The Palmist Ch. 01

So I asked Derek, "Where did you hear this?"

"Brittany told me."

"Brittany? ... Really?" I felt like the earth dropped from beneath me. Oh my god. "So... she told you... what exactly?"

"What I just told you. That Katrina met this dude, she ditched you guys and left with this dude, she went back to the campground with him and fucked him in his tent, and she's been seein' this guy since then. So... are you saying... wait, dude, how could you not know about that?"

"Because... well, I don't know! I just didn't! Brittany never told *me*. If it's true. And... if she knew... then."

"Well, OK, so... what happened when you got back to camp?"

"Katrina was there waiting for us. And she said she met some people staying there, and they brought her back."

"Oh, fuck, man. No. She didn't meet 'some people'. She met one people. That dude. So ... she camped with you guys that night?"

"Yeah. We spent the night in our tent."

"Who's tent?"

"Mine and Katrina's."

"So you slept with her that night."

"Yeah."

"Ohhhh my god. See, I didn't know that. Brittany just told me she hooked up with that guy, dumped you right after that, and she's been seein' that guy since. But the way you tell it, she would have to have fucked that guy before the rest of you got back to camp. If you spent the whole night with her, in the same tent, and you're sure she never left... then she had to have fucked the guy before you got there. By the way, did you guys... like... I mean, did *you* fuck her that night?"

"No."

"Whew. OK, good. 'Cause it would have been sloppy seconds, man. I mean... sorry, I don't mean to be... you know, I'm just sayin' ... yeah. She already... uh... well, yeah, you know what I mean."

My face went white. Sloppy seconds? Oh my god. If she fucked someone before I ... ohhh my god. Oh my god oh my GOD!! Did she have me... licking... her... sloppy... ohhhh my god. Humiliation washed over me like a flood.

Derek noticed, though I'm sure he didn't fully appreciate what was going through my mind. "Aw, dude, I'm sorry. I had no idea you didn't know about this."

"I didn't," I said, and my voice sounded to me like it came from somewhere else.

It's a good thing I knew what I was doing at Feedler by then, because over the next week at work, I was on auto-pilot. I was totally traumatized by this news from Derek, that apparently only *I* had not yet heard. I thought about it every waking moment. My first breath every morning was followed by a cold emptiness washing over my whole being. I would lie in bed, stare out my window, and shake my head. I would think, I am ... SUCH ... an IDIOT.

My mind went crazy trying to conjure an image of this "some dude from Trentstown". What did he look like? Was he taller than me? More muscular? Different color hair? What did Katrina tell him when she left his tent? "I can't stay here with you tonight, because I don't wanna break up with my boyfriend here. I'm gonna need a way back to Anniston, hahaha."

Is that what she said to him? And did he laugh? Ohhhh god. The humiliation of these unknowns was just too much to bear. Just too much.

Or did she tell him she had a boyfriend at all? She *must* have, I thought. Otherwise, what would be her excuse for either not spending that night with him there in his tent, or inviting him to stay in her tent? So she must have told him about me. And if she did, why would he be OK with her spending that night with me? Wouldn't he want her to break it off with me right away?

Then I thought... Maybe they compromised: Maybe she said, "I can't break up with him until I get back to campus," and maybe he said, "Well, OK, but if you're not gonna break it off with him now, will you at least promise me you won't fuck him before you do?" Ohhhh god. Could her refusal to have sex with me that night be because HE had made her promise not to?

And when did Brittany find out the truth of what happened? Is it possible Brittany knew that very night? When we got back to camp, we had all sat around the fire for a little while. Maybe an hour? Was there an opportunity for Katrina to tell Brittany she had met "some guy from Trentstown"? I thought there probably was, so I tortured myself with the possible dialogue:

"Oh my god. Britt. Listen, sh, sh... I met this guy, he brought me back here. Oh my god, he's so hot. Sh, listen... [whisper:] We fucked in his tent before you guys got back."

"What???"

"Shhhh!! Yeah, I just fucked him. His cum is still inside me."

"Ohhhh my god!"

"Will you shut up? Listen, listen... You can't tell David, 'cause I'm gonna stay with him tonight, but ... this guy, he and I exchanged numbers, and we're gonna get together again next weekend."

"Oh my god. So ... what are you gonna do, you still gonna see David?"

"No, I'm ... I'm gonna break it off with David, but not yet. So ... you can't say a word about this to anyone."

"What about tonight, though? Are you gonna ... have sex with David?"

"No, but ... OK, keep quiet ... here, cover your mouth ... don't make a sound. OK? OK. I think I'm gonna make David go down on me, and lick this guy's cum out of me."

I could picture Brittany with both hands over her mouth, choking off an "ohhhhhhh my gaaahhhhd!!" that was raging to work its way out of her throat, and Katrina perhaps adding both of her own hands to the gag, while continuing to say "Shhhhh!!"

Such thoughts swam through my head all day, every day, and it was just agony.

On the Fourth of July, my parents had a cookout at our house, and all our relatives from the area were there. My cousin Jason had a new girlfriend he brought with him. She was Katrina's height, and had a similar body type, and I got so jealous watching them be so affectionate that I could only eat half a burger. It reminded me of just the kind of relationship into which I had hoped mine and Katrina's would evolve. They kissed openly, and I thought, God, that would be so nice. I couldn't handle it. I had to go inside. I fed our dog the rest of my burger, and squatted down and petted her in the kitchen. I let her lick my face and thought, At least someone appreciates me and wants to kiss me.

