Sour Apple

I don't know exactly when I wrote this one. I was obviously still pretty young and horny. I think I did a much better job of sticking to subject matter I knew, primarily finding women attractive and being a bit of an ass, oh, and wrecking my bike, I guess. It feels rushed at the end, but I'm not the best judge. Tell me what you think in the comments. I only have two other stories from back in the day, and they are much more "horny teenager" than this one. I have to decide whether to share those before I start trying my hand at writing again.

Enjoy "Sour Apple"

Ms. Arneson always wore plaid skirts that reached to mid-shin. She also always wore wispy blouses and a matching bra. I know her bra always matched because my desk was in the front row next to the north wall. Her desk, a gray metal job with a veneer top, the sort of thing you would expect in lumberyards and public schools, was in front of mine facing the class. Every time she sat down she would lean forward, I could see down her shirt. I started kindergarten a year late, so I was eighteen my senior year. Ms. Arneson, perhaps I’ll call her Paula, was only twenty-eight. Paula was young for a teacher and at the time I felt it was important to stress that she was only twenty-eight. Otherwise I don’t think I could have been comfortable with my attraction. Paula, I think I much prefer calling her Paula, was only twenty-eight, that’s only a ten year difference; she had long black hair which she kept in a bun during school. She had sharp features; often I compared her to a hawk, and deep brown eyes. Except for the lack of glasses Paula Arneson filled the role of lusty librarian in my fantasies.

I was having one of these fantasies and staring blankly out the windows when the class bell rang. Kids started walking across the lawn outside the window almost immediately and I watched them for a moment. I took my time putting my books in my pack. I didn’t want to stand up until I could be sure I wasn’t going to broadcast the nature of my daydream.

It was late October and it was supposed to snow that evening. When I felt secure standing up I watched Ms. Arneson, well maybe I’m not so comfortable with Paula after all, clean the chalkboard while I put on my jacket. I shrugged my bag on and told Ms. Arneson to have a good evening.

“Thank you Mr. Olson. Enjoy the snow this weekend.”

I smiled a little at being called Mr. Olson and she smiled back, probably thinking I was just smiling politely. I grinned like an idiot and walked quickly out of the room.

In the hall there was already an eerie silence. There were no lockers in the English wing and the only sounds were from lockers being closed in the math and social studies halls. I turned and headed straight for the exit at the end of the wing. There was a squeak from a sneaker on waxed asbestos tile, only the best for our children, and I turned to see Robert jogging to catch up to me.

“John! The Carthys and I thought we could pick up some movies, maybe some Hitchcock, and watch ‘em at David’s.”

The Carthys were David Carthy and Tom McCarthy. David’s dad owned a small chain of electronics stores, Iggy’s or Ziggy’s or Zigg’s I don’t remember, and had a killer entertainment system. We watched all our movies and played all our video games at David’s house.

“Is Gary coming?” I was hoping Gary Eagan was coming so I could use him as an excuse not to show. Our junior year, just before summer break, I got in a fistfight with Gary and broke two of his ribs.

“Naw man, you know we don’t invite him anymore. He’s got his jock friends to hang out with if he gets bored. Come on, we thought if the movies got boring we’d pretend it was sophomore year and play some Goldeneye.

I hadn’t told anyone about my crush on Ms. Arneson and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that I couldn’t make movie night because I was going to be stalking Paula. So I just copped out as plainly as I could.

“Sorry. I’ve got plans tonight, but maybe I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

“John-John, you can tell me if you’ve got a girl. I won’t even tell the Carthys if you’re dating a freshman.”

I stopped in the doorway, propping open my half of the doublewide fire door with my foot. Robert stopped and leaned against his half. He was giving me his best shit-eating grin, as if he had caught me doing something embarrassing, alone in the bathroom perhaps, and it pissed me off. The afternoon sun was bright over the edge of his half of the door and I had to squint to look at him. I tried for as hard-ass a look as possible.

“Look, ass-hole, if I have a girl, and I want you and your ass-ettes to know about her, freshman or otherwise. I will tell you. I don’t need you dicking around in my life.”

Perhaps I went beyond hard-ass right into total shit-head because his smile faltered and he started walking to his car without a word.

Watching him walk away I realized I was an ass and shouted after him.

“Bobby, buddy-boy, if anything loosens up tonight I’ll give you a call. And I will, for sure, call you tomorrow afternoon.” Under my breath I added that I was sorry but his only response was to give me the finger over his shoulder.

Once, when we were nine, we were in the field behind his apartment building with my Daisy and a slingshot. We had just put a new band on the slingshot, it was one of the ones with a wrist brace, we called it a wrist-rocket, and we hadn’t given the yolks enough time to dry before we started playing with it. He was pulling back the band, I mean really giving it his all, when the yolk slipped and the band snapped back along his face. There was a moment of complete silence as a welt, stretching from his cheekbone just below his left eye to his earlobe, turned from dead fish white to angry red. Then, without a word, he got up and started walking back to his apartment.

I yelled after him back then too. I asked him where he was going, if he was okay. I know now that he was trying not to cry in front of me. He flipped me the bird that time when we were nine because if he had tried to talk he would have started crying.

I worried that day, standing in the doorway to the English wing, that I may have hurt him more than I could understand. It’s hard to know what someone else is really going through, and sometimes what seems like tolerable, if slightly cruel, behavior happens to be the the thing that pushes them over the edge at the end of a string bad experiences.

He sat in his car for a few minutes, probably afraid his shitty car wouldn’t start and his otherwise dramatic exit would be marred. It did start on the first try and as he was pulling out Ms. Arneson slipped past me through the door I still had propped open.

“Thank you Mr. Olson.”

I told her she was very welcome. Once she was past me, and her smell, sour apple, was washing over me, I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Ever since Ms. Arneson there has not been a smell that I have found more appealing, or more arousing, than sour apple.

I watched Ms. Arneson, Paula, sour apple goddess, walk to her car. When she pulled out of the faculty/staff parking lot I spun around behind the door and unlocked my bicycle.

Her house was a forty-five minute ride by bike, but it was Friday so I would get there before her because she was going to stop at the health club. I would have loved nothing more than to watch her, in her shorts and sports bra, working up a sweat, but I knew she would notice me. I followed her to the club once, too horny and stupid to resist, and she asked me the next Monday if that had been me in the parking lot watching her. I told her it probably was me because I had been cutting through the lot when I thought I recognized someone in the club. I explained that I stared for a while trying to place the face. That when I realized it was her I had left. The truth was I stared, simmering in my own hormones, until I realized she was staring back.

Ms. Arneson lived at the bottom of a hill so when I got to her house and saw her car in the driveway I was coasting much to fast to stop before I got close enough to be seen. When I realized she was sitting on her front steps watching me I was too startled to avoid a parked car.

When my front wheel hit the rear bumper of the Civic my bike stopped abruptly but my body had no similar intentions. I don’t remember much until the next afternoon when things started clearing up. I do know that Ms. Arneson cradled my head in her lap until help arrived. I was, for a short time, enveloped in a soft warm heaven that smelled of sour apple.