A Jordan
Winters Adventure
Match-22
By Bek D Corbin
With special
thanks to Ellen Hayes
The Great Game was afoot!
Lord Burningoak peered over the battlements with
his field glasses. “By the Gods! There are at least three thousand of
them! Fuziwazaks, Bazibazuks and Snaligazaars, all riding together. And each
unwashed ragamuffin of ‘em carrying a brand-new Wayland Arms pin-cartridge
rifle, courtesy of Lord Scapegallows, Miss Mirandine.”
Lord Burningoak turned his lean aristocratic
elven features toward the olive skinned adventuress. Her eyes were shut in
concentration and the tips of her fingers were at her brow. “My Lord, while I
did know that Lord Scapegallows was smuggling lotus blossom, I had no idea that
he was paying for it with rifles and ammunition.” She screwed up her classic Mediterranean
beauty features as she sent her mind out among the imp-bitten rabble. “Yes, I’m
sure now. Count Koshei is definitely here.”
“I thought that I sensed his hand in this.”
“More than his hand in it - he’s still got his
hands ON it! He’s over on that rise, watching the charge with the three chiefs!”
“Perfect,” Lord Burningoak purred. “Company
Sergeant!”
The skinny goblin field engineer, Charlie
Company, 3rd Battalion, Queen’s Rear Regiment, clipped up and
snapped a salute. “Sah!”
“Are the carrots loaded?”
“Yeass, Sah! Ev’ry one of the for’ard bombards
are load with as many carrots as they can hold.”
“Very good.” Lord Burningoak lit the brazier and
began to enchant. The purple fire lanced from the brazier and danced over to
the seven crates. The crates began to bustle with barely contained fury. “Very
well, Company Sergeant, on my mark.”
“Forward gunners, ready your fuuuuusssses!”
the Company Sergeant roared out a in a bellow that belied his wiry frame. The
bombardiers prepped the fuses and lit their matches.
Lord Burningoak put the field glasses back up to
his eyes. “They’re almost in range.” Then he slowly raised one hand, paused and
then jerked it downwards.
“FYYYY-AARRRR!” roared the Company
Sergeant.
The six forward aimed bombards erupted in a
shower of orange vegetable root. The charging orcs’ steeds, not being used to
facing heavy artillery, balked. Lord Burningoak threw the essence of oyster on
the brazier, and the crates danced with rage. “Now, Company Sergeant.”
“LET LOOSE THE BUNNIES!”
From their safe hiding places behind the rammed
earth walls, the field engineers pulled the cords that dropped the overstrained
grates, and hundreds of near-berserk Vorpal Bunnies swarmed toward the carrot-covered
riders.
Lord Burningoak watched with grim satisfaction
as the vicious lagomorphs tore into the marauders.
*****
Jazz played with her dice and gave me a long ‘Say
What?’ look. “_Vorpal bunnies?_”
I put on my best Look of Honor Doubted. “What?
There’s an Arms Convention that prohibits the use of dangerous Leporidae?”
“Oh, wonderful - now, we gotta deal with
hundreds of Vorpal Bunnies, instead of twenty,” said Mike.
“Hey, not to worry! Once the Bunnies and the
Raiders have stopped chewing on each other, I’ll drop the Multiplication spell,
and the bunnies will merge back together. The damage that each has taken will
combine and aggravate arithmetically - see, it says so, right here on Page 168
- and that will probably kill most of the Bunnies that are left. Those that
survive, we mop up with grenades. By the way, you ARE gonna bring up the
Grenadiers, aren’t you?”
“Grenadiers advancing,” Euge said. “I hope you
realize that I’m gonna hold each and every one of my soldiers that gets chewed
up in this fiasco against you.” Euge was playing Charlie Company, 3rd
Battalion, Queen’s Rear Regiment - the entire Company. Don’t ask me how
he managed to talk Booker, the GM into it, but he did.
Jazz held a pencil under her nose with her
curled upper lip. “So— do you guys use ‘live artillery’ like this a lot, in
this game?”
Mike made a dismissive noise. <pfaugh!>
“This is nothing! You should have seen the havoc that we wrecked with the
Chicken Mines!”
*****
It was, of course, a complete fiasco. When ‘Lord
Burningoak’ merged the wounded Vorpal Bunnies after they’d finished chewing up
the orcs, they amalgamated into a single rabbit headed Vorpal Hydra. And yes,
Euge chewed me out for every goblin field engineer that he lost. But by then,
it was getting late, and we had to call it a day. Booker assigned experience,
and informed Euge that reinforcements would get there - in a couple of weeks.
As Jazz and I left the Kelling College Student
Union, she turned to me and said, “Well, that was surreal!”
"Yeah, well, y’see, ‘Vorpal Bunnies’ are
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s one of the threats
that King Arthur and his knight have to face, along with the ‘Knight who say
NEE!’-."
“I know that. I’ve seen the movie. I was talking
more about your gaming buddies. I mean - ‘They call me ‘Euge’, ‘cause when I
drop my trousers, the ladies always say, ‘He’s ‘UGE!’“ Jazz shook her head.
