Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Two Streakers - The Story of Yvonne and Christina by EC

   Chapter 10 Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry ten: Daytime
streaking and exhibitionism with Yvonne

   The following month our streaking excursions became even more intense. I
didn't think that could be possible, but it was.

   Following the storm front that had brought all that rain, the weather at
night remained too cold to safely be outside.  We learned that lesson the
hard way, three nights after I gave Yvonne her first real spanking We went
for a "short" streak that took us around the school and two small parks. 
Yvonne wanted me to take a bunch of pictures of her, but I was shivering so
badly I could barely hold her cell phone steady enough to not ruin the
shots.  If we kept moving, we were sort of OK, but if we stopped for any
reason, even for a few seconds, the cold hit us and we started shivering
right away.  As hard-core as Yvonne was about her nude running, even she
realized that it was too cold to be outside after dark anymore.

   There was another problem.  My parents were coming back from their
latest cruise and Yvonne wouldn't be able to spend anymore nights at my
house until they left again.  I didn't know when that would be and I had to
avoid making it too obvious I was desperate for them to leave the house.

   I figured that the cold nights and my parents being home meant that
meant we'd have to stop our streaking, but it turned out that no, Yvonne
simply moved our runs to daytime.

   That year we had a really nice, long "Indian summer".  While it was too
cold to be outside at night, the days were very pleasant.  Also, by pure
good luck, there was a teachers' strike at our school, so we had several
weeks of unexpected time-off from our classes.  We knew there would there
would be hell to pay when we got back, because we'd have to catch-up on all
our work, but we didn't care about that.  What mattered was that during the
days we had nice weather and plenty of free time to enjoy it.

   Since there was not much to do at home and the school district had not
yet set up remote learning, I told Mom that I wanted to go hiking with some
girls from school and that I needed to borrow her car.  She was good with
that, so I was able to pick up Yvonne in the mornings and take her wherever
we wanted to go.  She looked at some maps online and decided that there
were some nice nature parks we could go to.

   She also had an interesting piece of news.  Due to budget cuts, the
state park rangers had cut back on patrolling the hiking trails.  Also, the
State Parks Commission announced that anyone using one the parks should
only call rangers for life-and-death emergencies.  The commissioner
specifically said:

   "If it's not hurting anyone, do not call the emergency line.  We don't
want to be getting calls about little things like someone smoking a joint
or skinny-dipping.  We don't have time to deal with stuff like that, so
don't bother to call it in."

   What the commissioner meant was that in the state parks and hiking
trails, laws against public nudity (among other minor things) would not be
enforced until further notice.  Yvonne saved the article to her cell phone
and showed it to me.

   We went streaking at least three days each week during the teachers'
strike.  Yvonne picked what she considered promising locations and I drove
us to the trailheads in Mom's car.  We took off all our clothes in the
parking lot and threw everything in the trunk.  We hit the trail wearing
nothing but our shoes, and carried nothing in our hands except our cell
phones and water bottles.  Our bodies were completely exposed and we had
nothing to cover ourselves.

   On the first day of our nude forest adventures, I was just as scared as
I was the first night I went streaking.  The daytime runs meant that we
were no longer running in secret.  We were not running on empty streets in
the dark, dodging in and out of shadows: we were running on brightly lit
trails where anyone nearby would get a clear view of our bodies.  We were
completely visible to anyone we passed along the trail and we had to run
very close to them.  If someone wanted to take pictures, there was nothing
we could do about it.  We would truly be nude in public.  I remembered
seeing pictures from some website in Europe that featured young women
walking around naked in crowded cities in broad daylight.  What Yvonne and
I were doing on the hiking trails came pretty close to that.

   At least Yvonne was not overly reckless about it.  As with her urban
runs, she researched trails ahead of time to make sure we went to places
where spectators would be less likely to object.  She knew that the more
difficult hiking trails would have fewer people, and more importantly,
fewer "families" and conservative types.  She wanted to enjoy being naked
outside with me, and not have it spoiled by the unpleasant experience of
having anyone yell at us.  It also helped that we were running on weekdays,
when people were at work and little kids were in day-care.

   Actually, I guess our park adventures weren't streaking as much as they
were nude nature hikes, because we weren't running most of the time.  We
only ran if there were people around, and walked if we were not within
sight of anyone else.  Usually we did have to run at the beginning and at
the end, when we were close to the parking lot where there were more people
around.  O5cther hikers thinned-out as we moved further away from the road.

