Shutter Speed
13
War Story
“IS EVERYONE GONE?” Starr called from behind the screen.
“Yes. I’m ready to start processing the film,” I answered. “I won’t have the light out in the darkroom for a few minutes, so come on over when you’re ready. It’s in the far corner.” It was going to take a while to get all the film processed since each roll needed to be in the tank for eight minutes and I had six rolls of film. Fortunately, I could process film while I was printing the proof sheet for a roll that was already developed. I got the first roll in the tank and started agitating it when Starr opened the door cautiously.
“Okay?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
She stepped into the darkroom. The only thing she’d changed was to take off the tutus.
“You, um, didn’t dress,” I stated the obvious.
“You have to remove my makeup before I put clothes on,” she said innocently.
Right. I’d put lipstick and mascara on her lips, drawn on her face with an eyebrow pencil, and put lipstick on her nipples. How was I supposed to remove all that while agitating the developer tank? She leaned back against the sink. Did I mention how really cute she was? And naked.
“I need to keep agitating the film in the tank,” I said, glancing at my watch. “I’ll… um… try to find some tissue after this is finished.”
“I told you you’d get lipstick all over your face when you sucked it off my nipples,” she said. “You can do that while your hands are busy.”
There was no doubt in my mind where this was going. I was definitely intending to suck the lipstick off her nipples.
“Maybe I should work on the lipstick on your lips first,” I said. I moved toward her and she raised her lips to mine. The kiss started softly and a little tentatively but it wasn’t long before it heated up. Of course, that’s when my wind-up timer went off. I had to back away and rinse the film.
“We were just getting started,” she moaned.
“Believe me, I plan to start again,” I said. “But there are six rolls of film to process and printing to be done. Kissing is going to be in short bursts while the timer is going. And someone will have to keep agitating the film while I print proof sheets. It’s fortunate that I’ve acquired such a nice and available assistant so she can turn the crank on the tank while I print. Otherwise, I’d be here all night.”
I emphasized her availability by putting my hand on her butt and pulling her toward me for another kiss. What a nice butt! I prepped another tank of film and handed it to her to agitate while I cut the negatives in strips and laid them out on the easel.
“Time to turn out the lights,” I said. I kissed her again and hit the switches to turn out the white light and turn on the red. “Please don’t open the door while the red light is on.”
I got a sheet of paper and put it on the enlarger with the negatives on top of it and turned on the lamp. Then I had another ninety seconds to kiss Starr while I held her rump in my hands and she turned the handle on the tank.
I had to focus on the print and get it in the developer before I could focus on Starr again. She was trying different positions for the tank so I’d have better access to her and looked a little like some kind of exotic dancer as she moved it around. I moved the print to the rinse and kissed her again while I took the tank and rinsed and removed the film. I set the new strip aside and put another in the tank. After a quick kiss and stroke of my hand all the way up and down her back, I moved the print to the fixative and turned to cut the next negative into strips for printing.
It wasn’t long before we had a kind of rhythm going and I did progress from her lips—which were smeared from side to side—to sucking on her nipples. Some of the lipstick had already come off on the front of my shirt. About the time she was working on the last roll in the tank, my fingers found their way between her legs and into her juicy center.
“Oh, yeah. I just knew you were the one who could find it. Play with my little love button. Nate, I want to come on your fingers.”
Unfortunately, I was interrupted by having to change a print from one mode to the next, but I got right back to the core of the matter. When the last negative was rinsed and no prints were in a tray, I went back to seriously kissing and fondling Starr. She leaned back against the sink with her legs spread to give me access and shook with an orgasm.
I started the last proof sheet and felt her hugging me from behind and stroking up and down my cock as I worked. That was a little distracting. I was already hard as a rock, just from kissing and fingering her. I moved the paper from the enlarger to the developer and turned toward her as she unzipped my fly.
“Starr. I have a hard and fast rule about not having sex in the studio and not having sex with my models. I can excuse everything else as not really having sex, but we need to cut this off now. Please.”
“You have some funny definitions,” she said. “Like that we haven’t had sex yet? My pussy feels like I’ve been having sex. So let me give you a few rules of my own. One: There is no way you can take pictures in the darkroom. Therefore, it is not the studio. Two: My real name is Elizabeth. Starr was the model out there. Elizabeth is your new girlfriend. Three: I borrowed a condom from you and I really need to return it.”
