“That’s a very interesting comment, April,” she said. “Did you come across the idea in your reading?”
“No, Miss Banner. It just came to me.”
“You thought of it yourself?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s very fine, April.”
Monday morning meant a study hall. The study hall was another classroom, five desks in a row, six rows of desks, with a spectacled teacher at the large desk in the front. In theory, at least, the study hall was a place for studying. This rarely happened. The study hall was a gossip arena, a place to make dates and spread news.
April was uncomfortable. She saw the way eyes followed her as she walked through the door and up an aisle to her desk. She heard buzzing, and she knew at once that they were buzzing about her. She wondered what they were saying. Telling each other she wasn’t a virgin, she guessed. Telling that she was an easy make, and telling that she was dumb enough to brush off a big man like Bill Piersall, and wondering whom she was laying now.
Well, to hell with them. She did not care what they thought or what they said in whispers. They were children — she was a woman. Their words and thoughts did not concern her.
That was Monday morning. There were two more classes, a math ordeal and a Spanish class, but they were uninterestingly routine.
Monday morning gave way to Monday noon. April walked to her locker, opened it, took out her paper bag of lunch. She carried it up several flights of stairs to the school cafeteria on the top floor, went through the line to get a cup of black coffee and carried everything to a table near the window.
Before, she used to eat lunch with a group of girls. Her friends, she thought bitterly. She had never been close to any single one of them in particular. But they were her friends, the girls she talked to, the girls who talked to her.
They were not talking to her now.
Now she was a pariah, a non-virgin, a girl who had done IT and who seemed to like it. She was, in short, a girl with a reputation, and at Antrim High a reputation was something on the order of a venereal disease. A good girl — one without a reputation — could not chance a conversation with a bad girl — as though the reputation might be contagious, and could rub off on the good girl and make a bad girl out of her.
So April ate alone.
She did not mind. Actually, she thought, she was pleased to get away from that clutch of gabbing poultry. They were children, they were foolish and shallow and they belonged in a tiny and stupid town like Antrim. She had nothing to say to them and they had nothing to say to her, and she was glad to avoid them.
And the view from the window was preferable to the noise that she would be subjected to at the girls’ table. This was much better, she told herself. She gnawed at a peanut-butter sandwich, sipped her coffee and relaxed.
But not all the girls ignored her. While she was finishing her coffee, she saw a diminutive blonde cross the cafeteria floor toward her table. The girl was Judy Liverpool and all at once April remembered how she had used Judy as an excuse that time when Craig had first picked her up. She wondered if her mother mentioned something to Mrs. Liverpool. That could mess things up, she thought. That could ruin everything, after she had managed to tie all the loose ends together so prettily.
“Hi, April.” Judy was smiling shyly.
“Hi,” April said. “Have a seat.”
The little blonde hesitated only a moment. Then she sat down, looked at April, looked away, and finally looked at April again, her lips trembling.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Judy said.
“Go ahead.”
“I — people have been saying things, April.”
“And you want to know if they’re true?”
“No, that’s not it at all.”
April smiled. Judy was nervous and April was sorry she had snapped at her. Judy had always been a sweet kid, not at all bitchy as the other girls were inclined to be. Judy was serious and dreamy.
“What’s the matter Judy?”
“I... oh, I don’t know.”
“You can tell me.”
Judy’s eyes were very wide now. “I want to know what it’s like,” she said. “That’s all.”
“What it’s like?” April asked.
The words came in a rush. “Oh, God, April. They all say terrible things about you, make jokes and call you names and everything, but I think they’re just jealous. You know so much now. You... you did it, you see, and we haven’t, and I don’t know about them, I mean I can only guess, but I know about me. And I want to know what it’s like, April. To be a woman, to have a boy do it to you, to feel it, to—”
She covered Judy’s small hand with her own. “Take it easy,” she said soothingly. “Relax.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little. The first time.”
“Does it — feel good?”
“There’s nothing like it.”
“Really good?”
“Perfect.”
“Do you — how many times do you do it?”
“That depends.”
“Sure. I mean — April?”
“Yes?”
“Doesn’t it make you feel bad?”
“It makes me feel wonderful.”
“Don’t you think it’s wrong?”
“No.” She remembered what Craig had told her. “There’s only one sin,” she told Judy. “Self-denial.”
Judy thought, nodded. “But your reputation,” she said at once. “Don’t you worry about it, April?”
“No.”
“Don’t you care what people think? What they say about you? How they look at you when you’re walking down the street?”
“I don’t care, Judy.”
“Really?”
“Really. I just care about what I think is right.”
As she watched Judy walk back to her table, April finished her coffee, set the cup down and smiled broadly. They talked about her, of course. They called her names and snickered behind her back.
But they also envied her.
She knew something they did not know, something they could not know until they had done what she had done. And they envied her this knowledge, envied her so deeply that one of them had needed to ask her what it was all about.
Let them talk about her, then. Because she was way ahead of them.
She was glad when school was over for the day. She went to her locker, put on her jacket, gathered up the books she would need that night. She tucked the books under one arm and walked out. It was a good day-fresh air, a crisp breeze, a clear sky. She filled her lungs with the smell of burning leaves, fresh autumn leaves raked and burned at the curbs, the particular smell of the season.
Bill Piersall was waiting for her.
“You don’t seem to understand,” she told him before he could utter a word. “I don’t like you, I don’t want to talk to you and you’re just making things difficult for me. Why don’t you get out of my life?”
“I want to give you a ride, April.”
“I don’t want one.”
He managed to smile. It was hard for him and this pleased her. Evidently he was really pretty crushed — probably he had never had a girl give him the air quite so coolly before and it was a new experience for him. Well, fine. Let him crawl around on his hands and knees. She would push his face in the dirt and laugh like a hyena.
“You’re going home now,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
“Well, why walk?”
“It’s good exercise.”
“Listen,” he said. “I won’t even talk to you if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s a fine idea.”
“I mean, in the car. I won’t talk to you, I won’t touch you, I won’t do anything but drive you straight home. Don’t you get it, April? I just want to be friends. I want to take you home — that’s all. I swear it.”