Heart Ball
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net

If you are under the age of 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do something else.

This material is Copyright, 2001, Uther Pendragon. All rights reserved. I specifically grant the right of downloading and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long as this notice is included. Reposting requires previous permission.

All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Heart Ball
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net

part 3
Continued from Part 2

Babysitting for Mrs. Green had several advantages (none of which compensated for the kids being monsters). She was not going to come home early, she was not going to come home drunk, she paid by check at the beginning of the evening, and she had no interest in finding fault with how Shannon had behaved. The last point was becoming more important to Shannon.

By the time Steve showed up at the Green house, he had done some planning. He was glad to see Shannon in a skirt again. He kissed her slowly and sweetly while they were still standing. After loosening her bra, he led her to the couch and eased her down.

Shannon's first thought was that Steve was going to try to do it. When he knelt beside the couch, however, she relaxed and let him renew the kiss. She noticed that he kept his hands outside her clothes much longer than had become their habit. When he did push up her sweatshirt, he took his time on her breasts before he reached their peaks. "Help me," he said, and pushed up the cloth to give his mouth full access. She raised herself enough to allow the sweatshirt to bunch under her arms. She felt his kisses everywhere, beginning on her stomach, before finally reaching her nipple. He stroked her leg, and then her mound, from outside her skirt. He put his other hand on her head and raised himself up so that they were looking each other in the eye.

"I love you, Shannon," he said.

Then, still gazing into her eyes, he stroked down her leg and under the skirt, luckily a wide one. He gave her one short kiss on the mouth and then bent to her nipple. It was her left breast this time, and his chest was pressed onto her right one.

Shannon felt every shift in Steve's position as an arousing movement against her stiff nipple, and his tongue and lips on her other nipple were even more arousing. The overwhelming source of her arousal, though, was the back-and forth motion of his hand on her thigh. His palm was firm on the top, but his fingers trailed lightly across the inside. One finger occasionally brushed the inside of her left thigh as well, sending tremors upward into her belly. Steve's hand was moving back and forth, but it moved upward more on every cycle. Finally, one finger touched her through her panties. She wanted more, she wanted his whole hand on her as it had been last time.

Steve felt her panties with one finger, but it was a finger in a critical position. Even without pressing against her, he could feel those mysterious folds through the cloth. He wanted to clasp her there, he wanted to explore those folds, he wanted to see that heart shape which he had only seen once, he wanted to plunge into her depths. He knew that she wouldn't allow any part of what he wanted. He abandoned her breast to tell her one percent of his feeling. "Oh Shannon," he said.

Without any conscious decision on the part of her mind, her knees raised and spread. She thought that he looked almost shocked, but he kissed her before she could really read his expression. It was a warm, gentle, kiss; Steve licked her lips rather than invading her mouth. When she finally sought his tongue with hers, she felt his hand slowly move to cup her mound.

Steve had been shocked speechless when he felt her legs open for his hand; but not, luckily, shocked kissless. Once touching her center, he could neither leave it nor keep still. Instead, he compulsively petted her pantied crotch. He wanted to seize it and clasp it tight, but he was frightened of the violence involved in his desire.

The way he petted the cloth between her legs reminded Shannon of petting a cat. It was exciting, then it was excruciating; she pulled his arm to get more pressure.

Steve had tried to be very gentle until Shannon grasped his arm. She's going to shove me away, he thought. She's going to push me away and send me out of this house, and I'll never touch her this way again.

Then she pulled him tighter. He knew that this was her acceptance of his desire for her and her expression of her desire for him. Everything was all right. "Shannon," he said. "Love."

She heard his words and felt him bend to her breast again, sucking on it and pressing it with his tongue. Steve sucked her sweet breast and stroked her sweet center. His own arousal was a tightness and a torment, but he had no hand to relieve that torment. It was too much for Shannon, then it was not enough. And then it was just right, and she flew away. When his beloved responded to him in a way that, even to his gross ignorance, was clearly a climax, Steve was in heaven, sharing her joy and experiencing his own pride.

When Shannon came back to the couch, it was suddenly all wrong. She shoved his hand away and curled up to cry.