I grinned apologetically. “I can’t believe that
he told you that story. Or at least, not just after meeting you.” I gave her
another long look. “Come to think of it, I can’t believe that you’re into Role
Playing Games.”
“Oh? Why? Do you think that gaming is just a
_guy_ thing?”
“Well, to tell the truth, it’s more that gaming
is a _geek_ thing. I mean, girls who are as cute as you are, are usually too
cool to be seen with gaming nerds, let alone spend hours rolling dice and
weaving stories out of nuthin’.”
Jazz gave a rueful smile. “Well, to be honest, I
got into it ‘cause my big brother Jase was into it for a while. When we moved
here from Chicago, he suddenly decided that he was too cool to be a gaming
geek, and I didn’t know how to find a game myself.” She paused. “I don’t know why
it never occurred to me to check out the colleges.”
“It’s that old ‘Town and Gown’ thing again. Hold
it - what do your parents do?”
“My Mom’s a doctor, and Dad’s an instructor of
Cultural Anthropology here at the college.”
“What? You’re a _College Kid_? What are you
doing, hanging around with a local girl like Jordan?”
“Hey, YOU try finding a cute, happening girl,
who happens to know her comic books, t’ hang out with, in this town!”
“Tell me about it,” I grumped.
Jazz grinned. “Well then - lucky you!” She
slipped her arm through mine.
Oh, Bright Ones, Blessed and Wise, please
don’t let this be going where I think it’s going!
A sudden look swept over Jazz’s face. “Hey! I
just had a great idea!”
“Jazz, it’s Six in the evening, we have school
tomorrow, and I gotta get home and help with dinner. We can’t stop off at the
Soda Fountainbleu.”
“No, not that!” Thank God! Being on the treated
end of the frilly parfait thingie bit so much, I’d sort of forgotten how expensive
those things are. Besides, it sucks, digging into a bland - if manly - Sundae
while Jazz tucks into a raspberry/lemon/orange sherbet concoction. “I was
thinking that maybe we could get up a gaming group of our own!”
“Oh? With who?”
“Oh, lessee now - Jordan, of course-”
“Hold it right there! Anything that starts off
with Jordan AND me, is doomed right off the bat!”
“Why? Y’know, Jordan would never really explain
what’s going on with that.”
“Let’s just say that you simply CANNOT get
Jordan and me in the same room at the same time.”
“That’s what she said. Same exact words, too. Why?”
“Lets---just put it down to ‘Family Politics’.”
“‘Family Politics’? What is that supposed to
mean?”
It really means that if anyone in The Families
ever found out about me, that I’d be sent to Siberia. But, if you look at it in
the right light it can also mean- “Well, that’s sort of a term for something
that’s really involved, really complicated, and it involves people that you don’t
know (and wouldn’t be that happy with me telling their business), and
situations that you’re not familiar with, and even if it weren’t all that, it’s
also usually really boring.”
“Woof!”
“Hey, small towns are like this! Let me sum it
up like this - I don’t have anything against Jordan, and I’m really glad that
you’re friends with her. But I am NOT going to be in a game with her. Period. And
I’ll lay odds that she’ll say almost exactly the same thing if you ask her.”
“Wellll...does she at least GAME?”
“Well, I’ve never seen her doing it. You can
always ask!” Hopefully, Jazz will ask me (when I’m ‘Jordan’), and we can do
this thing together as girls.
She grinned. “I’ll do that! And I’ll bet that
when I ask her, that she’ll surprise you and insist that you GM!” With
that, she leaned over, gave me a kiss on the cheek, whirled around and flounced
away.
Why do I get the impression that this is going
to get stickier before it gets simpler?
*****
Sure enough, the next morning, I had e-mail from
‘Jinxkat’ in my ‘mailbox’. ‘YO, BLONDIE! WE GOTTA GET 2GETHR! MEET ME UZE PLAZE.
I GOT BIG FVR 2 AX U. JAZZ.’ Oh well, at least she wasn’t into the ‘leet freek’
schtick, and spelling things with numbers and stuff.
I was about to check to see if she was still
online, and I-chat with her, when Boris and Natasha, Mom's cat familiars walked
up. Boris sniffed at the monitor, and Natasha decided that the keyboard was the
perfect place to stretch out and catch a few winks.
“Ex-CUZE me!” I tried to dislodge Natasha, but
she did that weird yoga thing that cats do when they don’t wanna move. I wound
up picking up the keyboard and turning it upside down. Boris just sat there,
looking at me with that combination of amusement and disdain that cats do so
well. I’m not fool enough to dish the dirt, girl-style with those two sniffing
over my shoulder. Hey, you know that cats can’t read, and _I_ know that cats
can’t read - I’m just not sure that Boris and Natasha know it.
I just replied, ‘SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL’
and logged off before the furry finkizoids got a good look.
