Free Every Time I Think of You by Jim Provenzano Page B

box. In it lay a sweatshirt from his school. He knew to send a worn one, no doubt his, instead of some stiff gift shop version.
    I never wore it outside of home, for so many reasons. What could I offer as an explanation? No, I didn’t go there, but the most gorgeous wonderful guy who I’m totally in love with sent it as a consolation prize.
    That first letter was simple, with remarkable penmanship, a somewhat arch description of his daily activities after returning to school.
    So happy that Everett had written to me, I didn’t know what do; write him back immediately? What to say?
    Under what I swiftly took as an understood rule that any expression of my longing should be discreet, I decided to do it in rhyme.
     
    Once did a lumberjack love a pine straighter
    Than poking’ for fun in the night.
    But he found a young poker
    Who, nights, was a stroker
    And yanked a few logs for the light.
     
    His next letter was entirely in French. I decided to check out a French 101 textbook from the school library to try to figure it out.
     
    I want to lick … root of desire … nights spending … for times of many … river of cream … sent to you … dream of me … my ass … grabbing your …
     
    Basically, it was obscene. I was relieved that I’d followed my instinct not to ask my Biology lab partner, Brenda Marsh, to translate it.
    Brenda was the only fellow student who had noticed my change in behavior. The previous semester, before I’d collided with Everett, I’d been pretty much the same quiet studious kid, the sandy-haired guy you sort of know in class who rarely speaks up, never stands out, who is easily ignored, but whose private world would astound.
    Brenda and I had been friends since grade school. Her long strands of blond hair usually covered most of her face, except in Biology, where she tied it back while poring over a microscope or when we dissected frogs. We had spent the first part of senior year sharing conspiratorial gossip about our classmates and teachers. Apparently her French teacher Madame Pinchon had begun to have a little bladder problem, and more often left her students to chat in small circles, babbling away in French conversation.
    “So, got a girlfriend?” she asked bluntly on a Tuesday after another of Everett’s letters had arrived. That one had been a series of scrawled cartoons done in a few colored markers. In it, he’d been taken hostage in a sub-basement of his school, only to be saved by ReidMan, a cartoon version of me. Everett had captured my dorky look a bit too clearly; my glasses, my jug ears and my shaggy hair. In the last panel, we were making out mid-air, with my magic cape fluttering just enough to keep the drawing from being too graphic.

    “Huh?” I gave Brenda a falsely quizzical return glance.

    “You’re like, I dunno, brighter.”

    “Was I dark before?”

    “No, but it’s like you were just filling time. Now you’re diving into class. You’ve been raising your hand a lot, answering questions. You never used to do that.”

    “Well, I got a few nice surprises over the holidays,” I replied, offering a hint, but no more.

    “So, you did get some action.”

    “Is it that obvious?”

    “Your skin’s cleared up, for one thing.”

    Inspired by Brenda’s having intuited my post-virginal glow, I struggled to share even a coded explanation of my affection for Everett. Words couldn’t match the quiet pride I felt from knowing that he thought of me.
    Our distance fed my longing. I didn’t want to settle for the innuendo in our obscured lustful scribblings. Everett had hinted in a previous letter about a need for caution, that his roommate, whom he’d mentioned a few times as being nosy, might “accidentally” read his letters.
    Instead of writing again, I trekked into the woods, searched out that sacrosanct area under the evergreens, yanked up a few small tufts of still green grass, scooped up some tiny pine cones and put them in my coat pocket. Once