Chapter 2
Discovery
The next few days were pleasantly uneventful. The weather stayed good, and I seemed completely recovered. My dad and I even got to spend a day fishing together.
I did return to the cave and take a look. There was no evidence of my previous visit, and no evidence of the hole I remembered falling through.
This pleasant relaxing atmosphere was disrupted three days before I was due to leave. It started when Alice the got a phone call from her daughter. She was on her way to visit. She wanted to be picked up from the airport (75 miles from us), tomorrow morning. We got this call at nine at night. We dropped our plans to go hiking tomorrow, and went to bed early.
If the above description makes it sound like I was annoyed, I was. But I had been the center of attention most of the summer, and I had to admit that Tracey had every right to come and visit. Perhaps the opportunity had arrived suddenly, and she hadn’t been able to give us any more warning.
But Alice looked a little strained when she talked about Tracey that night, and again in the morning.
“Oh well,” I thought “She hasn’t seen her daughter for more than four years, She has every right to be nervous.” I was actually becoming eager to meet Tracey. Alice was 38 years old, and still quite good looking. Her daughter was about 18, and I was hoping that she took after her mother in the look’s department. Seeing Alice and my dad getting along all summer had made me start thinking about getting a girl of my own.
The trip to the airport was uneventful, and the flight was only 10 minutes late. So we were all in good spirits when Tracey arrived. It was then that I got my first look at her.
Tracey wasn’t just good looking. She was gorgeous! My first impression was that she looked like she had stepped out of an ad for an airline. She had long auburn hair, with green eyes, and a heart shaped face. She was about 5′5″ tall, with her shoes on, and had a body that could have gotten her a spread in Playboy magazine. I never got into estimating girls measurements, but I suspect that she was at least a C cup, with a small waist.
Tracey was dressed to show off what she had too. I don’t mean that she was dressed like a cheep hooker, or something. In fact her clothes looked quite tasteful and expensive. It was just that they made it apparent that the body they covered was worth looking at. The blouse she wore was white, and just sheer enough to make you think you might see something through it in the right light. She had it opened at the top to expose just the tiniest bit of cleavage. Her skirt went down to the tops of her knees, and had a small slit on each side.
The only thing that detracted from her looks was her expression. She had a look I had seen before. It was the look of someone who feels people have not treated them with the respect and immediate obedience that they deserve, and they are going to complain about it until someone fixes things. In short, she looked like a spoiled brat about to throw a tantrum. I recognized this look because I had lost a part time job in a shoe store due to my inability to handle that sort of person.
I was hopping that I had misread her expression, but no. By the time we reached the luggage area she had told us that “The ticket people at Miami were rude. The stewardesses were lazy. They had given her the wrong meal, and when she finally got them to change it, the food was awful. The plane had arrived late to her transfer point, and she had been forced to WALK to the other gate, and then her seat had been uncomfortable and she had a backache from the trip.”
The trip home was not much better. She seemed to complain about everything. By the time we got home I was seriously considering going back to college early!
One thing that became painfully obvious on the trip back home was the reason for this visit. She didn’t come right out and say it, but her various complaints made it obvious. Her father had failed to give her something she wanted, (a trip to Europe), and she had left home to punish him.
When we got home, and had her luggage moved into her room she declared “I’m tired from the trip and I have a headache. I am going to take a nap until dinner. Please try to keep quiet so I can sleep.”
Back in the living room, dad and I worked at cheering up Alice. Tracey had clearly upset her, though she was trying not to show it. Tracey had upset me too. The idea of spending the next three days with a girl who did nothing but complain was not pleasant, even if she was great looking.
When Tracey came down for dinner, she had changed clothes. She was wearing a light summer dress, with a low neck line. Her hair was loose, and fell down the middle of her back, and she was wearing a pendant on a light chain around her neck.
My eyes were drawn to where the pendant rested right at the start of her cleavage. My face must have shown how her appearance was affecting me, because she gave me a look that seemed to say “I know what you want, and you can’t have it.” Then she turned to go into the dining room.
By the time Alice had the food on the table, Tracey had managed to complain about the bed, and was starting to say something about me, when it happened.
Tracey was serving herself some mashed potatoes. I was looking at her and thinking “It would be really nice if that big glob she has on the serving spoon managed to wind up in her cleavage instead of on her plate.” As I was thinking this the spoon seemed to almost take a life of its own, and sure enough, the potatoes landed right where I had been wishing they would.
Well, we never learned what she thought of my biology major, because she let out a scream that could have been heard a mile away. Those potatoes were HOT! She jumped up and started yelling and dancing around, and she nearly tore the top of her dress off trying to get the potatoes.
By the time Alice had gotten the aloe lotion applied, and we all had settled back down to dinner, I was beginning to wonder what had happened. Dad, and Alice had been looking elsewhere when the incident occurred, and Tracey had been talking at Alice. But I had been looking right at Tracey, and that had NOT been an accident. There was over a foot of distance between where she should have put the potatoes, and where she had placed them.
The episode in the cave came back to me right away, especially the part about “THE REWARD IS YOURS”. I decided right then that, if I HAD been granted some special powers or something, I didn’t want to do ANYTHING with them until I knew what was going on.
When I made that decision, I felt something strange. It was as if someone had whispered in my ear that my decision would be followed. It wasn’t in so many words, but, some how, I felt that whatever had caused the incident with the potatoes would wait until I was ready before acting again.