Chapter Twenty-Two
posted in Novel |
Here’s the continuation of the previous Chapter of Lost and Found.
This will be it for the rest of the year for new Chapters of this book. I’ll get back with new posts after the holidays. While there will be some computer time in my life over the holidays, it will be used primarily to keep emails cleaned up. If you’ve fallen behind, this would be a good time to catch up.
I hope each of you and your families have a fabulous holiday season. Here’s a Christmas Card I’d like to share with you from Ashland University. I received this from one of my friends, and now it’s time to pay it forward.
Ashland Holiday Card
Be well — Be in Peace,
Ron Rink
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I went down the stairs and saw how much their basement looked like a regular room in a house. It certainly wasn’t anything like my dark, gloomy basement with its plain old cement floor and walls.
The Gross’ basement was brightly lit, the floor was covered in nice linoleum with some rugs scattered about, and the walls had knotty pine wood on them. There were two easy chairs, a davenport, and an area over to one side that had a counter with tall stools in front of it. The ping-pong table was near the counter. I walked over to the counter and could see it had a sink on the other side of it, along with some shelves on the wall behind it which held some bottles. I had seen some of the people who worked at the track with bottles like these when they were hiding out and getting drunk.
The ping-pong paddles were on the table and there was a ping-pong ball under one of them. Joanne followed me over and picked up the other paddle and said, “Go ahead, serve!”
I hit the ball, she hit it back and I missed it completely. I laughed as I picked up the ball and tried again. I played poorly at first but began to get the hang of it after a few minutes. Joanne was much better at this than she had let on. She never missed a ball as we laughed and played. We didn’t keep score—we just kept volleying and laughing at my mistakes while I kept joking around and complaining about how I was the only one who had to go chasing after the ball.
After about a half hour, we decided to play jacks. She got out a box which had a ball and the jacks in it. We sat down across from each other on the floor. Since I had lied to her about having played this game before, I told her to go first so I could see how to play.
She said, “Onesies first”, then took all the jacks in one hand and scattered them in front of her. She then took the little rubber ball, tossed it up with her right hand, picked up a jack with the same hand and after the ball had bounced once, caught it again with her right hand. She transferred the jack to her left hand and continued until she had all the jacks in her left hand.
Next, Joanne scattered the jacks again and called out “Twosies”. She proceeded to do the same thing she had already done, except this time she picked up two jacks at a time.
As I was watching her do this, I noticed since she was sitting cross-legged, I could see all the way up between her legs because the skirt she was wearing had ridden up quite high on her thighs. I was suddenly finding it very hard to watch how she played jacks—I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off this view of underpants I had never seen this close up before. I guess there were a couple of times where I had seen girl’s underpants at school, but that was only for a split-second. Here, I was getting a good, long look and it was making me feel strange—sort of like I had to pee.
“I think I have to pee,” I said, “Where’s your bathroom?”
“It’s right over there on the other side of the basement,” she answered.
After I finished, I came back into the room where Joanne was still playing with the jacks. I had every intention of telling her I had to go when she said, “I got all the way up to foursies when I missed, so it’s your turn.”
She was handing me the jacks and the ball as I sat down again when she giggled and said, “I saw my brother’s pee-thing once when he didn’t know it. Can I see yours?”
I let out a huge gasp! There I was, sitting on the floor with a girl who is older than me, looking at her underpants, and she wants to see my thing! I was in a total state of shock. I was speechless. I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. All I could seem to manage was to sit there staring up her skirt with my mouth hanging open.
I wanted to stop looking where I was looking. I wanted to play jacks. I wanted to play some more ping-pong. I wanted to get on my bike and ride out of there. I wanted to stop feeling the way I was feeling.
However, despite all this exciting shock, I knew that somewhere in the recesses of my nine-year old brain I wanted to see hers too.
“Can I see it?” she asked again.
She looked at me and saw where I was looking.
“C’mon, let me see yours. If you do I’ll let you see mine,” she coaxed.
I felt like I had to pee again, my stomach was doing flip-flops, and I could feel my face getting hot. I quickly mumbled, “If you show me yours first, I’ll show you mine.”
I figured such a challenge would probably stop her and I could get out of there and back on my bike. Even though I liked hanging around the racetrack, the thought of being there rather than where I was at this moment was more than extremely enticing.
Then she threw me a curve—she stood up and showed me hers!
At first, all I could do was sit there cross-legged on the floor with my mouth hanging open. My mind was racing along at a hundred miles an hour as I gaped wide-eyed at her. I had no idea what a girl looked like there. I was amazed, excited and very nervous. I didn’t want to show her mine, but I also didn’t want to stop looking at hers, so I stood up and showed her mine.
Just as I was getting ready to pull up my pants and get out of there, she said, “Can I touch it?”
Now I really wanted to run. I wanted to be so far away from there, while at the same time I didn’t want to leave. I really didn’t want her to touch it, but I did. I also wanted to touch hers but was much too afraid to ask.
Then I saw her hand reaching toward me. I watched and at the same time saw my hand reaching toward her. We touched—we giggled—we both turned beet red—our eyes lowered in embarrassment as we quickly pulled our pants back up and covered ourselves.
“I should probably go now,” I said looking at the floor, “but maybe we can play jacks again sometime, okay?”
Joanne kept her eyes down and wouldn’t look at me but I could see that she was smiling as she responded, “Yeah, okay. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Sure, tomorrow’s fine. When do your parent’s and brother leave for the store?”
“About eight o’clock.”
“Okay, I’ll come over and call you,” I said as I climbed the stairs, went out the door, got on my bike and rode unsteadily up the street. I felt more grown up as I rode away. I wished I had someone I could tell about this experience, but all the guys I knew were older and would probably just laugh.
I knew I wanted to go back the next day, but even as I thought about it, I wondered if I would.
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