The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 5.

"-your job is to beat people up when it has to get physical..." 

    "You've never told me about this job of mine before," I said, laying on my back and squinting up at the moon. 

    "That's because as of tonight, you're being promoted." Sage ran her hand up my leg this time. I shivered and kicked her away. "Okay, now revisiting the whole shaving thing. You're really lucky your hairs are white, or you'd have like- no chance with anyone ever," Sage paused to draw a breath. 

   "Why am I being promoted?" I asked her. "And what makes you think I'd be good with-."

   "-beating the s**t out of people?-" she finished.

   "Yeah that," I licked my lips and squinted at the moon again, trying to take in each individual crater.

   "You're a red head. All of you are ruthless. Now, quit changing the subject. Why don't you shave?" she asked me.

    "Why are you so obsessed? Huh?" I inquired pointedly. I sat up and blinked. My eyes had been so accustomed to staring directly at the bright moon, that Sage was now complete shadow.

    "Because you ought to show more skin, Misty." I sighed, closing my eyes. My eye lids seemed to latch onto that position, because they ached to open again.

    "It's not that I don't shave, it's just that I haven't had time lately. It is Fall after all, and it's approaching jeans weather. There's no point in shaving during the cold seasons." 

    "I guess that makes sense," Sage said. "Sure you don't want to join me?" Sage dipped her head under the water and let out a single, quivering orb of air from her mouth.

   "I'm sure," I said, once she broke the surface again. Sage curled her bottom lip into one of her famous pouts.

    "You ruin my fun, Misty." 

    "I try my best," I said. Sage pushed off from the boat into a back flip and didn't come up for air until about twenty seconds later. When she came up, her makeup was smeared in streaks down her cheeks. In the soft lighting of the moon, it looked like she crying ethereal waterfalls of bright red blood.

    "You were complaining earlier about how uncomfortable you are in the clothes I picked out for you. Why not take them off?" she chuckled. I let out a deep huff of breath. Sure enough, as soon as she said it, I was reminded once again of how uncomfortable the clothes made me. My thighs felt contorted and constrained within the denim shorts, and the constricted feeling spread to my crotch, where I felt like all of me was cleaved in two by how tight the seam chaffed under and in between my legs. Through the slots in the tassels of the tie-dyed shirt, my pale skin bulged out from the tight waist-line like powdery bags of flower. I wanted nothing more than to take them off and relieve my waist and thighs of the discomfort, but I didn't.

    "Yes, but not enough to get naked in the presence of others," I replied. I must admit, that a part of me wanted to let go and strip for the sake of a refreshing plunge into the cool Lake. But I resisted the temptation just by thinking of eyes speculating over my body. The mere thought of it was enough to wash away the urge.

    "Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasssssse, for meeeeee?" Sage whined.

    "Come on, Sage, she said 'no'" a deep voice came from behind me. I turned around, startled. I felt my body tilt dangerously towards the water. My body began to pitch to the left. A hand reached out from the darkness, however, and pulled me to the warm body attached to the hand. Kevin Candin's startlingly soft eyes were inches from mine. They looked like refreshing little pools of water with the way the moonlight danced in them. "You okay?" Kevin asked me. I nodded, speechless. I no longer paid any mind to the abominable way in which my body was shoved and contorted. My world extended only within the confines of those eyes, blue and beautiful. I was engulfed in Kevin. His smell was a combination of so many things I couldn't identify, and I was lost in the scent of him and in the warmth of his embrace. Kevin shifted his stance so that he could position me once again on my perch upon the boat's edge. I was surprised at how quickly the cold brought goosebumps to my arms. I ran my fingers along the grainy surface of my arm, yearning for Kevin's warmth and smell again. "Can I get you a drink?" Kevin asked. I felt my neck bob as if the hinge between my neck and head were made of fluid. "What do you want?" Kevin asked. He placed a hand on my back, right between my shoulder blades. I was so glad that the squeak I made was too high to be audible.

    "Cider," I managed to say, my lips and tongue feeling unfamiliar to their owner. When Kevin left I turned to Sage, who I had forgotten was there.

    "Please tell me I don't have to beat the crap out of him because he stood up to you."

