A Good Year at Linwood High, Chapter 6
Friday seemed to drag on forever for some of the kids at Linwood. Griffin was antsy because he was curious about what Levi had in store for him that night. Levi hadn't given any hints other than to say it was a little kinky.
At the middle school, Nolan was nearly as excited but for different reasons. He was meeting his dad at the park again and was going to see the house they'd bought. He could hardly wait. His friend, Jason, had given him cover, and was actually going with him to see the house.
It was a bit of a drive from the park, and Terry didn't want to leave the boys' bicycles chained to a stanchion there in case of theft. So, he laid them in the back of the SUV he'd rented and hoped they wouldn't cause any damage to it. The bike ride home would be fairly short for both boys, which meant they could have a leisurely visit.
Nolan loved the house but was even more excited that his dad would soon be moving close to him even if he might not be able to live with him fulltime. He said he'd like to lay claim to whatever bedroom Griffin wasn't going to use. He thought his brother should have the biggest one, but he'd like the one which faced east if he could. Terry promised it would be his.
The men had spent the day working on the house after a trip to the Goodwill store to buy jeans and T's since they hadn't brought work clothes with them. Those went in the laundry first to make sure they were clean.
Once they were dressed for the job, Terry and Joaquin had gotten busy dusting, vacuuming, and running loads of laundry. There was no reason not to keep the linens they found in the closet because it would be no different than sleeping in the sheets at a motel. The men weren't poor, but they didn't believe in wasting money, either.
They had also contacted a handyman Ken Kirk recommended to get an idea of how much it would cost to refinish the floors. His estimate for labor and materials was lower than they'd anticipated and they decided to hire him to do the job before they got moved in. He was bonded, but since they didn't know him, they agreed to see if Kathryn would let them leave the sterling with her instead of in the house. Being vacant, it could be a target for thieves even if the workers were as honest as Abe.
The men were going to knock off while Nolan and Jace were there, but the boys said they could help too. So, they were given dust rags and put to work side by side with the adults in the bedrooms upstairs.
Nolan had to keep track of the time so he wouldn't be too late going home. When he left, he hugged his dad and stepfather. Jace hugged them too.
Kathryn had been busy teaching her on-line classes and was planning to serve Chinese carryout for supper. Joaquin said Terry and he would buy, but she didn't want them to because they'd paid the bill the night before. She finally gave in to going halves.
There were fewer people around the table than usual. Carson and Brianna were continuing their Friday night pizza date with Megan and Dave. They were all becoming good friends and were hoping to attend the same university after graduation.
After dinner, Terry and Joaquin packed up their bags and said they would be sleeping in their own house that night and Saturday. They appreciated the hospitality they'd received from the Havel's and didn't want to overstay their welcome. They were planning to prep the master bedroom and bath for painting the next day. They would be batching there until their flight which left early Sunday morning.
Kathryn insisted that it would be impossible for them to wear out their welcome but she could understand their desire to start redecorating their new home. She wished the kitchen at Havel House had been remodeled before they had moved in. That would begin on Monday and she wasn't looking forward to living in the mess!
In one sense, Griffin was just as happy that his father and stepfather weren't sleeping at Havel House on Friday night. He would have had a difficult time keeping quiet when Levi sucked on his big toes in the antique bathtub.
"Oh, God, that's so hot!" he shrieked. "I'm gonna do you too!"
He'd never thought of feet as being an erogenous zone, but he'd quickly become a fan of the experience. With their junk rubbing together at the same time as they squirmed in ecstasy, they nearly came without using their hands at all.
After they rested for a few minutes and hosed out the tub with the shower wand, they walked to Griffin's room hand in hand, completely naked. Their erections didn't deflate until after they'd engaged in the pleasures of oral sex. Then, completely drained, they fell asleep in each other's arms.
Terry and Joaquin's coupling was also noisier and less inhibited than it had been while they were guests of the Havel's. Somehow, despite the thick walls, they couldn't make love with abandon as they would in their own space. It was delightful to say the least!
The men spent several hours painting on Saturday. Griffin wanted to work on his bedroom and Levi joined him. Ashton and Rhett came along to help too. They also painted the room Nolan hoped to claim, using the color he had requested in an email to his brother. He wanted it the same as his current room and he still had the sample with the number on it.
