“So do you want to meet Jamie?” Camille asked in a hyperactive tone, grinning as if she was readying to give away a special present.
“Sure,” I replied.
Camille shouldered up next to me and pointed down the hallway. “Okay, she’s right over there,” she said, pointing down the row of lockers toward a petite girl with long, golden-brown hair and nice breasts.
“Get on it!” Kmart Cowboy prompted me. “We have to get going!”
I walked over to the identified girl and leaned against the side of the lockers near her. “Hey,” I greeted the feminine stranger with a manly tone. ”I’m Keaton—Kmart Cowboy’s friend.”
“I know,” the girl replied, while taking some items out of her locker. “I saw you walk in with him. I’m Jamie.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
Jamie closed the door to her locker and looked straight at me. “You’re not a cowboy are you?” she pointedly inquired.
“Me? No—no, I’m not a cowboy. Why?”
“You don’t wear flannel and one of those big, stupid hats like your friend is wearing over there do you?”
I glanced over my pinstriped pants, the black t-shirt, and my white dress shirt that I had hanging off my shoulders like a suit jacket. “No,” I repeated, moving my hands over my toned body. “This is all me right here. I don’t wear any garbage can lid belt buckles or Wranglers. I don’t have any of that stuff.”
“Or boots? You don’t wear boots either I hope. I hate boots.”
“I don’t own any boots,” I reported. “And I don’t have any Oakley sunglasses either. I can’t remember the last time that I’ve touched a horse. Neither can Kmart Cowboy over there but that’s beside the point. Matter of fact, and this might surprise you, I don’t have a big, jacked up, four-by-four truck either. I don’t even have a car. That’s why I hang out with dingle berry over there. He drives me around.”
Jamie smiled. I was unsure if she was entertained at my humor or the fact that I did not dress like every other desert-dwelling Utah homo that she had probably come across. “Good,” she said. “Look, I have to go home now. My stepfather’s picking me up in a few minutes. But you can come pick me up tonight if you want. He goes to work after five.”
“Uh, okay,” I stated.
“Camille knows how to find my house,” Jamie stated, walking away. “See you later!”
I walked back over to Kmart Cowboy and Camille, who were both standing in the middle of the hallway, busily making-out. “Well, that was quick!” Kmart Cowboy said, wiping his moistened lips off across his flannel sleeve and looking over to me.
“Jamie said that she has to go home now,” I reported. “She told me that we can go by to pick her up after awhile.”
“What are we waiting around here for then?” Kmart Cowboy stated. He turned and briskly walked out of the high school, rudely leaving Camille and myself behind.
As we waited for the time to pass to meet up with Jamie, Kmart Cowboy drove his Chevy pickup truck around the dusty roads of the small, rural town. Camille was sitting in the middle of the bench seat between us while we cruised. After an hour or so, my amigo eventually parked his truck on a corner lot along the main drag so that he could watch other teenagers drive by, prowling the central street. We chatted as the time approached to travel over to Jamie’s house.
“You don’t plan on doing anything with Jamie, do you?” Camille unexpectedly asked me.
I looked at Kmart Cowboy’s girlfriend with a curious expression. “What do you mean?”
“I mean sex. Every guy she’s ever gone out with has tried to get in her pants. The last one really freaked her out. I think he tried to rape her or something. She got really scared over it and it’s taken me forever to talk her into dating again.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not like that.”
Kmart Cowboy scoffed. “Yeah, right…” he murmured.
“I’m serious!” Camille stressed.
“Okay, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I won’t do anything. I wasn’t planning on it anyway.”
Camille demonstrated an expression of relief. “Well, good, because we don’t need anyone else getting pregnant around here.”
“Pregnant?”
“Didn’t I tell you, dude?” Kmart Cowboy asked, looking out the window at a carload of girls who were driving past us.
“Tell me what?”
Camille gleamed. “I’m pregnant,” she announced.
The world around me froze still for a moment while my mind struggled to accommodate the cognitive dissonance. I looked at the girl beside me, being not more than fifteen years-old. I then glanced at the impregnator sitting behind the wheel of the partially rusted pickup truck. He was staring out the side window in a nonchalant manner, a toothpick in his mouth, and a black, felt cowboy hat resting atop his head. Kmart Cowboy was unemployed, a hoodlum, and a promiscuous womanizer. I immediately felt sorry for the unborn child.
“You’re pregnant?” I asked, still in disbelief over what I was hearing.
“Yeah, ain’t that some shit?” Kmart Cowboy said, looking away from the other girls on the street.
I grappled with what words to say. After a few seconds, I sputtered out: “Wow.”
“Isn’t it great?” Camille asked with a bedazzled smile.
“Do your parents know about this?” I inquired.
Camille turned to look at the sperm donor beside her. “Well, not yet,” she said, her voice lowering. “But we were planning on telling them tonight.”
“Tonight? As in now?”
“Well, not right now. We have to go get Jamie first.”
I stared forward with my mouth hanging open.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kmart Cowboy said. “We won’t get in the way of whatever it is you two will be doing.”
“Just remember,” Camille said to me, “you told me that you weren’t going to try anything with Jamie.”
Kmart Cowboy laughed. “Right. We’re going to be coming downstairs and I’m going to hear some moaning noises coming from inside your bedroom. I’ll open up the door and see Keaton’s white moon pumping in and out of your friend, on your bed!”
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Camille asked me.
“No. I’m cool. No worries.”
“I hope you’re being honest,” Camille stated, “because Jamie is really a good girl. She’s still a virgin and she wants to wait to have sex until she’s married.”
After several more minutes of discussion, it came time for us to drive over to Jamie’s house. We picked her up without delay and spent the remainder of the evening walking around inside the local park, talking and getting to know each other. Toward nightfall, Kmart Cowboy drove all of us to Camille’s residence.
While waiting for both