It got better, and even better, and she felt his hot breath on her face and the heavy pressure of his strong young body upon her.
Then passion reached its peak. Then the tide of pleasure reached its crest and broke, and she held him in her arms and wept quietly into the night.
She was almost home. She thought about that night, about the way neither of them could speak when they had finished, about the way they sat together in the car and smoked two more cigarettes apiece before he drove her home. They did not stop for a soda at the Pink Pig as they usually did. And when he kissed her goodnight at her door there was something awkward about his kiss.
She had been unable to fall asleep for hours. She tossed and turned in her bed, worrying and frightened that she had done something wrong. Then she decided that everything would be all right. She would keep going out with Danny, and It would not happen again, and finally some day they would get married and live together and do It all the time. To do It when they were married would be all right. She did not know why this was, but that was the way things were supposed to be.
So they would be married, and everything would be all right.
But things were not working out that way. She had not seen him or heard from him on Sunday, and Monday in school he had passed her without speaking as if there were something wrong with her. She failed to understand and wanted to catch his arm and ask him what was the matter, but she realized dimly that it was his place to speak, and that she should wait for him to say something.
He said nothing.
He seemed to avoid her purposefully. There was nothing she could put her finger on but somehow he never spoke to her, never again met her in the hallway, and never called her on the phone.
Now it was Thursday afternoon. She did not even know if they were supposed to be going out Saturday night, and she did not see how she could ask him. She felt that she must have done something terribly wrong but could not figure out what her apparent error had been. She had only let him do what he wanted to do. Why should he be mad at her for that?
She reached her house. The lawn was still smooth and green, the leaves raked into a neat pile in the gutter. Soon the grass would turn brown and die for the winter, but for the time being it was fresh and green and beautiful. She walked up the flagstone path to the front door, opened it and went inside.
She studied until it was time for dinner. She did her advanced algebra homework, started the required reading for French III. When her mother called her for dinner, she went downstairs to the dining room for the evening meal. Her father talked about politics, and her brother talked about the football team, and her mother talked about a hand of bridge that had been badly misplayed by her partner that afternoon. April listened without hearing and ate in silence without tasting her food. She finished a piece of pie and a glass of milk for dessert and left the table.
At seven-thirty the phone rang.
Link answered. April barely heard the phone, concentrating at the time upon the remainder of the French, and she was surprised when her brother called her name.
“For you, April”
She left her room and walked to the phone. “It’s a boy,” Link added.
Was it Danny?
She took the receiver and held it to her ear. She said hello and waited.
“April?”
“This is April.”
“Yeah. Well, this is Bill Piersall.”
He was a tall, thin boy with a blond crew-cut. She did not know him too well.
“I was wondering if we could take in a show Saturday night. You and me.”
That was a surprise. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d like to go but I’m going steady. With Dan Duncan.”
There was a pause.
“That’s funny,” Bill Piersall said.
“It is?”
“Yeah.”
She waited.
“Danny told me to call you,” the voice went on. “He said he isn’t goin’ steady with you any more. Said I ought to take you out.”
Her mouth dropped open.
The voice went on, and now she could hear the smile in it. “He said I’d have a good time with you, April. Said you’re pretty hot stuff. What do you say?”
2
He said I’d have a good time with you, April. Said you’re pretty hot stuff. What about it?
She was numb from head to foot. She moved in slow motion, replacing the receiver on the hook, turning from the phone and walking to the staircase. She went upstairs to her room and closed the door.
What do you say?
Well, what do you say? What do you think or feel? What do you do next?
She threw herself onto the bed and buried her face in the pillow. At first she thought she was going to cry, and she was surprised when no tears came. Finally she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She breathed deeply, trying to relax, trying to think straight.
Obviously, good old Danny had had a talk with good old Bill. And just as obviously, she had been the subject of their conversation. That much was easy to understand. The thing she was unable to figure out was why Danny would do a thing like that. It made no sense — just no sense at all.
For a short time she had been convinced that Danny loved her, that he was going to marry her. This somehow seemed not too likely any more. But why? Did he hate her because she had done what he had wanted her to do? Had he stopped respecting her when she had let him do It to her?
She nodded thoughtfully. That made some sense. That was what was in the books sometimes, and since the books were her only previous experience in this particular area, she had no choice but to accept what they told her. Obviously, Danny felt that she was no longer a nice girl, and therefore wanted nothing more to do with her. From there it followed that he would spread the word to his buddies so they could share his good luck.
Her reputation was made. She was a girl who put out, and as such she would be much in demand. It seemed only logical to assume that Danny would tell his best friends first. Since Bill Piersall was not a good friend of Danny’s there were probably a lot of guys who had heard the word before him. So the word was out about April North. Everybody knew about her.
Ya hear about April North? Yeah, Danny Duncan gave it to her in the back seat. He says she’s the hottest thing since canned heat. Lays like a rug. I figure I’ll give her a try one of these days. She’s not bad to look at. Hell, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed or anything. I’m not one to turn down a sure piece...
From that point the course of events was clear. No boy would take her out because he thought he might like her company. What dates she had would be dates arranged with the object of getting her into an automobile’s back seat in the shortest possible time. Even if she never let anybody else go All The Way with her, she would still be considered a not-nice girl, a girl who put out. And she would be treated accordingly.
Her mind swam. Her previous plans for the future, while pleasantly vague, had taken a certain form. She would graduate in June. In September she would enter Ohio State University as a freshman. Admission to OSU was automatic for any Ohio high school graduate. She would be admitted, she would do well, and she would not bust out during her freshman year as half the entering students did each year.
At college she would major in English. She would join a sorority, do a lot of dating, eventually get pinned and engaged and married to someone more or less like Dan Duncan. She would settle down, either in Antrim or in a town quite like it, be a housewife and raise children.