There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (39 page)

She took her turn, entering the bathroom with her sleep-shirt and a change of fresh undies in hand. She felt grungy from the long, sweaty day they’d spent in the Pines, and the dunk she’d taken (twice!) in the lake. A hot shower was most definitely in order. How those boys could fall asleep, filthy and smelly, she’d never know.

She shucked her dirty clothes and peeled off the still damp and tight bra, literally gasping at the blessed relief. She took the time to wash it out and lay it over a dry towel on the towel rack. Several minutes later, she stepped out of the shower and toweled off, feeling like she’d just shed five pounds of grit, grime, and grease.

As feared, Joel was upset she hadn’t called in, to let him know where she’d be for the night. She felt bad for her little brother. She ended up spending most of her time away from home—and by extension, Joel. Despite being a brat most of the time, Joel always covered for Josie. Bless his skeevy little heart. Not that Shayna would’ve really cared. She just liked to pretend she was on top of things. Josie knew she’d have to make it up to him. Maybe buy him a new Hot Wheels car. Yes. He’d like that.

She stepped into the clean panties and picked up her T-shirt, unconsciously seeking out her father’s long lost scent as she pulled it over her head.
Sea salt, sunblock, and Old Spi
ce.
Hi, ya, Daddy. How ya doing?

Tubby had made himself as comfortable as possible on top of the Star Wars sleeping bag. He was reading one of the comic books he’d brought along when Josie stepped out of the bathroom in a fragrant cloud of steam. He did a wide-eyed double take. He’d heard her taking a shower, and had endeavored to keep his mind from imagining what was going on behind that shower curtain…

She was naked in there! You betcha! Soaping up her wet, glistening skin. Water sluicing down the sloped mounds of her soft, pink flesh—
STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP THINKING THOSE BAD THOUGHTS, TUBBY TOLSON! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU???

Josie had taken a long time and Tubby wondered if that was a “Girl Thing” (his dad would have had a conniption if he used up that much water). He’d expected her to come out either fully dressed, like himself, or at least sporting some sensible pajamas. To his flustered consternation, Josie was wearing nothing but that oversized black T-shirt; the torn-neck-hole so well sprung it revealed the beginning of some serious cleavage. Josie’s scent was stronger than ever now, a tropical ambrosia that Tubby inhaled deep into his lungs. Her copper burnished hair was wet and combed straight back, revealing the girl’s one physical flaw. Her ears stuck out from her head like handles on a jug.
Monkey ears
, Tubby thought, sighing.
Gee whiz, even her imperfections are cute!

             
Her shapely thighs disappeared under the frayed hem of the sleep shirt. Mere inches from what Tubby could only hope were her underpants. She certainly wasn’t wearing a bra. Josie’s breasts, much larger looking now without the bra squashing them, swayed freely underneath the cotton T-shirt. Stealing Tubby’s breath away.

             
Josie jumped into bed and Tubby caught a glimpse of her white panties, in stark contrast to her tanned thighs.

His breath caught again in his throat, and he had to flip over quickly on his stomach to hide the sudden tent pole in his pants. He let out a groan as his balls took the full brunt of his weight. The pain was enormous.

Concerned, Josie leaned over the side of her bed, her shirt bellowing open. “What’s the matter, tiger? You got a stomachache?”

“Nuh-uh, I’m fine.” Tubby looked up, blinking at all that soft skin perched above his eyes. He could see almost all of Josie’s bulging breasts as she leaned over the bed, her chin nestled cozily between them. A bridge of freckles traversed the curved, upper slopes, like dusty little rose petals linked together. The pink crescent of one aureole teased the tattered edge of her shirt, as if testing the waters. Astonished, Tubby watched the breast succumb to gravity and pop free of the worn and worried neck hole.

Josie seemed not at all perturbed. With a slight of hand that would’ve made any magician envious, she neatly tucked the errant boob away. Nonchalant and cheerful, she chattered on-and-on, oblivious to the pressures she was exerting on Ralph’s hormones. He strained against the pull of his greedy eyes. Lifting them up instead towards Josie’s freshly scrubbed face. He forced himself to focus on those limber red lips, softly flexing around each syllable and syntax. Seeing but not hearing Josie’s words. Her straight teeth, slick and white; her breath, so clean and minty, washing across his flushed face like a fresh winter breeze…

Any other time and such a vision would’ve more than sufficed. Not now. Like a record player stuck on the same groove, Tubby’s mind kept retreating to that lusty image of Josie’s inquisitive breast, popping out for a visit…
 

             
              *******

             
             
Saturday, October 9
th
, 2,004

Bud awoke, confused and startled. A new dream, amidst all the old reruns, had jumpstarted his day. Something to do with Robby the Robot, their Tin Man, in the midst of a storm, clanking down the middle of Main Street with an ax held aloft in one mechanical claw, while fireflies danced all about him. Another piece to the puzzle—yet no more enlightening when added to all the others. 

              “Feels like I’m getting farther away from it,” Bud said, shaking his head awake. He made a mental note to log the vision into his dream journal the first chance he got.

             
He looked around the room and realized Josie and Tubby had split. Rusty was sawing some serious timber in front of the darkened TV. It was amazing how someone so small could snore so loud. Kid sounded like a bad muffler.

             
Tubby must have walked Josie home last night
.
Better call her to make sure she got home okay…

             
He threw off the blanket and hurried over to the door. The sun was up and Moon Island was coming to life on the street below. He heard Mr. Peteovich, the testy Polish owner of Peg Leg Pete’s, berating the mailman for all the damn circulars in his mailbox. Miss Beasly, who ran the Book Nook, and had a small apartment over her store, was opening early for her
Saturday morning Coffee Klatch
.

Bud’s mother had once belonged to the same book club.

