She still felt that sense of comfort, of safety. The conversation was so normal that it centered her, yet it felt easier and more natural than when she'd been on similar dates with other boys. She realized around when dessert arrived that the reason it was so much easier and more natural was that he was doing most of the work. Normally, when she was on a date, she was always semi-consciously guiding the conversation, keeping it to safe areas, keeping it going, avoiding awkwardness and overlong pauses. Mason found a sense of relaxed freedom in being able to just talk.
The movie was pretty bad, but she enjoyed holding Derek's hand in the dark, and they joked afterward about it, so she didn't mind at all. He drove her home, arriving ten minutes or so before her curfew of half past midnight. They sat in the darkened car interior in front of her house, and Mason wondered if Derek were going to kiss her good night. Most of her previous boyfriends had.
"This has been the most wonderful evening," Mason said softly. Derek nodded agreement, his head close to hers. She lifted a hand and softly brushed her fingers along his cheek. "Thank you."
Derek said, "So wonderful I wish it did not have to end. But all evenings, no matter how wonderful, do. I--" he stopped in mid-sentence, and held still as Mason leaned closer and kissed him. The kiss left him stunned and breathless.
"I'll see you Monday," she whispered, and slipped out of the car, closing the door behind her. He watched her return to her house, go inside. The car sat there for nearly half an hour after that, Mason saw, watching it from her window.
So much had gone through her mind in so short a time. Tell him to kiss her? Ask him if he wanted to? To her credit, she had never for a moment doubted that he did. It had suddenly been important to her that she be the one to initate the goodnight kiss, something she had never done before. She had never wanted to kiss any other boy with the intensity she had wanted to kiss Derek, she realized as she looked out at the dark car in the night. Whatever she thought she'd felt with those others, it didn't seem anymore to be anything at all.
-----
Caryn approved because she liked seeing Mason "in love." Jessica approved because Derek had never been a jerk to her. Mason was wary, but appreciative of her friends' support. She knew she might not have been as accepting had it been one of them. Derek's friend Jim was still in good favor with Jessica as well. Mason suggested they go on a double date next weekend. Besides telling her friends about the date -- though she did not mention the incident of the green marker -- she spent nearly every minute thinking of Derek.
Sunday afternoon, she looked up his phone number again -- this time committing it to memory as she had not done before -- and called. The same woman's voice answered again; Mason thought it was probably Derek's mother. "May I speak to Derek? Tell him it's Mason."
"Mason, hello," Derek said.
Mason felt herself blush, though she had no idea why. "Hi, Derek."
"I'm so glad you called." She could hear the happiness in his voice. "What may I do for you?" It sounded as though, Mason thought, he were hoping she would ask for something.
But she didn't know what to ask for. "I don't know... Friday night was wonderful..." she tried to think of something, and then she had it. "I know. You can drive me to school tomorrow." She had never much liked taking the bus, and only seniors were allowed to drive to school.
He hesitated. "My car isn't as nice as the one I drove Friday," he said in a low voice.
"Don't be silly, I knew that already. Whose car was that, anyway?" she asked curiously.
"My mother's boyfriend's." She heard an edge in his voice that was almost startling, but it was gone again in the next sentence. "I would be honored to provide you with transport, Mason. What time would you like me to pick you up?"
------
The rides continued. Derek picked Mason up before school every morning, and dropped her off at home every evening. They often talked during those rides.
"I get the feeling you really like me to ask you to do things for me?" Mason ventured one morning.
Derek nodded. "I enjoy that very much."
"What kind of things? I mean, anything, or is there some that's better than others?"
"Anything, but yes, some is better. Things that are difficult, I like because they let me prove my devotion to you." Derek stopped for a red light, turned his head and smiled looking into her eyes for a moment, and she felt a wave of heat. Then he continued, looking back to the road as the light turned green again, "And things that bring you pleasure, or let me get close to you," he paused for a second, "like driving you to school." He smiled again still looking at the road.
After school that day, she continued the conversation, having been a bit distracted by it all day during classes.
"You said you liked things that are difficult? Difficult how?"
"Oh... there are several ways tasks can be difficult. They can take a lot of skill -- doing brain surgery, for example -- that's not a kind of difficult I'd like, because I'd probably do it badly and let you down. But, things that take a lot of work, that'd be better. I would enjoy putting a lot of effort into anything you ask. Or... " Derek stopped for a moment.
