Saturday promised to become one of the most important days in my life. Chris suggested going on a picnic together and then, in the evening, watching the city lights from the hill. Romantically-minded girls named the peak “Edward’s cliff” in honor of the main Twilight character, while boys simply called it the “humping hill”.
This was the exact spot where the majority of the kids from our school were losing their virginity. The place was perfectly suited for this occasion. The high elevation offered a picturesque view of the city that, as the dark descended, turned into thousands of multicolored lights resembling Christmas garlands on a tree. And most importantly, there were a lot of hidden places among the trees, where kids could park their cars without fear of being caught in the act.
I wasn't sure if I was ready to say goodbye to my innocence… but all these last days Chris had been so sweet. In the end, I agreed to go on a picnic and decided to think about everything else on the spot. I'm sure if I don't want to, Chris won't insist. Unlike the vast majority of boys in our school, he is a real gentleman.
When Chris arrived at my house, I was already standing in the driveway with a picnic basket in my hands. He got out of the car, opened the passenger door for me, and helped me to get in.
“Here. The strongest protection that was in the pharmacy,” he said, handing me a tube of sunscreen, “I don't want you to turn into a grilled chicken again.”
I told you that he’s the sweetest! Indeed, last weekend I was badly sunburned, even though I was outside for no more than 15 minutes. This had never happened to me before. Probably, this is another trick of puberty. Mom said that at my age, her hormones also went crazy.
I took the sunscreen and kissed Chris on the cheek in gratitude.
“You know a dress once a year won't kill you,” he added after examining my outfit.
I took a quick look at my Metallica T-shirt and ripped jeans and replied, “If you like dresses so much, why don’t you wear them? I'm sure your legs will look great.”
Chris responded with a slight smile and hit the gas. Twenty minutes later the last pretty white house of our suburb disappeared. A beautiful landscape with green meadows and slender trees stretched out on either side of the road. A couple of miles later, I pointed at a nice clearing to our right. Chris turned off the highway and parked away from the road so that the passing cars wouldn’t interrupt our time together.
I grabbed the basket from the back seat and started arranging our picnic. I took out sandwiches, a meat and cheese platter, a fruit platter, and a thermos flask with iced tea and put them on a red and white striped picnic blanket. Everything was very classy – even the plates and forks were real, not disposable. At that moment, I felt like a character from classic Victorian literature – I’d never heard of my peers having such a proper, grown-up picnic. Even when kids from our school ever did go out in the open, they usually took only beer and chips.
To create a proper atmosphere, Chris went to the car and turned on a romantic playlist that he had specially prepared for this occasion. At the beginning, I ate very little like a real lady. The first half-hour I tortured a single, poor sandwich, biting off bits not larger than a nickel. But then I snapped. For several days already, I'd been tormented by that strange feeling of hunger that I couldn’t dull with anything. This damned hunger-thirst even prevented me from sleeping at night. So in the next ten minutes, I managed to eat the rest of the food except for the fruit plate.
Chris saw the last slice of salami disappear in my mouth and smiled. I looked around and realized that there was no food left. “Oh, sorry. Seems like I’ve eaten everything. Are you hungry?”
“It’s ok, don’t worry! I had a snack at home. Since when do you have such a huge appetite?”
“A week, I guess. Dad says it’s because of puberty – enhanced growth and all.”
“It also could be worms,” Chris smiled slyly.
“Shut up! You have worms!” I smiled, picked off one grape from the bunch, and threw it at him. Chris pulled an angry face and threw another grape at me.
“Hey! Don’t waste food! We don’t have much left!” I replied.
“And whose fault is that?” Chris laughed.
“Must be yours! I ate almost nothing – just two slices of salami.”
“The audacity!” Chris’s face expressed feigned indignation.
And then he threw the remainder of his sandwich at my face! It bumped against my nose, and, without inflicting any noticeable harm, fell on the picnic blanket.
“That’s it! Now you've done it!”
I went down on all fours and fixed my eyes on him unblinkingly, like a lion before a decisive jump. He also stared at me in response. Tension hung in the air and the stare-down began. Chris made a feigned dash, but I didn’t fall for it and remained standing still. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and rushed at him, knocking him down on the blanket.
Chris placed his hand on my neck and pulled me closer. We started kissing. It was wonderful! After, as it seemed to me, a hundred billion years of bliss, Chris moved away from my lips and brought me to my back next to him. We were lying sprawled on the blanket and looking up into the sky. It was very beautiful. Light and blue, with just one small and puffy cloud, slowly crawling along its illimitable space.
“Have you already thought of what you’ll do next?” Chris asked.