Terry went to Zoey's for carry-out pizza for lunch. He had to agree with the boys that it was the best in the area. He'd always liked Pagliai's in Iowa City when he was a university student but felt this was on a par with what he'd eaten there.
By late afternoon, a lot of progress had been made. In addition to their bedroom suite, the adults had finished the kitchen. The boys weren't as fast, but they had managed to paint the upstairs bathroom as well as two of the bedrooms. There would be a lot more to do later, but it was a good start. Having finished places in which to sleep, they would be under a lot less stress while working on the rest of the house.
Terry and Joaquin said their good-byes on Saturday night. Their flight would leave early on Sunday morning and the teens wouldn't be up at that hour anyway. Not only did they need to allow time for security screening, they had to turn in their rental vehicle.
Terry sent an email message to Nolan, on the private account Tiffany didn't know about, since he couldn't see him in person. It made his younger son happy that he wasn't forgotten.
Griffin wanted to surprise his dad by painting the remaining rooms in their new house over the course of the following weeks. Terry had given him a key to the house, and they'd already purchased the paint while there because of Menards 11% rebate sale. Of course, his best buds wanted to help him.
William and Kathryn thought the boys' hearts were in the right place but questioned whether their finished product would look professional, especially in major areas like the den, dining room, and parlor. William had always been an avid do-it-yourselfer and had saved a fortune by doing his own labor when he was young and had more time than money. Therefore, he felt he should oversee their work. After doing a thorough inspection of the paint job on Griffin's and Nolan's bedrooms, he was convinced that at least some of the kids possessed adequate skills. Griffin said he'd watched some tutorials on the web before he'd painted his room at his mother's house and that's why it turned out looking good. William encouraged the rest of the boys to watch them and follow Griffin's instructions. Griffin became the informal foreman, much to his delight.
Rather than resenting William's "intervention" in their project, the boys welcomed his participation. Griffin wanted the new house to look as perfect as possible. Given their busy schedules, the work didn't go as rapidly as they had hoped.
Toward the end of the first week, they had to quit painting the interior because the handyman and his crew were working on the floors and the boys didn't have access to the rooms again until the crew was finished. They pitched in to help the men cram the furniture into the sunroom, kitchen, and bathrooms which had tile floors. Of course, there wasn't space for everything in the house, so some of it was carried to the double garage.
There was some exterior painting to be done in the meantime, so the teens got Carson to haul over a couple of ladders on top of the family SUV to give them access to the trim. The one ladder in the garage of the new house was an old wooden one which weighed a ton and didn't look too stable.
Knowing there would be peeling paint to remove in places, William sent along a couple of scraping tools he had for that purpose. Again, the boys appreciated his input.
Doing these jobs on top of studies and marching band meant that the teens had to budget their time carefully. William had initially been concerned that they might neglect their schoolwork while striving to improve the house. However, when their quarterly grades came out, all had done very well. At that point, he thought the project had been an incredibly positive thing. Instead of sitting on their butts playing video games, the kids had done something constructive and had undertaken it for their friend and not for money. They were learning lots of good lessons.
Nolan and Jace rode their bikes over to the house on several occasions. Levi's younger brother joined them sometimes. They didn't feel that they could paint as well as the older boys, but they could scrape off loose paint and knew they could work in the yard. With pruning saws and shears, they managed to make the shrubs look presentable, filling several barrels with yard waste besides tying up bundles of branches on the curb so the town's forestry service would pick them up. They also edged around the driveway and sidewalk. Rhett had supplied the tools from his house before they discovered some good ones in the shed behind the garage.
While they were working on the yard, a neighbor asked if they would prune her bushes too. She would pay them $10 per hour. For middle school kids, that sounded like a small fortune, and they agreed to do hers the following day. Since she would pay them in cash, Nolan's mother wouldn't have to know about it and he wouldn't have to make up a story as to why he had a check from a stranger.
The daytrip Raymo and Luis made to Postville was a nice change of pace. They went to the poultry plant to see Mr. Bulgarelli in the morning around 11:00 and stayed to have lunch with him in the cafeteria. While there, they caught up with several of their former associates. It was a good experience, and it served to underscore how great their current situation was in comparison.
