F.1

Walking into school on Friday was somehow a different experience than ever I had had before.  Most of the time I just sort of walk in and nobody really notices me or talks to me.  You know, goth girl, dressed in all black, stays by herself in the computer lab all the time...  Well, she must know what she's doing, people figure, and they just sort of ignore me.

Only recently have I realized how stupid that is.  That ignoring, I mean.  When you look at the average person on the street, you figure that nothing's wrong with them.  Because nothing looks wrong with them.  They just look fine.  ...Only, we know what fine means now.  Maybe we should stop making such stupid assumptions.  I mean, look at what I did.  I looked at my sister every day of my life, who faced every day of her life the exact same challenges and the exact same stupid parents I did...  And assuming nothing was wrong with her just because she had that face on her, the one that says nothing's wrong.  Why should she be okay?  I wasn't, and I was wearing that face too.  Why hadn't I realized before now that the face might be just that—false, a mask, a mask ready to be ripped off and crumbled?  That underneath it might be eyes pleading for help?

Anyway.  I wasn't able to just walk through today.  Because, of course, I'm Arie Chang, I'm Naked In School, and as today was Friday, my last day of The Program, I had to stop and strip.

And that was part of the difference too.  The number of people who showed up to watch, I mean.  It's been a different amount of people every day.  Nobody on Monday, obviously, because we didn't strip that day.  On Tuesday, everyone stared at my scars; two people touched my breasts, a thousand people touched my arms.  On Wednesday nothing happened, because my mom plowed through the crowd with me and I was wearing clothes.  And you don't make lewd suggestions to my mother.  Even the jerks in the crowd were smart enough to realize that.

Thursday was when things started to change.  Though I wasn't paying the slightest attention at the time.  People started coming to watch.  Particularly they wanted to see Brandon.  I guess news had gotten around about his speech in English class.  And probably also about the confrontation in the wastelands on Tuesday.  And, of course, since he was stripping down, everyone yelled interesting suggestions and Brandon had some fun with it.  He asked me to help him out, but I was thinking about other things at the time.  Like Meredith, and whether she'd still want to talk to him after this, and whether I'd accidentally ruined something for one of my best friends.

But now it was Friday, and everyone wanted to see Brandon.  I guess people have developed an affection for that slouch-chested old man.  But Brandon wasn't here.  So they settled for me.

Derek, of course, made it worse.  I'm pretty sure he planned this, because he was standing around talking to people when I showed up.  I'd never seen him hanging around the front of the school before.  —Okay, I'd never seen him hanging around before, period, but still, I don't think he's the kind of person who loiters at the entrance.  That's just not his MO.  Yet here he was.  And when I appeared on the scene, a wave of cheering started up that I'm sure originated near where he was standing.

And the voice was definitely his, a soaring rendition of a gameshow announcer: "Aaaaaand here she is, on her last day in The Program, she's the goth with the gunbarrel gaze, let's hear it for...  Arie Chang!"

I swear.  I am going to kill that man.

And of course people started tossing out suggestions, and I'm bound by Rule Three, right?  I'd start with, let's say, my left shoe, and people would start giving me advice on how to make it look really seductive.  As if you could seductively untie a sneaker.  Though evidently some of it worked, because people laughed and whooped and cheered.  Though there was some booing too, but not a whole lot of it.  I just didn't get it at all.  I mean, really.  Sneakers?

But, regardless: that's how I ended up bent over at the waist, naked except for pants and panties, letting my breasts hang down, and looking back over my shoulder (as directed, and also because everyone wanted me to take off my pants from this position and how exactly was I going to do that without looking?), my hair sliding down around my neck.  With Brandon laughing and shouting, "Whoo, go Arie!  Rock on, sistah!"

Then he doffed his clothes in record time and escaped.  Bastard.

In any case, I finally got the rest of my clothes off and my socks and shoes on, despite rather unhelpful commentary from the crowd—I mean, lick my leg?  Sheesh.  Talk about fetish play.  Then I shouldered my backpack, slung my clothes into the box, and got going.  Derek, of course, appeared at my side almost instantly, and I was about to wrap my hands around his staff—the one below his big head, you understand, the one he doesn't think with—and give him the handjob to end all handjobs, when he stooped down, kissed me on the cheek, and said, "You're totally awesome, you know that?  That was incredible."  At which point I simply blushed and giggled instead, and took his hand and held it in my own.  Damn that man.

When we caught up with Brandon, I started to do The World's Biggest Handjob on him too—Goddammit, I'm a friend, not camouflage!—but somehow he managed to deflect me by asking about whether I'd told my parents or not.  Seeing the look on my face, he said, "If you don't wanna talk about it, that's okay.  I just...  I mean, you know?  I'm concerned.  I'm worried about you."  That was nice to hear.  Sajel and Brandon and Meredith and Derek crowded close and I explained.

I ran through basically what I'd said to them—not verbatim; I couldn't have recalled the exact words if my life had depended on it—and my father's responses.  Meredith seemed concerned over my refusal to let my mother speak, but she could be concerned all she wanted.  "Look, my mom's not the type to listen.  She just goes on what she thinks is right, and that could be the most ridiculous thing in the world but she'll still do it, even if we tell her it's ridiculous and explain why.  And she'll still do it.  Because she thinks it's right.  So I needed her to listen, and I guess the best way to get that started, was to keep her from talking."  Meredith conceded that point.

"What did they think?" Derek asked.  The look in his eyes made me want to kiss him.

"I dunno," I said, "I left before they started talking.  I know, that looks bad," I added, as the four of them reacted visibly, "but I felt like I was about to just collapse on the floor.  It was a lot harder to tell them than I thought it would be.  I had to get out of there before, you know, before my knees gave out.  I don't think I could've argued with them in that state."

"Still," Sajel said judiciously.  "You could've come back later."

"Still," said Derek coming to my defense, "she could've just said nothing too."  And Sajel let it go.

"And how do you feel?" Meredith asked me.

"You must hate your parents by now," Derek said.

At first, I was going to say that he'd gotten that right, baby.  I mean, God, all I had to do was think about my scars and feel them prickle to get a hint of just how badly they'd fucked me up.  But...

"No, not really," I said.  "I didn't...  Well.  My mother's this creature from hell.  Only a few things make sense to her.  Sure, she wants me and my sister to have a good life, you know, to be successful and wealthy and all that, but that's why we've gotten so bad, because she wants those things for us so badly that she's, you know, she's hurting us to get them for us.  But...  That's where it started.  She wants Trina and I to be happy with our lives.  And I understand that."

"But you have a problem with it because..." said Derek.

"Because I don't like what she did to us," I said.  "Oh God no.  But, I can understand it.  And I mean—well, I don't ever plan on having kids, but if I did, I'd want for them what my mom wants for me.  She showed it totally in the wrong way, but...  She loved us.  She still loves us.  And everything she's done has been because she loves us.  Once I realized that, I couldn't...  I dunno, I couldn't hate her anymore."

Sajel and Brandon nodded slowly.

"But hopefully you aren't going to do the same thing to your kids," Derek said.

"That's why I'm not having any," I retorted, punching him in the arm.  "Because I bet I would.  I'd fuck my kids up soo bad."

"That's not true," Meredith protested, "you're not that fucked up."

I held up my forearm.  "Really."

"That's nothing, that's cosmetic," Meredith said.  "That's like getting a tattoo.  Maybe you had your bad days, but you figured out why.  And you took action to stop it from happening again.  You changed, Arie.  Maybe there's not a lot of parents with scars on their arms, but there probably aren't a lot of parents who learned so much about themselves, that they know what not to do to their kids.  It's like what Jesus said.  No one has sinned so much that they can't find salvation."

"No religion, please," I said.  "That shit gives me the creeps."

"Save us, O Lord, from your followers," Brandon said.

Then the bell rang, and it was time for Pre-Calculus with Mr. Bhajra.  Derek was in that class with me, and he walked with me to the Norter wing, shielding me with himself on one side and the wall on the other.  (Doesn't Brandon share Pre-Calc with Meredith?  Weird beans, for us to both find significant others in a math class.)

"Whose idea was it to let people take Pre-Calc first thing in the morning," I grumped.  "My eyes are open, but I don't think my brain is."

"Yeah, not such a great time," Derek said.  "But imagine the people in sixth period.  Right after lunch.  How do they stay awake?"

"I don't care," I grumped, "I have problems just being awake in the first place."

"I think I can wake you up," Derek said, and the tone of his voice really should've warned me.  Actually, it did warn me.  Whenever somebody talks like that, it means they're planning something—and if you hear yourself referred to, you'd better get out of there, because you aren't gonna like it.  But he moved so fast.  One minute we were just walking along, calm as you please—and the next I was pressed up against the wall, my backpack lumpy and hard and making balance a tricky proposition, and his hands were on my breasts and something about them felt really goood.

"This—" I gasped.  "This is going to wake me up?"  His hands were a little bit cold, but that only made it worse; my nipples perked up to take notice, and every slightest movement of his hands over them sent fire zinging through me.

"Yup," said Derek, his expression one of furious concentration.

His hands left my breasts, and I started to protest—only to have them return, fingers only.  He found my nipples, stroking, caressing, pulling, drawing me out inexorably, the heat urging and mounting within me.  My heart thundered in my ears.  He had just barely gotten started, but my engine was already running, I was already wet.  The touch of his hands was so primal, so insistent, so good...  Like water, like air.  Something I needed.  Something I must have.  I pushed away from the wall, moving into his hands.

"Whups," said Derek.  "We can't be late for class, can we."  And then he started walking away.

"Ahh?!" I said.  "Hey, you can't do that!  Come back and finish what you started!"

He grinned at me, receding, walking backwards.  "Hey, you read the pamphlet.  You're not supposed to interfere with class time.  Better hurry before you get a detention."

I don't get detentions, thank god for my deal with Dr. Zelvetti.  And I had half a mind to just stand there in the hall and take care of myself right then and there.  But Derek was still grinning at me—that irreverent, ridiculous grin we all know and hate—and I growled and chased after him.  Derek laughed and took to his heels keeping pace with me, taunting me by stopping to examine things in comical surprise before bolting again.  In this manner we clattered all the way to Pre-Calc.

"I hope you realize," I growled when I finally caught him, "that you are rapidly inching towards deserving The Handjob To End All Handjobs."

Derek, insouciant bastard, just grinned: "Ooh!"  Except that he wasn't the only one who had commented: we were actually standing in the classroom, and everyone was staring at us.  And now, laughing at us.  Or rather, at me.  While I straightened up and attempted to make my face revert to its normal color in some dignified manner.  And Derek, smug little punk, just grinned.

"Mr. Strong, Ms. Chang," Mr. Bhajra said.  "Please sit down.  Class is about to begin."  We were halfway to our seats when he added: "Unless, of course, Ms. Chang should require relief."

It was like a lightbulb had switched on in my head.  Now there was an idea.

"Uh-oh," the person sitting next to Derek said.  "When someone looks at you like that, buddy, it's time to be scarce."

"I noticed," Derek said, chuckling.  The light shining in from the open door silhouetted him in shining white.  There were only a few desks separating him and freedom.  "Okay, Gavin.  You distract her, and I'll leap over—uh—"  He looked around wildly.  "—that person's desk in a single bound, and then—"

"Oh De-eeerek," I said in my best sugar-sweet voice.  "I need some heeeelp here."  And just to be cruel, batted my eyelashes and gave him as innocent a smile as I could make.

