She happened to look at Wayne Conroy, who was leaning on his elbows at his first-row desk, his chin resting in his cupped hands. God, he was a handsome boy, she thought, in a split-second flash of desire. Her eyes traveled brazenly for a moment on the width of his young shoulders, the ripple of his developing muscles, and the taper of his boyish waist as he sat in his seat. Wayne was the son of Montock's richest and biggest farmer, Agnew Harrison Conroy, and had a bad reputation as trouble-maker and bully. His swaggering manner could be traced to his father's position, which allowed him to get away with things other boys couldn't afford to do, and to the maturity for his fifteen years, which made him larger and stronger than the rest of his classmates. Joan Frazer knew this, but it wasn't enough to stop her from one fleeting thought: God… I wonder what the rest of him is like, the part I can't see…

Wayne's eyes met hers and then skipped away to blatantly trace the contours of her throat down to the cleavage between her ripely mature breasts under the thin spring dress. Joan's throat turned instantly dry, and she felt her face warm with a sudden rush of blood which crimsoned her cheeks and temples. Damn! It was as if he could read her mind!

"We… We are up to the point of actual sexual intercourse now," she stammered to the students, hurriedly attempting to cover her fluster. "We've studied the sex organs individually, and… and last week, if you remember, we saw slides, on how each sex matures physically."

One of the girls, petite Sharla Gronsworth, giggled appreciatively from where she sat. Joan looked at her sharply, frowning with disapproval. "Sharla," she scolded the little blonde girl, "by this time I would think you would have been able to get over your childishness. This is a serious subject, and you must be a young adult about it."

"That's just it, teacher," Micky Hagen said, "Sharla's very adult about sex."