Icebreaker – Part 1
by
Tommy Linarcos
“Fuck, yes,” I sighed as Ms. T sucked on my cock in the hotel room in the Devil’s Moon Ski Resort.
I twisted my hands in her mousy light-brown hair and made her look up at me. When I could see her eyes, I raised up a little for a better angle and slid my cock down her throat, my pubes tickling her lips. “That’s it, Ms. T… suck my cock…”
Ms. Michelle Tattersall moaned as if that’s exactly what she wanted to hear as her throat and tongue massaged my dick. “That’s a good girl,” I said, picking up that she liked the dirty talk. Especially from her student.
I wasn’t her student, yet, actually; that would be next semester when I took Health. Right now, she taught Johnny in both Health and PE. But she was also one of the sponsors for Ski Club, which is how she got to be sucking my cock in a hotel room in the middle of Wisconsin.
Her mouth didn’t really feel much different than my girlfriend Mia’s mouth, but here’s the thing — it was a grown woman’s mouth, a teacher’s mouth. That thought alone could make a guy bust early.
Ms. T found my sweet spot and I gave a little yelp.
“You like that, Rory?” she asked, briefly pulling off of me.
“Fuck, yeah,” I moaned. She smiled and started teasing that spot directly with the tip of her tongue. I closed my eyes and let her tease me. Her hand was exploring my abs under the layers of shirts I wore, reaching up to my chest and… Yes, there you go, you… pinching my nipple…
“Is Johnny coming back?” she asked just before she sucked on my balls.
“I thought he would, but he probably thinks we were done,” I said, enjoying the sensation. We had “volunteered” to bring up everybody’s bags and put them in the assigned rooms after Ms. Tattersall checked in the group with the desk clerk after three o’clock. Everyone else was still out skiing the slopes. Johnny and me figured we could get some brownie points doing this, and maybe earn a favor in case our plan to switch rooms tonight was discovered.
“Then I better get you off and let you head back,” she said and swallowed my shaft again.
This was great, getting sucked off by a teacher. The experience of an older woman is much appreciated!
Ms. Tattersall was a babe of a PE teacher. Not hot, but a babe all the same, in the way that any young teacher is. It’s like, if there was a girl hosting a TV show about video games, she’d instantly become every nerd’s dream girl, even if she was a plain jane. Ms. T is twenty-four, has mousy light-brown hair, a nice smile, I think hazel eyes, and a pretty decent rack. I mean, she looks damn fine in a sweater and she’s no Peppermint Patty.
“Am I going to fuck you, Ms. T?” I asked. I kept saying it like “Misty,” like it was my own personal pet name for her. I’m so cool.
She peeked up at me. “Maybe tonight, if you can sneak away?”
That was out. I’d be spending the night with Mia, if all went well.
I relaxed and got into Ms. T’s talent. Her tongue. Her wet little tongue… Ms. T wasn’t just a sucker-and-bobber, her little tongue was doing tricks to the underside of my cock every time it went in or out of her lips, slaloming in a criss-cross, tickling my sweet spot, running along under my crown. Fuck. This was no girl. This was experience incarnate. Fuck! I wanted to cum. “Misty… show me your tits, Misty… let me see your tits…”
She was happy to do it. She lifted her sweater and t-shirt combo, and I helped pull her sports bra up along with it to get her puppies freed faster, and I got a gander at some really nice tits. I reached down as much as I could, and she thrust her chest out. I couldn’t caress her breasts as well as I could in a different position, but I got my hands on them, all the same. And that made the difference.
“Fuck… yeah… Misty… Misty? I’m gonna cum…. I’m cumming, Misty…”
“Not on my face, Rory,” she cautioned. “I’ll suck down everything you can give me, but not on my face or in my hair.”
