Waking for Hours

Copyright © 2012

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-5884-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5885-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920222

iUniverse rev. date: 11/20/2012

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Never Tell Your Parents You’re Bored

Chapter Two

A Meeting and a Grilling (or Two)

Chapter Three

Walking for Hours

Chapter Four

The Taming of the Shrewd

Chapter Five

Back to School

Chapter Six

At the Start of the Fall

Chapter Seven

Questions, Confusions, and Faithfulness

Chapter Eight

Being Thankful

Chapter Nine

From Advent to the Yule Ball

Chapter Ten

Have Yourself an Awkward Little Christmas

Chapter Eleven

Resolutions

Chapter Twelve

Table for Three (Plus One)

Chapter Thirteen

Waking for Hours

Chapter Fourteen

How St. Valentine Failed Me

Chapter Fifteen

Mad as a March Hare

Epilogue

May Daze

for those who know who they are

and

for those who are discovering who they are

Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible without invaluable input from others.

First, I must thank the Boy with No Name. Really, that’s an improper designation, but I met him a very long time ago, fell out of touch with him a long time ago, and don’t even remember the proper spelling of his name. Meeting him was an educational experience, an experience that I will never forget. He was the first nonstraight person I’d ever met in person, and our discussions, though few, were enlightening.

Second, I’d like to thank my proofreaders, including my daughter Shannon, who provided valuable advice regarding the realism of adolescent interactions, and Bonnie Rambob and Jeanne Strauss for their feedback on how youth groups in churches might address certain issues.

I’d also like to express my appreciation for Back Yard Coffee Company in Redwood City, California. I relied on their coffee, food, electricity, and Wi-Fi while working on this book. Their staff provided support in other subtle ways, too. More than a café, it’s a haven.

There are others, many others, who supported and encouraged me during this effort. Thank you, all of you. I couldn’t have done this without you.

Chapter One

Never Tell Your Parents You’re Bored

BILLY, HURRY UP! You’re going to be late! Mom called from downstairs. Again. I hated it when she called me Billy. I was just about seventeen, after all. Billy seemed like such a young name to me. It didn’t bother me when Melody or Shelly called me Billy, though. But Meli was a friend, and Shelly was my girlfriend. They could get away with using that name.

It was a Monday morning in August, and I needed to get up or I’d be late for school. Well, it wasn’t exactly school.

During the summer between freshman and sophomore year, I mentioned that there were times during break that I’d been so bored that I almost wished school had been back in session. But then once I was back in school, I couldn’t wait for vacation again. Of course, all my parents heard was that I was bored during summer. Never mind the part about the vicious cycle of school making me want vacation. So this summer, my mom signed me up for this high school version of a music and fine arts camp at a local community college. It wasn’t exactly summer school, but I guess it was in a way.

Mom and Dad had gotten over the whole how-can-you-be-bored-you-have-a-keyboard-and-your-own-computer thing and decided I needed something to do. Surfing the web can get old after a while, and writing music wasn’t easy. It seemed that my creative ability came in fits and spurts. Grampa took a practical approach to my random creativity. He’d tell me, Just let it happen when it happens. But my parents thought I could use formal training to help things along. Yeah, right. How do you teach someone to write music? How do you teach creativity? I mean, if the teachers were so damn creative, why were they teaching instead of touring?

Me and my big mouth.

Down the hall and into the shower, shaving while in there. Wrap a towel around the waist and go downstairs to put an English muffin in the toaster. Back up to my room. Throw on a T-shirt and jeans, stomp into my hi-tops, brush my mop of plain brown hair so Mom won’t freak, and cram stuff into my backpack. Return to the kitchen, butter the muffin, and out the door shrugging into a hoodie while juggling the backpack and the muffin.

Yeah, a hoodie in August. Hey, this was South San Francisco. Summer wouldn’t really start until October, and then it would only last for a few weeks.

Have a good day, Mom called.

Okay, I answered. I was leaving quite some time before classes actually started, because of the crazy route I had to take to get up to the college. Through the complex to the gate, a short jaunt on this park-like path to a side street, and then cross El Camino. Take a bus to the mall and transfer to another. Take that bus to the college. My commute to school was actually simpler, even if it was longer. I went to a private all-boys Catholic high school that was about a half-hour bus ride each way every day. But the school year wouldn’t start for another two weeks.

Even though this was the first year they tried this fine arts camp for high school students, it wasn’t all that bad. I was pretty sure the college was trying to expand its fine arts department and was using this camp thing as a test to see how many kids would be interested. I actually enjoyed music and fine arts camps when I was in junior high, so it wasn’t a big surprise that I liked the senior high camp. The summer between seventh and eighth grade, I met Melody at a junior high camp at the very same community college where I was going this summer. We became boyfriend and girlfriend shortly before starting high school. It didn’t last very long, but it was … something.

