me in that regard. Sometimes I was tempted to see why smoking pot had such a fan base.

A group of teens stood by the train tracks, and some of them were smoking the stuff. I recognized the icky sweet smell from the bathroom at my high school. I watched as they passed a little pipe around a circle of guys. A few girls stood in the crowd, but near the back corner of the lot.

I loved how Fish draped his arm over my shoulder so everyone would know we were together. I liked that he wanted to hang out with me even though I'd heard his friends refer to me as jail bait more than once. I asked at school what they meant and they said it had to do with my age because I was under sixteen.

Fish introduced me to a girl named Mary who happened to be around his age, and her younger sister Cathy, who looked like she was at least a year younger than me.

"Missy Houghton, this is my friend Mary Dunkin. And this is Mary's baby sister, Cathy Dunkin."

Cathy stuck out her tongue. "I'm almost fourteen. I'm no baby."

He rolled his eyes because she had just proven his point. He went on to introduce me to his male friends inside the dim clubhouse, like he was proud to be with me even though he'd stopped putting his arm around me at that point. His friends stopped their card game to check me out. One offered me a cigarette. The only ones that didn't stop what they were doing were the guy and girl making out on a cot in the corner. I guess they were too preoccupied with each other to care.

Another guy winked at me and slapped Fish on the arm at the same time. Fish gave his friend a slight shake of the head and frowned, whatever that meant. I recognized his friend Jeff as one of the guys who'd checked out my body at the pool when Fish and I had started seeing each other. I liked knowing Fish had impressed them by picking me up as a girlfriend. I just wished I understood their man signals.

After brief introductions, I went over to visit with the girls I'd just met. As we got to know each other, I found out that Cathy was crazy about a drummer guy named Dave, whose brother was the main drug dealer in the neighborhood. Dave played in a local band and toured city bars for extra money. She talked about him all the time.

According to her sister, he was almost twenty years old and didn't know she existed. Talk about jail bait. Plus, according to Mary, he'd dropped out of high school and sometimes sold drugs with his brother on the side. But Cathy didn't care, she just wanted to have sex with him, but she used the F word when she described it. I'd just met the girl and I couldn't believe she'd told me something really personal like that when she barely knew me. She said she didn't care if it made her a slut. She had to have him. Period.

Within days of meeting them, I discovered that unlike Cathy, who fixated solely on Dave, the older sister
Mary, liked just about any guy who paid attention to her. She had nice blond hair and a shapely figure, but a rather long nose and homely face.

Unlike her sister, Mary's personality lacked boldness, and she presented as very shy around guys. Cathy was much prettier with her curly long brown hair, green eyes, and smile. She had a good figure for being only fourteen. They seemed to know everyone and had a lot of friends on the West Side. I'd heard Mary was famous for her BJs too. I wasn't brave enough to ask her if the rumor was true.

I had never obsessed about guys before I met the sisters, nor was my only goal in life to have sex with some cute guy. Something about the way they viewed sex changed my perspective over time. They also lived a few miles from my house, so they had to take the same city bus across town to hang out with Fish and his friends. I decided hanging out with them might be fun even if they were always talking about boys and who they wanted to "do it" with.

Since we didn't go to the same high school, it didn't matter if they were popular or not. With my mom being sick a lot and my dad working all the time, any distraction from the sad reality of my life was worth pursuing. Little did I know, though, that my pursuit of pleasure would end up causing me so much
pain. In fact, nothing I experimented with ended up being as glamorous as I'd imagined it would be.

Later that same evening, I decided to go home with the sisters to see where they lived. I'd already called my parents from a pay phone and told them I was going to my new girlfriends' house. When my mom picked up the call, she told me to have fun. While I liked this new thing of not getting interrogated by her, it saddened me at the same time. What did it say about my mom that she didn't bother to ask me for details? Or did she simply believe I could be trusted? I didn't want to think about that.

As the three of us walked to the bus stop to leave the west end and return to our neighborhood before dark, a girl called my name and waved at me to come closer. I strolled over to where she stood so I could find out what she wanted.

The moment I stepped within two feet of her, she punched me in the mouth and yelled, "You stay away from Fish, or I'll kick your ass."

I blinked and touched my mouth, now bleeding and sore. A coppery odor and salty taste filled my senses and made me gag. I had no idea who this girl was or why she cared who I dated. As she swung her fist at me a second time, I grabbed her hands before she could hit me and pinned them down at her sides. I didn't know why she hated me, but I knew enough to subdue her before things got any worse.

Once she finally settled down, I let go and turned away from her. She tossed a lot of F words and verbal threats at me as she stormed off with a few girls I didn't recognize. I walked the rest of the way to the bus stop with my friends, more than a little stunned.

"Who was that girl? Why did she hit me?" I glanced at Mary, who had exchanged a knowing glance with Cathy. They both smirked. They knew something they weren't telling me. I could sense it.

Mary shrugged. "Her name's
Beata. I think she's dating Fish. Or at least she was."

What kind of name was that? Come to think of it, she did have a bit of an accent.