“Well, you wanted to go to Edward’s cliff, didn’t you?”
“No, I don’t mean today, I mean in your life.”
“Well, it’s about time to start applying for college.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know yet. Dad says it’s good to get a general education which will always help me find some job and earn some money to buy a slice of bread, but I don’t think people need any education at all to be able to buy a single slice of bread.”
“What do you want to be? I mean, when you grow up,” Chris asked.
“An astronaut,” I forced an awkward chuckle. “To be honest I’ve never dreamed about any particular profession. I don’t know what I want to be. That’s why my father’s words seem reasonable. He also always adds ‘get a decent profession, find a steady job with a good salary and then in your free time, you can think about what you want to do in life and search for your dream. It’s better to be an accountant who plays in a rock band on weekends, than an unlucky musician who makes next to nothing, playing in a dirty bar where the listeners throw up on his shoes’.”
“Has your father found his dream job? What does he do?” Chris asked.
“He’s an engineer. He designs some industrial things.”
“Is it his dream job?”
“I don’t know, but he says he likes it. He says that a quiet, stable life attracts him more than the hectic pace and million-dollar salaries of Wall Street.”
“I see,” Chris said thoughtfully and for a moment an awkward silence hung in the air.
“And what do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked.
“An actor,” Chris laughed. “I’m not very original. My father thinks I should be a broker.”
“Acting would suit you.”
Chris poked me in the side with his elbow.
“Come on! It’s a stupid job!” he said.
“There is nothing stupid about making tons of money.”
Chris said nothing in return. We lay in silence for a few minutes. Then he turned to me and we started kissing again. We were kissing, talking, kissing, and talking again, sprawled on the blanket and looking into the sky. We hadn’t noticed the time passing, and it started getting dark.
“So, maybe it’s time to go to the cliff?” Chris asked.
I tried to express as much indifference on my face as possible and only nodded in reply so as not to reveal my nervousness with my voice. We got up from the grass, put the remains of a picnic into the trunk, and hit the road. The cliff was very close, and several minutes later we were slowly approaching the top of the hill, intensely looking out to make sure that there were no other couples nearby. Chris chose a suitable place and stopped the car.
“We can climb on the hood – the view is better there,” he said.
“Won’t we scratch the paint?” I asked.
“I hope we won’t, or my father will kill me. Come on, let’s do it! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
The dark was rapidly thickening, and the town at the foot of the hill started to brighten with thousands of lights. Our town isn’t Los Angeles, of course, but it also looks attractive at night. The stripes of roads were gradually turning into colorful rivers – white on the left, from headlight beams, and red on the right, from the tail lights of passing cars. Here and there I could discern the bright neon signs of bars and other venues. It was beautiful. For a moment, I may have even stopped thinking about the frightening idea of having sex. Chris took my hand.
I turned toward him. He reached his other hand toward my face and gently ran his fingers along my chin. Then his hand skimmed over my cheek. He brought his lips closer to mine, and we started kissing. This time it wasn’t those tender and romantic kisses that he gave me during the picnic. This time his lips were hot and passionate. They even seemed to pulsate like a small heart.
Chris let go of my hand and slid his into my hair. I tried to hug him and pull him closer to me, but it wasn’t easy to do on the slippery hood. Chris tried to throw my leg over his but also failed to do it. He tore his lips away from mine and said, “Maybe it will be more comfortable in the back seat?”
“Definitely,” I replied and hurried to jump off the hood so that he wouldn’t notice the fear in my voice.
Chris picked me up and carried me in his arms to the rear door of the car, opened it, and carefully laid me down in the back seat as if I were a cut glass vase that could break from the slightest push. He went around the car in two jumps and got into the back seat from the other side.
Without waiting for me to close the door, Chris hugged me around my shoulders and drew me closer to him. We started kissing passionately again. Everything was boiling and seething inside of me. And it was far from the most pleasant feeling. It was like every cell of my body was rushing forward at a furious pace, and they were all moving in different directions. I literarily felt that I was being torn from within.
And it was not only the fear of first sex. It was something else. Something very strange. Something animal. Maybe even predatory. His lips! They really pulsated! I felt his pulse on my lips! My arms were wrapped around his shoulders, and I felt his heartbeat with my fingertips, palms of my hands, and even with the surface of my arms, touching his body.
Either he will have a heart attack any moment, or something is wrong with me. I felt his lips digging into mine, his tongue in my mouth, his hands running over my back, tightly squeezing my neck. His hands reached down. He snatched at my t-shirt and started pulling it up. I still couldn’t focus. I was distracted by his damn pulse! Now I heard it! Like an old pendulum clock, it was ticking in my ears “tick-tock-tick-tock”. Something strange started to happen in my mouth. I felt a tickling. At first, I thought it was Chris who was tickling me with his tongue, but then I realized that the tickling sensation was coming from the inside of my gums.
