Page 122

"Yes and I heard how Victoria thought she was too expensive."

He laughed and then shook his head.

"Well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with keeping your eye on your stash," he said getting into the car. "You can learn a lot from Victoria if you'll listen."

"When you're with Victoria, that's all you can do is listen," I muttered. I probably shouldn't have said it even though I didn't for one moment think Jake would tell anyone what I had said. I just didn't like sounding mean and ungrateful.

He lowered his sunglasses and gazed at me with a half-smile on his face and then he started the engine, waved and drove off. I watched until the car disappeared. Then I turned and slowly walked back into the house.

Merilyn was just starting her dusting and vacuuming. She had come home very late the night before and hadn't bothered getting up early enough to prepare my breakfast. She knew I would make my own and leave the kitchen in better condition than she usually did, so she wasn't worried.

I really didn't have any homework left to do, just a little studying for a possible history quiz. Audrey and I had done all our homework after dinner the night before. We had talked and talked until her mother had come for her. She had confessed that the one thing she longed for more than anything, more than the best grades, the best part in the school play, was a real boyfriend, and she told me about the one and only time she had almost had a relationship. Bizarre didn't even begin to describe it.

"His name was Charles Princeton," she had begun, "and he was in this special advanced French class that combined girls from Dogwood and boys from Sweet William. It was part of an experimental college satellite program run by the nearby

community college. We were the only ninth graders in the class at the time, both having done well on the entrance exam. All the rest were juniors and seniors.

"Charles was just an inch or so taller than me and chubby, but I thought he had the most beautiful blue eyes, Rain. When he looked at me, he really looked at me. He would stare right into my eyes as if daring me to stare back into his. You know how some boys will always be staring at your breasts and make you feel as if you are naked. He didn't. He just kept his eyes on mine. I always gazed right back at him. I wasn't intimidated like most of the other girls. Not that he was very popular with other girls. He wasn't, but he didn't seem to care. I used to watch him when the other boys in the class stared at one of the prettier senior girls. Charles really wasn't a gawker. At first I thought he just wasn't interested in girls yet. You know, some boys are so immature, they'd rather collect baseball cards."

I laughed.

"I didn't know many like that," I said. "Where I come from, you grow up fast. Twelve girls in my eighth grade class got pregnant."

"Really?" Audrey said impressed, her eyes wide with excitement. Rich white kids, I thought. What I told them about my life wasn't real to them, nowhere near as real as it had been to me.

"Have you ...almost gotten pregnant or anything?" Audrey asked. It was her way of trying to find out just how sexually active I was.

"No, have you?" I countered. It brought a wide smile to her face.

"Me? The only thing I've ever done is kiss Charles a few times and let his hand rest here," she said indicating her right breast.

"That was all? How did you stop him?" I asked, just as curious about the intimacies of these rich girls as they were about mine.

"I didn't have to. When he touched me, he acted as if he had put his hand on a hot stove. He was more frightened than I was by what he had done."

I started to shake my head skeptically.

"No, really," she emphasized. "It was his mother's fault,"

"Mother's fault? What do you mean? She wasn't there, too, was she?"

She looked down for a long moment and then said, "I swore to him I would never tell anyone." "Then maybe you shouldn't," I said.

She looked up quickly. When someone is just bursting to tell you something, the best way to get them to do it quickly is to tell them not to, I thought.

"No, Charles is gone. His family moved away over a year ago and I suppose it's all right to tell you."

"Why is it all right to tell me?" I questioned.

"You're different," she said with a thin, nervous laugh that sounded like tiny china cups shattering. "And I don't just mean because you're AfricanAmerican. You're easier to talk to," she said with sincerity in her eyes.

I gave her a small smile and waited.

"He told me how his mother warned him about sex. She made him think of his penis as if it was a little animal with a separate mind of its own living between his legs!"

"He said that?"

"A huh. She told him it would get him into big trouble if he let it do what it wanted. So to stop it..."