Guardian Angel
5 Not Really a Date
I DID MY COLLECTIONS as quickly and as early as I could on Saturday and we were in and out of the circulation office by one. I’d already packed my suit and a towel in my gym bag and we headed straight for Cassie’s house. Mom pulled up and I waited for Cassie to come out.
“Brian, you don’t wait in the car for a girl, even if you are just giving her a ride. You always pick up a girl at the door and walk her back to her door. No matter what. Get out and go to the door. Cassie’s parents are conservative and will want to know you are a gentleman.” Crap! Okay. Unwritten rule number two: Always go to the door to pick up your date and when you take her home. I should write this stuff down. That wasn’t in the book. I jumped out of the car and ran to the door and knocked. Cassie’s dad opened the door and I was thankful to see he wasn’t some big burly guy with a shotgun. He invited me in and I stood in the hall waiting for Cassie.
“What time will you be home this evening?” he asked.
“Um…” Crap! That was no way to start. I should do this like I was selling papers. “Mr. Clinton, Brenda has invited us all to have a picnic dinner with her after we’ve been swimming. That will probably be about six o’clock unless everyone is having too much fun in the pool. I guess we’ll probably play some games after dinner. I know we won’t be late, though. Even though I don’t work on Sundays, I get up most mornings at four-thirty so I’m usually asleep by eight-thirty. At the latest, that’s when we’ll be back.”
“Well-spoken, young man. I’ve known your parents for a number of years, though we don’t see each other often. That would be different, of course, if you all went to our church. Since you’ll be up early in the morning anyway, why don’t we stop and pick you up on our way tomorrow.” I saw Cassie cringe behind her father and mouth, “Sorry.”
“I’ll check with my parents, Mr. Clinton. I noticed you have a News paperbox out by the road. I’m sorry you are out in the rural delivery area and not on my route. I hope you enjoy your paper.” I figured my best bet was to change the subject.
“Yes, I do. It’s great to see an enterprising young man concerned for customers even when they aren’t his direct responsibility. I’m going to let the circulation department know you checked. I understand they reward carriers for compliments.” I wondered how he found that out. But at least Cassie and I were out of the house and headed for the car. I started to open the front door to get in, but Mom glared at me. I quickly changed to the back door and held it open for Cassie and then slid in beside her. She didn’t slide all the way over to the other side. Mom smiled.
When we got to the party, we got out of the car and were directed by Brenda’s dad to the back of the house. It had been a cool morning and no one had headed over to the pool yet. We each carted our bags to the back and looked at the couple dozen kids who were there.
“Well, thanks for picking me up,” Cassie said. “I suppose you want to go join your friends.” I don’t know how I figured this out, but I looked at Cassie and could see she was really uncomfortable. Heck, I can talk to Doug and Carl anytime.
“I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk all afternoon. Here. Let’s park our bags and go see what’s on that big food table.” I took her bag and set it next to mine and then took her hand and led her to the food. She seemed startled at first but her grip tightened as we walked. She was smiling. I grabbed a couple chips but fixing a plate of food would mean I’d have to let go of Cassie’s hand. I kind of didn’t want to do that. “Uh… I think I just want a drink right now. How about you?”
“Yeah. Do they have Cokes?”
“Sure do. Let me open one for you.”
“Oh, give me the ring.”
“I don’t know, Cassie. Do you think we’ve been going out long enough for me to give you a ring?” She giggled and I handed her the pop-tops. She broke the tabs off and left them on the table. She slipped the rings on her pinky.
“Ah, Brian. Now that we’re, like, engaged, what shall we name the children?” I looked at her horrified. She started laughing. I rolled my eyes and she offered me her hand again. I’m no fool, I took it.
“Boy, that didn’t take long, did it?” Brenda said coming up behind us. We both spit Coke out our noses. “Now Cassie, we’ve got a rule about protecting our pet. Don’t you break him this afternoon.”
“I’m… uh…” She started to pull her hand away from mine, but I tightened my grip a little and she relaxed.
“We were trying to decide, Brenda, which of our friends we should name our first child after,” I said, looking my buxom classmate in the eye. Cassie gasped. Brenda turned red but got right back.
“Oh. Are you going to name her after me? Your best friend ever?”
“Well, I was actually thinking of Samantha. That way if it’s a boy we can still name him Sam.”
“Oh pooh! You’re not much of a friend. If you chose me and it was a boy you could name him Brendan. That’s what my parents were going to do. If you two can tear yourselves away from each other for a few minutes, girls are changing in my room and boys are changing in the basement. And don’t bother to look. I made sure my blinds were down and the curtains are drawn.” I sighed.
