This is the second of five chapters. I recommend reading the first one before you undertake this one.
*
Jenny and I spent the next several days being angry with each other. We stopped touching each other. We avoided each other; we didn't even walk to or from school together. We spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary. And I, at least, was surprised at how often "necessary" aroseānot least when we had to share the table with Mom and Dad at meals. We were too civilized to hurt each other physically, but there were times when I wanted to injure her, and I'm sure that there were times that she wanted to do the same, or worse, to me.
We'd had multi-day fights beforeātimes when we weren't speaking to each other. And, however much we tried to hide our rancor, our parents knew when they were living between the trenches, in no-man's land. But they'd told us, a few years earlier, that they figured that we had grown up enough to work things out between ourselves, and they would no longer intervene. That, I think, was some of ProfessorĀ Mom's psychology. And, naturally, ProfessorĀ Dad was philosophical about it.
They did require, though, that we behave in a civil fashion when anyone else was aroundāno matter how much we currently hated each other. We didn't have to speak to each other, or even acknowledge the other's presenceābut if we did either in other people's presence, we were to do so politely. If we broke that rule, they told us, they would see to it that we wished we hadn't. And we believed that.
Her anger with me didn't keep Jenny from jilling herself off during that period. In fact, she did so more frequently than had been her habitāfive times during the ensuing week. Nor did my anger with her keep me from listening to her pleas to be fucked harder, when they came through our wall, along with her moans, right after bedtime. She'd moaned that way when we'd fucked. And I knew, now, what her pussy felt like when we put my cock into it, so her moaning now evoked memories that excited me even more. In consequence, my anger with her didn't stop me from jacking off to her moans and pleas. And it certainly didn't stop me from thinking about fucking her again.
On some level, I recognized that the two of us were being childish. But one of the symptoms of childishness is refusal to take any steps toward altering your behavior. If we had acted more like the adults we weren't, we would have controlled ourselves, talked things through together with some semblance of calmness, and come to an adult resolution. But our childish impulses prevented us from doing that. Neither of us was willing to overcome our anger long enough to listen, let alone to talk rationally, to the other.
At the very least, if we had behaved in any way like adults, we would have ignored each other long enough for our anger to weaken. Then our childishness would have run its course, and we would have reconciled ourselves with each other and with what we had done. Though we were the same age, Jenny was the more mature. She proved it by beginning to moderate her attitude toward me. But no sooner did she do so, than I found a way to be even more childish. And I made things worse.
It was a week after that ill-starred fuck, and Jenny had gotten home from school a bit before I had that afternoon. When I got home, she'd already gone upstairs to change clothes. I left my pack by the front door and went through the living room, headed for the kitchen, looking for food. Our parents wouldn't be home for a couple of hours.
As I approached the couch, I saw that she'd left her pack on it, open. A bundle of papers inside it, folded vertically up the center, caught my eye. The paper on the outside of that folded bundle was seriously marked up with red pencil.
"What's this?" I said to myself, and I reached in and extracted the papers. I took them into the kitchen with me and, as I made myself a jelly sandwich, I examined them more carefully. It was Jenny's latest Spanish test; she'd gotten a 52 on it. The minimum passing score, school-wide, was 65, so this was a definite
F,
if ever I'd seen one. If either of our parental units found out about this test score, Jenny would be grounded until she was thirty! Maybe longer.
I smiled a vicious little smile in my heart. "Sweet!" I muttered to myself. "It's payback time!" She had made me want to fuck her, and then she'd made me pay her a lot of money to do so. I was still pissed off at that. I hadn't accepted any responsibility for the tension between us; all of the blame, I thought, belonged to her.
As I finished eating the sandwich, I took the exam back into the living room, Jenny was sitting on the couch near her pack, about to turn the TV on. She looked and, for the first time in days, smiled at meāsmiled prettily, in fact. "Hi, Jerry," she said. It was a peace offering, which I was about to reject in no uncertain terms. And, referring to the paper in my hand, she asked, "Whatcha got there?"
I smiled back at her, not prettily at all. "Oh, just something very interesting," I answered. And I held it up so that she could see what I had.
She blanched. I'd never seen that happen to anyone before. Her face went dead white, and it looked like she was about to fall over.
"Oh, Jesus!" she breathed. "My Spanish test! Give it back!" She reached out for it, and I moved it around behind my back, out of her reach.
"I don't knowā¦" I began. I paused for effect. Then I continued, "I think Mom and Dad should know about this."
Terror flitted across her face. "NO!" she almost shrieked. "You can't tell them! They'll ground me forever! I'll miss Karen's party on Friday! I have to go to that party!"
I rubbed it in. "This is pretty serious," I offered. "It's an
F
, you know."
"It was a bad day!" She was almost sobbing. "It was the day after⦠after⦠you know⦠After we fucked. I wasn't myself! I'll do better from now on. I promise! You can't tell them. I can't even tell them why I did so badly that day. Please! Give it back to me!"
I was intent on making her hurt. "You took a lot of my money last week, and now you want me to be nice to you." I paused and looked meaningfully at her.