Lacy and Jack by Ray Cates (Adolphus)

When we were in her car on the way to school, she said, “Remember your place.  Don’t walk along with me, or talk to me because I am not your girlfriend.  You are a servant at our house that my father said could ride to and from school in our car.

“I’m not a servant of anybody.”  I said.

“If your mother is a servant it makes you a servant,”  she said.

“She’s not my mother and she’s not a servant.  She only takes care of your little brother and sister.”

“I was told she is your mother.”

“You were told wrong.”

“Well whatever she is to you, you are nothing to me, and the driver will let you our around back by the gym and then will drive me around front where everyone is.”

“I’ll get our where ever you get out.”

“Then you’ll probably walk home.”

“Not likely,”  I said.

It was a long ride, maybe ten miles to Carver Junior High.  It was the first day of school and Miss Lacy Vanderwater, age 13 sat primly on her side of the Lincoln automobile in her starchy rose-colored dress.  I was in my new suit that my foster-mother had purchased last Saturday.  We had been at the Vanderwater house all summer, a miserable summer for me because there was no one around my age as Lacy was off at a girls camp.

All summer the main thing I did was swim in a pond that was on the Vanderwater property, and read detective books.  Lacy’s father had  some 400 year old copies of the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, even some original printings of Mickey Spillane.  Those were bloody times, and I got caught up in the violence of that period of time while doing nothing beside the pond, or wandering aimlessly in the woods around the acres of wooded property that the Vanderwater’s owned but used for nothing but growing underbrush and trees.

All summer I told myself that being a foster child was better than another orphanage — with screaming children everywhere, and chores.  I had no chores and I got a $5.  allowance for doing nothing.

The driver drove around back to the gym as Lacy told him, and I didn’t get out,  as I told them both I would.  Then Mac the driver said, “He’s just not getting out Miss Lacy”

“Go to the front of the building then!”  she almost yelled, and said looking at me her fiercest look, “I will get you for this!”  She didn’t want to explain me to her friends. 

As luck would have it we were in the same class.  It was the kind of school where all the same class group went together from subject to subject.  We had English, PE, lunch then social studies, math, science and then music.  At lunch I sat at the table where she was with two other girls.  I sat there because I didn’t know anyone else in the class yet.  Lacy got up at once and moved to another table.

Lacy was at the table with two other girls.  One was named Shoann, and Shoann said,  “I wonder what got into her”

“Who cares?”  I said and the others laughed. I think they would laugh at whatever a boy said, most boys didn’t talk to those two.  Lots of boys in the 8th and 7th grade shy away from girls.  Girls are for the most part bigger than boys at our age.

During the ride home she was looking at her music book and ignoring me.

“They have good lunches there.” I said, trying to be a friendly person.  I am basically a good guy.

“Like shit, I would just as soon eat shit!”  she barked.

“Most people like me,”  I said, “what is it particularly that you dislike?”

“Mostly you don’t know your place, but beyond that your short, not blond or particularly good-looking.”

“You’ve overlooked my brains and talent.”

“Everybodies got a brain, but what talent do you have?”

“I can make people do what I want.”

She laughed and began looking at her music book again.

The next morning we rode to school without speaking and the driver didn’t go around to the gym to try to let me out.  I figured that she complained to her mother and received no sympathy.  Even then I fairly well knew things like that.  Also I knew she was very curious about my statement that I could control people, but was too proud a bitch to ask quickly.

I sat on the front row of my classes because if the teacher was talking about something interesting I wouldn’t be distracted by the other people around me.  I was especially distracted by being around hundreds of people.  People vibrate and angry or insane people almost shake the house down.  I feel unstable people acutely in large crowds, the classes at that school were in large rooms, and were large bunches of people. 

Thank goodness the class that I was in that year vibrated normally.  Some days a girl was angry at her brother or parents, and girls are vastly more unstable than boys in the 8th grade.

