To understand what happens next, it is necessary to go back and consider Joey’s conversation with the Ramirez twins. Juanita and Carmelita were NOT being catty, when they talked about Joey being a brooding loner, obsessed by her training and wanting to be a soldier like her father. As a matter of fact, Joey is probably closer to the twins than any other alien-human hybrids of her generation except for Mark, her brother. While Joey talks about her Aunt Izzie and Aunt Ava, in fact, Isabel and Max were the only two aliens related by blood. Since Michael really wasn’t related by blood to any of the other aliens of his generation, Joey actually could have found a mate with among any of her ‘cousins.’ It wasn’t that easy, though. The twins were not only younger than Joey, but the wrong gender. Of her male cousins, Kevin Valenti would have been the logical choice. He was a few years her senior. But even if Kevin didn’t have other human girlfriends, which he did, Andrew ruined it for her. For Andrew had gotten beat on that soccer shot, way back when Joey was in third grade, and been a perfect gentleman and real sport about it. A week later, she’d beaten Kevin in the ‘alien olympics’ at the family picnic, and he’d whined and been obnoxious about a girl beating him. Sure, he was only eleven, but the contrast had been pretty stark.
Both Maria and Isabel had commented a year ago about Joey's growing isolation from the world, and what if anything they could do about it. She wasn't a very happy girl then.
Joey had lived most of her life believing that she could never be accepted outside her extended family, but also believing that, while she loved and cared for all her cousins, there really wasn’t anyone right for her….boyfriend wise, amongst them either. Yeah, she sort of fantasized about Andrew, went to his freshman football games, but that so was NOT going to happen. So until Andrew had forced the issue…by breaking his neck, Joey had indeed been a brooding loner that lost herself in training regimens and team sports where she really never felt part of the team. And in all fairness, it hadn’t been much better for Andrew. Barbara and Roger probably SHOULD have adopted another kid. Both of them, particularly Barbara, had kind of indulged him. He was shy…painfully shy. His one attempt ever to get a girl to go out with him had been a disaster when Joey had turned him down, so he had pretty much decided that he wouldn’t have any meaningful social life either. In fact, strange as it sounds, Andrew breaking his neck was probably the best thing that could have happened for both of them. Otherwise their only real chance of getting together would have been if someone spiked the punch at an athletic awards banquet and they both got drunk. If they had, well…something very much like this might have happened, but probably not. It would have taken a lot more to get Andrew drunk.
But anyway, back in her brooding loner days, Joey had been in to martial arts. She had put in a couple of years in both Judo and Tae Kwan Do. Not only that, at one point when she was 10 her uncle Kyle had taught her Greco-Roman wrestling. He’d been State Champ at the 152# level his senior year. Now Andrew didn’t have any of these skills, although he was good at football and soccer. As a consequence, his weight and height advantage was less an advantage than he believed. Of course, Joey’s midbrain couldn’t access all of those skills, they really belonged to the motor cortex of the cerebrum, which was walled off by the champagne, and wouldn’t have let the midbrain play with those skills anyway. But like I said, the cerebrum is kind of slow. In order to do things fast it loads subroutines into something called the cerebellum. The cerebellum is sort of like a cache on the processor. Real dumb but lightning fast. It really doesn’t even think by itself, but when either the cerebrum or the midbrain triggered those routines, they worked pretty well, pretty quickly. And the midbrain had access to the cerebellum because it was part of the fight part of the fight or flight reflex. Got that?
Anyway, Andrew’s cerebrum was just assuring itself of it’s physical superiority to Joey when she grabbed one arm and did a foot sweep. Boom, Andrew on the floor, Joey on top of him. He quickly got up. She closed on him and did a one arm shoulder throw. He quickly got back up. She got him again…an inner thigh throw this time….he got up quickly, but shakily. She pounced on him again….a lifting pulling foot sweep. He got up…..slowly…minus one sock. His cerebrum had just decided this wasn’t working nearly as well as he had thought it would.
Joey’s midbrain wasn’t totally happy with the proceeding this far either. All of those throws were in the cerebellum and she could use them, but she couldn’t modify them. They would have been great if Joey had been looking for a fight. She wasn’t. It was just that what the sports conventions were, ie., that the winner ended up on the top,…well….it wasn’t actually what her midbrain had in mind. Her midbrain was kind of hoping for the bottom, with Andrew on top, and none of these throws seemed to do that. Oh, it wasn’t that the midbrain was unable to visualize other positions, hell, it’d evolved over eons, it knew some GREAT positions. But it seemed like any time she wasn’t facing him….well, he ran. And he did have the ability to push her off when she was on top.
Now her midbrain was still being a sport, it really cared for Andrew. But it was getting awfully tired of foreplay. No…that’s not even true. It’d be glad to get back to foreplay……afterwards. In fact, Joey’s midbrain was getting more than a little frustrated. It was sending all the right pheromones and it was getting all the corresponding pheromones back. As a matter of fact, the more Andrew sweated, the more pheromones Joey’s midbrain was receiving. Somewhere in that body of Andrew was a midbrain that really wanted Joey’s midbrain. They’d just have to keep working on that cerebrum.
It wasn’t just that he was having his butt kicked in Judo by a girl that bothered Andrew. It was that she was in a bra and panties. Generally in a judo throw you get your body underneath your opponent, and then pull them off balance, into a throw. When you do that the body of the throwee slides over the body of the thrower. Joey was the throwee, and Andrew found his body sliding over hers repeatedly, making just an awful lot of skin contact. He couldn’t help it, she was initiating the action. And the bra wasn’t even a sports bra, it didn’t even reliably stay in place. And if he hadn’t been so scared that someone would hear all the commotion, that someone would come in and discover the glowing walls and a Joey Guerin that was too out of control to protect the secret, by this time his midbrain probably would have been able to convince his cerebrum that they ought to make love, not war. But he was scared of Joey’s secret being discovered, so he wound up on his back on the floor repeatedly, as Joey’s midbrain exhausted the cerebellums repertoire of judo and tae kwan do maneuvers, and started on Greco-Roman wrestling moves.
A lot of people are not familiar with Greco-Roman wrestling. This type of wrestling prohibits holds below the waist. Wrestlers can not avoid being thrown by hooking or grabbing an opponents leg, that's the rule.
Well, Andrew’s cerebrum either did not know that, or simply didn’t care. When Joey tried to slam him he hooked her leg, abruptly stopping the momentum of the throw with his weight pretty much right above her center of support. She was caught off balance, and toppled over onto the bed, with his body crashing down on top of her. By sheer happenstance, her midbrain had finally found exactly the maneuver it was looking for.
When he fell on top of her, Andrew was immediately concerned that he had hurt her, and pushed himself back up to get his weight off her body.
This was apparently not what Joey’s midbrain wanted him to do, because she instantly reached up beneath his arms to grab his ribcage and force him back down onto her, his arms slipping out to the side on the top sheet of the bed.
Instantly, he again raised himself above her in pushup position, suddenly becoming very uncomfortable with what appeared to be going on here. She tried again to pull him down on her, but he was unyielding. And that’s where things got real weird……..
Remember us talking about those ‘higher centers’ of the cerebrum? Cerebrums like to think of themselves as being very ethical, very values oriented, and for some that’s probably true. The actual truth is that cerebrums generally take the values that the cerebrums of their mothers and fathers teach them. Take Joey, for example. She’d played competitive sports since the 2nd grade. Not once, not ever did she use her powers to help her win. She could have. With a little telekinesis, she could have made all the other teams shots miss the basket, and hers go in. She could have curved the soccer ball around the goalies outstretched hands. She never had, not once. Her mom and dad had told her it wouldn’t be sporting, so she had never done that. Midbrains were unimpressed by such arguments. They knew that you could program a cerebrum with just about any values. If mom and dad said to be a cannibal, cerebrums were cannibals…or Hitler Youth…or whatever. Midbrains, actually, were unimpressed by cerebrums.
Midbrains on the other hand, were hard wired by evolution….or God, ….but we’ve had that discussion already. And ethics weren’t really an issue for midbrains. They really couldn’t be programmed, they just sort of were what they were. And as for ethics, midbrains had a philosophy that could be boiled down to this, ‘If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.’
That’s why the Antarean part of Joey’s midbrain said …well, it didn’t really say anything, midbrains aren’t good with words,….but what it THOUGHT was, ‘Screw this, I’m going to use my powers….’
Joey (AA/CC teen) [WIP]
Moderators: Anniepoo98, ISLANDGIRL5, truelovepooh, Forum Moderators
In the meantime, Michael and Maria……..remember Michael and Maria? Well Michael and Maria are in a car going south on 285. If you look at a topographic map north of Roswell you’ll find a place called Garcia flat. And it is flat, but not perfectly flat, and when they crest a small rise there, they are for the first time in over two hours within line of sight of a cellphone tower. Instantly Michael’s telephone lights up with three priority messages.
Now let’s discuss this a minute, because Michael didn’t handle it right. If YOUR cellphone should ever light up with three priority messages from three different people…..well maybe you’ve won the lottery and your three best friends want to call to tell you about it…but that’s probably not the way you’d want to bet. You’d want to bet that, if you’ll pardon the expression, that the shit just hit the fan somewhere. Now THAT’S the smart bet.
But it wasn’t how Michael saw it. Things had been going real well for Michael the past few hours, there had been no snow on the drive, the car was running well, Maria had gotten a rest, then they’d been talking about how proud they were of Joey and how glad they were that she seemed to be over that brooding loner business, that Andrew had really been good for her. Michael saw the priority message from Andrew and was instantly pretty pleased. He didn’t realize the extent of the bias in the voting toward seniors, and actually thought she had won MVP for the tournament and Andrew was calling to tell them about it. So what he did was decide to put the message on speakerphone so Maria could get the good news firsthand. Like I said, he didn’t handle that EXACTLY right.
“Mr. Guerin……this is Andrew. I’m with Joey and she’s….well, I think she’s drunk, actually.”
‘What??!,’ thought Michael Guerin. ‘He got my little girl….drunk? I’ll kill him!’ That was his midbrain thinking, actually. It thought Drew was putting her life at risk. If it had thought they were making….well, new DNA, it would have been quietly cheering. His cerebrum would be just as upset very soon now.
“Are you calling my dad? Hi daddy……you old horndog you…”
“Uh…..that’s the TV in the background…I’m sorry, I’ll try to turn it down ….if I can find the remote. Uh….anyway, she seems a little out of it……I really think I need your help.”
“You’re a horndog too, Mom……I can’t believe you two. I come from a family of horndogs. Oh well…..why not. Hey Drewey…..wanna get naked and play around?”
“Joey…you shouldn’t joke like that…..you’ll upset your folks. Really, she doesn’t mean that. Doesn’t mean that at all….”
“Liar, liar pants on fire…..!”
“What the…ahhh….owww!…….dammit Joey, that hurt. And I got to get these in the shower before the damn smoke detector goes off. You can’t start fires in the motel, Joey. We’ll get caught.”
At this point in the message there were the sounds of a shower being turned on and the hiss of steam.
It ended with the sounds of the voice in the background…..
“Oh…..poor Drewey’s got a burned bum…..let Joey kiss it better……”
Now a lot of you have never been the dads of teenage girls, so let me clue you in here. Dads are real important to girls…..boys too, for that matter. Society kind of forgot that back in the Sixties and Seventies, tried to pretend that you could replace a dad with a welfare check or payroll check…..you can’t. Dad’s are important for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that he teaches his daughter that a man can really love her without…well, without trying to get into her pants.
Because sex and love really kind of get blurred to teenagers, well…it’s important that she understand the distinction, that she knows what that sort of non-sexual love is so she knows the real thing when she sees it because…..let’s face it, there were going to be lots of teenage boys trying to get into her pants.
Even that one true love, when she finds him, well…..hell, he’s got a midbrain too. And that’s OK too, because eventually dad’s will even come to terms with the sexuality of their daughter and her mate….usually when he’s looking down at a grandchild and his midbrain is telling him, ‘Look! That’s our DNA down there…..ours and Maria’s….life goes on, screw you death!,’ and his midbrain and cerebrum start high-fiveing one another, and it’s really cool.
But Michael isn’t there yet. Now Michael had one put over on him by Andrew with the engagement thing. You might think that Michael would still be pissed about that….well not at all. Michael, like most good husbands, realized he had never really deserved Maria, or Joey either for that matter. While he wasn’t just 100% sure that anyone would be good enough for his princess, the fact that Andrew had thrown a fastball by the old man….well, that didn’t bother him a bit. Joey deserved a husband that was smarter than Michael as far as Michael was concerned. While he wasn’t 100% sure Andrew was the right guy, outfoxing him on the engagement….well, Michael actually looked on Andrew a little MORE favorably, because he’d managed to do it. He still hadn’t been sure though.
And right now, Michael is about as frightened and angry as any father can be. Trust me, it’s a damn good thing that Andrew is 193 miles to the north, because if he were here this second, he wouldn’t have a burned butt, he’d have a powerblasted butt, and there wouldn’t be enough of it left for anyone to kiss better.
Michael was feeling betrayed, and that’s a powerful feeling. He hadn’t just given Andrew the benefit of the doubt, but he’d actually started to like the boy….actually started to suspend disbelief that the boy could be interested in Joey in other ways besides getting into her pants. And now this. The boy gets her drunk and gets her in a motel somewhere, and when he finds out that alien-human hybrids can’t take their liquor, puts in a call to her daddy. Michael’s going to kill him. Maybe Joey will be upset with him for a few years….OK, he’ll learn to live with that. But the boy has to die.
He now takes the second message. He’d like to take it off speakerphone but one look in Maria’s eyes tells him that would be dangerous….maybe even lethal. Perhaps the only thing more deadly than a protective father is a protective mother.
“Mr. Guerin, this is Andrea Lopez….Joey’s roommate. Except, she isn’t here. She left the party with Andrew kind of abruptly and I remember she told me once that she was allergic to alcohol. Well, one of the girls brought some champagne that she’d gotten at her sisters wedding reception and….well I think she may have given Joey a glassful, not knowing about her allergy. I tried to call her, but she left her cellphone in the room. I tried Andrew but it went directly to messaging….I think his battery must be low. I haven’t told Coach O’Malley….I’m not sure what’ll happen if Joey’s not back by bedcheck. Call me if you think of anything I can do to help.”
OK, that now begins part one of a transition for Michael Guerin. I mentioned that betrayal was a powerful feeling. So is guilt. He’d misjudged the boy. Andrew had NOT set this up. He was, perhaps, taking advantage of it…..and that didn’t exactly endear him to Michael, .....but he hadn’t caused it.
In all fairness, Michael knew, if a drunk 15 year old Maria DeLuca had been intent on bedding Michael….well, he was a gentleman but…..Hey, he might have gone along with it, OK. He didn’t want to even think of that going on but if it was…..well, Andrew may care for Joey, but he’s only human……..literally. That didn’t make it right…didn’t excuse him taking advantage of her….not even with them being engaged……..but maybe he wouldn’t have to ….die.
