It could. Adele Christopher. And this time, he was absolutely sure. Never mind about appearances being deceiving, they couldn’t be all that deceiving. Adele Christopher was a virgin, no question about it.
Actually, she wasn’t much Vince’s type. She was a short, slender, mousy girl, with a boyish figure. She had breasts, but they were about the size of a bee-bite. And she had hips, but just barely. She did have good legs, at least, and a pleasant, oval face beneath short-cropped mouse-blonde hair, and she was definitely a virgin.
Adele was sixteen, but she looked more like twelve. She usually wandered around wearing scuffed loafers and frayed faded blue jeans and a white man’s shirt with the tails tied in a knot beneath her bee-bites. But her little butt wiggled nicely inside the tight blue jeans, and her waist looked small enough to put his arm completely around it, and she had a nice friendly smile and clear blue eyes.
She wasn’t precisely his type, but the more he looked at her, the more he had a feeling she could become his type without too much trouble at all. There was an old saying he’d heard once: The closer to the bone, the sweeter the meat. And you couldn’t get much closer to the bone than skinny Adele.
He’d also heard it said that a thin woman is built for speed and a fat woman is built for comfort. A girl like Adele, being as thin as that — and it would be her first time, too, of that he was sure — she might just go wild. It didn’t take much thinking-it-over before he really began to look forward to the experience.
The first thing, of course, was to get to know the girl better. He’d met her at the grocery store-post office around on the north shore of the lake, talked with her a bit, seen her a few times when he’d swum from his own cabin to the public beach near the store, but it had never been any more than talk about the weather and sunburn and how cold the lake water was. So the first thing to do was get to know her better.
That part was easy enough. He drove around the lake to the store, parked in the gravel parking lot beside the store, and there she was, at the public beach, sitting with a bunch of girls. She was dressed, as usual, in blue jeans, white shirt and scuffed loafers, and she looked, as usual, not a day over twelve.
He went over and talked for a while, talking with the whole group of girls. The usual vacation-at-the-lake crap, about the weather and the temperature of the water and all that; and when the right moment came, he asked her if she wanted to join him for a coke over at the store. Adele wouldn’t be a wine girl like Rhonda. She’d be a coke and hot dogs girl.
And, of course, her Dream Man would be a coke and hot dogs boy. An outdoorsy type, young and kind of gawky, the kind of clown who’d wander around with Lassie at his heels. So that was the way Vince played it, young and gawky and full of coke. He fooled around with the notion of borrowing a dog from somebody, but decided it was too much trouble, and he could be gawky enough all by himself.
She went with him for the coke, but so did two of the other girls. That was the thing with girls, particularly short fat ugly girls like the two who came along to share the coke. They always ran in packs. You get a bunch of good-looking girls together, it’s no trouble at all to cull one out of the herd. You get a bunch of beasts together, with one good-looking girl in their midst, and they’ll cling to the looker as though she were a life-preserver. Vince thought that was probably because they knew the looker would attract males, and they didn’t want to miss out if there were any extras. Or maybe they were just hoping some of the looks would rub off on them if they hung around long enough.
He knew better than to let the girls know he was less than overjoyed to have them along. He knew he had to make believe he liked Adele’s bug-eyed monster friends if he wanted to get anywhere with her. So he grinned at them and talked with them, and waited half an hour before asking Adele if she wanted to go for a ride around the lake. She said yes, and he pulled her away before the beasts knew what was going on.
That first day, all they did was drive around the lake, looking at the cabins and the swimmers and the motorboats, while Vince did some strong groundwork on the Dream Man. By the time he brought her back to the store, where she wanted to be let off, he knew he had her hooked. She thought he was just the greatest thing since Claude Jarman, Jr. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as she got out of the car, and she smiled and nodded, looking very pleased.
He spent four days that way, just driving her around the lake, going swimming with her either at the public beach or the little beach behind his parents’ cabin, and all the time building up the young and gawky impression for her.
After the first day, he didn’t have too much trouble with the beasts any more. It was obvious that Adele preferred to go off with him, rather than hang around with the tons of fun, and that was an excellent sign. There was only one of the beasts who caused any trouble at all; a short, heavy, stringy-haired mound named Bobbi. She even managed, on the second day, to come along for the ride around the lake — which pleased Vince no end. After that, he worked extra hard to keep himself and Adele away from lovable old Bobbi.
The fourth day was a Friday, and there was to be a dance that night in Cornwallville, a town about eight miles from the lake. In a Grange Hall, no less. While they were driving around that afternoon, Vince asked her if she wanted to go to the dance with him, and she said she’d be glad to. By that time, they were old hound-dog buddies.
So that Friday night was the first real date. He knew he was dealing with a genuine virgin this time — there wasn’t the slightest doubt of that at all, he kept telling himself — so he played it very cautious on their first date. At the dance, which was lousy, consisting of a hillbilly jukebox alternating with some local hillbilly non-talent, he danced with her as though they were brother and sister. Afterward, he drove her right back to her cabin, and kissed her only once before saying good-night. She was surprised that he hadn’t tried to kiss her again, he could tell that, and he knew she wanted him to kiss her again. She could keep wanting for a little while, he told himself. Work the anticipation bit.
At first, he’d been planning the defloration for the backseat of his father’s car, but as the time grew nearer, he began to think about the mechanics of the thing again; that business of switching from front seat to back, of squirming around trying to get your clothes off in a cramped backseat, and he decided a grassy slope somewhere under a tree would be a hell of a lot better all the way around.
But not out at the island. Not after the fiasco with Rhonda. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that lousy island ever again. Somewhere else.
He took some time out to look for a new spot, a place as secluded and handy as the island. He went looking on Monday afternoon, three days after the dance.
The thing was, this was a vacation-type lake. Every inch of shore was used by somebody or other, with cabins and docks and boathouses and beaches. A two-lane blacktop road circled the lake, and even the side of the road away from the lake was solidly lined with cabins.
Yet he couldn’t roam too far away from the lake. He had to find a spot close enough so it would seem natural to go there. It would be in the afternoon, of course. An outdoorsy girl like Adele, you could only de-virginize her in the daytime, with the sun shining like mad.
He drove around Monday afternoon, looking for a secluded spot and not finding one. Then he noticed the little stream that fed into the lake from the east, tumbling down from the wooded hills back of the lake. There was a small bridge at the point where the road crossed the stream, and he noticed what looked like a narrow path leading off from the road along the streamside.