Aunt Dolores and Uncle Geraldo were pleased to see them and wanted to have them stay for dinner. Instead, the boys insisted on taking them out to a restaurant just across the border in Wisconsin. The kids, Angel and Jose were thrilled to be going out to eat at a place they'd only heard about. It was even more exciting to be traveling there in Raymo's fancy car with the top down.
After their meal, the children went home with their parents while Luis and Raymo traveled to Marion directly. They had put the box of keepsakes in the trunk of Raymo's car, so there was no reason to go back to Postville which would have added several miles to their trip.
The guys arrived home about 10:00 and didn't look at the contents of the box. They wanted to get a full night's rest before school and work. And they wanted some quality time before they went to sleep!
With studies and their jobs to occupy their time, Luis and Raymo didn't go through the box until Sunday. When they did, they discovered photos of relatives along with a lot of old receipts from both sets of grandparents. Luis asked Sabrina if she thought any of the things, other than the pictures, were worth keeping.
"It might be nice to have a connection with the past for your children to see someday. It would show them a bit of their history in this country.
"Look at these dates. Some of them go back to when your parents were children."
"Yeah, that's pretty cool. Both Mom and Dad were pretty young when they came here."
"That would make them eligible to be in the DACA program!" Sabrina exclaimed. "They should never have been deported in the first place!"
"Do you think it's too late to get them back into the county legally," Luis asked.
"Perhaps, but if we could find that they weren't given a chance to prove their status, it might be possible. I'll show some of this to the immigration lawyer I know. If anyone can help, he can."
For the first time in several years, Luis went to bed with a glimmer of hope for his family's future.
Homecoming at Linwood High was the big fall event, as it is in many Midwestern schools. The football game was well attended and the home-team won like they're supposed to.
The marching band performed an abbreviated show at halftime to accommodate the crowning of the king and queen. While the quarterback on the football team frequently gets the most votes, it isn't always the case. This fall, Shawn Swanson, a top senior wrestler, was chosen and Chloe Clark was his queen. Most people weren't surprised that Chloe got more votes than any other girl in the senior class because she was liked by almost everyone, male or female. However, practically everybody was shocked about Shawn. He was a great guy, and well-liked, but certainly Raymo was more popular. What the student body didn't know was that Raymo had withdrawn his name from the list. He had figured he might be chosen, partly because of the media coverage surrounding his disappearance from town for most of the summer. He didn't want that to play a role. Also, he wanted to be officially out of the closet. He had begun the process at the gay/straight dance, but the audience had been somewhat limited.
He was pleased to see that the girl who had served as his cover in the past would now be officially considered a "free agent" in the dating scene.
When Raymo showed up at the dance on Saturday night with Luis as his date, a number of students began to figure out the reason he wasn't homecoming king. It could have been awkward for a gay guy to have to play a straight role. Megan and Brianna thought he might have been discriminated against because of his orientation and were ready to take the administration to task over it. However, Raymo assured them it wasn't the case.
If anyone had thought Raymo was upset about his teammate's good fortune, that was quickly squashed when the two publicly embraced.
Raymo and Luis danced with several different girls over the next two hours, but when the lights dimmed for the slow, romantic finale, Raymo was seen with Luis in his arms. Everyone knew where his heart lay.
In Arizona, Joaquin had given his two-week notice at the salon. Though many of his customers were upset that he was leaving, they wished him well. Some tipped him double to show appreciation for his services. They had become almost like family. He would be sad to leave them.
Of course, he was happy to take on a new adventure with his husband. In the short time he'd been around Griffin and Nolan, he'd found them to be the kind of boys he would be proud to claim as his own. They were polite and full of energy. They had buddies who seemed to be just as nice. Joaquin was looking forward to the life that awaited him in Iowa.
Terry, on the other hand, wouldn't be changing much more about his job than his home address when he moved. His position and clientele would remain fairly stable. Although he might lose a few because of his move, he would soon pick up others to replace them.
After checking on the cost of U-Haul trucks and moving companies, the men figured they should sell anything that they couldn't get into a small trailer. For the most part, they weren't emotionally attached to the furniture but there were a few keepsakes which had been handed down in Terry's family. Those, along with the new sofa would go to Iowa. The rest would go on the market as soon as the house got sold.