*****
Jazz was waiting for me by the library, as per
uze. She was practically bubbling over with something that she simply HAD to
tell me. “JOR! It’s about freaking time! I just had the most scathingly
brilliant idea!” From there, she launched into her sales pitch for a
Role Playing Game. As she was halfway through her spiel, I held up my hand. “Jazz,
I've seen those mutts that Dan games with; I’m surprised that he subjected you
to them. Please don’t ask me to get stuck in a room with them!”
“No, no! I was thinking that we could get a game
together in our group - You, Griff, Lex, Paris, and the rest.”
“Well, I’m familiar enough with it that I could
back you up. I suppose that Dan has some books that I could use. You’ll have to
be the one doing the honors.”
“Well, actually--- I was thinking that I could
get Dan to do the Games Mastering.”
“Ack! Problem!”
“Oh, you’re not going to tell me that you can’t
be in the same room with Dan again.”
“Amazing! You’ve developed psychic powers! Tell
me, are there any tall dark men or romantic cruises in my future?”
“I can see a major league butt-whooping in your
future, if you don’t ‘fess up. What is UP with this?”
“You don’t know, you don’t wanna know, and I’m
doing you a BIG favor by not telling you.”
Jazz looked heavenward for strength from any
stray Ministers of Grace that might happen to be wandering by. “Well, if you
won’t play, will you at least not get all bent out of shape if I try and get
the others to play?”
“Sure! Why not? I’ll even help you sell it!” I
paused. “Are you doing this just as a way to get close to Dan, or something?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, it’s something of a byword in RPGing that
there are three kinds of girls who game: Geeks, Trolls, and Girlfriends. The
Geeks are the female version of the guy-nerds who play. The Trolls are the
hefty girls who do it because it’s practically the only way that they can get
social life, let alone a husband. And Girlfriends are the otherwise normal
girls who aren’t really into it, but do it so that they can have quality time -
such as it is - with their boyfriends. Jazz, you may have some...interesting
interests, but you ain’t a geek. And you couldn’t pass for a Troll in bad light.”
Jazz preened a bit. “So, that leaves the ‘girlfriend’.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, you got me - I was on the high road to
being a she-geek before my body caught on that I was going to be a Fox. I got
into gaming ‘cause my big brother Jared was into it. He’s since decided that it’s
uncool, but what does HE know?”
I gave a long sigh. “Okay, I’ll take your word
for it. But, even so, as your best friend, I feel personally obligated to let
you in on a rather nasty little secret.”
“Dan’s Gay?”
“That wasn’t what I was talking about. No, Jazz -
Dan is wearing the Fool’s Cap.”
“_hanh?_”
“Oh, that’s right. You only moved here from
Chicago a while ago, right? The ‘Fool’s Cap’ is the Millbridge way of saying
that someone is the Designated Victim.”
“You mean that someone stuck a ‘Kick Me’ sign on
his back?”
“Well, sort of. There’s this old tradition at
Horace Mann Elementary and Middle School, where Dan goes. One student is
singled out as the guy or girl that it’s okay to do anything to.”
“Well, sure! That happens everywhere! But
usually they do something to deserve it.”
“I dunno how they do it in the Windy City, but
here, there’s this thing called ‘The Fool’s Cap’. It isn’t a real cap, but
everyone agrees that it’s just sort of there. When a student has
the Fool’s Cap put on them, they are IT, for as long as they go to Horace Mann.
Sometimes the stink even follows them to High School. When they graduate or
leave town, the Fool’s Cap sort of floats around until somebody does something
to earn wearing it. Earlier this year, Booker Lennox, the kid who’d been wearing
it for years, moved to Wooster, and the Fool’s Cap landed on Dan’s head. Since
then, he’s become very good at getting out of tight places.”
“Jor, WHY are you telling me this?”
“Well, first of all, if you decide that you
wanna get close to Dan, you run the risk of some of that bad luck rubbing off
on you. A girl is measured by her guy, and all that. Second, as you can
imagine, Dan’s a little, eeerrr… twitchy in social
situations. Being everyone’s punching bag will do that to you.”
“Hey, he’s been fine when I was around him.”
“Good t’hear it! And lastly, I didn’t want any
nasty surprises to jump out at you, because of Dan. Or at least, they won’t be
complete surprises.”
“So, it’s cool with you if Dan and I---”
“Well, he’s not the boy that _I_ would have
picked for you.”
“Oh Yeah, that’s right. You picked that chuckle-head
JayDee for me. And did I ever tell you how THAT turned out?”
“Oh Yes, you did! Y’know, I still haven’t
figured out what got into him? I mean, in all the time that I’ve known him, he
was an absolute sweetheart! Then –Boom!- he turns into the ‘Notorious B-O-Z-O’.”
To show how sorry I was for setting her up like
that, I gave Jazz ‘Dan’s’ phone number, and helped her pitch the idea to Griff
and the gang.
By and large, the gang wasn’t all that enthused.
They decided that they’d give it a try, but my experience is that Role Playing
Games are something that you either really get into, or you shouldn’t waste
your time. I also took a bit of flack for not letting on why I wouldn’t game
along with my ‘cousin’. No, I didn’t tell them that ‘Dan’ was my cousin; Jazz
got that impression, and I decided not to burden her with any corrections. I am
such a considerate friend.