I made my grunting, and probably scrunched up my face like usual, and blasted what I thought would be a later gift for Mia into Michelle Tattersall’s mouth. I shot, like, six or seven times, and I could feel her throat grip and pull me, like drawing everything out of my cock, draining my life force, and directing it straight into her belly. When she was sure I was clean and she’d got a good taste of my cum, she released me. I fell back onto my ass on the bed, my cock still pointing at her, while she wiped her lips and fixed her sweater and stuff.
Fuck, I’ve gotten blowjobs, before, but because of how tired my body was from all the skiing, I got lightheaded. The ecstasy of cumming was still swirling around my head even after the rush of shooting a full load into Misty’s mouth. But add to that the feeling of knowing a grown woman had sucked me off — not a milf but a hot college student type, a teacher for christsakes! and my mind was rolling. I could’ve easily fallen asleep, but that was probably not a good idea.
“That’s a real nice cock, Rory,” Misty said and reached out and gave me a few more strokes before I sat up and pulled my pants up. I was happy to let her. What do you say to a teacher who’s just sucked your cock? Thank you? I just smiled.
We got our coats back on, and she gave me four room keys. “Can you give this to Johnny, and these two to your girlfriends for their room?” she asked of me. “And tell everyone you meet to see me for their keys.”
“I think I can do that.”
As we walked out, she pointed at the number on her door, 211, like I should remember it.
I might. I don’t know if I can pass that up, but I’d have to run it by Mia. Hell, she might even want to join us…
It was the Saturday after 1st Semester finals at school. We had one more week of school in December before Winter Break, but everyone knows that week is almost useless. It also meant no homework to worry about. A perfect weekend to do this Ski Club trip to Devil’s Moon Ski Lodge and Resort somewhere north of the Wisconsin Dells. We didn’t have to actually ‘join’ Ski Club, there are no weekly meetings or anything — we just had to sign up to go, talk to the advisor, and fork-over the dough in advance with a signed permission slip.
We’d gone on two day-trips, so far — one to Villa Olivia in Bartlett (with fake snow), and one to Alpine Valley near Milwaukee, and got our skills down. I’m happy to report that I’m no longer on the Bunny Hill! The Alpine Valley resort looked like fun to stay at, so we had high hopes for Devil’s Moon. This being an over-nighter trip would only guarantee that it would be! Hotel rooms, dinner at the lodge, hot chocolate in front of a roaring fireplace. At least that’s what Mia and I pictured when we signed up. We hoped it would be a blast. How could it not be when we’re with our friends?
The biggest thing, I suppose, was that it’s, like, a $300 trip, with lift tickets, ski rentals, and the lodge room, plus whatever we wanted to spend on food. Finally, I understood why the various clubs did fundraisers every week in the school cafeteria. I thought it was just to finance awards and shit. If we did a bake sale, with overpriced cookies, we could have shaved off some of that cost of the lift tickets. Every one of us heard it from our parents that this trip was our Christmas present for the year and not to expect anything under the tree. Except for Conor; his parents would gladly have paid even more to get rid of him for the weekend.
Yeah, Conor was in Ski Club and on our trips. He’s my friend and probably always will be. He’s broken up with Lyla, but he wants to ski and have fun like the rest of us. School can’t deny him just because of him not being a good boyfriend to Lyla.
Johnny and Lyla are together now, finally, and are also on this trip. They don’t talk to Conor.
And Kiki was here, too. Both Akiko Tanaka and her older sister Akari were in Ski Club, and on this trip. Both Kiki and Kari are former girlfriends of Johnny. Yes, if you knew that Johnny and Kiki just got together at our little Mystery Date game the day after Thanksgiving, the event where Conor screwed up and he and Lyla broke up, then it might not be a shock to learn Johnny and Kiki barely made it to two weeks. They broke up right after the Alpine Vally trip. It was a little weird: Kiki seemed to be okay with it, but her sister Kari was angry that Johnny had taken her little sister’s virginity and then… well, she’s just nuts.