The tickling grew into itching. Unbearable, nasty itching that started to drive me crazy. I think I wanted to bite Chris! And I completely forgot about the thoughts of whether I wanted to have sex with him or not. At that moment, I was only thinking about that nasty itching in my gums and how I wanted to get rid of it by biting something. As if sensing that something strange was happening to me, Chris moved away from my lips, drew back, and asked, “Are you all right?”
I answered with a nod.
“Sam, I don't want you to think that I brought you here just to have sex. I really like you. I like you very much. Damn, I think I'm falling in love with you.”
It was incredibly sweet and romantic, but I was too preoccupied with the itching in my gums to react properly.
“Here. I bought this for you,” said Chris and took something out of the pocket of his jeans.
It was a silver chain and pendant in the form of a pigeon with extended wings. I was finally able to get my mind off my itchy gums, exhaled nervously, reached out, and touched the pendant. I instantly jerked my hand back as if having touched the surface of a red-hot stove. Sharp pain pierced my fingers.
“Ouch! What the hell!” I exclaimed.
Chris jerked aside, scared of my reaction.
“What…What happened?” he asked worriedly.
“I don’t know. Must have pricked myself,” I said confusedly. “Does this stupid pigeon have sharp edges?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered hesitantly.
Chris took my hand and brought it to his eyes.
“Sam… you got a burn.”
I looked at my hand and saw what Chris was talking about – in a mere second burn blisters appeared on my fingers, in places where the pendant touched the skin.
“What the hell?!” I pointed at the pigeon, dangling in Chris's hand. “How the hell did that pigeon become so freaking hot?”
Chris brought his hand closer to the pendant and poked it very carefully with the tip of his finger. Nothing happened. Then he took it in his hand and squeezed. Still nothing. I decided to recheck and slowly brought my finger closer to the pendant.
“Son of a bitch!”
Again, I jerked my hand back, feeling a severe pain piercing my hand like a needle as soon as my fingertip touched the pendant that I had already started to hate.
“Seriously, what the hell! What’s happening?!” I seethed with anger.
“There’s nothing to worry about. Maybe it’s just an allergy,” he said soothingly. “It’s silver. I've heard there are silver allergies.”
“Allergy? What kind of allergy?” I asked huffily.
”Well there can be skin redness, itching, and stuff like that,” Chris answered timidly.
“And what about skin burns? Have you ever heard about an allergy in the form of burns?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said, “but maybe you have some kind of seasonal issue?”
“Shit! Issues my ass!” I exclaimed angrily. “Pardon my French!”
I got out of the car. How could I ruin such an incredibly romantic moment?!? He said he loved me! No one has ever told me that he loves me! And what is this crazy allergy?!?
“Sorry for freaking out,” I said when Chris came up to me.
“That’s ok. I understand. I’m sorry that it turned out this way,” he answered and added, “Sorry, I didn’t have enough money for a gold one.”
Oh, he's so cute! I wanted to tell him that I loved him too but found the courage only to snuggle up to him and kiss him on the cheek.
Chris kissed the top of my head and said, “Perhaps it’s better to take you home. It’s already late.”
I sniffled sadly.
We drove in silence all the way from the hill to my house. In about half an hour, we reached the end of our trip. He parked the car, turned to me, and put his hand on my knee.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. It just sucks that such a beautiful day ended with such a major fail.”
“Oh, come on! That’s not a big deal. The day was wonderful!” Chris said reassuringly.
He leaned over and kissed me.
“Don’t go yet,” he said. “I think I have a burn ointment somewhere in the first aid kit in the trunk. I’ll go get it.”
“It’s okay. It’ll heal by itself.”
“No, it’s not okay!” he wagged his finger at me. “Stay here, don’t go anywhere.”
I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. Chris jumped out of the car and almost immediately came back.
“Here. Apply twice a day.”
I nodded. Chris kissed me.
“You’re great,” I said in a much too serious tone.
“I know,” he smiled. “You’re not so bad yourself!”
He kissed me one more time. I got out of the car, waved my hand at him, and slowly and sadly walked to the door of the house. To be honest, somewhere deep down inside I was even a bit glad that everything had ended up like this. The thing that was happening inside of me, the thing with his pulse when we were making out in the back seat, I didn’t like it at all. I didn't know what it was, and I was afraid to find out how everything would have ended if we had continued... if it hadn't been for that damned pendant and my strange allergy.
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