Chapter Twelve

The Heart Remembers ©2009

Chapter Twelve

I never told anyone about what had happened with Kathleen that day. For one thing I didn’t really know how to explain the strange things that seemed to happen whenever she was around. I was smart enough to know that she was toying with me in some fashion. Everything about Kathleen bewildered me. Her teasing caused my imagination to run rampant with thoughts of the mysteries of the flesh of which I was still quite naïve. On this particular day, I had agreed to meet Nat and Harvey at the baseball fields after work. Elise had gone somewhere with her parents so it would just be the three of us. Nat and Harvey had both been surprised to see me burst into the library the previous day, sweaty and out of breath. But Elise had seemed to be right because I sensed that they were both very pleased to see me there as we listened to Nat bemoan the lack of aviation books in the tiny library. As I approached the ball field late that afternoon, I saw Nat warming up on the mound. It was a muggy afternoon and the stagnant air held the promise of coming rain. Harvey was stuffing strips of rags into his dilapidated catcher’s mitt because Nat threw so hard that if your mitt wasn’t in very good shape, you would drop the ball from the pain in your fingers and palm after a particularly hard pitch. Even with a decent mitt, my palm would have a buzzing sensation for hours after Nat had thrown her usual 50-60 “practice makes perfect pitches” as she called these practice sessions.

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Thankfully she mixed her pitches up well, because I don’t think anybody in our town could have lasted for 50 of her fastballs without injury of some sort. To make matter worst, when Nat got tired her pitches got wild, which aggravated her and made her try to pitch even harder. This is when it really got dangerous and when I would usually throw down my mitt and quit or step out of the batter’s box if I was hitting. Thankfully Harvey was the catcher most of the time. Harvey wasn’t a good catcher. He had a weak arm and was slow to get to his feet, but despite his lack of confidence in most things, he was fearless when it came to Nat’s fastball. Occasionally, a particularly hard pitch would hit a thin spot when Harvey’s makeshift rags shifted inside his glove and Harvey would howl in pain, throwing off his mitt and shaking his hand as if a horde of bees had decided to camp on his knuckles, but he always crouched back down and kept catching once he got the feeling back in his hand. I walked over to the dugout and saw Ronnie sitting on the bench cleaning his cleats. He nodded at me and I nodded back taking a seat at the opposite side of the bench. “C,mon Ronnie!” yelled Nat. “You don’t need to clean your cleats. I’m gonna strike you out so you’re not going to be running anyhow.” Ronnie stepped out of the dugout and grabbed a bat, taking a few practice swings. I was jealous of his height and his build, but couldn’t help but to admire his swing. I was still sore that my friends were so comfortable around him when I barely knew him. Ronnie stepped to the plate and dug in. Harvey said something to him that I didn’t catch, but it caused him to laugh and my jealousy knew no bounds. Nat wound up and let loose with her famous Virnett worm burner.

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Ronnie, who had been expecting a fast-ball was way out in front, swinging so hard that he almost fell down as the ball sailed slowly past him into Harvey’s glove. “What was that?” asked Ronnie, grinning. “Never showed you that one yet. I’ve been saving that one until Daniel got here. Nat gave me a wink and stared Ronnie down. “Get ready Ronnie. I’ll even tell you the next pitch. It’s going to be a fast ball.” “Yeah right, I really believe you.” Nat wound up and with a whip like motion released the ball. Blazingly fast, it crossed the plate before Ronnie could even get his bat around. “Strike two,” barked Harvey, clearly enjoying the show from behind the plate. “Way to go Nat!” I yelled a little too loudly. Ronnie looked over at me, but his smile wasn’t unfriendly. I still didn’t like him. Nat’s third pitch was a thing of beauty, a ball that appeared to be rising on the way to the plate, when suddenly it dropped as if the laws of gravity had just gotten confused. Ronnie ended up swinging at a pitch that barely made it to the plate. As I cheered I wondered if maybe Ronnie was letting up a little, but when he went to fetch another bat and I saw his face I could tell that he was upset over the strikeout and this brought me great joy. “Pulling out all your tricks today, Nat?” he asked, digging in at the plate once more. “You haven’t seen anything Ronnie. I’m just warming up.” For the next thirty minutes Nat continued to baffle Ronnie with her entire arsenal of pitches. I couldn’t ever remember having seen Nat pitch this well.