   Still, we did cross paths with other hikers.  I was terrified whenever I
saw anyone, but Yvonne got a thrill from the expressions of hikers as they
saw two naked young women running towards them.  There were several times
other hikers asked to take their picture with her, and she always agreed.
Fortunately, since I was the one with the camera or the phone taking the
photo, I managed to stay out of the only-one-naked shots.

   Yvonne definitely got an adrenaline rush from our naked outings. 
Everywhere we went she took a bunch of pictures of me, and had me take a
bunch of her.  When we got to our turn-around point, she usually wanted to
have sex with me.  She refused to budge until I agreed and she was
passionate with her love-making.

   If I showed any hint of being annoyed with her, she picked up on that
and teased me until I spanked her.  I'd get up on a picnic table, put her
over my lap, and put my effort into giving her a respectable spanking.  If
no table or other flat surface was available, she simply grabbed a tree
trunk and I spanked her standing up.  I always used my hand.  The thought
of hitting her with a stick never crossed my mind.

   By the time the teacher's strike ended and we had to go back to school,
Yvonne was starting to become more of a real exhibitionist instead of just
wanting to be naked outside.  She got a kick from showing off her spanked
butt to other hikers when we were returning from our outings.  To me, the
public display of that part of our relationship was way too much
information, but it wasn't TMI for her.  She totally loved the shocked look
on people's faces when they saw us running towards them in the nude, and
then the even bigger surprise when they saw her reddened bottom after we
had passed them and were running away.

   There was much more to our nature hikes than sex and spanking.  It was
important to Yvonne that we climb as many hills as possible and take
pictures of ourselves in front of scenic overviews.  We did take a lot of
really nice pictures.  She had bought both a selfie stick and stand for her
phone, so a lot of those pictures were of us together with the phone's
timer.  She took plenty of me as well, in front of just about everything
imaginable and all kinds of poses.

   "You're the prettiest girl in the school.  I'm fucking lucky to have
you."

   We had a very strange relationship.  But there's no way I can describe
how alive I felt when I was with her.  Being with her stressed the fuck out
of me, but I always felt it was worth it.  I had fun with her, a special
kind of fun I'll never have with anyone else.



   Chapter 11 Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry eleven: A new
year and a photo-shoot with Suzanne Johnson

   I spent a typical stressful Christmas with Mom's side of my family. 
That meant a trip to West Virginia.  We had to fly to Dulles Airport and
then drive west, for three hours.  Yes, three hours, in a rental car, with
my parents.  And things were never that great at my grandparents' place. 
They never liked the fact that Dad's parents were from Mexico and that she
had taken Melendez as her last name.  However, Mom sort of got the last
laugh on them, when Dad got all that money from his investments.  We now
had more money than the rest of them combined, and while the others toiled
in crappy minimum-wage jobs, Mom spent most of her life traveling and doing
fun vacation-type stuff.

   It was that year, the final Christmas I'd spend with my family as a
teenager, that I realized what was going on with my parents and all those
cruises, why they were showing off, and to whom.  I knew that my
grandparents were pretty nasty to Dad when they first met him.  But, what
could they say now?  There was no question that Mom, at least from a
material point-of-view, had a much better life than anyone else in her
family.  She also felt that all that travel and partying and cruises made
her "sophisticated".  She loved to return home as and present herself as
"the world traveler".  My grandparents had been very wrong about Dad, and
she loved to rub that in their faces whenever she had the chance.

   As I watched Mom bore everyone with her travel stories and Dad sitting
next to her, silently looking at investment statistics on his cell phone, I
thought to myself: I don't know what I want from my life yet.  But I do
know what I don't want.  I don't want to be like any of them: not like my
grandparents, not like Dad, and certainly not like Mom.

   I was constantly thinking about Yvonne.  I couldn't help it because we
were texting and sending selfies to each other continuously.  I knew that
she was spending Christmas with that friend who had gotten her the job at
Gi-Gi's.  I was glad about that, because if her family was as bad as she
made them out to be, I could imagine being with them over a holiday would
be pure hell.

   *****

   My parents left on yet another cruise a few days after we got back from
West Virginia.  I was so happy to see them get out of the house and to have
Yvonne come back over.  I hadn't seen her for nearly a month.

   The next two weeks were the best of our relationship.  As always, I took
off my clothes the moment my parents left the house and was appropriately
naked when she came over.  She had gone back to her normal bossy behavior,
so she took control of me as soon as I was in her arms.  Her hands were all
over my body and I passively allowed her to seduce me.  If felt so good,
being like that with her.

