Unknown - Kidnapped teen

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Johnny was bad enough… but… Hank, and Bill, and T-Bird… all four of them… corning closer and closer.

I cried out… I begged them to reconsider what they were doing.

But it did no good.

They kept coming closer, stopping only to tip the bottle of cheap tequila up to their mouths.

And then, their hands were on me…

How many times have we heard of one media report or another telling us that sexual activity starts younger in our children these days.

Our mothers wondered what shoes to wear with what dress when they prepared themselves for a date. Our daughters are faced with a similar question, whether to wear the leather panties, the crotchless or the edibles.

Ah love… ah life. Most of the experts (if anyone really has faith in THAT designation anymore) agree that this trend is a healthy one. It's a meaner world that faces our children than the one our parents knew. It should, therefore, be prepared for earlier, and the rituals of love and sex should naturally be an integral part of that preparation.

So say the experts.

But one can't help wonder are young minds and young personalities ready to cope with the wild extremes of emotion that accompany serious sexual activity?

Rejection is difficult enough at any age, but when one has scarcely scratched the surface of the question, "Who am I?" can he reasonably be expected to handle a painful rejection? Is there, perhaps, an increased danger that extremes of emotion, ill prepared for, could produce extreme reactions?

The following story would indicate that this is the case. Read for yourself, and decide.

I was talking to my friend, Mary Beth Rogers.

Or, rather, she was talking to me.

"Junella Simpson, you are really too, too much! You deserve better."

"Mary Beth, you just don't understand him. There's a soft side to him… really. Johnny's… I don't know… he's afraid that people are going to brush him off…"

"I know. So he pounds them into the dirt before hand, just to keep things in gear."

"Well… I'll admit, he does have a temper."

"Oh, give me a break, Junella. That's like saying Anne Boleyn had a headache!"

"No… you give him a break!"

"Like he gave Harry Robbins?"

I was afraid she'd mention that.

Johnny and Harry had both been thrown out of school for a week because they were fighting. Harry, however, in addition to the failing grades, was also going to have a big hospital bill. Johnny had broken his arm and his nose.

"And another thing," she went on, knowing when she had me at a disadvantage and pressing it to the fullest extent possible, "the morons that he hangs out with are even worse."

She was referring to Hank Smoot, Bill Scogg, and Ernie, a.k.a. T-Bird, only one of whom, T-Bird, was still in school, and he was walking a thin line himself.

"I know," I finally had to admit. I didn't like hearing what she was telling me, but it was hard to argue with her.

"You know it's the truth," she pressed.

"Yeah…"

"I mean… you can't have opinions about truth. It's just…"

"Mary Beth! You do not have to rub my face in the mud! All right?"

"Easy girl… don't be so sensitive."

But I knew she was right. I just didn't like hearing it.

"What do you see in him, anyway?"

I took a moment before answering. I could have said the same crap about seeing a different side to him than he showed to everyone else… a soft side… a sensitive side…

I could have said that I knew there was potential there, that he could develop into a first-rate human being…

I could have said that he needed me… that without someone like me to care for him, he'd just go down the tubes…

I could have said any or all of those, but I didn't, because it would have all been bullshit!

I knew it, and Mary Beth knew it.

If there is such a thing as redeeming social value, Johnny Waddell was NOT the person the term had been coined to describe.

The sonfabitch was worthless, and I knew it.

Miserable human being.

He lied.

He stole… from his mother, his sister, from my mother and from me…

He beat up on anyone who got in his way or who wouldn't give him what he wanted…

Me included.

In fact, the first time he took me out, he raped me.

That's right.

Just up and raped the shit out of me.

"This isn't the way to Center City, is it?" I'd asked him when I saw that there were less and less houses.

"I told you," he mumbled in that quaintly inarticulate way of his, "it's a short-cut."

"Yeah… well, usually when my daddy takes a short-cut, we get lost."

He smirked, and then he casually looked my way. "Well, some short-cuts are shorter than others."

"Listen," I said, "I think I want to go back now."

"You do, huh?"

"Yeah… I do. Can you turn the car around?"

"In a minute."

"Why? Why not now?"

"Because we aren't where we're going to be, when we get there, that is."

"Where's that?" I asked, getting more and more scared.

"Where we're going."

Then, looking levelly at me, he said, "You ask one fuck of a lot of questions. Ain't anyone ever told you that women should keep their fucking mouths shut?"

"NO! No one ever told me that. And furthermore…"

"You're wrong. You just been told."

I was going to say something, but then he started to slow the car down. "Where are we going? Where are you taking me?"

He smiled. "You'll see. You're gonna like it."

"No I won't. Let me go! Let me out."

"Hang on, would you?" he asked, acting like I was getting all worked up over nothing and wouldn't I feel silly once I realized that I'd just been over-reacting…

Well, I wasn't over-reacting. I was being taken down a tiny dirt road, a real backwoods washboard road, and then, suddenly, he stopped the car, and the thing had been making so much noise before, rattling and shaking over the bumpy road, that the sudden silence was jarring. Frightening… almost as frightening as the look on Johnny's face reflecting the moonlight.

"Where are we?" I asked. I cursed inwardly at the way my voice was shaking.

"Where do you think?"

"I… I don't know."

"We're at the playground."

I looked around. I couldn't see anything but trees.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that now you and me… we play."

"You stay right where you are," I said as he slid across the seat anyway.

"Don't be that way, Junella," he said. "Don't. It's real unfriendly."

"You get back. I never let a boy kiss me on the first date."

"Suits fuck out of me," he said. "I'll forego that and get straight to the good shit."

"You leave me alone!" I shouted.

"Ain't no point in you shouting at me," he said, "or shouting at all, for that matter. No one's ever going to hear you out here."

"Johnny… please…"

"There's an old saying. 'Put out, or get out.' You ever hear of that saying?"

My hands and my voice were both shaking terribly by now, and I didn't have the faintest idea what I was going to do next.

"What's it going to be?" he asked. "You going to put out, or are you going to get out?"

"I… I…"

Then, I realized. The bastard… he was bluffing.

"You aren't ever going to lay a hand on me, that's for sure."

"Fine."

He opened the door to his side, got out, walked around the big car and opened my door.

"Don't you think I'm polite? Opening the door for my date? Come on… get your ass out."

"Johnny! You can't be serious! Stop kidding."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he said, "Look, could you hurry it up? I don't have all night."