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With all the excitement of my job and getting to know Elise I had pretty much been blind to everything else around me, and as I sat in the dugout watching Nat, I realized that my two best friends had changed in these last few weeks of summer. They had not only formed new relationships I was unaware of, but even physically they somehow looked different. Nat had grown taller that summer, passing me up again which infuriated me. She had always been too skinny, but her thin physique seemed to be evolving, her limbs looking long and lean instead of just bony. Her hair was still a mess and her glasses still sported gobs of tape to hold them together, but that was just Nat. I thought back to what my mom had said about Nat being beautiful and I still didn’t see it. Maybe, if she combed her hair occasionally and got new glasses, she might look halfway normal, but Nat would never be accused of being beautiful. Harvey had changed too. He had lost a little weight, nothing drastic and definitely not enough to keep him from being teased by the inevitable cruel kids that always seemed to pop up every school year, but it was still noticeable. I wondered if I looked different to them. I measured myself with a pencil on my bedroom wall every night hoping to see some kind of change but as Nat sprouted like a weed, my height remained unchanged. I made up for it by lifting weights and it was only here that I noticed any difference as my strength improved and my muscles began to develop. I watched Nat walk over to the batter’s box where Ronnie was inspecting Harvey’s tattered catcher’s mitt and the three of them talked for a few moments. Nat motioned me over and I walked over self-consciously, even though I would have liked to just wait on the bench until they were through talking to Ronnie. Ronnie eventually told us he had to go and I was surprised to see him offer me his hand again. “Thanks for coming to watch Daniel. Maybe we can hit a few sometime.” 102

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I muttered a quick assent, feeling slightly embarrassed by my hostility to him before, since he actually seemed like a decent guy. It was getting late so we started making our way home. Harvey had to be home early to get ready for a bus trip his parents were taking to Cleveland to visit his Uncle and we walked him home first, saying our goodbyes as he climbed the steps to his front porch. The sky was getting darker and it looked as if a storm might crop up at anytime. Had it been earlier I would have asked Nat to read some more of “Les Miserables” to me in our tree fort while we listened to the rain drum down on the makeshift tin roof, but it was getting late and Nat had grown quiet after Harvey left. “Want to sneak out tonight and spend the night in the tree fort during the thunderstorms?” suggested Nat, as we approached her house. “Sure,” I replied enthusiastically. “Bring the book too okay? I’ll bring us something to eat.” We each made our way home to eat dinner. My mother had cooked meatloaf and I told her that meatloaf was Nat’s favorite, knowing that my she would be unable to resist making a sacked lunch for me with extra sandwiches to share. My mom was convinced that Nat wasn’t being fed properly, so she was always cramming extra food into the small paper sacks she gave me for lunch. She had given up on having me eat lunch at home that summer. I tended to lose track of time everyday as we played ball or ran around trying to ease our boredom on the days I wasn’t working. I went to bed early, not even bothering to listen to “The Lone Ranger” on the radio, knowing that my antsy mood might make my parents suspicious. It seemed like ages before I heard the creak of my parent’s mattress as they settled in for the night, then I lay there impatiently giving them another 20 minutes to fall asleep.

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Finally, I crept out to the kitchen and retrieved the paper sack with the extra sandwiches that my mother had prepared for the next day. I also stole a few cookies from the cookie jar knowing I would pay for that later since she kept track of such things as we struggled to make ends meet like most families. I snuck out of the house and was dismayed to see that the rain had already started. Not wanting to take the chance of sneaking back in and getting caught, I simply ran as fast as I could to the tree house in the woods. I could hear thunder in the distance, but it was still a long ways off. By the time I got to the dense canopy of the trees, I was already soaked to the skin and the paper bag with the sandwiches had fallen apart in the rain. Luckily my mother had wrapped each sandwich in waxed paper and they still looked edible for the most part although the cookies I had stolen had turned to mush. I reached the tree fort and could see that Nat had already arrived and lit the oil lamp. I made my way up the ladder to find her snuggled up under a blanket, fixing her glasses with more tape that she kept in the tree house just for that purpose. “Stupid rain made the tape on my glasses fall off,” she said, Her concentration focused on the task at hand, she barely lifted her head to acknowledge me. “It’s raining hard, I said. “I brought us some meatloaf sandwiches and I think they’re okay, but look at the cookies,” I added, holding up the pile of mush that I had attempted to protect from the rain with a torn portion of the wax paper from one of the sandwiches. “Yuck! That looks nasty.” Said Nat, squinting to see without her glasses. I dipped my finger into the mess that now resembled thick oatmeal and stuck it into my mouth. “It’s still pretty good,” I mumbled with my mouth half full.