*****
Sure enough, Jazz called me at home. During
dinner, too. Little brother Trey made a lot of loud, presumably embarrassing,
noises about my getting calls from gurls.
Mom, on the other hand, was interested for other
reasons. “A girl, Dan? When did this happen?”
“Well, remember that time when you had me take
the munchkins to the movies, and Brett got lost?”
“I remember that that was when we trusted you to
take care of your brothers, and you left them alone to go goofing off with your
friends.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I ran into Jazz, and she helped
me look for Brett when he went lost. We got along okay, and it turns out that
she likes Role Playing games. Anyway, she wants to try starting up a game in
our circle of friends.”
“Hm. Interesting. What sort of girl is she?”
Trey made ‘Tim Allen’ noises, and said, “A babe
and half! She looks like Halle Berry’s kid sister!”
“She’s African-American? Even more interesting. Maybe
you should invite her over for dinner.”
Fortunately, Dad stepped in as the voice of
reason. “Dear, step back and think about that for a second. Bringing her here
to meet the folks? Pressure the poor girl, much?”
Mom tried the ‘I’m only thinking of the children’
bit, but it wasn’t washing. Long story short, Jazz was spared the ‘meet the
parents’ visit.
*****
Della scooped up a pile of _Twenty-Four_ - yes, twenty-four!
- dice and rolled them with fiendish glee. Her ‘flying bulldozer’ character, “Ms.
Might’, plowed into the Mekka Marauder, and sent the towering ‘giant robot’ flying
into a skyscraper, where it took even more damage from slamming into the
building. “Oh Yeaaahhhh!” she exulted as she picked out a
staggering number of sixes, which sent the damage done up even further.
I checked my sheet. “Okay, the Mekka Marauder
isn’t looking too good. There’s a ‘Ms. Might’ shaped dent in its front chest
plate, and its right arm is stuck in the wreckage. BUT-” I picked out twelve
dice and rolled it. “-you take- (five, ten, twelve, eighteen,- hmmmm…) THIRTY–
FIVE points of Stun! How does that do you?”
Della looked at her sheet, pouted and grumbled. “I’m
not unconscious, but I’m definitely phased.”
“Well, that’s why you should always buy Damage
Reduction (only for Move-Throughs) for ‘flying bulldozer’ type characters.”
“Then why didn’t you give me any, when you made
this character?”
“It’s a stock ‘flying brick’ character. I couldn’t
be sure who’d want to play it, or what their style would be. If you manage to
keep her alive without giving her brain damage, maybe you can buy some Damage
Reduction with Experience points.”
I’d decided to break the gang in with Champions©,
everyone’s favorite superhero RPG. Well, it’s MY favorite superhero RPG, and
that’s just as good. I figured that they’d get the general idea better if they
understood the basics of what’s going on. And let’s face it, everybody gets the
gist of superheroes, right off the bat. So far, I was getting a pretty
interesting reaction from the gang. Paris was bored, as I figured she’d be. Griff
and Stew were moderately interested. But Lex and Della were really getting into
it.
Go figure.
Lex swooped in with his character, ‘Dyna-Blaster’
and put an energy bolt through the ‘Ms. Might’ shaped dent in the Mekka
Marauder’s chest plate. <sha-KOW!> He used his Ranged
Killing Attack, and rolled pretty well. I decided that the combat had gone on
long enough - Paris was starting to make shapes with her dice - so I let him
ignore the armor. “Okay, your Dyna-bolt punches through the weakened chest-plate
and detonates the Mekka-Marauder’s fusion core power plant.” I rolled a
completely token set of dice. “The power plant violently explodes, sending a
concussive wave that does-” More dice rolling. There’s a lot of that in role
playing games. “Woof! A LOT of damage!” I knocked their figures
around. “But you just get knocked around a bit. Mind you, the insurance
companies won’t be anywhere near as happy about it. The head of the Mekka
Marauder goes flying and lands with a big clang.” I placed a big twenty-sided
die on the mat.
“Zoomer super-speeds over to the head and tries
to open it,” Stew said.
“You look for an access hatch, but all that you
find is a single opening panel, about the size of the cover for a gas cap.”
“I open it.”
“Two white mice come scurrying out of it, and
disappear down a storm drain.”
All six of them glared at me. Griff quirked a
wry smile. “By any chance, when we put an ear to the drain, might we hear
something that sounds like ‘Narf!’?
“No, but you do hear a sharp sound that might be
a ‘Poit!’”
“Well then,” Lex entoned, “we have to get back
to headquarters, to get ready for tomorrow night.”
“What are we going to do tomorrow night?” Paris
asked, not getting the joke.
“The same thing that we do Every
night!” the rest chorused. “Try to save the world!”
*****
Reviews were mixed. Lex and Della thought that
the game was great and couldn’t wait until the next game. Paris was still
glowering at me, and I didn’t think that it was because of the ‘Animaniacs’ ending.
Maybe she just isn’t a Champs player. I could always bring over Vampire,
The Masquerade©. She looks like someone that would get into playing a
tragically hip mass murderer.
