Exactly twelve seconds later he came out the front door, striding stolidly along. When he got to the cars that had been driven onto the lawn, there was another conference. Philbrick gestured a lot.
Nobody said anything. Pat Fitzgerald was chewing a fingernail thoughtfully. Pig Pen had taken out another pencil and was studying it. And Sandra Cross was looking at me steadily. There seemed to be a kind of mist between us that made her glow.
'What about sex?' Carol said suddenly, and when everyone looked at her, she colored.
'Male,' Melvin said, and a couple of the jocks in the back of the room haw-hawed.
'What do you mean?' I asked.
Carol looked very much as if she wished her mouth had been stitched closed. 'I thought when someone started to act . . . well . . . you know, strangely . . . ' She stopped in confusion, but Susan Brooks sprang to the ramparts.
'That's right,' she said. 'And you all ought to stop grinning. Everyone thinks sex is so dirty. That's half what's the matter with all of us. We worry about it. ' She looked protectively at Carol.
'That's what I meant,' Carol said. 'Are you . . . well, did you have some bad experience?'
'Nothing since that time I went to bed with Mom,' I said blandly.
An expression of utter shock struck her face, and then she saw I was joking. Pig Pen snickered dolefully and went on looking at his pencil.
'No, really,' she said.
'Well,' I said, frowning. 'I'll tell about my sex life if you'll tell about yours.'
'Oh . . .' She looked shocked again, but in a pleasant way.
Gracie Stanner laughed. 'Cough up, Carol.' I had always gotten a murky impression that there was no love lost between those two girls, but now Grace seemed genuinely to be joking-as if some understood but never-mentioned inequality had been erased.
' 'Ray, 'ray,' Corky Herald said, grinning.
Carol was blushing furiously. 'I'm sorry I asked.'
'Go on,' Don Lordi said. 'It won't hurt.'
'Everybody would tell,' Carol said. 'I know the way bo . . . the way people talk around. '
'Secrets,' Mike Gavin whispered hoarsely, 'give me more secrets.' Everybody laughed, but it was getting to be no laughing matter.
'You're not being fair,' Susan Brooks said.
'That's right,' I said. 'Let's drop it.'
'Oh . . . never mind,' Carol said. 'I'll talk. I'll tell you something.'
It was my turn to be surprised. Everybody looked at her expectantly. I didn't really know what they expected to hear-a bad case of penis envy, maybe, or Ten Nights with a Candle. I figured they were in for a disappointment, whatever it was. No whips, no chains, no night sweats. Small-town virgin, fresh, bright, pretty, and someday maybe she would blow Placerville and have a real life. Sometimes they change in college. Some of them discover existentialism and anomie and hash pipes. Sometimes they only join sororities and continue with the same sweet dream that began in junior high school, a dream so common to the pretty small-town virgins that it almost could have been cut from a Simplicity pattern, like a jumper or a Your Yummy Summer blouse or play skirt. There's a whammy on bright girls and boys. If the bright ones have a twisted fiber, it shows. If they don't, you can figure them as easily as square roots. Girls like Carol have a steady boyfriend and enjoy a little necking (but, as the Tubes say, 'Don't Touch Me There'), nothing overboard. It's okay, I guess. You'd expect more, but, so sorry please, there just isn't. Bright kids are like TV dinners. That's all right. I don't carry a big stick on that particular subject. Smart girls are just sort of dull.
And Carol Granger had that image. She went steady with Buck Thorne (the perfect American name). Buck was the center of the Placerville High Greyhounds, which had posted an 11-0 record the previous fall, a fact that Coach Bob 'Stone Balls' Stoneham made much of at our frequent school-spirit assemblies.
Thorne was a good-natured shit who weighed in at a cool two-ten; not exactly the brightest thing on two feet (but college material, of course), and Carol probably had no trouble keeping him in line. I've noticed that pretty girls make the best lion tamers, too. Besides, I always had an idea that Buck Thorne thought the sexiest thing in the world was a quarterback sneak right up the middle.
'I'm a virgin,' Carol said defiantly, startling me up out of my thoughts. She crossed her legs as if to prove it symbolically, then abruptly uncrossed them. 'And I don't think it's so bad, either. Being a virgin is like being bright.'
'It is?' Grace Stanner asked doubtfully.
'You have to work at it,' Carol said. 'That's what I meant, you have to work at it.' The idea seemed to please her. It scared the hell out of me.
'You mean Buck never . . . '
'Oh, he used to want to. I suppose he still does. But I made things pretty clear to him early in the game. And I'm not frigid or anything, or a puritan. It's just that
. . ' She trailed off, searching.
'You wouldn't want to get pregnant,' I said.
'No!' she said almost contemptuously. 'I know all about that.' With something like shock I realized she was angry and upset because she was. Anger is a very difficult emotion for a programmed adolescent to handle. 'I don't live in books all the time. I read all about birth control in . . . ' She bit her lip as the contradiction of what she was saying struck her.
