Dancing baby videos went viral all the time. Kyle did this cute thing where he tried to shake his butt. Of course, I might have been responsible by telling him that he needed to shake his ‘moneymaker.’ Mac, being a little older, was more coordinated. She tried to do everything Brook did.
We made plans to go skydiving Saturday morning. We had to get all our jumps in to qualify for our license. Brook gave me a quick kiss and jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped.
◊◊◊
When I got home, I did something that I’d been neglecting: calling my friends. The first call was to Tami. We talked about school, and then I broached a subject that was in the back of my mind.
“Can I trust you, or if I tell you something will you tell on me?” I asked.
“Oh, this is good. What have you done?”
“Answer my question first.”
“Of course you can trust me. Now spill it, or I’ll figure it out,” she threatened.
In the old days that might have been a credible threat, but Tami had been gone long enough that it wasn’t anymore.
“I’ve been bad,” I admitted. “I’ve been going on adventures I thought I never would, but have to say they’ve been fun. I guess what I need from you is your opinion on whether I’ve gone too far.”
“I find it hard to believe you’d go too far. What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Let me show you a video,” I said and started the one of me doing motocross.
“Two things come to mind: the first is you are
“There’s more,” I said, then showed her Brook and me skydiving, and then the video of Devin’s new toy, the wingboard.
“I can see you doing all these different activities, but you do realize you’ll kill yourself, right?” Tami asked.
“Maybe.”
She looked at me hard, and I felt like she was looking into my soul.
“Tell me the rest,” she ordered.
I told her about my last two recruiting visits. The first, I had gone to a swingers party. On the second, I had bought prostitutes for my friends, faced off their pimp, and spent the night with a prostitute who taught me stuff.
“Like what stuff?” Tami asked.
“Have you ever heard of the helicopter? That’s where you swing your dick around in a circle,” I said with a big smile on my face.
“As much as I’d like to see that, what the hell were you thinking?” she asked.
I guess I wasn’t.
“You do realize that in a few short months you’ll become a household name when your movie’s released. This is the kind of stuff that will cause you no end of trouble,” Tami warned. “David, raising a little hell is understandable. I can see you wanting to do fun things like motocross, but the risky sex stuff is going to bite you in the ass. I’m not going to lecture you. You need to decide for yourself about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. Just realize that at some point you’ll get caught, and it won’t be pretty.”
Tami was right, in that I had had fun with the swingers and Raven, but couldn’t see repeating it anytime soon. I guess if you had a bucket-list at my age, I could check those two off. Just how much meaningless teenage sex could I have? Shit! My ‘Man Card’ just burst into flames!
“Can I make one observation? I think this all goes back to your mom ordering you around and not talking to you. I think this is your way of rebelling against how you were treated. I never knew you to keep anything from your parents,” she said.
I had said there would be consequences. I no longer felt the need to share everything. I was silently kicking myself because I’d told Tami.
“You may be right. I hope you don’t feel the need to tell my mom,” I said.
“It really upsets you that she talks to me about you, doesn’t it?” Tami asked.
“It really does,” I admitted.
“I’ll start telling her I don’t want to know. While I like your mom, I love you. No matter what happens in the future, please remember that if you need to talk to someone, I’m here for you. If I get too nosy, just tell me to back off.”
“That means a lot to me. I really don’t want to feel like we’re at odds. I hope we can be friends for the rest of our lives. I’d like us to be the type of friends that don’t have to hang out every day, but when we do catch up, it isn’t awkward,” I said.
“I think for now that’s the best we can hope for.”
After we hung up, I thought about where we were in our friendship. For the first time in a long time, I felt good about it. I didn’t feel the pressure that had always been there before. It honestly felt more like what I had with Beth. I could tell Beth anything, and she never judged me. I hoped that was where Tami and I were going.
◊◊◊ Thursday October 8
Today we had gotten smart about lunch. I ordered Chinese and got a variety of dishes. If someone wanted to join me for lunch, they paid me $5. Even Ms. Jaroslav thought it was a great idea and paid her money. It was better than eating lunch in the cafeteria, and it let us get to work on our next test.
