another route and marry a cockwrinkle of a lawyer who would twist her words like soft metal until she was voiceless.
Mary Lou, the trophy wife.
Mary Lou, a big fuckable future blob.
What did I have there?
“ Nothin.” I answered her quickly, hiding the sucker behind my back. I thought she might tell on me. She was that type of person. Mary Lou was very mean. She had the two twins on either side of her, Cathy and Denise Something-or-the-other, looking as though they’d had their spirits stolen by Mary Lou.
“ I know you got somethin. I seen it. It’s a sucker, ain’t it?”
“ No.”
“ Yer lyin. Wallace Black is a liar .”
“ No I’m not.”
“ And a... mo les ter.”
I don’t know where she got that from. I’d never even kissed a girl, of any age. The only girls I’d even seen with their clothes off were on the television. I had a few fuzzy memories of seeing the mother naked as a small child but that seemed more appropriate for vomition rather than anything else, really.
“ No I’m not.”
“ I bet you are.”
“ I bet I’m not.”
“ I want that sucker.”
“ You can’t have it. It was a present.”
“ From who?”
“ That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“ I want that sucker.”
“ No.”
“ I’ll let you kiss me if you give me that sucker.”
Then I lied. I suddenly realized what it was I might have. A bartering tool.
Everybody loves a lollipop.
“ Aw, I kiss girls all the time. I’m sixteen. That’s almost an adult. Kissing’s what adults do.”
“ Yer a big fat liar is what you are, Wally Black. I know you want to kiss me. Everybody does.”
It was true that I wanted to kiss her. I figured that would make me more like at least twenty-five other kids in the middle school. Hell, even the high school. Mary Lou was one of the girls that would hang out outside the middle school until the loser high schoolers drove by in their battered cars. Only, I guess I was a bigger loser than they were. At least they were in high school. But I felt like I needed more than a kiss from Mary Lou. I wanted to up the ante at least a notch.
“ Can I use my tongue?” I figured that might be worth it and it seemed like something she would plausibly go for. I knew she wouldn’t suck me or let me finger her like I’d heard she’d done with Johnny Listo.
“ Only for a second? For the sucker?”
I nodded. I was starting to choke up. It felt like somebody had poured cement on the inside of my body and it was rapidly hardening. The only thing that wasn’t hardening was Mr. Lawrence. Maybe if we hadn’t been on the playground. I had ogled Mary Lou all year. I had never even touched a girl and, with the prospect of sticking my tongue in that mouth, I felt weak all over. I think hearing about Mary Lou’s exploits made me even more excited. Like I thought that anything she could do would be really good.
“ You ain’t got AIDS or nothin, do ya? You look like somebody who’s got AIDS.”
“ I don’t have AIDS. I promise.”
I guess that was good enough for her. She took a step toward me and closed her eyes. She was a lot shorter than me so I had to bend way down. I shook uncontrollably. As soon as I was close enough to smell her skin under her perfume I kind of lost it, I guess. Once our lips touched, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before I tried to put my tongue in her mouth. I really wasn’t sure how it should be done. I mean, I’d seen people do it on the television but you never really got to see how the tongue got there. I just stuck it out like an insult. I wanted to slip it halfway down her blobby throat. At that point, I thought sex must be more about destroying each other. Just touching her made me want to like step inside of her body. To somehow stretch it to the point of bursting.
But she kept her teeth clenched. That felt like an embarrassing eternity, standing there as my tongue moved wetly against the plaque on her teeth. So I got this