The entire classroom clapped and cheered and whooped.

Derek knew when he was caught.  He unfolded himself from his desk chair, the faint red on his cheeks the only sign that he'd been outmaneuvered.  "Well, when a lady calls, I suppose I have to answer."  He raised his voice in an echoing theatrical call.  "I'm coming, my fairest!"  Which only made me turn red again.  Dammit, am I ever gonna end one up on him?

Mr. Bhajra pulled a freestanding chair from somewhere.  It was grimy and its rough cloth cushion was blotched with stains and some strange white filmy covering, like donut frosting.  Maybe dried bubble gum.  Maybe worse.  Where the hell had this thing come from, Orgies 101?

Sitting down on the chair, I spread my legs wide, letting him (and the class) (and Mr. Bhajra, who looked wildly intrigued) see exactly where I wanted him.  My slit was still wet, and I knew he could tell.  "Now," I said, "get down there, and worship my pussy!"

My classmates laughed and cheered and whooped.

But Derek got down on his knees with an expression I can't describe—startled, but more than that, maybe pleased—and said in a voice only I could hear, "Believe me, lady, I plan to."

And then all I could do was stare at him for a half-second until his hand first touched the outside of my slit.

After that, I can't really explain what happened.  Look, girls, you can agree with me on this—when someone goes down on you, you can't see what's going on.  At first I could feel his thumb slipping up and down my slit, already split with moisture and ready for his touch; then his mouth descended to meet me, and I gasped and the crowd cheered.  And then I couldn't hear them anymore; it was only his lips, and his tongue, and his fingers inside me, driving me closer and closer towards that inevitable release, that insurmountable peak, that glorying jump off the top of the cliff—

I'm sorry, what was I saying?

When I could hear again, there was a constant thunderous applause going, and Derek was grinning in a decidedly smug manner and making theatrical bows.  Whereas I was sort of sagging in my chair, twitching rather feebly in an attempt to rise.  If Derek was the musician, then my instrument was all played out.

Then he went back to his desk and left me to sort of totter back to mine.  Damn that man.

F.2

The rest of the day was actually pretty uneventful.  A couple of people stopped me in the halls, mostly the slightly weird creeps who had heard about Derek's performance and wanted to see if they could recreate it.  They didn't do a very good job.

The other amusing thing was Brandon.  I think Meredith's got a wicked streak the size of Manhattan—I saw her give him a very brief, very thorough fondling as they parted ways between 1st and 2nd periods.  She left him standing there poleaxed while she waved and continued on her way.  She has such a cute little face, very innocent—you'd never suspect she had such a naughty side.  At least, until you saw her reach between Brandon's legs, and then saw the way Brandon stood up very straight on his tippytoes, his eyes bulging.

So, Brandon needed relief.  Again.  In English class.  And this time someone actually gave it to him.  (It wasn't Christa, though true to her word she did volunteer.)  Which, I think, made us all feel better.  I mean, how sucky was that on Wednesday?  I know how I'd feel if that had happened to me.  I probably would've just slit my wrists right then and there.  And Brandon stands up to it with dignity.  He's incredible.

The really interesting time was Psychology, however.  Dr. Zelvetti was there, as was Mr. Trineer, which puzzled us all—his main gig was photography, not the inner workings of the human mind.  (Why had he been such a big Program advocate anyway?)  And what was Dr. Zelvetti here for?  But no, Dr. Schlemmer was basically going to hold an open forum on The Program today, and of course Mr. Trineer and Dr. Zelvetti wanted to hear.  They were all about the growth thing, the sort of thing Brandon had brought up on Wednesday, and if anyone would be able to predict how teenagers would react to being stripped naked and thrown into school, it would be Dr. Schlemmer.

Or—I realized—Brandon and I.  Who had just lived through it.

Neither of the interlopers tried to take control of the class; evidently they were content to remain flies on the wall.  So Dr. Schlemmer stood up—looking just a bit nervous—and got things started.  "Since we've been altering the lesson plan all week, I suppose one more day won't make a difference.  As you know, Arie and Brandon are naked in school this week, and today is the last day of their Program weeks.  What you may not know is this year is the first year, and this week the first week, our school has offered The Program.  These two have been very brave.  Let's show them what we think of them."  He started clapping immediately, and so did Dr. Zelvetti and Mr. Trineer, and with that sort of enforcement, nobody was going to contradict.  What was surprising was that no one seemed inclined to contradict.  People clapped and cheered.  Brandon and I exchanged glances, startled, and, yes, pleased.

"This has been a learning period for us all," Dr. Schlemmer said, "experimenting by trial and error.  And unfortunately there have been some errors.  Brandon has been assaulted not once but twice this week.  Thankfully he came to no harm in either incident, but it is still a disturbing precedent."

I raised my hand.  "What I'm surprised at is that I haven't been assaulted this week.  I mean, I'm the girl here, I'm the weak one."

"That's not necessarily true," Brandon said.  "Me, I'm a known quantity.  I'm the wimp.  I talk to myself, sure, but that's understandable; all nerds do that.  But you...  Well, look at your arms.  That's something that people don't understand.  They don't know how you'll react.  If someone comes at you, for all they know you'll pull a broadsword out of your ass and go after them."

That was such an absurd mental image that I burst out laughing.  How could you hide a broadsword in your ass?  What is a broadsword?  A sword that's...  Broad?

"I think..."  Dr. Schlemmer, smiling, was raising his voice to regain our attention.  "I think this issue of being assaulted is probably the most pressing one.  After all, if The Program is to continue, we can't exactly allow its participants to wander about with no regard for their safety."

"You could give them all Mace," someone said.  "Or stun guns."

"But that just opens the door to the same kind of abuse," Meredith said.  "Except in the other direction.  You can't give somebody a weapon.  People already sign up just because they want to have sex.  Open the door to violence as well...  That wouldn't work.  You'd run the risk of letting really deranged people in."

"Security guards?" Rebekah asked.  When people laughed, she said, "No, I'm serious.  Who's gonna come at you when you've got that much muscle next to you?"

"Who's gonna touch you with that much muscle next to you," the broad-faced boy from Tuesday asked.  "The Program's all about hands-on policy.  Hiring guards just enforces hands-off.  It would defeat the purpose."

"What if you just cleared out the badlands," I asked.

"What if you just stayed away from the badlands," the broad-faced boy amplified.

"Scott, I think you have a very good point there," Dr. Zelvetti said (evidently that was the boy's name).  "If The Program continues, we'll warn participants away from the badlands.  But Arie..."  She turned to face me, her eyes serious in her worn, wide face.  "Well, a number of parents have come to me with similar suggestions, but there's a really simple reason we let people sit around in the badlands: If they stay there, they aren't here.

"The kids who go out beyond the football field...  Well, they want to be away from the rest of society.  And there's nothing we can do to change that.  Sure, we could try, but we've been trying, every one of those kids is in special programs to deal with their home situations, their upbringing, their current circumstances...  And some of them take advantage of that.  Some of them—well, I hesitate to say 'get better,' because it's not a sickness.  But...  They learn to move beyond their surroundings.  But others stay.  And they stay in the badlands.  Because they don't want to be here.

"These kids don't want to be a part of the rest of society.  They don't want to conform to the norms of behavior.  And we can't stop them.  Sure, we could institute drug tests and backpack searches and all sorts of security measures...  But this isn't a jail.  It's a school.  So we don't regulate the badlands.  We turn a blind eye.  We let those kids..."  She sighed.  "Do what they want to.  Because sometimes there isn't anything else we can do."

"So those losers are staying," someone said flatly.

"Those people," Dr. Zelvetti said, "are staying.  Because if we kicked them out of there, they'd have to come here.  And they'd do their best to make our lives as much of a living hell as we, by destroying their one place of refuge, had made theirs."

Brandon and Meredith and I exchanged glances.  When you put it that way, it was easy to see why no one regulated the badlands.

"Besides the assaults," Dr. Schlemmer said.  "Arie, Brandon, how have you two been treated this week?"

My scars prickled on my arms.  When I looked at Brandon, his eyes were on my arms, and when his eyes met mine, I knew he understood.  "That's not exactly an easy question," he said, turning to Dr. Schlemmer, a smile hovering about his lips.

"What do you mean?" Dr. Schlemmer asked.

How to explain this?  Perhaps a demonstration was in order.  I stood up.  "Okay, class, let's have all of you guess.  On Tuesday, how many people do you think asked to touch my boobs?  A number, guess the number."

Hands went up all over the room, mostly accompanied by grins.  Scott, smiling broadly, guessed forty billion.  Brandon, much more conservative, guessed thirty thousand and forty.  Rebekah, for her part, got the most laughter—she walked over to me and made a big show of inspecting me and my boobage (or lack of such, more accurately), and then made an exasperated noise and said, "Those tiny things?  Girl, you'd be lucky to get two people.  One for each."

I didn't see how she was one to talk—she was barely any larger than I was—but she'd hit the nail on the head.  "Actually," I said, "that's exactly right."

"What?" Rebekah asked, all the joke yanked out of her.  "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope," I said.  "I counted.  Two people.  All day.  And now, class, take a guess on this number.  On Tuesday, how many people do you think wanted to see my scars?"

Not a hand went up.  The class showed only wide eyes.

"I think I've made my point," I said, and sat down.

"Damn," Rebekah pronounced, now the only one standing.  "That sucks."  And with that she walked back to her desk.

"Our reputations preceded us," Brandon said.

"It's like we're museum exhibits," I said.  "People poke and prod, but they don't really treat you like an actual human.  They wanna see the weird."

"You should probably ask Steve or Shannon or some of the others this question instead," Brandon said.

"We are," Dr. Zelvetti said, "we're catching them after lunch."

"The point is," Brandon said.  "We're not exactly your 'average' Program participants.  We weren't really in it to broaden our horizons or because we wanted to get laid.  We were in it because..."  He glanced at me, as if suddenly realizing that my bargain with Dr. Zelvetti might not be common knowledge.  "—because we had certain experiences in common.  And certain cosmetic decorations in common on our arms.  People didn't know how to deal with that."

"You must have seen this coming," I said to Dr. Zelvetti.

"I warned them," Brandon told me.

"And for the first two days," Dr. Zelvetti said, "no, you weren't received so well.  But what about Thursday?  And today?"

"What's that got to do with it," I asked.

"Opinions of you changed," Dr. Zelvetti said.  "Sure, maybe you came in with all sorts of weird things hanging off you, but people got used to that.  I saw you at the front of the school this morning, Ms. Chang, you can't tell me they weren't accepting you."  That unexpected, playful smile came back again, and at once she looked ten years younger.

"Well," I grumped.

"And that's part of the point of The Program," Dr. Zelvetti said.  "To bring people into the spotlight who might otherwise have stayed out of it."

"That's risky, though," Meredith said.  "What if the person isn't ready?"

"I know the guy from Central who had a nervous breakdown last year," someone else volunteered.  "It wasn't pretty."

Brandon turned in his chair.  "You know Dim Kaspar?"

"Yeah, we went to Meldus Junior High together," the other boy said.

"That makes three of us," Brandon said, smiling, "Go Chargers," and the other boy laughed.

"Excuse me," I said, completely confused.  "What?"  We'd heard about the nervous breakdowns, of course, but now I wanted details.