Ski Club uses two of the school’s vans for transport, so we all sat practically on each other’s laps here and back, but that has benefits. Mia and I were kissing under a blanket, and Ms. T saw us in her rear-view mirror.
“Are you two making out?” she asked over her shoulder.
“No,” my Mia answered, “I only had one stick of gum, so we’re sharing it.”
Ms. T actually looked like she accepted that, but then we heard a grunt from her a minute later. But she didn’t pull any ‘No PDA!’ rules on us. Mr. Dambraugh, driving the other van, might’ve. But since Ms. T likes giving blow jobs to students, I wonder how long she’d been watching us before she called us on it?
Johnny and Lyla were next to us, all curled up in each other like a nest, asleep. Lyla brought a pillow for this trip. Smart girl. It was a four-hour drive or so to the place, plus a washroom-and-McDonald’s stop near Janesville.
When we got to the resort, this Senior boy and me helped take down some skis off the roof rack. Some doofus came up to us and asked, “So! Going skiing?” and the Senior boy, Kevin, shot back, “No, I’m playing tennis, but I’m giving myself a handicap.” This guy cracks me up.
It was a fuckin’ great day on the slopes! Cloudy in the morning, but then the sun came out and made the snow sparkle so bright, you got those green and red eye thingies from the glare if you weren’t wearing your goggles. And it was good snow, not the fake stuff. Now, I’m no champion skier, but I’m a lot better than I was two weeks before. I’m still too nervous to try a black diamond run, but me and Mia were having fun on the green and the blue runs. And that’s what this is all about — fun. I don’t need to break my leg.
This place has some snowboard runs, too, and I definitely want to get some time in there. Sometimes we see Johnny and Lyla actually skiing; other times we just find them making out in the trees.
Mia and I took the lift up to the top of an easy run to start — always begin with an easy run to get your… I don’t know what to call “sea legs” for skiing. Snow legs? Snow shoes? Snow balls? Whatever. I gave her a kiss, fixed my goggles, and told her, “Meet you at the bottom!”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she challenged me. She fixed her hat — which looked seriously cute on her, dug in her poles, and jumped into her glide.
I put in my AirPods and started my new playlist. I wanted something that would sound cool when skiing, some snow music, some action music I could try to swerve to. YouTube gave me a few options, but a lot of them were light jazz lists for sitting by the fire. Johnny uses a classical one he gave me, starting with Verdi’s “Winter,” and he downloaded some James Bond skiing-scene music. I found I like stuff like Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” from that Thor movie, with the “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah-ahh!” hawk screams, and when I’m going downhill, I try to time those with doing wide swerves. Then there’s tunes like Massive Attack’s “Angel,” which I love — fuckin’ love! — or something with a dedicated beat like Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and Wyclef Jean’s “Staying Alive” — the type of stuff I wish was being blasted out on the slopes for everyone to hear instead of just in my head. But then again, I suppose they don’t do that because of avalanches, if they have avalanches on Wisconsin ski slopes.
Mia was ahead of me, and she kept looking back to see if I was following. I was waiting for her to wipe out, but she’s good. Not Silke good — Silke could be in the Winter Olympics for Belgium — but better than me. Damn, this skiing is addicting! It’s like flying with your feet on the ground! I love controlling where I’m going, and I’m getting better at it, and I know I’ll be sore at the end of the day, but it’s such a natural high!
Mia took a wide turn and headed into some thick trees separating our run from another. I angled and headed there to check on her, make sure she wasn’t hurt. I didn’t stop too well like I thought I would — you know, a sideways hockey stop that looks cool, but a tree helped me come to a good enough stop. Yeah, good ol’ tree. “You okay?” I asked Mia.
She pulled me down. “Horny,” she said and sucked on my face. She started rubbing my pants. I was pretty-well layered, but I’m a guy — we all know how to get our pants open and off real fast when we want to. She looked right in my eyes with that… look of intent. “What can we do here? What can we get away with?”
