�7#�Q�sssss� ���� � ���Mx�� �'*Qs'%''Q''''''This is a story about being fifteen, and how it sucks. I am to be found thinking about this while sitting on my porch steps looking at a smallish jet rip across the night sky. It slices effortlessly through the clouds. I wonder how a thing so small and fast can make that much noise, even from this far away. It commands attention. Kind of like a dragon would, even a green one, if one were ever to reveal itself to me at last and say, hello Ray, I am your dragon; you may ride me. But that has never happened yet, and I guess there�s no reason to assume it ever will. The neighbor kids are playing basketball. This sucks, because I cannot play basketball to save my life, but for some reason when you�re fifteen and tall, people always want to make you play it. That is my dream for the future: to be in a place where no one makes you play sports; where you can play or not play anything you want. I am out here after midnight because I don�t have to be inside; my parents are gone. Well, more accurately, my parent, the one who is usually here, is gone tonight. The other one, the woman, has been gone for some time and is never coming back. Don�t ask me how I know. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she yelled, �I�m leaving and I�m never fucking coming back!� five years ago, on a night kind of like this, and has never been seen since. So, filled with the adrenaline rush of temporary aloneness, of ruling over this quiet house while Dad is off on some important business trip, I called my �girlfriend.� She earned the name �girlfriend� because I asked her to go out with me�well, actually she told me to ask her to go out with me�well, not in so many words, but I never would have done it without her generous prompting. She is kind of like a shark. She wears a leather jacket and is nothing like me. She hates classical music, she hangs out at the mall, she�s not smart and doesn�t hang out with smart people. She lives in a part of town I�ve never even ridden my bike through. I don�t know what it is about her I like�there�s just a certain feeling I got the first time I realized she was flirting with me, and not only meant it but knew how to do something about it, and that feeling has never quite subsided. It�s like a hot, glowing coil in the base of my stomach. But unfortunately, I don�t know everything she knows. In fact I don�t know anything she knows. I don�t know a damn thing at all. The closest we ever got to making love was on a long schoolbus ride back from a state marching band competition. It was dark. She sat next to me after getting bored of talking to her friends, and I gradually let my hand stray over until it was actually pressing vaguely against her breast�through her knit shirt, of course, but I could actually feel her pulse there. I felt her pulse in her breast. And then we were back at the school, and everyone had to go home. Damn home. Home is the death of excitement like that. Home is the opposite of the real world. A girl�s pulse against your fingertips, the coarse, warm fibers of her shirt�that�s the real world. And that�s the problem. On the phone tonight we talked about the usual dumb shit: She�s a Pisces and that means blah blah blah, I�m a Gemini and that means she should beware of me. She asked me why I say �hello� instead of �hi��no one says �hello.� She asked me why I say �yes���Yes� is a feminine word, while �No� is a masculine word. She asked me what that classical crap was on my radio in the background. We talked about sex; me theoretically and her out of experience. She said isn�t it kind of sad that she was only fifteen and already bored with sex. �But I�m clean,� she added. �At least that�s one thing I am.� We talked about me riding my bike over to her house, but it was already midnight and it would take me forever to get there and it was kind of cold and wet out and it would take us an hour just to get me warmed up. The way she said that, the part about getting me warmed up, really made the knot in my stomach tingle, but I didn�t ask for specifics, and now I�ll never know because it just seemed too unreal and I didn�t go, and now I�ll never know. And that sucks. But at least I have a girlfriend. My brother is jealous though he won�t admit it. I�d be jealous too if my younger brother had a girlfriend and I didn�t. Even if he never really did anything with the girlfriend, scarcely even holding hands. I made sure to mention to him that you could feel someone�s pulse in her breast, and though he hated to, he asked me how I knew and I told him. uhrough. I don�t know what it is about her I like�there�s just a certain feeling I got the first time I realized she was flirting with me, and not only meant it but knew how to do something about it, and that feeling has never quite subsided. It�s like a hot, glowing coil in the base of my stomach. But unfortuna���������� @ @/� /���LD������$�$��A-head������� ��00�����7 hx��pH$�@� ���������� l�P������ � �����U���������  � �  ��7h�#�&p&q*�.�/-/�/�3�3�3�3�3�3�3�3�3�7�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�9�::::::::�;�?�HH�@���� Rt(��HH g `�'���� R=�/������B@H-:LaserWriter 300/LS �Century Schoolbook/�Georgia� � ��� �2��(