"Dmitri Kaspar," Brandon said.  "He's a junior too.  He went through The Program at Central High and couldn't handle it.  Had to be hospitalized over a case of nerves.  You get people who are too wallflowery..."  He shook his head, looking chagrined.  "You have to find people who are just ready to start stepping out and making a name for themselves, but who haven't yet."

"Like you, Mr. Chambers," Mr. Trineer said.

Brandon shook his head.  "No way.  I'll tell you the truth, when they tapped me this week, I thought I'd end up just like Dim.  Especially going first.  I'm not on the cusp of some breakthrough or whatever."

"No, you're not," Dr. Zelvetti said, her voice distant and strangely, infinitely, wise.  "You've already passed the cusp.  You broke through."

Brandon looked vaguely uncomfortable at this.  I wonder why.

"And what of Arie," Dr. Schlemmer asked.

"The same thing," Dr. Zelvetti answered.  "Arie, you've been crying for help since day one.  Maybe this isn't the help you envisioned...  But you got it, all the same."

"How is 'help' a personal breakthrough," Rebekah said.

"Because that's what depression is," Dr. Zelvetti said.  "You may not be in a prison cell, but even if the door is open, you're scared to come out.  You're not sure what's outside the cell, which is safe even if it's smelly and dirty.  Arie wanted help in leaving."

"So, if she recovers, it's not her doing?" Rebekah asked angrily.

"No."  Surprisingly it was Meredith who answered.  "Maybe Dr. Zelvetti shut the cell door behind her, but it was Arie who walked out of it."

Now I was blushing.  They seemed to be making such a big deal out of it.  What had I done, anyway?  I'd walked around for a week with no clothes on, with all my scars showing.  That was all I'd done.  Everything else was because I was naked.  Without my clothes to hide my scars, I could've...

...Gone on ignoring where they came from.  Stayed in my cell.  Not elaborated when people asked.  Not reached out for help by telling people what I did on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.  Not marched into Dr. Zelvetti's office on Thursday and asked her what to do about Trina, asked her to help me close that door behind me.  The real armor was in my refusal to face the evidence of my screwed-up life etched into my arms; the clothes were only a formality.

And so was the message from Trina.  Well, maybe more than a formality; it was the lock on the door.  But the choice had all been mine.  Brandon and Derek and Meredith and Dr. Zelvetti had all helped.  But...  Mostly, it had been me.  Arie Chang.  Naked, clothed or otherwise.

"I'd left the cell before," I said, aware that I was interrupting someone else, and not really caring.  All eyes turned to me as if by magic.  "It was weird out there.  The sunshine felt strange.  The fresh air smelled strange.  The blue of the sky was like nothing I'd ever seen before.  It was scary.  So I said to Dr. Zelvetti, 'Promise me.  This time, when I leave, lock that damned door behind me.  Because I'm scared.  Because I know it'll be for the better, but I can't have the choice in front of me, it has to be taken away from me.  Or else I'll run back to what's safe.  And I won't go anywhere.  So promise me.'  And she did.

"And you, Brandon."  I turned to face him, speaking for his ears.  "You've taken risks too.  You didn't want to help me, but you did.  You didn't want to share your friends with me, but you did.  You even trusted me enough to take me to bed."  People whooped and whistled; I didn't hear.  "You were scared of your nakedness as much as I was.  But you stood up and faced it.  You shared what your scars had taught you, even though they're what sets you apart.  And you discovered that they don't make you as different as you thought they did."  I smiled.  "So don't tell me you haven't made some breakthrough.  Don't tell me you haven't changed.  You're free now as surely as I am."

Brandon smiled and smiled.

"Arie, Brandon," Dr. Schlemmer said.  "If it were up to you, would The Program continue here at this school?"

"Absolutely," I said, and Brandon nodded and said, "Yes."  He added, "I seriously doubt you could find more participants as dysfunctional as Arie and I, so the others should have an easier time."  People laughed.

"And what does everyone else think," Dr. Schlemmer asked, turning to the class at large.  "Would you guys like to keep The Program around?"

Meredith actually raised her hand.  "It brings people into the spotlight," she said.  "I don't know if any of us would have looked at Brandon twice if he hadn't been naked—because he likes to keep to himself.  He prefers having some distance between him and others.  And honestly, that's kind of sad, because he's obviously a very nice person.  And it's the same with Arie.  I'm really glad I met both of them."

"So, that would be...  In favor of?" Dr. Schlemmer asked.

"Absolutely in favor of," Meredith said.  "There are five hundred juniors at this school.  I know at most half of them.  What if the other two hundred fifty are just as nice as Brandon is, but no one knows, because they keep to themselves so much?  That would be criminal.  So let people step forward, let's give them a chance."

"But you have to be careful," Rebekah said.  "Nervous breakdowns would be a bad thing.  I know I couldn't go through it."

That brought a ripple of questions.  I was as surprised as the rest.  Rebekah's one of those people who looks like she's got it all together.  Sure, her mouth is open sometimes, but that's just 'cause she's black—her eyes are always half-lidded, very calm, very closed.  She's tall and trim and attractive.  What's wrong with her?

"Guys, I'm very conscious about my body image," Rebekah said.  "I look in the mirror and I just see...  Flaws.  Everything wrong.  I dunno what other people would see...  But I know what I see.  And I think it'd drive me insane to have to show all that to everybody."

"People just have to have a certain...  A prior amount of self-confidence and self-esteem going in," Brandon said.  "Or else they'll go down in flames."

"Self-confidence," I said, amused, "self-esteem.  Me.  Who knew?"

"Hey, maybe you've got body image problems," Meredith said to Rebekah, "but at least you're conscious about them.  And you can admit them in front of the whole class."  She smiled.  "There's gotta be something in there."

"Yeah, but enough?" Rebekah returned with a wry smile.  "Call me crazy, girl, but I'm not interested in finding out the hard way."

"Well, let that be a lesson then," said Mr. Trineer, the first time he’d spoken all class.  "People aren’t always what they seem."

"People don’t always react the way you expect them to," Brandon said.

"Least of all yourself," I said.

And then the bell rang, which was probably just as well, because that was really all there was to say.

F.3

The rest of the day was, happily, pretty smooth.  We got all the carpool issues for my party worked out over lunch; Zach, when told we'd approved him as the designated driver, set up such a rejoicing and whooping—and Sajel and Brandon gave me such incredulous looks—that I started wondering whether to reverse the situation.  But it was a bit too late by then.

Over the course of the day I saw Brandon get felt up a few times, which he grinned and made jokes over, and Derek continued to terrorize me any chance he got—which was mostly just lunch, because we don't have any other classes together.  Putting Derek, Brandon and Zach together in the same room for a while is just not a good idea, because Zach will start something, and Derek will follow him, and Brandon will play the straight-man, and pretty soon everyone's on the floor laughing.  And then sometimes Kelsey gets in on it.  Now that's a disaster—at least, if you're trying to keep a straight face.  I didn't bother.  I rolled on the ground and laughed.

Meredith was there, and Sajel, both of them pitching in comments on occasion to make one or more of our comedians look bad, but Tim wasn't there.  That struck me as odd.  Most of the time he loitered near Derek and I, maybe emboldened by our shared Asian heritage; he hardly said anything, but his face was always present.  It was odd not to have him around.  When I asked Sajel about it, though, she shrugged.  "He does his own thing," she said.  "He doesn't always tell us where he is.  Tim...  He's more loosely bound to us than anyone else is, I guess.  That's just his way."

Of course, I had 7th period with him and Brandon, so I asked him.  "Hey, Tim, we missed you at lunch, where were you?"  To which he gave me a blinking, distracted look and said, "Uh, I was.  I needed some time alone."

I kind of wanted to press farther, but he seemed really uncomfortable, and Brandon seemed completely oblivious, so I didn't say anything.

And shortly afterwards got a chance to find out what he had been thinking about.  After the final bell, as the class dissolved into Friday-afternoon chaos, he asked to speak to me privately and pulled me aside.  "Arie...  I guess this might sound weird, because I've been so quiet all week.  I've—  I've just been watching you, and—  Yeah, that really sounds bad.  But.  I haven't been off in my own world or anything, I've just been watching the situation, and..."  He took a breath and the rest blew out in a rush.  "I think you're really attractive.  If—if you're not busy after school today, would you like to...  I dunno, get some food, watch a movie, something like that.  I guess it—"

"Tim—  Tim," I said.  That sucks, doesn't it?  That really sucks.  "I'm already seeing somebody."

Watching him slowly deflate was an awful experience.  It was like he grew hollow and kind of died somehow.

"I see," he said stiffly.

"I'm sorry," I said.  I felt really bad for him.  I mean, who likes disappointing someone like that?  "I don't know what else to say."

"It's okay," he said, not meeting my eyes.  "It happens."

Then he walked away.

Brandon found me still standing there about two minutes later.  "What happened?"

"Sucky things," I said.

"What, did Tim—?"

"How did you know?"

He gave me a wry smile.  "Some of us are just psychic like that.  I guess I don't have to ask how it ended."  I nodded.  "Well.  He'll recover.  Come on then."

"Come on what," I said.

"It's Friday," he said, grinning.  "We can put some clothes on."

I blinked and looked down at myself.  Aside from the whole deal of getting fondled in the hallways, I'd basically forgotten I had no clothes on.

"It's gonna be weird being covered," I said.

He smiled.  "Well, you could always wear a T-shirt."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said.  "I can't.  I have to hide my—"

Wait a second.

I don't have to hide my scars.  Everyone I was hiding them from...  Knows about them now.  I'd worn long sleeves for two years because having people see would cause unwanted questions.  But now the questions had already been asked.  Hell, some of them had even been answered.  I could wear T-shirts again.

Brandon gave me that smile of his, that one I'll never be able to imitate.  That smile is a flood of light, like the sun bursting through clouds.  You can't face it and not feel better.

"Wow," I said.  "I guess I have changed."

"Yes, you have," Brandon said.  "So now let's go and get changed."

Meredith joined us halfway, looking uncomfortable a little intimidated.  "Okay, uhm.  Guys?  There's something you should probably know about the clothes boxes."

Brandon and I exchanged glances.

"Everybody's waiting for you," Meredith said in a rush.

Brandon and I broke into laughter.  "What, that's it?  I thought someone had stolen them or something."

"Nooo, but..." said Meredith, twisting her hands.  "They're all waiting.  It's, like, practically the entire school.  And since you're still on school property, Rule Three's still in effect."

Brandon and I exchanged glances of an entirely different nature.

"I guess maybe it's because no one's sure if they're gonna cancel The Program or not," Meredith said.  "This might be the last time anyone goes naked in school.  So..."

"And they want a show," Brandon said.  I had a vague, wild flash of an image: Brandon and Steve and Shannon and I, brandishing top hats and canes, trying to get through Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Brandon sighed.  "Well.  Forewarned is forearmed, they say."

"And there's parents," Meredith said.

That made us stop.

"Because it's the front of the school.  They're picking their kids up."

"My parents," I said, realizing.

"Not to mention some of the teachers," Meredith said.  Now she looked really unhappy.  "I'm sorry to ruin your birthday like this, but—"

"It's fine," I said, thinking.  My parents.  Specifically my mother.  And probably Trina as well, since we were both getting picked up.  What did Trina think about me being in The Program?  Would she head straight to the car and sit next to my mother, the two of them united in prim disapproval?  Would she be in the crowd, egging us on?  Would she try and get me out of it?  That I doubted; Trina was all for anything that would make me suffer.

