Guardian Angel
2 Fairy Loops
IN SPITE OF the fact that Jessica and I never got back to the hayloft, I made it through the rest of my school year with few incidents. It seemed like anytime Drew or the Kowalskis or Andy or even any of the bigger kids in my grade (which was all of them) started heading my way, they’d look over their shoulder and see one of the sixth graders nearby and suddenly find something else to do. I felt sort of safe at school for the first time since I started.
Camp was a big thing that summer. Betts was sent to horse camp with Rika. That was great as far as I was concerned, but when I found out Jessica was going to a modeling camp, I was really worried. That meant that I’d spend my summer hiding from Drew. I couldn’t even get to my friends the Hopkins without going past Drew’s house. We managed it a few times, playing war in their yard and sometimes if there were enough people, we’d play ball in their field. My field had too many horse-apples in it.
I got pretty good at going to the barn like I was going to take care of Silk and then heading on out to the woods and circling around behind the Barnes’ to get to the Hopkins’ place. Sometimes I even rode Silk and let her graze in their field. She was a good old girl. I just rode her bareback. The saddle was too heavy for me to handle. I’d only seen Drew twice and I’d avoided him on those occasions. Then came the day that he showed up for our game of war. I tried to stay close to my buddies, but Drew kept popping up nearby.
I knew when I shot him and he didn’t fall down that I was in trouble. Nobody else was near.
“Hey, you’re dead.”
“Wrong. You’re dead, faggot.”
“You’re supposed to fall when you get shot.”
“Now you get to fall, you little runt.” Drew was all over me. He tackled me and sat on me. “You’ve been avoiding me all year, you little cock. I’m the sixth grader now and your goon squad is all going to junior high, so let me tell you what to expect this year.” He didn’t tell me anything. He threw an elbow into my ribs and then kneed me in the gut. When he finally left me, I crawled back through the woods and home. I just went into the barn and cried while I brushed Silk. I hated him. I hated my life. I wouldn’t even be riding the bus with the junior high schoolers. I was dead meat.
I didn’t go outside for the next week. I went to the attic instead.
The problem with the attic in the winter was that it was too cold to stay in for long. In the summer, it’s hotter than hell. One afternoon it had to be a hundred degrees up there and I just started mixing chemicals randomly. Nothing blew up, but I hit some combination that stunk to high heaven. And it was one of those ‘heavier than air’ things that went right down the stairs. In a few minutes, Mom had me taking everything out to the garage and opened all the doors and windows—most of which were already open as it was July. She had two big box fans and a little rotating one in the kitchen trying to air the house out.
Next day, Dad said they’d found a science camp they thought I’d be interested in. Sunday I was on a bus.
I was pretty smart, but that doesn’t make me a child prodigy or something. In Indiana, they wouldn’t know what to do with a prodigy anyway. I was already in the ‘smart kids’ class in school. But the summer at camp opened my eyes to the possibilities. I learned the difference between physical science and life science, for example. Physical science included most of the things that I was interested in like physics and chemistry. Life science included biology and botany. I’m not saying that wasn’t interesting. Especially when my lab partner explained it to me.
Angela Kimes was my lab partner. Science camp encouraged partnering with people who had different interests. Angela was one of about a dozen girls who were at camp with the thirty or so boys. The camp administrators made it clear that there was to be no prejudice based on sex, race, size, or even intelligence. Angela was about twice my size and a girl. She was the first black kid I ever met. Opposites in everything, except we were both really smart and—I have to confess—pretty proud of it. She was cool. We conducted experiments in the chemistry lab, recorded measurements in physics, collected leaves for botany, and charted the growth of sea monkeys in biology. We ate at the same table and walked to convo together in the morning.
Science camp wasn’t all science, and we even met to go swimming. She taught me the rudiments of playing tennis. I could barely get the ball over the net, but she kept no prejudice rule even for tennis. Angela was about the same age as me, regardless of what our size suggested. By a fluke, our birthdays being just thirty-five days apart, she was going into sixth grade as I was going into fifth. She was so good at everything and so smart that I forgot entirely that she was a girl. She was mostly interested in life science as I was mostly interested in physical science. We got each other through the rough spots.
“All life is based on male and female parts,” she said, explaining life science to me. “Until you get down to simple life-forms, like amoebas and stuff, all of the life sciences have a dual sex format.”
“Yeah. Well, in physical science there’s positive and negative,” I answered. “That’s about the same.”
“Right. If you take two hydrogen atoms and combine them with an oxygen atom, which is male and which is female? You don’t come out with baby hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It’s completely different.”
“Like there’s a male and female flower,” I laughed.
