Luann and the Runaway Boyfriend - Chapter 7

Luann was packed and out of the room before the others were up the next morning. She hadn’t slept well the rest of the night and wasn’t exactly eager to face any of her friends in the morning.  She was embarrassed by her action that night. Not just embarrassed but mortified. She’d exposed her self to Gunther, tried to tear off his clothes and had been caught in the act by Crystal and Knute.  In a way she didn’t have to worry about the goth girl because Crystal was clearly planning to skinny-dipping with Knute just as she had been  with Gunther. Crystal couldn’t say anything about her (Luann’s) indiscretion without revealing her own.  But Knute? Knute wasn’t known for keeping secret and the juicier the secret the quicker he’d blab it. Even when he tried to keep a secret he was no good at it. Luann’s could only hope that Knute’s crush on Crystal would be enough that if Crystal had told him to keep quiet about last night he would. ‘Cause if Tiffany ever found out about last night she would never let it go.

Gunther she could trust to never said anything about it because it would be just too embarrassing. The trouble was that Luann wasn’t sure how she was going to face Gunther this morning. God, she had acted like a total nymphomaniac last night. What was that all about - and why? She had decided that maybe it was because in all the months that they’d known each other she and Quill had never made-out, kissed soulfully or did any of the other stuff kids her age were already doing. No wonder she’d been so horny. She’s been living like a nun for most of the year. She wondered how Bernice put up with living a boyless life?

Luann have been walking up and down the length of the cabins as she thought. As she neared the car on one of her rounds she saw Bernice leaning against it. Time to face the music... At least Bernice thought she’s just gone out to walk so she had nothing to explain.

“Where did everybody go last night?” Bernice asked as Luann leaned against the car next to her.

“I went out for a walk - because I was keeping you up.”

“Yeah but what about Crystal and Tiffany? I woke up and looked around and nobody was in their beds. I was the only one in the room. It’s kind of scary waking up and finding yourself all alone like that. I wondered if everybody had driving off and left me behind...”

“Sorry, I didn’t know. You seemed to be sleeping when I got back.”

“I was pretending.”

“Wait - Tiffany was gone?”

Luann thougth about that for a while then all the pieces fell together. Gunther hadn’t been in the pool area because he couldn’t sleep. He was there to meet Tiffany. He must have been sketching her when she had arrived, hence his rapidly turning the page in his book.  And no doubt he was drawing her in the nude because he’d choked when Luann had suggested she pose that way. But where had Tiffany gone? She’d been no where to be seen in the pool area and there was only the one entrance/exit to the pool. Well, where she got to was no matter. Luann would have so much fun twitting Tiffany about posing naked for Gunther. Oh, wait. She couldn’t say anything about that without revealing that she’d been there, too. Luann sighed. A perfect chance to make fun of Tiffany and she couldn’t do anything about it.

The others were out soon enough, packed the car and headed off. Tiffany was driving, Crystal beside her. Knute was about to slide into the seat next to her when Crystal unexpectedly grabbed Bernice and pulled her onto the seat next to her.  Crestfallen, Knute got into the back seat next to Luann. “Welcome to the dog house,” she whispered.

“What did I do?” Knute whispered back.

][

The mountains were spectacular, so much so that they had to stop a couple times at scenic turnouts to admire the view and take pictures, none of which could capture the grandeur and scale of the Rockies. The road wandered through mountain passes and across wide plateaus. The passes were somethings fairly gradual but at times the road snaked along the mountain side on land clearly cut out directly from the side of the mountain so that it was a solid wall of rock to the right and blue sky to the left.

They came out onto one of the plateaus around noon and - Gunther was driving - when he saw a sign for a restaurant he pulled in without asking.

The sign said “Authentic Mexican cooking” and showed a man in a poncho riding a burro. Gunther was slow to get out of the car and walked hunched over like an old man for a few minutes until his muscles relaxed.

The inside of the restaurant was old and well worn but clean. The place was little bigger than a diner, with a row of spools in front of a counter and several tables along the wall. The gang crowded around one of the table. Moments later a middle-aged Mexican woman came out and placed menus, silverware, water around the table. A man about the same age leaned out of the kitchen area and asked her someone in rapid-fire Spanish. Luann thought she was pretty good speaking Spanish after three years but the words were so fast and blended together so much that she couldn’t really make out what he was saying. When she came back a few minutes later they all ordered tacos except for Gunther who asked for rice and bean with guacamole on the side. He didn’t like hot food.