   I served dinner, and as we were cleaning up, we noticed it was snowing
outside.  Snow storms weren't common in our area, so we watched the snow
come down in my back yard for a few minutes before going to the hot tub
room.  We exchanged massages and sat in the hot tub with the lights turned
off and watched the snow as it continued to accumulate outside.  It went
without saying school would be canceled the next day.

   The snowstorm was the most severe the region had experienced since a
record-breaking storm in the 1930s, so we were snowed-in for the entire
week.  Even Gi-Gi's was closed, so neither of us had any reason to leave my
house.  There was plenty to do, so we didn't get bored: Yvonne got me to
improve giving massages and I got her doing more advanced yoga moves.  We
spent hours in the pool and hot tub, and more time in bed.  We had naked
dares, chased each other around the house, and took lots of pictures.  We
cooked together and I taught her several recipes so she wouldn't be so
hopeless in the kitchen.

   When I lost one of our dares, she gave me the only spanking that I got
from her the entire time we were together.  The spanking was different from
the ones I was giving her: it was more playful and seductive than
punishment.  I went over her lap and placed my bottom at her mercy.  She
was totally fascinated with that part of me, so she massaged and rubbed my
ass more than she slapped it.  Feeling the caresses and the warm slaps on
my exposed bottom, and knowing that she was taking in every detail of my
bare backside while I was submissively lying over her lap completely turned
me on.  She knew that, and slipped her fingers between my thighs to give me
a really great orgasm.

   *****

   The weather warmed up and the streets cleared over the following
weekend, so after a week of non-stop sexual adventures in my house, Yvonne
and I returned to school and resumed our normal routines, which included
pretending not to acknowledge each other whenever anyone else was around.
My parents came back in the middle of the week, Yvonne went back to her job
at Gi-Gi's, and I went back to studying.  It was frustrating that I
couldn't see her.  However, I realize something now.  I think that one of
the reasons we were so passionate with each other when we were together was
because of the other times we were forced to be apart and couldn't see each
other.

   *****

   Over the months we were together, Yvonne and I took hundreds of pictures
of each other, as well as plenty of us together that were taken with the
timer on her phone.  Every single picture we ever took of ourselves had to
be without any clothes.  The rule with our cameras and cell phones was the
same as it was when we were alone in my house, we could not use a camera
unless we both were fully undressed.  The same rule applied to selfies: no
clothing could be in the picture.  So, we sent each other a lot of nude
pictures.

   However, Yvonne was not satisfied with the growing collection of amateur
images we had of each other.  She wanted something special and more
professionally done.  In the middle of January I realized how determined
she was about that when she told me that we were going to have a three-hour
session with the famous erotic and glamour photographer Suzanne Johnson.  I
was stunned.  Suzanne Johnson?  How on earth did Yvonne manage to get a
session with Suzanne Johnson?  How did she even know her?

   Suzanne normally worked out of Chicago, where her husband and son lived,
but she spent part of her time traveling around the US and had a system for
setting up temporary studios in the cities she was visiting.  The place
where we were going was one of those temporary studios.  When we showed up
at the door, we were greeted by a young woman who was wearing a skimpy
chemise that was completely open on the sides.  She was not wearing
anything underneath.  The only other items she had on were a cloth belt to
hold her garment in place and a pair of deck shoes.  She told us to got
into a changing room and remove all of our clothing, to include the
necklaces and bracelets we were wearing.  I nervously undressed and did as
I was told.  I put my necklace and two bracelets in a pocket of my coat. 
Then, as naked as we could possibly be, Yvonne took my hand and led me to
the main part of the studio.

   Suzanne was wearing the same style of chemise that her assistant was
wearing.  She was naked underneath that one garment, and like her
assistant, wore nothing else except a light belt and deck shoes.  That was
her normal work outfit in the studio.  She kept the temperature warm for
her models and did not want to be uncomfortable while moving equipment,
setting up cameras, and giving instructions to her subjects.  I later
learned that style of chemise was popular in a European country called
Danubia and that Danubian women typically wore chemises when the weather
was hot.  Suzanne liked the style, which was perfectly suited for moving
about in warm temperatures, so that garment became something of a trademark
for her.  She bought several, in different colors, and rarely wore anything
else when she was working.

