Sapphire Disconnected

Comments to imagineer47@yahoo.com

"Hi, Angela," she heard. "Come on in." She saw the younger boy's face aglow behind the huge computer monitor. "Have a seat, I'm just finishing up something," Ricky said without looking up.

Angela plopped down on the bed, springs squeaking. She looked around; the walls were covered with the same posters as the last time she was here -- six months ago, when sophomore Ricky had helped senior Angela study for an Algebra final -- but there were some new drawings. Ricky did lots of drawings. He wanted to be a comic book artist, and while Angela was no expert on comic books his stuff looked as good as anything she'd ever seen. She got up off the bed to check out what was on his drafting table, bedsprings announcing her movement. "You should get a new mattress, Ricky, or you'll never be able to have a girl in here," she teased.

"You're in here," Ricky pointed out.
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant. Maybe I'm not as obsessed with sex as you are." Angela started to blush, but realized he knew nothing of her recent activities. She looked over his latest drawing. A small and slender but well-toned man leaping up, fist cocked, heading toward a huge, bare-chested muscle-bound minotaur-looking thing. Ricky's typing picked up speed. She'd only been here a few times but she recognized the pattern of keyboard clicks that marked Ricky wrapping up an email. "What's this one's name?" she asked, her fingernail gently tracing the arc of the smaller man's body from foot to fist.

Two mouse clicks and he was done. "What? Oh, him," he said, remembering the drawing. "Dirk."

"Dirk?" Angela had expected something more super-heroey. "Not much of a name. Besides, I thought you hated Dirk." Dirk was the Varsity starting quarterback, and a real asshole to anyone he thought was beneath him, which was pretty much everybody but especially the geeks. Ricky was a favorite target of Dirks' hallway intimidation tactics, even after he'd traded lockers to be on the other end of the main hall.

"No, the minotaur is Dirk." Angela nodded in understanding. "Seriously, I don't have names for them. I don't usually bother with names. Names require too much back story; not worth it until I find a character I like drawing. If I end up drawing a bunch of the same guy, then I start working out the details: their powers, how they got them, their weakness..."
"Why do they always have to have a weakness?" Angela asked. Ricky was surprised by the question. Angela always liked looking at his artwork, but whenever he talked about the characters and plots that made up a good book she would get that I'd-rather-be-shopping look in her eyes. Her interest was unexpected but welcome.
"Well, an invulnerable superhero wouldn't be very interesting."
"Why not?"
"A superhero who couldn't ever be stopped would win all the time."
"Well, don't they anyway? In the end, I mean?"
"In the kiddie books, yeah, they did, but that doesn't happen so much any more. Anyway, it's not about the winning, it's the challenge that makes it interesting. And overcoming your weakness, winning in spite of it, is the biggest challenge for any hero."
"I guess," Angela sighed, "but why do they always have to have some critical weakness?" Especially her.
"They just do. Makes them more human, I guess. So the reader can better identify with them. I don't know."
"And what's with super-villains? I mean, come on. Aren't ordinary human bad-guys bad enough?"
"You try coming up with a new interesting challenge for a super-powered hero every month. Eventually you run out of ideas, and two standbys are the Achilles Heel and the super-villain."
"Achilles?"
"I forgot, you almost flunked that quarter. Achilles, the soldier in the Illiad who was invulnerable everywhere but his heel, remember?" Angela gave him a blank look. "Because his mom dipped him in special stuff when he was a baby, but she held him by his heel..."
"Oh right, that guy. I hated that story. It was so long! Even worse than Dickens."
Ricky let it go; Angela was sweet, and while she wasn't exactly dumb, she was no scholar.
"Anyway, why are you so interested all of a sudden? Is summer vacation that boring?"
Angela suddenly remembered the purpose of her visit. "Never mind that, Ricky; I think you know why I'm here. It's down in the car."