So.  What would Trina do?  I didn't know.  But regardless, I needed to get my clothes.

"Well," I said.  "They want a show?  Let's go give them one."

Brandon and Meredith looked at me as though I'd grown a third head.  Yeah, I know I only had one to begin with, how'd I grow a third without first having a second?  Well, that just tells you how much they were gaping at me.

It wasn't as bad as it could've been, just time-consuming.  It was really much the same as the morning, except that Derek wasn't there.  And that Meredith was there.  It was evidently within Reasonable Request for her to have to 'help' Brandon with his affairs.  Not that what they wanted her to do, helped much.  I stood around for a little waiting for them to finish up, but they were a little bit involved at that point.  They'd told Brandon to leave his pants unbuttoned until the end, and from the size of the hard-on he was sporting, I had a hunch that they'd have problems with that eventually.  But Trina was standing on the edge of the crowd (she's so small, it's a wonder she wasn't crushed by the crowd), catching my eyes every few minutes and pointing sternly at her watch in a manner scarily reminiscent of our mother, and I had to go.

"We'll meet at your house at 5:30," Brandon said once he saw me leaving, which was what we'd agreed on.  And so I went home.

The drive home was basically silent—well, not really silent; my mother asked us what had happened that day, and we told her, but that was normal, she always asks us that.  Nothing else was really said.  Trina fidgeted in the front seat, and my mother looked pretty much normal.  I'd just dropped a bombshell on her and my dad last night.  How had she reacted?  What was a mother supposed to look like if she'd just had everything she believed ripped out from under her?

Trina stopped in the kitchen for a snack, but I went straight up to my room and checked my e-mail and the Candlelight boards to make sure that Chiana was safe (she was; she'd eventually gone to bed without taking the pills).  After that I puttered around online, checking all the sites I normally check.  Did you know some people publish comic strips online?  Who needs the newspaper?  Now you can read Calvin and Hobbes using your computer.  Even better, people who would have never made it into the newspapers get to put their stuff online, which is good, because newspapers have to be so sanitary.  You can't even say 'booger' in a newspaper strip.  But online, all bets are off.  You can actually be funny online.  Unlike, say, Garfield.  Which is about a million years old and hasn't been funny since, like, before I was born.

About twenty minutes after we got home (while I was still running through my bookmarks), I heard Trina tromping up the stairs.  She went into her room and slammed the door.  Her door is always closed when she's in her room, because when I sit at my computer (which is what I do in my room, if I'm not sleeping), I can see what she's doing.  She wants the privacy.  And the speed and intensity at which she closes the door is the barometer for what sort of mood she's in.  Surprisingly, I didn't hear my mother's yells following her up; normally if she slams the door, they've just had an argument, which is one of the few things that can really put Trina off balance.  But not so this time.  I wondered what had caused it.

I found out.  My mother came up a little later and knocked on my door.  "Arie."  The look on her face was the strangest I'd ever seen; she seemed distracted and worn; her eyes looked past me and through me, to...  Where?  Another world?  Another universe?  She seemed ready to fade from sight, to slip away from here, to...  Where?

"Your father and I have spoken," she said.  "We have agreed that it may be wise to seek counseling for this family.  I'll talk to the insurance company, I'll talk to our physicians.  We'll find something."

"Okay," I said.  I was skeptical; a lot of people at Candlelight don't advocate therapy.  I've never quite understood why.  Applied psychology is a billion-dollar industry right now, especially in the really big cities; Sara tells us breathless tales of how expensive meds are in San Francisco.  Then again, she tells us breathless tales of how expensive everything is in San Francisco, so maybe it's just the city.  The point is, everyone else seems to think therapy and psychology is a good idea; why does everyone on Candlelight have problems with it?  I've never understood why.

"I want you to know," my mother said, sounding shaky and brittle.  "Telling us what you did, yesterday, was very brave.  And your father and I are proud of you."

There was a silence between us for a short time.

Then I said, "But you don't believe me."

My mother didn't answer.

"Sucks to be you, then, that you can't recognize truth when you hear it."

My mother didn't answer.

I turned to my computer.  A few moments later, I heard my mother's footsteps descending the stairs.

I sighed.  I had better tell Trina, then, I suppose; I wasn't sure if she knew.  She probably didn't; if not, she'd have busted into my room already and threatened to kill me.  Or attempted to kill me.  She's not very subtle, is Trina.  Trina angry!  Trina smash!  But since I wasn't being pinned to the wall with her arm across my throat at this very second, I figured it was a safe wager that she hadn't heard.

"Trina?"  I knocked on her door.  "Can I come in?  I'd like to talk to you."

Her reply was muffled by the door, but perfectly understandable: "Go away you pompous bitch!"

"Trina," I said.  "Please."  Suddenly I felt like crying.  "I never meant to hurt you.  I couldn't just...  I couldn't just sit there, knowing what I did."

There was silence for a moment on the other side of the door.  Then, to my surprise, it burst open.

I hadn't seen the inside of Trina's room in a long time.  Really, when you got down to it, it looked a lot like mine, except that her colors tended more towards bold, dark reds with some occasional blue for contrast.  It smelled more like a spice cabinet than my orchard of a room.  The drapes were drawn against the afternoon sun.  On her desk was a computer, just like mine.

Trina was yelling.  "—think that you have the right to fuck around with my life!  You just waltz into—"

There was another smell in the air, the smell of pain.  Don't ask me how I can smell it; maybe you can too.  It smells like blood, except worse—the smell of blood drawn in anger, blood drawn from one's own skin.

Her arms were behind her back.  "Trina," I said, lost in her tirade, and reached for her shoulder.

Trina flashed.  She'd taken martial arts training for a lot longer than I had (I gave up in sixth grade) and it showed in the speed of her movements.  A distant, retarded part of my brain thought that next time Brandon ventured into the badlands, he should bring my sister with her.  In her right hand she held a tiny, triangular piece of metal—the razor-sharp blade from an X-Acto knife.  They were my mother's; she used them to cut cardboard or foam-board, generally for our school projects.  She'd bought a small box of replacement blades at some point; I had four or five of them hidden away in various places in my room.  They was barely an inch long, hardly enough to hold on to, but Trina could hurt me with it if she had a mind to.  The scars on my arms prickled, clawing at the sleeves of my shirt.

The tip of the blade was red.  On the top of her arm were five red lines, still seeping.

"Don't touch me, bitch," Trina snarled.

I shoved the sleeve of my right arm up to my elbow and put my forearm right under her nose.  Trina's breath ruffled the hairs on my arm, sluiced across the scars like cold water.  She stared.

Now I was angry too.  "Not fake.  Not making things up.  Jesus Christ, Trina, they're my parents too.  Why should you be the only one to suffer?"

Trina stared.

"Fuck, you know how it is.  We look out for each other.  Even if you're my sister and you're a bitch sometimes.  You want me to go down and tell Mom I changed my mind?  Tell her we don't need it?  You wanna go on puking like this for the rest of your life?"

Trina stared, her mouth dangling open.

"Jesus Christ," I said again, and let my arm go down.

Trina blinked, and her mouth opened up and down several times like a fish struck dumb.  "I—  I'm sorry."

"It's fine," I growled.  "I didn't think of it until this morning."

"Did you—  Did you really tell them?" Trina said.

"While you were fluting," I said.  (We've turned flute and violin into verbs, so what I meant was, 'While you were at your flute lesson.')  "Just sat 'em down and told 'em the whole story."

"And Mom believed?" Trina gushed.

"Chuh.  Not exactly.  But she's willing to admit that maybe something has to change.  Which is better than nothing.  You know Mom.  Gets these ideas into her head, and you can't change 'em."

"Yeah, like when she was convinced that everyone would like that crazy birthday cake two years ago.  My God, you remember that?  Jenny took one bite of it and she was just like, 'Uh, Trina, what is this and can I spit it out yet?'  I was so embarrassed."

I laughed.  "Well, at least that was the year nobody could make it.  If everyone had come that you'd invited, you'd have poisoned half the eighth grade with that thing."

Trina giggled.  All the fire was gone from her eyes and suddenly she wasn't my bitch sister, that unpredictable thing that might snap in any direction at any time; she was just that tiny sprite of a girl I saw around campus, chattering with her friends.  She was...  Normal.

"Hey, it's your birthday today, isn't it," Trina said.  "What are you doing for the cake?"

Uhh!!  "Holy shit, I totally forgot about that," I said, and started to laugh.  "I guess that's what happens when you put together a party in fifteen minutes.  Hold on, I'm gonna go call Brandon."

Trina giggled again.  "We keep hearing that name.  Brandon.  Is he your boyfriend?"

I turned, but this time she was grinning.  No teasing, no sparring.  Just the question.

"No," I said.  "But he's good at solving problems."  And he was; when everyone showed up at 5:30, they had the cake situation smoothed out.  Brandon's like my superhero.  If something goes wrong, we call him, and he fixes it up.  It's a good trait to have in a friend.

After I was done on the phone, Trina was back on her computer, and we didn't really speak again until after I came home.  I guess we were a little nervous about the peace between us; fourteen years of on-and-off hostility makes for prickly truces, and it's way too easy to make accidental missteps.  But she didn't close her door to the world.  And every now and then I took a glance over my shoulder, just to see if she was there—and I think she did the same to me.

F.4

The cake solution was far less grand than I have suggested.  It was a boxed affair, already a little smushed to one side by the treacherous car ride, with the Safeway logo on the box.  Brandon grinned at my frown and said, "What, you expect miracles?  Give me more than an hour's warning then."

Brandon looked really weird with clothes on.  He was wearing a blue T-shirt with brown stripes and some tan khaki slacks.  "What, what's wrong?"

I shrugged.  "It's so odd not seeing skin from the neck down."

He laughed.  "Look who's talking.  At least you've got more colors on than black this time."  Which was true.  I'd traded the normal black long-sleeved shirt for a dark purple one.  Maybe not so much of a difference, but hey, whatever works.

Meredith had had the presence of mind to arrange carpools, so that not too many cars cluttered up our driveway.  Zach pulled up in this huge sleek minivan of dark blue, and we piled in.  Meredith and Brandon balanced the cake in the back seat; Sajel took the navigator's post in the front passenger seat, and Derek and I were left with the middle-row bucket seats.  As opposed to, say, the back seat, which would've allowed us to sit a little closer together.  But no, I needed to be close to the front so that I could direct Zach to the restaurant.  Stupid Brandon and Meredith didn't even take advantage of the back seat either, they put the cake between them and left it there the whole ride over.  I swear.  Those people.

My mother said hello to all my friends, made sure I had my cell phone (uncharged, as always), and bade me happy birthday.  And just like that, we were off.

"Did you bring any music," Sajel asked me.

I said, "What?"

"Music," Sajel said.  She was twisted in her bucket seat and her head leaned over its shoulder.  "CDs, discs, cassette tapes even.  It's a tradition.  Brandon started it.  Whoever's birthday it is, gets to choose the music."  She made a face.  "He was fourteen.  We had to listen to boyband music."

"At least I don't still listen to it, Ms. Heartthrob Seven," Brandon called from the back seat.  It's hard to hear in a van sometimes.

"Yeah, and like the next year was much better," Zach retorted.  "Remember ABBA?  That shit must be about a million years old."

About as old as Garfield , I thought inanely.