And sure, there were prima donnas at camps like these, but it was fun anyway. My biggest problem is that I played music mostly by ear; I had a really tough time reading it. To some of the kids, this was cool. To others and the teachers, it made me some kind of lesser musician. So I usually called myself a keyboardist, because I thought that real musicians could actually read music. I really couldn’t read music and play it at the same time.

It was cool that Melody was going to this camp, too. Since my school was so far away, most of my friends didn’t live nearby. So that meant that none of my school buddies would be here. But at the same time, most of Melody’s stuff was choir and photography, so I didn’t actually get to see her all that much. We tried to meet up and hang at lunch, but she usually had to go right away after classes ended for the day. So it was pretty much only lunch times when we could hang out.

This week was the last week of the camp, and the various projects we’d been working on would be finalized on Thursday. In the ensemble class I was in, it meant a performance with other groups, including the choir Melody was in. The music theory class didn’t have a final so much as a review. We were expected to play the compositions we wrote in the song-writing class. I wasn’t too worried about that, since we were given a formula to work with. I don’t know if I learned to be creative in the last six weeks, but I did write something. I didn’t give it my all, true; but I gave it something. And we didn’t have to write lyrics and sing. No. It was just instrumental songs. Thank God.

Monday morning was music theory, which was fascinating but mind-boggling with all the details and rules. I was really glad we weren’t getting graded on this stuff. But I was learning about how to put chords together to create some really cool sounds ranging from harsh to ethereal. I don’t know if that’s what they were trying to teach us, but that’s what I was learning.

At the beginning of the lunch period I went looking for Meli. As usual, she was dressed all in black and white and gray. A gray hoodie, a black shirt that looked really good on her the way it clung, and white jeans. I don’t think she had any other colors in her wardrobe. She almost always wore at least two of those three colors. In addition to singing, she had a thing for black-and-white photography. I think her camera was permanently set that way.

Meli! I shouted a greeting and jogged up to her.

Oh, hi, Billy, she said quickly. My friends from school would’ve described her as short and top heavy, which I guess was true. She was really curvy and really cute. Well, I thought she was curvy, but most of my schoolmates would call her fat, I think. Straight black hair, bright yet dark eyes behind these half-moon glasses, and this smile you couldn’t help but smile back at. Except, the smile wasn’t really there right now. Listen, I’ve got a lot of work to do before the final choir performance on Thursday, so I think we’ll have to skip lunch this week. I’m really sorry. Maybe we can meet on Saturday, okay?

Sure, I said, trying not to sound too disappointed. That was something I learned from Shelly. If I sounded too disappointed, I’d get accused of being too needy. I still hadn’t figured out if she was right. Was I too needy? What did too needy really mean anyway?

I had some time to myself, so I bought a mocha from the coffee cart and wandered to the edge of the campus where there was this strange waist-high stone-and-mortar wall that looked over the ocean. There was a bench on the far side of the wall, and I sat there with my mocha, thinking about what it meant to be too needy.

I guess it was a bit pathetic. There I was sitting on a bench drinking coffee by myself while Meli went off to do something else. Dammit, was it too much to ask to have someone to spend time with? Did that make me needy? Melody had never said that to me, and I’d been careful to not give her any reason to after the break-up. Our break-up was friendly, and I wanted to keep it that way. So I was sitting there trying to figure out if I really was needy when Shelly suddenly sat next to me.

She just plopped down on the bench like she didn’t even notice that anyone else was sitting there. That wasn’t exactly a good sign, but it wasn’t exactly a bad sign either.

Shelly! I just about shouted. I’m so glad to see you! And I was. Not only was she fun to be with, she was really cute, too. She had this awesome kind of reddish-brown hair, and blue eyes that were almost the same color as her eyeglass frames. She was just about as tall as me, which meant we fit well together when we kissed. She wasn’t nearly as curvy as Melody, though. Instead Shelly was thin and kind of lanky, really. Also unlike Meli, Shelly liked a lot of sharply contrasting colors in her outfits. I think part of it was that she had to wear a uniform at her school. We just had a dress code. In keeping with her radical sense of color, she was wearing a neon-pink blouse, blue jeans, and purple sneakers. Her parents used to call her a rainbow disaster when she was little, and it still applied now.

Billy, Shelly said, sounding surprised. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, as it was more of a flustered surprised than a happy surprised. Wow, you’re taking summer classes up here, too?