This started a conversation about who had eaten the hottest food. Crystal liked sushi with lots of washbi horseradish. Knute talked about the five alarm chili he liked. Luann mentioned some Indian curries she’d had which were pretty hot. Bernice had never eaten anything really hot but told a story about an uncle of hers. One year when they had gone to visit he had taken her family out to dinner at a fancy Szechuan restaurant and after warning the others that the Szechuan dinners were hot, ordered Szechuan trout and asked for it to be extra spicy. As soon as he started eating sweat popped up on his forehead. It was almost pouring down. So he’s stop eating for a moment to mop his brow. Then eat some more. Then mop his brow. Pretty soon he had a rhythm doing - eat - mop -eat -mop. Bernice concluded that she would never understand why anyone would want to eat food that hurt then that much.

Tiffany bided her time then when everyone else was finished claimed she’s once eaten a whole Habanero pepper.  “It was easy,” she declared. “Tasty.”

Luann plopped the bottle of red-hot sauce down in front of her. “If that was is easy, then you’d have no trouble taken a swig out of this.”

“I will if you will!”

“I never claimed to eat a Habanero; I know my limits.” Luann pulled out her wallet and extracted one of her small stash of twenty dollar bills. She had mostly been paying for everything with T. J.’s magic credit card, hoarding her cash for emergencies. “Twenty says you won’t drink that hot sauce.”

“Twenty bucks? Is that all you’ve got?”

Luann took out another twenty, laid it on top the first. “Forty bucks! Think of all the cute shirts you can get for that...”

While Tiffany was trying to stare down Luann their waitress came back with their plates. Tiffany was about to push the money back when someone started going ‘buc-buc-buc-buc...’ Luann was surprised to see that it was Crystal, supposedly Tiffany’s best friend.

With an angry growl Tiffany grabbed up the money and stuffed it down her shirt, picked up the bottle and drained maybe a quarter-teaspoon on her tongue. “There, See! Nothing to it - AAAAAhhhhhhh!”

Tiffany’s eyes bugged out and she opened her mouth and started huffing like she was trying to blow out a bunch of candles from inside. Through watering eyes she found her glass of water and all but threw it down her throat. That didn’t seem to help any.

Looking around for relief, she seized one of her tacos and crammed it into her mouth. She chewed it a couple time before swallowing. She sighed with relief but it was premature. Her mouth became inflamed again, her face red and slick with sweat. She shoveled another taco into her mouth, barely chewing it before swallowing. And then again. That still didn’t seem to help, but there were no more tacos in her plate. She grabbed one of Crystal’s and inhaled that. She reached for another but Crystal swept the plate out of reach. So she reached across the table and snagged one off Knute’s plate.

Luann had prepared to laugh at Tiffany’s foolishness but looking at the torment on her rival’s face and the seemingly unending pain in her mouth, Luann found herself handing one of her tacos to Tiffany as soon as she’d gulped downed Knute’s.

She was about to hand over another when Gunther scooped a large glob of guacamole on a spoon and handed it to Tiffany. “I hear that the oils in fatty foods will absorb the capsaicins in peppers,” he said. Tiffany took the spoon and looked at it doubtfully. “Kind of roll it around in your mouth to absorb all the oils,” Gunther added. She took the spoonful and did as he’d suggested.

Slowly the redness left her face, and her eyes stopped tearing. Finally she exhaled in relief.  Wiping her face down with a napkin, she forced a smile at Luann. “Your turn!”

“You gonna put $40 on the table?” Luann knew that Tiffany was too tight with her money to do anything like that. Meanwhile their waitress came back and looking at the carnage on the table asked in heavily accented English, “Is the girl, she going to be all right?”

“I think she could use a tall glass of milk,” Gunther suggested.

Luann, looking at the remnants of their meal, suggested they all have bowls of ice cream for dessert instead.”

Tiffany, who was helping herself to Crystal’s water, nodded and asked for two scoops.

Bernice took the wheel when they got back in the car. She wanted to get her stint driving in early so she wouldn’t have to drive at night. Looking across at Knute who had his usual insolence grin on his face, Bernice snapped. “I am going to teach you how to parallel park if it kills me. I’m not going on another road trip with you laying back doing nothing, just because you don’t have a license!”

][

Bernice took one hand off the wheel of the caddy and shook it to get some of the cramping out of it. They were driving through a pass in the Rockies where the road was narrow and twisting. Bernice didn’t want to admit it but this was white-knuckle driving. She could hear Tiffany moaning in the back seat but ignored it. Tiffany was always moaning about something.

“Didn’t we just pass a rest stop?” the blonde girl asked.

“That was about ten miles back,” Gunther, who was sitting next to her, answered.

“Then turn around. I’ve got to go.”