"Hey, what's wrong with ABBA," Derek said.  "I like that stuff."  And Brandon said, "And lo, the skies opened, and he was vindicated," and they high-fived.

"So, did you bring any music?" Sajel asked me.

"Uh," I said.

"Uh-oh," said Zach.

"Nobody told me!" I protested.

Zach and Sajel gasped.

"Brandon," Sajel said, scolding.  "How could you."

"What, how come it's my fault," Brandon said, "one of you could've told her.  Am I my Program partner's keeper?"

"Here," said Zach, making a left turn.  "Sajel, open the glove compartment.  Arie, there's all my CDs, see if you can find something you like."

"Why is this music thing so important, anyway," I asked.

Sajel tossed the folder of CDs at me and grinned.  "One word: karaoke."

Brandon and Zach whooped like drunks.

"Hey, we got three people in choir in here," Derek said, "it ought to be interesting."

"And you can't forget me," Zach said, "I'm the next Andrea Pavarotti."

"The next what," Meredith exclaimed.

"It's Andrea Bocelli, dumbass," Sajel told him, grinning.

"Oh who cares," Zach said, "all these Italian people, all their names are the same.  Andrea Bocelli, Andrea Pavarotti, Andrea Spaghetti, Andrea Fettuccini—"

I put my head in my hands and groaned.

That was basically the car ride.  Brandon does a really good straight man, but I found myself taking that role more often than not, being the one reacting and letting them bounce off me.  In part it was just because, despite everything, I felt a little uncomfortable.  This wasn't a milieu I was familiar with—not this group, not these traditions, not this style.  Derek was finding ways to fit in just fine (and God, I wish I knew how he did that) but as for myself...  Of course, I imagine Meredith felt even worse.

The music, on the other hand, was something else.

Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional leaped out at me at first, but I passed it over—you can't sing along with that.  Well, maybe Brandon can, but I can't; I have these things called boobs and I don't have these things called balls and it makes it hard to sing low.  For a moment I wished for Tori Amos; that, at least, I can do.  But most guys aren't sopranos.  Finally I passed the folder back to Brandon and asked him to pick out something with a democratic voice spread.  I approved his choice and we passed it forward.

"Aww, what the fuck," said Zach, plugging the disc in.  "ABBA again?"

"Hey," Brandon said, "it's your CD folder."

You can dance, you can jive,
Having the time of your life...

Now here's the thing.  I don't know why Sajel isn't in the choir, she sings pretty well.  And Zach isn't that bad either.  Then you throw in Bran and Meredith and Derek, and I was just showered in all this incredible sound.  If you've never had a chance to surround yourself with really good singers and let them loose, I highly recommend it.  You get into something like "Take A Chance On Me" where the guys and the girls sing something completely different—and then Meredith shifted down to the harmony, and then Zach started on that really weird electronic honking they use on the background, and then I think we were all laughing a little too hard to keep singing.  But, like...  Jeez.  It's like surround sound, except better, 'cause it's this entire car load of your friends.  And they sounded good.  ...And I guess I sounded okay too.

Though public opinion of my croaking was higher than I expected.  Derek started it—he turned to me and said, totally deadpan, "Arie, if you don't quit the orchestra and come sing with us, I'm never going to kiss you again."

"No kidding," Meredith amplified.  "If you don't, I'll never kiss you again either.  —Oh wait."

"Uh-oh," said Brandon, making a show of his uncertainty.  He turned to Meredith, exaggeratedly timid.  "Honey?  Is...  Is there something I oughta know about?"

"Hey, keep your hands off my girl," Derek protested.  "If anyone's gonna not kiss her, it's me."

My girl.  I like that.

"Jesus," Sajel said.  "Good at violin and good at singing.  Whose brain did you eat when you were young?"

And that got me thinking.  My mother would complain, yes—but maybe I could get out of violin.  I'd rather sing.  And I don't think my voice is half as wonderful as everyone's saying, but I wouldn't mind having a future as a vocalist.  Maybe, when Dad suggested I'd rather be part of the choir, he wasn't just pulling an option out of his ass.

The restaurant was pretty crowded, which was to be expected, since it was Friday night.  Most of the patrons were Asian.  It was a little surprising how many there were; this area isn't exactly known for its Asian demographic.  But then again, Zach had driven us for the better part of an hour to get here; maybe people came from miles around.  Meredith took charge of the cake—she told them to keep it in the kitchen until we called for it.  It looked remarkably squashed at that point.  The waitress looked at it very dubiously and agreed to take charge of it.  In the meanwhile, we got our reserved table and sat down.

"Hot Pot Palace.  I've never been in this place before," Sajel said.  We had to speak pretty loudly to hear over the noise of the other patrons.

"It's nifty," I said.

"How do we order?" Zach asked.

"You don't," I said.  "It's a buffet.  Go take a look."

Zach and Sajel stood up immediately to go investigate.  Derek, though, cueing off me, stayed put.  Brandon started to rise, but Meredith had seen the same thing, and she pulled him down.

"So," she asked, "what's with this thing?"  She gestured to the fixture in the middle of the table.  A sunken pit had been built into the table, perhaps foot square and half that in depth, and in it was a strange rectangular object with some weird thin knobs on the front, one round and one rectangular.  Of course, I knew what those knobs did, but to Meredith it must look bizarre.  On top of the object, held up by metal claws, was a wide metal plate covered in tin foil, with a smaller metal container in the middle, like the pot from a rice cooker.  The plate was about level with the surface of the table.

I just grinned.  "You'll see."

Sajel and Zach were back within moments.  "Arie, if salmonella is your idea of a good birthday present..." Sajel said.

"All the food's raw," Zach said.

A grin grew on Meredith's face.

"Yep," I said smugly.  "Grab what you like.  "When the—  Ah, here we are."  As if rehearsed, one of the waiters bustled up.  He attached a round plastic thing to the round knob—and suddenly it was a dial with positions for "On" and "Off".  (They take off the plastic dial so that customers can't play with the appliance.)  He switched it to "On", made sure the other knob (a lever) was pushed all the way to the top, and then produced an electric match.  A couple of snaps later, there was a fire burning under the metal plate.  The waiter took back the dial, produced a large kettle, and poured water into the container in the middle of the plate.  Then he left.

"Grab what you like," I said.  "You use this thing to cook it."

"Cool," Zach said, clearly delighted.

"Just be glad we're not still in The Program," I told Brandon.  "Lots of grease flying around.  Though your clothes get really stinky too.  You'll be smelling your dinner for the rest of the night.  Oh, and—"  Catching Zach and Sajel as they were about to go.  "—They charge extra if there's uneaten food left over, so try not to get too greedy."

Brandon and Zach looked at each other very slowly.  "You know not to whom you speak," said Sajel, rolling her eyes.

Eating at Hot Pot Palace is an adventure in itself.  You can boil things, you can fry things on the plate—and for those who'd rather just eat, there's a few things that come already cooked.  None of us seemed interested in that, though.  The first ten minutes was a chaos of going back and forth, grabbing chunks of chicken or sliced beef or lamb or anything that looked interesting.  On occasion, we even got something green.  That was more Meredith and Sajel and I.  The vegetables you had to boil; they tended to be leafy, and you can't fry that.  Some of the chicken and beef went into the pot too, but most of it (especially the marinaded stuff) was spread out in thin slices onto the hot plate.  There was also a frantic run to find some forks; Sajel and I were the only ones who could use chopsticks.  And then after that we had to find some more forks, and chopsticks, once Sajel pointed out how truly intelligent it would be to both prod raw meat and then eat cooked meat using the same utensil.

When we finally had something cooked (I think it was a lump of chicken), Derek grabbed it and dropped it onto my plate.  "Weird new restaurant.  Birthday girl gets the first taste."

I threw it back onto his.  "What are you talking about, I've been here before.  You try it."

"But it's your birthday," Derek protested, sending it back.

"You're just scared it's going to poison you or something.  It's edible.  Trust me."

No I am not," Derek said, "I'm just—"

He dropped it on the floor.

We both looked at it.  Then we looked up at each other.

"Guysh," said Zach, lips smacking, half of a greyish meatball on his fork.  "It'sh fine.  Naow eat arreddy."

Cooking stuff yourself is fun.  There's just a certain novelty in tossing slices of meat onto the heat plate and watching them sizzle.  The problem is, each slice is only about a mouthful, and there's pretty limited space on the plate.  It takes a long time to cook for six people if you have to work with a surface area not much larger than a piece of binder paper.  And no, none of us were really into the boiled stuff.  I guess we're too American, can't stand anything that hasn't been fried.  McDonald's would be proud of us.

Over dinner, the topic inevitably came up: "So, Arie, how goes the domestic campaign?"  Oddly enough, it was Sajel who asked me.  "Any casualties to the latest battle plan?"

"Well...  Some," I said.  "I don't know what my father thinks.  My mother...  She agreed that we should seek counseling, which I think is a step in the right direction.  But I'm not sure if she'll listen."

"So why's she going into therapy then," Zach asked.

"Because...  To shut us up," I said.  "She may not agree that she's fucked-up, but she agrees that we're fucked-up.  Me and Trina.  Maybe she figures she can get us back on track without having to change anything about herself."

"But..." Meredith said.  "If she's the reason you're off-track..."

"Yeah, that's the problem," I said.

"Welcome to the human race," Sajel said.  "Stupidity and ignorance, or your money back."

"Sounds like a neat trick," Zach said, "just ignoring everything to go your own way.  "How do you do it?"

"Very, very carefully," Brandon said with dull sarcasm.

"With great skill and deliberation," Meredith said in the same voice.

"By being desperate," Derek said, and his tone was so different from the others that we all turned to look.  He stared at us all, his fork limp in his hands.  "It's when your plan isn't working and everything's going wrong, but you cling to it anyway, because you're scared and you don't know what else to do."

We blinked at him.

"What?" he said.  "Play an online war game.  Play StarCraft or something.  Suddenly your opponent does something you weren't preparing for and you don't know how to respond to it.  Then you lose a lot."

"Except that it's not a game, it's Arie's life," Meredith said.

"Well, that's where you gotta have confidence in yourself," Derek said.  "Not, 'Oh no, things are going wrong what am I gonna do,' but 'Okay, things are going wrong, but I can handle it.'  He comes over the horizon with Mutalisks, well, I can build Corsairs instead of Archons, and have his fleet for dinner."

"...He comes over the horizon with whats," Zach asked.

I stared at the cook pot for a while, ignoring them, saying nothing.  ("See, it's this big flying alien thing..."  "Uh-huh...")  It was really sort of a scary thought.  My mom had made a mess of my life, and of Trina's life, because she didn't feel...  Confident.  Because she didn't think she could guide us, handle us, provide for us.  She'd been scared that she'd mess up.

The only response I could think of was, Well, you were right to be scared, werntcha!

But it wasn't an angry thought.  All in all, I could hardly blame her for being scared that she might screw up her children's lives.  I mean, Christ, I'm so scared of that, I'm not even gonna have children.  And the fact that she'd gone and done exactly what she feared, only gave credence to the fear.

Though, arguably, if she'd had enough confidence to trust her own parenting abilities, none of this would have ever happened.  But I've been where she was—where she is.  That sort of confidence in yourself can be really hard to muster.

Well.  All we gotta do is convince her to change her mind.  Which will be, as it always has been all along, the real challenge.