She had my cock out and if I hadn’t set a timer, I’d have forgotten all about the print that was in the developer. I moved it to the rinse just as she sucked my cock into her mouth. I moaned as she bobbed up and down long enough for me to move the print to the fixative. I pulled her up to me and kissed her deeply as I ran my hands all over her body. My new girlfriend? I’d figure that part out later. She was grinding her wet pussy against my cock as we kissed and I barely had presence of mind enough to move the print out of the fixative and under the running water.
Then my focus was all on Starr. Elizabeth. She rolled the condom on me and made sure I was stiff and ready, then she turned and bent over the sink. I stepped up behind her and found her high heels brought her pussy up high enough that I’d hardly need to bend my knees to get my cock in her. I ran the tip through her wetness and positioned myself at the opening.
“Yes. Do me. Make love to your new girlfriend. Put it in me, Nate.”
I pushed forward and sank slowly into Elizabeth as she sighed her pleasure. I’m sure my moan echoed hers. I reached around her glorious butt and found my way back to her pussy as we fucked slowly back and forth, both of us moving our hips to an unheard rhythm. I started putting kisses all up and down her back and she moaned some more.
With as much teasing as we’d done for the past hour, I was surprised that I wasn’t in a rush to come. I just loved sliding in and out of her and finding ways to give her pleasure. In my experience, this wasn’t a great position for a girl to get stimulated, but apparently my fingers had found the right combination on her nipples and clit to get her into her happy place. And when I felt the contractions start in her pussy it was game over for me and I groaned out my orgasm as I spewed into the condom.
I spent a lot of time in the darkroom that afternoon. In fact, I had to ‘borrow’ a condom from Elizabeth’s supply. I gave it back to her. Intimately.
About five o’clock, Elizabeth got dressed and went to Levi downstairs to order us some food. I actually got some printing done. I managed to get the set printed that Starr wanted and made a set for myself as well.
“You know, I’ve got girlfriends back in Tenbrook,” I said.
“I know. But the very fact that there is more than one means they ought to be tolerant of one more. Just don’t let them gang up on me when I come to visit.”
“Are you going to come to visit?”
“I’d like to take my model side to have some more photos done in your studio there. I’ll bring along the girlfriend side to go out afterward,” she giggled.
She was doing a much better job of keeping her two identities separate than I was. I just needed to remember that in the studio, she was Starr and, in the darkroom, she was Elizabeth. And most of the time she’d be in Chicago. That was all going to take some getting used to.
“As long as you understand that I’m not breaking up with Chris or Ronda, and are okay with that, I don’t think there will be a problem. And… I don’t know… Maybe Anna. She confuses me sometimes.”
“And who else? You didn’t have a whole lot of hesitation about making love to me. They let you fool around with others, too, don’t they?” she asked.
“I have half a dozen models in Tenbrook who are all intimate to a certain degree. You know how that goes when I’m posing them. Or celebrating a birthday or something. I don’t date them and I don’t fuck them, but there have been a few orgasms. And there are a couple of girls they loan me out to. Vicki and Roxie aren’t girlfriends and they aren’t models. But they like to fuck. I’m sure if Kelly was still around, she’d be on the list, too.”
“Free love. It’s great to be alive right now. Well, I haven’t had much luck in relationships past a little fling for a few weeks. Guys seem to forget about me and only remember how much money I have.”
“Shit. I forgot about that.”
“I know. That’s why I’d like to be your Chicago girlfriend. You’ve got a studio here now. I hope you’ll be coming into town on a regular basis. Maybe you’d even come for my senior prom this spring. Then I won’t have to deal with any of the local boys.”
“But your father is one of my patrons. Is he going to go ballistic over you having a relationship with me? Or me with you?”
“He left before the last scene today. He knew exactly what you were going to do with me. He might not have guessed that I was going to do my best to seduce you, but he’s probably figured it out by now. He’ll certainly know when I tell him. To be honest, I think he probably loves you more than he does me. I am just your model. You are an artist.”
