If I stayed out of cars, she thought oddly, I might stay out of trouble. But if I stayed out of trouble I wouldn’t be April North, because April North seems to be nothing but a brainless blob who has one ever-loving hell of a knack for getting into trouble, not out.
Well, she was going to get out of trouble. She had made some mistakes, and Danny Duncan had been the first one, and Craig Jeffers had been an even worse one. For a while — a week, not much longer than that — she had thought herself in love with him. But any feeling she might have had for him was over. He had killed it.
Love? Not love, she knew. Sex, more than anything else. He had made her hear bells ring and rockets whistle, but the bells and the rockets were not signs of love. They were the fruits of sex. He was an expert, polished and accomplished, and he was able to lead her to heights of which she had never even dreamed.
But this hardly made them soulmates. Frank Evans had told her that sooner or later she would find out that Craig was a failure himself, just like everyone else at the party. And Frank Evans was right. Craig was dissipated and depraved, the same as Ken Rutherford who drank too much and the insatiably promiscuous Sue Maynor. Craig needed to try new kicks, new women, and he was incapable of love. He was rotten to the core. And she did not love him.
She rolled down the Pontiac’s window and filled her lungs with night air. Tonight, she thought, she was getting rid of him forever. She was going to return the Pontiac and she was going to explain that she did not want to see him again, that she knew him for what he was and that obviously he was not for her. He probably would not mind too much, as far as it went. She was just a toy as far as he was concerned, that he had had his fun with. Probably he would be almost as glad to get rid of her as she was to get rid of him.
And after that? Nothing too glamorous, she thought. She’d already messed herself up by trying to turn herself into a glamor gal, darling of the suave set. And it had not worked at all. Deep down inside she was little April North, the daughter of an Antrim druggist. A month ago she’d been a virgin. And, while she could hardly grow back her virginity, she could do the next best thing. She could start being April North again.
She would live at home, with parents and brother. She would go to school, study diligently, and get the best grades she could possibly get. And she would live out the remainder of her senior year at Antrim High in a sort of social cocoon, turning down dates, avoiding other girls, and keeping to herself. She did not want to trade sex with Craig and his friends for sex with boys like Dan Duncan and Bill Piersall and Jim Bregger — that was no solution. She wanted to renounce sex entirely and start being a good girl all over again.
The rest of the year would be tough to get through.
She had a reputation, of course but the reputation would atrophy in time. And she could ignore the knowing glances easily enough, much as she had been ignoring them all week in school. After while they would tire of making remarks and passes.
And once she had graduated, everything would be simpler. She would go away to school — either land a scholarship or convince her father to spend an outrageous sum for her education. A bad reputation would not follow her across state lines.
College would give her a fresh start. She would still have a family to come home to, and this would be much better than her original idea of running away to New York. She would have a chance to mature at her natural pace, a chance to meet the right kind of guy and marry him and move to the right kind of town and have kids and be a good person.
She sighed. Craig’s house was on her right, a few lights on downstairs. His Mercedes was parked in front. The other cars which had lain dormant there when she had left were gone. She pulled the Pontiac over to the side of the road, cut the engine, hauled on the emergency brake and got out of the car.
She rang Craig’s doorbell and he let her in.
“Well,” he said. “The little auto thief has returned.”
“I didn’t steal the car. I borrowed it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, my dear. Do I detect a note of hostility in your words?”
“You’re very perceptive.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Last night was just a little too much for me, Craig. Maybe I’m not as smooth and sophisticated as the girls you’re used to. I don’t care.”
He slapped his hand to his brow in mock horror. “April,” he said. “April, April April. Come in, girl. Seat yourself, relax. You’re all unnerved.”
“I’m mad.”
“Sit down, whatever you are. Would you like a drink?”
“No.”
“A cigarette?”
“No.”
“A session in bed?”’
She colored. “No,” she said firmly.
“Then what do you want, April? Other than to return Sue’s car. Frank Evans had to drive the poor lass home, and she wants her car back as soon as possible. Rather uncouth of you to take it, wouldn’t you say?”
“I had to get home.”
“You could have asked for a ride.”
“You were sleeping,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
“You were sleeping with a blonde. I didn’t even want to stay in the same room with the two of you.”
He laughed happily. “Wonderful! You’re jealous, little girl. A rather bourgeois sentiment, but not without its own sort of merit. Actually you don’t have to be jealous. The girl is unimportant enough. But she has the largest breasts I ever saw in my life. I simply had to find out what it was like to make love to a cow.”
She drew a breath. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“How was it?”
“Interesting,” he said.
“I’m glad you had an interesting time, Craig. And I’m not jealous. Not jealous of your blonde cow and not jealous of Sue Maynor.”
She was angry, now, angry at him for what he was and at herself for not seeing through him sooner, for being blind to all the rotten streaks in the man. He was depraved and rotten from top to bottom, and she was sick at herself for ever having anything whatsoever to do with him.
“I’m not jealous,” she went on. “I suppose I was, for a little while. But now I’m only revolted. I’m sick of you, Craig. You’ve got carloads of money and plenty of sophistication and you’re nothing but a bum underneath it all.”
“Really, April. A bum?”
“A bum. A horrible person — that’s all you ever have been and all you ever will be. And I’m through with you, Craig. I’m through with this whole little life you and your friends have. It’s not for me, not ever.”
He stood up, walked to the wall, flicked a switch. Mood music filtered through the room. More props, she thought. Like the car and the house and the oh-so-dashing mustache. If you took away his props he was nothing at all.
“What life is for you, April?”
“A normal life.”
“And what does that mean, pray tell?”
“A decent life,” she snapped. “A life at home with my parents. Oh, you would call it a dull life, but it’s the right way, Craig. I’ll finish school at Antrim and I’ll stay decent and I’ll go away to college. It may sound commonplace but it’s what I want.”
He sighed. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I thought you might feel something along these lines. And the thought of you going home to mama is more offensive than I can possibly tell you. So I’ve ruled out that course of action, girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shrugged. “It should be clear enough,” he said. “I mean exactly what I’ve just finished saying. You can’t go home to the bosom of your revolting family. They’ll throw you out on your ear.”
“Why should they?”
“Because you’re a slut,” he said dispassionately. “Mind you, I’m not making a value judgment. Those are not my values, not by any means. But, in the eyes of your fatheaded father and your moronic mother, you are a slut.”