The cake was pretty battered; half of the frilly frosting trim was smashed to ruin.  But the "Happy Birthday Arie" was still legible, and it tasted good, so who exactly was complaining?  And there was no extra food to pay for; either we'd all done a very good judgement on how hungry we were, or the menfolk had bottomless stomachs.  I suspect the latter.  I had no idea Brandon was one of those guys who makes a big deal over being able to stomach about fifteen people's worth of food.

After we left, the sun was already gone, leaving only dark reds and purples and blues to mark its passing, and no one really wanted to go home.  Brandon's house was the obvious solution, since there were no parents to displace.  "When exactly do they plan to return," I asked him, and he shrugged and said, "I think some time in late October."  This time Derek and I got the back seat, and we actually used it this time.  Not that we, like, got it on or anything.  But we didn't keep the empty seat between us.  Unlike someone I could mention.  Zach keyed the music down, and we talked and chattered, while the sun slowly sank away.  It's fun being on the road at night, surrounded by friends, with the bright angled shine of headlights the only light source.  It's dark—but you feel warm, and safe.  And not alone.

It's really nice to be not-alone.

Derek and I sat close together, wrapped up in each other's arms.  This is what Brandon and Meredith do, I thought to myself.  I wonder how they think of it.  I knew what I thought of it: it was making me horny.  Being near Derek was like an aphrodisiac.  From the way he fidgeted, I thought he felt the same way.  Which, of course, meant I needed to shift a little bit and wiggle my bum against him, and rearrange his arms so that one of his hands—purely by coincidence!—lay across the top of my boob.  Time to put a little of the pressure on him for a change.  Though the pressure was building on my end too.

Derek was the only one who hadn't seen Brandon's house by now.  I half expected him to comment on it—how empty, how vasty its powers—but he didn't.  And I was startled to realize that I didn't feel that way either.  We were too busy talking and laughing.

After we had called our parents to tell them what was going on (Meredith's idea), we ended up in the room with the giant TV, sitting around drinking soda and munching on whatever snacks Brandon had rustled up and smashing each other around in video games.  And Brandon sat back and fetched a deep contented sigh and said, "I should pay you guys to live here.  We have enough money.  And this house wouldn't be so damned silent all the time."

Zach laughed.  "I'd stay.  I mean, shit, look at this place!  DVDs, big-screen TV, wireless network—"

"You've got him," Sajel said to Brandon.  "He's hooked.  Dangle modern technology in front of him and he's yours for life."

"I'd stay," Meredith said, which made Zach whoop.  "Ah, but you got your own reasons for staying," he said, which Meredith actually faced without blushing.  At least, as far as I could tell.  Derek and I were wrapped up in each other on the couch and not really paying attention to anything.  Every now and then there was a whoop when someone did something spectacular on the video game—I think people kept yelling at Meredith for some reason—but I had other things to worry about.  Besides, there were only four controller ports.  It wasn't my fault the other four had pounced on the video game, leaving poor Derek and I stranded on the couch, with only each other for company.  And it wasn't our fault that we were so, umm, so full from dinner that we, uh, didn't feel like straining after the controllers.  Or, something.

Eventually someone tapped me on the shoulder.  It was Brandon, with a bright, quirky smile on his face.  "Uh, guys, don't you think that sort of thing ought to be left in private?"

"In other words, Get a room, you guys," Sajel said with a dry grin.

Zach laughed.  "They could.  This place has like a thousand rooms."

Derek and I glanced at each other.  What do you think?

"Oh, nice work, Zach," Sajel said.

Derek and I looked at Brandon with puppy dog eyes.

Brandon looked down at us.  "Christ.  I feel like a pimp or something."  Behind him the other three laughed.

"Is that what you want for your birthday present, Arie," Brandon asked.  "A private place for the, uh, The Grand Deflowering Event?"

"Not my deflowering," I retorted, sticking my tongue out.

"Uhm," said Derek quietly.  "Mine instead."

"Oh-ho-ooo!" said Zach, and he came over ponderously and shook Derek's hand.

Brandon looked from one of us to the other and said, "So, what do you think," and suddenly I realized he was taking this seriously.

"I'm game if you are," Derek said, but I could tell he was reluctant.

"We'll take a look," I said, and we got up off the couch.

Brandon turned to the others.  "I'll be back soon, guys."  And with that he lead us away, out through the kitchen to the main lobby, where the front door opened out onto miles of green lawn.

"Where are you taking us," I asked.

"I dunno, let me think," Brandon said.  "Did you know there are four guest bedrooms in this house?  Plus some of the other rooms can take a number of sleeping bags...  I think my dad had some weird dream of gathering his entire family into this house for...  Well, anyway."

"Just pick the nearest one," Derek said, "so that we don't get lost on the way back."

Brandon made a wry smile that didn't reach his distant, occupied eyes.  "Oh, believe me, it's not quite that simple..."  Something turned in his eyes, and he made a decision.  "All right.  Let's go."

The room whose lights he flicked on was small, but perfectly proportioned.  A freestanding bed stood in the middle of the room, covered in sheets of rose and beige.  One wall was a full-size closet with sliding mirror doors.  The lights were wall sconces that set up a warm orange glow; the only other furniture was a waist-high bank of drawers along one wall in rich brown wood, its surface covered with occasional objects—a digital clock; some random knickknacks.  It was beautiful—but the position of the bed made it intensely clear what this room was for.

"Wow," Derek said.  I just stared.  Now I knew why it had been such hard decision for him.

"This is special," I said.

"Yeah..." said Brandon.  He ran a hand through his hair.  "If...  I always figured that, if Jane and I ever got this far...  It would be here.  Every time, I always...  I never showed her this place.  I wanted it to be a surprise."  Then he sighed, a deep sigh, like a farewell.  "But I guess that dream isn't for me anymore.  Now it's yours."

"What," Derek said, mustering his humor from somewhere, "Jane?"  His hand was tight and rigid on mine.

Brandon rolled his eyes, a grin on his face.  "No," he said.  "You.  You both.  If you guys are going to have your first in my house, I want you guys to have the best."

"It's not my first," I protested again, but Brandon shook his head.  "It's your first," he said.  "You two, together."

"Brandon..." Derek said.  "We can't.  This is your house.  It should be your..."  His words ran out, and he held his hands out.  "It's yours."

But Brandon shook his head, and smiled.  "No.  I give it to you.  To both of you.  To make something wonderful out of this thing you have together.  If this house my parents gave me can somehow help you in that...  Well, let that me be my honor."

Derek and I said nothing.  We just stared at him with tearful eyes.

Brandon hugged us both.  "My friends," he said; and then that smile shone out, like light, like all the light in the world.

Then he stepped to the door, and that more familiar, less-unsettling grin was back—except, maybe a little more unsettling, because of the truly wicked gleam in his eye.  "Be sure to enjoy yourselves," he said.

Derek and I glanced at each other, stunned.

And he took his leave of us, leaving the door just slightly ajar.

F.5

For a long moment, Derek and I just stood there, staring at each other in blank confusion.

"Well, uhm," Derek said.  "Are we, uh."

"Do you want to," I asked.

"I do, but...  I'm kinda...  I dunno.  I'm worried."

"Why," I teased, "scared it's gonna hurt?  I thought that was only for the girls."

He colored.  "No, not scared that it's gonna hurt...  More like...  The opposite.  Scared that I'm gonna screw up."  His eyes dropped.  "Scared that you aren't gonna enjoy it."

How totally sweet is that?  I could put up with any amount of fumbling after that.  "Derek," I said, taking his hand.  "I'll be fine.  I want this too.  Besides," grinning, "you're such a good student, I'm sure you'll listen if I give you some lessons."

A smile perked across his face—some of that old Derek spirit, showing its face again.  "Will I need to take notes?  Shall I get my pen?"

"There will be a written test," I said loftily.

He cackled.  "Too bad there won't be an oral test."

Then we giggled like schoolgirls.

"No, but, seriously, Arie..." he said, humor fading from his voice.  "I...  It does make me nervous.  You're...  You're really important to me."  His eyes were wide and shadowed, as honest as I had ever seen them.  "You're special to me.  I don't know if I can ever show you just how much you mean to me."

I just stared at him for a few moments, totally  incredulous.  "What happened to your confidence," I asked him.  "You're always so...  So out-there, so forward, so in-charge-of-everything.  Christ, you make jokes when you don't even know the people around you!  Who are you and what have you done with the real Derek!"

Derek paled, and he sputtered for a few seconds.

"The real Derek," he said.  "The real Derek.  He's standing right here in front of you."

I didn't get it.

"You talk about confidence."  He gave a rueful laugh.  "Confidence is a face on the water.  That's my mask, that's how I keep people away from me.  You want the real me?  I have no confidence.  I'm scared."

That was such a startling thought that, really, I should've predicted it beforehand.  Hadn't I just been telling Trina, earlier today, that there was no reason I shouldn't have a face on, just like she does?  So why hadn't I thought Derek might have one?  Probably because he has, like I said, confidence.  It didn't look like he needed one.  If you're sure of yourself, why do you have to protect yourself?  But what if the confidence was the mask?

"I'm scared," Derek said.  His face was slack and naked in the indistinct light.

"Of me?" I asked quietly.

"For you," he said.  His face turned miserable.  "And maybe for myself too."

I moved closer to him and pressed my body against him.  He was rigid, almost trembling; it was strange to be next to him.  I kissed him on the lips—no, that might not be a good idea, better get his cheek instead.  "You don't have to be afraid for me."

He said nothing.

"Jeez, Derek, you need to calm down," I said.  "It's not like you're going to your execution or anything."

"What if you're a black widow," he said.  "They eat their mates after they're done in the sack."

"That's only if you really fail, and I doubt you're going to do that," I snapped impatiently.  He's just taking this way too seriously.  I untwined my body from his and stood back.  "Look.  Putting aside all the fear and the worry and all that.  Do you want to do this?"

He looked down at me, and I could see the answer in his eyes before he spoke it.  "Yes.  I do.  Oh yes."  Suddenly the rigidity of his face was gone, replaced only with turgid need.

Now was the time.  I stepped to him again, letting him feel the pressure of my breasts against his chest, kissing him on the lips.  "Then everything will be fine."

I could see the light in his eyes when I pulled away, and I knew I had him.  And that, pretty soon, he would have me.  Hey, we'd have each other, how convenient!

"Have you seriously never done this before," I asked him.

"Don't rub it in," he said, a wry grin on his face.

"What, it's kind of cute, actually," I said, smiling.  "There's nothing wrong with it."

"Try telling that to a sixteen-year-old virgin."

"There isn't," I repeated.  "It's just a little surprising, is all.  I mean...  You know.  Confidence and all that."

"I have fooled around with girls before," he said, sounding a bit defensive.  "And I waste a lot of time on the Internet."

I grinned.  "Well, you should be just fine then.  I mean, it's not like there's a lot to know when it comes to the guy's part."

"Excuse me," he said, grinning.  "I have to do all the moving and such.  You're just supposed to lie back and think of England."

I burst out laughing.  "You better hope not, or I'll dry up!"  England!  What a boring place!

"Well, then," he said, and suddenly that old mischievous gleam was back in his eye.  "I'll have to make sure you're far too distracted with other, more...  Pleasant thoughts."

Then we were kissing again, and now his hand was on my breast—and despite the shirt and bra in the way, it felt even better than this morning.  I'm not really sure why.  All I knew was that I liked it.