No, I explained. I’m in the senior high music and fine arts camp up here. You’re taking classes? Like, college classes? I knew she was enrolled in an online college, but I didn’t realize she was going to an actual college, too.

Yeah, she said. If I work hard enough, I can have my associate’s degree when I graduate high school. Then it’ll only be two more years to my bachelor’s. Since most of the college work I’m doing is online, I just take a creative writing class and a self-defense class here. She was babbling. Usually that was a good sign.

Wow, I said. I couldn’t imagine intentionally working that hard at school. She was literally enrolled in three schools at the same time. But I suddenly had an idea why I hadn’t seem much of her over the summer. Is that why we haven’t been able to go out much lately?

Billy, she sighed, I’m just really busy. I’ve got a real chance at doing this. I could have my master’s degree by the time most people only have their bachelor’s. It means that I’ll be able to leave home a whole two years earlier. That might not seem like much to you, but it is to me.

I know, and I think I really did know. Her parents were divorced, and she didn’t like her stepmom. It’s just that I love you and I miss you.

She sighed again and said, I like you a lot, but I’m not sure if I love you. I didn’t like hearing that, but I guess it was better than a lie. "I’m just really confused right now. I do want to see you and I do want to spend time with you. But I really want to get a head start on getting away from home, too. If I have my AA when I graduate high school, it’ll make getting scholarships a lot easier. I don’t want to stay at home when I go to college."

We just sat there in silence. I didn’t want to give her a reason to call me needy again, and I figured I’d better say something quick or she’d think I was giving her the cold shoulder. All of a sudden she said, I’m on the Pill, ya know.

Huh?

I’m on the Pill, she repeated. I’ve been taking it since last December. That meant she’d already been on the Pill when we started dating in February. And my dad and stepmom both work during the day, and the semester is almost over. Maybe we could get together.

Oh. My. God.

Are you serious? It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say when your girlfriend suddenly tells you she’s on the Pill.

Yeah, she said, smiling, and I loved seeing her smile. She always wore the reddest lipstick that somehow didn’t quite coordinate with her hair. I’m serious. I’m on the Pill, and I’d like to … you know. I didn’t know what to say. When I didn’t answer quickly enough, her smile faded, she looked away and said, You’re not interested. I’m not sexy enough.

Shelly was not the most drop-dead gorgeous girl I’d ever seen. But the same was true for Melody and I would love to have sex with either of them. But Shelly’s offer really caught me off guard. Shelly, you are sexy. Trust me, I assured her. And I am interested. It’s just … How could I explain this to her? She’d said I was needy and now I was about to tell her she was going too fast for me. Thinking quickly, I blurted, It’s against church teaching.

She grabbed her backpack and said, I didn’t realize you were so devout.

As she stood to leave, I jumped up and stopped her, saying, Shelly, we’ve never even made out, you tell me you don’t love me, but then you say you want to have sex with me?

I didn’t say I don’t love you, she replied. I mean, well, I guess I did, but what I meant was that, well, Billy, I’m really confused about you. I really, really like you. And I know I’d like to have sex with you. Is that so wrong? I’m not saying we’re not boyfriend-girlfriend. I mean, I think we are. It’s just … is it okay for me to just like you and lust after you without feeling real, well, love?

What in the actual fuck did that mean? I decided that would be a bad question to ask, so instead I said, Uh, yeah. I paused and then added, Is it okay for me to love you without wanting to jump into bed right away?

Sure. She smiled. Look, my class is starting soon, so I gotta go. It was good seeing you.

Well, at least she kissed me good-bye. And not a quick, dismissive kiss, but a real kiss.

I plopped back down on the bench and wondered if that conversation had really happened, or if I had slipped somehow into an alternate dimension. If she’d been a guy, I wouldn’t have been surprised she wanted sex without love. Sophomore-year religion class was all about sex and morality, and they said that male brains were programmed for sex and female brains were programmed for love. Shelly and I seem to be proving that wrong. Jeez, did it make me needy to want to hear Shelly say she loved me the way Melody used to?

Meh.

After lunch was the whole ensemble rehearsal. The next two days would be full of rehearsals and then the actual show on Thursday. Once again, I was back in the theater with Mr. Kroeger, the drill sergeant running the show.

Dammit, Bill, try it again! he shouted. Jeez, I wanted to just crawl into a hole. Closing my eyes so I wouldn’t be distracted by the sheet music, I played my solo section again. This time it was a lot better. Not perfect, and Kroeger let me know it, but passable. You’ve got to learn to read music better, he told me after class. "It’ll open a lot of doors. You’ve got great potential, but playing by ear and trying to memorize every piece of music you have to perform is no way to succeed. You’re going to have to learn how to