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Nat set her glasses down and got up from her cot, awkwardly holding the blanket around her as she approached to inspect the ruined cookies. “Why are you walking around with a blanket around you? It’s not even cold out.” “Because my clothes are soaked goofball, so I took them off. I’m not running around here naked so you can try to steal peeks at my boobs like you do Elise when we go swimming.” “You don’t have boobs Nat,” I said, as we both dipped our fingers into what remained of the cookies. Nat licked her finger off and pulled her blanket out a little glancing inside. “I have boobs. They’re just little right now,” she added, looking up at me warily to see if I had tried to steal a look. “You’re getting the floor all wet, Daniel. Take your clothes off or go back outside.” I gave Nat the wet cookies which she continued to eat and I set the sandwiches down on the one small table we had which also held a jug of rain water we kept for drinking. “Turn around Nat, unless you want to see my butt.” Nat turned around, still clutching her blanket, licking another large clump of mush off her finger, which she was clearly enjoying. “Were you able to bring the book or was it raining too hard?” I asked, as I hurriedly finished stripping off my wet clothes and wrapped the blanket on my own cot around me. “I brought it. I kept it covered on the way here. It got a little wet but it’s alright.” I carried my wet clothes over to a rope we had stretched across the room for occasions where we got caught in the rain since going home wet meant too much explaining to our parents about how we had gotten that way and where we had been.

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My blanket was smaller than Nat’s and I had arranged it like a roman toga allowing me to have the use of both hands. Nat had already hung her own clothes up to dry and I draped mine next to hers. “Can I finish these?” she asked, holding up the last bit of cookie mush. “Go ahead, I said. “I’m having a sandwich.” “Get me one too,” she said, popping the last clump of cookies into her mouth and then licking the waxed paper clean. Nat had a prodigious appetite. I was amazed that she could eat so much food when it was offered to her, especially since she was so skinny. I wasn’t very hungry since I had eaten dinner not that long ago, so after Nat wolfed her sandwich down I gave her the rest of mine which she devoured in four bites followed by an impressive belch. The wind had picked up outside and the storm finally arrived, the thunder literally shaking the tree house several times. We sat there in silence listening to the rain hit the tin roof, and watching the lightning through a small cracked window we had found at the dump and salvaged to use in our tree house. Presently the worst of the storm passed and the rain slowed to a pleasant patter on the tin roof. The thunder grew muffled and almost soothing as it grumbled far in the distance. Nat pulled out her book and for the next few hours she read the story of Jean Valjean as I lay there quietly and thought to myself how great our lives were sometimes despite the fact that we had little money. I could feel myself dozing off and Nat must have noticed because she got up and extinguished the oil lamp before returning to bed. In the middle of the night I got up to pee.

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Nat was bunched up in her blanket and seemed to be asleep so I left my blanket on the cot and climbed down naked, doing my business as quickly as possible in the steady drizzle. When I got back up I took a long drink form the jug of rainwater on the table before settling back into my cot. Nat rolled over and lifted her head up. “You still awake?” she asked. “Yeah,” I answered. “I had to go pee.” “Naked? she giggled. “Yup.” “Too bad Elise wasn’t here to see that.” ‘Elise has seen me naked at the river before.” “Just your butt, because you and Harvey always cover up until you jump in,” she laughed. “How would you know if you’re not looking? And anyways, look who’s talking. You cover your boobs at the river like you’re trying to hide a secret. Nat didn’t reply to this right away, but glanced under her covers towards her chest again. “They’re never going to grow if you keep looking at them like that.” “They already did…a little. I wonder why some girls get bigger ones like Elise and some don’t like me. She’s only a little bit older than me.” “I don’t know. The same reason why some boys like Ronnie get tall and some like me don’t, I guess,” I said sighing. I couldn’t remember having such a relaxed conversation with Nat without arguing about something all summer. I kind of liked the change from our usual squabbling. She seemed unusually subdued. “I wish Harvey was here,” I said.