At lunch the 2nd day I ate at the table where Shoann sat.  It was the same table that Lacy had left the day before.  The only girl I knew there was Shoann.  The two other girls (one of which was fat) were friends with each other and didn’t talk to anyone else.  There was a boy who talked to Shoann about clothes.  I mean he was interested in shoes and belts people wore and how well things fitted on them.  He was I thought with a mind-set more akin to what girls thought.  He had the mind of a girl, and was about as stupid, in lots of ways, as an insect.

At some time during the last of my hamburger Shoann said to me, “So why does Lacy hate you so much, she takes her lunch and leaves our table?”

“Love is funny,”  I said with my mouth full.  You have to eat school lunches fast, there is not time at all for proper digestion.  Kids swallow their food mostly whole.  Shoann was laughing about what I said.

“Love?”  she said, “Last year in the seventh I had lunch with her every day.  Last night on the phone it didn’t sound like love.”

“But it is love, she doesn’t know it yet, and I haven’t really decided about her yet.”

Then the bell rang and we had to exit fast.  Shoann laughed and laughed as I left.

When I got to the car after school Lacy was already there she said, “You’re a big lier Jack Carter!”

“You talked to Shoann, and did she tell you exactly what I said?”

“Exactly”

“What is it then?”

She unfolded a note and read, “Jack Carter says you love him, but you don’t know it yet.”

“Is that what you said?”

“Oh yeas it’s very true.”

“But JackIi totally despise you.  I don’t love you, in fact I wish you were dead.  If I could kill someone and get away with it, you’d be it!”

“Just as I said Lacy your in love with me, but don’t know it yet.  You have to care about me lots, to build up the kind of killing hate that is bruning you now.”

“And just why would I love an arrogant son-of-a-bitch like you?”

“Because I’m the smartest person you have met, or will ever meet.  I’m more than smart.”

“You keep saying that, “  she said, “but I don’t see any proof.”

“What demonstration do you want me to do?”

“Well in school I haven’t seen you at the board solving the hardest problems.”

“I haven’t been to the board.”

“Maybe you could tell me something that only you could know, and somehow I would know your telling the truth.”

“If I am as smart as I say I am I will know something about you that only you could know.”

“Or”, she said, “tell me something about me that only I would know.”

“That would be real hard, you think.  But it would prove to you how smart I am.”

“I don’t think your smart at all.  I would guess a really average IQ, but go ahead, I’m all ears, tell me something about me only I would know.”

“OK, lets start with Camp Wingina this summer.”

“You could have overheard anyone talk about that, or maybe you read my letters that mom probably left laying around.”

“OK, so I must tell yo something personal.  Something you wouldn’t write home about.”

“Exactly, I guess it would be one kind of smart if you could tell me about something personal that happened to me this summer.”

I checked the window between us and the driver, it was completely closed.  She said, “He can’t hear.”

“The night of July 7th.”

“How could you know?”

“Do you want more?”

“Did you read some letter?  Intercept some letter?”

“No.”

“So you had a date this summer, and I think you got hold of a letter that I certainly didn’t see.  So far I think you are, or have been very devious.  Devious is not smart.  Smart would be something not found in letters.”

“The 4th was a big holiday celebration.  He was a junior counselor from the boys camp, age 16.  He didn’t dance very well, but he had a great build.  His father is into clothing stores.”

“That could have been in his letter,” she said.

“I didn’t take any of your letters.”

“Yes you did!” she looked like she would cry, “and I didn’t think he wrote me.  I’m going to tell my mother on you as soon as we get home.”

“Would he write,” I said, “that he took your virginity on the pier at 1:30 AM?”

“I hope not,”

“Would he write that he didn’t use a rubber, but told you afterwards to wash off with coca-cola and that would kill the sperm.  He bought 2 cokes with him and drank one.  His was diet, he said, “Classic is the only one good for squashing sperm.  It’s the only soft drink that burns them enough.”

“How did yo know that.  It is like you were there!”

“Would he write about his little toe on the left foot being cut off by a lawn mower?”

“Maybe, but how do you know about his ‘squashing sperm’ comment?”