After I allotted the Experience Points, the game
sort of broke up. Jazz, Della, and Paris were shifting out of gaming mode and
into girl-talk mode. I had to force myself from diving in to the dish, ‘cause
guys don’t dish. Anyway, the time came when it was obvious that Paris, Della
and Jazz wanted to get down to serious girl-stuff, so we more *ahem!* manly
types made our good-nights.
Jazz and Paris showed us to the door. “Well,
Dan,” Jazz breathed, “thanks for the great game! I hope that we can get
together and do this again, soon!”
“Yeah, well, getting a good gaming group
together is always a pain.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting Paris into
it.”
“Hey,” Lex enthused, “if she won’t come around,
we can always do this at my place!”
“Lex,” Griff gently reminded him, “your mother
hates it when we hang out in your living room. How do you think she’s gonna
react when we try to cram _three more_ people in there?”
Jazz smiled. “Well, let’s see then.” She turned
her full attention to me and beamed. “Well, g’nite!” Then she leaned in and
kissed me.
_wow_.
I thought that that only happened with Griff!
We were locked in the kiss, unable to break its
power.
Not that that stopped Lex and Paris. “Hey, hey,
hey! Knock it off! Or at least go get a room!”
“Hey, Jazz! Watch it! My Dad will go ballistic
if he catches you like this!”
Jazz and I broke off. I could tell that Jazz was
just as surprised by the reaction as I’d been. She blushed, even through her
dark complexion, and hurriedly went inside. Della and Paris were right after
her, smelling some heavy-duty dish in the making.
Y’know, I don’t know what I miss more - the
chance to sit with Jazz and the girls and just talk, or the chance to hear what
Jazz has to say?
The guys, being guys, took a completely
different tack. “Whoo-Hoo!”
“Way to GO, Dan!”
“Looks like we have competition, guys!”
I gave them my lamest grin. “Hey, it’s not like
you think! That was the first time that she’s ever kissed me!”
“Yeah, well, it’s not gonna be the LAST time!” Griff
hooted.
We moved off in a group, and the guys
immediately went into Locker Room mode. “So, you, ah, looked like you really
knew what you were doin’, Dan. You two been at it for a long time?”
“No! This is the only time that we ever kissed!”
“Hmmm...maybe, but you still look like you’ve
had a lot of practice.”
Okay, that’s technically true. Griff and I have
been putting in a lot of practice time on the ol’ tonsil hockey. “<*ahem!*>
“Well, gentlemen aren’t supposed to go throwing names around--”
Griff, Lex and Stew broke out in a storm of
barnyard noises. Yep, it was locker room time, all right. Lex slung an arm
around Griff’s shoulder, and said, “Yeah, well not everyone is so gentlemanly!
SOME people share the good parts, man! Now, m’man Griff here, he
hands out ALL the news that’s fit to hear!”
Oh, really, now? “Really? And
exactly who’ve you been doing anything worth reporting on, Griff?”
“Hey, Jordan, of course! And a
choicer piece I’ve never had!”
Hey, I’m the ONLY piece you’ve even been near,
I thought to myself. “Really? How far have you two gone?”
“Oh, so where’s the ‘a gentleman never tells’ NOW?”
“You’re the one telling - I’m just asking for
corroborating evidence.”
“Yeah, well, ah - let’s say that a few weeks ago
at the Tivoli, Jordan and I were in the back row to ‘Justiciar II’,
and we weren’t exactly playing Gin Rummy.”
Okay, that was accurate - indiscrete,
but accurate. “So, how far are we talking here? First Base? Second Base?”
“Oh, just First Base, so far!” So far? “Hey, I
don’t date Doorknobs, y’know!”
Stew leaned in with a leer. “So far? And maybe
you’re lookin’ to steal a base, hmmm?”
“Hey, I been givin’ it some thought.”
"You’ve been givin’ it some thought - Hey
Somebody! Call the Pope! A miracle has happened!"
“Hey, I have plans!”
“Such AS?”
“Hey, I’m waitin’ for the right opportunity!”
“Ahhh... You’re just fulla shit! You
ain’t getting nowhere, and never will!”
“HEY! I’m gonna get some!”
“Yeah? When?”
“When the time is right! Hey, I’m not some chump
who tries shovin’ his meat into a girl’s mouth, just to say that he did it!” Griff
calmed down a little. “But it IS comin’, I’m tellin’ you, right here and now. As
a matter’a fact, I've been givin’ some serious thought about Hobb’s Woods.”
“Hobb’s Woods?” I echoed. “No Way, Man! Hobb’s
Woods is major league Bad News, Jack!”
“What’sa matter with it?”
“How long have you LIVED here, Man? Everybody
knows that Hobb’s Woods is haunted or somethin’!”