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“Yeah me too. We better not tell him we did this without him. He gets upset because you’re gone so much now with your job and everything.” “Yeah. It will get better once school starts. We’ll see each other every day until I go to work.” We both grew silent, listening to the crickets and toads outside now that the rain had stopped. “Elise says Harvey is in love with you,” I said struggling to keep a straight face. Nat scowled, and pondered this information for a moment. “If I wasn’t naked under here, I’d come over and pop you a good one.” “I’m just telling you what Elise said,” I protested. Nat seemed to mull this over for a few more seconds. “Harvey likes me because I made him a better catcher. And If you say he loves me again, I’ll hide your clothes when you fall asleep, plus I’ll still sock you.” “I’m not going to say it again! I thought Elise was crazy too for saying it. I’m just telling you what she said.” “I like Elise, Daniel, but she’s got some funny ways talking about love all the time and giving me hugs and stuff.” “That’s just how she is,” I explained. “I know she sure does like you though...a lot.” “Really?” said Nat rising up to one elbow and adjusting her blanket quickly as it fell, almost exposing her chest. “What makes you say that?” “I can just tell when she talks about you and stuff. She likes Harvey a lot too.” Nat lay back down. I caught her taking another look under her blanket and grinned, but kept quiet. We both lay there quietly. “I think Ronnie likes me,” she said softly. “Of course he likes you. You both play ball and you’re both good at it.” 108

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“No…not in that way. I think he likes me in a girlfriend kind of way.” I almost laughed, but I liked having Nat in this talkative easygoing mood so I restrained my laughter. I rolled over to see her expression. “Why on earth would you think he likes you like a girlfriend? He’s sixteen years old and you’re only thirteen for Pete’s sake. And I’ve seen plenty of older girls hanging out near the ball field and watching him.” Nat paused and I could tell that she wanted to tell me something but that she was still deciding whether or not to do so. Finally she began speaking in a very low tone. “Harvey had chores one day and couldn’t practice and you were working so I went to the ball fields to see if I could find someone to pitch to and Ronnie was there. We played for a while; then we sat in the dugout and talked. I told him about me wanting to be a major leaguer and he didn’t even laugh at me like everyone else does. He told me that if ever a girl had a chance it would be me. Then he started asking me about you. He asked me if I was your girlfriend. I told him you and Harvey were my best friends.” Nat paused and I could see her chewing on her lip as she thought about what to say next. “He told me that he liked when I came to play ball with him. And then he did something really weird, and if you tell Harvey or Elise any of this I’ll punch you so hard you’ll still feel it next week.” “Keep going,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anybody.” I felt strange as I lay there listening to Nat. Her story was making me uneasy. I still didn’t like this Ronnie, no matter hoe friendly he seemed

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He seemed like a nice enough boy but I had not gotten over my jealousy yet and I envied everything about him. Nat continued her story. “He put his hand on my shoulder, not around it like you hug someone, but like a Dad puts his hand on your shoulder. Then he asked me to take off my glasses.” “Why?” I asked, starting to think that maybe this Ronnie was a lunatic. “Let me finish,” said Nat waving her hand. “I took off my glasses and he just sat there looking at me for a few seconds. It made me kind of nervous. Then he told me that I was pretty but that my glasses hid my face or something like that.” I sat up quickly, not liking where this story was going at all. “And you didn’t sock him? What else did he say? Did he do anything to you?” “Just be quiet a minute and let me finish.” said Nat. “And lay back down and quit acting like you want to fight somebody or I won’t tell you the rest,” she added. I lay back down, hating everything about this Ronnie who talked to my friends as if he had known them forever. “The last thing he said was that he would be a senior when I got to high school and that he hoped he still knew me then because then I would be old enough to ask to a dance or something.” I stared at Nat incredulously. “Did you hit him then?” “No he left, and I left and that was it. I didn’t say anything else to him till later.” “Why didn’t you sock him,” I asked angrily. I don’t know why I felt so angry. I certainly didn’t want Nat for a girlfriend. I was crazy about Elise. But I couldn’t stand the thought of this boy invading my close-knit circle of friends and trying to change everything. Nat was only 13. Ronnie was already16. He could drive a car for Pete’s sake, and legally! 110

