The Henry Sessions (2 page)

Something changed when Elsie turned thirteen. I don’t know if it’s because she was officially a teen, but all of a sudden I saw her in a different light. I didn’t know what to do around her. I’d either clam up or just start saying mean stuff to get a reaction out of her but she was a firecracker and would always dish it back.

I remember one time we were hanging out in their family room downstairs. Jason and I were talking about sex when Elsie came sauntering in, sucking innocently on a lollipop.

I’m sorry if this sounds really crass but for a fifteen-year-old boy, a girl sucking on a lollipop is like visual Viagra. Thank God for throw pillows and the oversize sweatshirt I was wearing.

“What are you talking about?” she asked casually, plopping down on the couch near me.

“About positions,” Jason said with a straight face.

“Like football positions?” she asked, all wide-eyed wonder.

Jason shot me a grin. “Something
like
that.”

I played along. “Yeah, like, there’s this position called the donkey punch. That guy’s responsible for coming up from behind and punching the opposing player in the back of the head.”

Elsie frowned. “That doesn’t sound right. There’s no punching in football.”

I continued as if I didn’t hear her. “And there’s this one play called the doggy style, where one player comes up from behind again and just rams into the other guy.”

“That sounds like the donkey punch,” Elsie pointed out, looking at me with skepticism.

“No, you don’t punch anyone in doggy style,” I said, my face nearly exploding from the effort of trying not to laugh.

Jason doubled over, clutching his stomach as he laughed. I let go and laughed along with him.

Elsie stood up and huffed, realizing we were yanking her chain. “You guys are dickheads,” she said and stomped off.

“You’re not supposed to say that word!” Jason called after her.

She turned around, her hands on her hips. “Yeah? Well you’re not supposed to be talking about sex either!”

Jason and I fell back onto the floor in hysterics.

I spent more and more time at Jason’s house. I’d come home from school and find my house empty and it was just so easy to just walk down the street and knock on the Shermans’ door. Jason and I would go to the family room and play Nintendo and eat snacks. I swear I owe that family thousands of dollars for the food I ate at their house. His dad kept grumbling that Jason and I were eating them out of their home but I never felt unwelcome. The Colonel always made sure I knew he was kidding.

Things at my home were more of the same. Mom stayed at the office until nearly ten and my dad, well, I had no idea where he was spending his time. All I knew was that he’d come home around nine smelling like alcohol and cigarettes and then lock himself in his man room. I was convinced that my parents were having separate affairs but I never could find proof.

And the sad thing?
I didn’t even care to find out.

I was so tired of it, of the constant loneliness, so I went over to the Sherman’s house and knocked on Jason’s window but he didn’t answer. The guy’s a pretty heavy sleeper. Elsie’s window was right beside his so I tried her window, thinking maybe I could go through her room to Jason’s and crash out on his floor.

Elsie’s face appeared in the window, her face sleep-creased, her curly hair tied up into a messy bun. She looked so adorable. She let me in, looking a little bewildered, and asked me if something was wrong.

“Why would anything be wrong?” I asked, instantly on edge.

“Because you’re knocking on my window in the middle of the night.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s only ten-thirty, smartass.”

“But you’re in my room at ten o’clock on a school night,” she said. “Something is definitely wrong.”

I sat on the edge of her bed and sighed, feeling deflated. Jason and I never really talked about our feelings, but Elsie was a girl and girls are pros at that kind of thing. “My parents are still not home,” I said.

“That really sucks.” She sat down on her bed and leaned against the headboard. I kicked off my shoes and climbed in, settling myself against the footboard. We faced each other in the semi-darkness, our faces lit only by the night-light in the corner.

“They always come home late,” I said, focusing on the bookshelf above her head. “But I’m so tired of sleeping in an empty house. And when I wake up, they’re already gone. It’s like I live by myself.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” she said. “You can do what you want, watch what you want.”

“It sounds fun, but it really sucks. I’m not even sixteen yet and I’m already living by myself.”

“Are you lonely?” she asked in a small voice.

I pondered my options. Lying was my first instinct but I had already opened up to Elsie, I might as well tell her the truth. If nothing else, it might make me look like a sensitive soul. “Yeah. I really am,” I said. I nudged her thigh with my foot. “You and Jason are so lucky. Don’t you ever forget that.
”

Her hazel eyes watched me. “I won’t.” She slid down onto her pillow. “Henry, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Is that why you’re always here? Are we, like, your adopted family or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.” I glanced at her. “Why, do you want me to leave?”

“No,” she said. “You can have my family. You and Jason are basically twins anyway. Twin dickheads.”

I squeezed her socked foot. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why? You and Jason do.”

“Because we’re disgusting and gross.”

“Yeah you are. Your feet smell.”

“They do not!” I laughed the comment off. I was at about that age when deodorant and a daily shower had become a necessity.

She scrunched up her nose and giggled. “They really do.”

I got up, grabbed my shoes, and headed to the door. “I’ll go stink up Jason’s room then,” I said with a grin before tiptoeing out. “Goodnight, brat.”

3

Elsie started going to Monterey High School when Jason and I were juniors. I don’t know if it was his dad’s influence or what but Jason watched over her like a hawk at first.
 
He recruited me to stalk her, to make sure that nobody was messing with her. Elsie was a sweet kid and some of the older kids liked picking on the freshmen, so Jason and I had to have words with a few people. We were football players and people actually listened to us like we had real authority.