"Or what?"
"I can't talk about this while I'm driving." Mason had never heard that tone in Derek's voice before either.
"Well, pull over someplace then and tell me." She wasn't about to let it go, she wanted to know. As he silently obeyed, pulling into a nearly empty church parking lot a block down the road, she almost changed her mind. Maybe she didn't want to know after all.
Derek parked the car and turned slightly in the driver's seat, catching her eyes with his. He held out a hand to Mason, palm up, and she took it. "Or. Or the things that are even better. I am sorry, Mason, this is going to sound bad." But his eyes on hers were bright. She squeezed his hand in encouragement. "The things that I covet most, for you to ask of me, may well be considered deeply wrong. Their only possible rescue is that they should please you, for me to test my devotion in such stringent measure." He took a breath, let it out slowly. Then speaking a bit more quickly, "Difficulty not of skill, or of hard work, but of either embarassment, or pain."
He had stopped, and she hadn't really figured out what he was saying, yet. Then through empathy more than the sense of the words he had used, it began to dawn on her. And with it a memory that made her flush. "Like... at the Halloween party when Will was ... " she paused, wanting to help him, feeling so much concern for how he felt. "What if you think of it more as courage? Not that you're looking for me to, uh hurt or shame you, but things that take courage? That's how I thought of it..." What she said was at the same time truth and rationalization. She had thought of it as courage. But that was not the part of it that excited her.
"I will try." Derek started up the car again and drove her home, as she sat silently thinking.
She looked at him as she got out of the car, and at that moment wanted very much to say, even to whisper, that she loved him. But she couldn't quite get it out. Mason left without saying anything.
Derek wasn't sure if she would even want to ride with him to school the next day, so he got to her house early. Mason saw the car sitting out front as she ate breakfast. "He's early," she said to her cereal.
"Very," her mother said. "Maybe he has some activity before school. You should hurry, so you don't make him late." Mason agreed, and decided not to finish the cereal. She rinsed the bowl in the sink, grabbed her backpack and went out to Derek's car. He opened the door for her from the inside, and she set her backpack in the back seat, then got in, fastening the seat belt around herself.
"Why so early?" she asked him. "Mom thinks you have some kind of morning extracurricular."
"No," he said softly.
"I didn't think so... why?"
Derek smiled slightly. "Insecurity."
"Huh?"
"I thought there might be a chance, after what we spoke of yesterday, that you would no longer..." he stopped in the middle.
"Why would you think that?" Mason said. She put her hand on his arm, stroking affectionately, something she did often.
Derek smiled more. "Insecurity."
Mason grinned back. "Well, don't be." She rubbed his arm again. "I was thinking about it, too. What we talked about."
"What did you think, Mason?"
"That you're weird. But... if you were like every other guy you wouldn't be you, and I like you being you."
"Even though I'm ... weird?"
"I guess I'm weird too, because I want to say, especially because you're weird." She paused, taking a breath. "And I think I thought of something good." She reached into her pocket. "This." She pulled out a plastic letter magnet, the kind her parents' refrigerator bore profusely. This one was either a W or an M, depending on what direction you looked at it.
"What?" Derek was surprised.
"It's a sort of present. You can.. well the idea I had is, you put it in your shoe, and sort of walk around on it all day. And not limp. That's pretty difficult right?" She looked at him, hoping the idea was one he could appreciate.
Derek laughed. "It sounds perfect. Mason. Almost as perfect as you." He laughed again, and said, "Might take a bit of, courage, you think?"
Mason blushed. "Might?" she agreed tentatively.
Derek sighed very softly. Mason felt a trickle of something, she was not sure what to call it, but it was as though she and Derek had a non-physical link to one another somehow, and it had just grown stronger, and was leaking a kind of electric feeling from him to her.
---------
One of her mother's friends was a psychologist, and Mason called her up one day to ask some questions that she'd been struggling with. Then she went to the library and read some books. One of them addressed some ideas that made her worry. She thought about Jessica's problems, and Derek's... she wouldn't, even in her own head, call it a problem. But his weirdness.