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Why didn’t he go chase some of those older girls who always hung around watching him? And why was everyone talking about how pretty Nat was all of a sudden? Couldn’t they see what I was seeing? Was I so blind that I was missing something here? I hated this Ronnie. I hated everything about him and I didn’t even know him. “So you must like him if you didn’t slug him,” I said bitterly. “Nope, said Nat. “He’s just nice to me and Harvey and that’s all. I don’t have time for boyfriends, not even when I get to high school. I told him that the next day when I saw him, and he said he understood.” I calmed down a little after Nat’s last comment. I still didn’t understand why this boy who seemed to have everything, height, great skills at baseball, and fairly handsome to boot, would have taken an interest in Nat, but I chalked it off to their shared interest in baseball. Maybe he thought that by being around Nat all the time with her phenomenal pitching, he could become even better than he already was. But Nat had put him in his place and this made me feel a lot better. I made a mental note to myself to ask her every day about what had happened while I was working so that I wouldn’t get hit with any more surprises. It was getting very late. I felt exhausted. I just wanted things to stay the same with my friends. No more outsiders unless I was there to get to know them too. I began to relax, my anger spent, and I could feel myself dozing off. I assumed that Nat had fallen asleep too because she hadn’t said anything else in awhile. In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of Nat’s voice calling me, “Daniel?” “What?” I asked in a sleepy voice. “It’s late Nat. Go to sleep” “Daniel, do you think I’m pretty?”

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I was awake now. Apparently Nat hadn’t said everything she wanted to say and now I was getting that uneasy feeling again. “What kind of question is that Nat? You’re my best friend. How on earth am I supposed to answer that?” Nat remained silent for so long that I wondered if she had been talking in her sleep. “I don’t feel very pretty, Daniel. I hate these glasses but I can’t see a thing without them.” “I’ll buy you some new ones if you let me go back to sleep.” “Elise sure is pretty, isn’t she Daniel?” I sighed, fully awake now. “Yes, Elise is very pretty.” “Have you kissed her yet?” “No.” “Do you want to?” I paused, unsure of whether I really wanted to expose my secrets to Nat, who feeling ornery might use any information she wormed out of me to embarrass me in the future. But there was something different about Nat tonight. I had never seen her this quiet, this subdued before. And I thought about how Ronnie had talked about personal things with her when I wasn’t around. If he could talk to Nat about personal things, then so could I. “I suppose,” I answered, wondering what it would be like to kiss Elise’s beautiful lips. “Daniel, can I ask you something else?” “Sure Nat.” “You think boys will want to kiss me when I’m older before I go try out for the Yankees?” “Probably Nat,” I said, having a hard time imagining anyone kissing Nat. “I wish I was pretty like Elise.” I opened one eye and peered over at Nat. she was staring at me and she looked sad.

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“My mom says that you’re going to be beautiful one day and Elise says that you have beautiful eyes.” “Really?” said Nat, her face glowing. “Yup, my mom said you’ll turn peoples heads when you’re older.” “I like your mom, Daniel.” “Well, she likes you too Nat.” Nat got up from her cot and shuffled over to me, her blanket still wrapped around her. She sat down on the edge of my cot. “What are you doing?” I asked, completely puzzled. “I want to tell you one more thing but I can’t say it from over there.” “What is it?” I asked. “Well,” said Nat, looking away from me and towards the foot of my cot, “I think that maybe one day I might like to kiss a boy if he’s nice. Not now, but someday I might.” I was wide-awake again Nat continued to look away, silently. “I don’t think I know how to kiss Daniel.” I let this comment sink in. I had seen kissing in the movies and it was different from the way my mom kissed me. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were doing on that big screen except that they kept their lips together for what seemed like a very long time. “I don’t think I know how either Nat, at least not a boyfriend girlfriend kiss.” Nat turned and looked at me. She seemed incredibly shy. It was almost as if she were a different person. The night felt surreal. “Daniel, I don’t want to kiss someone I don’t know very well the first time. I was hoping that maybe you would let me kiss you. It could be like practice. There’s nobody else I would really want to kiss right now. It’s kind of like why I didn’t tell you about striking out Ronnie. I’ve been saving it for you.” Nat looked down, unable to look me in the eye any longer. 113

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I was too stunned to move and seconds that seemed like hours went by. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I know you like Elise.” I had grown extremely nervous thinking about a potential first kiss with Elise. She was a year older than me and I suspected with all her talk about love that she might have already experienced her first real kiss with someone else. I had nightmares about doing something wrong, something that might disgust her or worst still, make her laugh at me. Although the thought of kissing Nat seemed strange, she was still a girl, and I was definitely curious enough about the whole ordeal to consider anything that might help me to not mess up if the opportunity to kiss Elise arose. “You want to do it now?” I asked, feeling a little shy myself. Nat nodded silently, her eyes owlish behind her glasses. “Okay, how do we do it? Do we stand up?” I asked. “I don’t want to stand up. My blanket might fall down when we do it.” “Well then how are we going to do it? I don’t know much about this Nat.” “Can I lay down beside you so my blanket doesn’t fall off?” I scooted over and made a spot on the tiny cot for her. She lay down beside me and our faces were mere inches apart. Her eyes looked impossibly large behind the lenses of her glasses. My palms had begun to sweat and I felt strange and extremely nervous. “Can I take my glasses off?” asked Nat in a tiny voice. “They make me feel ugly.” I nodded, too nervous to speak. Nat placed her glasses on the floor next to the cot. I was startled to see how green her eyes were with incredibly long eyelashes.