Elsie, for her part, had her friends and was a genuinely likeable person. Coupled with her good looks—she’d learned how to style her hair a little better by then—she quickly became one of the popular girls at school. I’d see guys trying to talk to her all the time and I’d get this urge to throw my arm around her shoulder to chase them off. I thought at the time that it was just overprotectiveness. Now that I’m older, I can now tell you those were the first flames of jealousy burning in my chest, but when you’re young and have never loved a girl, you don’t know those things. Unfortunately, not knowing what the hell I was feeling, I ended up doing some pretty stupid things.

Take, for example, in senior year when this guy took Elsie to the homecoming dance. Elsie was only a sophomore at the time but John was a senior and a known ladies-man, so Jason and I were already on high alert. John was on the football team too, albeit a second-stringer, so we all chipped in for a limo and rode together. I really pushed for it so Jason and I could keep an eye out on the guy and his wandering hands.

Everything was going fine at the dance. I took my girlfriend Nina, who was smoking hot in her tight green dress that really looked good with her red hair. We were dancing and Nina was whispering really raunchy things in my ear when I saw John lead Elsie onto the dance floor.

They started off innocently, with her hands around his neck and his around her waist, but there’s a lot of truth in John’s reputation and he started to get fresh with her. She kept trying to pull his hands away from her ass but he was relentless, until she just gave up and let him touch her all over that dance floor. I’ll never forget that blissful look on her face, when she closed her eyes and let him kiss her neck.

It made me so fucking furious.

I pulled away from Nina and ran over to John, grabbing the back of his shirt and throwing him across the room. I turned to Elsie, ready to… I don’t know. I wanted to yell at her and kiss her and keep her safe from disgusting guys like John.

“What the hell, Logan?” John shouted and pushed me. I pushed him back, waiting for him to hit me. I’d instigated the fight, so if I threw a punch I would get expelled for sure, maybe even get charged for assault.

“You were practically molesting her in front of the whole school!” I yelled at him.

“It’s not molesting if she wanted it!” John shouted back.

We were both trying to out-shout each other when Jason got into the mix. Then I realized Elsie was gone. Luckily, someone said they saw her running to the exit, so I took off after her with Jason right behind me.

We caught up with her, and I swear, it took everything I had in me not to just tackle her to the ground and… I didn’t know. Those damned teenage hormones firing on all cylinders.

Jason went back to his date right after he realized that Elsie was fine, that we were just acting like children. There, alone in the dark hallway with Elsie, I was filled with so many warring emotions, the main one being protectiveness. I didn’t want her with guys like John who didn’t respect her, but honestly, I didn’t know one guy deserving of her. Me? Hell no. I was just a horny teenage guy too. “You shouldn’t have let him do that,” I told her.

“We were just dancing.” She looked like she was about to cry.

I didn’t know what to say to take that look away from her face and ended up saying the first thing that popped into my head. “Now the whole school will see that you’re easy.” I didn’t know why I said it. I meant to say the school would
think
she was easy. “Elsie, I didn’t mean it like that,” I added quickly.

“I hate you,” she said and flipped me off.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said again, but she was already gone. I faced the nearest locker and pounded my head into it repeatedly. Nina found me like that a few minutes later.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“I’m great, Nina,” I said. “What the hell does it look like?”

“It looks like you got jealous because John was touching Elsie.”

I took deep breaths to stave off the headache. “She’s like a little sister to me, alright?”

Nina didn’t look convinced but she nodded anyway. “Fine. Can we just go back to our homecoming dance?”

I took her by the hand and led her back into the gym, glad for any kind of distraction.

“Well, if you look like a whore and quack like a whore,” she said under breath.

That was the first time I noticed the nasty streak in Nina, but at that point in my life, she was the only female left who could still stand me, so I just asked her to can it.

I didn’t stop coming over to the Shermans house but Elsie made sure I felt the chill. She froze me out, refusing to even acknowledge my presence. One night, during dinner, her parents asked flat out why she was so angry with me.

“Because Henry is a jerkface,” she said and kept eating.

The Colonel eyed me but said to her, “Can you expound on that?”

Elsie shook her head. Jason spoke up. “It was because at the homecoming dance last week, Elsie’s date was touching her inappropriately and Henry put an end to it.” Jason yelped. I was pretty sure Elsie kicked him under the table.

Mrs. Sherman shot me a look of gratitude. She loaded my plate with another slice of meatloaf and another heap of mashed potatoes. “Well, we really appreciate that, Henry.”

Elsie sputtered. “What? You’re taking his side?”

“Yes. He did the right thing,” her dad said, and her face turned even redder. “Who knows what the boy would have done to you if Henry hadn’t put a stop to it.”

“It didn’t occur to you that maybe I was letting John touch me?”

The Colonel’s eyes narrowed. “I should hope not.”

“Oh my God, you’re so sexist!” she shouted and pushed away from the table.

I was pretty miserable by then, my earlier feeling of vindication trumped by how awful Elsie must be feeling. But it was too late. Whatever anger she felt towards me had now been compounded by everyone’s support of me. I had inadvertently turned her entire family against her.

“May I be excused?” she said through her teeth, glaring at me through slitted eyes. Then she fled the room.

I stayed away for a while, giving her some time to calm down. By then I knew the way she worked: she had a wicked temper but she just needed to be left alone and she’d eventually calm down. Elsie was someone who forgave her loved ones freely; I just hoped I was still one of them.

After two weeks of refusing to talk to me, I finally had enough. I couldn’t stand not talking to her so I finally put a real effort into making her forgive me.
 
I’d approach her at school; she’d walk away. I had people give her messages from me; she just threw the notes into the trash. One time, she even pretended to wipe her ass with it before going into the girl’s bathroom, presumably to flush it.