“Michael this is Liz. Joey’s fiancé Andrew called. Somehow she got drunk and she’s been using her powers openly. Andrew doesn’t think anyone saw and he’s managed to get her to room 118 and hide her there. I tried to call Ava and Kyle,…I forgot they are at the law enforcement convention in Denver. You are probably closer than Max and I are, but if you can’t go back to Santa Fe let us know and we’ll get there as quick as we can. OH, I told Andrew to kiss Joey, because that’s what got Max over his episode of being drunk. I don’t think he did it though. It kind of sounded like he was afraid of what would happen if he did. I thought you told me those two were engaged…he’s really shy. Don’t know how they ever got together….well, the broken neck I guess. Give my love to Maria.”
OK, here comes part two. Not only had he misjudged the boy…twice, he thought guiltily, but there Andrew was, up in Santa Fe, taking care of Michael’s little girl when she needed taking care of, while Michael had been way down here heading for home.
Not only did the boy care about her, but he was doing Michael’s job, not because he was trying to get in her pants, it sounded like he was struggling hard to avoid getting in to her pants. Andrew loved her and was just trying to take care of her….was trying to take care of Joey’s whole extended family, because if the secret got out, they were ALL in the same trouble, and here Michael was derelict in his duty to his daughter mentally badmouthing the guy. Hell. Andrew was a fine kid. Someday they’d be lucky to have him in the family. And Michael knew that he wouldn't live forever. It might be kind of comforting to know that Andrew would be there taking care of Joey when Michael and Maria weren't around any longer.
Maria could tell when it happened, just by the look on Michael’s face. He’d liked Andrew, she could tell …but he really hadn’t had any choice, Joey had chosen him. But as they made a U-turn 60 miles north of Roswell and headed up 285 to Santa Fe, she realized that Joey's father loved Andrew too, just like Joey’s mother did.
“I’m glad Andrew’s there to help her,” said Michael. "I just hope we can get back there in time….”
Now let’s discuss this a minute, because Michael didn’t handle it right. If YOUR cellphone should ever light up with three priority messages from three different people…..well maybe you’ve won the lottery and your three best friends want to call to tell you about it…but that’s probably not the way you’d want to bet. You’d want to bet that, if you’ll pardon the expression, that the shit just hit the fan somewhere. Now THAT’S the smart bet.
But it wasn’t how Michael saw it. Things had been going real well for Michael the past few hours, there had been no snow on the drive, the car was running well, Maria had gotten a rest, then they’d been talking about how proud they were of Joey and how glad they were that she seemed to be over that brooding loner business, that Andrew had really been good for her. Michael saw the priority message from Andrew and was instantly pretty pleased. He didn’t realize the extent of the bias in the voting toward seniors, and actually thought she had won MVP for the tournament and Andrew was calling to tell them about it. So what he did was decide to put the message on speakerphone so Maria could get the good news firsthand. Like I said, he didn’t handle that EXACTLY right.
“Mr. Guerin……this is Andrew. I’m with Joey and she’s….well, I think she’s drunk, actually.”
‘What??!,’ thought Michael Guerin. ‘He got my little girl….drunk? I’ll kill him!’ That was his midbrain thinking, actually. It thought Drew was putting her life at risk. If it had thought they were making….well, new DNA, it would have been quietly cheering. His cerebrum would be just as upset very soon now.
“Are you calling my dad? Hi daddy……you old horndog you…”
“Uh…..that’s the TV in the background…I’m sorry, I’ll try to turn it down ….if I can find the remote. Uh….anyway, she seems a little out of it……I really think I need your help.”
“You’re a horndog too, Mom……I can’t believe you two. I come from a family of horndogs. Oh well…..why not. Hey Drewey…..wanna get naked and play around?”
“Joey…you shouldn’t joke like that…..you’ll upset your folks. Really, she doesn’t mean that. Doesn’t mean that at all….”
“Liar, liar pants on fire…..!”
“What the…ahhh….owww!…….dammit Joey, that hurt. And I got to get these in the shower before the damn smoke detector goes off. You can’t start fires in the motel, Joey. We’ll get caught.”
At this point in the message there were the sounds of a shower being turned on and the hiss of steam.
It ended with the sounds of the voice in the background…..
“Oh…..poor Drewey’s got a burned bum…..let Joey kiss it better……”
Now a lot of you have never been the dads of teenage girls, so let me clue you in here. Dads are real important to girls…..boys too, for that matter. Society kind of forgot that back in the Sixties and Seventies, tried to pretend that you could replace a dad with a welfare check or payroll check…..you can’t. Dad’s are important for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that he teaches his daughter that a man can really love her without…well, without trying to get into her pants.
Because sex and love really kind of get blurred to teenagers, well…it’s important that she understand the distinction, that she knows what that sort of non-sexual love is so she knows the real thing when she sees it because…..let’s face it, there were going to be lots of teenage boys trying to get into her pants.
Even that one true love, when she finds him, well…..hell, he’s got a midbrain too. And that’s OK too, because eventually dad’s will even come to terms with the sexuality of their daughter and her mate….usually when he’s looking down at a grandchild and his midbrain is telling him, ‘Look! That’s our DNA down there…..ours and Maria’s….life goes on, screw you death!,’ and his midbrain and cerebrum start high-fiveing one another, and it’s really cool.
But Michael isn’t there yet. Now Michael had one put over on him by Andrew with the engagement thing. You might think that Michael would still be pissed about that….well not at all. Michael, like most good husbands, realized he had never really deserved Maria, or Joey either for that matter. While he wasn’t just 100% sure that anyone would be good enough for his princess, the fact that Andrew had thrown a fastball by the old man….well, that didn’t bother him a bit. Joey deserved a husband that was smarter than Michael as far as Michael was concerned. While he wasn’t 100% sure Andrew was the right guy, outfoxing him on the engagement….well, Michael actually looked on Andrew a little MORE favorably, because he’d managed to do it. He still hadn’t been sure though.
And right now, Michael is about as frightened and angry as any father can be. Trust me, it’s a damn good thing that Andrew is 193 miles to the north, because if he were here this second, he wouldn’t have a burned butt, he’d have a powerblasted butt, and there wouldn’t be enough of it left for anyone to kiss better.
Michael was feeling betrayed, and that’s a powerful feeling. He hadn’t just given Andrew the benefit of the doubt, but he’d actually started to like the boy….actually started to suspend disbelief that the boy could be interested in Joey in other ways besides getting into her pants. And now this. The boy gets her drunk and gets her in a motel somewhere, and when he finds out that alien-human hybrids can’t take their liquor, puts in a call to her daddy. Michael’s going to kill him. Maybe Joey will be upset with him for a few years….OK, he’ll learn to live with that. But the boy has to die.
He now takes the second message. He’d like to take it off speakerphone but one look in Maria’s eyes tells him that would be dangerous….maybe even lethal. Perhaps the only thing more deadly than a protective father is a protective mother.
“Mr. Guerin, this is Andrea Lopez….Joey’s roommate. Except, she isn’t here. She left the party with Andrew kind of abruptly and I remember she told me once that she was allergic to alcohol. Well, one of the girls brought some champagne that she’d gotten at her sisters wedding reception and….well I think she may have given Joey a glassful, not knowing about her allergy. I tried to call her, but she left her cellphone in the room. I tried Andrew but it went directly to messaging….I think his battery must be low. I haven’t told Coach O’Malley….I’m not sure what’ll happen if Joey’s not back by bedcheck. Call me if you think of anything I can do to help.”
OK, that now begins part one of a transition for Michael Guerin. I mentioned that betrayal was a powerful feeling. So is guilt. He’d misjudged the boy. Andrew had NOT set this up. He was, perhaps, taking advantage of it…..and that didn’t exactly endear him to Michael, .....but he hadn’t caused it.
In all fairness, Michael knew, if a drunk 15 year old Maria DeLuca had been intent on bedding Michael….well, he was a gentleman but…..Hey, he might have gone along with it, OK. He didn’t want to even think of that going on but if it was…..well, Andrew may care for Joey, but he’s only human……..literally. That didn’t make it right…didn’t excuse him taking advantage of her….not even with them being engaged……..but maybe he wouldn’t have to ….die.
“Michael this is Liz. Joey’s fiancé Andrew called. Somehow she got drunk and she’s been using her powers openly. Andrew doesn’t think anyone saw and he’s managed to get her to room 118 and hide her there. I tried to call Ava and Kyle,…I forgot they are at the law enforcement convention in Denver. You are probably closer than Max and I are, but if you can’t go back to Santa Fe let us know and we’ll get there as quick as we can. OH, I told Andrew to kiss Joey, because that’s what got Max over his episode of being drunk. I don’t think he did it though. It kind of sounded like he was afraid of what would happen if he did. I thought you told me those two were engaged…he’s really shy. Don’t know how they ever got together….well, the broken neck I guess. Give my love to Maria.”
OK, here comes part two. Not only had he misjudged the boy…twice, he thought guiltily, but there Andrew was, up in Santa Fe, taking care of Michael’s little girl when she needed taking care of, while Michael had been way down here heading for home.
Not only did the boy care about her, but he was doing Michael’s job, not because he was trying to get in her pants, it sounded like he was struggling hard to avoid getting in to her pants. Andrew loved her and was just trying to take care of her….was trying to take care of Joey’s whole extended family, because if the secret got out, they were ALL in the same trouble, and here Michael was derelict in his duty to his daughter mentally badmouthing the guy. Hell. Andrew was a fine kid. Someday they’d be lucky to have him in the family. And Michael knew that he wouldn't live forever. It might be kind of comforting to know that Andrew would be there taking care of Joey when Michael and Maria weren't around any longer.
Maria could tell when it happened, just by the look on Michael’s face. He’d liked Andrew, she could tell …but he really hadn’t had any choice, Joey had chosen him. But as they made a U-turn 60 miles north of Roswell and headed up 285 to Santa Fe, she realized that Joey's father loved Andrew too, just like Joey’s mother did.
“I’m glad Andrew’s there to help her,” said Michael. "I just hope we can get back there in time….”
Last edited by greywolf on Mon Nov 27, 2006 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The fact of the matter was that Andrew had never really thought of Joey as an alien. She was…Joey, once a fantasy and now not only a friend, but his betrothed. But he’d never really thought of her as an alien. She had started out Joey, and after he was healed had become Joey with special powers. He knew she was alien, of course. He’d seen her practice powerblasting and molecular manipulation, and he’d recently had his butt nearly set fire by her. But he had never really considered her …..alien.
But she was….and he realized that as he looked into her eyes as he struggled to keep her from pulling him down to her. Her eyes….her beautiful blue eyes that he had always loved…. They changed.
As he looked down into those blue eyes, the blue changed. The background of the irises remained blue, but suddenly he saw iridescent silver sparkles in those eyes, and the face that he loved took on a gentle smile as if it was listening to some internal voice telling it an inside joke.
He absolutely didn’t know what was going to happen, but whatever she was listening to…whatever thought she had just had, it was clearly not human, clearly…well…alien.
The first thing Andrew noticed change was….well, the laws of physics.
Andrew was in good shape. He was not going to allow Joey to pull him down to her. He could support her weight…both their weights. While he couldn’t keep Joey from pulling herself up to him perhaps, Joey just plain didn’t weigh enough to pull him down. Except as those iridescent sparkles started in her eyes, that was exactly what was happening.
It wasn’t just her hands on his back that were pulling him down, but some invisible force. He tried to support himself on his hands and knees, but found himself inexorably getting closer to her.
As the mattress compressed he felt the muscles of his shoulders and forearms strain as the pressure on them grew. He was afraid to bend his elbows, afraid that once he allowed his elbows to bend, the pressure would crush him to her, hurting Joey. But eventually the pressure became too much, eventually he could no longer withstand it, and as his elbows bent he winced involuntarily, realizing that he would soon slam into her……..but he didn’t.
She continued with those otherworldly eyes, and that otherworldly smile, and he found himself being slowly pulled down to her an inch every few seconds. Relaxing his arms completely…allowing his body to just fall….well there was no difference. His body was going to meet hers at a leisurely pace, but there was no stopping it, no hurrying it. It was like gravity didn’t exist, like his muscles didn’t exist, like no force on earth was going to affect that slow movement one way or another, as she slowly drew him to her.
The second thing he noticed was that the iridescent silver sparkling in her eyes seemed to spread. It spread into her face like shimmering lights, and then down her neck, seeming to toy with the chain and ring there, the iridescent sparkling shimmering over the surface of the metal, and then passing on lower. It was when it got to the level of her bra that he first realized what it could do. He watched the fabric seem to crumble as the iridescence reached it, turning to a white dust that fell at her sides and into the valley that was suddenly exposed between her breasts as her bra disintegrated into near-nothingness….and still the iridescence spread …both out into her arms and lower below her breasts.
Where her hands were holding him, pulling on him, he felt the slightest of tingles, but the sudden feel of her hands against the skin of his back and the gentle rain of dust from where her arms reached up to pull him down convinced him that his t-shirt was also disintegrating under her alien power.
And still the iridescence spread down her body, combining with the fluorescent light show from the graffit and heart she had put on the wall in a dazzling display of other-worldliness.
As it reached her panties and the thin rayon dissolved into the finest of dust, and she lay revealed in all her beauty before him, Andrew was awestruck by her alieness…and her beauty.
As he was pulled inexorably toward her by the invisible force, he smelled the muskiness of her, as she released more pheromones. As he moved ever closer her face took on a look of deep satisfaction. He looked down and saw that his boxers, at least the boxers where they were still somewhat...extended.... were almost ready to touch her pubic hair that had been exposed when her panties had dissolved.
He saw the iridescence gather there, almost as if anticipating his arrival, ready to dissolve any impediments to their union. He knew then that there was nothing he could do to stop this from happening, knew it with utter certainty. As their union drew nearer he found himself wishing that he had a condom on, knowing that once he entered her…he really wouldn’t be able to control himself, and then suddenly wondering if the iridescence would even allow that. He didn’t think so.
Something in those blue eyes, the eyes that sparkled with the same alien iridescence, something told him that Joey was not about to allow any impediments to their union whatever. Somewhere deep in his mind Andrew heard a distant voice say, ‘you are about to be raped….violated, ...used….’
He smiled and shook his head ever so gently. ‘Yep, I guess I am. So shut the hell up and let me enjoy it, at least.’ Who had that voice thought this was beneath him? It was Joey, for Pete's sake. HIS Joey...soon to be REALLY his, it appeared.
His closeness and the pheromones his midbrain was causing to be released were driving Joey’s midbrain insane. It wanted Drew, wanted him more than it had ever wanted anything in her life, it longed for their union, ached for their union, needed to feel him inside her, feel the warmth of his DNA, feel the ripples in her fallopian tubes that would assist the little swimmers in their race to the egg which it had prepared for them.
