"Laura!" she heard vaguely as if from a great distance. "Laura!" she heard a more demanding tone and started up from her position, the waves of pleasure rolling back like waves rolling back into the sea. She made a rapid dive for her underpants and then for her closet, grabbing the first things that came to hand. It was a dress with rosebuds on it, that she absolutely hated. It was bad enough that it was a dress, but the rosebuds finished it, in her eyes. She went to throw it back inside. Her mother liked that dress. It would divert her mother's attention if she wore it.
There was nothing showing on the little girl from which to divert her mother's attention, but she was so accustomed to having her mother discover the least guilty secret she might harbor that she thought in terms of hiding everything, even the invisible, even her growing up. Although so far, she had done a better job of hiding her growing up from herself than from her mother, but she didn't know.
CHAPTER TWO
If her mother noticed the dress, she didn't make any indication. She was too much in a hurry, had been interrupted in whatever she had been doing, also.
"Telephone," she told Laura briefly as soon as her young daughter appeared. Then the mother returned to the kitchen.
Laura was a little out of breath, whether from the frustrated and unfinished love-making or from the strain of hiding her guilt from whoever, specifically her mother, might see, it would be hard to say. Nevertheless, her breathing was a little hard, raspy. She paused a few moments before taking the receiver from the telephone bench where her mother had placed it to await her coming. She sat down, took one deep breath, and tried to speak in as normal a tone of voice as she could muster.
"Hello!"
"I feel terrible and have to apologize," a voice thinly said after a pause. It was Pete DePow. Of all the nerve! Yet, she couldn't be too angry. She couldn't shake the memory that upstairs just now, on the bed, she had just about willed him to be with her. Who knows? Maybe that's why he was calling. Maybe he knew she wasn't really mad, at least not any more.
"I guess we might as well forget it," she said sternly. Gosh, she didn't know what to say! She couldn't admit to him that she… well… that she liked him! And on the other hand, she hadn't really had the time to think it all out, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it would be better if she made herself get over all this and went back to concentrating on baseball and hockey.
"I don't know if I can forget it, Laura. I… you're pretty special, you know. I decided, though, that I just won't stay alone with you any more. Will that be all right? You do still want to join the club, don't you? You wouldn't let a little… slip like that get in the way, would you?"
It wouldn't hurt to be forgiving, would it? Laura asked herself. And as long as he promised not to trust himself alone with her, she should be all right, shouldn't she? A nasty little devil in the back of her mind hinted to her that she didn't want to be that all right, but she thrust the naughty thought away.
"I suppose," she mumbled. She didn't have time to say what it was she supposed before Pete's voice came back to her all excited.
"Great!" he exclaimed. "Janie and Mack are at the clubhouse now. I gotta do something, but you come back and they'll tell you about things, okay?"
"Okay," she muttered. She was just hanging up the telephone when her mother returned to the hallway.
"Who was that? I didn't recognize his voice," her mother said.
"Oh, Peter DePow," she said, not without some pride that she knew him.
"You look lovely in that little dress," her mother enthused before the name she had heard registered on her brain. "DePow? Any relation to Ernest DePow?" her mother asked, stunned.
"I don't know. His son, maybe," Laura said, now sorry she had been proud of her new friend and had mentioned his name. Her mother was bearing down on her, forgetting whatever errand had brought her through the hall. She looked as though she were bursting with a million questions. "Look, Mom, I don't really know and I got to go in a big hurry."
Her mother's face look disappointed, rejected. Laura, forgetting that she was wearing a dress, bolted out the door in her usual fashion, like a barn-crazed colt let out to pasture for the first time in a long winter.
Laura easily remembered the way to Peter's house, and she turned into the yard not knowing whether she hoped someone saw her going into such an important place or hoped no one saw her because she understood now that playing with Pete was going to make of her a social oddity in her family and among her relatives. They would all stop making fun of her boyish interests and start to talk to her like a human being, and she didn't know if she could take that notoriety. There was a price to fame that she hadn't known about before she had seen it in her mother's avid eyes. Thinking about that, she wondered about something else. If everybody bugged a person for being a friend of someone important like Peter, what must it be like to actually be Peter DePow? Maybe that's why he had to go to a private school and play baseball in some other secret place, part of a secret club. Gosh, imagine having to sneak around avoiding people all the time! How lonely!
By the time she had finished that kind of wondering, she had arrived at the big red maples, and there was Janie.
"Mack's gone to get some sodas," her girl friend explained. "Pete will be awhile. I'm going to get some cookies or something. Would you mind picking up the club house a little?" Janie asked.
"No, I don't mind," Laura said generously. She was feeling kindly and understanding now after her sympathetic thoughts of Pete and all the problems he must have being wealthy and related to a former mayor. She looked around. No, the boys were not in sight. She had been silly to wear a dress, but as long as they weren't here to watch her climb into the tree house, she guessed she would be fine. At the moment she wasn't as worried about being seen as she was about knowing she was seen, feeling the hot eyes staring at her under her dress. She doubted it would take much to force those incredible feelings to the front once more, burning away her will power and her reserve.
"Tell Fido to be good," Janie added. "Tell him I'll bring him a bone if I can find one!" The dark-haired little girl laughed.
"Who's Fido?"
"Club mascot," Janie explained with a twinkle in her eye. With that she turned on her heel and started back to the street.
Fido turned out to be a dog. From his name, Laura had guessed he would be a dog. What she had not guessed was that he would be such a big dog! He was a full grown German Shepherd, his long hair a soft black color. How in the world had they gotten such a big dog up into a tree house, she wondered.
"Well, my goodness, aren't you a mystery, though," she cooed gently to the beautiful dog, lovingly stroking his large head.
The pleasing sound of the girl's soft, crooning voice together with the gentle pressure of her small, stroking hand filled Fido with warm-hearted relish. Instinctively, he raised his head and began licking her hand to seal this new friendship. Imagine getting goosebumps from an animal's licking tongue! I'm in a bad way, thought the pig-tailed little girl. She kept hoping that the sexual stimulation that she had now undergone twice without fulfillment, would go away with the passing of time, yet it seemed to be roused more easily as time went by instead of less easily.