"Shannon," he said. It had been marvelous, feeling her and seeing her react to him. And then she had rejected him. And then she had cried. Had he hurt her? Had he offended her? "Did I hurt you? What did I do wrong? What do you need? I'm sorry if I was too rough. Shannon, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she finally managed to say. "You didn't do anything wrong, just hold me." So he held her, hugging her head with one hand and her knees with another. She felt his chest crosswise on her back. Steve cuddled her from a very contorted position, but happy that she accepted him again, he was glad for the connection. Finally, she straightened and relaxed. Then she said, "Let me get up." He moved back, accepting that she always pushed him away to put herself together. She sat up and refastened her bra. She would have liked to straighten her panties, too, but didn't want to do it in front of him.

Logically, the brief glimpse of breasts that he had kissed and caressed minutes before shouldn't have stimulated Steve; but logic had little to do with his feelings. Needing a little relief, he headed up the stairs to the bathroom.

Shannon watched Steve leave her, and then she remembered having seen Mrs. Green's diaphragm on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet on a previous evening. If Mrs. Green didn't hide it when she knew Steve was going to visit, Shannon probably had no obligation to do so. Still, she felt that it was a real invasion of her hostess's privacy. "Steve," she called, "can't you use the bathroom down here?"

Steve's reason for going upstairs was to place as much distance as possible between himself and Shannon while he relieved the ache. Explaining that was worse than using the bathroom a few feet from her. He went down the few stairs that he had climbed and shut the door. After his experiences that evening, Steve found that freeing his cock from his Jockey briefs was harder work than bringing it to climax.

He sniffed his right hand, which still retained Shannon's odor, for a few seconds before beginning a vigorous stroking over the toilet bowl. He cleaned up the spatters, used the facilities to piss as well, and washed his hands. The latter was a matter of real regret, but he could hardly keep his hand dirty just to have something to sniff at odd moments. Besides, he was afraid that others would be able to smell it, too.

Each of them was dressed neatly, if in rather high color, when he came back into the living room. They actually got a little studying done before he began to yawn. Their kiss good night left them a little more mussed, but it didn't necessitate any rearrangement of underwear.

Steve dreamed of Shannon that night; Shannon was considering, rather than dreaming.

Shannon remembered something about positive reinforcement from a Social Sciences course in tenth grade. She hoped that attending church with Dad would reinforce whatever effort he was exerting behind the scenes about Albion.

Anyway, she generally tried to fulfill parental expectations the mornings after she saw Steve. "Well," she could say, "you never asked if Steve was there, and -- after all -- the study evening didn't interfere with me getting up and going to church."

Besides, Miss Olson, a member of the church, had been Dr. Wyatt's office nurse since Shannon had been his patient. "Miss Olson," she started out, "could I speak to you privately?"

"All right, Shannon," she said, "what did you want to discuss?" She kept her voice neutral. This could be anything from business for the women's group, of which Miss Olson was currently treasurer, to a request for a secret appointment with Doctor. Shannon had been a patient when she came to work for the Doctor.

"It's little Amy Jensen. What's going to happen to her?"

"And what makes you think that I know?" Information about patients was confidential. Shannon really shouldn't ask.

"She's a patient of Dr. Wyatt. She has asthma bad. Every time I go to babysit, I see Dr. Wyatt's phone number on the pad. She's such a sweet kid, and so young! Couldn't you ask Dr. Wyatt?" Shannon felt like crying.

Miss Olson patted Shannon's shoulder. Curiosity was one thing, sympathy was another. "She is a lovely child, isn't she? But you know the parents. They know the prognosis; ask them. I'm sure that they'll be glad to tell you." Which, without quite breaking confidentiality, should let Shannon know that the long- term prognosis was good. "But Doctor doesn't like me talking about his patients, don't you see? I think that your father is looking for you."

In fact, Wayne had seen Shannon and was waiting for her to join him. Happy to have his daughter to sit with him, he wished he had his whole family. Raised a Presbyterian, he was now a Methodist because Allison had insisted. She, more committed to denomination than to faith, missed more services than she attended. He and Shannon found seats just as the prelude was ending.

