(AN: Hi-ya! College has been treating me just peachy but, as it is Labor Day weekend and my parents didn't let me come home, I had plenty of time to update this fic… and my other two fics as well! Thanks again for all the reviews, and to Band Geek—yeah, Cougar was pretty mean in this story, but I had to do that, you know, to fit into the story better. And I wanted him to make an appearance too… so there we go! And now, on with the chapter.)
O.o.O
"All it took me was five years of playing football, and I graduated from college!" said Cosmo, giving the mother and son sitting next to him a smile. "Well, five years of college, and a bunch of studies of things that I never really understood… but that's what those tutors were for!"
The woman nodded.
"A lot of people thought I wouldn't graduate at all, but I showed them!" laughed Cosmo. "And Mama was so proud of me!"
O.o.O
"I'm so proud of you, Cosmo!"
Cosma instinctively straightened Cosmo's graduation gown as she gave him a hug. "You showed all those idiots that you could make it in college!"
"Yeah, and guess what I leaned in college, Mama?" said Cosmo excitedly, like a five-year-old. He made his hand into a fist, stuck it up through his gown sleeves and in his armpit, and started "farting" out the tune of "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here".
"Uh, that's nice, dear…" said Cosma uncertainly. "Didn't you learn anything else though?"
"Well…" Cosmo considered this for a minute. "I learned something about… what was it… the English Civil War?"
"Oh, good!" said Cosma. "You're all set then!"
"I am?" asked Cosmo, shocked.
"Well, not yet."
A new voice said those words. Cosmo and Cosma spun around and saw a man in an army uniform holding pamphlets. "You still need worldly experience to really make it out in the real world. Have you given any thought to your future?" The army man handed Cosmo one of the pamphlets and sauntered off to another victim.
"Thought?" asked Cosmo in confusion, looking at the pamphlet, which read "I WANT YOU FOR THE U. S. ARMY".
"Absolutely not!" hissed Cosma. "I forbid you to join the army, Cosmo!"
"Well, I don't really want to…" Cosmo's voice trailed off as he opened the pamphlet and began to read it. "Hey, Mama! Listen this! 'Join the army and you'll be manly and tough!' I wanna join the army! I wanna be manly and tough!"
"I said, I forbid it!" snapped Cosma. "And that's the end of that!"
"Mama, I'm twenty-three years old! I can make decisions for myself!" said Cosmo, his lip jutting out.
"Not if I have anything to say about it!" said Cosma, her eyes narrowing fiercely. "You're not joining the army, and that's final!"
O.o.O
"Hi, I'm Cosmo!"
"NO ONE GIVES A DAMN WHO YOU ARE, GET YOUR ASS ON THE BUS, YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW!"
"Uh… Okay!" Cosmo leapt up the rest of the stairs on the bus and looked around for a seat, the heavy rain from outside pounding in his ears and making it even harder to think than it usually was for him.
He spotted a place to sit and moved towards it.
The man sitting there moved over defensively. "This seat's taken."
Cosmo looked again at another seat. The other occupant placed his bag on the seat. "Taken."
"Now, at first I thought I was making a mistake… and besides, it was REALLY reminding me of the first day of school!" remembered Cosmo. "And I hadn't even gotten to basic training yet!"
Cosmo tried again and looked at a seat with only one occupant—a man with buck teeth and a silly pink hat. Seeing Cosmo looking at his seat, the buck toothed person moved his suitcase to his lap. "Sit down if you want to," he said in a friendly tone.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Cosmo sat down next to him.
"Being in the army something completely different from anything I'd ever done before!" admitted Cosmo. "I didn't know what kind of people I'd meet, or what kind of questions they'd ask me, or how much of my knowledge of the English Civil War I'd be needing. But hey, I found out soon enough!"
"Hey, have you ever been on a shrimping boat?" said the buck-toothed guy.
Cosmo blinked. "Uh, no… have you?"
His companion also blinked. "Well… no. But I was going to start up my own shrimping business! But then I got drafted. But I'll start it up as soon as I get out of the army!"
"Why do you want to?" asked Cosmo. Although he knew that he wasn't as smart as most other people, he still couldn't see why anyone who'd never been in the shrimping business before would suddenly want to start.
The buck-toothed man's eyes turned into hearts. "Trixie Tang," he said in a dreamlike voice.
"Who's that?"