Fortunately, their luck with selling it was almost as good as it had been in buying their new place. They didn't get quite what they'd hoped for; however, with the sale of their furniture and the savings on moving, they weren't really out anything. In October, they began their trek eastward.
After having worked in the yard at his father's new home, Nolan was eager to continue doing little things around the house that would improve the place. He began to hang out there more with Griffin and some of his buds. Naturally, that didn't happen as often as he would like because the high schoolers had band and other obligations after school.
Occasionally, Jace, Eli, and he would just fool around in the back yard. As the younger brother Griffin's boyfriend, Eli had been quickly assimilated into this group. He was pleased to have a connection so he didn't feel all alone in his new school.
The older boys had removed the rusting basketball hoop and backboard from the garage gable and that became another project for Nolan, Jace, and Eli.
Jace brought rust-proofing primer from home to spray on the rim after they'd removed the loose rust with a steel brush. They planned to get some bright orange tractor paint for the finish coat. Since the hardware store wouldn't sell spray paint to minors, they had to ask William to buy it for them.
Griffin's mother had given up on him completely once he was out of her house. She supposed that she should offer the Havel's some compensation for feeding and housing him, but she decided that was his father's obligation. Terry was the one whose genes made the boy gay. In the meantime, she would do her best to keep Nolan on the straight and narrow. To do so, she must be vigilant and prevent his older brother from being an influence on him. She made Nolan hand over his cell phone every evening so she could check his text messages. She also went into his email account(the one she knew about)frequently. What she found, was a lot of mundane chatter between him and some of his buds, mainly Jason Woods and some kid named, Eli whose last name she didn't know at all.
The main problem with keeping Nolan on a short leash was that there were several hours between the time his school-day ended and when she got home from work. She had a feeling he might be using the time to do things she wouldn't approve of.
Nolan had become more secretive in the past year. Of course, Tiffany realized some of it had to do with boys entering puberty and growing up. Griffin had exhibited the same kind of behavior, and his pediatrician had explained to her that it was normal. She hadn't seen Nolan with his shirt off lately, so she didn't know if he had any secondary signs of sexual maturity like armpit hair, but his voice had become lower and that tipped her off to the hormonal changes in his body.
One afternoon in early October, Tiffany took a couple of hours of comp-time she'd built up and left her job before the middle school dismissed for the day. She pulled into the drive behind a small sedan which sat low enough in comparison to her SUV to allow for a clear view of the bike racks.
Shortly after the final bell, Nolan came out the front door with Jason and another boy. The three of them unlocked the security cables on their bikes and proceeded to ride across the athletic field toward the street behind the building. Now Tiffany's SUV was trapped by other vehicles and she couldn't get onto the street quickly enough to follow them.
When she eventually got free, she circled nearby blocks, becoming more frustrated by the minute. She was about to give up when she spied three bikes sticking out from behind a garage. There was a "sold" sign in the yard, so she assumed this wasn't Jason's house. Perhaps it belonged to the new kid. She would have to find a way to get the information out of Nolan without having him figure out she'd been tracking him.
"So, did you go biking with your friends after school like you usually do?" Tiffany asked.
"Yeah, we rode around some," Nolan answered evasively.
"Did you end up at someone's house?"
"Why are you asking that?"
"I'm just making conversation; taking an interest in your life."
"Like you do when you're going through my emails and text messages? That's called spying and I'm getting sick of it."
Nolan stormed out of the kitchen and went up to his room. He was glad she'd started the conversation after dinner instead of before. Otherwise, he'd have gone to bed hungry instead of remaining in here presence any longer.
Tiffany didn't follow Nolan up to his room. She realized she'd pushed too hard and made him angry. Was he simply acting like a kid, or was he hiding something? She would have to check again later when she got the chance.
She made herself a nightcap to settle her nerves. After she'd finished it off, she still felt unsettled, so she made herself another one.
Author's notes: Thanks to Tony C, Jim M, Mendy D, James M, Allen, Charles G, Vinnie D, Marlin S, Paul R, Walter S, Randy Mac, Peter S, Ray M, Brad, Marty H, MOE, Tim T, Hotrod, Tom A, Frank K, JJ R, Steve C, George D, Jim W, Membear, Wayne, Alex, and Joe W (2) who have emailed since last posting.
Thanks to David (Boxerdude) for editing this chapter.
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Stay well,
David