<oooohhhh…> They jeered as
one. “Haauunnteddd…”
The problem is, Hobb’s Woods really IS haunted. Not
by a ghost, but by a major league bad news spirit that’s been giving the
Witches in the area grief for centuries. Nothing major, mind you, but one or
twice every ten years or so, a kid goes missing, and six times out of ten, the
kid belongs to one of the Families. And it’s been a while since any kid in the
Millbrook area has gone missing. I may be a little old for the Lurker, but I
still don’t wanna push my chances by going into Hobb’s Woods on any night that
Griff might think of as ‘romantic’.
“Hey,” I defended myself, “Bad Things happen
there. Kids go in and don’t come out. If you take a local girl into Hobb’s
Woods, the only kiss you’re gonna get is Good-Bye.”
“Hey, that’s half the fun! A place with a spooky
rep-“
“Then take her out to Cooper’s Woods. It’s just
as creepy looking, but it won’t freak her out like Hobb’s Woods would.”
Lex gave me a dirty look. “I cannot Believe
that you buy into spooks and haunts and stuff.” Oh, that’s right - Lex has a
bit of a bug about superstition.
“Hey, there are reasons why people
don’t go into Hobb’s Woods. We may not remember what they are,
but there are reasons. And the only way to find out what those reasons are
tends to mean going out and finding out the hard way. Personally, I’d take the
safer route.”
“Why are you so concerned about what I do with
my girlfriend?” Graff asked, one eyebrow raised.
Stew slapped him in the shoulder. “She’s his
COUSIN, remember?”
Well, I never came out and SAID that, but
I didn’t go out of my way to correct them, either. I just leaned over into
Griff’s face and said, “Hey, listen, you watch yourself! Just don’t make me
come after you, y’hear? I may not look like much, but I am a scrapper in a
fight!” The rest of the conversation as we walked toward our homes was very
much the ‘who can beat up who’ variety.
*****
The next day, by the electronic grace of e-mail,
I managed to finagle most of Saturday afternoon with Jazz, Paris and Della. I’d
been cut out of the loop, and was in desperate need of an in-depth news update.
I leaned over the table at the Soda Fountainbleu and went into my best
interrogating newshead mode. “Okay, my sources say that, last night, at about 8
o’clock Pip-Emma, that you did, in front of witnesses, go into a five-minute
lip-lock with Dan.”
“Pip-Emma?” Paris asked, torn between disbelief
and amusement.
“My Mom makes me watch a lot of PBS. Well, Jazz?
Do you wish to go on the record at this time?”
Jazz blushed a lot at first, but then decided to
brass it through. “Hey, what can I say? I thought that I’d get it over with,
but your cousin is more of a handful than he looks! I mean, WOW, what a kisser!”
Paris nodded. “I wouldn’t’a thought it of him,
but Jazz here was stone-cold floored afterwards!” Paris flashed Jazz a wicked
grin. “Or, maybe she just doesn’t have that much experience with
kissing boys!”
“I do too!” Jazz flared. “Okay, not a Lot,”
she continued, a bit more quietly, “but I have kissed boys before.”
“And?”
“They just don’t compare. I mean it was like----
kissing lightning! With most guys, you’re just sitting there, swapping
spit and wondering what all the fuss is about! But Dan? MAN! He lit up my mouth
and set every nerve that I got tingling!”
"Oh, Yeah,” I murmured with a pussycat grin.
“That’s what it’s like with Me an’ Griff. Electricity City!” Oh yes, dishing
the dirt with your girls is so much better’n tossing the Bee-Ess
with the guys.
Then I noticed Paris and Della’s eyes fixed on
me. _oops._
“So -- you an’ Griff -- you’ve been making out?”
I looked with confusion at Paris. “And you haven’t
with Lex? Della, I know that you’ve been making time with Stew.” Della sort of
pulled her head into her shell. “Oh? Then why were you so hot to go see Lord
Stengo’s Honor with Stew?”
Della glared at me from the depths of her shell.
“Oh, Okay! But don’t let my father hear about it!”
All three of us turned to Paris. Well?
Paris sniffed and tossed her hair. “Well, Lex
and I...we’ve been waiting for the right time and place...”
Jazz gave Paris a slightly superior smirk, then
turned to me. “Hey, maybe we can go out on a double date with Dan and Griff
sometime.”
Oops. “Ah, sorry, ain’t gonna happen.”
“Yeah, Jazz said something about you not getting
along with Dan.” Paris was only too glad to get the spotlight off of her. “What’s
that all about?”
I held up my hands. “Hey, tell you true, I wish
that I could tell you, but I can’t! If any of this got back to my family, they’d
disown me! Heck, if you asked my parents about Dan and me, they’d tell you that
they have no daughter!” Well, that covers things nicely, and it’s technically
true!
I managed to steer the conversation away from
that point, and we spent the rest of the afternoon in a blur of girl talk.
*****
When Jazz and I separated from Della and Paris,
I finally managed to get her alone and talk about a topic that I couldn’t bring
up in front of Paris. “So, Jazz. If you’re so hot about Dan, how do you feel
now about Lex?” Hey, either I’m in the fix of trying to figure out whether Jazz
is my best girl-friend or just my girlfriend, or I’m still stuck with being
caught between Paris and Jazz over Lex. I’m on the horns of a dilemma; I’d like
to know upon which horn I’ve been impaled.