   Suzanne was tall and voluptuous, and pretty in a Victorian sort of way.
She was soft-spoken, but at the same time very direct with what she wanted.
Whenever she had a camera in her hands, her personality became very intense
and she was somewhat intimidating.  If you were her subject, you did what
she wanted and that was the end of it.  It was her profession to convert
you into high-quality art, and it was something she was very good at.

   The photographer had two ways of charging her customers.  She was more
than happy to photograph subjects who didn't have any money, as long as
they agreed to grant her ownership of the photos she took and allowed her
to publish or use them however she wanted.  I knew that was the arrangement
Yvonne must have made with her.

   As I stood naked in the studio with Yvonne holding my hand, I realized
that what we were doing with Suzanne was a just a variant of the streaking
we had been doing outside a few weeks before.  Yvonne loved to see herself
naked and wanted to see her body posted around the internet.  She wanted
people to look at her.  What better way to do that than to have someone as
well-known as Suzanne Johnson take a bunch of high-quality figure and
fetish portraits, show them in art galleries, and distribute them online?

   Suzanne started the session by taking pictures of Yvonne by herself. 
She experimented with lighting, different backgrounds and poses, and with
different cameras.  She had Yvonne dance, stretch, lie down, and sit.  Then
it was my turn.  Yvonne was totally excited as she ran up to me, squeezed
my hand, and nudged me to move in front of the photographer's cameras.  I
took a deep breath, very worried about the commitment I was getting myself
into and how it might impact my future.

   Suzanne had a way of making a person submit to her and not hesitate
about having dozens of nude pictures taken.  As I danced and posed, the
only thing on my mind was satisfying her.  I don't know how she did it, but
as soon as her camera started flashing, she established a psychological
hold over me.

   Suzanne directed Yvonne to join me and we started posing together.  At
first we were simply standing, or sitting, or lying next to each other. 
Little by little, Suzanne directed us to become more intimate.  With the
photographer moving all around us, we hugged, kissed, and caressed each
other's bodies.  We stopped just short of having sex.  However, we were
both aroused, and that precisely was what she was looking for.  We had a
hungry look in our eyes and our expressions.  Now she was getting exactly
what she wanted from us and her camera.

   Suzanne's assistant was joined by a second woman who was a bit older,
but like her boss and co-worker, dressed in a chemise that was open on the
sides and nothing underneath.  The two women quickly moved a round red
cushioned platform into place and told Yvonne and me to get on it.  We were
still aroused, and at that point Yvonne took control of me.  She got on top
of me and pinned my wrists to the cushion and kissed me.  She rolled me
onto my stomach and massaged my shoulders and bottom.  Then she lay on her
back and got me to get on top of her and kiss her breasts.  I was on my
elbows and knees and my bottom was spread and shamelessly exposed.  I
didn't care about that at all.  Suzanne and Yvonne had captured my
imagination and my actions.  It was a decadent photo-shoot and I had become
a perfectly willing participant.

   That was only the first half of the photo-shoot.  There would be a
second half: with me spanking Yvonne.  I was very nervous about spanking my
lover in front of a professional photographer.  The spankings were the most
intimate thing we had going on between us, but now we were sharing our
secret with the artistic world.  However, when Suzanne started giving me
directions, I realized right away that Yvonne must have told her about her
fetish before we started and that she wanted it as part of the session.

   Yvonne settled over my lap and Suzanne took a bunch of pictures with
several cameras from different angles.  I felt that I needed to spank her
convincingly, which meant spanking her hard.  My companion went quiet as
the minutes passed and her bottom became more and more red, and as the heat
and sting that she so much loved built in her skinny backside.  In spite of
the pain, the only sound coming out of her was an occasional moan of erotic
pleasure.

   When I finished, Suzanne's assistants scurried in and moved the platform
away from the cameras.  They replaced it with a model's stand.  Apart from
that, there was nothing else in front of backdrop where the cameras were
set up.  So, that was just the first part of the spanking session.  I
wondered what Susanne was going to have us do next.  Yvonne already knew.
Suzanne told her stand up and put her hands on the model's stand.  She
obeyed, and looked at us with eager anticipation.

   Suzanne handed me a paddle.  It was a cruel-looking wooden paddle, much
scarier than the leather one I was using at my house.  When she saw the
surprised look in my eyes, she commented:

   "Your girlfriend and I have agreed that we want the second part of our
session to be more intense.  So, you're gonna paddle her.  You've gone
through this at school, so I'm assuming you know how to use one of these,
right?"

   "Uh...  I...  I 'spose..."