    "Are you kidding?" Sage peeped, her bloody eyes brimming with excitement. "That's Kevin Candin. Hell, if you beat the s**t out of him than I'd personally screw up my manicure just to beat the s**t out of you. Oh my gosh! Misty, did you see the way he was looking at you? He totally wants you."

    "Please." I tossed my red hair over my shoulder. "Kevin Candin was just being nice."

    "Oh yeah, real nice. You do realize how sex works, right? You see, part of the mating process is to impress someone. You don't impress someone by being a dick wad, Misty."

    "Well if he does 'want me', which he doesn't, he's getting nowhere within the galaxy of sex."

    "Really?" scoffed Sage. "Galaxy? You wouldn't want him to kiss you?" I felt my face turn red as my imagination bequeathed the exact feel and taste of his lips to my senses. I felt my cheeks warm up. "Caress you?" she continued. My breathing sped up, thinking of his hands on me, whether it was from ecstasy, embarrassment, or both. I felt my face burn brighter. I felt right then and there as if I were an orb brighter than the sun, lighting up the Autumn night sky with my face. "Or-," pressed Sage, as she beheld my crumbling visage. The water swished aside as she moved closer to me. "'loosen' those tight shorts?" I let out a cough.

     "That's enough, Sage," I felt as if my face were so hot that the tears of embarrassment eddying within my tear ducts were evaporating from the corners of my eyes before they could fall. Sage scoffed.

     "You are such a virgin, Misty." My hot face cooled, and was replaced with shame. Why was I so shameful of it? I don't know. I was ashamed that the very idea of sex embarrassed me. I was ashamed that I couldn't be a normal teenager. A tiny rip opened up in my heart. It was a small little tear that only tore every so often; usually when I was left alone with my thoughts, and confronted with the fact that I was an innocent among transgressors. My tears of embarrassment, became tears of shame, and I let them slip invisibly down my cheek as a cloud passed over the light of the moon. "You're going to lose it eventually," Sage retorted bitterly.

     "I'm only thirteen," I hiccuped to the moon more than to Sage. I was lucky that she couldn't hear how close my voice was to cracking. She would call me pathetic if she heard it. Suddenly, I felt safe with how tightly the shorts chafed against my crotch. All the more tight it kept my virginity encased from the grasp of the corrupt.

    "Thirteen's just a number. I was nine." I felt my emotions crack into individual shards. A part of me yearned to prove myself to her; to let Kevin take me into the bushes and loosen my shorts, loosen my virginity, and end the discrimination. Another cowered under the shame she had me pinned under, to bolt and never speak to Kevin, or to lie and tell her I had done it, and embrace her unearned pride in my falsehood. Nothing felt better than Sage's pride, and yet nothing felt worse than her shaming. There was a third part of me that hated Sage with such gusto, that had that third part of me gained control, I'm sure I would've had to have shown great restraint in order to prevent myself from holding her under water until she stopped kicking. Perhaps Sage was right in some ways. I a red head, was ruthless and crazy in so many ways, because I was picking between three urges before my emotions would choose before me. "Let me tell you something, Misty," Sage said. She was all poison. All fun and games was lost now. I felt my gut clench in terror. Sage was an enemy you did not want. "You-," Sage punctuated this like no other word. "-need to grow up. You are thirteen years old. Look around you. You're hanging onto a childhood that doesn't exist anymore. It's the current events, honey and you're still caught up in the old news. Listen to me. You. Are. Going. To. Lose. It. To. Kevin. Candin. Tonight." I looked at her. The blood falling from her eyes wasn't humorous anymore. Her eyes were daggers and I was her target. The first urge won out and I was disappointed. Throughout our year long friendship, all Sage had given me was options. Pressure with these options, yes, but options all the same. This time, Sage was commanding me. I was her property. She controlled me, and tonight she was selling my virginity to a boy I barely knew, with whom I shared a merely budding attraction, with. This time, I didn't have a choice. I was quivering under the weight of the shame I shared for the petty virgin I was, and all the same the fear, worry, disgust, and guilt of what I had to do.

     "Not many get to say they did it with Kevin Candin. Hell, I haven't even done it with Kevin Candin. You should be proud."