"He never said anything to me about another girlfriend. I thought I was the only girl he was seeing right now." I dabbed my lip again, which had split where it hit my slightly crooked tooth when Beata punched me.

Mary shot her sister another knowing look and I decided they definitely knew more than they were letting on. But since I'd just met them, I wasn't going to push it or nag them until they told me more about her and Fish.

Besides having a nasty mouth, that girl Beata had a seriously strong right hook. If I had realized her intent to punch me in the face, I wouldn't have gotten so close to her. But why did she have to hit me anyway? What did I ever do to her?

I never heard anything about her liking Fish, or him liking anyone else. I didn't know a thing about her, so how did she know about me? I didn't even know she existed until she'd given me a bloody lip. I couldn't help feeling a bit betrayed, especially when someone told me later that she was pregnant and Fish was the father. I couldn't have been more shocked since he'd never tried to have sex with me.

Honestly, I don't remember a guy ever liking me before Fish did, so I didn't know how fleeting a relationship could be. We talked about a lot of things and had fun together, at least until that witchy girl came between us that afternoon. The breakup hurt like a knife to the stomach, and even though it was my idea to dump him, I'll never regret meeting him. I'll treasure those memories because he was the first guy to take an interest in me beyond friendship. It's not every day you get a first boyfriend.

Regardless, I thought maybe he wasn't such a great guy after all if he couldn't warn me that he had an angry ex-girlfriend waiting in the wings ready to give me a bloody lip. I stopped seeing him after that and decided his friend Jeff was pretty nice, so I wanted to give a relationship with him a try. The funny thing was Fish didn't seem to care that I had dropped him and started seeing his friend. I thought he'd at least be jealous.

In fact, after all those kisses and flattering words, I hadn't expected such extreme coldness. He never said a word to me when he saw me hanging around his friends until one day he noticed that I was smoking a cigarette with some of our mutual acquaintances. He just looked at me with a surprised expression, and then stared them down before returning his gaze to me.

I thought maybe he was going to apologize for
Beata hitting me, or admit he had been two-timing me and say he was sorry. Or maybe he'd even tell me he was angry that I'd dumped him without telling him why. But the words that came from his mouth surprised me.

"That doesn't make you cool," was all he'd said as he walked off.

I wasn't smoking to try to look cool. The reason I'd started smoking with my friends had more to do with calming my nerves. Some of the things I witnessed made me more than a little scared. I suppose I did feel older and more sophisticated when I lit up. I didn't smoke pot though. Only cigarettes. Not a big deal, right?

Besides, my dad smoked a pack a day. And my mom used to smoke until she got sick and couldn't walk anymore without getting winded. Then she just cried a lot. I hated to see her feeling sad, so I spent a lot of my free time away from home. The fact she couldn't -- or wouldn't -- chase me down made it easier to deceive her.

My poor dad worked three jobs just to make ends meet and pay the various medical bills my mom's illness created. There was little supervision in my home, and because I was an only child, my parents must have thought I could handle things like an adult. It was easy to lie so I could hang out with my new friends, and neither of my parents would be the wiser.

If I decided to get drunk with Mary and Cathy, my parents wouldn't know about that either. As long as I was sober by the time I got home, everything would be cool, or so I hoped. I hadn't tested that theory yet.

Mary and Cathy did whatever they wanted because their mom was too crazy to do anything. At least that was their explanation for her lack of concern. That should have tipped me off that these girls could get me into serious trouble. Call me stupid, but I figured their mom's clinical depression didn't have much influence on them. I started to see their mental issues the more I got to know them.

They also had two step-sisters who lived in another neighborhood. The step-sisters had a lawyer for a dad. He was no longer married to their mother, but they often hung out like they were still a step-family. It was bizarre, to say the least.

I liked their step-sisters, Margie and Sharon, sometimes more than I liked Mary and Cathy. They seemed mentally stable and actually tried to pass their classes during the school year. Plus, they had a cute older brother named Clay who was in college. They told me he thought I was pretty hot after they showed him my yearbook picture. At least the step-sisters didn't smoke pot and run around town chasing down the next party.

Anyway, Fish's friend Jeff was nice to me in the beginning, like Fish had been. I heard he worried about me being jail bait too, but despite that, he tried more than kissing with me. Not much happened beyond him touching my chest, but it made me uncomfortable when he slid his hand inside the waist of my jeans. So our "seeing" each other didn't last long. He didn't kiss nearly as
good as Fish did anyway, so I wasn't too sad about that.

Now that I was used to guys liking to kiss me, however, I didn't want to go without a boyfriend for long. I felt naked without a guy by my side. The way my heart pounded when a guy wanted to kiss me gave me a feeling of importance. When I had dry spells without a cute guy to make out with, I started feeling a desperate need to change that, which, I discovered later, is never a good thing.

In my case, it set me up to compromise my values, just so I could have a boyfriend. Once you go beyond kissing, you can't backtrack with a guy and return to holding hands. I learned that lesson the hard way.