“Turn around where?” Bernice asked, waving her hand towards the road ahead. From their perspective there were two lanes of road, a guard rail and infinity beyond that. The road they was on had literally been carved from the face of the mountain. To the right was about three feet of “shoulder” and then a fifty foot vertical wall of granite. If they were to drive next to the guard rail they could look down a hundred feet or more and see the east-bound lanes squeezed into another cut into the rock face.

“You’re just going to have to hold it in,” Crystal said from the front seat.

“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five minutes?”

The road made another sharp curve then opened out into a small meadow maybe a hundred yards wide and a half mile deep.

“Stop the car.” Tiffany said.

“There’s nothing here?” Bernice said.

“Just stop the car!”

Bernice pulled over and waited. Tiffany grabbed a handful of tissues from her purse, and threw open the door. Crystal reached across the seat to hand her some wet wipes as well.   “I guess she really had to go.” Bernice said, as the door slammed. Tiffany waddled off into the underbrush.

“Was it something you ate?” Luann couldn’t resist calling after the departing girl.

][

Tiffany had never felt more mortified in her life. The whole hot-sauce fiasco was nothing compared to this - forced to squat in the woods like a bear or something. She was going to go behind the first clump of brush that hid her from the road then reconsidered. Luann could be sneaking up on her at this very minute hoping to scare her while she had her pants down. It’s what she would do if their situations were reversed. So she waddled on farther into the meadow, up the slope into the overshadowing trees, hoping all the while not to have an accident before finding her perfect pitstop pit. She followed a deer trail for a while until she found a large thicket growing next to a clearing. A large tree next to the thicket formed sort of a lane into the middle of the undergrowth giving her a welcome amount of privacy.

She went in as far as she could, and took off her pants and underpants. She had no idea how one squats in the forest and the only thing more humiliating than this would be to get some on her clothes. She’s rather do this naked.

She scrubbed down her hands with the wet-wipe afterward, throwing the used tissue on the ground then put on  her pants.

She’d just got back to the clearing when she heard a snuffling sound. She turned around and found herself face to face with a huge ... bear?

Tiffany screamed and covered her face with her hands, too scared to move, expecting to be attacked at any second.

When a minute had gone by and she hadn’t been attacked, Tiffany spread the fingers on one hand and peered through them. The creature - bear, or whatever - was sitting on the ground near her. it had placed its hands over its face wand new was peering at her with one eye though spread fingers.

Tiffany closed her eye and whined. A whine came from the beast in front of her.

Tiffany opened both eyes, looking at the beast suspiciously. It was sitting on its heels, which put its head at a level with Tiffany’s. Standing up the thing must have been eight or nine feet tall. It was covered in long, reddish fur. It seemed kind of sparse compared to a cat or dog, though. Tiffany had no idea how thick a bear’s fur was, though she had always assumed it was pretty thick. It’s head was large, like everything else about it but curiously flat. Wasn’t a bear’s face kind of like a dog’s? The only bear she could remember seeing was Yogi Bear and that wasn’t much to go on. This creature’s face was flat, like monkey’s - sorry Chimpanzee. Tiffany remember how a Zoo Docent had gotten quite snippy when she’s called a chimp a monkey. Chimpanzee were apes, because they had no tail. Tiffany wondered if this beast had a tail. She couldn’t see one but that didn’t mean anything. No, more like an orangutan. It’s nose was a broad, flatten lump between warn brown eyes. There was a heavy brow like a gorilla... Maybe this wasn’t a bear, after all, Tiffany thought. Maybe it was an escaped gorilla. That was much better she thought, then recalled the only movies about gorillas she had ever seen they were in the habit of ripping people apart. Oh shit!

After a while Tiffany got annoyed because the monster was just sitting there, doing nothing but keeping her from escaping because it was so close to her. She put her hands on her hips and scowled. The beast moved its gigantic arms and placed them on its hips and looked back at Tiffany with out-thrust neck and pouty squint to its eyes. Only where her lips ere pursed into a little circle, the creature had a broad smile.

They stared at each for a couple of minutes. Tiffany could feel her heart pounding in her chest, her face was cold and clammy. Her breaths came in long spaced gulps as she forgot to breathe. The more she looked at the creature in front of her the less sure she was what it was. It’s eyes faced front, like hers. It had heavy jaws but a receding chin. The hair around its face was very long and... white.  He almost looked like someone very old, very hairy grandfather.

But it was still in her way and Tiffany never liked anyone to get n her way. “Go away, shoo, shoo!” she said, fluttering her hands in front of the beast.

The creature looked at her for a moment blankly, then grumbled something that sounded liked “rhoo, rhoo” and it fluttered its enormous paws in her face.

“Move it, you big lummox!” she shouted.

“Rwow ip, mwomax!” it replied.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Wockin’ mwa?”