Jazz screwed up her face. “Jeez, I wish I knew!
I mean, I’ve never been the sort to go chasing after white boys--- but Dan is
so damn cute! And Man, what a kisser! But
Lex is such a hunk! And I could actually take him home to my family without
things going to DefCon-5. I’m really confused about this one, Jor.” Oooggg...gored
with both horns! Gee, thanks, Pal.
I was about to offer a little girl-friendly
advice and maybe steer her (and me) off one (hopefully both) of those horns,
when Griff rode up on a bicycle. “Hey, Jordan! Where y’been? I been lookin’ all
over!”
Jazz steered me toward him with a gentle push. “Go
on ahead, Jor. I gotta do some serious thinking on this. No reason that you
gotta waste your Saturday hanging with me while I’m like this.”
“Hey, what are best friends for?” I hooked my
little finger and offered it to her. She smiled and hooked her pinky with it. Yeah.
Best friends. I could feel it. Well, at least _I’ve_ made up my mind about one
thing. Maybe I can help my best bud come up with some way out of her mess.
She smiled at me with that ‘gee, I wish that I
weren’t feeling so many things at once’ smile. “Yep, that’s what best friends
are for. And they’re for telling you to get on the back of the cute boy’s bike,
and not throwin’ away a perfectly good spring afternoon listenin’ t’me suck my
thumb. Gowan’.” She gave me another gentle shove.
I gave her a questioning look. Hey, you don’t
prove that you’re a best friend by letting yer bud hanging while you go off
with a boy. She just shooed me off. “Go on! B’sides, I gotta go home soon,
anyway. Family stuff. Go on!”
Well, she’s bound and determined to tough it out
alone. I draped myself side-saddle across the book-rack on the back of Griff’s
bike, wrapped my arms around his middle, and we were off.
As we pedaled north and west past Kelling
College, I yelled in his ear, “So, what’s so important that I gotta leave Jazz
hanging? We were in the middle of something, there!”
“Yeah, and she wanted to deal with it herself.”
“Hey, you don’t know that! Girls gotta talk
these things out!”
Griff laughed. “Typical! I never met a girl who
understood that some things you just gotta work out by yourself!”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Jazz is a Girl!”
“Oh, I noticed. I also noticed that maybe she
just didn’t wanna deal with it right then.”
Enh. Serves me right for trying to talk sense
about emotions with a guy. I was still stewing about that when Griff pulled
into a thick grove of trees.
“This is what I wanted to show you. This is
where I come when I want to be alone. This is sort of my ‘special place’.”
I tried to hide a smile. Oh, so he was going to
try and pull the dark and secluded ‘special place’ bit? Well, now all that I
have to do is let him take it from here. We talked about this and that, as he
slowly built up steam. Finally, he’d maneuvered me back against a tree, and he
was closing.
At last, his lips met mine, and there was that
electricity again. I melted into him and surrendered to the power of the kiss.
But there was something wrong, something off.
The first thing that I noticed was that Griff
had his hand up my blouse. Normally, Griff just gets into the kissing. Oh, Wise
Ones, Blessed and Bright, he’s trying to take it up a notch! This could be
trouble. I don’t know how well the glamour is with other people. What if he
grabs my tit, and, really being a foam rubber insert that’s sort of merged with
me temporarily because of the glamour, it comes off in his hand?
Come to think of it, will it hurt?
Then he started grinding his groin against me. Oh,
I have to stop this before he really gets started. Griff was really pushing the
envelope when he slipped his hand up my blouse. This, on the other hand, is WAY
over the limit. “Griff. Griff, sweetie. Please. Please Stop. Please. Stop.” C’mon,
Griff! You’re a Third Millennium kind of guy! You know that when a girl says ‘No’,
that she means ‘No’!
His only response was to ram his tongue down my
throat. This was getting worse and worse by the minute. Then he took his hand
out from under my blouse and stopped grinding. I sighed, relaxed, and,
satisfied that he understood that he’d taken it too far, too fast, decided to
reward him with more smooching.
Instead, I heard a metallic ripping sound. Griff
took one hand and steered it to a location right about where his crotch should
be. I felt something tubular, hard and warm. Then I felt it throb.
Eeewww!!! GROSS!
“NO!” I pushed him away. As I tried to center
myself from the sense of…violation…I felt that sense of deep wrong-ness
again, but it wasn’t coming from Griff.
Okay, it was coming from Griff, but not just
from him. My thumbs were pricking.
I looked around. This wasn’t Cooper’s Woods. Cooper’s
Woods looks creepy, but that’s it. This place looked normal and healthy enough,
but there was this sense of something waiting, something watching.
And then I saw it.
Only for a second. But then, you never really
see it for more than a second. The Lurker in Hobb’s Woods. That thing eats
Witches alive!
I pushed
Griff away from me with every ounce of strength that I had. “This is Hobb’s
Woods!” I screamed. “You brought me into Hobb’s Woods! And it’s getting dark!”
