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"Give me fifteen to take a shower and dress and I'll be out to drive you home."

"Okay," I said. Before he turned to go in, he leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips.

"In baseball," he said, his lips still close to mine, "we call that getting to first base. Did I get on with a hit, a walk or an error?"

"Felt like a hit," I said. He beamed, kissed me again and hurried into the building.

Oh please, please, I prayed, let this not be deception.

While I waited for him, I gazed back at the ballfield and wondered why my aunt Zipporah never spoke about her or my mother having any boyfriends at school. Didn't anyone ever ask either of them out? Didn't they watch boyfriends at basketball or baseball practice? Why weren't they in the school plays? Surely, they could have met boys th

ere. They were as void of any school activities as I was. Could that possibly have had something to do with what had been going on and what had occurred later?

It seemed that whenever I went into deep thought about my mother, I left time and place and had no concept of where I was or how long I had been there. The next thing I heard was Craig calling to me. Finally, I felt him nudge me.

"Hey, what's with you? I was shouting like crazy," he said.

"Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking about things."

"That deeply? I hope it involved me," he said, reaching for my hand.

"In a way it did."

"Great. I'll take anything. Even 'in a way,' " he said, and we headed around the building toward the parking lot. Just about everyone had already dressed and gone. There were only a half dozen cars left, including his.

"I saw you were talking to Charlene Lewis in the stands," he said as we approached his car.

"You weren't concentrating on your practice?"

He laughed. "No, but I did finally. She's a nice girl. I like Bobby, too. Maybe we'll go on a double date with them."

I didn't say anything. He opened the car door for me, and I got in.

"You didn't say anything when I mentioned a double date," he said after we drove out of the lot.

"What should I say?"

"You'd like it or not, for one thing."

"I don't know. I've never been on a double date. I've never been on a date," I added unashamed.

"No secret romances?" he kidded.

"If there were, they were so secret, even I didn't know," I told him, and he laughed.

"You know you're a pretty interesting girl, Alice. As I told you, what I like about you is I can't tell what you're going to do or say. Most of the other girls here are carbon copies, almost mass produced. I was thinking about them when Kasofsky was describing Henry Ford's creation of the assembly line the other day, and then I looked at you and I thought, unique, custom made from the bottom up."

"Not weird?"

"No," he said and then smiled at me and added, "well, maybe a little."

I laughed.

"But I like it," he said.

I said nothing. Am I being seduced? Am 1 hearing what I want to hear? How cautious should I be? How trusting? How truthful? What are the rules, the guidelines? How much do you rely on your own instincts? Does it boil down to how much you can trust yourself? And what am I risking anyway? My virtue, my virginity, my reputation? What does that amount to here? Or is it something that will change me so much, I will hate myself, never mind what others think?

"You get into your thoughts so deeply again, Alice, that I feel like you're gone every once in a while. Does anyone else tell you that?" he asked.