“There’s a male part, the stamen, and a female part, the pistil and carpel. The carpel produces the egg and the stamen produces the pollen or sperm. Just like you have a cock and balls that produce semen and sperm and I have a vagina and ovaries that produce eggs. You do know about sperm and eggs, don’t you?”
“Um… of course,” I lied. Chickens laid eggs. What’s that got to do with those other things? I started getting uncomfortable and squirmy. Angela looked at me like I’d just grown another head. Maybe I had. I tried looking at myself. No luck.
“I thought you country kids were all about farm animals and breeding and stuff,” she huffed.
“We plant corn and sometimes wheat. We don’t have cattle or pigs or anything.”
“Well, there you have it. Corn. You’ve got the male tassel that provides the sperm or pollen and the female silk that provides the carpel or egg. When the corn gets fertilized, you get little corn seeds that will grow into healthy adults if you plant them.”
“Male and female corn?”
“Then you get into the animal kingdom,” Angela continued. She was on a roll and we sat down on a log facing each other near the pond. We’d been walking around the campground after dinner and I hadn’t paid much attention to where we were. Nobody else was around. “Male and female created He them. That’s in the Bible. Corn has silk. I have a pussy.” I nearly fell off the log when Angela swung her leg over and pulled her shorts down. Then she turned to face me. “See? This is my pussy. I have a hole here that is like the corn silk. It conducts the sperm to the egg so it can be fertilized. Pull your pants down.” I was staring at her—well at her crotch. She was holding her—what’d she say?—pussy open and pointing out the hole where sperm went. I just pulled my pants down and faced her. Hell, if she was showing me hers, I’d show her mine. I was embarrassed because my cock was getting stiff. It did that sometimes when I was thinking about Jessica. “Thank God, it’s little. I’ve heard stories about them being big and hurting. That doesn’t look so bad,” she said. “So, you’ve got a cock. Under it is the balls. Your sperm gets made there and shoots up out of your cock. If your cock is in my pussy, the sperm hits my uterus and if there is an egg there, it gets fertilized and nine months later a baby pops out. It works the same way as corn.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” I asked.
“My mom and I have been talking about this stuff since I was practically a baby. She says everything in the world can be explained through male and female or yin and yang as the Japanese say. She’s a nurse. I’m going to be a doctor. Mom says so.”
None of the rest of science camp was anywhere near that interesting. Every time I thought about it, I started getting stiff. Somehow, I couldn’t help substituting Jessica in my mind for Angela. I mean, Angela was nice and I liked her, but Jessica was… well she was just Heaven.
When school started that fall, all I could think of was that I was going to get beaten to a pulp by Drew and his gang every day.
I hung out at the house until I could see the bus coming and then ran to the road just in time to get on after Drew had. I could see him ahead of me as we went down the aisle and saw his elbow come up to jab me in the gut. Then all of a sudden, a big guy blocked the path between Drew and me. He shoved me into the seat against another big guy. I recognized both of them. Carl Fisher and Doug Swift.
“Hey Brain,” Doug said when I almost sat on him. Carl slid into the narrow seat on the other side pinning me between the two. When did these guys get so big? They were both in my class, but last year they were nowhere near as big as this. My life was shit. Now I was going to get beat up in class as well as on the playground.
“I understand you might be able to help us with science this year,” Carl said. “I don’t mean like doing our homework or anything. But maybe you could help with things that we might not understand when Mr. Boyd says them.” I nodded absently.
“We figure if we sit with you on the bus, maybe you could explain things. Unless you want to sit with your buddy Drew,” Doug said.
“Uh no. That’s not a problem.”
“We aren’t a problem either,” Carl explained. “You know my brother Bill? He said my year would be a whole lot better if nothing bad ever happened to you. He told me to tell you Jessica said. Understand?” I did understand. Carl and Doug had just become my new best friends and I’d do my best to make sure they understood science.
The thing was that Carl and Doug turned out to be really good friends and not just bodyguards. I was still close to a foot shorter than they were and I didn’t weigh half as much, but we laughed and told jokes and studied. We all did pretty well that year.
“You’ve got to think of it in terms of science,” I said.
“Huh?” Carl asked. I laughed. It was the end of the first week of school and he’d just been talking about how Brenda got to him. Brenda was an early bloomer. That’s what Mom said. She had huge bumps on her chest and was wearing a bra. Carl was as fascinated with the straps of the contraption as he was with what it contained. He sat behind her all through the day watching for tell-tale signs of the straps moving beneath Brenda’s blouse. I’d watched a bit, myself, but he’d actually reached out with the eraser end of his pencil and traced the strap on her back during class. She’d turned around at one point and looked at him with big surprised eyes. She didn’t tell him to stop, though. I suppose she was relieved. If we still used inkpots resting in those holes in the old desks, Carl was the type who’d be dipping her pig-tails in it.
