by Cole Parker
Circumstances 1
It wasn’t entirely my fault. It was circumstances. That was it. Circumstances. Lots of life is, you know. It could happen to anyone, if the circumstances were right.
I was up late the night before. I’d left an essay for Mrs. Gallagher’s class till too late, as usual, and was working on it when Mom yelled at me to go to bed. I yelled OK back, but still had a long way to go to finish the thing.
When she came up later, I was still hard at it. She stuck her head in my door and tut-tutted sarcastically but spared me the it’s-your-own-fault, you-put-it-off-too-long, go-to-bed-now talk I’d already heard too many times. I just kept thinking and writing.
Part of what I thought was how lucky I was, being able to write on my computer. I’d write something, then delete a few words and add better ones. I’d move entire paragraphs to different positions in the essay, see what that did, how it sounded, and then move them again to test them elsewhere. When finished, I’d spell-checked the thing and made the needed changes. And all the while, I was wondering how anybody ever wrote essays longhand or on typewriters.
I was up till almost midnight, but finally printed it out and hit the sack. I was dead tired. Too much thinking, too late an hour. I didn’t even have the energy for how I usually rewarded myself for going to bed when it was time. Not that I didn’t want to. I just fell asleep thinking about it.
And so I slept later than I should have the next morning and had to skip my shower in the rush to get to the bus on time. This left me even hornier than usual and still tired, tired only as someone can relate to who’s been yanked out of bed still fast asleep by an unsympathetic and, as usual, short-tempered mother who’s worried about being late herself.
But I barely made it to the bus on time. I was at the beginning of the route, one of the first to be picked up every morning. I had to be standing at the curb in front of my house to be sure the driver would stop. Some drivers stopped and honked if the kids weren’t there. Mine, a woman with weird eyes, didn’t do that, except for the kids she liked. Me, she didn’t even acknowledge I was alive.
The bus was practically empty. I took my usual seat and settled in for the 40 minute ride by putting my backpack up against where the window met the back of the seat, used it for a pillow, and was asleep again before the bus had pulled away from the curb.
Kids got on the bus as we followed our route. I was left alone until, finally, the seats were filling and someone sat down next to me. Through blurry eyes, I looked to see who it was. I didn’t recognize him.
It was a new kid, a boy about my age. He had long blond hair, and a long face as well. He was looking at me just as curiously as I was looking at him. I struggled into an upright position on the seat to give him more room, setting my backpack on the floor next to where he put his.
“Hi,” he said, and I yawned as I ‘hi’-ed him back. He laughed, which made me do the same. I think that laugh broke the ice I usually felt meeting new people, or it seemed that way. His eyes sparkled, and I had the feeling he noticed the same thing.
“Hi. Late to bed, or something else in bed?” Then he laughed again. “Oh, I’m randy, by the way. Well, my name is Tommy, but I’m randy.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me.
I couldn’t believe he was talking to a stranger this way. I was going to say something, but he beat me to it. “You are too, huh?”
I frowned, wondering what he was talking about, until he pointed and asked, “Morning wood, or do I turn you on?” And laughed again.
I looked down and blushed. It was very obvious. Yeah, I guess morning wood would be right, but it had never happened on the school bus before. But then, I usually didn’t take a nap going to school, either, and I’d usually taken care of my urges the night before or in the morning after waking up.
As I said, it was just circumstances.
The way I was sitting, there was no question what Tommy was looking at. It was tenting out my pants in all its glory. Tommy was still laughing, and then, slowly, he reached over and wrapped his hand around it.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, and tried to jerk back, but he was holding on and there wasn’t anywhere to jerk back to anyway. They didn’t build school buses with students’ comfort in mind.
“What, you don’t like this?” he responded, and began rhythmically squeezing his hand, not stroking, just squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
My god! I was 14, and it never did take much for me to get off, and I was horny anyway, and now this?
“Stop!” I said, the urgency I was feeling making my voice shrill. He grinned, and didn’t stop at all.
“I’m going to come! Stop!” I hissed desperately.
He did. But it was too late. The rush came anyway, and as he watched I started jerking in my seat, filling my briefs with spasm after spasm.
In the distance I became aware of a vague roar, and as it became louder, it also became more distinct. Suddenly, I was awake, and opened my eyes to see half the kids on the bus standing and elbowing to see me better, roaring with laughter, some of the girls blushing but not looking away, some of the boys cheering along with their laughing. There I was, sitting with my head on my backpack, sprawled out with the front of my pants wet and poking out, my hips still bobbing up and down sporadically.
More of the boys started shouting and clapping, and then everyone on the bus was.
There was no Tommy. There never had been. Only me, wondering how I was ever going to live this down, or even survive the day with my khaki pants showing exactly what had happened.