The alien part of her midbrain craved the sensation that would come when the chromosomes united, when the new aura of life would be formed. Her midbrain poured out pheromones from every pore of Joey’s body, the silver iridescence spreading and relieving her of all impediments to their union, waiting to dissolve any impediments he wore, when their bodies touched.
Through the autonomic system it increased the sensitivity of the skin around her areola, noticing the tightening of the nipples as they awaited the warmth of his touch. Blood flooded into her labia, swelling them, pushing them outward, moistening them, preparing them to part for him…to draw him in, preparing her body to drink deeply of the DNA he would give to her. Her midbrain struggled to continue to use its power, its control almost overcome by its excitement and its urgent longing for their union.
And in the end, Andrew was alright with what was happening. This wasn’t the way he’d have wanted it to happen, but this was his Joey. He loved her, even the alieness that was making this happen, even that part of her he loved. He didn’t really want to make her pregnant…yet. He really hadn’t wanted this to happen…not when she really wasn’t in control…but at this point, neither was he. Whatever was now controlling Joey, well…it wasn’t something he could stop…and apparently neither could she.
So it was going to happen, and that would be OK. He loved her, somehow he’d help her deal with it. If she conceived, it would be their child, and he’d be there for them both.
He’d rather have Joey and deal with the consequences of tonight, than take any chance of losing her, and if this was what she wanted…what she needed,…if this would keep her quiet until her folks arrived, it’d be OK somehow, and he’d even deal with Michael and Maria too if it came to that.
It was funny, he thought. He’d probably fantasized about having Joey thousands of times, in thousands of ways…but truth was going to be stranger than any fiction he’d thought about in all those fantasies. “I love you, Joey,” he said, kissing her. “I’ll always love you.”
As his lips touched hers, the connection formed. Briefly, her midbrain and cerebrum both shutdown for a few milliseconds, and as they came back online, they rebooted, her cerebrum now working again. Joey sensed Andrew near her, and was happy. She also was tired....bone tired. It had been a long day, she’d played two hard games in the last weekend, and felt like she’d been in a wrestling match tonight. She was also tired from the residual effects of the champagne. Her fatigue was overwhelming.
As she felt his body lay on the bed beside her, she cuddled up against him, already fast asleep.
Andrew wasn’t sure what had happened. One moment the silver iridescence looked poised to reach out and dissolve his approaching boxers, the next moment the force was gone, and he had to catch himself to keep himself from crushing down on Joey.
His Joey, the one without the iridescent sparkles, although he realized now that that Joey was his as well. She was alien….he hadn’t totally realized that emotionally before tonight, but she was HIS alien, not someone to be feared. And in a way, he was almost sorry that the alien in her hadn’t held it together just a few more minutes. But they’d have years for that. Andrew was sure of that.
He got up and covered her with a sheet, while turning off the lights…which only served to accentuate the light show on the wall. She seemed to miss him, and cuddled in the direction from which he’d departed. He smiled down at her, then lay back down on top of the sheet beside her. Her back seemed to spoon in against his chest and abdomen as he moved awkwardly, his boxers not quite their old selves yet, but getting there.
He put his right arm over her and pulled her closer to him, leaving it there to awaken him in case she awoke delusional during the night. Even in her sleep she had somehow found the ring on the chain around her neck, and clutched it in her hand. It was the only thing she still had on.
Lying together, their union not yet consumated but lying closer together than they had ever done before, Andrew kissed her softly on the top of her head. Then he drifted off to pleasant dreams of Joey, Joey splendid in a white string bikini, a bikini that would sometimes dissolve in a sea of silver iridescence.
And it was probably just as well they got to sleep fast, because it would be a short night and a very interesting morning, when Michael and Maria arrived.
But she was….and he realized that as he looked into her eyes as he struggled to keep her from pulling him down to her. Her eyes….her beautiful blue eyes that he had always loved…. They changed.
As he looked down into those blue eyes, the blue changed. The background of the irises remained blue, but suddenly he saw iridescent silver sparkles in those eyes, and the face that he loved took on a gentle smile as if it was listening to some internal voice telling it an inside joke.
He absolutely didn’t know what was going to happen, but whatever she was listening to…whatever thought she had just had, it was clearly not human, clearly…well…alien.
The first thing Andrew noticed change was….well, the laws of physics.
Andrew was in good shape. He was not going to allow Joey to pull him down to her. He could support her weight…both their weights. While he couldn’t keep Joey from pulling herself up to him perhaps, Joey just plain didn’t weigh enough to pull him down. Except as those iridescent sparkles started in her eyes, that was exactly what was happening.
It wasn’t just her hands on his back that were pulling him down, but some invisible force. He tried to support himself on his hands and knees, but found himself inexorably getting closer to her.
As the mattress compressed he felt the muscles of his shoulders and forearms strain as the pressure on them grew. He was afraid to bend his elbows, afraid that once he allowed his elbows to bend, the pressure would crush him to her, hurting Joey. But eventually the pressure became too much, eventually he could no longer withstand it, and as his elbows bent he winced involuntarily, realizing that he would soon slam into her……..but he didn’t.
She continued with those otherworldly eyes, and that otherworldly smile, and he found himself being slowly pulled down to her an inch every few seconds. Relaxing his arms completely…allowing his body to just fall….well there was no difference. His body was going to meet hers at a leisurely pace, but there was no stopping it, no hurrying it. It was like gravity didn’t exist, like his muscles didn’t exist, like no force on earth was going to affect that slow movement one way or another, as she slowly drew him to her.
The second thing he noticed was that the iridescent silver sparkling in her eyes seemed to spread. It spread into her face like shimmering lights, and then down her neck, seeming to toy with the chain and ring there, the iridescent sparkling shimmering over the surface of the metal, and then passing on lower. It was when it got to the level of her bra that he first realized what it could do. He watched the fabric seem to crumble as the iridescence reached it, turning to a white dust that fell at her sides and into the valley that was suddenly exposed between her breasts as her bra disintegrated into near-nothingness….and still the iridescence spread …both out into her arms and lower below her breasts.
Where her hands were holding him, pulling on him, he felt the slightest of tingles, but the sudden feel of her hands against the skin of his back and the gentle rain of dust from where her arms reached up to pull him down convinced him that his t-shirt was also disintegrating under her alien power.
And still the iridescence spread down her body, combining with the fluorescent light show from the graffit and heart she had put on the wall in a dazzling display of other-worldliness.
As it reached her panties and the thin rayon dissolved into the finest of dust, and she lay revealed in all her beauty before him, Andrew was awestruck by her alieness…and her beauty.
As he was pulled inexorably toward her by the invisible force, he smelled the muskiness of her, as she released more pheromones. As he moved ever closer her face took on a look of deep satisfaction. He looked down and saw that his boxers, at least the boxers where they were still somewhat...extended.... were almost ready to touch her pubic hair that had been exposed when her panties had dissolved.
He saw the iridescence gather there, almost as if anticipating his arrival, ready to dissolve any impediments to their union. He knew then that there was nothing he could do to stop this from happening, knew it with utter certainty. As their union drew nearer he found himself wishing that he had a condom on, knowing that once he entered her…he really wouldn’t be able to control himself, and then suddenly wondering if the iridescence would even allow that. He didn’t think so.
Something in those blue eyes, the eyes that sparkled with the same alien iridescence, something told him that Joey was not about to allow any impediments to their union whatever. Somewhere deep in his mind Andrew heard a distant voice say, ‘you are about to be raped….violated, ...used….’
He smiled and shook his head ever so gently. ‘Yep, I guess I am. So shut the hell up and let me enjoy it, at least.’ Who had that voice thought this was beneath him? It was Joey, for Pete's sake. HIS Joey...soon to be REALLY his, it appeared.
His closeness and the pheromones his midbrain was causing to be released were driving Joey’s midbrain insane. It wanted Drew, wanted him more than it had ever wanted anything in her life, it longed for their union, ached for their union, needed to feel him inside her, feel the warmth of his DNA, feel the ripples in her fallopian tubes that would assist the little swimmers in their race to the egg which it had prepared for them.
The alien part of her midbrain craved the sensation that would come when the chromosomes united, when the new aura of life would be formed. Her midbrain poured out pheromones from every pore of Joey’s body, the silver iridescence spreading and relieving her of all impediments to their union, waiting to dissolve any impediments he wore, when their bodies touched.
Through the autonomic system it increased the sensitivity of the skin around her areola, noticing the tightening of the nipples as they awaited the warmth of his touch. Blood flooded into her labia, swelling them, pushing them outward, moistening them, preparing them to part for him…to draw him in, preparing her body to drink deeply of the DNA he would give to her. Her midbrain struggled to continue to use its power, its control almost overcome by its excitement and its urgent longing for their union.
And in the end, Andrew was alright with what was happening. This wasn’t the way he’d have wanted it to happen, but this was his Joey. He loved her, even the alieness that was making this happen, even that part of her he loved. He didn’t really want to make her pregnant…yet. He really hadn’t wanted this to happen…not when she really wasn’t in control…but at this point, neither was he. Whatever was now controlling Joey, well…it wasn’t something he could stop…and apparently neither could she.
So it was going to happen, and that would be OK. He loved her, somehow he’d help her deal with it. If she conceived, it would be their child, and he’d be there for them both.
He’d rather have Joey and deal with the consequences of tonight, than take any chance of losing her, and if this was what she wanted…what she needed,…if this would keep her quiet until her folks arrived, it’d be OK somehow, and he’d even deal with Michael and Maria too if it came to that.
It was funny, he thought. He’d probably fantasized about having Joey thousands of times, in thousands of ways…but truth was going to be stranger than any fiction he’d thought about in all those fantasies. “I love you, Joey,” he said, kissing her. “I’ll always love you.”
As his lips touched hers, the connection formed. Briefly, her midbrain and cerebrum both shutdown for a few milliseconds, and as they came back online, they rebooted, her cerebrum now working again. Joey sensed Andrew near her, and was happy. She also was tired....bone tired. It had been a long day, she’d played two hard games in the last weekend, and felt like she’d been in a wrestling match tonight. She was also tired from the residual effects of the champagne. Her fatigue was overwhelming.
As she felt his body lay on the bed beside her, she cuddled up against him, already fast asleep.
Andrew wasn’t sure what had happened. One moment the silver iridescence looked poised to reach out and dissolve his approaching boxers, the next moment the force was gone, and he had to catch himself to keep himself from crushing down on Joey.
His Joey, the one without the iridescent sparkles, although he realized now that that Joey was his as well. She was alien….he hadn’t totally realized that emotionally before tonight, but she was HIS alien, not someone to be feared. And in a way, he was almost sorry that the alien in her hadn’t held it together just a few more minutes. But they’d have years for that. Andrew was sure of that.
He got up and covered her with a sheet, while turning off the lights…which only served to accentuate the light show on the wall. She seemed to miss him, and cuddled in the direction from which he’d departed. He smiled down at her, then lay back down on top of the sheet beside her. Her back seemed to spoon in against his chest and abdomen as he moved awkwardly, his boxers not quite their old selves yet, but getting there.
He put his right arm over her and pulled her closer to him, leaving it there to awaken him in case she awoke delusional during the night. Even in her sleep she had somehow found the ring on the chain around her neck, and clutched it in her hand. It was the only thing she still had on.
Lying together, their union not yet consumated but lying closer together than they had ever done before, Andrew kissed her softly on the top of her head. Then he drifted off to pleasant dreams of Joey, Joey splendid in a white string bikini, a bikini that would sometimes dissolve in a sea of silver iridescence.
And it was probably just as well they got to sleep fast, because it would be a short night and a very interesting morning, when Michael and Maria arrived.
Last edited by greywolf on Tue Nov 28, 2006 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
It was about three AM when Joey woke back up, with no memory of anything that had happened ....or hadn't happened...since drinking the champagne. She’d recover those memories slowly over the next half hour, as the headache from her first and hopefully last hangover of her life gradually faded.
But she didn’t have them now, and as she awakened she found herself naked in a strange bed, lit by some kind of fluorescent light show, some guy’s arm laying over her, gently cupping her left breast through the sheet. The moment of terror was brief though, as her mind desperately reached out for Andrew, then was instantly reassured.
That was him sleeping back there….Andrew's arm, ....his hand. And even Joey was surprised at just how far her relationship had come with Andrew, just how much she really did love him, when her first thoughts came to her. ‘Omigawd. I can’t believe I don’t remember anything about it…Well, I hope,at least, it was good for him.’
She wasn’t sure of exactly how it had happened but she was pretty sure that….well, it HAD happened. And she was alright with that….they’d deal with the consequences later. Right now she just needed the closeness. She snuggled back against him, comforting herself with the warmth of a sleeping Andrew against her, a gentle smile of contentment on her face. That’s when she heard the security bolt on the door unlock itself.
As the door opened and she saw her mother and father gazing in at the two of them on the bed, Joey snuggled even further back against Andrew. She figured the next few hours weren’t going to be very pleasant. She might as well enjoy Andrew for the few seconds they had left.
But she didn’t have them now, and as she awakened she found herself naked in a strange bed, lit by some kind of fluorescent light show, some guy’s arm laying over her, gently cupping her left breast through the sheet. The moment of terror was brief though, as her mind desperately reached out for Andrew, then was instantly reassured.
That was him sleeping back there….Andrew's arm, ....his hand. And even Joey was surprised at just how far her relationship had come with Andrew, just how much she really did love him, when her first thoughts came to her. ‘Omigawd. I can’t believe I don’t remember anything about it…Well, I hope,at least, it was good for him.’
She wasn’t sure of exactly how it had happened but she was pretty sure that….well, it HAD happened. And she was alright with that….they’d deal with the consequences later. Right now she just needed the closeness. She snuggled back against him, comforting herself with the warmth of a sleeping Andrew against her, a gentle smile of contentment on her face. That’s when she heard the security bolt on the door unlock itself.
As the door opened and she saw her mother and father gazing in at the two of them on the bed, Joey snuggled even further back against Andrew. She figured the next few hours weren’t going to be very pleasant. She might as well enjoy Andrew for the few seconds they had left.
Four hours ago Michael Guerin would have been rushing to powerblast Andrew into oblivion before Joey would have time to shield him if he’d seen the sight that he beheld when he opened the door to room 118.
But he’d already misjudged Andrew twice since then, he wasn’t going to let it happen again. Besides, the kid looked like hell. He looked like he’d lost a Judo meet and a Tae Kwan Do meet. Not a match….a meet…personally.