“Whoa, man. How does Carl getting hot looking at Brenda have anything to do with science?” Doug asked.
“It’s something I learned at science camp last summer. It’s a male-female thing.” I proceeded to tell them about stamens and carpels and penis and vagina, just like Angela had taught me. Well… I didn’t exactly mention us pulling our pants down.
“Are you serious?” Carl asked. “They taught you that in science camp? I’m going next summer.”
Doug pondered it all.
“I think it’s time I ask my sister to show me how it all works like she said she would,” he finally said. Neither of us believed for a minute that she would.
My overall relationship with girls changed, too. As if I’d ever had a ‘relationship’ with the girls in my class other than to be avoided. This year, I got adopted. Carl and Doug benefited from it, too. Here I am, both the oldest and smallest kid in my class—even Cassie Clinton, the shortest girl in our class, had grown a couple inches this year and was taller than me—and girls started treating me like I was a doll. None of the girls in my class still played with dolls, so I guess they decided to use me as a substitute.
“Bri-an,” Whitney called, stretching my name out. She batted her eyelashes at me like some movie star. “Come sit with us.” The girls at the table all giggled. It was lunch and I had a full tray. It’s not like I didn’t eat enough to grow. I ate everything I could get my hands on. My lunch tray was loaded. I think even the lunchroom ladies thought that if they fed me a little more I’d grow bigger.
“Um… I told Carl and Doug I’d sit with them,” I said motioning over my shoulder where they were filling their trays. The truth was that when I went anyplace where there were a lot of other kids, they stuck to me like glue. I had to thank Jessica next time I saw her. I’d just turned eleven and I was still alive. But we didn’t go to the same school anymore so it seemed like I never saw her.
“They can sit here, too,” Brenda said. “As long as they don’t do anything gross. Sit between Whitney and me.”
I had a new shirt on. It was one of two that I got for school and they were cool. Button-down oxfords. I was wearing the dark blue one with clean, if not new, jeans. I squeezed between the two girls and they didn’t give me any extra room. Carl and Doug sat at the ends of the table with Brenda, Whitney, and me on one side and Rhiannon, Samantha, and Liz on the other. These were the coolest and smartest girls in our class and just being at the same table put Carl and Doug on their best behavior—not to mention the fact that we were all in awe of Brenda’s… development. I’d no more than wedged between the two and started to shovel food in my mouth when Whitney grabbed the little hanger loop on the back of my shirt. I never figured out why they put those things on shirts like this. When I dressed for gym, I just hung the shirt on a hook; I never used the little loop.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I asked. I tried to turn toward Whitney, but Brenda put her hands on my shoulders and made me sit facing the table. Shit! I knew getting invited to sit at their table wasn’t a good thing. Carl and Doug would be fine at protecting me from Drew, but they’d be helpless against five girls.
“I’m taking your fairy loop,” Whitney said. I heard two snips and she brought a pair of little scissors and the strip of cloth in front of her.
“You cut my clothes!” I complained.
“I took your fairy loop. Now you have to do whatever I say. This will be fun!”
“For who?”
“Look around the table, Brain. I think you’ll have fun. Now do you have any more shirts like this one? I mean with a fairy loop?”
“Yeah. I got two new shirts. Mom will kill me.”
“Trust me. She’ll never notice. Who gets the next loop?” I figured Brenda was going to jump at it since she held me for my first snipping. I glanced at her and she was talking to Carl and he was nodding. Hmm. Across the table Rhiannon raised her hand.
“Me? I want my own fairy.”
“Okay. Next time you sit between Rhiannon and me and she’ll take your other virgin shirt loop.”
“Whitney!” All the girls at the table blushed. I figured there must be something going on here that I didn’t know about. Other than talking to Jessica in the barn and then to Angela this summer, I’d never really talked to a girl. I mean they were okay, but none of them were really into science. They all had girl-stuff to talk about. And all five of these girls were always together. Talk about scary. Nobody was ever going to have a conversation with just one of them.
Still, I sat there and finished eating my lunch as they chattered around me about movie stars and musicians and how cool they were. Whitney was pressed right up against me and every once in a while she’d put an arm around me and dangle my loop in front of my face. Fairy loop? Did she think I was gay? And she was, like, the biggest girl in our class. I mean tall, not like she was fat or anything. I started to scoot away from her a little because I was getting antsy feelings, but Brenda scooted back against me as she was talking to Carl and kept me pinned up against Whitney. I glanced across the room and saw Drew and the Kowalskis looking at us. I’d take Whitney.
