Taking a deep breath to help calm herself, Suzie mused, “I have to think of something else to do tonight, instead.” While she mulled her options, she tapped her broken pencil’s eraser idly on the cover of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. Oddly, the drawn picture of Mark Twain’s boy-hero looked to her to be almost exactly like Charles Womack. If Huck’s freckles were acne-scars and if Charlie wore a torn straw hat, they would have been twins in her mind’s eye.
Suzanne pursed her lips, laid down the pencil and thought, “Perfect! I need help in English, Womack, and you are nice, and smart, and might even be flattered that I ask.” If her concentration had been lax at the beginning of Social Studies, it was completely absent for the remainder of the period. She was the first out of the room when the bell rang.
Suzie blew through her front door at four o’clock and cried exuberantly, “Mom! MOM!”
Bernice Pomeroy dropped her damp tea towel on the counter beside the sink and exited the kitchen patting her apron against her crisp cotton housedress. “My goodness, Suz,” she called up the stairs to her already out of sight daughter. “I’m downstairs! What on earth is the commotion?”
The teen re-appeared from her room and walked more calmly, yet still in a hurry, back down to the entry where her bewildered mother stood. “Oh,” Suzie said, as she caught her breath. “It’s nothing, I guess. I’m just running late to meet some of the gang. We’re gonna do some group studying and I wanted you to know I was home, but that I was going right out again. That’s all.”
Bernice squinted knowingly as she appraised the girl’s effort to hide her excitement. At thirty-nine, Bunny Pomeroy was not so far removed from her own youth that she didn’t recognize something was afoot, even thought her parental experience cautioned her not to be too nosy. “Well, that’s fine, dear,” she said blandly. “Your dad said he would bring a pizza home with him, so don’t be too long, if you want to eat before that Carlson boy picks you up for your date.”
“Oh, gosh, Mom! We’re gonna get burgers, or something,” Suzie lied. “Besides, I’m not dating Butch anymore. If he forgets that and drops by, just tell him I’m out, please.”
Bernice frowned. “Well, alright dear, only don’t tell me where you’re going, or with who. I don’t want to fib to anyone. When do you think you’ll be home?”
“It’s Friday night, Mom,” Suzie reminded. “I won’t be out past my curfew. I have cheer practice at nine in the morning.” She laughed, “You know I like to get my beauty sleep! Now, I have to get my face fixed and get out of here!” She kissed her mother’s cheek and scurried upstairs again.
Meanwhile, unaware that he had been targeted by Suzanne Pomeroy as her foil to erase Butch Carlson from her social calendar, Charles Womack wandered blithely from store to store in the Quadrangle Mall. He simply could not settle on what to get his mom for Mothers’ Day. “A card, obviously,” he muttered under his breath. “But what to go with it?” With his mind a-whirl, he sat on a bench and blankly stared at other shoppers.
After a few minutes, Charlie focused his eyes on a window display thirty feet in front of him and realized that he had randomly stopped in front of Victoria’s Secret. To his embarrassed chagrin, the scantily clad underwear model on the poster he was staring at was his mom. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, then looked again. Now the model was, in fact, a model and she looked nothing at all like who he had imagined he saw.
“Man, oh man, Charlie,” he said to himself. “Your brain is in bad shape.”
Just then an older, overweight security guard tapped Charles on the shoulder and said, “Listen to me, kid. Studying that picture is not cool. Why don’t you go home and watch TV or something?”
Charlie stammered, “N-no, mister, y-you got it all wrong! I was thinking about what to buy my mom. I’m shopping!” Then he jumped up and ran into the lingerie shop while the mall cop laughed his ass off.
Inside the store, a mature sales-clerk strategically blocked Charles path and asked pleasantly, “You’re in a hurry, what are you looking for?”
Charlie gulped, hesitated, then blurted out, “A Mothers’ Day present. But I don’t know what she’d like!”
The clerk grinned and answered, “Oh, that’s easy: Anything. May I make a suggestion?” As she watched Charles gratefully nod assent, she continued, “A gift card would be perfect. She could come in… find exactly what she wanted… and you wouldn’t have to worry about it.” Steering her customer to the counter area, she pulled out a distinctive pink-and-black plastic card with a mag-stripe and assumptively asked, “How much shall I put on it?”
Charlie was steamrolled. His neck was hot, his hands itched, and all he wanted to do was bolt for the exit. Clumsily pulling his wallet from his jeans, he fished out a twenty-dollar bill and replied, “Umm, twenty? Is that enough for a decent… er, I mean a nice, gift?” The lady just smiled and bit her inside cheek to keep from chuckling as she loaded the amount on the gift card while he nervously swiveled his head to see if anyone that he knew was watching him.
Seconds later, Charles was out of Victoria’s Secret with his purchase and looking across the mall aisle at See’s Candies. In his head, he heard Old Lady Krautheimer telling him how she loved See’s and missed getting them now that her children were grown and gone. Inspiration clobbered him.
Marching into the candy store, Charlie bought a half-pound box custom-filled with the California Brittle and Scotch Mallows that the teacher had said she liked. Smug with his surprises, he walked out to his car, pausing only long enough to search the internet on his phone. Luck was with him; he found a Krautheimer’ with a nearby local address.
Charles arrived home at half-past four after tucking the See’s box, with no identifying note, under Clara Krautheimer’s doormat. Though he was home later than usual, he was well ahead of his mom, who worked downtown until five. Going directly to his bedroom in the small tidy one-floor bungalow, he stashed the gift card in his sock drawer then flopped on his standard maple-frame bed. He felt wrung out and closed his eyes, but neither sleep nor relaxation were to be had.
Visions of Suzanne, Mrs. Krautheimer, the Victoria Secret poster model, the polished sales clerk, and even his mom in scanty underwear paraded in a kaleidoscope through Charlie’s head. His hands, seemingly out of his control, unzipped his jeans and hauled his hardening cock out from his Hanes briefs. Groaning, he stroked his warm filled prick with his curled left fist, while he scratched under his balls with his right fingers. It wasn’t long before creamy gray relief shot from his slit onto his T-shirt.
When his sticky dick was again limp, Charlie closed up his pants, peeled off his spunk-stained shirt, and found the quiet peace he had been missing since seventh-period began. An hour later, Colleen Womack, just home from work, peeked in on her son. She nodded her head as she saw his body position and the rumpled cotton evidence near his left hip. Backing out discreetly, she closed the door and sighed softly to herself as she moved down the short hall to her own bedroom to change clothes.