“Talk about no fun.” I collected our bags and Cassie went with Brenda. I followed along behind the guys to the basement. Of course, we were dressed and waiting out front with our towels for about fifteen minutes before the girls showed up. What the heck took them so long? I was a little excited, though when Cassie came straight to me and offered her hand. In fact, excited enough that I dropped my towel over my arm and down in front of me.
Swimming was fun. Especially playing chicken fights. That’s where the girls got on the guys shoulders and we waded around about chest deep in the water while the girls tried to pull each other off our shoulders. I should say, the other guys were chest deep. I was up to my chin and that gave me less stability than the other guys. Poor Cassie kept getting dunked.
Later, Brenda’s dad grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and after we were dressed, we all went to the basement and messed around for a while. I don’t know how it got started, but Cassie and I stumbled in on a game of ‘seven minutes in heaven.’ Before either of us even knew what was happening, we’d been shoved into a dark closet and the door closed behind us for seven minutes.
“Uh… Brian? I’m… uh…”
“Cassie, I’m here and I won’t do anything to hurt you. I don’t know what this is all about, but you can absolutely trust me. Here’s my other hand.” We hadn’t let go of hands other than to eat all day. I really liked it. “Now you know where I am and you don’t have to worry about me doing anything. This is really weird and I’m sorry. I didn’t know about this. I’ve never played it.”
“Thank you, Brian. It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. But… I guess I’m not as mature as Brenda is.”
“I think only Bo Derek is as mature as Brenda,” I laughed. She giggled, too. I guess we relaxed a little.
“I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me once,” she said softly.
“Wow! I’d like to if you’re sure,” I said. “I don’t have much experience, so if you’re expecting something great…”
“I’ve never kissed anybody. Please?” I could feel her grip tighten on my hands. I scooted up closer and tried to figure out where her face was. I tried to remember all the steps Jessica told me. After a near miss, she raised one of my hands to her face. “Here I am, over here.” With a reference point I leaned in and found her lips. I remembered what Jessica showed me and kept my lips real soft and just let them press lightly against hers. We were both breathing pretty heavily and I pulled back.
“I don’t know how long we have left,” I whispered. “I’d like to do that again sometime, but I don’t want us getting caught.” Cassie giggled.
“Put your hand right here so I know where it is,” she said. I was pretty sure that the right here she chose was on her bare leg. I knew for a fact that I was springing a hard-on. I tried thinking of my sister masturbating while she read the book and it went down a little. Cassie fidgeted around a little and then took my hand in hers. “Just wait,” she whispered. That was about all it took and the door opened. The light made me squint as I stepped out. I pulled Cassie out behind me and heard everyone gasp. I turned to look at her.
Her shirt was half untucked and she’d thrown her hair over her head from one side to another. She was carrying one shoe in her other hand. She staggered out of the closet and just said, “Wow!”
It was a fun party and I was looking forward to church with Cassie in the morning.
The summer between sixth and seventh grade was just awesome. Mostly. The downside was that I didn’t go to science camp. Which meant I didn’t see Angela and didn’t… Oh well. I did get a week at Starbridge Dude Ranch and Dad delivered my papers. I won a ribbon in the dude ranch horse show on a really big horse named Jingo. I liked horses—even Rika. Silk was a love. I think I got along with them better than Betts did. Silk and I took 4-H Horsemanship. I couldn’t take any more time off after that. I had a paper route and didn’t have any way to keep my customers satisfied if I left. I needed to train a replacement for next year or I’d never have a vacation again.
On the positive side, I had a girlfriend. Sort of. I went to church with her family. It was nowhere near as fun as the church Brenda and Carl described. We spent an hour-and-a-half every Sunday memorizing Bible verses. The boys all sat on one side of the room and the girls all sat on the other. Sometimes when we were sitting in the backseat on the way back home, Cassie’s hand would just touch mine a bit. We had to sit on opposite sides of the bench seat, though, so the touch was always fleeting.
Inspiration. It was the new word in my vocabulary. I learned it in sixth grade from Miss Sullivan. I’d spent a lot of afternoon recesses writing poetry in her classroom and occasionally we’d talk. That’s when she told me about being inspired and asked what my inspiration was. I couldn’t exactly tell her that she inspired me, but I did tell her that her class was an inspiration. That got a smile.
But my big inspiration was in July when I was moaning to myself about not going to science camp this summer. I loved the woods and as soon as I could get free every day, I’d walk through it to the Hopkins’ or just ride Silk out to one of my favorite spots. One day I was out and realized I’d walked farther than usual. You can’t really get lost back there because it is just a strip of woods that sits about four hundred yards away from the road and runs along behind everyone’s property. Grandpa told me that before he started selling off sections on that side of the road, he plowed and planted everything from our house north, but that he always felt it was important to keep a woodlot so there was plenty of fuel in the winter. I took a left turn and made my way to the edge of the woods so I could see where I was.