“How would I know that he seemed not to notice when he tore your green panties as he pulled them down.  Or what about his remark about your breasts.  You must remember that.”

“Tell me.”

“Two nice little marshmallows to suck on.  He said that as he placed them in his mouth and licked them, you thought like a pig.”

“Now you even tell me my thoughts.”

“I know, how could I know your thoughts from a letter?”

“I don’t know, but do you know other things, about me, about other people?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you before.  But just a minute what did I do last night after I turned out the lights and got in bed?”

“What you do almost every night.  You take the three fingers of your right hand and put them up inside you working them slowly until you lubricate.”

She said nothing more during the drive home.  We got home at 4PM and at 6PM I had finished supper and was reading another of her father’s mysteries when the phone rang.  I went into our sitting room and it was Lacey.  She said, “I was having some trouble with math problems Jack and I wondered if maybe we could have the driver take us to the library to fool with them.”

“Sure,” I told her.

At our local library there was a reading area and a talking area.  The talking area was where she wanted to go.  There were always lots of teenagers in the talking room.  Studying together was an accepted week night date, although I saw no one else there as young as us.  We didn’t even open our book bags, she pulled a letter out of her pocket.  She was wearing hip hugger jeans and she wore them well, further her breasts looked well beyond the marshmallow size as described in the summer.  She handed me the letter which said,  “I was dumb to be like I was to you.  Right now I feel like an insect compared to you.  You are the most amazing boy, or whatever, I have ever met. 

I went home and wrote out all that you said in the car, and its as fantastic as if someone is here from a distant planet.  I’ve got ten thousand questions to ask you.

I burned up all that I wrote down this afternoon.  My conclusion is that you are probably the most important thing that has ever happened to me in my life.

You told me once that you can make people do what you want.  I agree, now just tell me what you want.  I’ll do it.”

So there I was with this willing girl.  An extremely attractive, even beautiful girl who I knew would not be despoiled or have a damaged virginity, because of what I wanted to do to her.  Lacy knew what I wanted, SEX.  What she didn’t know was that I had never had it before.  I was only thirteen as she was.  I didn’t have a rubber, and knew that coke was a soft drink only.  How does a boy of 13 get rubbers?  Girls expect smart boys to just have them.  But then again maybe a rich girl like Lacy could get protected.

I wrote her back, “I want you to be my girlfriend, and I want to do all the things with you, and more, that you did with that red-headed boy this summer.  I think we can go on afternoon hikes and there are places here and there on your father’s property where no one will see us screw.

I am smart, but I can’t make things appear out of thin air exactly, or at least I can’t yet conger up birth control devices.  Don’t tell me to buy coke it doesn’t work.  We don’t want to alert adults, and we don’t want to steal anything so this is a problem.  I hope you can help me solve.  So until we solve that problem we can do some of the things you did on the pier at camp on July 18th, 19th and 23rd.  Those things will never cause anyone to have a baby.

Something else I must tell you is that I am a virgin.  I admit that I’ve kissed girls and basically know what they feel like with clothes and with little clothes, but to sum it up either I chickened out or they got scared at the moment of entry.  So what do you think of my idea?”

She wrote back, “It’s what I expected you to write.   It’s what I wanted you to write.  I think we should begin hiking tomorrow right after school.  My mother often misplaces her birth control pills, but this time she may not find them.”

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To contact the author Ray Cates e-mail him at rcates2@cox.net  or fax him at 1-352-629-1573  OR LEAVE COMMENTS HERE.

Other related stories about Jack are found at:

http://goconstitution.wordpress.com

http://youngdevil.wordpress.com

http://jackstricks.wordpress.com

http://jesusjack.wordpress.com

Another off the topic story with links to other diverse stories is as follows: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com

Add a comment December 28, 2009
Tags: 7th and 8th grade students, birth control, clothes horses, coke-a-cola, foster homes, hate, knowing by mind reading, large crowds of people, letters instead of talk, minds like insects, orphans, reading thoughts, servants and masters, stealing, virginity in boys and girls, What is SMART?