And whatever had happened, and despite all the circumstantial evidence, Michael actually had some hope that what he was afraid might have happened, really hadn’t happened, it certainly looked like Andrew had done his best to keep an irrational Joey under cover…if only a single sheet. Andrew hadn’t scorched the levis. Andrew hadn’t done the fluorescent wall art. And Andrew hadn’t dissolved the buttons and zipper from the clothes on the floor, or dissolved the material to make those two handprints on the back of his shirt, either. And as he saw his daughter snuggle even closer back against a sleeping and somewhat battered Andrew Douglas, it was clear that, drunk or sober, Joey loved the guy.
Andrew was having a beautiful dream, but he was still sorry she wasn’t dreamwalking in it to share it with him.
As he felt the movement against his chest and abdomen as she snuggled back against him, he slowly came awake, knowing at once that she was there, that this was real. Without even really opening his eyes, he pulled her tighter against him, surprised to find his hand cupping her breast through the sheet. He smelled the shampoo in her hair as he kissed her head and opened his eyes drowsily to tell her good morning.
His eyes filled first with her blonde hair in front of him and he smiled and kissed it again, before looking past it to the faces of Michael and Maria standing in the doorway. As Joey snuggled back against him once again the thought occurred to him, ‘This really isn’t a bad way to go, I suppose…’
But he’d already misjudged Andrew twice since then, he wasn’t going to let it happen again. Besides, the kid looked like hell. He looked like he’d lost a Judo meet and a Tae Kwan Do meet. Not a match….a meet…personally.
And whatever had happened, and despite all the circumstantial evidence, Michael actually had some hope that what he was afraid might have happened, really hadn’t happened, it certainly looked like Andrew had done his best to keep an irrational Joey under cover…if only a single sheet. Andrew hadn’t scorched the levis. Andrew hadn’t done the fluorescent wall art. And Andrew hadn’t dissolved the buttons and zipper from the clothes on the floor, or dissolved the material to make those two handprints on the back of his shirt, either. And as he saw his daughter snuggle even closer back against a sleeping and somewhat battered Andrew Douglas, it was clear that, drunk or sober, Joey loved the guy.
Andrew was having a beautiful dream, but he was still sorry she wasn’t dreamwalking in it to share it with him.
As he felt the movement against his chest and abdomen as she snuggled back against him, he slowly came awake, knowing at once that she was there, that this was real. Without even really opening his eyes, he pulled her tighter against him, surprised to find his hand cupping her breast through the sheet. He smelled the shampoo in her hair as he kissed her head and opened his eyes drowsily to tell her good morning.
His eyes filled first with her blonde hair in front of him and he smiled and kissed it again, before looking past it to the faces of Michael and Maria standing in the doorway. As Joey snuggled back against him once again the thought occurred to him, ‘This really isn’t a bad way to go, I suppose…’
Joey had known her father all of her life, of course, and it wasn’t often that Michael managed to surprise her, even for birthday and Christmas gifts. He did this morning though.
“Andrew, I think you’d better give me the keys to your car and tell me where you parked it. I’ll go bring up your suitcase. I don’t think those levis are repairable…even with molecular manipulation. Maria will keep the two of you company……just so you don’t get….lonesome.
I also need to go talk to Coach O’Malley. We got a message from her when we got within cellphone range of Santa Fe. She’s quite worried about you, Joey. So is Andrea.
I’ll pick up your suitcase when I talk to them, and bring it back here. In the meantime….well, just make yourself comfortable I guess….you seem to be already doing that. When I get back, .....when you are dressed Joey….you and I can do something about the graffiti while Andrew showers. He smells a little….scorched.”
And it wasn’t just the words, it was the funny little smile that he had when he said that last word, that really surprised Joey.
“Mr. Guerin…..we didn’t…,” started Andrew, stopping when Michael put a finger to his lips.
“I’m sure you didn’t do anything that wasn’t necessary, Andrew,” said Michael. “But you might tell your right hand the emergency is over for now…”
“Andrew, I think you’d better give me the keys to your car and tell me where you parked it. I’ll go bring up your suitcase. I don’t think those levis are repairable…even with molecular manipulation. Maria will keep the two of you company……just so you don’t get….lonesome.
I also need to go talk to Coach O’Malley. We got a message from her when we got within cellphone range of Santa Fe. She’s quite worried about you, Joey. So is Andrea.
I’ll pick up your suitcase when I talk to them, and bring it back here. In the meantime….well, just make yourself comfortable I guess….you seem to be already doing that. When I get back, .....when you are dressed Joey….you and I can do something about the graffiti while Andrew showers. He smells a little….scorched.”
And it wasn’t just the words, it was the funny little smile that he had when he said that last word, that really surprised Joey.
“Mr. Guerin…..we didn’t…,” started Andrew, stopping when Michael put a finger to his lips.
“I’m sure you didn’t do anything that wasn’t necessary, Andrew,” said Michael. “But you might tell your right hand the emergency is over for now…”
It was 3:15AM and Bobbi O’Malley hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep.
She had called the Guerins when she had checked and found Andrea alone in the room, and left them a message. She had thought that Andrea knew more than she was telling, and when two of the other girls had indicated they saw Joey leaving the party being dragged by her boyfriend, she was almost certain she did.
O'Malley hadn’t known that when she’d called Michael and Maria, and she didn’t know what she should do with that information now. She’d seen Joey’s ring on the chain and was pretty sure that they were more than casually dating, and the hidden ring likely meant her parents didn’t approve.
Besides, she’d already called the Santa Fe police who had told her, barring evidence of foul play, a missing persons report couldn’t even be filed for 24 hours.
She jumped to her feet when she heard the knock on the door, hoping it was news of Joey Guerin. But as she looked out through the peephole and recognized Joey’s father, she didn’t know what she could say to him…and didn’t know what she should say to him regarding Andrew Douglas. She opened the door, steeling herself to confront a scared and angry parent.
“Relax Coach O’Malley, Joey’s OK.”
“Thank God! Where is she….what happened to her?”
“Joey has a food allergy, Coach O’Malley. She had an allergic reaction to something she ..consumed. Fortunately Andrew was there. He got her to …treatment. He should have called you I know, but he was busy…and worried about her.”
‘So the parents did know about the two of them,’ she thought. She wondered if they knew about the ring. “A couple of the girls said that they thought they’d seen Andrew lead her away from the party. I didn’t know that when I called you and left the message. I wasn’t sure what it meant when they…uh…left together, and she missed bedcheck. I was sort of worried about…well..the two of them, I guess.”
And here, Michael Guerin really did surprise Bobbi O’Malley, because she’d seen his reaction to the kiss in the key those many long weeks ago, and she knew he hadn’t cared for it a bit.
“Andrew Douglas is a good kid, Miss O’Malley. He may have saved Joey’s life last night. Maria and I are a little frightened by the intensity of their relationship ourselves, but…..well, Andrew has our full trust and confidence. If anything were to happen to Joey and you couldn’t get in contact with Maria or me…..well I know legally he wouldn’t have any authority but, it would be good if you’d listen to Andrew. He’ll know what to do. The young man has good instincts…and he cares very much for my daughter.”
‘So he did know…’ she thought. She had been talking to Jim Greer before this happened. Jim had said they were ‘special kids,’ and Jim had been right. How exactly Andrew had won over a frightened and protective Michael Guerin, she wasn’t sure. But apparently he had.
“So is she in the hospital?”
“She’s being released to us. I think it’s best if we just take her home now…not wait for the team bus. If I could get her suitcase with her stuff…”
“Oh sure, Joey and Andrea’s room is three doors down. Just a minute, I’ll help you…..”
It was 20 minutes later when Michael Guerin returned to room 118 with two suitcases, stopping first at the desk to pay cash for the extra night’s stay in room 118. Andrew was already in the shower, Joey, wearing a toga made from the bed sheet, had largely erased all evidence of alien activity. He noticed she’d saved the heart with the initials for last. He waited until she started erasing it to help her. He and Maria needed to talk to her…that was for sure. But they’d have a three hour drive to do so. Now wasn’t the right time or right place. He gathered the remnants of clothes together in a bag. He’d destroy them when they were out in the wide open spaces alone.
As he heard the shower stop he lifted Andrew’s bag and carried it to the door, unlocking it with his powers before setting the suitcase inside. Andrew was toweling off, and Michael noticed a 4x4 inch area of burn on his lower left buttock, with scorched hair even further down his leg. It was mostly first degree, with a few small areas of blistering. It didn’t look too bad. Michael suddenly found himself hoping fervently that it had never looked any worse.
He also hoped fervently that if it had, he never learned exactly how Joey had made it better……..
She had called the Guerins when she had checked and found Andrea alone in the room, and left them a message. She had thought that Andrea knew more than she was telling, and when two of the other girls had indicated they saw Joey leaving the party being dragged by her boyfriend, she was almost certain she did.
O'Malley hadn’t known that when she’d called Michael and Maria, and she didn’t know what she should do with that information now. She’d seen Joey’s ring on the chain and was pretty sure that they were more than casually dating, and the hidden ring likely meant her parents didn’t approve.
Besides, she’d already called the Santa Fe police who had told her, barring evidence of foul play, a missing persons report couldn’t even be filed for 24 hours.
She jumped to her feet when she heard the knock on the door, hoping it was news of Joey Guerin. But as she looked out through the peephole and recognized Joey’s father, she didn’t know what she could say to him…and didn’t know what she should say to him regarding Andrew Douglas. She opened the door, steeling herself to confront a scared and angry parent.
“Relax Coach O’Malley, Joey’s OK.”
“Thank God! Where is she….what happened to her?”
“Joey has a food allergy, Coach O’Malley. She had an allergic reaction to something she ..consumed. Fortunately Andrew was there. He got her to …treatment. He should have called you I know, but he was busy…and worried about her.”
‘So the parents did know about the two of them,’ she thought. She wondered if they knew about the ring. “A couple of the girls said that they thought they’d seen Andrew lead her away from the party. I didn’t know that when I called you and left the message. I wasn’t sure what it meant when they…uh…left together, and she missed bedcheck. I was sort of worried about…well..the two of them, I guess.”
And here, Michael Guerin really did surprise Bobbi O’Malley, because she’d seen his reaction to the kiss in the key those many long weeks ago, and she knew he hadn’t cared for it a bit.
“Andrew Douglas is a good kid, Miss O’Malley. He may have saved Joey’s life last night. Maria and I are a little frightened by the intensity of their relationship ourselves, but…..well, Andrew has our full trust and confidence. If anything were to happen to Joey and you couldn’t get in contact with Maria or me…..well I know legally he wouldn’t have any authority but, it would be good if you’d listen to Andrew. He’ll know what to do. The young man has good instincts…and he cares very much for my daughter.”
‘So he did know…’ she thought. She had been talking to Jim Greer before this happened. Jim had said they were ‘special kids,’ and Jim had been right. How exactly Andrew had won over a frightened and protective Michael Guerin, she wasn’t sure. But apparently he had.
“So is she in the hospital?”
“She’s being released to us. I think it’s best if we just take her home now…not wait for the team bus. If I could get her suitcase with her stuff…”
“Oh sure, Joey and Andrea’s room is three doors down. Just a minute, I’ll help you…..”
It was 20 minutes later when Michael Guerin returned to room 118 with two suitcases, stopping first at the desk to pay cash for the extra night’s stay in room 118. Andrew was already in the shower, Joey, wearing a toga made from the bed sheet, had largely erased all evidence of alien activity. He noticed she’d saved the heart with the initials for last. He waited until she started erasing it to help her. He and Maria needed to talk to her…that was for sure. But they’d have a three hour drive to do so. Now wasn’t the right time or right place. He gathered the remnants of clothes together in a bag. He’d destroy them when they were out in the wide open spaces alone.
As he heard the shower stop he lifted Andrew’s bag and carried it to the door, unlocking it with his powers before setting the suitcase inside. Andrew was toweling off, and Michael noticed a 4x4 inch area of burn on his lower left buttock, with scorched hair even further down his leg. It was mostly first degree, with a few small areas of blistering. It didn’t look too bad. Michael suddenly found himself hoping fervently that it had never looked any worse.
He also hoped fervently that if it had, he never learned exactly how Joey had made it better……..
It was less than an hour later that a very short caravan of two cars was wending its way south on 285. The trailing car had a bruised, battered, and slightly burned Andrew, driving the family car all by himself. The lead car had the Guerins, Michael driving, Joey in the front passenger seat, and a still pretty tired Maria in back.
Now any midbrain could have told you….well, thought at you anyway, that there ought to be a real discussion going on in the lead car. Joey had, besides just causing her folks to make a three hundred mile backtrack, almost blown the cover for four families of aliens, and act that would have affected almost thirty people considering cousins, and grandparents of alien-hybrid kids. That’s not even mentioning the pretty meager apparel the kids were wearing, or the fact that they were cuddled up in bed together when Michael and Maria got there.
But there wasn’t a discussion, at least…not yet. Any midbrain would be sure that only some know-it-all cerebrum would think it would be a good idea to just sit there and ignore the proverbial elephant in the room….and the midbrain would be right.
The tactic that Michael and Maria were employing was called by different names by numerous different sets of parents. Letting the transgressor “stew in his or her own juices,’ giving them ‘time to contemplate the enormity of their sins,’ giving them ‘time to reflect upon their mistakes,’ it had a variety of colloquial names. In fact, it was a form of ‘shunning’ that had been advocated for dealing with children in a book they read together shortly after Mark had been born, a book authored by Dr. Spock.
No, this was not some pointy-eared Vulcan with copper based blood, that guy hadn’t been born yet, and his planet was thousands of light-years away in any case. This was an earthling child psychiatrist, who had first put together a book of total psychobabble on how to raise children in 1948, and had managed to get rich on spinoffs and subsequent revisions almost until his death in 1998.
Any midbrain would have been appalled to know that people were paying money for a book on how to raise kids. Midbrains had been rearing young for eons, or else none of us would have been here at all. Obviously, these books were things that only cerebrums would buy. Cerebrums, in fact, were in to just that sort of mental masturbation, thought the midbrains. And normally they wouldn’t have cared. But in this case, what the man was saying was flat out wrong.
And the damnable thing, really, was that Dr. Spock had admitted before his death that he had indeed been wrong. But almost nine years after his death, a decade and a half after he admitted he was wrong, his book had still been there in the non-fiction area of the library, under childcare and early child development. How screwed up is that?
If you own a 1963 Volvo and the NTSB finds a problem with that model, they will recall the cars and Volvo WILL track you down to let you know and tell you how to fix it. If a problem is discovered with a medication, the FDA WILL recall all the stocks of that medication.
But Dr. Spock recants his books and….nothing. 15 years later they are still in the library in the non-fiction section. And they don’t even have a disclaimer. OK, granted, a bad technique for dealing with a teenager may not be the end of the world, although this one is going to cause some fireworks this morning. But that goes for all books.