              Beasly was a spindly, fifty-year-old spinster who was forever flirting with Mr. Peteovich, a confirmed member of The Woman Hater’s Club.

             
“Good morning, Mr. Pete! How are you today?”

             
“Rrrrrrrrrr,”
growled Mr. Pete in return.

             
Bud grinned. At least no one could accuse the old dude of leading Beasly on. With the rising of the sun, Bud felt a little more at ease, his fears a bit more unreasonable.

             
He was still going to make that call, though.

             
He walked back into the clubhouse to wake up Rusty and that’s when he saw the Aurora Model box on top of the steamer trunk. He grinned hugely as he sat on the trunk and reverently picked up the glow-in-the-dark kit. Shrink-wrap still covered the unopened Aurora Model. The original price sticker read a ludicrous 98 cents. A yellow Post It note, sticking beside Hyde’s bestial face, confirmed someone had left it there for Bud to find.

             
To Big Bad Bud Brown.

             
From the New Kid in Town

             
                            *******

Tubby awoke to a painful throbbing between his legs. The sun was up now and streaming through Josie’s lone bedroom window. The two of them had talked for a long time before she’d finally nodded off to sleep. She: about her family, Bud, Rusty, and Mr. Huggins. A man she adored almost as much as her own father. Tubby: about all of the places he’d been over the years. The traveling road show that was once his family’s way of life. He surprised himself by opening up to her about his eating problem. About how lonely he’d been. To her credit, Josie never asked him about dieting or offered any other well-meaning advice. She’d just listened, her head resting on the palm of her hand, the top sheet draped loosely over her bare legs. The whole time Tubby had had to lie on his stomach, hiding the evidence of his shameful arousal.

              Even now, well past sunup, his erection showed no signs of wilting. Just laid there like a block of wood, pressing into his aching balls. The pain was excruciating, even worse than the insistent pressure in his kidneys.

             
When he’d caught that glimpse of her breast, the dusty pink nipple topping off that white mound like a winter bloom…. Well, good grief, Gertie! He’d almost exploded inside his tightie-whities right then and there!

             
Maybe it would’ve been better if he had. Even though he’d managed to control himself, he’d paid a price for not getting the release he so dearly needed. The burning urge to pee finally spurred him into action.

             
For the first time since he’d flipped over onto his stomach, Tubby turned around and sat up. His penis felt like a body part,
apart
from him. The pain in his balls went from an aching throb, to a pulsating crescendo.

             
He peered over the top of Josie’s bed and gasped aloud. She was laying on top of the sheets now, one long leg pulled into the other, her bronzed limbs forming the number 4. Her T-shirt had ridden up her belly, revealing Josie from the bottom half of her breasts on down…

Tubby trembled before the sight, unable to avert his gaze. Her right foot was closest to his head. Her toenails a carnal shade of red. A delicious offset to her skin’s tawny hue, the only feminine touch, to what was essentially a tomboyish sort of girl. Her foot was on the smallish side, almost childlike, compared to the rest of Josie, which was athletic and ripe. You sure couldn't accuse the girl of being anorexic! There was a touch of baby fat in her face and stomach. So girlishly endearing. A bewildering collage of youth and sex. The foot curved into a shapely ankle, the soft line continuing smoothly upwards into a firm muscular calve.
Oh, but to cup that calve in my hand
sweetly,
Tubby’s sex-addled mind composed on the spot.
T’would fill my greedy palm so neatly.

An adorable dimpled knee flared upwards into a lengthy smooth thigh. Figure skater’s legs, he decided. Powerful, yet feminine. Tubby longed to reach out and trace that golden thigh with his fingertips. To feel the texture of such a marvelous limb.

The thigh seemed to go on and on, up her body, the lush line finally broken, yet further accentuated, by the hip-hugger band of Josie’s clean white underpants. They lay flat against her stomach, her alluring bellybutton an impossible distance from the puckered elastic band.

Tubby strained his neck to peer into the mystifying crevices between her legs.
Eldorado!
The cotton diving to silky depths he’d only dreamed about. His penis twitched, begging to be acknowledged. A straining hound on an ever-fraying leash. Tubby refused himself the liberty, though, continuing instead his skulky survey. He yearned to peek once more underneath that cotton T. It was already halfway there in exposing one breast.
Just
one
little peek…

No!
He shook his head roughly.

That’s going too far!

He was not only risking his friendship with Josie, but also Rusty and Bud—either of whom would probably beat the snot out of him for what he was doing now, much less thinking! And yet he was unable to look away…

He watched the rise and fall of Josie’s chest, slow and even. Her hand, resting on her bare stomach. Her fingers long and tapered, so cool to the touch, he recalled. Fingernails short and practical. Unlike her toenails, plain and unpolished. The hair on her arms and legs so fine you could barely see the downy curls. Shoulder length hair in a rusty fan around her pillow, one stray strand looped across her full lips—lips parted to reveal the tip of a pink tongue, clamped gently between her teeth.

Tubby took the incalculable risk of lifting the lock from Josie’s face. He bent over to kiss those soft lips, as if she was Sleeping Beauty, and he her brave Prince, when he realized just how far he’d gone in this insanity.

Josie stirred, stretching cat-like on her bed, her pretty toes flexing and curling, her eyes still closed…

Tubby got up, grabbed his bookbag, and scurried over to the bathroom, softly closing the door behind him.

              He leaned against the wall, trying to control his breathing. He sounded like a gasping Darth Vader.

             
Had she known all along?
Did she sense me leering at her like some creepy peeping Tom?

             
He looked down at the door and noticed for the first time an old-fashioned keyhole. Always thinking ahead, Ham had salvaged the antiquated oak door from a junkyard.

             
Tubby dropped his bag, pulled the skeleton key from the lock, and peered through the keyhole…