Page 10

Face up and sprawled out on his worn mattress, Quinn closed his eyes and waited to feel the breeze blow over him through his open bedroom window.

It was late August and there was no air conditioning at the Casey house.

Only the occasional faint breath of wind through the screens could attempt to douse the summer heat.

Michigan summers could be brutal, even this far north.

The sun beat down all day and the humidity was merciless.

Feeling a bead of sweat drip down his bare back, he let out a sigh and, drifting off, let the exhaustion he felt drop him right back into the dream he'd been having the night before.

He was laying on the beach listening to the waves.

This wasn't the beach of Lake Michigan that he was used to, but somewhere the weather was this sunny all year, like Jamaica or Cancun.

He propped himself up on his elbows to look out at the peaceful blue ocean.

Rae was next to him on a beach towel, lathering up with suntan lotion.

She was wearing a sparkling purple bikini he was sure he'd never seen before and Quinn couldn't help noticing she was all legs and golden sun-kissed skin, her usually straight blonde hair wavy with the salty ocean air.

Rae turned to face him, holding out the bottle of lotion she'd been applying to her legs.

It was then that Quinn noticed how she glowed.

She seemed to be emitting her own bright light, as if the sun were directly above her, its sole purpose to light her up.

Quinn's gaze dropped from her face down her smooth neck, to her chest where two small, rounded breasts had blossomed sometime over the last few months.

Even in his waking life this hadn't gone unnoticed, but were they really so perfect?

"Can you get my back? I can't reach," Dream Rae's voice was light but sultry, and let loose a needy growl in his stomach.

"Yeah, of course," his voice came out far more confident than he felt, and Rae moved so her back was to him, scooting back until she was close. Unusually close.

He squeezed the lotion onto his hands and paused for just a moment before resting them on her bare shoulders. Oh wow . Her skin was soft and hot from the sun and felt like satin beneath his palms. He began rubbing the lotion in and could swear he heard her let out a pleasured moan.

"Quinn?"

"Mmm, yeah."

"Quinn…"

"Mhmm, yeah that's good," he muttered, eyes closed.

" Quinn! " Rae's voice was sharper suddenly and lacked the sultry quality that had ignited the dormant monster in his chest. Missing the sweet sound to her voice, he scrunched up his face and let out a grunt.

Whack!

Quinn felt an abrupt blow to the chest, though whatever had hit him was soft.

His eyes opened and he was no longer on the beach.

The blue walls of his bedroom came into focus, as did the face above him.

Rae was standing there, looking down at him where he lay on his bed.

She was no longer glowing, and her hair was straight again.

He realized she was holding a squishy pillow in one hand and had her other rested on the small curve of her hip.

Her face transformed from a look of concern to a sly grin, "Were you about to have one of those wet dreams they talked about in sex-ed?"

"No!" Quinn shouted defensively, grabbing the pillow out of her hands and swinging it back at her. She turned and the pillow caught her lower back .

Giggling she replied, "Are you sure? The little guy downstairs might disagree."

Quinn felt the color drain from his face as he glanced down to his crotch where, visible through his boxer shorts, he was indeed sporting an erection. "Shit," he muttered, using the pillow to cover up his arousal. "Don't call it 'the little guy', Rae, Jesus. "

"Right, sorry, the big guy then," Rae shrugged, still smirking playfully.

"I'm glad my embarrassment is amusing to you," Quinn said flatly, rolling to sit up and put his feet on the floor, careful to keep the pillow in place.

"Oh, Quinn, it's a natural part of growing up," said Rae, mocking their health teacher's squeaky voice and clasping her hands together. Then in her usual voice, "I mean you're going to be fourteen in a couple weeks and I hear puberty's a wild ride."

Quinn merely grunted. He looked around, then asked, "How did you get in here?

" He hoped she hadn't gone to the front door expecting to be let in by his mother who was likely still passed out in her room.

Quinn had come home to find her face-planted on the living room floor, and after checking her vitals to confirm she hadn't overdosed and was simply drunk, he'd carried her to her bed.