What about Mein Kampf? Don’t you think at least the librarian ought to put a little yellow sticky note on it saying, ‘Hey, this was tried and it really didn’t work well,’ or at least, ‘Hey, all this Master Race business is screwed up’? But they don’t. And whose fault is that? Cerebrums, of course. They lack common sense. Hitler’s midbrain would have never written Mein Kampf. It would have still been holed up in Berchtesgaden with Eva Braun, screwing like bunnies. Probably playing music in the background…on old style 78RPM records. I can practically see it now, Adolph and Eva, doing it in time to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’,…Dum de de DUM DUM, … Dum de de DUM DUM, Dum de de DUM DUMMMM, Dum de de DUMM!. Yamamoto’s midbrain wouldn’t have been planning to blow up Pearl Harbor, either. He’d have grabbed his favorite geisha and flown off to Berchtesgaden too, likely gotten a room in the same inn. The most aggressive thing he might then do is to pound on the wall at 2AM yelling, “Adolph, Eva, can you turn the damn Wagner down. Meiko and I are trying to do it in the lotus position, very difficult, we need to concentrate.
But I digress….
Anyway, because of some old dumb dead shrink, someone who knew less about Earth teenagers than a Vulcan thousands of light years away who had never even been born yet, someone who even recanted his own works before dying, Michael and Maria are giving Joey the silent treatment, letting her ‘stew in her own juices’ to intensify the learning she will do from the experience she has just gone through.
The only thing is,…well, Joey NEVER READ THAT BOOK, so she’s really stewing about something altogether different.
Whoops…we need another short digression here. It has to do again with midbrains and making whoopee. Since the advent of cerebrums, midbrains have found their options kind of restricted by the inhibitory impulses from the cerebrums. In fact, some cerebrums totally restricted their midbrains from making whoopee at all. That’s what’s called Darwining yourself out of existence, since those particular cerebrums, albeit along with their hapless midbrains, died out…(SURPRISE)…in one generation. The other midbrains got busy after that. Nothing motivates like watching extinction stare you in the face. They developed something called endorphins.
Like I said, midbrains are kind of hard-wired, what you see is what you get kind of critters. They specialize in making whoopee because that’s who they are. Endorphins are chemicals that give a sensation of pleasure. Endorphins are released, and affect the cerebrum, when you make whoopee, and for awhile thereafter. Now another short digression. Some people will tell you that men and women are pretty much the same. Nonsense. Especially when it comes to…making whoopee.
To women, sex can be graded from awesome to bad, on a scale with about 25 different values. Guys only have three. Good, outstanding, and awesome. Women get compensated for having to put up with their scale by an increased endorphin release in the post whoopee period. And that’s only fair. Look at what could have happened back there in room 118.
Both Joey and Andrew were, as far as making whoopee went,…well…rookies. Nothing wrong with being a rookie, every one starts there. Now for the two of them it actually might have been easier, because they had the connection. Through it, they could kind of feel what they other one was feeling. Most people,,,,well, it’s not like that.
Usually with two rookies…well, they don’t know EXACTLY what they are doing. In fact, it’ll take them some time to really figure out what the other finds most Whooptastic…because most people don’t have a connection. But even before that…the first time…well, no matter what, for the guy it’s going to be at least good, and quite possibly awesome. The gal though…I mean, even if the guy weren’t a rookie and actually did know what she would like, well….it’s still the first time, and there’s gonna be some stretching and probably even a little tearing, and that’ll certainly happen if either midbrain gets too carried away. And Joey might do that…she’s always gung-ho about sports….and that’ll likely carry over to making whoopee. Of course, she can heal herself. Most gals can’t.
Anyway, as kind of compensation, gals get this big endorphin release when they are done making whoopee, and they get it whether they smoke the traditional post-whoopee cigarette or not.
So while Michael and Maria waste an hour letting Joey ‘stew in her own juices,’ because of some psychobabble some dead shrink wrote a half century previously, what Joey’s cerebrum is really doing is playing and replaying in her mind the few seconds she had when she awakened to find herself spooned up to the chest and abdomen of a sleeping Andrew with his hand softly cupping her breast, and let me tell you, the endorphins are just flowing.
No, they hadn’t really made whoopee, even though she’d thought for awhile they had. But it didn’t matter, because to gals, cuddling produced damn near the endorphins that outstanding whoopee did, and you could replay the memory.
It was a cold morning in the high desert, but Joey was warm enough, and it wasn’t the car heater that was doing it either, it was her midbrain and her cerebrum playing and replaying those few seconds of being snuggled up in bed with a sleeping Andrew, just feeling safe and warm and loved.
Yeah, Joey’s stewing alright…and she’s likely even making some juices. But Michael and Maria are about to discover just how far off the mark you can go trusting Dr. Benjamin Spock.
Now any midbrain could have told you….well, thought at you anyway, that there ought to be a real discussion going on in the lead car. Joey had, besides just causing her folks to make a three hundred mile backtrack, almost blown the cover for four families of aliens, and act that would have affected almost thirty people considering cousins, and grandparents of alien-hybrid kids. That’s not even mentioning the pretty meager apparel the kids were wearing, or the fact that they were cuddled up in bed together when Michael and Maria got there.
But there wasn’t a discussion, at least…not yet. Any midbrain would be sure that only some know-it-all cerebrum would think it would be a good idea to just sit there and ignore the proverbial elephant in the room….and the midbrain would be right.
The tactic that Michael and Maria were employing was called by different names by numerous different sets of parents. Letting the transgressor “stew in his or her own juices,’ giving them ‘time to contemplate the enormity of their sins,’ giving them ‘time to reflect upon their mistakes,’ it had a variety of colloquial names. In fact, it was a form of ‘shunning’ that had been advocated for dealing with children in a book they read together shortly after Mark had been born, a book authored by Dr. Spock.
No, this was not some pointy-eared Vulcan with copper based blood, that guy hadn’t been born yet, and his planet was thousands of light-years away in any case. This was an earthling child psychiatrist, who had first put together a book of total psychobabble on how to raise children in 1948, and had managed to get rich on spinoffs and subsequent revisions almost until his death in 1998.
Any midbrain would have been appalled to know that people were paying money for a book on how to raise kids. Midbrains had been rearing young for eons, or else none of us would have been here at all. Obviously, these books were things that only cerebrums would buy. Cerebrums, in fact, were in to just that sort of mental masturbation, thought the midbrains. And normally they wouldn’t have cared. But in this case, what the man was saying was flat out wrong.
And the damnable thing, really, was that Dr. Spock had admitted before his death that he had indeed been wrong. But almost nine years after his death, a decade and a half after he admitted he was wrong, his book had still been there in the non-fiction area of the library, under childcare and early child development. How screwed up is that?
If you own a 1963 Volvo and the NTSB finds a problem with that model, they will recall the cars and Volvo WILL track you down to let you know and tell you how to fix it. If a problem is discovered with a medication, the FDA WILL recall all the stocks of that medication.
But Dr. Spock recants his books and….nothing. 15 years later they are still in the library in the non-fiction section. And they don’t even have a disclaimer. OK, granted, a bad technique for dealing with a teenager may not be the end of the world, although this one is going to cause some fireworks this morning. But that goes for all books.
What about Mein Kampf? Don’t you think at least the librarian ought to put a little yellow sticky note on it saying, ‘Hey, this was tried and it really didn’t work well,’ or at least, ‘Hey, all this Master Race business is screwed up’? But they don’t. And whose fault is that? Cerebrums, of course. They lack common sense. Hitler’s midbrain would have never written Mein Kampf. It would have still been holed up in Berchtesgaden with Eva Braun, screwing like bunnies. Probably playing music in the background…on old style 78RPM records. I can practically see it now, Adolph and Eva, doing it in time to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’,…Dum de de DUM DUM, … Dum de de DUM DUM, Dum de de DUM DUMMMM, Dum de de DUMM!. Yamamoto’s midbrain wouldn’t have been planning to blow up Pearl Harbor, either. He’d have grabbed his favorite geisha and flown off to Berchtesgaden too, likely gotten a room in the same inn. The most aggressive thing he might then do is to pound on the wall at 2AM yelling, “Adolph, Eva, can you turn the damn Wagner down. Meiko and I are trying to do it in the lotus position, very difficult, we need to concentrate.
But I digress….
Anyway, because of some old dumb dead shrink, someone who knew less about Earth teenagers than a Vulcan thousands of light years away who had never even been born yet, someone who even recanted his own works before dying, Michael and Maria are giving Joey the silent treatment, letting her ‘stew in her own juices’ to intensify the learning she will do from the experience she has just gone through.
The only thing is,…well, Joey NEVER READ THAT BOOK, so she’s really stewing about something altogether different.
Whoops…we need another short digression here. It has to do again with midbrains and making whoopee. Since the advent of cerebrums, midbrains have found their options kind of restricted by the inhibitory impulses from the cerebrums. In fact, some cerebrums totally restricted their midbrains from making whoopee at all. That’s what’s called Darwining yourself out of existence, since those particular cerebrums, albeit along with their hapless midbrains, died out…(SURPRISE)…in one generation. The other midbrains got busy after that. Nothing motivates like watching extinction stare you in the face. They developed something called endorphins.
Like I said, midbrains are kind of hard-wired, what you see is what you get kind of critters. They specialize in making whoopee because that’s who they are. Endorphins are chemicals that give a sensation of pleasure. Endorphins are released, and affect the cerebrum, when you make whoopee, and for awhile thereafter. Now another short digression. Some people will tell you that men and women are pretty much the same. Nonsense. Especially when it comes to…making whoopee.
To women, sex can be graded from awesome to bad, on a scale with about 25 different values. Guys only have three. Good, outstanding, and awesome. Women get compensated for having to put up with their scale by an increased endorphin release in the post whoopee period. And that’s only fair. Look at what could have happened back there in room 118.
Both Joey and Andrew were, as far as making whoopee went,…well…rookies. Nothing wrong with being a rookie, every one starts there. Now for the two of them it actually might have been easier, because they had the connection. Through it, they could kind of feel what they other one was feeling. Most people,,,,well, it’s not like that.
Usually with two rookies…well, they don’t know EXACTLY what they are doing. In fact, it’ll take them some time to really figure out what the other finds most Whooptastic…because most people don’t have a connection. But even before that…the first time…well, no matter what, for the guy it’s going to be at least good, and quite possibly awesome. The gal though…I mean, even if the guy weren’t a rookie and actually did know what she would like, well….it’s still the first time, and there’s gonna be some stretching and probably even a little tearing, and that’ll certainly happen if either midbrain gets too carried away. And Joey might do that…she’s always gung-ho about sports….and that’ll likely carry over to making whoopee. Of course, she can heal herself. Most gals can’t.
Anyway, as kind of compensation, gals get this big endorphin release when they are done making whoopee, and they get it whether they smoke the traditional post-whoopee cigarette or not.
So while Michael and Maria waste an hour letting Joey ‘stew in her own juices,’ because of some psychobabble some dead shrink wrote a half century previously, what Joey’s cerebrum is really doing is playing and replaying in her mind the few seconds she had when she awakened to find herself spooned up to the chest and abdomen of a sleeping Andrew with his hand softly cupping her breast, and let me tell you, the endorphins are just flowing.
No, they hadn’t really made whoopee, even though she’d thought for awhile they had. But it didn’t matter, because to gals, cuddling produced damn near the endorphins that outstanding whoopee did, and you could replay the memory.
It was a cold morning in the high desert, but Joey was warm enough, and it wasn’t the car heater that was doing it either, it was her midbrain and her cerebrum playing and replaying those few seconds of being snuggled up in bed with a sleeping Andrew, just feeling safe and warm and loved.
Yeah, Joey’s stewing alright…and she’s likely even making some juices. But Michael and Maria are about to discover just how far off the mark you can go trusting Dr. Benjamin Spock.
First of all, Joey was a bright enough kid. She really didn’t need an hour of contemplating to figure out that she’d screwed up, and was in fact tougher on herself than her parents would be.
Her brother Mark had told her that by the time you got to High School, people would be drinking alcohol, legal or not. Even before Michael had come back with the suitcases, she had started remembering the things she had done, the times she might have given away the secret. She remembered the phone call to the twins………they’d be giving her a hard time about that for decades…. And most of all she remembered what she had put Drew through. Not almost forcing him to do it….because she really did know his soul, and had certainly seen the state of his boxers. It was sweet of him to protect her virtue though, even against a drunken Joey. But she wasn’t foolish enough to believe he would have really objected all THAT much.
But she’d actually used her powers against him, which she found reprehensible. She’d damn near set fire to him. And even when she hadn’t been using her powers, she’d basically used him to practice every Judo throw she knew, in the middle of a hotel room full of furniture. He had been bruised and battered and hadn’t even fought back, just absorbing the punishment to keep anyone from finding out about the secret.
So Joey didn’t need an hour to contemplate the enormity of her sins. Before they’d even left the motel, she had made a vow to be more careful, to never let it happen again, never put her family or Andrew through that sort of a risk again.
So when her parents drove on in silence, she thought of other things. She thought of her talks with Andrea. She HAD gotten up yesterday morning, and Drew wasn’t there with her and she was likely going to get up tomorrow morning and Drew wouldn’t be with her either, but she was going to cherish the memory of waking up this morning and being spooned up against him for the rest of her life. And she decided that the fact that they couldn’t have everything…..well, it probably wasn’t a good reason to keep them from having what they COULD have. And in that silent car, looking out into the darkness, remembering the happiness she’d felt cuddled back into him, with his arm across her, she decided she needed that closeness, that she’d spent too many years as a brooding loner, that Andrew made her feel alive….he made her feel human, like no one else could.
An hour into the trip it finally happened.
“Dad….about what I did with Andrew….”
“People do lots of crazy things when they drink, Joey. Particularly if those people are part alien. That’s why you can’t drink.”
“But Dad…”
“No buts about it, Joey. As you get older there’s more and more alcohol around. When you get to college, it’s everywhere. What you did put your entire family at risk, your brother and parents, all your aunts and uncles, all your cousins…..everybody. You have to be more careful.”
At this time Maria butts in, to underline the lesson.
“We know you didn’t mean to do this, Joey. That you were just celebrating with your friends. But it frightened us. Have you any idea what would have happened if Andrew hadn’t been there…or if you’d been there with some other guy who cared less about you than Andrew did…or simply had less self control?”
“About Andrew, Mom…Dad…….”
“And that’s right, what about Andrew,” asked Michael. “Suppose the secret had gotten out, and it was found out that you’d healed him? You may not believe this but there are people who would take Andrew apart, just to see how you healed him, to see if they couldn’t find a way to do that. You were horribly irresponsible to drink anything without being very sure what it was, no matter who handed it to you. You just can’t do that, darling.”
“But about Andrew and me…. “
“Oh, I know. You made a fool of yourself, you set fire to him…, you’re embarrassed…and you deserve to be. Maybe before you take a drink of something next time you’ll think about that, think about what he had to endure to keep you safe. If you can’t be careful for yourself, at least you might think about being careful in the interest of the people that care about you.”
