Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 03:51:32 -0800 (PST) From: SJL Subject: Paul and Adam: Chapter 12 So slow in updating, I know. Things have calmed down somewhat, now I'm just blocked. Well, not blocked since I don't believe in writer's block, but slow. So, you know, any encouragement or mocking emails are greatly appreciated. Send them to geekwriter143@yahoo.com And my website is still http://veggiegrlaz.tripod.com if you're interested. I post little updates every once and awhile, and the chapters are usually up there before they hit all of Nifty's mirror sites. Standard disclaimer here. Don't read this if you shouldn't read this. Be kind to animals. Call your mother. On to Chapter 12, from Paul's POV ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Everybody decent?" Caroline asks, knocking on my door and cracking it just an inch. "Yeah," I say. I'm sitting at my desk going through my sketchbooks, looking for something I don't hate. "Where's Adam?" The sketch of Caroline's hands at the piano isn't bad. I'm getting good at hands. "He went home." "Good. Mom was starting to get pissy having him here every night." I look over at Caroline. "What?" "Well, he has been here four days straight." She almost sits on my bed, then looks at it for a moment. "You haven't washed your sheets yet, have you?" I shake my head, and Caroline sits on the floor. "It's not like I have cooties," I say. "It's not cooties I'm worried about. It's all that jizz the two of you spend so much time coaxing out of each other." She pulls her knees up to her chest, rests her chin on her knees. "What you working on?" "I'm just going through my sketchbooks," I say. "Everything I've ever drawn in my entire life sucks." She laughs. "Bullshit." I pick up another sketchbook and flip it open. A small, folded piece of paper flutters to the floor. I pick it up, open it, then refold it quickly. "What's that?" "Nothing important," I say, tucking it between two pages. It's a love letter I gave Adam. I don't know how it ended up in my sketchbook. "I noticed you were out late with Mitch last night." Caroline groans and covers her head with her arms. "I'm a disgrace to hotties everywhere." I laugh and turn to look at her. "What?" She looks up at me. "It wouldn't go in," she says. "And we tried. Mitch was very intent on getting it in, but it wouldn't fit." I try not to laugh but end up snorting. "Not that I'm an expert on female anatomy or anything, but how is that possible?" "I don't know!" "Does he have a gigantic dick or something?" "It doesn't look that big until it's coming right at you," she says, holding her arms out and bring her hands quickly towards her face for emphasis. "Was he putting it in the right spot?" "Jesus! I know what I've got down there. I've been using tampons since I was twelve." I cringe. "That's something I really didn't need to know." "Deal with it. I'm going to be a virgin for the rest of my life. All these girls look up to me, think I've got everything completely under control, think I'm hot shit, when really I'm a fraud. I can't even lose my virginity." "I hardly think your inability to get fucked makes you a fraud," I say. "You're still a hottie." "Damn right I am." "And, you know, most people are terrified of you. You own that school." "I do, don't I?" She sighs. "I was really nervous. You think that made me, I don't know, extra tight?" I cringe and shake my head. "That's another mental image I really didn't need. But, yeah, being nervous definitely affects things. You need to be relaxed in order for your muscles to be relaxed." "Danielle said I should be drunk, but I want to remember it." "Don't get drunk," I say. "Just have a shot or something beforehand to relax you." "It's really disturbing that it's getting easier and easier to take sex advice from you," Caroline says. "What happened to your naked camping weekend, anyway?" "Adam's fighting with his dad, so it got cancelled," I say. "Thank God. I'd probably start school with poison ivy." "Or with ticks," Caroline says, wrinkling her nose. "Or spider bites." "Adam would be perfect if he wasn't so outdoorsy." Caroline laughs. "Did I just hear you say that Adam's not perfect? Holy shit, call CNN." I flip her the bird. "I never said he was perfect." "You always say that he's perfect." "Fine. He's perfect except for the outdoorsy thing." She sighs and shakes her head. "What is it with guys and the outdoors?" "Hey!" "Sorry. I mean some guys. Mitch suggested I go camping with him earlier this summer. I mean, does he know me at all?" "What's wrong with a nice hotel?" I ask. "Exactly! Room service. Cable. Clean sheets." "Air conditioning," I say. "Indoor plumbing," Caroline says. I laugh. "We're such snobs." "We're not snobs. We're sophisticated, that's all. I hardly see the romance in sleeping in some musty tent, rocks poking you in the back, fifty miles away from the closest bathroom." I curl my lip. "Cooking Spam over an open fire." Caroline shudders. "I