Chapter 6

On Monday I was faced with the age old dilemma: what to wear. I no longer felt like wearing the usual jeans and a top. I wanted to dress up a little, though not too much. Denim mini? Maybe. Or I could wear nicer slacks; no, too dressy. And then, in the back of my closet, I saw it. A full skirt, just more than knee-length, certainly modest, certainly flirty in an itty-bitty way, and it probably still fit.

There's something light and airy about wearing a full skirt. Pencil skirts and most minis were just clothes, practically form-fitting, and in some ways not unlike wearing a pair of jeans. But a full skirt—it's very feminine, it's modest, it certainly isn't unfashionable, and as the weather heated up (and it was supposed to be a scorcher) kind of cool to wear. The air circulates around your legs and you don't feel like you're baking in one.

There's also the thing I'd learned from Rick: guys will wonder if you're wearing any underwear. My initial reaction was to say 'of course', but then I began to pay attention to the whole thing. The biggest reason to wear underwear, aside from hygiene, is so that you're covered in case your skirt flies up or a guy sees up between your legs. The biggest reason not to is 'visible panty line', those dreaded marks on your clothes that tell people what you have on under your clothes. Of course that's your business, but people are always looking. That's why you see photographers placing themselves at certain places at a big fashionable opening: they can see up a woman's dress and see if she has panties on.

Some girls counter this by wearing pantyhose to smooth out the line, and others wear slips. Of course some girls, as I learned in gym, don't wear panties under their pantyhose, but that's their business. I had learned to accept that the guys would look, but usually didn't worry about it too much because guys were more interested in what I had up top.

But anyway, this morning it was a full skirt, with panties, and a blouse that hung past the waistline of the skirt. I had sandals with a slight heel, enough that they could be considered shoes, not sandals. My blouse had short sleeves, something that used to be appalling. Now long sleeves were something only worn when it was cool outside. I had a pair of earrings that were fake pearl studs. I wasn't going to add a pearl necklace, this was school, not a fancy dance.

I breezed through the morning, feeling a happiness in my chest. I was practically counting down the time to lunch. What would it be like? We'd gotten pretty close over the weekend, well, intimate, actually, but close other than that. I did see a couple of girls I recognized from the party, and they nodded at me. We shared a secret we could never tell, or even acknowledged existed. If people know there's a secret, they'll go to great lengths to ferret it out. The best way to hide something is to not even admit it exists, even casually. They didn't have to know that we had spent most of the weekend naked and hopping on and off mattresses having sex with boys.

I saw Eric waiting for me at the door to the cafeteria, and walked right up to him. I felt very ... female, all pretty, and kind of sexy, and kind of innocent, and ... and had eyes only for him. He smiled when he saw me, and I decided not to do too much thinking, not like I usually do, in the next little while, but to just enjoy being with him.

Our hands brushed, and then sort of slipped together as we walked in. I could feel a few murmurs of speculation. Last Friday we hadn't been seen near each other, and now here we were, holding hands. What had happened? How did we meet? What happened when we met? I knew I was going to be quizzed closely over the next few days, or at least until the other girls were satisfied that they had the answers they wanted. Who knew if that would be the answer that fit the facts?

Now part of the social scene at a high school is that when you start going with someone you insert yourself into their circle of friends. Of course you also have your own circle of friends, and so on one hand I was getting to know, and getting known to, Eric's friends. They were generally older, except for a couple of girls my age, and so there were slightly different perspectives. But mother maintained that I was more mature than most girls my age, and so the adjustment wasn't too strenuous. I had opinions about what was going on in the community, the world, and some of what we all saw on TV about various things, and they weren't the gum-chewing teeny-bopper view that I think, that I know some of the kids my age had and never outgrew. Plus I could defend my views. Not all of them could do that.

One of the girls admitted she didn't understand my views on some of the fashions that were being shown in the magazines. "I have very pale skin," I told her. "Most of what we're seeing look better with a tanned skin." I laughed briefly. "It takes me so long to tan without burning that I almost don't want to even do it. I've gotten used to spending my entire summer in SPF 30 or more."

"Couldn't you try one of these tanning creams?"

"I tried one, and itched for days. As for the others, I don't know. Right now I'm used to the pale look. Who knows, maybe by summer's end I'll actually start to look tanned."

"Mary Jean has the opposite problem. She looks tanned with maybe 20 minutes a day." She sighed. "I wish."

"Must be nice to be able to wear summer fashions."

"Have you thought ... No, you probably have."

I didn't have to ask. "Probably. I think last summer I tried nearly everything. The most I got was freckles. This year I've seen a little bit of tanning. I've been careful, though, so I haven't had much in the way of a sunburn. This last weekend at my Grandmother's was the closest I came to a prolonged time in the sun."

"Your Grandmother's?"

"The one in Shreveport is so stuffy that I have to spend time outside or I'd scream. The other has some property on a lake, so at least I can find things to do when I'm outside. In Shreveport I take a couple of books, hot, throbbing romances."

She kind of laughed. "The kind your mother probably doesn't know you read."

"Oh, I'm sure she does, but I'm not sure she cares. Usually my sister Krys buys them, and then I latch on to them after that."

"Ah, yeah, I've gotten all the good ones from my sister or an aunt." She cocked her head, and in the most casual voice possible, asked, "How did you and Eric meet?"

"We were at my Grandmother's, and he was nearby. He was kind of cute, and well..."

"Ah."

"We had a lot of chances to talk, too."

"You don't know how envious some of the other girls are. He's totally ignored them."

"I guess I just came along at the right time." I didn't add that I'd had sex with him, and even kissed him, before I knew his name. And one of the first things we did after sharing our names was to have sex again. That she didn't need to know.

"I'm hoping he'll ask me out to a movie or something," I added in a low voice.

""Well, good luck."

She left to spread the word, and to drop what she'd just learned into the mix of gossip that swirled around Eric and me. I let out a very slight sigh of relief. Here I was, thinking all the way through this whole thing, and I was trying very hard not to show it.

We did get a chance to go walking by ourselves. The day was warm, and there was a section of the school grounds between the athletic complex and the main building where kids could sit out on the lawn, or walk, or even goof off. You were in plain view of everyone, so there wasn't the chance for anything adults might object to. All of that meant we could be alone, but out in public so we weren't "alone" in the sense that would set tongues wagging more than normal.

"Do you want to go to dinner sometime this week?" he asked when we were out of earshot of most people

"I'd love to," I said. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, there's a movie playing in town, or we could go to a dance."

"How about the movie on Tuesday, and the dance on Thursday?"

"Good, because there's a party this weekend I wanted to take you to."

"A party?"

"Like at your grandmother's."

"I'd love to go. I had so much fun, especially after we hooked up."

"Well, that sort of thing is supposed to be for couples."

He smiled, I smiled, and it was set. We'd go out this weekend, and have fun. It would definitely be adult fun, and by implication we wouldn't be doing that sort of thing during the week. That was a shame because I'd love doing it with him, but we'd have privacy at the party, and we'd be in public for a movie and a dance. Of course at the party we'd be doing it with other people as well, but that was fun, too.

"Will there be anyone we know at this party?"

"Some of the people we saw last weekend. There's a party nearly every weekend. Usually the adults are having one too, so it all works out."

"You got into this through your parents."

He nodded. "The same, I think, as you did."

It was my turn to nod. "I knew about it, in a general sort of way, though I wasn't up on the details. Mom was pretty close-mouthed, and Krys, well, she doesn't talk about that part of her life at all. There are times I think she wishes that whole aspect of life would simply go away and not bother her."

"She'll come around, though maybe not so much as to enjoy the parties."