“Oral’s easy,” I suggested. I honestly wasn’t hard or anything. Mostly I was enjoying the adrenaline of skiing, but it must’ve been affecting Mia in a different way.
“Yes!” she cheered and did some quick motions and suddenly I was looking at her bare ass. “Good idea. I need this!”
I thought I was offering to take my pants down for a blowjob, but who was I to say ‘no’? I love eating Mia’s pussy. I pulled off my gloves and took ahold of her thighs and put my face into her rear and shoved my tongue between her labia. She found a better angle and moved like she was twerking, helping me get a rhythm. She had her AirPods in, as well, and might’ve had a good song going.
Conor suddenly appeared at the edge of our trees. “My turn next?” I just flipped him off. I didn’t want to interrupt her pleasure. “Hey, you guys aren’t as invisible as you think. Just thought I’d let ya know.” Then he corrected his position and balance, and headed downhill, again.
I paused, thinking we’d better stop when Mia nearly shouted, “What are you doing? Don’t stop, I’m almost there!” So, I went back and attacked her clit. There was satisfaction for both of us when she started vibrating. I love to make her cum.
I looked around, and looked out through the trees on both sides of us. Wasn’t too bad. A couple people skiing past, but further out on the run, not so close to the trees. We could get away with it. I rose onto my knees and shoved my pants down. I wasn’t truly hard, yet, being bent down while servicing Mia, and I gave myself some strokes to get going. The cold air was a factor, too, but my cock got hot and hard soon enough.
Mia knew what I was up to. “That’s it, Rory. Give it to me.”
I slid my cock head along her cunt, and was about to plunge in when Costa stopped by, followed by Silke. “You guys… okay?” he asked, then saw our bare asses. “Oh.”
“We saw Rory head into the trees and stop not so well,” Silke admitted. “We thought you might have been hurt, but… We will leave you be.” Then they, too, headed back downhill.
“Who’s next?” Mia laughed. She shifted and started putting herself back together, but I stopped her.
“No, I need to get in there,” I said with my teeth clenched, and I stabbed forward. I held myself inside her for a moment, feeling the difference in temperature, the cold air to her hot pussy feeling like jumping into a hot tub in winter. I slammed into her a couple more times, but “traffic” was picking up on our run. I pulled out and put my cock back in my pants.
Mia pulled her snow pants back up. “I’ll take care of you soon. Somewhere more private.”
I helped Mia up. “Like in some thicker trees?” I joked, pulling my pants up.
“If we can,” she agreed.
We made sure our clothes were tucked and coats were snapped against the cold. “You remember our picnic fantasy?” I asked.
“From our Mystery Date? Sure. Out in the middle of Veterans Park?” That gleam was still in her eye.
“I would love to do that here,” I said, pointing at the run, at the snow. “Like at night, with only the glow of the moon and the reflection of all the snow, in the middle of an open snowfield, on a blanket or a long coat. We’re naked and fucking and can’t hide.” “I would love that,” she agreed. Her words were kind of caught in her throat, so I knew she could picture it. “I so want to make love under the stars.”
We came out of the trees just in time for Johnny and then Lyla to slow down and stop. “Hey, didn’t see you in there!” Johnny said. Well, at least someone didn’t see us trying to fuck…
Our day continued, we went to lunch at this one place, went inside to sit and get warm a couple times at this other place, and headed back out. We were smart and didn’t overdo lunch; we needed calories, but didn’t want to get sick on the slopes. I joined Conor and Costa on the snowboard terrain park. We started with our skis, but went to the shop and got snowboards, which was easier to do the tricks with. I was a pretty good skateboarder, so got to apply that. I can’t believe we’d never tried this stuff before — other than standing on my sled back home and wiping out going down Sled Hill. Costa wiped out pretty badly on this one pipe, but no broken bones, thank goodness. And Conor…? I swear his head is made of concrete.