say if you can't identify what animal the meat came from, you shouldn't eat it." "What about foie gras?" "Oh, please, who doesn't know where foie gras comes from?" She frowns. "Never mind. We are snobs, aren't we?" I nod. "Yeah, pretty much." "Now I'm hungry." "We could probably scare up some Spam to fry for lunch." She shakes her head. "So gross." "If there are leftovers you can make a sandwich and pack them for your lunch tomorrow." "That remark is revolting on so many levels. As if I'd pack a lunch. Besides, I'm a junior, now. I can go off campus for lunch." "Maybe you and Mitch can practice fucking during lunch hour. You're bound to get the hang of it by midterms." She stands up, shaking her head. "You're such a little prick sometimes." I grin at her. "I know. Now, you're sure you used lube and not super glue?" "I swear to God, if I murdered you no jury in the world would convict me," she says, leaving my room. She turns and crosses her arms over her chest. "And I'd make it slow and disgusting. I'd pay Traci Petron to sit on your face and suffocate you. Death by pussy." "That's cruel even for you," I say. I get up and follow her out of my room and down the stairs. "Maybe you could work your way up, you know? Tampon to carrot to zucchini and then, finally, dick." "You are so gross!" Caroline says, darting into her room. She reemerges in the doorway with a bottle of water in her hand. "Really, you should get your head examined." I wait until she's about to take a drink of water before I say, "Or, you know, go with a water bottle if he's really got some girth on him." Caroline throws the bottle at me, hitting me in the chest and splashing water over my clothes. "You little shit. You're paying for that one." "Look what you did to my-" is all I manage to get out before Caroline tackles me to the floor. I might be taller than her, but she can still kick my ass. "You think you're funny?" she asks, pinning my arms to my sides with her legs. "You think you're a funny guy?" She slaps my face a few times just hard enough for it to sting. "Jesus, Caroline," I say. I try to be mad but we're both laughing. "You're a sick little pervert," she says, leaning over me. "Say it." "Fine. You're a sick little pervert." "Don't test me, funny guy." "What?" I try to feign innocence. Caroline smiles, and I cringe since I suddenly know what's coming. Slowly, a loogie descends from her lips and dangles precariously close to my face. "Fine," I say, trying not to look at the elongated teardrop of spit and mucus. "Fine. I'm a sick little pervert." Caroline slurps the loogie back up and lets me go. "You're sick," I say, sitting up. "Me? I'm baring my soul and you're talking about mounting water bottles. You're the sick one." "And what are the two of you fighting about?" Mom asks as she climbs the stairs, a basket of laundry on her hip. "School," I say. "Foie gras," Caroline says. "Mmm-hmm," Mom says, passing us and carrying her laundry towards her room. "Speaking of school, have you decided what you're wearing tomorrow?" "We're not in elementary school," I say. "It's not like we have to dress up for the first day of school." "Speak for yourself," Caroline says, jumping to her feet. "I'm wearing my new hip huggers and that green halter top." Mom sucks in air through her teeth. "What?" Caroline asks. "The school's not air conditioned. It's hot." "But that halter top shows so much skin," Mom says. Caroline shrugs and tosses her hair over one shoulder. "I might as well show it off while I've got it. Besides, I can guarantee you that it will be in much better taste than half the shit girls show up in tomorrow." "She's got a point," I say. "But it's important to make a first good impression," Mom says. Caroline rolls her eyes. "Everyone in this town knows me already. But I'll wear something else if it will make you happy." "It will." "Come on," Caroline says, kicking my foot. "Help me decide." "Me?" I ask, getting up and following her to her room. "Why me?" "Why not you?" she asks. I stretch out on her bed, which is kind of difficult considering how many pillows she has on it. "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I know anything about clothes." "Fine. Your knowledge of fashion has absolutely nothing to do with you being gay. Happy?" "Not really." Caroline opens her closet and gazes in at her clothes for a moment. "This?" she asks, pulling out a blue ribbed tank top. I shake my head. "Boring." "Um..." She pulls out a pink striped button down. "This is cute." "Too hot. Wait until October." "Oh," she says. She pulls out another tank top, this one ivory with a cowl neck and a brown and red geometric print. "That's new." "Cute, huh?" she asks, holding it up to herself as she looks in her full-length mirror. "So this and the hip huggers and-" "Not the hip huggers," I tell her. "Your corduroy skirt. The short brown one." Caroline turns and grins at me. "You so know about fashion." "Shut up." "I'm not saying it's a bad