“That hardly seems fair. Are you okay at home?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. I’m being overly dramatic. My dad loves me. He’s even proud of me most of the time. I’m a good student. I stay out of trouble. I don’t do drugs or alcohol. I have to tell you, that’s a real problem in the jet set. I think you met Amy. She told me you changed her. I don’t have a lot to do with her group, but our fathers are friends.”
“Amy was out to see me for a session over Thanksgiving. I am not intimate with her.”
“Yes, you are. Maybe not physically, but she told me flat out you were the only boy she’s ever trusted. My father has a small copy of the photo of her she says won a statewide competition. I mean, you looked in my purse and did my makeup. To most girls, that’s more intimate than us having… made love in the darkroom. My head wanted to say fucked, but my mouth wouldn’t make the word. That’s how intimate we’ve been.”
“Elizabeth, you really bowled me over. I can’t believe we did any of the things we did today. That you let me rub lipstick on your nipples. Which came out terrific in the photos, by the way.”
“And then let you suck it off those very nipples,” she giggled. “You know your face is covered with lipstick and your shirt is probably ruined.”
“I don’t care. I loved it.”
“That’s what my father saw in your photos. You love it. You love your models and get inside them. Maybe not with your cock, but you get inside their heads. He was ready to call off my session today if he didn’t like what he saw yesterday. When he got home last night, he was raving about the session. ‘The boy’s an artist,’ he said. ‘A goddamn artist. He took a street whore and turned her into a damn work of art, right in front of us.’ Then Pappa got real serious and looked at me. He said, ‘If you go there to get photographed, you will be changed. You will never again be just my little girl. You’ll be a work of art.’ I came here today thinking I was just a lump of clay. I wondered what you’d see in me. You really saw me.”
“I can’t put it in words, Elizabeth. I really liked what I saw.”
“You don’t need words. You took the picture.”
When Uncle Nate came to pick me up, he agreed to take Elizabeth home and definitely saw me kiss her goodnight at her door. He didn’t say anything or warn me about anything. He loved the photos she showed him and she agreed he could have a set. I’d print those up when I got home. I intended to catch the early bus out of Chicago in the morning, but I had her address and her phone number. She had mine.
Life was good.
“You need to tell Anna, too,” Christine said when I told her about Elizabeth.
We were out at Hanratty’s farm, parked behind the barn in the VW. We’d kept the mattress inflated in the back, but I’d taken the second row seat up to the studio where I’d stored the third row seat. I’d be taking Ronda out on Saturday night and would tell her the whole story then.
“I know Anna isn’t actually your girlfriend like Ronda and me. And Elizabeth, I guess. But she’s really intimate with you in ways none of the rest of us are. And if you haven’t noticed, it’s become apparent that she pretty much worships you,” Chris continued.
“That’s Anna. I’ll talk to Ronda tomorrow. Tell me about Christine,” I said. “Are you really okay with all this?”
“Nate, since we started going steady, you’ve fucked me, Ronda, Vicki, Roxie, and now Elizabeth. You’ve made any number of girls in our class come and among the models you’ve petted and made Patricia, Pris, Judy, and Janice all come with your words, your kisses, and your touches. Having Elizabeth added in is scarcely a drop in the bucket. I always have a little pang whenever you’re with any of the others. That’s just because I want your cock in my pussy. But I think it’s kind of neat that you have a girlfriend waiting for you in Chicago when you move there. You’re really going to need that. And I hope she does come out here for a visit. I want to see if she’s really as funny as you say she is. And my pussy gets twitchy at the thought of a girl I haven’t even met yet eating me. God! I’m a pervert!”
“You know what I’d like?” I asked. “I’d like to eat your perverted little pussy right now. And then I’d like to fuck it again. Christine, I want you to know how much I love you, no matter who else is involved.”
“Yeah. Do that. Do it all.”
The time in Chicago really put a hole in my schedule, but Saturday I had another shoot scheduled. And in spite of myself, I was excited about it. We were meeting early Saturday morning to reduce the number of people likely to see her coming and going. No, it wasn’t Yvonne Renninger. It was Sandra Gottschalk, the fourteen-year-old sister of my model Pam. Fifteen now. She’d had a birthday since our photoshoot almost four months ago.