Buck-Teeth shook himself out of his trance. "Oh, she's only the most beautiful and perfect woman in the universe! But she wants nothing to do with me. However, her father's in the shrimping business—he got rich because of that! So I figure, all I gotta do is start up my own business and she'll be all over me!"
"Wow, I never thought you could attract women with shrimp!" cried Cosmo, trying to imagine himself wearing shrimp all over his body and wondering if Wanda would actually find that attractive. "I've gotta try that sometime!"
"I can help you there!" The buck-toothed man opened his suitcase and pulled out a lot of books on shrimp. "I've been researching shrimp, you see, and…" The man stopped. "But wait, you don't even know my name." He extended his hand; Cosmo shook it. "My given name is Timothy Thomas Turner, but everyone calls me Timmy. Can you believe that? It's like a little kid name!"
"My name's Cosmo Uhsmith… People call me Cosmo Uhsmith," said Cosmo with a shrug.
"Well, the army was a lot different than what either Timmy or me thought!" said Cosmo. "Our knowledge of seafood and English wars didn't seem to help us much… but boot camp wasn't that hard, actually…"
"UHSMITH!"
The big, muscular drill sergeant shouted straight in Cosmo's face, and it was all Cosmo could do to stand up straight. The drill sergeant continued shouting. "I, Jorgen von Strangle, toughest drill sergeant in the universe, have seen my share of puny recruits, but you are by far the puniest, stupidest one that has ever stepped foot in the prestigious boot camp! WHAT IS YOUR SOLE PURPOSE IN THIS ARMY?"
"Uh… to eat cheese! No, wait, to… to march around and polish my boots! Wait, that's not it…" Cosmo began sweating profusely. Jorgen von Strangle, looking at his little note card that said, "To serve my country well and obey the orders of my commanding officer," snorted, knowing that the puny, idiotic Uhsmith would never even get close.
Finally, Cosmo broke down and started to sob. "To do whatever you tell me, drill sergeant!"
"GOD DAMMIT!"
Cosmo winced again, knowing he said something wrong.
"That's the BEST answer I've EVER heard! I thought you were a moron, but you've obviously got SOMETHING working up there! NOW STAND BACK AT ATTENTION, PUNY RECRUIT!"
"Yes, drill sergeant!"
"So the army wasn't as bad as it seemed to be at first, really. All you had to do was make your bed real nice, keep your boots nice and shiny, clean up any pudding that you dropped on the floor, and always answer every question with, 'Yes, drill sergeant!'"
O.o.O
The army consisted of other things too, like learning how to clean and load guns. Timmy, as usual, was chatting informally with Cosmo about the only thing that seemed to be on his mind—shrimping, and how he would win Trixie's heart because of it.
"The shrimping community down south is what holds the economy together, don't you know? It's also a very competitive business. I figure, all I gotta do is make a good name for myself while not blowing Trixie's old man out of the water, and I'll have it—"
"DONE, DRILL SERGEANT!" Cosmo suddenly hollered at the top of his lungs.
"UUUUHSMITH!" Jorgen's voice seemed to be very drawn-out. In an instant, he was looming over Cosmo.
"Why did you finish that so quickly?"
"…you told me to, drill sergeant!"
"Jesus Christ! For a moron, you're a genius!"
"Huh?"
"Disassemble your weapon and assemble it again!"
Cosmo immediately obeyed.
"Well, anyway, like I was saying," continued Timmy, picking right back up where he started, "I don't think it'll be hard for me. You see, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbeque it, sauté it, boil it…"
O.o.O
Cosmo and Timmy were polishing their boots.
"…shrimp salad, shrimp pasta, shrimp gumbo, shrimp flambé…"
O.o.O
Now the two friends were cleaning the bathroom floor with toothbrushes.
"…shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp on a stick, shrimp sandwich…"
Timmy suddenly stopped. Cosmo stopped too and looked up at him.
"That's about it," said Timmy dryly. Cosmo nodded, and the two continued their task.
O.o.O
"Nighttime in the army is a lonely time," remembered Cosmo simply. "I mean, during the rest of the day, we were always too busy to be thinking about home and stuff. But at nighttime, I always thought of Wanda, and Timmy always thought of Trixie, and even the other guys looked at magazines with girls in them."
"Hey, Uhsmith!" said someone, throwing a magazine on Cosmo's lap. Cosmo shot him an annoyed look; he had been trying to sleep. Trying was the key word, however—at night, thoughts of Wanda would never stop running through his mind and keeping him awake into the wee hours of the morning.