A few minutes later, the tower of Angela's computer was on Ricky's desk. "What'd you do to it *this* time?"
"I don't know. It just wouldn't boot this morning. And no, I didn't load any new software," she said sternly, anticipating his question. "I'm expecting some important mail, so I really need to get it working."
Ricky raised an eyebrow at her; he knew that 'important' meant the kind of private mail that she couldn't read or write from anywhere but her bedroom.
"I warned you about those chat rooms, Angela. If you're not careful, you'll catch a virus."
"I'm running Virus Scan, and I download the updates every week like you taught me."
"That's not what I meant."
"Don't be silly, Ricky. I haven't even met him in person yet," Angela said, her voice fading with the end of her sentence as she realized she was sharing too much.
"You should keep it that way. You don't need to be hanging out in chat rooms to get dates anyway, as beautiful as you are." The compliment made her self-conscious; she'd known Ricky not quite two years, but they shared a deep platonic understanding that belied the infrequency of contact. He wasn't the type to throw a girl compliments for effect; he'd never really looked at her except when she flat-out asked him to, never even caught him stealing a glance, the only boy she knew that didn't. She felt the fire in her cheeks. "That's... sweet of you to say, Ricky. But it's still none of your damn business, kiddo," she recovered, socking him in the arm.
"Ow!" Ricky flinched and covered the impacted shoulder with his other hand, nursing it. For a moment Angela thought perhaps she'd hurt him with her strength, but she remembered she wasn't wearing her sapphires. She'd barely tapped him. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were hurt there."
"Don't worry about it."
"So I can trust you not to go poking through my files, right?"
"Your secrets are safe with me, Angela."
"That's not what I asked." She saw he still winced in pain. "Are you sure you're all right? What happened? Let me see," she said, reaching for his sleeve.
"No, really, I'm fine, it's just a little sore, I fell the other day and..." he said, pulling away from her. One of the cheap rings on her fingers caught in the fabric of his sleeve as he backed away, yanking her hand and pulling her off-balance to fall on the bed. Panicking, he continued pulling back; the sleeve of the old flannel let go and followed Angela's hand as she twisted awkwardly on her back, her breasts jostling about fighting to escape her lace bra underneath the tight cropped summer sweater. Stretched out as she was, the bottoms of the lace cups peeked out from the bottom of the knit garment.

