For a small moment she considered slapping his face, denying that she and Danny had done anything at all and running out of the store.
She considered this course of action dispassionately and rejected it just as dispassionately, knowing very well that such a thing would not do the least bit of good. The rumor was past denial now, and had assumed the character of a fact, accepted as such by the bulk of the high school community. There was no point trying to nip such a story in the bud — not when it was already in full bloom.
So she did not say anything.
“Just so we understand each other,” he said. “So we know where we sit. I don’t want you to be mad at me or anything. That would be silly.”
The waitress, hollow-eyed and sad, returned with their orders. She set a pink frothy concoction in front of Bill and put a dish of vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce on the counter in front of April. She gave April a spoon and Bill a straw. Bill gave her a half dollar and she went away again.
April took a bite of her sundae. It was cold and sweet and all a sundae should be. She ate several bites in silence.
“Sundae okay?”
“Fine,” she said.
“They make ’em better here than at the Sweet Shoppe. More for your money.”
And you can talk to a not-nice girl without your friends around, she added mentally. You can make your play without any of the crowd watching...
She ate more of her sundae and the drugstore was silent except for the slurp of Bill finishing his soda. She could tell that the stage was set. And so she decided to contribute her own little bit to the play.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
He looked at her for a second. Then he gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. It was a small enough act and the chances were great that nobody would notice it, but it set things up for Billy-boy. The coast was clear.
“April—”
She looked at him.
“Look, we know where we stand. You like it and I like it. So why shouldn’t we get what we want?”
She flicked her ashes from her cigarette into the glass ashtray on the counter. She didn’t say anything.
“You know what I mean,” he whispered. “We’ll take a little walk. A little walk in the woods, just the two of us. A walk in the fresh air. It’s healthy.”
“Now?”
“Sure.”
“Now? In the middle of the afternoon?”
He shrugged. “No time like the present.”
She wanted to laugh but something kept her from laughing. Why not? Why not take a little walk in the woods, just for the pure, sheer hell of it? It might even be fun. And it couldn’t hurt anything. She was already a bad girl. She might as well have all the fun she could.
So she stood up and took his arm. “Why not?” she said. “A little walk won’t hurt. And I like to walk in the woods. It’s nice there.”
As nice as a car, she thought.
The woods stood brave and silent on the north edge of town. Somehow a little over a hundred acres of wooded land had been ignored by progress and by Antrim. The area was not primeval cover; bushes and shrubs were thick, and the trees that grew there, mainly oaks were no more than thirty years old.
Leaves rumpled under their feet. The air was crisp, cool, fresh. The few birds that had not yet gone south for the winter sang foolishly in the branches.
They found a quiet spot and sat down.
Your cue, she thought.
And he came in right on cue. His arm went around her and his mouth went to her ear.
“You’re a beautiful girl,” he told her. “Really beautiful. And sweet. I like you very much, April.”
That was funny. Why did he tell her these things? She could not have cared less whether he liked her or not, whether he thought she was beautiful or not. Saying these things would not help him to get her to go All The Way.
He kissed her and she analyzed the kiss, being quite cold and clinical about the whole thing. He gave her breast a squeeze and again she was the keen analytical mind, the sexual scientist adding and subtracting and observing phenomena.
His hand went under her skirt and touched her. And she was surprised
She had expected the cold, analytical attitude to last throughout the whole procedure.
It did not.
Her response astounded her. The reaction was immediate and unexpected, a sharp charge of sensation that overwhelmed her. Automatically she felt herself stiffening with passion and pulled him close, her young body yearning for him.
At four-thirty on the dot she returned to her own house, her purse under one arm and all the leaves brushed from her skirt and sweater. She walked in the front door and called hello to whomever might be home. Everyone was out — Link was somewhere, Dad was at the drugstore, Mom was at another meeting.
She went upstairs, changed her clothes, got a small suitcase from the attic. She filled the suitcase with clothing then added most of the five-hundred-odd dollars she’d gotten from the bank. Purses, she knew, got snatched — presumably by purse-snatchers, she guessed. Her money would be safer in the suitcase.
Bill Piersall was going to be a celebrity, she thought. He’d managed to get to her, and she’d given him a time he probably would remember for quite a while. Now, when she suddenly dropped out of the picture, he would be able to give everybody the last word on April North. This would bring great honor upon his head, by all the rules.
And Jim Bregger was the goat. She could just see his face when he turned up at eight o’clock and found out she was gone. He would be burning, all right — two hours away from a shot at April North, the notorious April North who was nothing but a sex-hungry nymphomaniac, as everyone in Antrim plainly knew.
And she could hear the ribbing he would take:
Man, if it wasn’t for you she’d still be around. Why, she had a fling with Piersall and it was great, see. And then she thought of having to do it with you and it was too much of her. She couldn’t stand it, Jimbo. So she cut out. You ruined it for everybody, Jimbo. Why, we all could have cut ourselves a piece of the cake, there was plenty to go around. But you had to louse it all up.
She laughed.
She snapped the suitcase shut and carried it downstairs. Her purse was slung over her other arm. Nobody saw her when she left the house, and no one saw her walking down Schwerner Street to the edge of town where it became Route 68. There was the place where the bus stopped, and a bus would be along soon. The bus would carry her to Xenia, where the Pennsy stopped on the way to New York.
She stood at the bus stop. After a few minutes she fumbled in her purse for a cigarette. She was kissing the town goodbye, and the old injunction against smoking in public hardly seemed to apply to her. She found a cigarette, put it in her mouth and lit it with the third match she scratched. The wind put the first two out, but on the third try the flame held and she drew smoke into her lungs. She shook the match out, threw it away, closed her purse, and let out a stream of smoke.
To hell with Antrim, she thought. To hell with the whole crowd of narrow-minded bastards. To hell with all of them. They could ruin her reputation but they could not ruin her. She would leave them. She would go to New York, where nobody knew her, and she would do whatever she damn well wanted to do. They could take this town and stick it, as far as she was concerned.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She was slightly nervous now. Suppose someone should pass her while she was waiting for the bus? She was hardly standing in an inaccessible spot. Route 68 was simply an extension of Antrim’s main thoroughfare, and anybody could pass by now and see her there. Suppose a relative came by — what could she do?