   "There's really just a couple of simple things to remember.  You swing
through your target, and concentrate the swats on the lower half of
Yvonne's bottom and the very upper part of her thighs.  The pattern you're
going with is a swat concentrated on her right cheek, then a swat on her
left cheek, then one flat across both cheeks.  Firm swats, but not too
hard. The point is you want to stretch it out.  Got all that?"

   "Uh...  yeah...  I...  got it."

   "No safe-words, but the rule is you'll stop as soon as dark patches or
blisters start forming.  Then we'll keep her in position for a while I get
some pictures and she recovers.  After that, you two make up."

   "OK..."

   I knew enough about spanking to start out slowly.  I caressed and patted
Yvonne's bottom before I started spanking her.  I slowly rubbed the paddle
on her bottom and then tapped her a couple of times.  She was nervous and
anxious, which gave Suzanne some good facial shots to get her expression. I
drew back and got ready to give her the first real swat.

   POP!

   Yvonne gasped and whimpered faintly.  It turned out that paddle was
going to be a lot more painful than she anticipated.  She became nervous
and worried, which was perfect for the emotion that Suzanne wanted to
capture.

   POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...

   Yvonne gasped and started trembling.  It hurt, in a scary sort of way.
However, she had committed herself and was not about to go through the
humiliation of trying to back out of the agreement she had made with one of
the nation's most respected photographers, an agreement that she had
negotiated herself.

   POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...

   I kept going, because I also felt it was important that Yvonne go
through with the fantasy of hers.  I had gone through a similar emotional
experience the first night I went streaking with her.  Even thought it had
been my fantasy to go streaking, it turned out to be different than I
imagined and the hardest thing I ever did.  But afterwards, I was glad I
went through with it.  I would have hated myself had I not pursued my
fantasy, so I never regretted it.

   I knew that Yvonne would go through the same experience.  She had
requested a real and intense spanking, one that would really hurt.  She
wanted to have it documented with high-quality erotic photos.  It was what
she had been dreaming about for a long time.  It would be different that
what she had expected, but later she would think it was worth it.

   POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...

   Tears were running down Yvonne's cheeks.  She was actually starting to
cry.  Suzanne moved around, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible but
wanting to get pictures of her model's teary face and her reddening and
swollen bottom.  She also took plenty of close-up pictures of me, trying to
capture my look of worry and my determination to finish what we had
started.

   POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...  POP!...

   Yvonne's body started shaking from her crying.  Her bottom was covered
with painful-looking dark patches.  I glanced at Suzanne, silently asking
for permission to stop spanking.  She responded:

   "Do what you whatever you can to make her feel better.  She's in a lot
of pain right now, so caress her and comfort her.  She needs to be
comforted, and that has to come from you."

   I put down the paddle and gently rubbed Yvonne's injured backside.  She
stood up, hugged me, and cried.  It was a moment of redemption and love, a
perfect end to a very intense photo session.

   A few weeks later, Yvonne showed me some of the pictures from out
photo-shoot.  I thought: Wow, those images are very powerful, and totally
sexy.  Just looking at them gave me an erotic thrill.  We were not
professional models: we were just two ordinary young women who had just
turned 18.  We had no experience modeling at all.  That was the strength of
the way Suzanne Foster did photo-shoots.  She didn't like using
professional models because she knew that a lot of photo-sessions with
models end up looking fake and staged, with was what they are, fake and
staged.  What Yvonne and I had done was not fake.  That showed in every
photo I saw from that session.  Our expressions, our postures, and our
bodies: it looked genuine because it was.

   There was no question about it.  Suzanne Johnson was extremely talented
at what she did.  There was good reason she was so well known and so
respected among the artistic and fetish photography communities.





   Chapter 12 Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry twelve:
Planning for the future, and a visit to Davenport

   At the end of the last week in January, I took a look at the semester
schedule to make sure I was keeping track of all the tests and term papers
that I had to finish over the next few months.  I don't know why it hit me
so hard at that moment, but I realized there were only three months
remaining in my senior year.  Classes would end after the first week of
May, and on top of that was the 10-day interruption of Spring Break.  Only
three months left, and then we'd all be done with high school.

   That looming deadline, the graduation date that would end our lives as
we currently knew them, still didn't register with most of my classmates,
and that included Yvonne.  It seemed they were all still living for the
moment.  What was odd was that my parents weren't much better.  They rarely
looked at any future beyond their next cruise.  My dad was a little better
about that when it came to his investments, but Mom was as oblivious about
the future as any teenager.