Joey shook her head sadly. They weren’t letting her make her point. “Mom….Dad….do you know what veritas in vino means?
“Yes Joey,” said Michael, who didn’t just read James Joyce. “It means there is truth in wine, that what you do when you are intoxicated is what you really want to do. But it doesn’t matter, Joey, because as much as you might want to show off your alien powers, we just can’t do that. It isn’t safe.”
Joey shook her head sadly, ‘Are my parents in denial, avoiding the subject, or being intentionally dense? It’s got to be one of those.’
“Mom, Dad…, am I grounded again?” she asked warily.
Michael and Maria looked back and forth at each other, convinced that they had made their point. Maria looked up at Michael, her eyes giving him permission to be the good guy this time….”
“Joey,” said Michael, “..there are crimes and there are mistakes. This was a mistake. We want you to learn from this mistake, and not make that mistake ever again. But it isn’t a crime. We aren’t going to punish you.”
Michael and Maria were both a little puzzled when Joey’s face didn’t really brighten appreciatively. Instead she looked out the window into the darkness. “Well, if I’m not grounded…..can you stop and let me ride back to Roswell with Andrew. I kind of need to speak with him.”
Maria put her hand on Michael’s forearm and the connection formed.
*I think we’ve driven the point home, Honey, no sense rubbing it in anymore than we have.*
*You’re probably right. Besides, she probably feels like she needs to apologize to the boy for all the damage that she did to him while she was drunk. Healing some of those visible bruises would probably be a good idea too. Let’s let her go see him.*
“OK Joey. We’ll pull over and let you ride back with him. I’m real glad we had this talk.”
As the car slowed, Joey was thinking to herself, ‘That wasn’t a talk, they didn’t let me talk about the most important part of what happened…’
When the car stopped, Andrew pulled the Douglas’ family car in behind them, wondering what the problem was. He saw Joey get out. She had almost closed the door, then apparently thinking of something more she needed to say to her parents, had opened it again to speak briefly, before coming back to get in to the Douglas car.
In the Guerin’s car, both Michael and Maria had been thinking they had handled that well as Joey had started to leave. She had looked troubled, and appropriately chastened, a little frustration clear on her face as she started to close the door. When she hesitated and reopened the door, they both looked up at their daughter, standing there looking back at them, nervously fingering the ring on the necklace. Both sat back in their seats slightly, in anticipation of a very sincere and heartfelt apology.
“Mom…..I think it might be a good idea if I was started on the pill…..”
The Guerins sat there in stunned shock as their daughter climbed into the car behind them. And they not only were stunned by the implications of what she had said, but by the words as well. Joey had invoked the Gabriella Peterson promise.
The strange thing was that Joey Guerin had never met Gabriella Peterson. Gabriella had been about two years older than Mark, and had attended the same elementary school. When Mark was in third grade Maria had been PTSA Vice President, and Myrna Peterson had been PTSA President. They had traveled in the same circles for the next two years, until Gabriella had gone on to Junior High School. Myrna and Maria would work on PTSA functions, even have lunch occasionally together. They had seen less of each other after Gabriella had gone on to Junior High, and by the time Mark was in Junior High, Gabriella was already a Freshman at West Roswell. Even so, Myrna and Maria would occasionally get together, and the families exchanged Christmas cards.
The problem had occurred the summer after Gabriella’s Freshman year. She was a cute young lady, one of the Freshmen cheerleaders, and selected to be a varsity cheerleader her Sophomore year. That summer she met a college student, who had gotten an internship with a national oil company. There were still oil fields operating East of Roswell, and the company had an office there. The college student, Maria had never learned his name, actually, let’s just call him Joe…, well Joe was between his Sophomore and Junior years at a prestigious Ivy League school, and he was selected for this internship in the Roswell office of the company. The company provided a small furnished apartment, and a pretty fair salary for an internship. Gabriella had a summer job at the same company, and they met. Gabriella had always aspired to living on the East Coast amongst the bright lights and excitement, and telling her about the life there is how their relationship started out.
One of Gabriella’s friends had warned her that a 21 year old college student might want a little more out of a relationship than a 16 year old high school girl was ready to give, but she hadn’t listened. Eventually, after seeing him for a month, he had indicated as much. He’d been drinking, and had given her a few drinks too. She was reluctant, but Joe assured her that he loved her deeply, he would never leave her, and nobody ever got pregnant their first time, even if no one had thought to bring protection. It would eventually turn out that all three of those statements were lies.
Gabriella apparently was in denial when she missed her first period, even her second. But when the third period was missed, she could deny it no longer. She made a tearful call to his fraternity at Harvard. Some one answered and took a message for Joe to call her. Three days and three more messages later, Joe eventually did call. Gabrielle had explained her condition, reminding Joe of what he had said…..Joe saw it differently now. He had told her he was sorry, but that girls who slept around…well, they were supposed to provide their own protection. But maybe, if she could have it done quickly while it was still fairly inexpensive, he could split the cost of the abortion with her.
Gabriella couldn’t believe it. She didn’t sleep for a week, afraid to tell her parents, but not really believing that Joe could possibly not love her. If only she could see him again. Gabrielle used her parents credit card, bought a ticket to Boston, and two days later was knocking on the fraternity door at Harvard, but Joe wasn’t there. He’d gone home to Connecticut for the three day weekend. Undeterred, she got his address and followed. Late that night the cab let her out at his door. The butler answered and when she asked for Joe, he ushered her in to the study. But it wasn’t Joe that came in to the study, it was Joe’s mother and father.
They explained to her that Joe wasn’t there, he was spending the weekend with the parents of his fiancé. She was also a junior in college, and had spent the summer in Europe while Joe was in Roswell. Her parents had known Joes parents for decades, they were both from appropriate old money families, and their engagement and ultimate marriage had been long planned. Joe had told them what had happened, that Gabrielle had practically forced herself on him when he’d been drinking, and Joe’s parents were not about to let Joe’s life be ruined by a summer fling with some round-heeled girl from Roswell New Mexico. They would give her money for an abortion, but the family lawyer would fight any other claim she made on them. She had left the estate in tears, and flown back to her parents.
Her parents had been upset about the credit card and the trip, but when they heard the reason …well all thought of that was forgotten. They talked to her for days, telling her basically that she was sixteen, she had her whole life ahead of her, and she needed to think clearly. Gabrielle had wanted to have the baby, naively hoping perhaps that Joe would come back to the two of them, once he came to his senses. They told her that wasn’t going to happen. A tearful Myrna admitted to Marie later that they pushed her…probably too hard, to have the abortion.
It took a few weeks to set it up, Myrna and Gabrielle flying out to where she could have a late-term abortion. On the taxi ride into the clinic for the procedure Gabrielle felt the baby kick for the first time…she wouldn’t tell Myrna about it for three months. Then she would tell her that she thought that it was her baby begging her mother not to do that….begging for its life. But in a few hours…it was over.
Except, it turned out, it really wasn’t over for Gabrielle. They returned home to Roswell and Gabrielle never really recovered. At first her physicians thought it was a post-partum sort of depression, from the sudden loss of the hormones of the pregnancy. They assured her parents she’d get over it. Later they prescribed antidepressants, in constantly increasing dosage. But it didn’t work. This went on for a year, and the treatment didn’t help, although in fairness, Gabrielle wasn’t taking all the medication the last few months, she was hoarding it. She got a refill of the medication a week early and took that months supply, and all she had hoarded, one year after the abortion. The note she left told her parents that she felt her baby calling to her…and wanted to be with it.
Michael and Maria had attended the funeral for the seventeen year old, and come home devastated. Fifteen year old Mark and ten year old Joey were in the living room, watching TV. Mark was called in and had the riot act read to him by Maria and Michael, telling him that if he ever…ever did anything like that to some little girl, they would disown him. He took it with good grace. He hadn’t been close to Gabrielle, but he knew her and knew the story. He understood why his parents were freaking. Ten year old Joey had never met the girl, had yet to have a period, and although she’d been favorably impressed by a kid she’d played soccer with the previous year, really had no interest in boys. Maria had given her the talk…she hadn’t spoken to her father for two weeks afterward…..but she was in the prepubescent shock and awe stage about sex. She was shocked that her parents would have had sex the first time to conceive her brother, and she was in awe that having done so an undoubtedly realized how ….EEEEWWWW…it was, that they had somehow nonetheless gotten over the revulsion enough to have sex a SECOND time to conceive her.
In any event, it hadn’t taken much effort from her parents to extract a promise from a prepubescent Joey who never expected it to happen that, should she ever…ever…ever think about having sex with a boy, she should get on the pill. And it had been pretty easy for Michael and Maria, in the aftermath of the senseless tragedy, to promise their ten year old daughter that if that ever happened she should just tell her mom that she thought it would be a good idea if she went on the pill and Maria would do it…with no anger, no yelling, no lectures. It had been an easy promise for them to make almost six years ago….they just hadn’t ever thought that Joey would take them up on it. Which if you stop to think of it, was the very purpose of such promises, to protect naïve parents and naïve daughters from their mutual ignorance.
As Andrew and Joey drove by them, Michael and Maria sat for awhile in stunned surprise.
“What are we going to do? What are you going to do, Maria?”
“I’m going to keep the promise we made. I’m going to call up the clinic and get an appointment for Joey.”
“Joey isn’t like Gabrielle, Maria. Joey would never commit suicide…she’d never do that. I know Joey better than that.”
“You know Joey? Did you know she was going to ask to be put on the pill tonight, Michael? Because if you did…it would have been real nice if you’d warned me. Then I might not have peed my pants.”
After that, not much was said for the next two hours on the drive south on 285 to Roswell.
Ahead in the Douglas’ car there wasn’t a lot of talking going on either. Joey had climbed in the passenger side. She had buckled in to the center seat, just so she could feel Andrew as she leaned up against him. Andrew could tell she was in a sort of somber mood, and although he could have connected, he knew she wanted to think on her own right now, so he didn’t. He wasn’t sure how much of a bad time her parents had given her about the champagne…or about them. He just wanted to see her happy again. He didn’t care about the bruises, he didn’t care about the blister on his butt, none of that was important. And he wasn’t embarrassed about a drunken Joey wanting him…if the truth be known, he was kind of flattered and his ‘victory’ in holding her off had been bittersweet at best. What he was afraid of was that she seemed depressed…almost morose. He surmised that things hadn’t gone all that well for the last hour or so. Maybe he could change the subject….get her mind off of her troubles.
“Well Joey….your birthday is in six weeks..... Have you decided what you’d like me to give you?” It was a rhetorical question, really. He’d already contacted his insurance company to add her to the policy, so she could drive his car. And he had a leather letterman’s jacket on order for her…with New Mexico State basketball champions on it. He was just trying to cheer her up.
Joey snuggled against his shoulder thinking. ‘Six weeks…. They said in 7th grade sex ed that you needed to be on them for one cycle before you were sure they’d work……that’d be about right.'
“I want you, Drew,” answered Joey.
“Well you already HAVE me, silly." said Andrew. "What do you want for a birthday gift from me?”
Joey turned her face toward his and looked up to him.
“No Drew..I really want you. I want you to make love to me on my birthday…”
Her brother Mark had told her that by the time you got to High School, people would be drinking alcohol, legal or not. Even before Michael had come back with the suitcases, she had started remembering the things she had done, the times she might have given away the secret. She remembered the phone call to the twins………they’d be giving her a hard time about that for decades…. And most of all she remembered what she had put Drew through. Not almost forcing him to do it….because she really did know his soul, and had certainly seen the state of his boxers. It was sweet of him to protect her virtue though, even against a drunken Joey. But she wasn’t foolish enough to believe he would have really objected all THAT much.
But she’d actually used her powers against him, which she found reprehensible. She’d damn near set fire to him. And even when she hadn’t been using her powers, she’d basically used him to practice every Judo throw she knew, in the middle of a hotel room full of furniture. He had been bruised and battered and hadn’t even fought back, just absorbing the punishment to keep anyone from finding out about the secret.
So Joey didn’t need an hour to contemplate the enormity of her sins. Before they’d even left the motel, she had made a vow to be more careful, to never let it happen again, never put her family or Andrew through that sort of a risk again.
So when her parents drove on in silence, she thought of other things. She thought of her talks with Andrea. She HAD gotten up yesterday morning, and Drew wasn’t there with her and she was likely going to get up tomorrow morning and Drew wouldn’t be with her either, but she was going to cherish the memory of waking up this morning and being spooned up against him for the rest of her life. And she decided that the fact that they couldn’t have everything…..well, it probably wasn’t a good reason to keep them from having what they COULD have. And in that silent car, looking out into the darkness, remembering the happiness she’d felt cuddled back into him, with his arm across her, she decided she needed that closeness, that she’d spent too many years as a brooding loner, that Andrew made her feel alive….he made her feel human, like no one else could.
An hour into the trip it finally happened.
“Dad….about what I did with Andrew….”
“People do lots of crazy things when they drink, Joey. Particularly if those people are part alien. That’s why you can’t drink.”
“But Dad…”
“No buts about it, Joey. As you get older there’s more and more alcohol around. When you get to college, it’s everywhere. What you did put your entire family at risk, your brother and parents, all your aunts and uncles, all your cousins…..everybody. You have to be more careful.”
At this time Maria butts in, to underline the lesson.
“We know you didn’t mean to do this, Joey. That you were just celebrating with your friends. But it frightened us. Have you any idea what would have happened if Andrew hadn’t been there…or if you’d been there with some other guy who cared less about you than Andrew did…or simply had less self control?”
“About Andrew, Mom…Dad…….”
“And that’s right, what about Andrew,” asked Michael. “Suppose the secret had gotten out, and it was found out that you’d healed him? You may not believe this but there are people who would take Andrew apart, just to see how you healed him, to see if they couldn’t find a way to do that. You were horribly irresponsible to drink anything without being very sure what it was, no matter who handed it to you. You just can’t do that, darling.”
“But about Andrew and me…. “
“Oh, I know. You made a fool of yourself, you set fire to him…, you’re embarrassed…and you deserve to be. Maybe before you take a drink of something next time you’ll think about that, think about what he had to endure to keep you safe. If you can’t be careful for yourself, at least you might think about being careful in the interest of the people that care about you.”
Joey shook her head sadly. They weren’t letting her make her point. “Mom….Dad….do you know what veritas in vino means?
“Yes Joey,” said Michael, who didn’t just read James Joyce. “It means there is truth in wine, that what you do when you are intoxicated is what you really want to do. But it doesn’t matter, Joey, because as much as you might want to show off your alien powers, we just can’t do that. It isn’t safe.”
Joey shook her head sadly, ‘Are my parents in denial, avoiding the subject, or being intentionally dense? It’s got to be one of those.’
“Mom, Dad…, am I grounded again?” she asked warily.