Around three o’clock, the sun was already hanging low, and Johnny and I were schussing down this easy, straight run called Moon Beam — all the runs had Devil or Moon names — and slid to a stop near Ms. Tattersall, who was waving a school pennant trying to get our attention.
“What’s up, Ms. T?” Johnny asked.
“Johnny?”
Johnny removed his goggles to assure her he was Johnny, and gave her that winning smile and blue eyes.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ve been…”
Johnny put up a hand and took out his AirPods. I did the same. Ms. T snickered.
“I’ve been trying to get someone to come in and help me with check-in and distribute the bags and keys,” she said. “Would you be willing to give me a hand?”
“Of course we will,” Johnny said, volunteering me.
Ms. T exhaled and visibly relaxed. “Thank you. You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to get someone’s attention. Mr. Dambraugh is somewhere doing Black Diamond runs with the Seniors… and Silke. My god, that girl…!”
“No worries, Ms. T,” Johnny assured her again. “Let us put the skis up and we’ll get it done.”
Ms. T had already done all the front desk stuff, but needed us to help unload the bags from the vans onto luggage carts.
“Why do we have to do this?” I asked Johnny as we trundled the carts to the parking lot. “Why can’t they all just get their bags when we’re done skiing for the afternoon?”
“Don’t know, but the lady has this burned into her mind and needs to get it done,” Johnny assumed. “Besides, a few brownie points for my Health grade couldn’t hurt. And especially if we get caught doing the room switch tonight.”
We unloaded the vans and brought the baggage up to the 2nd floor of the lodge. For the next half-hour, Ms. T opened doors and told us which nametags to find, and we tossed bags onto beds. We had, I think, eight rooms between us — six for the students, and Ms. T and Mr. D had their own private rooms.
And this is where Ms. T decided on how she was going to thank us for our help, only Johnny decided to be a trooper and took the baggage carts back downstairs, thinking we were all done, then headed back out to find Lyla. And I got that blowjob.
I took the towrope up to the top of the easy Moon Light run and found Johnny and Lyla. “You guys will never believe what just happened to me. And what you missed out on,” I told Johnny. I was met with expectant faces. “Ms. T gave me a blowjob for helping her.”
“No fuckin’ way,” Johnny said, not unbelieving, because why would I lie about that.
“She was waiting for you to come back from the elevator, but I guess you took off.”
Johnny rested on his poles in thought.
“Hey,” Lyla shook him, “I can tell you’re thinking about how you can still get in on that.”
Johnny shrugged. “Yeah… That’s not a thing that happens to you every day. But I don’t need that when I’ve got you.”
“Smart answer,” she patted his head.
“Do I tell Mia?” I asked. “Or just hide it like it never happened ‘cause she’ll get mad?”
“Tell her,” they both said at the same time.
“She might surprise you with her reaction,” Lyla said, “and you don’t want the fire that would rain down if she found out any other way.”
I nodded. I could see Mia coming up on the tow rope, right then. Johnny was still deep in thought.
“I wonder if I can use that to guarantee our grades in Health?” he asked Lyla. She seemed to consider that.
Mia arrived up top. “I hear you’ve got our keys?” she asked me. “Let’s head in and change for supper and make the room switch. It’s getting dark, and I’m beat.”
“Okay, this’ll be our last run today,” Johnny said, and he and Lyla skied off.
I kissed Mia and said, “Honey, you’ll never guess what happened to me, today…”
We sat in the… I don’t know, I’ll call it the fireplace lounge. I expected to see some poor guy with a broken leg by the fire, drinking some brandy or something, and some girl fawning all over him, but it wasn’t like that. It was just a couple old people, and then some more old people came in, but not like grandpas, kind of like my parents’ age. When our school group came in, they gave us the dirtiest looks, like, ‘Here come those young whipper-snappers, making noise, and playing their rock and roll music!”