The theme of the ball before Christmas break was going to be Santa's reindeer. Ken approached Steve about working on the committee. "I don't think so, Ken. I'm putting in all those hours at the store and trying to keep my grades up."

"Come on, Steve. Every senior should be on one dance committee, at least. It gets you a free ticket, too."

"Maybe later."

"I'm thinking of something like 'Be a Dancer or a Prancer at the Donner Party.' How does that sound?"

"Fine Ken, but not good enough to get me on the committee. I'll come to the dance, though."

The weather, which had been unseasonably mild up to then, turned vicious. Steve reluctantly stored his bike in the garage and took the bus every day. The bus wasn't all that reliable either, but you never got into trouble when the school bus made you late to class.

That meant that Steve couldn't walk Shannon home, couldn't even stay after school to chat with her. On many Wednesdays, he could borrow the car. Those days, he could drive her home but not stay and talk. Wednesday afternoons he had to rush home, eat in an indecent hurry, and get to Hauksbee's.

"Shannon," Mr. Jensen asked over the phone, "are you free next week? I know it's getting close to Christmas..."

"What day next week?"

"Your choice. She won't trust any other babysitter but you. You reacted so fast to the pill matter. We figured that we would ask you first."

"One thing, you said that you didn't mind Steve visiting."

"Of course."

"I'd like him to meet Amy. I don't want her coming down the hall and seeing a man that she has never met. How about Tuesday, he's off that night."

"Of course. And we'll make it early." They didn't need to do that for Shannon, but she knew that this was a lost cause. Mrs. Jensen was still breast feeding Peggy, and expressing one bottle was her limit.

Steve showed up, by design, well before Shannon. Peggy looked a lot like a warm lump to him, and one who didn't smell that nice. Amy, on the other hand, was as bright as Shannon had suggested. Besides, Peggy wasn't going to report any wrongdoing; they didn't need her good will.

Amy was used to playing second fiddle to her new sister. When Steve's attention concentrated on her, she responded tenfold. He used a histrionic voice for reading her books, and Amy was charmed. She was getting in serious lap time when Shannon showed up. Shannon's arrival, which always heralded her mother's departure, was bad news. Ten minutes after her parents were out the door, however, Steve was reading Horton Hatches an Egg for the third time.

Shannon didn't know whether to be jealous of Amy for capturing her boyfriend's attention, or of Steve for having a lap that Amy clearly preferred to her own. Then Peggy needed attention, and each of them had a kid to deal with. "Okay," Shannon said when Amy's bed time rolled around. "Do you want to walk to your room, or do you want me to carry you?"

"Teef!" Amy said, and triumphantly rode down the hall in Steve's arms. Shannon did most of the work, but Steve did the lifting and tucking in necessary to put Amy to bed. They both kissed her good night.

"And what," Steve asked when they were again in the living room, "do Mommy and Daddy do when their kids are tucked in?"

"They check their watches because the four-year-old is going to want a glass of water in five minutes." That wasn't really true of Amy, though, and Shannon didn't mind spending the time kissing, so long as that was all they did. They broke to put Amy's books back on her shelf, but ten minutes later Shannon was lying down with Steve kissing her. When he reached for the bottom of her skirt, she grabbed his arm.

"Do you know when to stop?" she asked.

"When you tell me to."

"What if I set a limit now?"

"Are you telling me to stop, now?" And, he wondered, what is stopping? Does she want my hand outside her skirt? If so, why a skirt?

Instead of answering, she hiked up her skirt. It was tight. She didn't have many full ones that weren't also too dressy for babysitting.

"Are you telling me to stop?" Steve asked.

"Not yet. Just establishing that you will."

"You are weird, Shannon. Beautiful but weird." He was quite happy to go back to kissing her, though. And his lips and hand brought her to her crisis once again. This time, when she pulled his hand from between her legs, she brought it to her mouth and kissed it. That made him feel much better. He knew about wanting the stimulation to stop, and didn't mind that she felt that way; he just didn't want her rejecting him. He cradled her as much as the awkward position allowed.