Michael and Maria looked back and forth at each other, convinced that they had made their point. Maria looked up at Michael, her eyes giving him permission to be the good guy this time….”
“Joey,” said Michael, “..there are crimes and there are mistakes. This was a mistake. We want you to learn from this mistake, and not make that mistake ever again. But it isn’t a crime. We aren’t going to punish you.”
Michael and Maria were both a little puzzled when Joey’s face didn’t really brighten appreciatively. Instead she looked out the window into the darkness. “Well, if I’m not grounded…..can you stop and let me ride back to Roswell with Andrew. I kind of need to speak with him.”
Maria put her hand on Michael’s forearm and the connection formed.
*I think we’ve driven the point home, Honey, no sense rubbing it in anymore than we have.*
*You’re probably right. Besides, she probably feels like she needs to apologize to the boy for all the damage that she did to him while she was drunk. Healing some of those visible bruises would probably be a good idea too. Let’s let her go see him.*
“OK Joey. We’ll pull over and let you ride back with him. I’m real glad we had this talk.”
As the car slowed, Joey was thinking to herself, ‘That wasn’t a talk, they didn’t let me talk about the most important part of what happened…’
When the car stopped, Andrew pulled the Douglas’ family car in behind them, wondering what the problem was. He saw Joey get out. She had almost closed the door, then apparently thinking of something more she needed to say to her parents, had opened it again to speak briefly, before coming back to get in to the Douglas car.
In the Guerin’s car, both Michael and Maria had been thinking they had handled that well as Joey had started to leave. She had looked troubled, and appropriately chastened, a little frustration clear on her face as she started to close the door. When she hesitated and reopened the door, they both looked up at their daughter, standing there looking back at them, nervously fingering the ring on the necklace. Both sat back in their seats slightly, in anticipation of a very sincere and heartfelt apology.
“Mom…..I think it might be a good idea if I was started on the pill…..”
The Guerins sat there in stunned shock as their daughter climbed into the car behind them. And they not only were stunned by the implications of what she had said, but by the words as well. Joey had invoked the Gabriella Peterson promise.
The strange thing was that Joey Guerin had never met Gabriella Peterson. Gabriella had been about two years older than Mark, and had attended the same elementary school. When Mark was in third grade Maria had been PTSA Vice President, and Myrna Peterson had been PTSA President. They had traveled in the same circles for the next two years, until Gabriella had gone on to Junior High School. Myrna and Maria would work on PTSA functions, even have lunch occasionally together. They had seen less of each other after Gabriella had gone on to Junior High, and by the time Mark was in Junior High, Gabriella was already a Freshman at West Roswell. Even so, Myrna and Maria would occasionally get together, and the families exchanged Christmas cards.
The problem had occurred the summer after Gabriella’s Freshman year. She was a cute young lady, one of the Freshmen cheerleaders, and selected to be a varsity cheerleader her Sophomore year. That summer she met a college student, who had gotten an internship with a national oil company. There were still oil fields operating East of Roswell, and the company had an office there. The college student, Maria had never learned his name, actually, let’s just call him Joe…, well Joe was between his Sophomore and Junior years at a prestigious Ivy League school, and he was selected for this internship in the Roswell office of the company. The company provided a small furnished apartment, and a pretty fair salary for an internship. Gabriella had a summer job at the same company, and they met. Gabriella had always aspired to living on the East Coast amongst the bright lights and excitement, and telling her about the life there is how their relationship started out.
One of Gabriella’s friends had warned her that a 21 year old college student might want a little more out of a relationship than a 16 year old high school girl was ready to give, but she hadn’t listened. Eventually, after seeing him for a month, he had indicated as much. He’d been drinking, and had given her a few drinks too. She was reluctant, but Joe assured her that he loved her deeply, he would never leave her, and nobody ever got pregnant their first time, even if no one had thought to bring protection. It would eventually turn out that all three of those statements were lies.
Gabriella apparently was in denial when she missed her first period, even her second. But when the third period was missed, she could deny it no longer. She made a tearful call to his fraternity at Harvard. Some one answered and took a message for Joe to call her. Three days and three more messages later, Joe eventually did call. Gabrielle had explained her condition, reminding Joe of what he had said…..Joe saw it differently now. He had told her he was sorry, but that girls who slept around…well, they were supposed to provide their own protection. But maybe, if she could have it done quickly while it was still fairly inexpensive, he could split the cost of the abortion with her.
Gabriella couldn’t believe it. She didn’t sleep for a week, afraid to tell her parents, but not really believing that Joe could possibly not love her. If only she could see him again. Gabrielle used her parents credit card, bought a ticket to Boston, and two days later was knocking on the fraternity door at Harvard, but Joe wasn’t there. He’d gone home to Connecticut for the three day weekend. Undeterred, she got his address and followed. Late that night the cab let her out at his door. The butler answered and when she asked for Joe, he ushered her in to the study. But it wasn’t Joe that came in to the study, it was Joe’s mother and father.
They explained to her that Joe wasn’t there, he was spending the weekend with the parents of his fiancé. She was also a junior in college, and had spent the summer in Europe while Joe was in Roswell. Her parents had known Joes parents for decades, they were both from appropriate old money families, and their engagement and ultimate marriage had been long planned. Joe had told them what had happened, that Gabrielle had practically forced herself on him when he’d been drinking, and Joe’s parents were not about to let Joe’s life be ruined by a summer fling with some round-heeled girl from Roswell New Mexico. They would give her money for an abortion, but the family lawyer would fight any other claim she made on them. She had left the estate in tears, and flown back to her parents.
Her parents had been upset about the credit card and the trip, but when they heard the reason …well all thought of that was forgotten. They talked to her for days, telling her basically that she was sixteen, she had her whole life ahead of her, and she needed to think clearly. Gabrielle had wanted to have the baby, naively hoping perhaps that Joe would come back to the two of them, once he came to his senses. They told her that wasn’t going to happen. A tearful Myrna admitted to Marie later that they pushed her…probably too hard, to have the abortion.
It took a few weeks to set it up, Myrna and Gabrielle flying out to where she could have a late-term abortion. On the taxi ride into the clinic for the procedure Gabrielle felt the baby kick for the first time…she wouldn’t tell Myrna about it for three months. Then she would tell her that she thought that it was her baby begging her mother not to do that….begging for its life. But in a few hours…it was over.
Except, it turned out, it really wasn’t over for Gabrielle. They returned home to Roswell and Gabrielle never really recovered. At first her physicians thought it was a post-partum sort of depression, from the sudden loss of the hormones of the pregnancy. They assured her parents she’d get over it. Later they prescribed antidepressants, in constantly increasing dosage. But it didn’t work. This went on for a year, and the treatment didn’t help, although in fairness, Gabrielle wasn’t taking all the medication the last few months, she was hoarding it. She got a refill of the medication a week early and took that months supply, and all she had hoarded, one year after the abortion. The note she left told her parents that she felt her baby calling to her…and wanted to be with it.
Michael and Maria had attended the funeral for the seventeen year old, and come home devastated. Fifteen year old Mark and ten year old Joey were in the living room, watching TV. Mark was called in and had the riot act read to him by Maria and Michael, telling him that if he ever…ever did anything like that to some little girl, they would disown him. He took it with good grace. He hadn’t been close to Gabrielle, but he knew her and knew the story. He understood why his parents were freaking. Ten year old Joey had never met the girl, had yet to have a period, and although she’d been favorably impressed by a kid she’d played soccer with the previous year, really had no interest in boys. Maria had given her the talk…she hadn’t spoken to her father for two weeks afterward…..but she was in the prepubescent shock and awe stage about sex. She was shocked that her parents would have had sex the first time to conceive her brother, and she was in awe that having done so an undoubtedly realized how ….EEEEWWWW…it was, that they had somehow nonetheless gotten over the revulsion enough to have sex a SECOND time to conceive her.
In any event, it hadn’t taken much effort from her parents to extract a promise from a prepubescent Joey who never expected it to happen that, should she ever…ever…ever think about having sex with a boy, she should get on the pill. And it had been pretty easy for Michael and Maria, in the aftermath of the senseless tragedy, to promise their ten year old daughter that if that ever happened she should just tell her mom that she thought it would be a good idea if she went on the pill and Maria would do it…with no anger, no yelling, no lectures. It had been an easy promise for them to make almost six years ago….they just hadn’t ever thought that Joey would take them up on it. Which if you stop to think of it, was the very purpose of such promises, to protect naïve parents and naïve daughters from their mutual ignorance.
As Andrew and Joey drove by them, Michael and Maria sat for awhile in stunned surprise.
“What are we going to do? What are you going to do, Maria?”
“I’m going to keep the promise we made. I’m going to call up the clinic and get an appointment for Joey.”
“Joey isn’t like Gabrielle, Maria. Joey would never commit suicide…she’d never do that. I know Joey better than that.”
“You know Joey? Did you know she was going to ask to be put on the pill tonight, Michael? Because if you did…it would have been real nice if you’d warned me. Then I might not have peed my pants.”
After that, not much was said for the next two hours on the drive south on 285 to Roswell.
Ahead in the Douglas’ car there wasn’t a lot of talking going on either. Joey had climbed in the passenger side. She had buckled in to the center seat, just so she could feel Andrew as she leaned up against him. Andrew could tell she was in a sort of somber mood, and although he could have connected, he knew she wanted to think on her own right now, so he didn’t. He wasn’t sure how much of a bad time her parents had given her about the champagne…or about them. He just wanted to see her happy again. He didn’t care about the bruises, he didn’t care about the blister on his butt, none of that was important. And he wasn’t embarrassed about a drunken Joey wanting him…if the truth be known, he was kind of flattered and his ‘victory’ in holding her off had been bittersweet at best. What he was afraid of was that she seemed depressed…almost morose. He surmised that things hadn’t gone all that well for the last hour or so. Maybe he could change the subject….get her mind off of her troubles.
“Well Joey….your birthday is in six weeks..... Have you decided what you’d like me to give you?” It was a rhetorical question, really. He’d already contacted his insurance company to add her to the policy, so she could drive his car. And he had a leather letterman’s jacket on order for her…with New Mexico State basketball champions on it. He was just trying to cheer her up.
Joey snuggled against his shoulder thinking. ‘Six weeks…. They said in 7th grade sex ed that you needed to be on them for one cycle before you were sure they’d work……that’d be about right.'
“I want you, Drew,” answered Joey.
“Well you already HAVE me, silly." said Andrew. "What do you want for a birthday gift from me?”
Joey turned her face toward his and looked up to him.
“No Drew..I really want you. I want you to make love to me on my birthday…”
Last edited by greywolf on Fri Dec 01, 2006 5:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.
So at 5AM there were four people heading south on 285 toward Roswell. It might be interesting to examine what is going on inside the heads of each one, because neither of them is speaking right now. In fact, one of them is sound asleep. Let’s talk about her first.
Joey was incapable of NOT loving her parents. They were, after all, not just her parents, but pretty damn good ones. And she’d be the first to admit it.
But she was certainly capable of being vexed with them, and she had really BEEN vexed with them. OK, she’d screwed up on the champagne, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. But it had been a pretty impressive lesson, and she’d learned it quickly. Carping on it like they had done, particularly to the exclusion of what she really wanted to talk about……well, they should have known better, should have been a little bit more considerate of Joey Guerin.
She knew that they were going to be uncomfortable talking about sex with her….but it wasn’t like she wasn’t pretty damn nervous talking with them about it either. And she’d tried….four times she had tried. And it wasn’t just that they had kept chewing her out about the damn champagne, either. They knew she was trying to talk to them about her and Andrew, they knew it was taking everything she had to overcome her embarrassment to have such a conversation, and they dodged it four times. She didn’t care if they were embarrassed….didn’t they realize how embarrassed she was? She’d tried her best, embarrassing as it would have been, to have a meaningful dialogue with her folks about how fast and how far her feelings had come…..to get some of that guidance that parents always wanted to give you. But they’d dodged it. OK, so that left it up to Joey. She could deal with that.
The big thing for Joey had always been deciding what the right thing to do was. Actually doing it, ...well...... emotionally that was easier, even if it was the hard part technically. When she’d kidnapped Drew, the hard part had been really the decision to do it….to decide that the boy she’d only wished was hers……well, she wasn’t going to let him be paralyzed for life. Once the decision was made, well…the rest was just execution. The hard part wasn’t duct-taping a couple of paramedics to fence posts, the hard part was deciding that brooding loner or not, you weren’t going to give up your only dream. So Joey had finally made her decision. Andrew was hers, she was his, end of story. The rest was only details, and Joey was rather good at handling details.
She really didn’t think her father or mother would take out their disagreements with her on Andrew, but it didn’t hurt to play it safe. She would have been ready to be his tonight, but it’d be legal for her to consent in six weeks. This wasn’t mindless teenage hormones at work, this was forever. She could wait six weeks. So once the decision was made, once she’d told Andrew what she wanted…..well, it was going to happen. They were soul mates, they’d been joined in the connection dozens of times, more intimate in its own way than most couples would ever get with one another. So having done all that, Joey was actually quite at ease. In fact, she had still only had three hours sleep in the past two days, and had played two hard basketball games in that time. Not to mention wrestling with Drew.
So she leaned against him, let her nostrils fill with the scent of him, let her mind feel his presence hovering on the edge of connection, let her body relax against his, and …..she simply went to sleep. It wasn’t quite like spooning against him 2 hours previously, but it was certainly something a girl could get used to……and she intended to do just that. She was resting peacefully, a tired little smile on her face, her head on his shoulder.
At the other end of the spectrum were Michael and Maria Guerin. Both of them had now realized they’d screwed up bad…but let’s take Michael first.
Michael was kicking himself mentally, because he couldn’t remember when he’d fouled something up so bad. Of the two issues that had screamed for discussion with his daughter, he knew he’d chosen the less important one, solely because he was far more comfortable discussing it. It was easy…and comfortable….to play the parental font of all wisdom about the champagne. And it wasn’t that the champagne wasn’t important, it was. But he’d seen her repairing the graffiti, he knew before she’d even gotten in the car that she’d already gotten the message about the alcohol and what it might have done. But by overemphasizing the alcohol, he had felt somehow that would make up for saying nothing about the other issue…the one he was far less comfortable dealing with. In a way, it was simple dereliction of duty.
Michael knew that if the roles had been reversed...if he had come to room 118 and found a bruised and battered…the burn arguably was a simple accident….Joey Guerin….if he’d found that she’d been manhandled by Andrew Douglas for 90 minutes trying to persuade her to have sex with him…..they wouldn’t have found enough of Andrew Douglas to bury. It wouldn’t have mattered that he was engaged to Joey, wouldn’t have mattered if he were drunk. Not to the Law….and most certainly not to Michael Guerin. And he knew that.