A week or two later, the preoccupation with Katrina and that excruciating night at Blackfoot Lake gave way to overwhelming anxiety about returning to Western in the fall. If Derek had known the truth about why Katrina dumped me, then maybe by now all my friends there knew what had really happened. I mean, sure, maybe no one but Katrina and I, and "that dude from Trentstown", knew I had gone down on Katrina that night and sucked someone else's cum from her pussy, but they must all know by now that she cheated on me that night, but rode back to Anniston with me and "officially" broke it off after we got back. That was bad enough.

But then I considered how Brittany, at least, surely must know I ate some other guy's cum. And for some reason, Brittany withheld from me key information, but was willing to disclose that same information to Derek. Among our friends, what was so special about Derek? Nothing, really. So if she told Derek, there's no reason she wouldn't have told anybody, or everybody, else.

The shame of returning to Western was, therefore, just NOT something I could face. So even though it was mid-July, and classes would resume in just over a month, I couldn't go back there. I told my parents I was gonna transfer to BC [Bellewood College], and they were shocked.

"When did you decide THIS?" my mom asked.

"Just today."

"Why?"

"I'm just not happy there at Western, Mom."

"Well, why didn't you tell us?"

"Well... I just didn't fully realize it until now."

My dad said, "Well, you'd better move fast, then, because there might not even be time left to apply for the fall. And it's gonna be more expensive, you know."

"No. It won't be."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I'm not gonna live in the dorms there. I'm just gonna stay here."

Luckily, BC was pushing very hard to increase their enrollment, because they'd just built two new buildings, hired new professors and added new majors. So they needed a corresponding increase in students. I talked to someone in admissions the next day, and they got me on the fast track to acceptance.

I decided to keep working at Feedler part time. They were happy to keep me on because I was reliable and knew what I was doing.

But the 15 or 20 hours a week I worked there were the only hours I wasn't miserable. It's not that BC was sooo bad; it's just that I constantly thought about how happy I'd been at Western during my first semester, how readily I'd made friends there, how much of a blast dorm life had been, and how I'd enjoyed ALL my classes and not just a couple. Of course, by now my second semester at Western held no real joyful reminiscence, because the memories of good times with Katrina were now all completely tainted by Blackfoot Lake.

But I made no friends at BC. It's hard to make new friends when you're depressed, and I still was. As for the cute girls on campus, well ... it's not that I wasn't interested. But whenever I'd pass one on the sidewalk, and we happened to make eye contact, and she smiled... it looked like a smirk to me. I felt like she was trying to communicate with me telepathically, to say, "I heard about what Katrina did to you, and oh my god, I thought it was hilarious!"

In my econ class, there was this girl Mindy, 19, a sophomore like me, very pretty, though she didn't really look like Katrina. But she had similar taste in clothes, and she always wore the same kind of hoop earrings Katrina wore. Mindy and I talked a few times, but not one-on-one, always in the midst of a group of students from that class. She was friendly enough to me, and I briefly entertained the idea of trying to get to know her better, maybe trying to pull her away from the group. In bed at night, I had a few fantasies about her. But when I'd try to imagine sex, I'd hear Mindy's voice saying, "Why don't you let me make the first move, OK?" or "I really want you to taste my pussy." As nice as Mindy seemed to be, I kept having this image of us making out or feeling each other up, and then her smirking and asking me to go down on her... knowing she had a pussy full of someone else's cum but not telling me.

But before I decided for sure whether I would, or would not, pursue Mindy, the decision was made for me. A group of us, including Mindy, were standing outside the building, after econ class, talking. Someone I hadn't seen before walked up to our group, came close behind Mindy, and put his arms around her waist. She smiled, tilted her head back to his, and kissed him.

Ah. A boyfriend. Well... so much for Mindy.

When they broke their kiss and she turned her face back forward, I could have sworn she smirked at me. Maybe her eyes just happened to fall on mine first after the kiss, and maybe her facial expression was just one of simple pleasure from the little act of intimacy. So ... it could have just been a coincidence. But the image stuck in my head. For the next week, every night I masturbated to climax picturing Mindy kissing her boyfriend and then turning to smirk at me.

I was losing all my confidence with girls, and beginning to see every one of them as a potential heartbreaker and cheater. Or, just as painful, an accomplice like Brittany. Well... maybe that was unfair. Maybe Brittany was not, in fact, guilty of anything. I didn't know that for sure.

That was the whole point. I didn't know *anything* for sure, and it was driving me crazy.

On the way out of town to the Feedler plant, along Whitestone Road, sits an old wood frame house with a sign in the front yard: "Lila's, Fortune Telling, Palmistry, Tarot Readings." The place had been there for years. Maybe even all my life, I wasn't sure. But it was a familiar landmark along the road. I only started to pay attention to it that October. Every time I passed, I became more curious about what went on in there.

Fortune telling. Was there anything to that? Tarot reading. I didn't even know what that was. Palmistry. Hmm. I heard a little, somewhere, about a love line on the hand? Could Lila tell me something about my situation, maybe give me a little hope, or at least insight, by looking at my love line?

Could I go in there and just say, "I'd like a palm reading"? And then could I just sit and listen, and see if she told me things that rang true? See if she knew things about me without me telling her, just from examining my hand? If it was worthless, it would cost me, what? Maybe 30 bucks? I usually spent at least that much taking Katrina to dinner one time. And what did any of those dinners benefit me?

I was curious, and what did I have to lose?