They stayed like that until Peggy's cries interrupted them. This time she was wet and messy. Shannon changed her and gave her a pacifier, but Steve was holding her when the Jensens came home.

Mrs. Jensen shed her coat and recaptured her baby in one continuous motion. She gave Steve an odd look before hurrying down the hall.

Mr. Jensen drove them home. "Was Amy all right?" he asked.

"She was perfectly sweet," Steve said. "Shannon was right about her."

"Humph," said Shannon. "She tried to steal my boyfriend. There wasn't a sign of the asthma, though. That's what he was asking, Steve."

Steve normally got paid on the third and the eighteenth of every month. Conscious of his employees' needs, Hauksbee got the payroll done by Saturday the sixteenth. Steve got to the bank in the last half hour it was open.

"I'm sorry," the cashier said. "This account needs two signatures for withdrawal." Steve knew that, but it wasn't a withdrawal.

"I'm making a deposit. This is a check. I've done this twice a month for more than a year now."

"I know that it is a check, sir; but, technically, you are depositing the check and withdrawing the cash. We don't enforce that rule when the cash is a trivial amount, but you are asking for more than half the check in cash."

"I need that money for my Christmas shopping."

"Well, I can't give you more than seventy-five dollars."

He took it.

The ball that night was called "Reindeer Ramble." They both enjoyed themselves greatly at the dance, Steve enjoyed himself a little less afterwards. The parking time was spent more in talking than in making out.

"I'm not saying no to you, Steve," Shannon said. "I'm saying no to the time and the place. You do see that?" She'd have to remember this, though, when she bought a dress for the Valentine's Day Ball.

"I see it, Shannon. I love you. Look, I want things that I can't have. I'm willing to wait for things I can't have tonight. Besides, although I shouldn't admit it to you, dancing with you in my arms is a sexual experience."

"You're right," she said. "You shouldn't have admitted it. I just thought that you had brought a sausage in your pocket."

"Shannon!" Steve was a little bit shocked. He was also amused and aroused. "Can we -- at least -- kiss?"

They did, until it was time to take her home. After they parted at her doorstep at precisely eleven, they made their separate preparations in their separate houses to ready themselves for their separate beds. There, finally, they met again -- but only in their separate imaginations.

Steve knocked at the Bryants' door the afternoon of the next day.

"Hello, Steven," Mrs. Bryant said. "Shannon's not here. The church youth group is rehearsing carols. I'm surprised that you didn't know." Shannon seemed to know, Allison thought, Steven's every move.

"That's why I'm here. Could you sneak that under the tree before your family opens presents." He handed her a bag containing a box.

"Come in a moment, won't you." She searched up the present Shannon had bought Steven.

Looking at the gorgeous wrappings, Steve felt guilty. "I had the store wrap hers," he said.

"Probably just as well." Kids, she thought as she watched him walk to his car, had such tender egos.

"I gave Steven your present," she told Shannon when she got home. "He came by."

"What did he want?"

"I'm sworn to secrecy." But Allison was not willing to live with her daughter's worrying for a week about whether Steve would get her a present. She would be bad enough wondering what it was.

Steve's father advanced him the cash for the rest of his Christmas shopping. Steve would sign over his check next payday, and get his dad's check for the difference.

Over the Christmas break, Steve and Shannon got to see each other occasionally and to talk on the phone a lot. Most of their meetings were, however, in public and in the light of day. Mallory was back from college, and Steve's parents insisted that the family do things together. Besides, she hogged the phone and accused Steve of doing that himself.

Saturday, Shannon had another baby-sitting job from Mrs. Green. Steve had previously promised to work that night, relieving Mrs. Thompson, but he could stop by afterwards.

That was the only thought that kept her sane while the little monsters were awake. When she finally got them to bed, however, they slept the deep, dreamless, sleep of the conscienceless. Mrs. Green had, indeed, moved her diaphragm from the medicine cabinet, making Shannon's earlier worries unnecessary.

That checked, she put her frazzled spirit back together, finished the dinner she'd abandoned when the boys had finished theirs, and cleaned up the worst of the mess. She checked on the boys one last time and settled down with one of Mrs. Green's bodice-rippers to prepare herself for Steve's visit.