That issue should have been the subject, and Joey had tried to make it the subject….four times. And Michael had known…each time,,,that she was attempting to make it the subject. But he’d dodged it. He had been frightened to death to discuss that with his daughter, because the issue was nowhere near as cut and dried as telling her not to get drunk and put herself at risk. Michael hadn’t been sure he would have a good answer, so he’d ducked the question…four times. And he knew he had. It was hard for him to think of his princess as a sexual animal, but he knew better. She wasn’t wearing Andrew’s engagement ring just because she wanted someone to go running with in the morning.
He wished he could blame Andrew somehow for this, but he knew he couldn’t. Andrew had taken a beating, both to keep Joey safe, and to stop her from doing anything with him while intoxicated, however much he would have enjoyed it personally. The boy…no, the young man…hadn’t given her the engagement ring to get a morning running partner either. But even that….how long had he and Maria been going together….doing it…before they were even engaged? Nope, Michael was not about to throw the first stone at Andrew….or Joey either, if it came to that. Besides, he really did like Andrew, thought he’d been good for Joey. Too bad he couldn’t go off on a three year tour in the Navy, though….spend the whole time on a submarine….submerged. If Joey wanted to give him a real welcome when he returned…when she was almost nineteen, well…it’d bother Michael then too, but probably a whole lot less.
So Michael was going to spend about 140 miles kicking himself for how he handled this, and use most of that time figuring out how he could bend the rules on the Gabrielle Peterson promise to try to have the talk with his daughter that she’d tried to have with them earlier….and hoping it wasn’t too late. He feared he’d burned his bridges behind him on this issue with Joey.
Maria was almost as frightened, and certainly as remorseful as Michael. Maria, in fact, had kind of felt like she had failed Joey for the last six or seven years. Joey really had been a loner, had never had even a single close friend other than her brother and her cousins. Maria had Liz as a friend, for most of her childhood and Alex until his death. But Joey had not only not had close friends like these, but really hadn’t had any human friends at all, until she had saved Andrew. And it was only after that when Joey had seemed to blossom. It had been great seeing Joey wear something other than Adidas, Levis, and a sweatshirt to school. It had been great taking Joey buying girl stuff with Barbara Douglas. And when Joey had repeatedly tried to bring up what had happened…and what had NEARLY happened…between her and Andrew while she was drunk….well, Maria knew she’d dodged it…just like Michael had. And Maria knew why. Maria hated hypocrites….always had, but if she’d gotten in to that conversation….she knew she’d have lied to Joey, either lied or had to admit that she had done some of the very things that she didn’t want Joey to do, which was yet another way of being a hypocrite.
Misunderstandings caused by Barbara Douglas aside, the kids had been pretty honest with their folks about everything going on between them. You couldn’t say that about a teenage Maria DeLuca. Heck, Amy Valenti still didn’t know all the things she and Michael had been involved in, before they got married. The first time she knew for sure her daughter wasn’t a virgin was when she read about it Liz’s journal……months after they had run off after graduation, hiding from the special unit…….and oh yes, the guy Maria is sleeping with is an alien. That must have been an interesting day for her mom, thank goodness she’d been in Junction City Colorado when her mother got THAT news.
Andrew had committed to Joey. The boy had gotten his ring on her finger before either Michael or Maria had even imagined it might happen. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love her Spaceboy, but it had taken Maria telling him that she intended to bear his child, married or not, to get him to pop the question…and eventually go through with it.
Hell, the first time a teenage Maria had slept with Michael she’d done so thinking that the clock was ticking, he’d be on the granolith and gone forever within a day…and he almost had been. And it even ran in the family. Maria’s dad had dropped her and Amy like your proverbial hot rocks when Maria was young. By comparison, Andrew and Joey were open, honest, and committed.
So what could she say? Don’t do as I do, do as I say, had never worked with teenagers….never would. So she ‘d ducked it….and let Michael duck it….and by ducking the issue, she’d lost the ability to even give Joey a sounding board for her own ideas, much less the advantage of her mother’s experience.
Oh, Maria was going to try to talk to her…try to have that conversation that she had ducked those four times. And she’d bend the rules on the promise she’d given Joey as much as she could to have that talk.
But the look in Joey’s eyes as she’d closed the car door….well, it looked as if those eyes might be telling them that, well…that opportunity was forever lost.
Actually, Andrew was handling it pretty well. Sure, he’d gotten lost in thought a couple of times and gotten a tire up on the rumble strip alongside the shoulder once or twice, and the left tires on the raised dimples that marked the center line too, for that matter. But this was New Mexico, the wide open spaces, the traffic was almost non-existent, the road was mostly straight and flat and his thoughts…and imagination…had been most distracting.
But largely, he was at ease with the issue. Five hours ago he had pretty much resigned himself to this happening, with the added issues of not really knowing if Joey were actually willing or just drunk out of her mind, and the fact that Michael and Maria were going to be showing up momentarily.
And he had decided at that time that he loved Joey and Joey loved him, and they’d get through it somehow. This new situation, and since she was certainly sober and unquestionably willing, he would certainly not define it as a problem, was sufficiently far in the future that it would be amenable to some fine-tuning if not some wholesale changes.
But in the end, it still didn’t matter, because Andrew couldn’t even visualize a life without Joey. They’d take each day as it came, and eventually it would work out, because he was confident that Joey was his destiny…..be it five hours ago, or 42 days from now, he couldn’t fear any part of his life with her.
In fact, driving through the middle of nowhere south on 285 with her head on his shoulder,,,,,her sleeping quietly…….damn….life was so good…….how could he be anything but happy?
Joey was incapable of NOT loving her parents. They were, after all, not just her parents, but pretty damn good ones. And she’d be the first to admit it.
But she was certainly capable of being vexed with them, and she had really BEEN vexed with them. OK, she’d screwed up on the champagne, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. But it had been a pretty impressive lesson, and she’d learned it quickly. Carping on it like they had done, particularly to the exclusion of what she really wanted to talk about……well, they should have known better, should have been a little bit more considerate of Joey Guerin.
She knew that they were going to be uncomfortable talking about sex with her….but it wasn’t like she wasn’t pretty damn nervous talking with them about it either. And she’d tried….four times she had tried. And it wasn’t just that they had kept chewing her out about the damn champagne, either. They knew she was trying to talk to them about her and Andrew, they knew it was taking everything she had to overcome her embarrassment to have such a conversation, and they dodged it four times. She didn’t care if they were embarrassed….didn’t they realize how embarrassed she was? She’d tried her best, embarrassing as it would have been, to have a meaningful dialogue with her folks about how fast and how far her feelings had come…..to get some of that guidance that parents always wanted to give you. But they’d dodged it. OK, so that left it up to Joey. She could deal with that.
The big thing for Joey had always been deciding what the right thing to do was. Actually doing it, ...well...... emotionally that was easier, even if it was the hard part technically. When she’d kidnapped Drew, the hard part had been really the decision to do it….to decide that the boy she’d only wished was hers……well, she wasn’t going to let him be paralyzed for life. Once the decision was made, well…the rest was just execution. The hard part wasn’t duct-taping a couple of paramedics to fence posts, the hard part was deciding that brooding loner or not, you weren’t going to give up your only dream. So Joey had finally made her decision. Andrew was hers, she was his, end of story. The rest was only details, and Joey was rather good at handling details.
She really didn’t think her father or mother would take out their disagreements with her on Andrew, but it didn’t hurt to play it safe. She would have been ready to be his tonight, but it’d be legal for her to consent in six weeks. This wasn’t mindless teenage hormones at work, this was forever. She could wait six weeks. So once the decision was made, once she’d told Andrew what she wanted…..well, it was going to happen. They were soul mates, they’d been joined in the connection dozens of times, more intimate in its own way than most couples would ever get with one another. So having done all that, Joey was actually quite at ease. In fact, she had still only had three hours sleep in the past two days, and had played two hard basketball games in that time. Not to mention wrestling with Drew.
So she leaned against him, let her nostrils fill with the scent of him, let her mind feel his presence hovering on the edge of connection, let her body relax against his, and …..she simply went to sleep. It wasn’t quite like spooning against him 2 hours previously, but it was certainly something a girl could get used to……and she intended to do just that. She was resting peacefully, a tired little smile on her face, her head on his shoulder.
At the other end of the spectrum were Michael and Maria Guerin. Both of them had now realized they’d screwed up bad…but let’s take Michael first.
Michael was kicking himself mentally, because he couldn’t remember when he’d fouled something up so bad. Of the two issues that had screamed for discussion with his daughter, he knew he’d chosen the less important one, solely because he was far more comfortable discussing it. It was easy…and comfortable….to play the parental font of all wisdom about the champagne. And it wasn’t that the champagne wasn’t important, it was. But he’d seen her repairing the graffiti, he knew before she’d even gotten in the car that she’d already gotten the message about the alcohol and what it might have done. But by overemphasizing the alcohol, he had felt somehow that would make up for saying nothing about the other issue…the one he was far less comfortable dealing with. In a way, it was simple dereliction of duty.
Michael knew that if the roles had been reversed...if he had come to room 118 and found a bruised and battered…the burn arguably was a simple accident….Joey Guerin….if he’d found that she’d been manhandled by Andrew Douglas for 90 minutes trying to persuade her to have sex with him…..they wouldn’t have found enough of Andrew Douglas to bury. It wouldn’t have mattered that he was engaged to Joey, wouldn’t have mattered if he were drunk. Not to the Law….and most certainly not to Michael Guerin. And he knew that.
That issue should have been the subject, and Joey had tried to make it the subject….four times. And Michael had known…each time,,,that she was attempting to make it the subject. But he’d dodged it. He had been frightened to death to discuss that with his daughter, because the issue was nowhere near as cut and dried as telling her not to get drunk and put herself at risk. Michael hadn’t been sure he would have a good answer, so he’d ducked the question…four times. And he knew he had. It was hard for him to think of his princess as a sexual animal, but he knew better. She wasn’t wearing Andrew’s engagement ring just because she wanted someone to go running with in the morning.
He wished he could blame Andrew somehow for this, but he knew he couldn’t. Andrew had taken a beating, both to keep Joey safe, and to stop her from doing anything with him while intoxicated, however much he would have enjoyed it personally. The boy…no, the young man…hadn’t given her the engagement ring to get a morning running partner either. But even that….how long had he and Maria been going together….doing it…before they were even engaged? Nope, Michael was not about to throw the first stone at Andrew….or Joey either, if it came to that. Besides, he really did like Andrew, thought he’d been good for Joey. Too bad he couldn’t go off on a three year tour in the Navy, though….spend the whole time on a submarine….submerged. If Joey wanted to give him a real welcome when he returned…when she was almost nineteen, well…it’d bother Michael then too, but probably a whole lot less.
So Michael was going to spend about 140 miles kicking himself for how he handled this, and use most of that time figuring out how he could bend the rules on the Gabrielle Peterson promise to try to have the talk with his daughter that she’d tried to have with them earlier….and hoping it wasn’t too late. He feared he’d burned his bridges behind him on this issue with Joey.
Maria was almost as frightened, and certainly as remorseful as Michael. Maria, in fact, had kind of felt like she had failed Joey for the last six or seven years. Joey really had been a loner, had never had even a single close friend other than her brother and her cousins. Maria had Liz as a friend, for most of her childhood and Alex until his death. But Joey had not only not had close friends like these, but really hadn’t had any human friends at all, until she had saved Andrew. And it was only after that when Joey had seemed to blossom. It had been great seeing Joey wear something other than Adidas, Levis, and a sweatshirt to school. It had been great taking Joey buying girl stuff with Barbara Douglas. And when Joey had repeatedly tried to bring up what had happened…and what had NEARLY happened…between her and Andrew while she was drunk….well, Maria knew she’d dodged it…just like Michael had. And Maria knew why. Maria hated hypocrites….always had, but if she’d gotten in to that conversation….she knew she’d have lied to Joey, either lied or had to admit that she had done some of the very things that she didn’t want Joey to do, which was yet another way of being a hypocrite.
Misunderstandings caused by Barbara Douglas aside, the kids had been pretty honest with their folks about everything going on between them. You couldn’t say that about a teenage Maria DeLuca. Heck, Amy Valenti still didn’t know all the things she and Michael had been involved in, before they got married. The first time she knew for sure her daughter wasn’t a virgin was when she read about it Liz’s journal……months after they had run off after graduation, hiding from the special unit…….and oh yes, the guy Maria is sleeping with is an alien. That must have been an interesting day for her mom, thank goodness she’d been in Junction City Colorado when her mother got THAT news.
Andrew had committed to Joey. The boy had gotten his ring on her finger before either Michael or Maria had even imagined it might happen. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love her Spaceboy, but it had taken Maria telling him that she intended to bear his child, married or not, to get him to pop the question…and eventually go through with it.
Hell, the first time a teenage Maria had slept with Michael she’d done so thinking that the clock was ticking, he’d be on the granolith and gone forever within a day…and he almost had been. And it even ran in the family. Maria’s dad had dropped her and Amy like your proverbial hot rocks when Maria was young. By comparison, Andrew and Joey were open, honest, and committed.
So what could she say? Don’t do as I do, do as I say, had never worked with teenagers….never would. So she ‘d ducked it….and let Michael duck it….and by ducking the issue, she’d lost the ability to even give Joey a sounding board for her own ideas, much less the advantage of her mother’s experience.
Oh, Maria was going to try to talk to her…try to have that conversation that she had ducked those four times. And she’d bend the rules on the promise she’d given Joey as much as she could to have that talk.
But the look in Joey’s eyes as she’d closed the car door….well, it looked as if those eyes might be telling them that, well…that opportunity was forever lost.
Actually, Andrew was handling it pretty well. Sure, he’d gotten lost in thought a couple of times and gotten a tire up on the rumble strip alongside the shoulder once or twice, and the left tires on the raised dimples that marked the center line too, for that matter. But this was New Mexico, the wide open spaces, the traffic was almost non-existent, the road was mostly straight and flat and his thoughts…and imagination…had been most distracting.
But largely, he was at ease with the issue. Five hours ago he had pretty much resigned himself to this happening, with the added issues of not really knowing if Joey were actually willing or just drunk out of her mind, and the fact that Michael and Maria were going to be showing up momentarily.
And he had decided at that time that he loved Joey and Joey loved him, and they’d get through it somehow. This new situation, and since she was certainly sober and unquestionably willing, he would certainly not define it as a problem, was sufficiently far in the future that it would be amenable to some fine-tuning if not some wholesale changes.
But in the end, it still didn’t matter, because Andrew couldn’t even visualize a life without Joey. They’d take each day as it came, and eventually it would work out, because he was confident that Joey was his destiny…..be it five hours ago, or 42 days from now, he couldn’t fear any part of his life with her.
In fact, driving through the middle of nowhere south on 285 with her head on his shoulder,,,,,her sleeping quietly…….damn….life was so good…….how could he be anything but happy?