Tiffany screamed in frustration. The beast cocked its head and watched her. After a moment it reached out its long, long arm and held its hand towards Tiffany, hairy palm down, fingers like black, ripe bananas loosely closed. She recognized the gesture. It was one her father used when he was meeting a strange dog. There was the hand to sniff but the fingers were protected in case the canine snapped.

Tiffany watched with sickly horror was the hand grew nearer and nearer. It was inches from her face when her nerves broke. She screamed again, turned and race.

She race smack into a tree, bounced off it like a rubber doll, staggered around for a moment before collapsing to the ground. Groggily she looked into the sky and saw the monster leaning over her, concern seemed written on its face. Monsters don’t show concern, she thought. Then everything faded away.

][

“Tiffany? Tiffany?” a voice called in the distance. She tried to hold up her her arm,  but her arm seemed leaden and limp as a noodle. “Here, Mr. Fogetty.” she croaked. That was wrong to. She never croaked like that except maybe to her mother when she was awaken too early after a late party.

Her bed was damp and hard. That wasn’t right, either.

Tiffany opened her eyes and saw blue skies overhead. A couple small clouds scudded across the heavens. The light hurt her eyes. She closed them then and squeezed, which only brought on another pain, like her own forehead was aching.

“Here she is!” A boy called and someone knelt beside her. She lifted an eyelid enough to see a blurry large form kneeling next to her. She was relieved to see that it was hairless and wearing clothes. Monsters don’t wear green plain shirts she was pretty sure. “Gunther?”

“Thank god you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you?” he asked.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you know?” Gunther said. Before she could make another comment someone was kneeling beside her. A damp tissue was applied to her forehead. “How any fingers do you see?” Luann asked, holding up three fingers in from of Tiffany’s face.

“How many do you see?” Tiffany shot back, holding up her hand with just one finger extended. Her hand flopped down being too heavy to hold up.

“Tiff, you OK?” That sounded like Crystal. She was standing at a distance, looking green, trying not to look at Tiffany’s face.

“Will you stop that,” she said, trying to push Luann’s hand away.

“I’m trying to clean up the blood. Hold still.”

“Blood?”

“You’ve got quite gash on your forehead. What did you do, run into a tree?”

Tiffany wasn’t about to admit to that. “I tripped and fell.”

“How did you get out there?” someone else asked.

“The bear must have brought me?” she answered absent-mindedly.

“Bear?” several people asked at once. Knute squinted at her, “Was it Smoky the Bear?”

“No, it wasn’t Smoky the Bear!” she answered angrily and tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her head as it moved. She stopped half-way sitting up, propped on her hands. “It was big with reddish fur and a face like an old man. And it mocked me. It mocked everything I did!” Tiffany realized that what she really hated about the monster wasn’t that it had scared her but the way it had imitated everything she had done - mocking her. “I think it was an orangutan. Stupid monkey!”

“What an orangutan doing the middle of the Rocky Mountains?” Bernice wondered.

“It could have been Bigfoot,” Gunther suggested..

“Big Foot doesn’t exist,” Tiffany retorted, as she pushed herself put her feet.

“It makes as much sense as a wild orangutan in North America.”

“Maybe it escaped from a circus,” Knute said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. A circus? That would have been all over the news. It was Bigfoot!” Gunther insisted.

Gorilla!” Knute popped right back.

“Orangutan,” Bernice corrected.

Their voices are already being to grate on Tiffany’s nerves. Just when it seemed things couldn’t get worse, Luann grabbed Tiffany’s chin and angled it up while she looked at her in the eye.”

“What are you doing,” she started to scream but that made her head hurt worse so it ended coming out as a whisper.

“I’m looking to see if your pupils are the same size. If they’re not that a sign of a concussion. Life Guard training,” she explained, anticipating Tiffany’s objection.

“Oh, great. Now you’re playing Dr. DeGroot. Is there anything you don’t know?”

“I don’t know why Quill was pretending to be flying home to Australia? I don’t know it matters so much to me. I don’t know why you always have to be a bitch. There’s all sorts of things I don’t know. But you eyes look OK, but that bruise is going to leave a mark. Let’s get you back to the car.” Luann pulled one of Tiffany’s arms over her shoulder and walked her slowly to the car. Gunther and Knute were still arguing loudly about what Tiffany had seen in the woods. Bernice got behind the wheel again and honked the horn at the two boys. They ambled back while Luann was searching for some aspirin and bottled water. She dampened a face cloth with some of the water and placed it on Tiffany’s bruised forehead.

As Tiffany closed her eyes and tried not to listen to Knute and Gunther continuing their argument she made a silent vow to never - ever - for on a road trip with Luann again. The next time the bear in the woods might actually be a bear ... in the woods.