“Hi, Sandra. Come on in,” I said. I locked the door behind her. “I don’t see you around school much. Is the school year going okay for you?”
“I survived my first semester as a freshman. Us little kids don’t see the seniors all that much. Most of the freshmen avoid them when they do see them.”
“I can’t blame you. I remember being a freshman and hiding from the seniors in my school. Mostly, we sought safety in numbers, but there were close to 400 in my freshman class.”
“Wow! I’d never survive in that circumstance,” she said. “I don’t like being in crowds.” While we talked, Sandra calmly began undressing. I had the same set pieces put together that we used last time. I knew the routine now and would be taking photos of the development of her body. When she finished taking her clothes off, she stood in the center of the backdrop and quietly waited while I focused the lights and looked her over.
“I can tell right away that you are growing,” I said. “Have you been feeling your body change?”
“I did measurements this week and can confirm that I am changing. I’m an inch taller than I was at our last session. And both my bust and hips have added an inch. Do you think my breasts are bigger?”
“That was the first thing I noticed. Let’s get some photos and I think you’ll be able to see what I mean. Did you bring your portfolio from the last session to compare?”
“Yes. Shall we do the same set? I brought the proof sheet for reference for the poses.”
“That’s good. Let’s get started.”
We went through all the poses, front, rear, side, arms raised and lowered. Then she positioned herself on the fainting couch that I moved into place and opened her legs to my view. I repositioned lights and changed lenses so I could move in for a closeup of her vagina.
“I suppose you don’t remember such a small thing clearly,” she said. “Do you see any changes?”
“I believe your hair is a bit thicker and might extend lower,” I said. “Also, my memory says that the little hole in your hymen was pretty much dead center when we took the last photo. It seems to be stretched a little and off center.”
“You remember that?”
“Sandra, your hymen is the only one I’ve ever seen. I’ve looked between my girlfriends’ legs and licked them to orgasm, but I don’t shine lights up there and photograph them clearly. The image of your vagina and hymen are vivid in my memory. There, that’s the last shot. We can get these developed and printed and you can examine them under a loupe to see how you think they compare.”
“I was afraid I might be, um, stretching my maidenhead a little. Let us say that my masturbation has been somewhat more vigorous since our last visit. It is quite amazing what letting a boy look up between my legs and touch my breasts has done for my libido,” she said. She kept trying to couch descriptions of getting turned on in technical and scientific terms, though I could see the evidence leaking out of her when I shot that last photo. She was definitely aroused by our photo session, even though we kept it somewhat perfunctory. We’d taken just twelve photos, but that was the set we’d done the last time.
Once again, she followed me into the darkroom without dressing and chatted with me about what chemicals were in the developer solution, as if we were in a classroom for photography. I went through the process of printing the proof sheet and getting it through its baths and rinse. Then I put it on a drying glass and squeegeed it off so we could look at it closely. We set the glass on the table and I used the hair dryer on it to speed up the drying process. She carefully examined the pictures, as I carefully examined her leaning over the table. Yes, her bottom had filled out some. I remembered it as being a little flat.
“I’d like to print the same selection of four images as we have on last session’s sheet,” she said. “I can definitely see differences, but I will need to study the photographs in order to identify them.” We went back into the darkroom and I set up to do the four prints on a single 10x16 sheet. “Tell me, Nate, what did you notice that told you I changed?”
“Hmm. Well, I was just noticing that your bottom looks a little rounder. I think fuller is the term I want. The last time we worked, I noted that it was kind of flat, like a boy’s bottom.”
“Oh! I thought I’d just gotten wider. I didn’t think about the inch making me rounder. That is an excellent observation. What else?”
“Well, I think you will see from the photos that your breasts previously were round, but the nipples and… um… areolae sort of sat on top of them like little cones. What I see now is that the areolae have kind of filled out to blend into the curve of your breast.”
“That would explain the itching. I try not to play with my nipples all the time but when they kind of itch like that, it’s hard not to pay attention to them. Would you like to hold them again? See if your hands can tell how they have changed.”
I’d just put the print in the fixative and had my hands free, so there was absolutely nothing to stop me from caressing the breasts of this fifteen-year-old beauty. And, yes, I could feel a difference from what I’d felt before. She turned her back and leaned against me, guiding my hands in their exploration.
