Things at home settled back into our normal routine after that. I don’t know what went on in private with Mom and Dad, but Shawn continued to go to church and Mom continued to spend a lot of time there. Maybe Dad talked to her, I don’t know, but Mom never came and spoke to me about jerking off.
That was good because it wasn’t a conversation I was even comfortable just thinking about, let alone experiencing. Actually, after that, I found the conversations I had with Mom were much less frequent than before.
I was getting older and often at that age a guy just naturally starts getting closer to his father, and maybe that was why Mom and I didn’t seem to talk much anymore. The talking we did was about ordinary stuff, like what new clothes I needed, whether I needed picking up at school, that sort of thing, not important emotional or personal stuff.
I talked to Dad a lot. When I was younger, growing up, he’d always been quiet, just sort of a figure in the background. Mom had been the more vocal of the two, the parent who was intimately involved in the details of my life. Of course, she’d been a different person then, happy and full of life and fun. Now she was closed off and had this righteous glint in her eye and no semblance of humor in her at all. No happiness that was apparent, either. So now, Dad was who I dealt with, talked to, asked questions of. He was there when I needed an adult.
When I was about to turn 14, things were still more tense at home than I liked. I talked to Dad about that, the problems we were having as a family, and he told me I might find an outlet for my thoughts and feelings if I started a journal. That didn’t sound like a bad idea to me. I’d always had a pretty good imagination and, even though I was outgoing and had lots of friends, I liked living in my head, too, thinking about things, imagining things. I regretted not being able to remember some of the neat stories I’d made up when I was seven and eight. Writing things down, having a record of them, and getting some of my worries out in the open instead of in my head might really help me.
So I started doing that and found I actually loved it. I didn’t do what a lot of kids did, write every day for a week or two and then give it up. No, I kept it up. I wrote almost every day, at least six days a week, and I didn’t stop. It became something I looked forward to, something I did before turning in every night. It calmed me, forced me to think more critically about things, and I learned to express my views much more cogently. The thinking I was doing seemed to make me a more introspective person. And it helped my vocabulary.
I wrote about what I experienced during the day, my reaction to it, and my thoughts about how things could have been better, how other people should or could have reacted differently to things that happened to them. I also began writing stories based on things I’d thought of or incidents I’d witnessed.
When we were 14, Jed and I were still fooling around together when we could. It was difficult because I had Shawn to contend with and he had Missy, so doing much in either of our homes was awkward. Mom was gone when I got home after school every day, but I never knew when Shawn would show up, and his attitudes about sex hadn’t changed, as far as I knew.
I actually didn’t know Shawn at all anymore. If it was safe to say he’d started withdrawing a year ago, then the fact was that he was officially withdrawn now. He rarely spoke to Dad or me and spent his time at home mainly in his room with his Bible. But if he was home, I didn’t feel safe doing things with Jed, and I never really knew when he was going to be home. This didn’t make having Jed over for fun and games—the type of fun and games we had in mind—a very attractive proposition.
This was the year we finally figured a way to get revenge on Missy. She was now sixteen and at that age where she and her friends would get together and talk about boys. In Jed, she’d found someone to pick on and she had made his life miserable in the past. Now, she’d moved on to finding him a pest and a nuisance and someone to tolerate with great reluctance and active scorn. She treated him with enormous disdain when she wasn’t actively tormenting him. And when I was with him, I was treated the same way. Otherwise, I didn’t even exist to her.
Jed, of course, saw her as the enemy, and our scheming about what to do about her, while never fruitful, had also never stopped. And when we finally saw our opportunity, we felt no traces of guilt or restraint, just glee and satisfaction at finally being able to get vengeance. We didn’t even once stop to consider consequences.
It started when I was eating dinner at the Tuckmans’. I enjoyed being free from the tensions at home and ate anywhere I was invited whenever I could. I ate at Jed’s house at least once a week, frequently more than that. Jed had never told me, but in the back of my mind I was sure he’d told his mother how frosty the climate in my house had become and that it would help me if I could eat with them often. I’d always liked Mrs. Tuckman, and she me. Her only flaw in my mind was her absolute belief in the ultimate goodness of her daughter. I thought everyone must have had at least one flaw.
We were talking about an upcoming school dance over dinner. Missy, as was her way, was gushing about the possibility of this boy or that boy asking her to the dance, what she was going to wear, who wouldn’t be asked and who would, going on and on, when suddenly an idea hatched in my mind. I looked over at Jed and he was stolidly eating his dinner, looking at nothing in particular. Or, in other words, Jed was being Jed. But, the idea, now firmly planted in my mind, was doing as ideas do: it was both growing roots and blossoming. And the possibilities were varied and exciting.