But they were both too focused on Ricky's arm to notice her exposure. Angela gasped as she saw the huge purple-and-yellow bruise that covered the length and breadth of his upper arm. "Oh, Ricky, what happened?"
"Nothing. Don't worry about it, okay?"
"But Ricky..."
"Look, it's nothing."
"It's not nothing. You're obviously hurt. It looks serious."
"It's just a bruise. It'll be fine in a few days."
"Ricky, did your..." she paused, thinking back to when she first came over, remembering that Ricky's father wasn't home, "did your Dad do that?" she whispered. She'd never thought of Ricky's dad as abusive, exactly, but he didn't seem to have any respect for his son and was always manhandling the boy as he lectured him on "toughening up" and "not taking any shit from kids at school."
"No, of course not," Ricky dismissed.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Angela was suddenly at a loss for words.
"No no, it's okay. He's a little rough on me from time to time, but he'd never do anything like this."
"Then who?"
"Dirk. Last day of school." That was a few weeks ago; this bruise looked fresh.
"Come on Ricky, that doesn't look that old. What really happened?"
"Okay, it was yesterday. Outside the Quick Mart. Dirk got a little rowdy is all. I'll live."
"It's not right. What did your dad say when he saw it?"
"He hasn't seen it, and I'm not going to tell him about it. He'll only make it worse. I don't think he understands that Dirk and his buddies are meat-tanks." Angela had to grin at the image Ricky's term conjured.
"Well can't he do something? Isn't that assault and battery or something?"
"He'd expect me to take care of it myself. And I am. I'm avoiding being in the same place as Dirk. It works most of the time."
"Jeez, Ricky, it's summer; who's he trying to impress? What's his problem? Did you do something to get on his shit list?"
Ricky sat down at his desk, fiddling with Angela's computer. Angela still lay sprawled out on Ricky's bed, squirming back and forth a bit as she struggled to free her cheap ring from the flannel sleeve. Her sweater worked its way up over her breasts, while her miniskirt inched up her thighs.
"Not exactly," Ricky answered as he peered into the monitor. "He just likes pounding me because I won't admit whether I'm gay."
"Well are you?" Angela asked without thinking. It had never occurred to her. She didn't think she had a problem with it, it just never occurred to her that someone she knew might be, well, that way.
"Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry, I guess it's none of my business, but I mean, if you're not, why not just say so to get him off your back? For that matter, even if you are..."
"Look, that's not the point," Ricky answered with a huff. "I'm not gay, at least I don't think I am. But it's none of Dirk's fucking business." The profanity startled Angela; Ricky basically never swore.
"Well, sure, but what is the point? Getting beat up all the time? That's not very smart."
"I don't expect you to understand, Angela. You're a girl. It's different for girls." He resumed clicking and pausing, clicking and pausing, expressions on his face tracking the progress of his analysis. "I can't get it up," he said finally.
Well Angela didn't expect *that*. But if Ricky wanted to talk, she was willing to listen. "Okay," she said slowly. "And Dirk has a problem with that?"
Ricky gave her a quizzical look; what was she talking about? "Oh! Oh, no, no," he said, blushing, "I meant your computer. It won't come up. I can't get the OS to boot. I'm gonna have to slave your drive, backup your stuff, and do a reload. It'll take a couple days, cuz I've gotta free up some space on my system first. And Jim has my ME disk."
"Oh!" Angela had dislodged the shirt sleeve from the ring on her finger, and was now twirling it idly, tracing patterns in the air between her and Ricky. The bedsprings squeaked softly as she rocked back and forth. Her sleeveless sweater was now completely above the swells of her firm breasts, which jiggled in circles as she moved. Her feet swung up and down, heels gently kicking the side of the bed in time with her arm movements. Occasionally the heel of one shoe or the other would catch the bedspread over the bedrail and she'd lift that leg slightly to free it, adding a random jostle to her movements as well as inching her stretchy skirt further up her hips, exposing more and more of her lace panties. She was obvlivious to her exposure, and to Ricky's gaze; he had noticed and was eyeing her form curiously. And with growing interest.

"So what about Dirk?" Angela continued. "Why not just tell him what he wants to hear and be done with it? Who cares what the truth is? I don't. I mean, you are who you are, right?"
"It doesn't matter what I tell him, he still pounds me. Besides, it's not just about me, Angela. It's Jim. He's my friend. I can't just cave, or Jim will get it even worse."
Angela didn't understand Ricky's logic, but she guessed she didn't really have to; Ricky was going to do what he was going to do. "Well, it sounds silly if you ask me. Dirk needs to grow up. I wonder how he'd like it if somebody beat *him* up." A vague idea formed in Angela's head; she imagined herself, as Sapphire, teaching Dirk a lesson about bullies. The tops of her aureolae just peeked out over the lace...
"Now *that* I'd like to see," Ricky grinned. Angela took that as a go-ahead; the thoughts of why and how and when began to play themselves out in her mind's eye as she continued twirling the ragged sleeve in the air.

Ricky now openly stared at Angela's mesmerisingly oscillating body, recognizing really for the first time that he had a Girl in his room. On his bed. Practically undressed. And he liked it. A lot. She really was beautiful. And sexy. He'd downloaded pictures of naked women before, but they didn't really interest him. This was different. According to his constricting pants, very different. It occurred to him that she didn't realize she was exposing herself to him, and as a gentleman and a friend he should probably warn her... and he probably shouldn't be thinking about a friend like that...

"Wow," Ricky said quietly, unaware he'd said it. Angela looked up at him, upside-down from her point of view. What was he staring at? Why was he looking at her like that? "Ricky?"
He began to come out of his hormone-induced stupor, turning redder as he did. "Uh, uh... Angela, uh, um, you're, I mean, um" he stammered.