We didn’t bother them or crowd them by the fireplace, though we did fill the place up — there were twenty of us, after all. We found the comfy, overstuffed chairs and were going to find something to drink — whatever we could get away with — when a group of our Seniors found a stack of board games in the shelves in the lodge’s ‘library.’ They had the game Life and took one of the larger tables there and started their game. They didn’t invite us.
Mia and I looked at the remainder of the games. They were all old editions, not a single brand new one among them. Probably donations from the desk clerks’ basements. There was Monopoly, of course — pass! And two editions of Scrabble, and Sorry, Risk, Stratego, and Battleship. The classics. Oh, and there was a standing chess game on a special table where the chessboard was built into the wood to help the place look classy.
Then we saw Clue and had a good laugh, remembering how we played that before. I looked at the box image and, yes, Miss Scarlett was still hot; different edition than Johnny’s or Lyla’s, but Scarlett was still hot. Thinking of who was with us, though, I briefly wondered if we could play a game of our ‘sexy’ Clue, using the hotel rooms as each of the Boddy Mansion rooms, but we only had, like, six hotel rooms and… and it just wasn’t going to work. It would be nice to see a couple of those Senior girls naked, but I had my Mia.
There was another stack of games. Kid games. Some of those I hadn’t seen since my 1st Grade classroom toy section. I called over Conor, and Johnny and Lyla and the others took notice.
“Hey! Look at these! Cootie! Remember that one? And Don’t Break the Ice! Don’t Spill the Beans! Ants in the Pants! I used to love these!” Conor almost screamed, and pulled all of them off the wall. The rest of us Sophomores gathered around another table and chose games.
Mr. Dambraugh and Ms. Tattersall came down to supervise us while we were in the lodge, but as we were occupied and not causing too much trouble, they gravitated to the bar and had a drink. Ms. Tattersall didn’t exactly make eye contact with me.
Mia and Lyla set up Don’t Spill the Beans. “Are there any sexy rules?” Lyla asked, balancing the bean pot and trying not to spill them.
“Don’t know if we can get away with anything here,” Mia replied. Kind of unusual for her — I thought she’d try to make a sexy version happen. But she was right.
Problem with those games is they can get boring real fast. I mean, when I was six, they must have been a challenge, but once you play them one time now, you’re kind of done. Except for Don’t Break the Ice — Johnny and I played best of three.
“What should we play for?” I asked him. “A wager we can pay off in the room, maybe?”
“What? Loser gets fucked in the ass?” Johnny laughed. But he said it quietly, so maybe he was serious. Win or lose, it was good for me, so long as it was with Johnny.
“Or what about a dare?” I said to the ice with a quiet smile on my face. My memory flashed back to a dare game we played where Conor ran outside naked, clapping his hands, spinning around, shouting, “I do believe in faeries!” three times! I laughed to myself but Johnny took that as an evil omen.
Johnny started tapping on an ice block. Briefly, if you don’t know the game, a little plastic man is sitting in the center of thirty-six white cubes, which are held in place a few inches in the air by a blue frame. You tap at each ice block, one at a time, but if it all collapses and the little man falls to his death, you lose.
“What do you mean? Like go snow tubing naked?” Johnny asked.
“Like…” I started, trying to think of one. I saw Ms. T at the bar. “You have to put on a song and ask Ms. T to dance. Dip her and go in for a kiss?”
“Oh, you’d like that. You get the blowjob but all eyes would be on me,” he groaned.
“Take her back to 211 and get your own blowjob,” I said. I tried to be strategic in tapping an ice cube that would make Johnny lose.
Johnny breathed a sigh, like he was troubled by the suggestion. “Are you still mad?” he asked me. “About Mia?”
“No,” I said, honestly. He was still worried about the trouble he caused between me and Mia and him, but we’d worked that out. “That’s over.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Johnny said, tapping carefully. “I want us to be able to make that room swap tonight. Me and Lyla haven’t had a chance to get privacy this week, so tonight will be our first time since Clue Day.”
