Free Posse by Kate Welshman

and picks it up. He stands there examining it, with his dick still dangling limply out of the top of his shorts.
    I shoot out the screen door, slamming it behind me. I take off through the bush, my thongs slapping steadily on the narrow gravel road. I run allthe way back to our hut, laughing so hard that there are tears in my eyes. Or am I crying? I crack up through the sobs when I recall the image of Bevan with his Good Book in one hand and his Big Cock in the other.
    My first and final relationship with a man. Thrilling, terrifying, mostly disgusting. And short. It lasted all of an hour. Still, I’m reeling and I have to tell someone. Wait till the posse hears about this – possibly the juiciest event of my life so far.

8
    W HEN I RETURN TO THE huts, I find ours empty. The girls must still be in the shower block. I kick Clare’s clothes off my sleeping bag and throw myself face-down onto it.
    I feel a quick pang of something for Bevan, but it quickly disappears. What was it? Fear? Guilt? Regret?
    Mum’s right. Men are amazing. Bevan, Tom, Dad – they’ve all put their grubby hands and other parts where they shouldn’t. I’ll stick to women,thank you very much. I’m never changing teams again.
    When the posse returns from the shower, I’m still flat out on my sleeping bag. My lip and the eye that got dicked are sore. I must look a wreck.
    â€˜Where the hell have you been?’ says Clare, rubbing her hair with a towel. ‘You were in the hall one minute and gone the next. You haven’t been with some loose woman, have you, Amy?’
    She’s so snide, I decide to drop the bomb on her here and now.
    â€˜Actually, I’ve been with a man.’
    That wipes the smirk off her face. If she’s been keeping an eye on me tonight, you can bet she’s been keeping an eye on Bevan. She would have noticed that we were both gone at the same time, but never, not in a hundred million years, would she have thought we were together.
    But now she knows. I watch her expression change like a twisting kaleidoscope. She knows, all right. The rest of the posse doesn’t though.
    â€˜Who? Who? Who?’ asks Jo, jumping on the spot like a chimpanzee.
    â€˜Bevan. He wanted to apologise for smacking me in the mouth. So he took me back to his hut and tried to have his wicked way with me!’
    Jo and Patricia shriek with laughter. Deborah smiles and shakes her head.
    But it’s Clare I’m watching, Clare whose mouth has formed a tight little rosebud. She’s not looking at me. She’s not looking at anything or saying anything. She turns around and walks out of the hut. Which is not really what I was expecting. I was expecting her to snipe or sulk or doubt me. Maybe some fireworks. I hadn’t really bargained for storming off without a word. Apart from making me look like a lousy friend, she has completely squashed my story. What a stunt.
    Patricia goes to trot after her, but I put a stop to that quick smart.
    â€˜Let her go,’ I say. ‘She’s been a moody bitch all day.’
    Well, I for one am determined to pick over the details of my little jaunt with Bevan, with or without Clare. So for the next half-hour or so the four of us sit cross-legged on the concrete floor of our hut, doing just that. The problem is, with Clare off in a huff somewhere, having fun isn’t as easy as usual. The only one of us enjoying the story with total abandon is Jo. Giggling and snorting at the lewder details, she has to know everything. Even I am shocked by the explicitness of some of her questions.
    â€˜Can’t I leave anything to your imagination?’ I ask her.
    â€˜It’s all in your imagination, isn’t it, Amy?’ she says in a superior tone.
    This really surprises and annoys me.
    â€˜It’s true,’ I say.
    â€˜Oh, I’m sure it is,’ she says, still tittering.
    â€˜It is .’ I have to make an effort to keep my voice