Their first kiss was brief. "Brrr," she said.

"Well, let me get this coat off," he replied. That accomplished, he kissed her again.

"Your hands are still cold as ice."

"Cold hands, warm heart," he claimed.

"And what do cold lips demonstrate?"

"That I'm a healthy dog?"

"That's a cold nose, silly."

"I have that too," he said. "I remember now. Cold lips are an infallible sign that the sufferer hasn't been kissed enough by Shannon."

"Does that mean that I should stop kissing you when your lips get warm?"

"Warm lips are a sign that the sufferer hasn't kissed Shannon enough."

She wouldn't let him put his hands on her, though, even over her clothes. He broke the foolishness to use the bathroom. He washed his hands afterwards, rinsing them for minutes under the hottest water that he could stand.

"Much better," she said when he came out and cupped her face for another kiss. Soon, she was lying on the couch with him kneeling on the floor beside it. Their tongues played together while he slipped his hands under her blouse and up to her breasts.

She relaxed into the familiar pleasures, only shaken when he first kissed her breasts. His face was still a bit chilly. His hand was not, however. It slid up her leg and then stroked down.

Steve found her breasts marvelously warm as well as soft. Her nipple puckered firmly for his mouth even more rapidly than usual. Convinced that he would be allowed access to her pantied mound at the culmination of the evening, he tantalized himself, and (he hoped) Shannon, by approaching this treat very slowly. He got into a rhythm of moving his hand upwards well above her leg and then resting it on the skin to stroke down her thigh. The smoothness of the soft curves under his hand was hypnotic, and he had to remind himself to switch breasts.

Shannon wallowed in the sensations coming from the licking and suction on her breast and the gentle caresses on her thigh. Steve's slow and gentle approach reminded her that she could trust him and relax. Moreover, since he was doing it, she didn't need to think of what to do next. After a bit, however, she was ready for a next stage which seemed slow in coming. When he leaned across her to reach her other breast, she expected the clasp of his hand. It didn't come. She raised her knees and spread them as much as the couch allowed.

Despite the discomfort in his groin, Steve felt that he could go on stroking Shannon's soft curves forever. Then she adjusted her position in clear invitation. For one moment, he was tempted to climb between those welcoming thighs. Then his common sense kicked back in; Shannon might be in the perfect position for his joining her, but that was obviously not her intention. With that picture still dominating his thoughts, he tickled her other leg on the way to her panties. Once there, he stroked his fingers over the smooth, damp cloth. He tried to read the configuration of her mystery through the constraining panties. Needing to straighten up on his knees to adjust his erection, he took that opportunity to kiss Shannon's mouth once more and to switch breasts after that. While he moved, he rested his hand on Shannon's mound and clasped her groin with his fingers.

Shannon felt that clasp with a rush of excitement. Steve's strokes in the new position were firmer and more exciting. "Yes, Steve," she said as he pressed more firmly against her labia. "Oh, yes," she said as he rubbed her more rapidly. She pulled his hand tighter against her and moaned "Yesss!" as the climax finally took her. This time he kept stroking until she was done. When she pushed his hand away, he kissed her immediately.

"I love you Shannon," he said. "You are wonderful." Then he kissed her again.

Steve really meant that Shannon was wonderful, and he thought that she had been especially wonderful for the previous few minutes. She had always seemed sexy and desirable to him. It had also been clear for many months that she thought him a nice boy. But only recently had he seen her respond as a desirous woman, behave as though she thought that he was sexy. This increased his arousal a thousandfold. He felt he should hug and kiss her forever in gratitude for this gift; on the other hand, he really felt the need to escape her presence so that he could do something about that arousal. He kissed her forehead and whispered, "I'll be back."

Shannon listened to his footsteps head toward the downstairs bathroom. She sat up, refastened her bra and buttoned her blouse. Steve had only undone the bottom buttons; the top two were still in place. She stood to tuck everything back in place. She needed the mirror in the bathroom to check herself out, though. She smiled at the idea of breaking in on Steve.

Then she thought, Why not? He's seen me. What he's doing is no secret. She took a deep breath to gather up her courage and walked to the door. No inside door in the Green home had a lock that the kids could use. She turned the handle quietly.

