April North (2 page)

They got into the back seat.

Immediately he kissed her again and his hand found its place inside her sweater. His other hand joined it, and both hands went around her body until they found the clasp of her bra. Again she felt that another milestone was being reached, but again she was unable to offer so much as token resistance. His fingers were clumsy, but he managed nevertheless to unlock the bra and remove it, leaving her firm breasts bare.

His hands fondled them.

“They’re so pretty, April. So nice and firm. Do you like it when I touch them like this?”

She liked it much too much. Her whole body was throbbing with passion now and her breasts were quivering under his touch. Her nipples stood up stiff and alert, and every time his fingers brushed over them a jolt of pure passion went through her, spreading outward from her breasts and engulfing her entire body.

Then his fingers were on the hem of her skirt. He raised her shirt, slipped a hand under the cloth and squeezed her knee. This, she knew, was dangerous. They were treading on thin ice. When he had unbuttoned her sweater they had passed the thin and arbitrary line which distinguishes necking from petting. Now, with the new twist which he was adding by slipping his hand below her skirt, they were traversing another emotional boundary. There was a distinct difference between petting above the waist and petting below the waist. Even nice girls might pet above the waist with their steadies.

But below the waist was something different.

“We’d better stop.” Her voice was only a whisper, and if he heard it he paid no attention. Somehow she could not bring herself to repeat her mild protest. If what they were doing was wrong, why in the world did it feel so good? If it was indecent to let a boy touch your thighs, then why did it make them tingle so nicely?

A good question.

“So smooth,” he was saying now, his tone reverent.

“You’ve got the smoothest skin. So nice to touch.”

It was only a matter of time before her panties were down and he was touching her more and she was quivering like a shimmering bowlful of jelly. It was only a matter of time before she was lying on her back on the car seat with her knees up and her brain swimming in equal parts of lust and fear. It was only a matter of time before he was crouching above her, ready for her.

“No!”

But again he ignored her, and again she did not have the strength to repeat herself. She knew inwardly that It was going to happen and that she wanted It as much as he did. She knew that It might very well be wrong, but that right or wrong It was going to take place.

She watched what he was doing, and she wondered whether he had had sense enough to visit her father’s drugstore, or any drugstore. The thought almost made her laugh and then he was touching her again, and she was beyond laughter and beyond tears, ready for whatever would happen.

Then it began.

There was pain first, sheer pain that tore her in two and made her want to scream out against the night. The pain went all through her—she could not see or think or feel anything but all-consuming hurting.

But then the pain began to subside. And, magically, something else took the place of the pain. The pain gave way to a tide of pleasure greater than anything she had ever been able to imagine, a tide of pleasure that caught her up and spun her in whirling dizzying circles of light and darkness.

Magic.

Right or wrong, good or bad, clever or foolish—adjectives fell away from her, fell away before the advance of the tidal wave of pleasure. She let herself respond to the fullest, let her body move as it had to move and writhe as it had to writhe. The passion spun her around and raced forward with her and the world began to move with her and It was happening, happening, and nothing on earth could stop It.

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.

Plans.

They would no longer work that way. Her new-found reputation would make life in Antrim relatively impossible. Living through the few months between now and June would be difficult enough. Then her reputation would follow her to Ohio State and it would be the same thing all over again.

She wondered if she would go to college. She even wondered if she would manage to graduate from Antrim High. And, while she wondered, she was amazed at the very calm way she thought about these things. It was as if nothing mattered at all—no, it was more as though she had everything strangely under control. Her own calmness nearly frightened her. Maybe it was the calm before the storm. Maybe she was going to crack up any minute now and go all to pieces. But she did not think so.

Maybe—

“April!”

She walked to her bedroom door, opened it. It was her mother calling her this time.

“Telephone, April.”

She walked slowly downstairs to the telephone. “It’s a boy,” her mother confided, handing her the telephone receiver. She took it, said hello to the mouthpiece, and waited.

“This is Jim Bregger, April.”

“Oh,” she said. “Hello, Jim.”

“I just thought I’d give you a ring,” he said. “Find out of you’re free Friday night.”

For a moment she thought of telling him that she was not free, that she was expensive. She almost came close to giggling, but she restrained the impulse.

“Friday,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s tomorrow night, isn’t it?”

That’s right.”

“Well,” she said, “how come you happened to call?”

“I thought maybe we could go out together,” he said, sounding defensive. “That’s all. Just thought we could go for a ride or take in a show or something.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Is it a date?”

“Well—”

“It’s a date,” he said. “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up about eight or so, okay? We’ll go for a ride or take in a show, something like that. I’ll see you, April.”

He hung up and she was left holding on to a dead phone. This annoyed her. She had never told him she would go out with him. As a matter of fact, she had been looking around for a polite way to tell him to go to hell, and now she was stuck with a date. And the date was one which he thought would lead to a quick tussle in the back seat of his father’s car.

She did not want this to happen. She was about as interested in Jim Bregger as she was in swimming in boiling oil. He was fat, had pimples on his forehead and he was stupid.

And, according to him, he was going to make love to her tomorrow night.

She put the phone back on the hook. She walked into the living room and swiped two cigarettes from the tray on the coffee table. She picked up a pack of matches. Then she got her corduroy jacket from the back hall and put it on, slipping the cigarettes and the matches into a pocket.