"Check out the tits on her!" said the guy who threw the magazine, in a voice that sounded excited, for some reason.
Cosmo picked up the magazine and winced—it was a naked woman! He wasn't supposed to look at that! He quickly flipped to another page, hoping that he would see someone with a little more clothes on.
And he did, alright.
"Whoa, is that…" he whispered, although it was pointless to ask—of course it was Wanda! Wanda, wearing her college jacket and giving that strange, sad gaze of hers that both enchanted and haunted Cosmo.
"For some reason, Wanda got in trouble for those pictures—I don't know why, they were really pretty!—and she got kicked out of college! But it wasn't that bad though, because someone found those pictures and offered Wanda a job! So I went to go see her, and she was working in this really cool club!"
Cosmo may have considered it "cool", but most other people would consider it "seedy", and only Cosmo seemed oblivious to that. Although, even Cosmo could tell he was out of place—he was in his army uniform, and everyone else there seemed to be wearing whatever the first clothes they had found that day were… and some of it looked like it was found in a dumpster.
As he walked in, there was a woman wearing almost nothing who was just leaving the stage. Cosmo covered his eyes and grimaced to himself. Wanda wouldn't be running around with next to no clothing on… would she?
"Alright, thanks Amber!" said some announcer guy. "And now, please put your hands together for the lovely Bobbie Dylan!"
The curtain opened and Wanda was on stage—she wasn't wearing much, it was like she had just jumped up on stage wearing only a swimsuit, but at least it was something.
"Uh, Pete?" she said to the announcer guy. "I can't find my guitar… like I could play it anyway…"
Cosmo scratched his head. Why were they calling her Bobbie, why were they making her play a guitar, why were they making her go out on stage wearing nothing but a bikini… this was Wanda, right?
"That's alright, darlin', you can stay on anyway!" said one of the members of the audience loudly. A lot of other people laughed—not very nicely, either. Cosmo could feel his muscles tighten—they were laughing at her! And not in the laughing way if she just told a joke—no, this was mean laughter. This was the kind of laughter that he always faced. It was the mean kind.
"Yeah, sure," muttered Wanda, rolling her eyes.
One of the guys from the audience suddenly reached up and tried to grab Wanda's ankle.
She kicked him off. "You jerk!"
"You should expect it, if you came here," muttered Pete.
Now two more were clawing up towards Wanda—and Cosmo couldn't stand it anymore.
Driven by some sort of other power, Cosmo grabbed a table and hoisted it above his head—still skinny, but now, with football and the added bonus of boot camp under his belt, much stronger than anyone would give him credit for.
And then, he hurled it across the room, knocking all those jerks to the ground.
Cosmo couldn't keep back a loud laugh.
"Cosmo? What are you doing here… and why did you throw that table!" shrieked Wanda.
"Oh great," mumbled Cosmo under his breath. "I must have done something wrong again…"
O.o.O
"You can't keep doing this, Cosmo!"
Cosmo didn't say anything. He and Wanda had left the club and were now walking in the cold night air. Wanda shivered a bit from underneath her jacket.
Wanda turned and gave him an exasperated glance. "You can't keep trying to rescue me all the time!"
God, was is difficult to talk! It was like someone had sandpapered Cosmo's throat. He tried to say something, anything, but all he could do was think to himself, God, Wanda's changed so much… but… but she's still Wanda, and…
"I… I can't help it!" he finally managed to blurt out. "I love you!"
Wanda stared at him in a "You're joking, right?" kind of way. Cosmo was confused and dismayed by that expression. "Remember? I told you I did! When we were kids!"
"Yeah, when we were kids…" Wanda shook her head. "But you didn't know what love was. You still don't," she added coldly.
Cosmo froze. Was she right? Was that feeling, that feeling that overtook him every breathing moment of his life since he first met her something less than love? Wanda would know, of course; she knew more about everything there was to know about than Cosmo—well, everything except football and boot camp.
"Well, I feel something for you, Wanda," he finally whispered. "And if it isn't love, it sure feels like what I thought love was supposed to feel like."
Wanda barely heard him. Instead, she was looking down at the river underneath them.