“Would you rub just lightly there?” she whispered. My thumbs were working on her nipples. I pulled my right hand away and licked my thumb, then returned to stroking her nipple. “Oh! What did you do? That feels so good!”
“A little saliva to make my thumb slippery.”
“Does that mean that if you, licked them it would be even better?”
“I’m told it is. Do you want me to do that?” I was as perverted as Chris! Asking to lick her little tits!
“No! Um… Not this time. I think I should absorb and record what I’ve been feeling and not get overwhelmed by more new sensations. Um… You could…” She pulled my hand down to her navel. “… see if navels still turn you on like they did when you were my age.”
Yes. Exploring her navel still got me excited. I was sure she could feel me as she pressed back against my hard-on. After a few more seconds, I needed to pull the print out of the fixative and rinse it under running water. Then I squeegeed it and we went out to the table where I could dry it and she could examine it more closely. I gave her the loupe and pointed out the things I’d seen compared to the earlier prints.
“Thank you, Nate. I’ll collect the prints into my portfolio and go home now. Oh. I suppose I should dress first, shouldn’t I?” she giggled. “I don’t know why I should feel so comfortable running around naked in front of you. I would be embarrassed to death if any other boy in our school saw me like this. Do you like looking at me?”
“Yes, Sandra. I very much like looking at you.”
“I’ll try to get here in less than four months next time. The fall has been so crazy.” She slipped on her panties and then the little training bra before pulling on the rest of her clothes as I watched her dress. “I would call you perverse if I thought you fantasized about any other girls in my class or younger,” she said. “But since I so blatantly show you my body and have you look directly into the eye of my vagina, while I talk about my sexual development, I could scarcely complain about you having sexual thoughts about me when you masturbate tonight. I assure you, I will be reliving the touch of your saliva covered finger on my breast as I masturbate. Thank you, Nate.”
She packed things up and I opened the door for her. She looked out to see if anyone was around and then skipped down the stairs and away.
I would think about her while I masturbated tonight except that I was going out with Ronda and was certain that I wouldn’t be thinking of anything else. Or masturbating.
I didn’t think about her again all day, in fact. After noon several of the girls showed up and wanted to get the studio ‘cleaned up for the New Year.’ That was the official intent, but the studio didn’t really need much cleaning. It was really an excuse for eight girls to run around naked for a couple of hours.
Eight. Anna showed up, and although she didn’t go naked, she did lose her bra for a while. A few eyes popped open when she took it off while she was working on my books and recording the sales and orders from my Chicago trip. Mine were among those eyes. It was still a real trip to see Anna’s naked breasts. She asked me a question about the number of orders and as I bent over the desk to look at the numbers, I absently stroked her bare back. I realized what I was doing and quickly backed away, but she simply gave me a little smile and went back to work.
I really needed to talk to her.
I talked to Ronda late into the night as we cuddled in the back of the bus out at the old ferry dock. I was really liking having my portable bed on dates. After we’d made love and talked for an hour or so, we made love again. She said she’d look forward to meeting Elizabeth.
Sunday night, I took Chris to the New Year’s Eve party at the Huffington EUB church. We knew a few of the kids there now, including Tony’s friend Eric. More importantly, though, we stopped on a backroad outside of town and made love after midnight. Last year she’d been the first girl I’d kissed after midnight on January 1. This year, she was the first girl I made love to.
I’d been with Chris most of the day on Monday and early Tuesday, just enjoying the time together and visiting with our families. I felt fairly caught up with my developing and printing and this seemed like the last deep breath we’d have before the new semester started. Monday evening, I had a little chat with Elizabeth and told her Chris and Ronda had agreed they’d like to meet her and hoped she would come to Tenbrook soon.
Tuesday afternoon, I picked up Anna and took her into Huntertown for a shake at Gertie’s.
“Anna, what is our relationship?” I asked. “I have to admit, I’m a little confused.”
“I’m sorry, Nate. I’ve yearned to be a part of everything that is going on so much that I’ve probably overstepped some bounds. I’ll try to pull back,” she answered.