I put my hand on Johnny’s arm and gave it a good shake, a bro shake, a ‘good man.’ “Things are finally all right with the world, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. Now that I’ve got Lyla, I don’t want to let her go.” Johnny had that smile. His whole demeanor (vocab word!) changed since Sunday when they got together, finally. “Have we figured out how to get rid of Jughead, yet?” he asked me.
That was the whole idea behind this overnight trip: to get rid of Costa and Conor in a room swap, and spend the entire night with our girls. The idea was based on Costa and Conor going to the girls’ room next door, and Mia and Lyla coming to ours. Costa and Silke were good with it, but their room got assigned a girl we didn’t really know as their fourth, so things were still iffy. Silke knows her from the play she was in — a girl named June — but we can’t force Conor on her.
Conor’s still a part of the group, but he’s been an ass, lately; leering at Lyla, making remarks, hanging on Silke. Johnny’s gonna hit him again if he starts anything with Lyla, and I’m gonna let him. And I don’t know if Costa knows about Conor fucking Silke like four times since that first day — he might want to punch him, too. We’d invited our friends Ava and Lucas to come on this trip, but Lucas was like, ‘If Conor’s going, we’re out,’ and Ava agreed with that.
But now Conor was playing a game of Cootie with Akiko, making her laugh, which turned out to be his chick magnetism. If they get together, that might be a good thing to get her off of Johnny completely. I don’t know if he’s doing it to tease Johnny, or if he actually likes her. Aki is cute, and is definitely available after she and Johnny broke up, so maybe. Or maybe it’s just for a conquest. Don’t know. Costa and Silke were playing Cootie with them, so everything seemed friendly.
I won the two-out-of-three on the Ice game, Johnny making the little man fall and scream pretty early in the third round. We did the scream out loud — you gotta liven these up! Maybe the ice wasn’t packed as tight as it could have been. I’d like to think Johnny tapped the wrong blocks on purpose.
“Another best-of-three for a position to be named later?” Johnny asked — quietly, again.
“How about you have to kiss me in front of the girls?” I challenged him.
Johnny took a moment. “Maybe,” he said to the ice, but we packed up the game and handed it off to Kiki. The ice falling is kind of noisy. Every time the little man fell and we screamed, we got looks from everyone.
Only fifteen minutes had passed since we broke out the games. Johnny went to find something new, but he came back with something old. “Battling Tops! Fuckin’… My grandpa had this! Then my uncle took it when… This is a fucking awesome game!”
I had never seen it, before. There was a tabletop round blue arena. Johnny taught me how to wind up these tops with a ripcord and white plastic ‘puller.’ You set your top thingies in one of four battle station gates, and then pulled the ripcords at “Go!” These things spun like the devil! Our tops had speed! And they spun around the arena, and then toward the center and hit each other. They were battling! They backed off, and came back and tapped each other again! They kept smacking until his hit mine, and mine lost speed, and his hit me again, and mine spun out. It skidded all over the arena and hit his, causing his to wobble and spin out, but I had lost. But it was fuckin’ cool!
Mia and Lyla immediately forgot their game and wanted to play ours. There were four battle gates and six tops, so we taught them how to wind the things up. Mia tried hers to test it, and her ripcord was too loose; her top just fell and the cord didn’t come off. Lyla’s was good.
The next time, we all went into battle. The tops all had names, so Johnny had Super Sam, Mia had Dizzy Dan, and Lyla played Twirling Tim. There was a Hurricane Hank and a Smarty Smitty, too. I’d done Smarty Smitty the first time, but he lost, so I chose Tricky Nicky.
“One, two, three, go!” Johnny called, we all pulled our ripcord puller things, and the four tops went into battle! Now, we had an audience. Conor’s table came to watch, even the Seniors paused their game of Life to watch. You could only see the tops’ colors while they spun, so people were cheering “Come on, blue!” or “Oh, no, red!”