After dinner, when we were in Jed’s room, with the door open as his parents liked––which never made any sense to me, but all families have their peculiarities and strange and senseless rules seem to be a common area in which parents can express their weirdness––I told Jed my idea.
“Missy is waiting to be asked out to the dance. I got an idea at dinner. You still want to get back at her, don’t you?”
“You kidding? Of course. What’s the idea?”
“Well, you know how crazy she is about boys right now, and how nutso she gets talking about them and how romantic she makes everything? Well, it would be really, really mean, but, what if we had someone call her up for a mystery date? Not tell her who he was, but say things like, ‘I’ve been watching you for a year and have this enormous crush on you,’ and then describe the things about her he loves, things that prove he knows a lot about her and has been watching her. That would get her all excited about having a secret admirer.”
I shook my head. This would be really mean, and I wasn’t that sort of kid. Still, we’d both been putting up with a lot from her.
“Then,” I continued after that pause to reflect, “maybe, he could say something or some things that suggest who he is. It could be someone who’s handsome and desirable, but he can tell her it’s important that he remains unknown till they get together, that he wants it to be a romantic surprise. She’ll eat up the romantic part, but for us, keeping it secret means she can’t approach him if she thinks she knows who it is.
“We want to really get the suspense going. He should call her a lot, keep her excitement at a high level. Then, of course, she’ll get all ready on the night of the dance, get a new dress, spend a lot of time on her makeup, get crazy with anticipation, and she’ll wait, and the clock will tick, and she’ll wait, and he won’t show.
“I don’t have all the details worked out yet, like, should we write a letter afterwards saying this is to teach her a lesson, that she should be nicer to the people around her, or, should we leak it to her enemies at school that she got stood up, or do a bunch of other things. But man, would that teach her a lesson, maybe even humble her a little.
“The thing we have to think about is, this is really mean, and will upset her a whole lot, probably really hurt her. Do we want to go that far?”
That was no problem at all for Jed. He didn’t even pause to think. “What do you mean? After what she’s done to me? You, too. All the trouble she’s got me in, and then laughed about it. She’s been sticking it to me for years, and rubbing my face in it. If we crush her like a bug and she ends up in bed for a week due to the pain it causes her, I’ll enjoy every minute of it. It’ll be payback for years of torment. This is a great idea, but we have to get someone to call her, maybe even pay them something to do it. And write a script so he’ll know what to say. Stuff like that.”
So, we talked about it, and talked some more. There were a lot of things to plan, and a lot of contingencies to figure out, but the scheme seemed to evolve as we worked out the details. For the next few days we talked, and worried over it and suggested and discarded and plotted, and then, finally, we had it all worked out and put together.
In the end, we got Billy Cameron to do the calling. I’d become pretty good friends with him and he was happy to help us out. To my disgust, he was straight as an arrow, but that actually was an advantage here because, being as good looking as he was, he was now popular with the girls and very used to talking to them, seeing as how he was something of a sex fiend. He wasn’t at all nervous about calling Missy. He also had a lower voice than either of us and sounded older, and he was bright enough to be able to avoid some of the mishaps that might result from things that could come up that we’d not been able to plan out or anticipate or had overlooked. We filled him in on the nasty stuff she’d pulled on us so he wouldn’t feel sorry for her, and we described some of her mannerisms that he could tell her he found attractive.
He first called her one evening about two weeks before the dance. We had to move before someone actually did ask her, and we wanted enough time so he could call her several times before the dance to enhance her excitement.
It all worked better than we’d hoped. In all, Billy called her seven times during the two-week period, and Jed and I were there listening on an extension during each call, standing where we could see Billy and we could all meet each other’s eyes and enjoy it together. He did his part beautifully, and you could hear the excitement in Missy’s voice, a little more with each successive call.
The last couple of calls before the dance, the talk became hotter. Billy had begun purring to her how he’d think about her when he was in bed at night, and he’d get excited. She’d asked him, excited how? And he’d said he’d got hard, thinking about her, and he could hardly wait to hold her on the dance floor, and maybe hold her differently afterwards, and she’d responded by asking how he wanted her to hold him, and the talk kept getting hotter. Both Jed and I were wide-eyed, listening to Billy pour it on. He acted like this was just natural for him.
During the call the night before the dance, the flirting had become pretty intense. It started with Billy discussing when he’d pick her up, then graduated to what they might do after the dance, and when Missy said she wanted to feel him, feel his excitement, find out for herself how excited she made him and what he felt like when he was that way, Jed was so hard his pants were sticking straight out. I was too, but was hiding it a little better. Billy was actually rubbing himself as he talked to her.
