"You're growin' up pretty as a heifer, Cynthia," Paul said. "Pardon my buttin' my nose in where it has no business, but is there anyone you're particularly sweet on around here?"

She glanced sideways at him, her eyes flashing in the moonlight. She liked Paul. "No," she said slowly. "Not particularly." She waited quietly.

He started to move his arm as though to put it around her, but then picked up a stone instead and threw it with a brisk swing, the stone clinking on a rock when it fell. He seemed embarrassed and unsure of himself, his inexperience revealed in his husky voice and nervous manner.

"Well, look, Cynthia," he said, "I was wonderin' what you were thinkin' of doin' after high school. Going to get married? Or are your parents goin' to send you to college?"

"I don't really know, Paul. They've said I could go if I wanted to, but I don't want to much. Maybe I'll go to Chicago and get a job. My aunt lives there, you know."

Although she hadn't told anyone, she had already made up her mind. College was not for her. She was too anxious for a quick plunge into the complex morass of life where she could surrender herself to the myriad delights she knew it would offer. It was not for her to go to college, where the fetters of a college routine would bind and choke her like the restrictions she felt at home, where the boys would be replicas of Paul and others in her own community, young, hesitant, undeveloped, and where she would not be able to freely indulge in the kind of experimentation she knew her body was ready for and eagerly demanded. No, when the time came, she would go to Chicago, live with her aunt until she found a job, and then strike out on her own.

As she shifted her position so her arm would brush against his and gave her head a shake so her fragrant hair swung against his face, tickling it with the golden wisps of her curls, she felt herself suddenly pushed back against the ground, her back pressed into the grass, her breasts and her belly flattened by the crush of his body on top of hers.