“Hey,
Jordan, clam down!” Griff came forward, trying to be consoling. But the thing
leering at us from the woods wasn’t helping. Come to think of it, the thing
leering at me from Griff’s lap wasn’t helping, either.
Griff
grabbed me by the arms and pushed me back against the tree. I pushed him back
with everything that I had, and sent him sprawling.
As he
clambered back up, I grabbed my backpack. Griff came at me again. “You ASSHOLE!”
I slapped him hard. He stood there, pole-axed for a moment. Weird. I didn’t
think that I hit him that hard. But I still took the opening, and lit out as
fast as I could.
I put an
Evasion spell on myself and Wings Unto My Feet, and I easily lost Griff in the
twilight, even though he was on a bicycle. I ran for at least a quarter mile,
and stopped in somebody’s back yard. Then, I slumped to the ground, and started
to cry.
Part of
the crying jag was because I was still scared. The Lurker had seen me! And part
was because I was so mad and disgusted with Griff. My Griff! I honestly thought
that he thought better of me than to try THAT! And there was Jazz, and Paris,
and Lex, and the Fool’s Cap and the whole damned mess!
I was
there until the lady of the house came out and asked what I was crying about. I
made my apologies, and made my way back to the library, where I changed.
*****
And just
to cap off the whole sucko mess, Mom gave me shit for not getting home in time
to help with dinner.
*****
Sunday,
Booker threw a particularly nasty Orc shaman at ‘Lord Burningoak’ and Charlie
Company, and I was able to vent a little on an abstract framework of numbers. Still,
I may have overdone it a bit, ‘cause when we finished and Jazz and I were on
our way home, she asked me, “Dan, is everything all right?”
<gusty
sigh> “Oh, I just had a really nasty run-in yesterday. I dunno why I’m
letting it get to me so bad. I should be used to it by now.” Out of sheer
habit, I felt up around my head, where the Fool’s Cap was anchored.
It was
gone.
Gone?
It was
gone!
It was
GONE!
THE FOOL’S
CAP WAS GONE!
My face
lit up. I was free! I was finally free! My life was my own again! Out of sheer
joy, I grabbed Jazz and gave her a deep passionate kiss.
After a
bit, Jazz pulled free. “Hey, not that I’m complaining or anything, but what’s
with you? All day, you’ve been like somebody ran over your dog, and suddenly *boom!*
you light up like a Christmas tree and kiss me! What’s up, Doc?”
<heh>
“It would take too long to explain. Let’s just say that I suddenly realized how
good I really have it.”
Jazz
looped her arm through mine. “Okay, that I can accept.”
*****
All day
Monday, I reveled in the absence of malice. I wasn’t Mister Popular or anything
- hey, people still thought that I was the Designated Victim - but that sense
that there was a target painted on my back was gone. People just didn’t feel obligated
to give me shit. The Pesloe swarm still had it in for me, but for some bizarre
reason, they just couldn’t find the perfect time and place like they used to.
But,
just as every cloud has a silver lining, even the full moon has a dark side. Reese
Aubrey cornered me in the Boys’ Room after Second Period. “So, Winters - I see
you finally managed to pull it off. How did you get rid of the Fool’s Cap?”
Dreck. The
hex that I laid on him was the only thing keeping Reese from using the fact
that he knew about my double life to screw me over. If I’m out from under the
Fool’s Cap, then I’m pretty much under Reese’s thumb, cause if I don’t have the
Fool’s Cap on my noggin, then he’s free and clear. Okay, let’s see how I can
weasel my way out of this without actually lying. I grinned at him
evilly. “To be honest, I don’t know. I was out by Hobb’s Woods Saturday, and I
haven’t had it since. Of course, that may mean that it’s out there floating
free. And if I remember the exact terms of the Hex I laid on you---” I looked
measuringly at Reese’s head, as if wondering what he’d look like with the Fool’s
Cap on.
Reese
promptly got the hell away from me. Life is good.
*****
For the
rest of school, I was someone that no one talked to, but at least they left me
alone. After weeks of being everyone’s scratching post, being left alone was
paradise. I was tempted to try taking the bus back home, but I’d ridden my bike
to school. Besides, I was feeling so good that I decided to go into town and
look up the gang. As Dan.
And why
not? Because of the game, I’d met everyone in the gang socially as Dan. Besides,
if I looked them up as ‘Jordan’, I might run into Griff. Ick. And I’m just
feeling too goddamn GOOD to let ‘Mister Trousersnake’ ruin it for me.
The
first ones that I ran into were Paris and two of the Paris-ettes, Mindy and
Rebecca. I’d met Mindy and Becky as ‘Jordan’, so I tried to make a good first
impression. For the second time. “So, how’s life treat’n you, Paris?”
“Pretty
much the same as Friday. So, Dan, what’s with YOU? You are significantly more
chipper than you were when you were rolling the dice for us!”
“Yeah,
well, the Producer decided that I’d played out the ‘Teen Angst’ storyline far
enough, so he talked to the writers. I just got the Pink Pages, and it looks
like they’re gonna write a ‘Teen Shenanigans’ story arc for me for a while.”