He stopped the car just beyond the bridge and walked back to look at the stream and the path. There was nothing up that way but woods. No roads and no cabins and no people. The path was overgrown, barely visible more than a few feet from the road.
This looked like the place. It would be the most natural thing in the world for a nature boy like Vince to suggest a little walk up that path. And it would be the most natural thing in the world for a nature girl like Adele to think it a great idea.
But it might also be a great idea to check first, to make sure there was some sort of clearing up that way, someplace where a couple of nature-lovers could lie down and have some room, if they happened to feel like it.
Vince didn’t like to walk, not even on sidewalks. And he especially didn’t like to walk along overgrown and weed-choked paths in the God-forsaken great outdoors. But a man with a goal will suffer a lot of inconvenience to reach that goal. And Vince was definitely a man with a goal. He started walking.
The stream meandered around like an idiot, curving back and forth and climbing erratically over hills, and the path followed right next to it, occasionally angling away from the stream for a few yards to cut through some particularly heavy underbrush. Vince fought his way along, and the farther he got the more overgrown the woods became, with trees crammed closer and closer together and all kinds of bushes and weeds stuffed in among the trunks. It looked as though there was no such thing as a clearing in these lousy woods.
But there was. And it was inhabited.
He heard the voices first, ahead of him. They sounded familiar, but they were still some distance ahead, and he couldn’t figure out who it was. He had a sudden fear that it might be Rhonda, and he almost turned around right then and ran back to the car.
But he didn’t. The voices might mean there was an open space ahead. Vince left the path, climbing up a steep slope away from the stream, planning to circle around and see who these people were before showing himself to them.
He was halfway up the slope when he suddenly realized that one of the voices was Adele’s. He hesitated, wondering what the hell Adele was doing there, and all at once he had the horrible fear that he’d goofed again; that not even Adele was a virgin, that she was up here with some guy.
Maybe there just wasn’t any such thing as a virgin, after all. Maybe virgins were myths, like unicorns. He suddenly remembered the legend that only a virgin could capture a unicorn, and now he understood that legend. It took a myth to catch a myth.
But as he stood there thinking about it, getting more disgusted every second, the other voice started talking again and, with a sigh of relief, he realized the other voice also belonged to a girl. So Adele wasn’t up here with a guy, after all. It was just one of her little Brownie friends.
He thought he heard Adele mention his name. Sure, she was talking about him, she was telling the Brownie about him. Good old Adele.
He wondered what she was saying about him. He moved forward even more slowly and cautiously now, wanting to get close enough to hear what Adele had to say.
From the top of the slope, he could see them. It was Adele and the tons of fun, Bobbi, the menace who’d been hanging around so much all last week.
And there was a clearing. A great clearing, right out of a storybook. It was oval in shape, with the stream gurgling through the middle of the oval the long way. There were level grassy banks right down to the edge of the stream, and the whole place was ringed with slender-trunked young trees and dark green shrubbery.
Adele and Bobbi were sitting on the grass next to the stream, on the same side as Vince. They were both dressed in the uniform of the area, blue jeans and white men’s shirts, and they were sitting chatting together about one thing and another. And mainly about Vince.
He lay prone on his stomach on the top of the slope, peering through the high grass, and watched and listened.
Bobbi was saying, “Vince wants to make love to you, you know.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Adele. “All boys think about it, but it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, he isn’t going to try anything.”
Vince grinned down the slope at Adele. That’s what you think, little baby, he thought. And what a great big surprise you’ve got coming. A great big surprise.
“I know why you’re going around with him so much,” Bobbi was saying. “It’s to make me mad.”
“I haven’t been going around with him so much,” objected Adele, but she smiled at the other girl, and she didn’t deny the charge. “We’ve just gone riding in his car, that’s all, just riding around the lake.”
“You went to the dance with him Friday night,” Bobbi said. Vince could see now that Bobbi was pouting. There was accusation in her voice.
Adele shrugged. “I wanted to go to the dance,” she said. “What’s wrong with that? And I couldn’t very well have gone with you.”
“Why not?” Bobbi demanded. “Girls go to dances together all the time. They even dance together. Who’d think anything?”
“I don’t know about your parents,” Adele told her, “but my mother and father are beginning to suspect.”
Vince frowned, not following the conversation at all. Suspect? Suspect what?
Oh for God’s sake, he thought suddenly, they’re members of a non-virgin club. He knew it, he knew it, he’d known it all along, there just wasn’t any such thing as a virgin. Virgins and unicorns, mythical beasties.
The conversation was still going on down there, and through his depression Vince continued to listen, and what they were saying down there just kept getting more mystifying all the time.
“They do not,” Bobbi was saying. “Parents never suspect a thing like that. We could do it right in front of them, for Pete’s sake, and they’d think we were just playing games.”
“All I know,” Adele said, “is that Mom’s been hinting that I ought to stay away from you. And every time she gets on the subject, she gets too embarrassed for words.”
“Then don’t worry about it,” Bobbi advised her. “Even if they think they know something, what difference does it make if they’re afraid to call you on it?”
“I don’t think I’d want them to know,” Adele said soberly.
“Are you ashamed? I told you, Adele, there’s nothing in the world to be ashamed of. There’ve been lots and lots of women—”
“I know all that. I just don’t want my parents to know about it, that’s all.”
“You changed the subject,” said Bobbi suddenly. “You didn’t want to talk about that Vince any more.”
Adele smiled, and lay back on the grass, staring up at the sky. “I think I like him,” she said thoughtfully.
“Adele, don’t be mean.”
“I think maybe I’ll let him make love to me,” she said, still smiling at the sky.
Vince sat up and took notice. Now, that was the kind of thing he liked to hear!
“Adele, you’re just teasing me,” Bobbi said reproachfully. “Don’t tease me like that.”
“I wonder how it would be,” mused Adele, ignoring the other girl. “I wonder how it would be to have a man make love to me.” She turned and looked at Bobbi, grinning wickedly at her. “Don’t you wonder sometimes how it would feel?”
Bobbi made a face and said, “Ugh!”
“I do,” said Adele. She lay back on the grass again. “And I think I really will do it. I’ll bring Vince up here and—”
“Adele, stop it!”
“After all,” Adele went on, “I really ought to try it.”
She was a virgin, Vince was thinking gleefully. This time, for sure, she was a virgin.
She went on, saying, “Just once, of course. But I ought to try it once, see what it’s like. Maybe I’d enjoy it.”