Steve had his cock out and cooling a bit while he sniffed the Shannon-odor once more. He wondered what Shannon would think if he used a handkerchief to rub her down there. He could keep it in a test tube with a stopper and only open it at night in his bed. On the other hand, there were already too many layers of cloth between his hand and her mystery this way.

Shannon saw Steve standing in front of the toilet with his penis pointing up; he had his hand against his mouth as if he were stifling a yawn. A little after she entered, he glanced towards her in shock, and turned towards her. "Shannon," he squeaked.

"You would have preferred Mrs. Green?"

Conscious of his erection in plain sight, Steve turned his back. Shannon could see Steve's blush creep across his neck. Maybe it was anger instead of embarrassment, but she wasn't going to stop now. She glided behind him so close that he could feel her firm breasts press into his back. Her hands slid around his waist and toward his groin. Somewhere in his forebrain he was scandalized and horribly embarrassed. None of this was communicated below his waist. There, her hands were touching him, holding him.

When she touched it, it jerked in her fingers. The skin moved with her fingers, although she tried to stroke it gently. Beneath that loose surface, however, she felt something much firmer and hotter. "Tell me what I should do," she said. He didn't answer, but that was soon irrelevant as it jumped in her hands and shot out pulse after pulse. The first ones hit the raised toilet seat; only the last pulses went inside the bowl. His hips moved back and forth within the circle of her arms, and he was sort of grunting. Then her right hand had some of the goo on it.

All Steve could think was that doing it himself had never felt like this.

She washed while he stood there. All in all, she thought, it had been interesting -- even a little arousing, but not in the least romantic.

Steve used the facilities when she had left. Then he cleaned up his mess and washed himself. He blushed scarlet when he had to leave the bathroom at last.

Shannon had decided to put that experience on the back burner until she could think about it in private. She was deep into her math book by the time he came out. She wanted to get all the studying out of the way before the New Year's rush for babysitters.

Steve had taken advanced algebra and trig the previous year. Still, he stammered when she asked him a question about it.

"I'm serious," she said. "What's this business with amplitude?"

"Simple enough. You're just asking the wrong question first. Where is the middle line of that function?"

"Here?" She sort of sketched a line across the book with her finger.

"Good enough. Y equals negative three. Now how high can the function get?"

"Positive one."

"And its minimum?"

"Negative seven."

"Okay," he said. "The difference between positive one and negative three is four. The difference between negative three and negative seven is four. The amplitude is?"

"Four... Or eight?"

"Shoulda stopped while you were ahead. The standard sine wave looks like this." He sketched it out. "Max value, positive one; minimum value, minus one; amplitude one."

"I know that." Steve was good at math, but that was no reason for him to patronize her.

"Right. This is math; we start with what you know. Wait till the teacher gets to the part that you don't know and you'll get lost every time." He'd been saying that since the beginning of the school year. It seemed to him that she ignored him every time, and that she got lost nearly every time.

"Anyway," he continued, "the distance from the center line to the maximum is the amplitude of this function. So that is the amplitude of any function. Or the distance from the center line to the minimum, they had better be the same."

She went back to her book, and he opened his English book. He kept hoping that reading Shakespeare one more time would make "Romeo and Juliet" clear. Half an hour later, they kissed good night. It was a warm kiss, with lots of tongue; but neither of them brought the passion to it that they had experienced earlier.

Shannon took a job babysitting on New Year's Eve, while Steve and Mallory were designated drivers at their parents' party that night. Steve drove the guests home in their cars, and Mallory followed after in the Civic. Steve would climb into what he considered Shannon's seat and ride back. They participated in the party until they were needed, but not in the main activity.

"You each can drink as much as you want Monday, though," their father promised. At one point, Steve doubted that the guests would leave anything undrunk in the county, let alone their house. As he couldn't go into Hauksbee's with liquor on his breath, he'd have to do his drinking on Monday night.

Steve did grab an unopened bag of caramels from the candy stash. He hid it in his coat pocket and ate them in his old style. The light-colored ones, which he liked well enough, he ate first.