"If you tell me we're going to be late for class," I warned.

"Nope," he said.  "Lesson's over.  Time for the final exam."

"Exam," I breathed.  "I like that..."

His hands threaded under my shirt, and I raised my arms to let him take it off.  Then I reached behind my back and let my bra flutter to the floor.

Eager?  I suppose so.  Let him take me.  I wanted him. I felt like a man hadn't touched me in years. Which was bullshit, of course; I'd just had Brandon on Tuesday. But the memories of that were painful to think about now. And Derek... Well, I'd never had him before at all, and now I knew: he was who I really wanted. Brandon had just been a distraction, and he had not sated my hunger.

This would.

His hands covered my breasts again, bringing back that warm tingling fire.  I could feel the ridged texture of his palms on my skin, the extra pressure against my hardened nipples.  His hands moved up and down, rubbing against my breasts, pushing their weight, and my nipples sang.  His lips covered mine, our tongues lashing around each other, caressing each other.  I loved the feeling—I loved all of it.  It had been far too long.

Somehow the bed was under us; I'm not sure where it came from.  Had it moved?  The sheets were pliant, shifting and rustling.  The bed was tall, almost as tall as my hips.  I found my legs dangling overside, my arms spreadeagled, as Derek's lips met my breasts for the first time.  They liked him immediately.  The warm, wet cavern of his mouth slid over the surface of my boob, kissing and licking, and then fastened onto my nipple and pulled gently.  Oh my.

"Mmmmm," said Derek, evidently just as happy with my boob as it was with him; the minute vibrations across his lips made me even happier, sending trembling waves of fire through me, waves that crested up and down my body, eventually coming to rest in that place deep within, that place between my legs, which was becoming warmer by the minute, whose urge was becoming more and more insistent.

I rolled away from him for a second to take my jeans off, and my underwear too.  Then I came back to him, presenting my naked body for inspection.  I had nothing on but a pair of socks.  "I just thought you should know," I whispered.  "Something's very happy to see you."  And I knew he could see me, see me down there, how my lips were spread and moist and waiting for him.  I knew because of the way his eyes bugged and his mouth dropped open.  I think he hadn't quite believed, until that very moment, that I'd meant it when I said I wanted him.

"Oh my," he breathed, and reached for me.

"But," I chided, catching his wrist.  "You've seen me.  You've seen all of me.  But I've seen none of you."

His eyes met mine, dazzled and confused.

"Shouldn't we do something about that," I asked him, smiling.

In a flash he had unbuttoned his pants and shoved his boxers out of the way.  Clearly, something was very glad to see me too.  But it was hard not to laugh—Derek, standing there, so earnest, clearly still a bit frightened, his trousers pooling around his hips, his manhood jutting out.

I stood up and helped him out of his clothes, letting my hands run over his body as his had roamed mine.  Well, had roamed my breasts.  He was new at this, I could forgive him.  I could feel the hard slats of his ribs, the lines of muscle under his skin, the frantic beat of his heart.  The warmth of his skin, the raw red fragrance that was partly the smell of all men, partly the smell of him.

When he was just as naked as I—that is to say, he still had his socks too—I sat back on the bed and smiled.  "There, isn't that better?"

He made a nervous giggle.  "Uhm.  Now I'm cold."  There was gooseflesh on his arms and his nipples were hard.

"Well," I said, "why don't you come over here, then, and let me warm you up."  The obvious innuendo made his face warm, at least, and he stumbled over to the bed like a blind man.

Climbing onto the bed, halfway off the floor, he blurted, "I don't understand how you're not scared."

I blinked at him.  Not scared?  What on earth did he mean?  "Of course I'm scared," I told him.  "But not of you."

Then I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.  He responded, coming to me, and I drew back, stretching him out on the bed beside me.  I put my arm around him and we pressed together, skin to skin, hip to hip, mouth to mouth, for the first time.  I gloried in the sensation.  A man in bed with me, for the first time in far too long.

His dick prodded at my hip, and I slung one leg over his.  His dick bobbed, seemingly confused, and then took the answer I wanted it to—it slid into the gap between my legs, rubbing across the outside of my pussy lips.  I felt the red tingle, and I knew he felt the wetness, because he pulled away and looked at me.

"Uh," he said.

"Do you want?" I asked.

"Do you want," he asked.

"Of course I do."

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Feel how wet I am," I said.  "I've never been wetter."  As a lie, that was not much of a stretch; I wasn't exactly dry as a bone down there.  Was I really ready?  Would I have an orgasm?  No.  Did I care?  No.  I could teach him what to do next time.  Right now I wanted to make sure there was a next time.  At this rate, he was as likely to throw up as come when the act was done.  He needed to see that this was all right, that this was fine.  That it was more than fine—that it was good.

I rolled onto my back, tugging him with me; clearly reluctant, he let himself be moved.  "You are on The Pill, right?"

"The Shot," I said, "but it's practically the same thing."  He hovered between my legs, supporting himself on his arms, and I put my legs around his hips.

He reached between us, and in a moment I felt the head of his cock at my pussy lips.  "Ready," he asked.

I kissed him.  "Go for it, sweetie."

His cock slipped between my lips, and then into me.  I could feel the pressure of his cockhead, spreading me open inside, filling me with his girth.  His breath whooshed past my cheek, through my hair.  His chest pressed against mine.  His hips brushed against my inner thighs as he sank, and sank, and sank, ever so slowly...  Until finally his wiry pubic hair pressed against mine, and there was nowhere else to go.

He opened his eyes.  I smiled at him and kissed his nose.  "See there.  That wasn't too hard."

"I...  That's...  Oh wow," he said, a faint grin lighting his face.

His arms were trembling with the strain of holding himself up.  I put my arms around him and drew him down to me until he lay atop me, pressing me into the bed with his weight, his head over my shoulder.  "There, isn't that better?"

"You feel...  So good," he gasped.

I giggled and kissed his ear.  "Well, you don't feel so bad yourself, lover boy."

He propped himself up on his elbows again and kissed me.  "Thank you," he said.

I blinked.  "For what?"  For having a birthday?  For being attracted to him?  For existing?

"For...  Well.  I don't know.  But...  I'm really glad I found you."

I laughed (which did all sorts of unspeakably lovely things around the area of my pussy).  "No kidding, you wouldn't be getting laid if you hadn't."

"No, not for that," he said.  "I'd be just as happy playing video games out on the couch.  You're—  You're wonderful, Arie.  I'm really glad you're in my life."  He smiled.  "I never understood why Brandon would follow around Jane Myers like that.  But...  Some girls are just worth following."

He says the sweetest things sometimes.  As I reached up to kiss him, I realized: You know, this is a guy I could seriously fall in love with.  The idea probably should've been alarming—but it wasn't.  I liked the idea of being in his life.  And of him being in mine.  Maybe for a long, long time.  Sure, we've only known each other for three days, but hey: a girl can dream, can't she?

"Now," I whispered, "aren't you supposed to be moving?"

I felt him sliding out of me, slowly, my pussy caressing him as he passed, shrinking around him as he left.  Then he moved back in, and I gasped with the pleasure he brought.  He gasped too, shuddering a little—but he didn't stop.  He kept moving, in, in, until the base of his cock rubbed against my clit.  Oh yes.

Then he moved out again and the whole thing started over.

I kissed him, running my arms over his back, as he picked up speed, moving in and out of me, pulling and pushing, my pussy clinging to him.  I crossed my legs over his waist and arched my back, pulling him in deeper.  I could hear the rush of his breathing, the pounding blood in my ears.  His body hovered over mine, brushing against my nipples, as he kissed my mouth, my nose, my cheek, my neck.  When he moaned and closed his eyes, I knew it would be soon.  And it was.

He thrust one final time, burying himself to the hilt, moaning and shuddering, his body straining against mine, and I felt his cock expand within me, and then the first burst of his warm, sticky cum against the back of my pussy.  I pressed up to him, squeezing my muscles around him, wanting more.  Yes.  Give me all you got!  His buttocks contracted, pushing, and I felt him spurt again, and again, and again, the base of his cock trembling against my clit, his cum clinging to my pussy, his heart thundering against my chest.

Then he lay still against me, and it was over.

I ran my hands up and down his back, stroking him, soothing him, feeling his breath slowly return, his heartbeat run down.  At some point he rediscovered the ability to speak: "Oh my God," he said, "that was so incredible."

I giggled.  "I'm glad you liked it."  Good job, body, you've done me proud.

"I hope I'm not getting heavy," he said.

"Oh no."  Actually he was, but who cared.  Not I.  He was warm and solid and beautiful.  I felt safe under him, not squeezed down.

"Good, because—"  He gasped for breath, and when he spoke again I could hear his smile.  "I was just thinking that this is my favorite place on earth.  I may just stay here forever."

"What," I teased, "this room in Brandon's house?  He may object to you moving in here—"

"Noooo," he said, raising his head to speak to me face to face.  "Having you wrapped around me like a blanket."

"Well, honey, you can have me like that any time you want," I told him.

He didn't seem to have an answer for that.  Oh boy, I hope I didn't break him or anything.  Where had Mr. Confidence gone?  We just got him back.

His softening cock slid out of me, and he rolled off me.  For a second I was disappointed, but then he reached over and drew me up onto my side, facing him, and held me close to him, my face against his chest.

"So, uhm."  I could feel the vibrations of his voice.  "Do you normally take your boyfriends to bed on the first date?"

"Well," I said innocently, "only if they're ugly."

He froze.

"See, 'cause I have to decide if they're worth keeping.  If they're good in bed, then..."

He chuckled.  "I'm not sure I want to know whether I fit into either category."

"Well," I said archly.  "It's a good thing you're handsome, then, because you sure don't make the grade in the other department."

He froze again.  I swear, I could almost feel his skin cool.  "I—  I'm sorry," he said.  "I'll try to—"

"Oh for heaven's sake!" I cried.  I wiggled up the bed until I could look him in the face.  "I don't care if you're the worst lover on earth.  I don't care if you're the ugliest man on earth either.  Stop worrying so much!"

"Yes," he said miserably, "but if I failed—"

"You didn't fail," I told him.  I realized I was shouting, and let my next comment be suitably quiet.  "There's no way you could've failed."  My hand caressed his cheek.  "You're my lover, Derek.  It wasn't a test.  You already passed the only test that matters.  You're here because I want you to be here.  Because I'm glad you're in my life too.  If—  If Orlando Bloom, or some hot guy named Fabio, or, or Niel Cruz asked me to go to bed with them, I'd say no.  Because I'd rather have you."

He looked so depressedly hopeful, like a lost puppy.  "You really mean that?"

I sighed.  "Derek.  You wanna hear it another way?  'I love you.'  Nothing you do wrong could ever matter to me.  Now, please.  Just calm down.  Be your own true self.  And be glad, like I am, that there's someone who will stick by you through everything.  Because someone will."

He laughed nervously.  "Cut it out, you're ruining my macho image."

"Oh, you know you like it.  You know you like being naked without your mask."

His eyes were serious on mine, that dark brown almost black, and I wondered what was in his heart.  Had I pushed him too far?  Had I broken him?

But then he smiled, and held me close, and said, "Yes, yes I do."

"And besides," I said.  "If you really think you have to earn my love..."  Running my hand down his body, between his legs.  "We can always give you another chance."

His hand matched mine.  "Hmm.  You know.  I think I'd like that," he said.