   The fact that everyone around me was so complacent made me all that more
worried about my own future.  Although I had started looking at
universities around the US in the fall, I knew that by the end of January I
had to be a lot more serious about making my final choices.  I did not want
to go to college locally: I wanted to get away and see some other part of
the US.  I finally settled on two universities: a big public university in
Boulder, Colorado, and a mid-sized school in central California called
Davenport State University.

   From the beginning it was Davenport State University that really caught
my attention.  DSU was built right on the coast, just north of Santa Cruz.
It was a mediocre college in an overpriced state, but what appealed to me
was the fact it overlooked the Pacific Ocean.  I had always wanted to live
near the beach and going to DSU would certainly give me that chance.  The
campus seemed really pretty, from what I could see from DSU promotional
materials and pictures from the Internet.

   However, there was something odd that drew my attention to DSU in
particular.  The art department had a promotional poster that featured a
smiling naked young model standing on a rock with the Pacific Ocean and the
late afternoon sun in the background.  Her hand was stretched upwards and
the camera angle made it look like she was holding the sun.  The poster's
slogan read: "Join us and set your creativity free!  Begin your adventure
at Art_DSU@mta.corp." I later found out the model was actually a student at
the university and worked for the Art Department.

   I wasn't planning to major in art, but the poster totally fascinated me.
I know it sounds totally silly that a naked art model would capture my
attention in the way that she did.  At the moment, the promise of freedom
she represented gave me hope that DSU really was a place where students
could "set their creativity free."

   I decided that DSU would be the out-of-state college of my choice and
that I'd visit it during Spring Break.  The university would be expensive
because it was in central California, but my parents had told me they'd pay
for my education as long as I was enrolled full-time, had a major that was
"serious", and kept my grades up.  "Serious" meant something science-based.
No humanities major with the word "studies" attached to it.

   The more I looked at DSU, the more I wanted to go there.  They had a
respected geology department, so I figured that would be as good a major as
any.  Geology was a practical field that didn't go too deep into
theoretical mathematical formulas, so it was a major I figured I could
handle and wouldn't stress me out too much.  I proposed studying geology at
DSU to my parents and their attitude was: "OK, let's go check it out."

   My only doubt about going to DSU was what was going to happen between me
and Yvonne.  At the time I didn't see that as much of a problem.  I knew
that Yvonne wanted to get away from her rotten situation in Eastwood.  I
figured that if I went to California, I could take her with me.  I'd have
to get an apartment instead of living on campus, but if my parents were
willing to pay out-of-state tuition for me to study in California, paying
for an apartment would be more of an after-thought than anything else.

   I brought the idea up with Yvonne.  As I expected, at first she was very
skeptical.

   "California?  You're shitting me.  What the fuck am I gonna do in
California?"

   "What you're doing now.  Giving massages.  So, what you're telling me
that people don't need massages in California?  Besides, there's a
professional massage school in Santa Cruz that gives out certifications. 
You could get an actual degree in what you're doing.  Think about that.  No
more jerking guys off or putting your finger up their asses.  You'd have a
real license and be legit."

   "I still...  I just don't know about it.  I mean, California?"

   "And what's keeping you here?  School's gonna be over in a couple of
months.  I'm not sticking around.  I want something new.  But I want you to
be part of that.  So come-on.  Just come with me.  You keep saying you want
to get out of Eastwood.  OK, I'm giving you a way to get out."

   "And just where the fuck am I gonna live?"

   "With me.  My parents will pay for either an apartment or a dorm.  It'll
my choice, as long as I keep my grades up.  If you come with me, I'd do an
apartment."

   "I dunno.  I still gotta think about it."

   She was really nervous and I knew her well enough to know why.  If she
went with me to Davenport, she'd be giving up what little control she had
over her life.  She'd become completely dependent on me.  Our relationship
would change, and at least for a while, I'd be the one in charge.  That
scared her.  I understood her worry, but neither of us had any choice. 
High school was about to end, whether we wanted it to or not.

   "Look, I'm gonna check out Davenport with my mom over spring break. 
I'll send you pictures, and also where we might end up living.  And I'll
also see if I can get a look at that massage school in Santa Cruz."

   "I..."

   "Why don't you just look it up?  The massage school, I mean?  See what
you gotta do to get yourself enrolled and get certified?"

   "Yeah, I guess."