"Give me a couple," Mallory said.

"Get your own. We'll be back at the house in a few minutes." But he dug into the bag to find a few. He passed her the two light-colored ones, dropped two of the three dark ones back into the bag, and started to peel the third for himself.

"Come on. Give me one of the dark ones. You have lots."

"Get your own. I have lots of dark ones because I eat the light ones first."

"You're a puritan. My little brother is a puritan even about eating candy."

Entering the house through the kitchen, as the family always did, they surprised a couple making out more heavily in a half- lit corner than Shannon would in a dark closed car. The man and his wife -- not the woman in the kitchen -- were his next passengers. "Seeing the big world, little brother," Mallory said as he got back in their car. She liked to pretend to be a woman of the world dealing with an innocent hayseed.

"I'm not surprised it happens," he said. "I just expect that, when I am married, I'll stick to my own woman, and my own house for that matter."

"And meanwhile, you stick to your own hand. Don't try to bullshit your big sister. You'd take it if it were offered. It's just that nobody would want you."

On a later return, he really was shocked. His father was pressed against a woman bending over one of the kitchen counters. "Dad!" he gasped. Then they moved apart, and he saw that the woman was his mother. All Dad had been doing was scratching her back. He did that lots, although they probably wouldn't have dodged out of their own party for it if either one had been sober.

"I hope," he told Mallory in the car later, "that Dad forgets that incident. It must have been clear what I thought he was doing."

"He had his groin pressed up against Mom's butt. What could you possibly have thought he was doing?"

"Well, I didn't know it was Mom at first. And what he was really doing was scratching her back."

"Someday, little brother, you should take lessons from Dad in backscratching. Mom started offering to do my back, instead of him, soon after they decided that I couldn't sit on his lap. And she definitely doesn't know how."

Steve had never bought his sister Mallory's woman-of-the-world schtick. On the other hand, she was a girl.

In bed that night, he experimented on his own thighs. Done right, it was arousing. He slid his nails very lightly down his inner thigh pretending it was Shannon's. The combination of sensation and imagination hardened him. She would lie like this; she would tremble like this; she would spread her legs like this. Then he turned sideways and grabbed a Kleenex. That friction was enough to bring the explosion.

Steve took Shannon out for a drive on the second. They necked as well as talked, but they had become nervous about the lack of privacy in the car, especially with the better places full of snow. Besides, it was cold in the car, and he had a hangover.

Steve hadn't heard from IIT yet, but he had received acceptances from both Albion and U of I the week after Christmas.

"This news is supposed to make me jump for joy," he said.

"Yeah," Shannon said. "Me too." The U of I had come though for her, too.

"The admissions offices aren't going to make our decision for us. Financial aid just might," she said after a minute of two.

"I don't know. They all say that they give aid to all students who really need it. And I don't think that either of us is going to get a great scholarship based on our academic record."

"I'm scared of telling my mother that I'm choosing a school to be with you."

"I'm more scared," he said. "It's unlikely to cost your parents any more, probably less."

But Shannon was thinking it less and less likely that the college for both of them would be Albion. The question was whether there would be a college for both of them. And Steve might still be accepted into IIT. She couldn't go there, but she could find another college in Chicago. She didn't want to, though; Champaign-Urbana was quite large enough a town, thank you. If Steve wouldn't give up his plans for her, why should she give up her plans for him? The thing was that Steve hadn't asked her to. And he hadn't really said that he wouldn't give up his plans, either. She wanted to be with him. And his plans, after all, were lifetime plans.

Could they keep a long-distance romance going for four years? That was four times as long as they had been dating.

Her parents scheduled an attic cleanup for Saturday morning. As Steve was working then, she made no objection. But they didn't start until after ten, took a long lunch which was devoted to "remember when," and finished grungy at nearly five.

Steve called, but he wasn't really free then either; and Mallory wanted the phone after only fifteen minutes. "E-mail," he said. She did, but she never felt the same about these. She logged on later to read two. They were nice, but she missed Steve's voice.

The Bryants all got to church the first Sunday of the new year.