I didn’t wear the other oxford shirt until Monday the next week. In the intervening time, Samantha and Liz each sat next to me once, pinning me against Whitney. I noticed, though that Brenda had taken up a position on the other side of the table and was always next to Carl. I wore the yellow oxford on Monday and Rhiannon sat down next to me. Whitney draped her arm across my shoulders while I felt Rhiannon snip my fairy loop. I looked at the three girls across the table from me and shrugged my shoulders.
“Sorry. I only have two of these shirts,” I said.
Brenda surprised me when she held up a white loop. She looked at Carl and he blushed. We were in fifth grade and Carl was nearly six feet tall already. He had sandy hair and freckles and when he blushed, his whole face went red.
“When did you get that?” I asked.
“He wore it to church Sunday. I got it in Sunday School.”
We all had a laugh, but none of us guys really had any idea what the girls would order us to do. Doug didn’t have an oxford shirt, or at least never wore it. It couldn’t mean anything like boyfriend/girlfriend because two girls had my loops. Besides, what would we do as boyfriend and girlfriend? We were eleven years old.
Well, maybe it meant something different to Carl and Brenda. He carried her books back to class. I was afraid I’d lost a bodyguard, but I had five girls to replace him. Shoot, this was better protection than big guys anyway.
The next week I started to get a notion of what would be required for this extra level of protection. I was explaining faults and volcanoes we were studying in science. We were sitting outside after lunch. After they figured everything was okay, with me surrounded by five girls, Carl and Doug ran off to join the football game. Whenever the game got close to the trees where we were sitting, Mr. Boyd called the guys back out into the open field.
“Sit back this way,” Whitney directed as I explained the Ring of Fire. I edged around with my back to Whitney, not paying attention to the fact she was playing with my hair. That was something that had changed. In spite of Betts complaining that I took too long in the bathroom and it should be her bathroom so she could get ready for school, I took a shower every day now. Betts was a freshman and her bus came earlier than mine, but if I let her go first, there’d be no hot water left for mine. It only took me five minutes to shower and she could damn well wait for me. She sure wasn’t willing to get up five minutes earlier so she could beat me to it.
So, anyway, my hair was always clean. Mom had let me grow it out, so I was no longer in a buzz cut like I’d been for the first four years of school.
“What are you doing, Whitney?” I asked as she pulled my hair up and rubbed something into it.
“Styling your hair,” she said. “We got this new gel and we want to know how it works.”
“Why not try it on your hair?” I asked, shrugging away from her.
“Experiment on these lovely locks?” she asked. “Hold still. You’ll look like a rock star.”
Mr. Graves, our history teacher, wasn’t amused. In fifth grade we stayed in the same classroom but different teachers came in for different subjects. History was first after lunch recess.
“Brian? Is there something wrong with your hair?” he asked. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about.
“No sir. We were just fooling around at recess.”
“Please comb it in an appropriate fashion. If you have a hit single sometime in the next five or ten years, you can go back to styling your hair. In this class you will keep it neat. And please polish your shoes before school tomorrow. That would be a better use for what is in your hair.” I ran my hand through my hair for the first time. Crap! It was sticking up all over. What was I going to do?
Whitney held up a comb for me and I quickly parted my hair and combed it to the side. When I handed it back to her, it was all full of goop. She giggled. I glanced down at my shoes. Graves’ class was like being in the army. I’d been told twice to go home and polish my shoes after school. I wasn’t sure he’d ever said that to anyone else. But I sure hadn’t brushed them off when we came in from outside. I rubbed them against the back of my pants leg to take the dust off and then ran my hand over my hair and rubbed the goop on my shoes. It did make them shiny.
“You didn’t know your hair was standing up all over your head in spikes?” Doug laughed.
“No! If you were any kind of friends, you’d tell me about that sort of stuff.”
“Are you kidding? With Whitney and Rhiannon beside you? Stop in the boys’ room after recess and look at yourself from now on. At least then Brenda won’t cut me off.”
“Cut you off of what?”
“Hey. I’m up to bat and headed for first base this weekend. You should come to church. Our Sunday School class doesn’t even have a teacher. We’re Unitarians. We just sit in the basement of the church and do whatever we want.”
“What’s up to bat mean? And headed for first base?”
“My brother Bill told me all about it. If a girl lets you hold her hand then you’re up to bat. If you kiss her, that’s first base.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Bill said he’d tell me when I was old enough. But I think I’m going to kiss Brenda Sunday at church.”
“Geez. From a Bra Strap Watcher to a kisser. What’s next?”
“Bra Strap Feeler,” Doug put in. “And I know the rest of the bases.”
Carl and I were all over him. The more he told us, the more antsy I got and couldn’t sit still. I kept thinking about Jessica. Crap! You just can’t talk about some things with other guys.
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