Speak up! I'm a little deaf in that ear...or, is it both ears?
Ezra
Hooten
A
Character Study by Rod Lindsey
Ezra Hooten and Donna Messenger
were a perfect fit for each other. Not
the same – far from it – but a perfect fit nonetheless. They’d been friends since grade school. Their mothers were friends through the
Pleasanton Assembly of God church, both choir members. Then there was the Bayside PTA, Pine Point
Garden Club, and the list goes on, making it inevitable Ezra and Donna would
see a good deal of each other. By the
time they got to middle school they were inseparable.
Ezra
became Hoot the summer after seventh
grade thanks to Donna. He took her
sailing in the brand-new/secondhand fourteen-foot dinghy his father gave him
for his birthday that year, just the two of them on a windward tack up the
coast a couple miles and then back, Donna sitting close at the tiller and
helping him with the sheets.
“This
is a real hoot,” she told him, ducking the boom and snuggling in closer against
the chilly breeze. “In fact…you’re a real hoot, Ezra Hooten.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek, said, “Hoot Hooten…I’m going to call you that
from now on. Hoot – the boy more fun to be with than anyone else I know.”
“Best
friends?” Hoot said. “How ‘bout
boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Forever,” Donna agreed with a long, soft
kiss – on the lips this time.
She
allowed him to slide his hand underneath her sweatshirt and touch her puffies
on the return leg of the trip, a priceless memory. Donna had no breasts, yet, only puffy
promises of things still to come turning stiff at the touch of Hoot’s cold
fingers. It was all the adolescent sex
either of them needed at the time.
Enough to keep Hoot’s bedclothes a mess the rest of that summer and well
on to Christmas.
Norman
Carpenter started school with Hoot and Donna three weeks later.
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