He told her she wouldn’t be disappointed and that he was looking forward to her stroking him! And then he said he’d never really stroked a girl before but had read up on it, and he was going to be gentle and go slow, talking dirty to her all the time, and he was sure she’d be really happy! Wow. Then he said he was so excited, talking to her, he was going to have to jack off, and she said she would, too, she was so wet talking to him that she was almost dripping, and she was getting off thinking about him playing with himself! When Billy hung up, I asked him if he always talked to girls this way, and he admitted he didn’t, but had always wanted to, and maybe he would now that he found he could and it worked so well! He said he’d always imagined talking like this with an eager girl, but that actually doing it was so much better than doing it in his imagination.
I spent some time over at Jed’s house during this period, and we watched as Missy was almost climbing the walls with excitement and giddiness. I was starting to get some reservations, seeing how high her high was and realizing how low her low might be. Jed, on the other hand, perhaps not having as active an imagination as I did and having suffered worse at her hands than I had, seemed delighted. The plan was going just how he wanted it to go.
I just happened—yeah, right!––to be over at Jed’s house the night of the dance. Missy got ready. It took her a couple of hours, even though this wasn’t a formal dance. Then she waited. And waited. Jed had a mean streak, a nasty one, I found. It had been his idea to have friends of his come ring the doorbell at about 15 minute intervals from the time Missy’s date was to pick her up till an hour afterwards. So, every 15 minutes, Missy would jump up, then walk slowly to the door, patting her hair, and it would be another of Jed’s friends. By the third time this happened, 45 minutes after she was supposed to be picked up by her mystery date, the disappointment was beyond palpable, and her nerves were raw and showing.
When the last of Jed’s friends had arrived, after Missy had let him in, she walked back to her room with a lost and empty look on her face and we didn’t see her again that evening.
I was feeling a little bad. Not awful, I knew she had it coming, but still… We were hurting her, and badly, and that makes you think a little. I guess I wasn’t as heartless or vengeful as Jed. But then, I thought of what he’d been through with her, and decided not to let it bother me.
We had given Missy the impression that a guy in her class at school, a rather shy guy who we thought might well be gay because of how he acted and who was very good looking and kept mostly to himself, was her secret admirer. We’d had Billy drop a couple hints that would lead her in this direction.
The dance was on a Friday night. On Monday, we watched in the cafeteria as she approached him. She was in a funny position, mad that she’d been stood up but uncertain how it had happened or who had done it. She obviously had bought our proposed theoretical date hook, line and sinker, and thought it had been Eric, the possibly gay but very shy boy, and so she approached him. She spoke to him hesitantly, and he responded in kind, not having a clue what she was talking about. We were on the other side of the cafeteria, watching, and the confusion both of them showed was hilarious, but we thought it would be dangerous to laugh in case she looked around and saw us. We thoroughly enjoyed their confusion.
Jed thought it would be good to have Billy make one final phone call. He did that Monday night. She answered, and he told her that he’d decided not to pick her up for the dance because he’d heard from a lot of kids that she was a real bitch to her brother, and he had a problem with bullies of any kind, and that included girls. Then he hung up. I told Jed I thought that was pushing it too far and was way too risky, but he didn’t care. Half of him wanted her to know this was revenge from him, half of him knew he shouldn’t let her know. This was his compromise.
I ate dinner at their house that night. Missy had a strange look on her face. She started to say something to Jed several times, then stopped. She looked at me hard once, and a considering, pensive look came into her eyes. She didn’t say anything to me, but very obviously was thinking hard. I realized she had to know that Jed would never have been able to come up with, or execute, a plan like this on his own, and also that I was very capable of such a devious plot. Her hard look soon became a glare. I returned a very blank look, and allowed a questioning look to come into my eyes.
Overall, you could tell the entire affair had rattled her. She wasn’t the same bubbly girl she’d been. She was quieter and less sure of herself. I didn’t know how long this would last. I hoped we hadn’t made a permanent dent in her self-esteem, though if that’s all it was, a dent, maybe that was for the better.
A couple of days later, Jed told me she’d confronted him and asked him if he’d had anything to do with her being stood up. He said he’d professed complete innocence. He also said she told him, if she found out he’d been involved, he’d regret it for the rest of his life, and from her tone of voice, he was sure she meant it. She told him that she thought that this was his doing. He wasn’t worried, though. He said she already made his life hell, and what more could she do?
We found out, of course, what she could do. What she could do was bide her time. She could wait. How could we have known?