“I didn’t ask you to pull back. I asked for a clarification. What are you feeling? What do you really want? Just to be a part of everything? That’s fine with me if that’s what you want, but I don’t want you to feel like that’s the only way you’ll belong,” I said.
“Belong. That’s a good word. To belong. Belong with the group? Belong to you? Nate, I know we aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, but I feel so close to you… and to Chris and Ronda, I guess. I like it when you look at me like you look at them. I liked it when you put your hand on my bare back. I felt I belonged,” she said.
“Honey, do you want to be a girlfriend?”
“Not exactly,” she hesitated. “I’m… I couldn’t be a lover unless we were going to get married. I don’t think. That confuses me right now. I’m not sure I’ll ever get married. I know you are not the right one for me to marry, no matter how much I fantasize about it. Yes, I fantasize about marrying you. When I had an orgasm with you, it completely overwhelmed my senses. If you had moved your hand, you could have put it in my panties. You could have had sex with me. I shouldn’t be so dependent on you maintaining control if I can’t. I want you to love me. But I don’t want to tie you down. I’m not going to ask you to give up Ronda or Chris for me. Just love me a little and make me feel special like you always do.”
“Yes. You are special to me, Anna. And that’s why Chris and Ronda told me that I need to tell you about Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth?”
“She started out as a model when I went to Chicago, but I found myself unable to resist her. She has declared herself to be one of my girlfriends and plans to come visit us out here in Tenbrook. I’ll probably go into Chicago occasionally this year to do photos in the new studio Levi set up for me. I’m sure I’ll be dating her when I go there.”
“Okay,” Anna said simply. “I think it’s good that you have someone in Chicago who cares for you. You’ll be moving there this summer and it will be nice to have a girlfriend who is so close to you when the rest of us have scattered. I’ll probably still hope to see you occasionally. You’ll still need your accounting done.”
“Your relationship to me as my accountant might be the longest lasting relationship I’ll ever have,” I sighed. “I know that what we all have here during our senior year isn’t real life. Everything will change the day we get our diplomas. We’ll all be thinking about where we are going next. Ronda to Boston. Chris to that school in Peoria. You to Rockford. Me to Chicago. I don’t even know what Elizabeth’s college intentions are. She’s pretty smart, so I’m sure she’ll be headed off somewhere. But you are right about one thing. I’ll still need my accounting done.”
We headed out to the van to go home and Anna playfully moved to the back where the air mattress was still inflated and spread with our blankets.
“Is this where you take your girlfriends to make out and have sex?” she giggled. I looked back at her. She was wearing a skirt and in the position she was sitting on the mattress, I could see right up her legs to her panties. Shit!
“Anna, please don’t play back there. I should have put that all away and put seats in again before I took you out. I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes, that’s where Chris and I or Ronda and I make love. It’s a great benefit of having the van. But if I come back there with you to make out, I might not be able to control myself or how far it goes. You are incredibly desirable.”
She picked herself up and moved up to the seat in front and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Nate. I shouldn’t depend on you to control me and the situation. I didn’t mean to tease, but… um… is there someplace we could go to just kiss a while like we did after my photo session? Would you take me parking without getting on the mattress?”
That was a proposition that was impossible to turn down. I headed out to the golf course and found the construction site still deserted. I was still following Kelly’s instructions about not frequenting the same place all the time.
And make out we did.
It started out with just a few gentle kisses and holding her to me. As we progressed, however, we got into some pretty heavy petting. We both got our hands inside the other’s shirt. I loved Anna caressing my chest and she seemed fascinated by exploring my nipples just as I managed to wiggle beneath her bra and caress her bare breast for the second time in our relationship.
The session didn’t end in orgasms for either of us, but we were pretty happy campers when we finally separated and put our clothes back together.
“I’d like to do that again sometime,” Anna said. “When you’re available.” She turned and looked at the mattress in the back as I pulled out of the construction site and headed us home. “Just for the record, the next time I get back there on your mattress, I won’t want you to control yourself.”