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She looked completely different, not exactly pretty, but certainly much better than when she had her dilapidated glasses on. She continued to stare at me. I realized that she was waiting for me to give instructions, and being completely clueless, I grew more nervous. “Should I put my arm around you like in the movies?” I asked. “If you like.” “I wrapped my arm around her and was alarmed to feel her snuggling closer to me. “You won’t tell anyone will you, Daniel?” she whispered. “No. And you won’t either, right?” “It’s our secret,” she said softly. “Can we do it now?” I nodded and waited to see what would happen but Nat just sat there expectantly. Apparently I was supposed to make the first move, just like in the movies. I leaned in close and pressed my lips against Nat’s for about two seconds before backing off with an audible smack. “How was that?” I asked feeling a little disappointed that except for a little nervousness there had not been much to it. “You kept your eyes open.” Said Nat. “So what?” “In the movies they kiss with their eyes closed.” “How do you know my eyes were open if you didn’t have yours open too?” I asked. “Cause I was checking.” “Should I go again?” I asked. “Yes please.” I repeated the exact same performance only this time with my eyes closed and I tried to keep the smacking noise to a minimum at the end because somehow it just didn’t feel right. I felt nothing again after the second kiss and I was beginning to think that perhaps this kissing business was overrated. 115

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“Was that better?” “I don’t think you’re doing it right?” said Nat. “Well then you try since you seem to know so much about it,” I hissed. “Don’t get mad at me Daniel. I’m just saying I think we’re doing it wrong.” “Well what do you want to do then? Should we just quit?” “No. Can I lay here for a little bit longer and we’ll try again in a few minutes?” “Okay,” I said, liking the feel of her lying next to me and imagining what it would be like to have Elise in my arms like this. We lay like that for several minutes and I grew quite comfortable despite us being scrunched together on the tiny cot. “Daniel, I’m going to try this time, okay?” “Okay.” Nat leaned forward and placed her lips softly against mine, letting them rest there lightly with no movement at all. Her lips tasted like cookies. A few seconds later she began to move her lips brushing them lightly against mine, letting them linger softly in different positions. I began to feel a heat in my entire body and I grew lightheaded. It was almost like being with Kathleen except I felt comfortable because there was no teasing and I knew what was expected of me even thought I wasn’t quite certain of the techniques. I heard a small moan escape from Nat and opened one eye to make sure she was okay. Her eyes were closed tightly. I closed my own and tried to emulate the movement of her lips, which were slightly parted now and felt exquisitely delicious against my own. I pulled her body closer to me, feeling as if I were in some kind of dream. I felt incredible; as if I were walking on air. But in that same instant Nat pulled away. I opened my eyes again to find her staring at me with a surprised expression on her face. I think I felt as surprised as she looked. I actually wanted to try it again and waited to see what she would say. 116

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“I think that was how it’s supposed to be,” she whispered. I nodded, unable to speak. “Should I go back to my cot now?” she asked. I didn’t really want Nat to leave yet. I liked the feel of her against me. I was still delighting in the sensation of what had just taken place. It was different from anything I had ever experienced, but I started to think about Elise. Was I betraying her by doing this even though it had been a kind of practice kiss? Was a kiss supposed to make you feel so lightheaded and giddy when it was just practice? Was I jinxing my future with Elise by doing this? Nat must have sensed my inner turmoil since I didn’t answer her right away and saved me the difficult task of having to make the decision. “I think I’d better go back to my cot now, Daniel. Thank you,” she whispered, and gave me a kiss on the cheek, letting her lips linger for only a moment. She picked her glasses up off the floor and shuffled over to her cot where she lay down. It had turned out to be one of the strangest nights of my young life and I was unsure what exactly had just happened or how I felt about it. I had no answers and I didn’t think I would get any until I kissed Elise and had something to compare it to. At least I felt a little more confident about kissing now. “Good night, Daniel.” “Good night, Nat.” I stole one last look towards Nat before trying to fall asleep. She was looking under her blanket at her chest.

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