Angela looked up/down at herself, seeing her bobbing breasts free of the sweater. "Omigosh!" she sat bolt upright, sinking into the soft mattress. She tugged down on the uncooperative sweater, her back to Ricky, then tried to get up off the bed, as if to erase any implications that lounging on his bed with her bra exposed might have made. In her embarassed confusion, she scooted forward first, unknowningly hiking her skirt the rest of the way over her butt to her waist, then stood up clumsily in the narrow space between Ricky's bed and the shelves on the wall, facing the wall for a moment before getting turned around. Ricky studied Angela's perfect ass, accentuated by the forward-thrust her high heels gave her hips and delicately framed by white lace bikini panties, and continued staring as she turned around to face him. It took her a moment to realize what he was staring at, finally giving her stretch miniskirt frantic tugs on each side until it covered her once again. "Ricky! I can't believe you, staring like that!"

"Sorry," Ricky said, finally tearing his gaze away from her curves to stare at his feet. "I can't believe you exposing yourself like that. Is that what you're into?"
"Of course not! It was an accident! I never would have done something like that on purpose, especially with you!"
"Oh," Ricky said glumly, the unintentional insult digging into his already-confused psyche. "I see. Sorry."
Angela realized what she'd said. "Oh, I'm sorry Ricky, I didn't mean anything by it, I mean, I would never embarass you like that, because you're my friend." It sounded dumb, but she hoped he'd understand.
"Oh, yeah, right, um, I guess I see what you mean. I'm sorry I didn't, um, warn you sooner. I just, well, I've never seen anything like that, er, I mean, nothing like that has ever happened to me, and I just didn't know what to make of it."
Angela calmed down; now that it was over, it actually seemed kind of fun in a way. A part of her had always wondered why Ricky never really looked at her, and she'd often thought about teasing him just to get a reaction, but respect for their friendship had kept her in check. She crossed the room toward him as he continued to sit, dumbfounded, behind the desk.
"That's okay, Ricky, no harm done. I'm sorry if I teased you," she said as she leaned over the desk, glancing down to check the effect of her accidental show. Sure enough, his pants were tented. Not small, either. His hands quickly covered and he turned an even deeper shade of red when he realized what she was looking for. She reached across the desk and tousled his hair. "You're cute when you're embarassed. And I think we've answered my question about your, um, interests."
"Very funny," he playfully batted her arm away, wincing when she accidentally made contact with his sore arm.
His pained expression brought her back to her previous thought. "So seriously, would you like to see Dirk get a taste of his own medicine?" She put her hands on her hips, assuming a cocky pose.
"Huh? How? I mean, no, I don't really want the guy to get beaten up or anything, but yeah if somebody putting the scare into him made him stop wailing on Jim and me, sure. But what does it matter? It's not going to happen." He looked concerned. "You're not going to tell anyone, are you? That would only make him worse."
Angela's eyes took on a distant look. "I have a friend who can probably straighten him out."
"Please don't. I mean, don't do anything you'll regret," Ricky cautioned. "I can take care of myself; I don't want to drag you into anything."
"Don't you worry, Ricky. My friend is very persuasive." With that she looked back down at him. "So, a couple of days to fix this, huh? Okay, I'll give you a call on Monday, sport. The usual fee?"
Ricky stroked his chin thoughtfully. "No, I'm thinking you owe me a date." He grinned mischevously as his eyes scanned her face for a reaction. He didn't know where he was going exactly, but something told him to take a shot.
"A date?" Despite the sexual charge in the room this took her by surprise. She'd never thought of Ricky that way; he was two years her junior, and until a few moments ago she'd never thought of him as a... guy. Well, why not? They were friends, they could go out together. "Well, don't think you're getting anything else, Mister. I'll take you to dinner, but only as friends, okay?"
Ricky was clearly disappointed, but what could a shy sixteen year old expect? Still, dinner with a pretty girl was something, no matter the relationship. "Sure. You pick the place."
With that, Angela excused herself, pausing in front of the hallway mirror to make sure she was decent.

Damn, two days without her computer. Hopefully Scott wasn't picking now to finally hook up with her. Oh well, she had a new project to keep her busy...

But what to wear?