“Get him, Super Sam!” Johnny cheered his top. That was a good top. Either that or there’s a secret to the way Johnny wound his ripcord. However, after some good smacks in the center, Lyla’s Twirling Tim wound up the victor, this time. She bounced up and down, all happy, and she kissed Johnny. It was good to see.
The next battle, I tried Hurricane Hank, and I pulled so hard on my ripcord thing that Hank popped into the arena and jumped right out onto the table — and he kept spinning!
“You’re out,” Mia decided.
“No, look! Hank is still spinning!” I tried.
“No. Doesn’t count,” Johnny said. “If you throw a wrestler out of the ring, and he just stands there punching seats, he’s not gonna win.”
So, I was out. Johnny’s Super Sam won. “This is great. Should we steal it when we leave?” I asked.
“No. Don’t do that. We can find one,” Lyla said.
“Ebay, maybe,” Johnny grumbled, showing Mr. Dambraugh how to wind the tops. “They don’t make this, anymore.”
Lyla leaned into Mia, and I heard her say, “Christmas present!” A good idea.
We played two more battles, then gave over the game and table to a couple of the Seniors and Juniors who weren’t playing Life, and to Mr. Dambraugh and Ms. Tattersall. Mr. Dambraugh won the first battle and the Seniors cheered him, “Damn brah!” Us Sophomores took a walk out into the night.
It was a pretty clear night, and it was cold, but that meant we could actually see stars up here in Wisconsin. That, in itself, was worth staying over for. I don’t know where we were walking to, just… out there, into the darkness. There was a good moon, so it wasn’t eternal blackness, but the ski hill lights were off, except for the tubing hill. That was still going on.
Conor was putting himself in-between Johnny and Lyla, as if he didn’t have enough attention from Kiki and Silke. “We should go tubing!” he pestered Lyla.
I called him back to me. “What are you doing? Leave Lyla alone.”
“What? Maybe I want to get back together,” he shrugged.
“She’s not yours, anymore,” I told him. I told him like a friend, you know? He was so clueless.
Out on the open snow, Lyla started spinning, her arms wide. “Woooo! I’m Twirling Tim!” She grabbed Johnny’s hands and made him start spinning, too. “Come on, Super Sam! Spin with me!”
And Johnny did. It was actually kind of nice to see him play, do something he might normally consider foolish. And it looked fun — I couldn’t help but join in. I ran at them and called, “Look out, I’m Hurricane Hank!” and my wide-stretched arms hit Johnny’s.
Conor and Costa immediately joined the battle. “Here comes Tricky Nicky!” Costa shouted.
“I’m Conor!” Conor shouted as he spun in. He just didn’t get it.
All five of us just spun on the snow, arms out, bashing into each other, wobbling, zooming out and careening back in! We were the Battling Tops! Lyla pulled off to the side right away for safety once all us boys were involved. Of course I couldn’t see us from outside, but from what I imagine as the girls’ point of view, we must’ve looked stupid, but it was fun! I mean, I got hit in the face a couple of times, but it was fun!
Later, Mia told me Kiki was just staring at us, and grumbled, “Boys…!” A few of the Seniors came outside, too, heading for the tubing, and that’s when Kari showed up.
We battled over near the frozen pond when we tired out and collapsed. Johnny was still standing. Out of breath, but still standing, hands on his knees, smiling at Lyla. He went down onto the pond and took a good slide. He was walking/sliding back with his hands out, pointing toward Lyla, I could tell, like he wanted her to come skating with him.
And that’s when it happened. Kari Tanaka, out of nowhere, picked up some big stone or lawn gnome or something and threw it at Johnny. “Don’t break the ice!” she called, and laughed. She didn’t hit him, but it fell just in front of him and broke through. So, yeah, she was laughing when Johnny disappeared into the freezing cold water under the ice.
All I saw was Johnny, then a pair of raised arms, then nothing. All I heard was this crunch! then nothing.
Copyright 2025 – Tommy Linarcos
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