Cosmo's coming in and, in a sense, pulling her out of there was a sign, it had to be. A part of her knew that she shouldn't have done this—she shouldn't have taken that indecent job… but hey, it was a way to get money, right? Especially since she was thrown out of college. But what did they care? Why should she care? If you've got it, flaunt it, right?
And yet, some small part of her knew that it was wrong… that she should be doing something else with her life instead of giving guys erections all the time.
But it was too late now. Without a college education, what else could she do?
"Do you remember when we were little and we used to pray for God to turn us into birds?" she whispered quietly.
"Yes," said Cosmo, shuddering at that memory—even though it hadn't been his uncle, sometimes that terrible voice still gave him nightmares.
"Do you think I could fly off this bridge?"
"Uh, no…" Suddenly Cosmo noticed how one of her feet was slowly slipping off the railing. Without thinking, he grabbed Wanda and pulled her off.
"No, definitely not!" he cried. "Don't do that! Even I know that—"
He stopped, unable to say anything else, as his mind swarmed with imagining what he would do if Wanda were to die.
"Yeah…" Wanda sighed. No; killing herself wouldn't make any difference, she decided. "I gotta get outta here…"
Conveniently, a car was just now crossing the bridge. Wanda walked out into the road, flagging it down.
"Wanda," asked Cosmo, "where are you—"
"I don't know, and I don't care, and you shouldn't care either," she said suddenly. The car stopped. "Can I have a ride?" she asked the driver.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't care."
"Get in."
Cosmo watched his beautiful angel open the passenger side door, and some part of him realized that he might never see her again, especially since…
"I wouldn't be able to go with you anyway," he blurted out. "They're sending me to Vietnam."
Wanda froze and stared at him.
"It's this whole other country," clarified Cosmo. "I hope they have cheese there…"
Wanda turned to the driver. "Could you wait just a minute?" She jumped off the step to the truck and went to Cosmo, putting her hands on his shoulders.
"Promise me that, if you're ever in any danger there, don't try to be brave. Just run away, okay?"
Cosmo nodded. "Okay."
"You promise?"
"Yes," said Cosmo. All Wanda had to do was ask him, and he was like her slave.
Wanda let go of him and started back for the truck.
"Wanda, I…" Cosmo's voice stopped. He knew what he wanted to say, but he knew that, for whatever reason, what he felt he felt and what he actually felt were two different things, according to Wanda, even though he had no idea was real love must actually feel like, if those powerful emotions that flooded him every time he even thought of Wanda weren't even love. "I'll write you every day!" he finally said.
It wasn't what he wanted to say, but it was close enough.
Wanda just looked at him, sadly, and then got into the truck… and drove off.
O.o.O
It wasn't love.
But if it wasn't love, what then was it? Why did he feel this way… it was so powerful, something that seemed to weigh his heard down and send it soaring at the same time—but it wasn't love! But then again, if there was an emotion greater than this, Cosmo couldn't help but think that it would be so powerful that it would kill whoever felt love…
Cosma sat down next to Cosmo. They were on a log outside of their house, overlooking a valley.
"I told you not to join the army…" Cosma's voice started off reprimanding, but suddenly she became choked up with tears. Cosmo felt sick to his stomach.
"Just… just don't get yourself killed!" she cried, hugging him tightly. Cosmo hugged his mother back, wondering…
"Mama… what's love?"
"Love?" Cosma's tears stopped flowing and she gave him a strange look. "Why do you ask?"
"Because… because I thought I was in love, but I guess it wasn't love… so I want to know what love really is—"
"Hold it." Cosma glared at him. "You were in love? With who?"
Cosmo fidgeted. "Well, I thought I was, but she told me I wasn't—"
"WHO?"
"Uh… Wanda," he finally said with hesitation.
"WANDA?" Cosma stiffened. "That little wench friend of yours? Well, whoever told you that you weren't in love with her is right! She's a bad influence, and—"
"I know my own emotions, Mama," whispered Cosmo suddenly. "And I know that I could never feel the way I do for Wanda for anyone else. I don't know much, but I do know that."
"You… I won't let Wanda or any other woman take you away from me!" Cosma suddenly cried, jumping off the log and storming back into the house.
And Cosmo, left all alone on the log, buried his face into his hands and sobbed.
O.o.O
(AN: Wow. This chapter was pure crap. I literally had to force every word out of me. Sigh. Let's hope the next chapter is better, huh? If you're still reading this, I shall see you whenever I might update next. Cheerio!)