When Jessica was over for dinner, and the two of them went up to Mason's bedroom to talk afterward, Mason wanted to ask about it. It, the thing she'd read, and suspected. She wasn't sure how to, though. Jessica was complaining about Jim, how she wasn't sure he was even really attracted to her, and Mason couldn't help thinking of it again.
Jessica said, "He never even tries, you know? Like, pretending it's an accident..."
"Do you want him to?" Mason asked her, a more confrontational approach than she'd normally take.
Jessica shook her head. "No, course not, but it makes me think he's lost interest, you know?"
"No, it sounds like he's just a decent guy to me." Mason paused, then started to speak again before Jessica could answer. "You remember, I mean, I remember when we were in ninth grade and you went all the way with Chris Ericson?" Jessica nodded, looking puzzled. "Well, I thought that was the first time, you kind of said, but you never actually said it was... "
Jessica frowned. "What's that got to do with whether Jim still likes me or not?"
"It's got to do with why you think him being nice to you means he doesn't really like you... I was reading this book, and it was saying that people who get started younger, or if certain stuff happens to them when they're kids..." Mason was still not sure how to go on.
She was startled by Jessica's intensity of reaction. "Who told you that? What did they tell you?"
"Nobody told me anything. I told you, I was reading it in a book." Mason thought Jessica still did not look like she believed her, so she picked up the book off her desk and handed it to her friend. "This one."
Jessica looked from the book to Mason, and when Mason met her eyes she was startled to see her friend crying. Jessica threw the book onto Mason's bed and stood up. "I'm not a social-worker case for you, Mason! You always want to fix things, you can't fix this, you know? Just stay in your perfect life and your perfect family and pretend like you dont know there's anyone out there who isn't, ok?" She ran out of the room, down the stairs.
Mason hurried after her. "Jessica... wait!" She saw the door closing and heard it slam.
She stared at it as her mother walked toward her. "Mason, what's wrong?"
Mason shook her head. "It's okay, Mom. Jessica and I had a fight, I guess."
Her mother nodded. "You'll make up tomorrow at school, right?"
"I guess so." Mason looked at her mother. She guessed she did have a perfect family, well, except for her obnoxious little brother Standish. "I love you, Mom."
Her mother looked faintly more worried, and gave Mason a quick hug. "I love you too, Mason. Don't worry too much. It blew up fast, it'll blow over fast too."
------
Mason's mother was right; by the time the next school day arrived, Jessica seemed to have completely forgotten the "fight." Afraid to look under the calm surface, Mason did not bring up the touchy topic again with Jessica.
She asked Caryn about it, visiting Caryn one afternoon later that week. "Jessica got really freaked the other day when she was over at my house," Mason began.
"Mmhm. She told me. She said you accused her of being warped from being molested as a kid." Caryn nodded, seeming like this was no big deal to her.
"What? I didn't..." Mason thought about it. "Well, I didn't mean it that way."
"I know, that's what I told her. She knew too, once she calmed down."
"You knew about it?" Mason knew the answer before she asked.
Caryn nodded. "It was pretty bad. And she still feels guilty because she thinks it's the reason her parents got divorced."
Mason wanted to ask why Jessica hadn't told her, but she thought she knew. She lay down on her stomach on Caryn's bed, propping her chin in both hands, and sighed. "It's so horrible. I don't know what to do."
Caryn looked at her sympathetically. "It's okay, Mason. There's nothing you can do, don't let it get to you."
Mason looked down at Caryn's bedspread between her elbows, then up at Caryn again. "I never had any idea. Caryn? Did anything like that ever happen to you?"
"Oh please. Well, when I was ten, I had this creepy piano teacher. He tried to get me to sit on his lap, stuff like that. But I wouldn't. I told my mom and she found Ms. Ichezeda and that was it." Caryn had an odd look for a moment, then she grinned at Mason. "Mason, calm down, it's not anything to worry about. You look like your head is about to explode."
"I know how well you get along with Ms. Ichezeda, but I never knew anything like that happened... it just seems so unbelievable. And horrible." She couldn't bring herself to say she thought it had happened to Derek, too. Because Caryn would want to know why, and she couldn't start to go into all that.
"It was six ~years~ ago, and it hasn't bothered me for a minute since, it's not like Jessica and her father--" Caryn closed her mouth abruptly and shook her head. "Okay, end of subject. Let's talk about something else, okay? Anything else."
-------