F.6

By the time we got out, it was closer to ten than nine at night.  I didn't really want to leave; it was a nice room.  But we should probably get home at some point.  Or at least come out and actually socialize.  It's my party and I'll fuck if I want to, but I wanna spend time with my friends too.

"Damn, you guys," said Zach when we came in, "you two sure made enough noise."

Derek and I glanced at each other, startled.

"He's joshing you," Meredith said, "we couldn't hear a thing."

"At least they drowned out the other noises," Zach said, giving Brandon and Meredith a glare.

I laughed and looked at the two of them.  But Meredith simply looked puzzled.  And Brandon rolled his eyes and said, "Zach, would you please attempt to keep your conversation grounded in reality here?"

"They didn't do anything," Sajel said.  "We've all just been here."

"Brandon's been whipping our asses at—what's that racing game?"

"F-Zero," Brandon said.  With a proud grin: "I even beat Meredith."

"Yeah, like that's a big deal, beating a girl," Zach scoffed.  Sajel hit him with a pillow.

Meredith just grinned.  "He said, forgetting how many times this girl beat him."

"Even I beat him," Sajel said, "and I don't play video games.  He kept driving into a wall."

"I think my joystick was broken," Zach said stoutly.

"I think you've forgotten how to handle any joystick besides the one between your legs," Derek replied.

Brandon and Meredith and Sajel and I all said, "Ooooooh," in honor of a sharp riposte.

Zach stood.  "I think you and I ought to step outside."

"Right, they're gonna go outside and compare over who handles their joystick better," Sajel said.

"Excuse me, I think we all know the answer to that," Zach said.

"Let's just ask Arie," Meredith said.  "After all, she's seen Derek use his joystick up close and personal.  What do you think?"

All eyes went to me.

I looked at Derek, who gave me that eternal, insouciant grin.  I kissed him.  Then I looked at Zach, who attempted (with depressingly little success) to flex.  I stuck my tongue out and turned my thumb down.

"And the winner is!" Brandon declared with the air of a TV announcer.  "Derek Strong is this year's Mr. Joystick Man!"

Sajel clapped and whooped, the applauding audience, and Derek bowed, saying, "Thank you, thank you..."

Zach sighed theatrically and sat down.  "I know when I'm outnumbered.  So how do I get better at this F-Zero thing anyway?"

While Brandon taught him (and Derek and Sajel), I sat next to Meredith.  "You guys didn't do anything?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, like...  Like Derek and I did something."

"Oh," Meredith said, coloring faintly.  "Well...  We kissed a few times."

"Are you asking her why they didn't sneak off and find another room somewhere," Sajel called.  Without waiting for an answer, she continued.  "That's what I've been asking them.  And don't tell me," holding up her hand to forestall an answer, "it's because you had to play host and entertain us.  If anyone, Arie should've been doing that."

"And we already told you, it'd be okay if you wanted to sneak off," Zach said.

"What," Brandon said, "is it like illegal if we don't want to sneak off?"

"Why wouldn't you want to," Derek asked.  "There's no reason not to."

"But there's no reason to either," Meredith said.  She grinned.  "I'm saving myself for something special."

"Maybe I'm just secure in my manhood or something," Brandon said dryly, "but I don't feel the need to bang her just because I can."

"I betcha he's just covering," Zach said.  "He already asked and she said no."

Brandon rolled his eyes.  "Meredith?" he called cheerfully.  "If I asked you to come have sex with me, would you?"

Meredith beamed.  "Why on earth would I say no?"

"There, see?" Brandon said.

"So, go!" Zach said.

Meredith and Brandon exchanged bemused glances.  "Haven't you heard a word we've been saying?" Brandon asked.

"Sometimes anticipation is half the fun," Meredith said.

I think I had a handle on it.  "Look, Zach, think of it this way.  They've been going out for so long that they don't feel like they have to jump in bed every time there's a chance.  They're comfortable with each other."

Zach was puzzled.  "But tonight was your first date."

Meredith laughed.  "Actually, no, we just went as friends.  We haven't had a first date yet."

"Ah-hah, there's another reason they shouldn't do anything," Derek said.

"How can you two be so..."  Zach trailed off, looking at Brandon and Meredith in turn as if they'd grown cauliflower ears.

Brandon and Meredith glanced at each other, and shrugged, and smiled.

"I think it's sweet," I said.  "That they don't have to have sex to show that they care for each other.  Maybe more people should be like that."

Derek grinned at me.  "You didn't seem to think that half an hour ago!"

I stuck my tongue out.  "Doesn't mean it's for me, I just thought it was cool.  Me, I'll take a good fucking any day."

Zach grinned.  "And you're looking at him for that?" he asked, nodding at Derek.

Derek looked a little pale, but I just grinned back.  "Better him than you, Mr. Joystick."  And I felt Derek's hand settle in mine.

"Zach, honey," Brandon began.

"Don't call me honey," Zach retorted.

Brandon grinned unrepentantly.  "Zach, honey, I don't think you're going to win this one.  Best back down."

"Chuh, yeah, I know when I'm outgunned," Zach grumbled, but he grinned and promptly drove his car into a wall.

And that was basically it for my birthday party.  Mom called at ten and asked me to be home before eleven, and despite it being Friday most of the other kids had curfews.  Meredith was one of them, which meant she and Brandon got some good-natured ribbing for not taking advantage of their time together.  They just grinned.  Zach drove us all to my house, and people went home.

And that was that.

"How was the party," my mother asked me.

I thought about that a little bit, and then smiled.  "Fun.  We hung out.  We played video games.  We joked.  It was fun."  And my boyfriend and I had sex, I said to myself, but I wasn't about to announce that out loud.  Especially not to my mother.

My mother chuckled.  "That's all it was?  Your seventeenth birthday?  Fun?"

"Saving it all up for next year," I told her, smiling.

"And you're not going to be naked next week," she asked.

"No," I said.  "Thank God.  One week's enough for me."

"You made friends," my mom said.  "You had a nice birthday.  That sounds like a nice week to me."

I thought about that.  Yeah, it had been a good week.  Despite all predictions and expectations, it had been a pretty good week.

"Okay, so maybe one week isn't enough for me," I said.  "But don't make me do it naked."

Epilogue

I was almost scared to come back to school on Monday morning.  A week ago I'd walked in and had my life almost completely rearranged; I half expected that I'd suddenly wake up from some long, extended dream and have to go through my whole Program week again.  But I didn't wake up.  Derek slid in beside me and grinned that twinkling grin of his, and Meredith was at the normal meeting place north of Stetsen, and no one thought it odd that she or Derek or I was there.  Tim looked...  Well, not so pleased; but he smiled, and we talked, and since then we've actually gotten to be pretty good friends.  He's a really good listener, which is really nice.  I dunno if he still has a crush on me.  I hope not—not for my sake, but for his.  Because I plan to stick with Derek, so he's got no hopes there, and Tim's a nice guy, he deserves someone.

Two weeks to the day after I told my parents about Trina's and my, ah, situation, we walked into the office of Dr. Loren Moreau, psychiatrist.  Immediately I understood why Candlelight people mistrust therapy—you don't get immediate results.  You have to go for months, just talking about random things, until your therapist gets an idea of what's going on and what needs to change.  And there has been change, on both sides; Trina has something of the same deal with Dr. Zelvetti as I have (including, she tells me, mandatory Program participation, which should prove very interesting), but where the teachers are lax on our homework, our parents are not.  But they let us make some of our decisions now.

I did drop violin and join the choir.  I still play the thing every now and then, but nowadays when it comes to music, my main identity is: alto.  A lot of the time the four of us (me, Derek, Brandon, Meredith) will find ourselves in cars, walking around, spontaneously singing.  It's strangely freeing—it's a lot like being naked, in its way.  You just don't normally see people randomly singing in public; but why the hell shouldn't we, if we enjoy it?  And it's an added bonus if we sound good.  Which, um, we do.  Though I may be a little bit biased about that.

Brandon says he's still in touch with Jane.  They talk—they're a little closer than average friends, but not much so.  There's a distance between them now that, I think, they can never bridge again.  He worries about her.  That's the kind of guy he is.  At first I think Meredith was jealous—at least, she was a lot worried—but then she got into it too.  Now they both worry.  Jane is...  Well, I don't understand her.  I don't think I ever will.  I'm not sure how someone could cling to such a life if it makes them unhappy.

...I did understand her, once.  But I don't anymore.  Dr. Moreau put both Trina and I on antidepressants—Paxil, to start with, but now she's on Celexa and I'm on Zoloft; you just basically try different ones until you find one that works, and it takes months to try—but I don't think I really needed the meds.  I already hit bottom, on Tuesday night of my Program week I hit bottom, and now I'm digging my way back out.  I'm out of the Hole now.  And I'm glad to be there.  And if learning to understand why Jane is how she is, means I have to go back in...  Well, sorry, Ms. Myers, but nothing's worth going back in there.

Brandon and Meredith have had sex, in case some of you were getting worried.  Despite all their talk on my birthday, they ended up in bed together not twenty-four hours later.  Though Meredith told me, with a shy grin, that it was definitely special.  They're not half as gung-ho about it as most couples are, but that's just their balance.  They don't hesitate around each other—they share everything.  No matter how dull, no matter how stupid.  Sometimes I think they're one person.  It's a little bit creepy sometimes...  But also a lot awe-inspiring, to think that two people my age could know each other so well.

Derek and I are very well, thank you.  We do seem to have sex a lot, but I don't mind.  He's becoming a well-trained lover, and what he lacks in skill he makes up for in enthusiasm.  And when we're not fucking, we're ourselves—bouncy, outgoing, kind of loud.  But every now and then one of us has a bad day, and it's always a little alarming—I've felt it and he's said it—to see that one breaking down in a heap on the side of the road somewhere.  Brandon says it's because we try to project an air of perfect togetherness, of...  How did he put it?  Of "seamless integration."  We try to suggest that the last thing that could possibly happen to us, is a breakdown.  So of course it's alarming if we break down.  (It's crazy how effective these false faces are!)  But we learned to get over our initial panic reactions.  I mean, there's a reason we break down in front of each other.  What, am I supposed to call Triple A?  No; I am Triple A.

The Program was placed on hiatus until late March, partially because it was getting on towards winter, and partially because Dr. Zelvetti, Mr. Trineer and all the others wanted to make sure that nothing like what had happened to Brandon, would ever happen again.  And also to make sure that Dr. Zelvetti wasn't able to drag anyone into The Program like she did Brandon.  Though that didn't stop her from walking around naked on warmer days.  We eventually got used to it.  Dr. Zelvetti asked us to write accounts of our Program weeks, which we did—she wanted short, convenient summaries to use in defense of The Program.  I don't think she exactly got them: I mean, you're reading them, and they seem a little bit long to be called 'summaries.'  (Brandon's laughing: "Isn't it a bit more like a novel by now?")  I also don't know if Dr. Zelvetti will like what she finds in here...  But we asked her, and she said, "Be honest.  Be true to what happened.  That speaks more loudly than any amount of propaganda."  Well, we were honest, Dr. Zelvetti; I hope it doesn't bite any of us in the ass.

A few, more strict security measures were put into place: people have to register their asthma inhalers, for instance, and anyone caught with one would have it summarily confiscated, and probably would face detention.  That's just one example.  But it was a long time before we saw anyone naked in school again...  But it did happen.

Who was it?  Well.  That's a story for another day.