To my surprise, I was looking out at the grass runway of Mr. Clinton’s airport. Now that was cool. I’d walked almost all the way to Cassie’s house. That’s the moment that inspiration struck. I ran through the woods to get home and find something to mark a trail. The pioneers blazed trails by cutting a notch in the trees along the path, but we were taught that we shouldn’t do that now because it damages the tree and leaves it vulnerable to disease. 4-H Forestry. I wasn’t sure what I could use, but Betts was out riding with her friends and I could search the house. I found a spool of ribbon in Mom’s sewing drawer.
I knew better than to take the whole spool. I used her sewing scissors to cut five lengths about a foot long. I could hardly tell anything was missing from the spool. I found some thumb-tacks and headed back for the woods. I had to do this carefully and took my chemistry note tablet so I could record where the landmarks were. I worked inside the edge of the woods so no one would see me from Cassie’s house and found two trees that I thought were identifiable. I sighted the windsock and her mailbox in a straight line between the two trees and carefully drew that out on the map. Then I looked back into the woods. I chose a tree and paced off ten steps to it and tied my red ribbon around a branch. I looked for the next easy target and counted the steps to another tree and thumb-tacked the ribbon to it. In two more segments, I was definitely out of sight from anywhere on the airstrip or Cassie’s house. There was a big oak tree a few feet away from this spot and I tacked the last ribbon to it. Then I took my notes home.
It took me most of the next day upstairs in the heat of the attic to draw out the map on a clean sheet of typing paper. There was a straight line through the mailbox and windsock to between the two trees at the edge of the woods. Then careful instructions about which way to turn to look for the next red ribbon. Finally, at the fifth tree, I put a circle with an ‘X’ in it and wrote “Treasure” beside it. Now, when? I figured that Wednesday would be good enough and 1:00 should be the time of our meeting. I sure hoped she could follow a map.
I went to the woods the next day and followed the map as if I was looking at it for the first time. I crept along the edge of the woods until I could sight the windsock and mailbox. Then I turned into the woods and could immediately see the red ribbon. I went to it and just looked until I saw the next ribbon. I realized I could actually see two ribbons, but it was obvious which one was first. The next ribbon took me deeper into the woods, and finally I saw the ribbon under the big oak. They were a clearly marked trail.
When I got home I read the instructions and wrote at the top of the map, “Memorize this map and then burn it!” I sure didn’t want her parents to find it.
Sunday on the way home from church, I slid my hand over toward Cassie. She looked up to make sure her parents weren’t watching and then reached over and touched me. I pushed the note into her hand. I looked at her and mouthed “later.”
I don’t know why I made the meeting for Wednesday. I walked to the spot every day to make sure I could be there at exactly one o’clock. Then, of course, on Wednesday Betts didn’t go riding and she was being a bitch all day long. I finally had to sneak out the front door. I ran around the house and stayed all the way over by the fence row to keep out of sight. Once I was past the barn, I took off at a run.
I’d been to the rendezvous site every day for the past week, so I knew my way there and crashed through the branches trying to make sure I made it by one o’clock. I was panting, but I was sure I made it on time. Then I waited. And waited. I’d about given up when I heard a twig pop and footsteps not far away. I carefully looked around the oak and saw Cassie headed my way. She hadn’t burned the map. She was looking at it and then checking around for the next mark. I let her spot the last ribbon and head toward it before I stepped out from behind the tree. I didn’t do it to scare her, but it startled her anyway.
She ran the last few steps and then stopped in front of me.
“This is so neat. I followed a treasure map and look what I found!” she said.
“You were supposed to burn the map so no one else could find it,” I said.
“No way. I have a secret place I can hide things that no one knows about. I’m going to keep this forever. It’s so romantic!” Wow! I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“I just wanted to see you and talk to you and stuff without church or your parents watching us,” I admitted.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be here because I had trouble getting out of the house and was late. I’m so glad you waited.”
“I couldn’t ask you what a good time for you would be, so I just had to guess. We can meet again anytime you want.” Cassie took my hand and we started wandering around the woods. I asked her about how her summer was going and she asked me. And we just walked for a long time.
“Let’s climb a tree!” I suggested. Heck, what else are you supposed to do with a girl? We climbed and laughed and played tag in the woods.
“You should probably get back, but you can come and meet me here any day now. I liked playing with you.”
“I can come again on Wednesday but make it two o’clock so I can finish my chores. And make another map and leave it there. Okay? This was fun!”
“Okay.” She surprised me with a little kiss and was off, following the ribbons back the way she came. I watched her all the way till she was out of the woods. The summer was going to get better.
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