   Her lack of enthusiasm worried me, but I figured she'd eventually come
around.

   *****

   Spring Break at my school started during the last week of March.  I flew
out to San Jose with Mom and she rented a car and we drove to Davenport.  I
immediately fell in love with the area.  All those cliffs and coves, the
winding road along the hills, and the ocean.  What wasn't there to like
about it?  Mom was not as impressed, but she had been all over the world in
cruise ships.  To her Santa Cruz and Davenport were just a couple more
pretty areas out of many she had seen.

   To convince her that Dad should drop a bunch of his money at DSU, I had
to take my visit to the Geology Department seriously.  The major seemed
like something I'd be able to handle and it was for sure the job prospects
for a geologist were better than any of the humanities.  I badly wanted to
check out the Art Department, but I had to content myself with grabbing a
couple of posters from their orientation center.  Fortunately, one of the
posters was the one of that naked model standing next to the ocean.  I'd
hang that in my room and show it to Yvonne as soon as had the chance to
invite her to my house again.  I hoped that the poster might help convince
her she'd be making the right decision if she came with me to Davenport.

   I took pictures around Davenport and of the beaches that were just west
of the campus, to sell her on the new life I wanted her to have with me.  I
also took some pictures around Santa Cruz.  I didn't get to go inside the
massage school, but I got a picture of the outside.  It seemed nice enough
and there was nothing creepy about the students going in and out of the
building.  I really felt it would be the chance for Yvonne to do something
positive with her experience at Gi-Gi's.  I also convinced Mom to take me
to several apartments around Davenport.  I took some pictures of possible
places I'd rent and sent those, thinking that Yvonne would be totally happy
at the thought of getting away from her "old man" and "that fucking
street-walker he's living with".

   I felt so confident during that week in Davenport.  I felt for sure that
it was in California where we'd build our lives together.  We would be with
each other full-time, living our own lives, and not having to dodge my
parents or the cliques at school.  We'd have all the time we needed to
figure out what we wanted from our relationship.  Maybe we'd even get
married.

   *****

   I sent Yvonne a bunch of images, but after the second day I was in
Davenport, she quit responding.  I found that odd and worrying, but with
Mom next to me, I had to stay focused on DSU and convincing my parents why
I should study there as opposed to somewhere else.  I had to pass myself
off as more serious than I really was and make her think DSU was best for
my academic future, not because I liked the beach and wanted to start a new
life with a girlfriend she didn't even know about.

   Finally I got Mom's approval.  She'd recommend that Dad pay for me to
study at DSU.  So, with a couple of DSU shirts and other souvenirs from
Davenport and Santa Cruz I had bought for Yvonne, I boarded the plane with
Mom to return home.

   I was about to get my wish for college, but as the days went by, I was
not happy.  By the time I was sitting in a terminal of the airport in San
Jose, I had not heard from Yvonne for over a week and her chats had not
been updated.  I was frantically texting her, but still no answer.  When we
got back home, I tried texting again, but it turned out that her cell phone
had been disconnected.



   Chapter 13 Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry thirteen:
Yvonne's disappearance and the end of the relationship

   I was getting very stressed about what had happened to Yvonne, but I
figured I'd finally find out when I saw her at school.  There was a problem
with that.  There had been a meningitis outbreak in the District while I
was away, so the School Board closed everything down for two weeks.  No one
was allowed in any of the buildings and we had to take our classes through
remote learning.  During all that time, there was not a hint of her.  Her
phone was still disconnected and I had absolutely no other means of getting
a hold of her.  I knew that she posted pictures online, so she must belong
to some picture-sharing forums.  But she had never told me which forums or
her user ID.

   To make matters worse, my parents were home that entire time.  Dad was
in and out a lot, but Mom was planted in the living room doing a bunch of
contract work.  For some reason, she took a real interest in my remote
learning and watched me while I was working and checked my assignments.  I
was thinking: WTF?  She's been blowing me off for the last five years and
now all of a sudden she's interested in what I'm doing?

   My parents tied up even more of my time by insisting I go out to eat
with them.  Mom started asking me a bunch of questions about how I was
doing and what my life was like at school.  After a while, I realized what
was going on.  I was about to graduate and leave home for college, and she
knew I wasn't going to be around much longer.  She had blown her
opportunity to spend time with me over the past five years, because she had
been sitting around drinking on cruise ships and beaches.  It suddenly hit
home what she had done.  Now she was trying to make up for it.  Uh, a
little bit late, Mom.  Still, I felt I needed to indulge her.  I knew we
wouldn't be seeing much of each other after I graduated, so I'd try to make
her happy for the moment.