thing. You're just artistic." I snort and pull one of her pillows over my head. "Yeah, right." Caroline flops down on the bed next to me and pulls the pillow away. "What's wrong, honey?" "Nothing," I say. "Just that I'm apparently a flaming faggot." She pinches my arm hard. "Ow. I mean it. Even you talk to me like I'm a girl." "I do not." "You do, too. Upstairs you said, 'What is it with guys and the outdoors?' completely oblivious to the fact that I'm a guy." "I didn't mean it like that," she says. She ruffles my hair. "So you're not some hulking lug with an IQ of 40 and a chaw habit, so what? Do you really want to be?" "No. But I don't want to be the artistic one, either. God, you know they're gonna give me shit tomorrow." "Who?" I shrug. "Just whoever. They always do." "If anybody gives you shit I'll-" "That's what I'm talking about," I say. "No guy wants his sister to protect him. It's humiliating." "Fine," she says. "I'll back off this year." "I'd appreciate it." She scrunches her face up next to mine. "You wanna tell me the real reason your panties are in a twist?" "Caroline." "Fine. Your boxers, then." I sigh. "Adam's...weird." "Everybody's weird," she says. "No, I mean he's different than he was. And it's not just the fight he had with his dad, either. Something else is going on." "Like what?" "I don't know," I say. "It's like there's something he's not telling me. And..." "And?" Caroline asks, turning onto her side and resting her head on her outstretched arm. "I wrote him this letter," I say. "It was just...I couldn't sleep one night and I wrote him this stupid letter about how much I loved him-" "How is that stupid?" "It didn't say anything really important. It was just...I don't know. And I gave it to him last week, but today, that piece of paper that fell out of my sketchbook, that was the letter I wrote him. He put it there, and I don't know why." "So ask him," she says. "Maybe I don't want to know why," I say. "Jesus." Caroline rolls her eyes. "Now you're acting like a girl." "Chauvinist pig," I say, elbowing her. "Fine, not all girls. You know what I mean." She tilts her head to the side and raises her voice half an octave. "'Oh, my God. Tommy told Billy who told Marcia who told Elizabeth who told me that he thinks that I use too much tongue when I kiss him, so I'm going to tell Katie to tell Seth to tell Lori to tell him that I think he has a small dick.'" I laugh and shake my head. "You sound like that kind of girl," Caroline says. "Just fucking ask him. I thought the two of you talked about everything." She drapes one arm over her forehead. "Love and romance and the depths of your souls." "Not everything," I say. "And we're usually not talking that much. Well, Adam is, but that's just because he likes to talk while we're doing it." Caroline cringes. "Too much information." She sits up and looks at her closet for a moment, then looks back at me. "What does he say? I mean, not specifics or anything. I'm just...you know, until I get this whole virginity thing straightened out I'm running out of ways to, uh..." "Get Mitch off?" I ask. She nods. "I mean, if I never have to give another blowjob it will be too soon." I just stare at her, confused. "What?" Caroline asks. "How can you...? Are you sure you're not a lesbian?" She laughs. "Yeah. Why?" "How can you not love...I mean I'm just...blowjobs are, like, the best part." She wrinkles her nose. "So gross. And I'm always worried he's going to, you know, in my mouth. I'd totally vomit." "It's not that bad," I say. "It tastes pretty good once you get used to it." Caroline gags and holds her hand to her mouth. "Oh, God. Don't ever say that again." "What?" "That is the sickest thing I have ever heard." "What's wrong with liking the taste of cum?" She points her finger at me. "You are seriously twisted." "Me? You can't even lose your virginity with a horn dog and a gallon of lube." "That's it." She dives across the bed and we tumble to the floor. I try to avoid getting anywhere near her face, since she's been known to bite on more the one occasion. She's laughing, though, so I decide not to be too worried about her digging her teeth into my flesh. "You're such a little shit," she says, hitting me over and over again with one of her decorative pillows. My mother knocks on Caroline's open door and clears her throat. "And what are you fighting about, now?" "Foie gras," I say. "School," Caroline says, the pillow paused in midair above my face. Mom rolls her eyes and nods. "All right, but don't kill each other. And no bruises. I don't want anybody to have a black eye on the first day of school." "Again," I say up to Caroline. She looks down at me. "That was totally an accident." She looks up at Mom. "I've told you a million times that he walked right into my elbow." "Mmm-hmm," Mom says. "And I want both of you in bed by ten. You have an early day tomorrow." Caroline drops the pillow onto my chest and sighs. "School totally sucks," she says, and I agree.