"Your bedroom window is literally wide open," Rae said simply. "I just climbed in, like you're always saying you do."

Glancing at the alarm clock on his night stand he saw that it was ten o'clock in the morning. Rae was already put together, dressed in a simple light blue tank top and- "Are you wearing a skirt?" Quinn asked, finally taking in her full appearance.

"It's a skort, actually," she replied with a smile. She tugged up one end of the skirt and Quinn felt that monster in his chest stir again before he realized there were shorts underneath. "So I can still look cute while we do batting lessons."

"Why do you need me to teach you to bat?

You play tennis at your country club, don't you?

I'm sure it's not much different. You're a natural athlete," Quinn said, rubbing his eyes.

Images of teaching Rae to bat while she wears that short skort buzzed in his head and it felt like dangerous territory.

"But I want to learn from the best," said Rae. "So get dressed, take care of...whatever you need to take care of, and I'll meet you out front."

"Take care of..?" Quinn looked at her confused.

Rae put a hand to one side of her mouth and whispered, " Masturbation ."

"Oh my God!" Quinn shouted, horror-struck that the girl he'd just been dreaming about told him to jerk off if need be. "Rae, just go wait outside!"

Rae giggled once more, paused to grab one of Quinn's many baseball caps off his dresser and pulled it on over her long, sun-bleached locks before hopping out his bedroom window with ease.

Quinn was left in his room, hands on his head as he threw himself back on the bed mortified, but grateful she hadn't been able to see into that dream.

That dream.

What had that been about anyway? Rae was his friend.

Just a friend. Best friend, actually. And obviously she had no misconceptions of how their relationship worked.

She was like one of his guy friends he could talk to about anything.

I mean, hell, she'd talked about masturbation in front of him, and that's not something you mention in front of girls you want to. ..what? Go out with? Kiss?

It didn't matter. That dream version of Rae was not the real one anyway.

It was probably just because they hung out all the time and he didn't see many other girls unless they were at school.

They were on summer break and he'd seen Rae nearly every single day for the past three months, so it made sense that she would pop up in his dreams.

Quinn tried to shake off the weird feeling the dream had given him and got dressed.

He threw on a pair of athletic shorts, a Nike t-shirt he'd scored at the thrift store, and his white Nike sneakers which were possibly the only non-thrift store item he owned.

These had come in a donation box from one of the local charities, providing new clothes and shoes to "underprivileged" kids .

He resented the term, but there was no point denying it.

When he spent all day with Rae and kids in similar neighborhoods- okay, maybe not quite like Rae's, but middle-class ones- their privilege and his lack thereof was clear as day.

He'd met a few of the kids in Rae's neighborhood and, honestly, they were all little pricks.

Quinn wasn't sure how Rae had turned out the way she did; even her sister, Camille, was sort of a spoiled brat at times.

Exiting his bedroom, he stopped to peek inside his mom's room where she was still sleeping face down, one arm hanging off her small twin-sized bed.

"Mom, I'm going out," Quinn called into the room.

When she let out an audible grunt, he pulled the door shut, satisfied that she was still alive, and headed down the hall toward the front door.

He paused with his hand on the screen door, looking out where Rae was waiting for him on the sidewalk.

She was squatting down to pet a dog whose owners were taking it for a walk. It was a small spotted mutt, and it was going crazy for the attention. Rae giggled as the dog jumped up and licked her chin, the owners apologizing. She brushed off the apologies, explaining that she'd always wanted a dog.

Quinn felt that growl in his stomach again as his eyes traced the outline of her long, summer-tanned legs in that damn skort.

Had he never realized how effortlessly pretty she was?

He'd noticed that everything else had seemed easy and effortless to her, but this was the first time he'd seen her like this.

He swallowed hard and shoved those feelings away.

Nope, he couldn't risk their friendship with these stupid puberty-based emotions.

Once he felt he'd gained control of himself, he pushed on through the screen door and met her out on the sidewalk like he had so many times before.