   I had wanted to tell Mom about my relationship with Yvonne.  I came
close a couple of times, but it worried me that she had dropped off the
face of the earth.  Where the fuck was she?  I decided to hold-off on
saying anything to my parents until I made contact with her, and then
hopefully I could bring her over to the house to introduce her.  It would
be embarrassing and weird to talk about her, only to have her never show up
again.

   In the back of my mind I always had that doubt, that Yvonne could
disappear someday.  In spite of all the time we had spent together, she had
shared almost nothing about her personal life.  She had deliberately made
herself hard to track.  The only reason I even knew about her job was her
t-shirts.  But I knew nothing else.  If she disappeared, I'd have a hard
time finding her.  Was it possible that's exactly what had happened, that
she had decided to ditch me?  Was it possible that she had planned to ditch
me all along?

   When school started up again, there were only three weeks remaining for
us graduating seniors.  The teachers were frantic to get us back on the
class schedule so we could finish on time.  The whole mood of school had
changed and everything was rush-rush-rush.  There wouldn't even be a senior
prom that year, partly because of the meningitis scare and partly because
the planning got messed up with the District being shut down for two weeks.

   Yvonne never showed up.  I didn't know what to do, because I didn't know
who to ask about what had happened to her.  The day I got back to school, I
saw that her locker had been cleaned out.  That's when I knew, for sure,
she was gone.  But, what happened?  Why would she have just disappeared? 
Why didn't she say something to me?  Even just left a goodbye text, or
something?  How could she do that to me?

   I didn't know who I could ask.  I was afraid to talk to any of her
friends 'cause they'd want to know why I'd be worried about her.  It sounds
totally stupid now, but in my school, we just didn't do stuff like talking
to members of rival cliques.  I couldn't go over to Eastwood to look for
her, 'cause I didn't know where she lived.  I mean, I knew that she lived
somewhere in the Eastwood Apartment complex, but we're talking about
fourteen huge buildings and thousands of apartments.  I didn't know where
Gi-Gi's was, or else I would have gone there to look for her.  Anyhow, I
didn't have much time to go out wandering around if I didn't know where I
was going, not with my parents bugging me and the frenetic make-up schedule
at my school.

   I was very hurt and very angry, and assumed the worst.  Yvonne must have
decided to run off and ditch me.  That was the only explanation.  And to
think, that was after I had talked about building a life with her.  Fine.
Fuck you, Yvonne.  If that's how you're gonna be with me, then fuck you. 
In my anger, I deleted her pictures from my cell phone and bought a new SIM
card.  I realized that I didn't have anything else to remember her by, but
I was in a destructive mood.  When I deleted those pictures, I deleted her.
Fuck you, Yvonne.

   So, when I graduated, I was completely alone.  I no longer gave a shit
about the girls in my group, not even enough to pretend.  I quit hanging
out with them and told them the truth, that my parents were back and Mom
wanted to spend time with me.  That small piece of information really
pissed them off.  All this time I had an entire house to myself, with a hot
tub and a pool, and I never invited them to come over and party?

   The three last weeks of school blew by and that was it.  My graduation
ceremony was about a big a let-down as it could possibly be.  I didn't talk
to anyone and left with my parents as soon as it was over.  I didn't bother
to go to any after-graduation parties or talk to any of my classmates.  I
did not give any of my former friends my new cell phone number and I did
not even take part in the high school annual signing.  I was done with
school and done with being a teenager.  I needed to move on.  I'd be
leaving for California in a few weeks and starting over.  I'd never see any
of those people again and that was fine with me.  I wanted to get as far
away from high school as I could, both physically and mentally.  I'd make a
clean break with everyone and everything.

   I decided to enroll in the summer session at DSU and move out to
Davenport early.  I figured there was no point in spending three months
just sitting around at home, doing nothing and getting depressed.  I'd live
on campus and give up the idea of having my own apartment.  Mom agreed with
me on that and told me she wasn't sure Dad was willing to pay all that
extra money for my own place, so that was one fight with my parents that I
avoided.

   The first evening I was here, I looked at the sunset over the ocean from
my dorm window and thought about how different my life in California would
be.  I started thinking: maybe it's just as well things with Yvonne worked
out the way they did.  I'm still hurt about it, but now I can start
something totally new in Davenport.