The financial secretary had the records of giving piled on a table when they got out of service. Shannon opened hers in the back seat of the car. She was three weeks behind at the end of the year. "Mom," she asked "is there enough to pay the back offering next week? It's fifteen bucks."

"Sure," her mother said. "But give me your babysitting money when we get home. I'll finish last year and start this. Nobody wants to show houses with the Christmas lights still on them and the ice dripping down."

"Shannon!" she called half an hour after they got back. "Where's the money from the Savages?"

"They paid in cash," Shannon called from her room. "I spent it at the after-Christmas sales. I only used your card for the big stuff."

"Then tell me the amount. I need to know cash amounts for keeping these books, and I'm starting the books for the new year."

"Why," Shannon asked in a perfectly reasonable voice, "does the new year change the rules? I kept the cash just as I did last year."

"Shannon!!" her mother screamed.

"Let's," her father shouted from downstairs, "get all this in one room and keep it to a dull roar."

But he sided with her mother when the matter was laid out. "I work for the hospital; it's the county's money. But every penny which comes in, and every penny which goes out, has to be reported to my office. It may be your money, but it is your mother's books. And you should be damn grateful that she keeps them for you. Maybe she shouldn't."

Luckily, Shannon kept records of appointments, expected starting and ending times, and -- since she wanted the warning before she went there again -- any late return or underpayment. She went over them with her mother in excruciating detail. For some reason, this required another column in the accounting record.

"And he paid me fifteen dollars, and that was the first time," she finally said. They had been working backwards.

"Did you finish up this year's books?" Shannon asked at supper. She'd cooked supper to pay back her mother for the extra effort on the books.

"No thanks to you. Honestly, Shannon!"

"So how much was my balance brought forward to the new year?"

"Well, you bought things at the sales. And you'll really owe taxes this year. The theater withheld, but nobody else did. Mrs. Green could get in trouble for that."

Shannon hoped that she wasn't as transparent when she was evading the subject as her mother was. "How much was my balance brought forward?" Her parents exchanged looks.

"Two thousand four hundred thirty-eight dollars and fifty-four cents."

"Two thousand dollars!!" she screamed.

"Remember the four hundred thirty-eight dollars and fifty-four cents."

"Two thousand dollars! And you didn't want to tell me! What I could have done with that."

"You could have wasted it," her father said. "What did you want that you didn't buy?"

"I could have got Steve something really nice for Christmas and his birthday."

"We went over that," her mother said. "The limit was what Steven would feel obliged to spend on you. He was embarrassed that your wrapping of his Christmas gift was better than the job that the store did on yours."

"There is another point that you need to consider," Dad said. Shannon felt that they were double-teaming her; but there was none of that nonsense about good cop - bad cop. "We'll pay your way to college. We've said so. We'll pay tuition, books, room, and board. It's only fair that you pay for your clothes and entertainment. Certainly, if we have to pay for them, you will be on a much tighter allowance than you spent this year."

"You've been talking about this. It's my money, but you've been talking about it behind my back!"

"We didn't talk about it." Dad was using his explain-the- obvious-to-the-retards voice. "Didn't need to. Back in the summer, you were getting $162 a week from Mrs. Green. How much from the theater?"

"Almost ninety."

"Not take home," her mom said.

"Nobody," Dad said, "not even Imelda Marcos, could spend two hundred and fifty dollars a week on clothes. Not in this town."

"And," Mom added, "you were with Steven almost every moment that the stores were open." Which was a gross exaggeration; so was Dad's.

"So," Dad finished up, "I knew that you were accumulating money without watching the amounts. Your mother knew that you would accumulate more through the summer before it even happened. Why did either of us have a duty to point that out to you? It wasn't as if you missed one, single, opportunity to spend money. I didn't actually talk to your mother. But I sympathize with her."

"You know, Shannon," Mom said, "you haven't the faintest idea what the style details will be at college. Every time you buy something now which may be appropriate for the next few months, you decide that you won't buy something next year -- maybe something which you will actually need."

Continued in Part 4
Heart Ball
Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
2001/01/18

This is one of a series of pages holding the novel Heart Ball.

The next page in the series is:
Part 4

The first page in the series is:
Part 1

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