School started back in session on Wednesday the third, and the plans took shape immediately. We’d have Christine’s eighteenth birthday party after school on Thursday. I had a little gift for her, which was difficult to get because with four girlfriends, going shopping alone was almost impossible. I’d gotten her an ankle bracelet for Christmas, so I didn’t think it was a good idea to give her more jewelry. I felt gifts of photographs were a cop-out. But I’d found an antique hand mirror set at Mrs. Wilson’s and thought she’d really like it. It was a silver filigree and the mirror sat on a little stand on the desk so it could be used hands-free, or it could be picked up by the handle and held at any angle. Pretty cool.
Of course, Mr. Turner tried to ruin everything by reminding us all that we were to have read the first chapter in the economics textbook and he would be giving a quiz on Friday. We all had to agree that the party would be no more than two hours so we could go study. Of course, Chris needed to go home to have her family birthday celebration, too. I was going to make it my mission to see to it that she came while sitting on my lap at the party.
We nearly got the party started in Miss Kellogg’s English Lit class. Her topic was romantic literature and she was comparing it to the Existential literature of the previous term. She said a key element of the writers of the romance era was that they were blatantly celebratory of life rather than depressed about it. We laughed a lot and said we were celebrating Chris’s eighteenth birthday. Miss Kellogg stopped the class and led us all in a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You.’
After lunch and bookkeeping, I dragged myself to Physics with a little less enthusiasm. We were studying forces and would have a lab where we were supposed to use fisherman’s scales to plot where the center point moved to as more force was applied in a given direction. Judy and I worked out the puzzles, but Patricia didn’t show up for Class. I’d seen her at lunch but Judy didn’t know where she’d gone after that either.
We all walked over to the studio together and had our little celebration, missing Patricia. I assumed she must have gotten ill at school and went home. I’d call over in the evening and make sure she was okay.
While we were eating cake and laughing about Miss Kellogg, I had Chris well on her way to that orgasm while sitting on my lap. I was being more direct about her stimulation than I’d been with any of the other girls. I had a hand up under Chris’s skirt and a finger in her pussy.
We were all startled when the door crashed open and Patricia stood in the opening looking ravaged.
“Oh, no,” Ronda whispered to Chris and I. “She’s been raped!” Chris jumped out of my lap as Patricia screamed and came running across the studio to fling herself at me. She was wordless and looked a mess but she clung to me while she continued to scream into my chest.
Mindful of Ronda’s warning words, I didn’t ask what was wrong. I just held her as protectively as I could and petted her hair. The girls all gathered around her and reached out to touch her. Finally, Ronda moved close to our friend and whispered.
“Can you tell us what happened, honey? Do we need to call the constable or a doctor?”
Patricia looked up at us all as if just realizing we were there. Her mouth worked, but for a moment no sound came out. Then she drew in her breath and screamed again.
“TONY!”
Patricia cried out for her husband and we were all sure she’d been attacked and possibly raped. Debbie took off out the back door to run for Constable Stoney. Pris ran downstairs to call for Mr. Barkley. Anna took off for my house to ask my mother to come. I couldn’t really move with Patricia in my arms and sobbing against my chest. My girlfriends and Patricia’s closest friends stayed gathered around, touching Patricia and offering her water.
Patricia looked up at last and grabbed hold of my shirt in her fists.
“Tell them, Nate! Tell them it’s a mistake. He can’t be dead! He can’t be!”
Getting hit in the stomach would have been easier to take than that. It completely knocked the wind out of me. Dead? Oh, no. No. No.
We’d all been leaking tears since Patricia busted into the studio. Now they were a flood. I clutched Patricia to me and we all cried out.
People began arriving. Stoney was first and I could tell he already knew. He’d been there. He knew what it was like. He knelt beside us, but what could he do?
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m just so sorry.”
Mr. Barkley had called Patricia’s father and found out the news from him. Tor was on his way. Dr. Mays, Ronda’s father, arrived with my mother. The girls scrambled to pull the bed out and put pillows on it. I carried Patricia to it. And laid her down. Patricia finally let go of my shirt and collapsed back as Dr. Mays gave her a pill and Mom held her hand, whispering comforting words to her. What words could comfort an eighteen-year-old girl who just heard her husband had been killed in Vietnam?
I stood up and Anna shoved my Nikon into my hands. I couldn’t really think about taking pictures at a time like this, but my hands knew what to do with the camera. It seemed automatic to capture what was happening on film.
The devastation of a life.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
