RELUCTANT PRESS

every Saturday to be a slave to fussy old ladies who treated me like dirt. I should tell her that I would wash and iron my own clothes and she should do hers. I should tell her that it was not my responsibility to pick up her room and make her bed every day. And as good as it felt to fantasize about all this I knew that it would never happen. And now I was letting another woman rule my life and knew equally well that I would not have the balls to stand up to her either.

-000-

Over the next couple of weeks I continued to go to Susie's house after school and had supper with her and her mother every Friday. We did study, and even extended our subjects to include English and History. With Susie's help, I made the honor roll for the first time.

One day Susie asked if she could come to my house to study and Mom told me it was all right. It was a day that I usually laundered towels from the salon but by now I was so at ease with Susie that I could do this with her there. I had the towels in the washer when she arrived and we sat in the living room to study. When the washer shut off I transferred the towels to the dryer, all under the watchful eye of Susie.

"You know, I have never done a load of wash in my life. I don't know what I'll do when I go away to college. Maybe you can give me lessons for a change."

"Sure, any time," I answered, thinking that it was indeed strange for a boy to be showing a girl how to do laundry. I knew that Mrs. Wales spoiled Susie, as evidenced by her previously sloppy bedroom which was now kept much neater, mostly because of my efforts.

We studied some more and ended when the dryer shut off. Susie helped me fold the towels, after I showed her how. "We're just like a husband and wife," said Susie, and how I wished that was true.

When that chore was finished, Susie asked for a tour of the house. She was amazed at how neat my room was kept, even checking out my closet and seeing how everything was hanging neatly and facing the same direction. I panicked for a minute when Susie stood in front of my dresser remembering that there were several pairs of panties sitting in the top drawer. But she was not nosy enough to look inside. She walked around my mother's bedroom and her eyes fell on the

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RUFFLES & CURLES

By Kammi Morton

picture on the night stand. She picked it up and looked closely at it for what seemed like an eternity.

"I recognize your mother, but who is the other woman?" "Ah...that's my...cousin," I stammered.

"Oh? You never mentioned her. What's her name?" "Ah...Danielle," I miraculously remembered from almost four years ago. "She ah, moved away so we don't see her much anymore."

"You know, she looks an awful lot like you," said Susie with a questioning look at me.

"Oh really. Do you think so? I never noticed the resemblance."

"I don't know how you could miss it. Surely everyone has pointed it out."

"No, you're the first," I replied, my voice now shaking. My sigh of relief must have been obvious when Susie finally put the picture down and did not say anything more. But there was an almost knowing look on her face, as though she had just found the answer to a difficult math question.

A week later, when Susie came over again, she saw a birthday card on the mantle. It was from my Aunt who was always at least a week early with her greetings.

"Danny! When is your birthday?," she asked excitedly. "Next Friday," I answered.

"Are you going to have a party? You didn't tell me anything about one."

"No, Mom has to work so we'll go out to eat Saturday night and have a cake then. Would you like to come?" "We have a game next Saturday, but how about we do something on Friday?"

"Sure. What?"

"Let me think about it."

Susie had confessed to me that she really did not like Jack, but she desperately wanted to be Prom Queen and knew that she needed the votes that a guy like Jack could produce to win. She admitted that it was a terrible reason to go out with someone that you really did not care about and went on to tell me that she had tried to break up with him but he had threatened to tell everyone that she was a whore and that she had slept with the entire football team. Susie

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