Marilyn Brant: According to Jane

“C’mon, Ellie. You know you’re as bored as I am.” Sam skimmed his fingertips over the spot where my bra’s back clasp bulged beneath the cotton fabric. “Tell me your fantasy.”

As our teacher gestured with her chubby arms up in front of our suburban Chicago classroom and performed other antics to entice student participation, I thought of my fantasy: Surviving adolescence. Maybe kissing Sam someday. Being a totally cool, in control, woman of the world.

Yeah, right. But I was an optimist in the ’80s.

I did not, however, divulge these imaginings to the precocious dark-haired boy who, thanks to the eternal delights of alphabetical order, sat near me in five out of seven classes.

No.

I might lust after Sam. A lot. But I hadn’t yet become self-destructive. I knew S-A-M was shorthand for D-A-N-G-E-R.

“In your fantasy, are you groping a guy in the dark, passionately, maybe under the bleachers?” Sam suggested, his voice low. His fingers massaged my spine, channeling toward me all the vigor of a testosterone-driven teen male.

I felt chills — equal parts anxiety and longing — at his touch. I tried to lean away from him again, but he drew me back with one swift motion.

“And are you feeling that guy’s hands rubbing your body, too? First, over your clothes, and then” — he paused to stroke his thumb down my bare neck — “underneath them?”

“Cut it out , Sam,” I whispered over my shoulder, finally breaking away despite my absurd desire for more. Since kindergarten he’d poked me in the back with his pencil tip and badgered me with pesky comments, but this was the first time he’d ever really touched my skin. I didn’t know what to make of it.

See, with anyone else I might’ve thought some tiny crush thing was going on, but I wasn’t dealing with a typical, gawky sixteen-year-old boy. This was Sam Blaine , a guy who exuded experience even then. A guy who’d morphed into a rare combination of good-looking, athletic, brainy and popular. Versus me, who was, well…just brainy. Or, at least, intelligent enough to know I wouldn’t rate high on Mr. Cool’s “To Date” list.

I sighed, wishing Sam’s attentions were sincere, and watched as our teacher wrote the title of our new novel on the chalkboard. Pride and Prejudice. Then out came the big box of paperbacks, distributed to us like the slap of breaded chicken patties on our hot-lunch trays.

I picked up my copy. A second later I felt Sam trace a pattern on my arm with his pinky, and I rolled my eyes. Guess he was more bored than usual. Just as I was about to tell him to knock it off yet again, I heard the first tsk .

In a panic of self-consciousness, I dropped the book back on my desk and glanced at our classmates. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us in the far-right row. Everyone looked lost in their own daydreams or make-out fantasies or whatever.

But I heard more tsking.

“Who said that?” I asked Sam, shooting a look behind me.

“Who said what?”

“The tsk, tsk noises.”

Sam’s forehead crinkled. He motioned me closer and I bent back toward him, a mere three inches away from his mocking blue eyes and those ever-smirking lips. I tried hard to keep my view of him peripheral. Gazing head-on at Sam’s striking features always made me sweat.

Another tsk came from somewhere in the room.

“That! Did you hear it?” I asked, swiveling around in my seat until I faced him. My eyes darted around in hopes of spotting the tsker.

But Sam didn’t seem to have heard it. Instead he simply grinned, his hand nudging my left shoulder until I made full eye contact with him. “Must be your subconscious speaking. It’s saying — ” He tilted his head to the side and squinted as if in deep concentration. “‘Ellie Barnett needs more sexual experience or she’ll die a virgin.’”

Then his hand slipped lower.

He covertly grazed the side of my left breast with his palm, his fingers daring to dance along the bra’s underwire before breaking the connection between us.

I stifled a gasp and stared at him, my mouth agape. For a split second I thought, Did he mean to do that? Was he seriously making a move on me? Then common sense took over, and I knew this had to be one of his little jokes. Sam loved games.

He sent me a smug, defiant look. His hand, an inch away, was still poised for grasping.

Before he could try that trick again, I seized his wrist with my long, strong, meticulously polished fingernails, and I used them as pink claws to dig four crescent-shaped notches into his hairless inner arm. Deep, darkening imprints against that pale skin.

Sam grunted and pulled away. Unfortunately, his moan elicited the attention of our teacher.

“Miss Barnett. Mr. Blaine. ” She elongated her syllables with believable menace. “Please flirt on your own time.”

The class snickered and my face burned, making me wish I could bolt out the door and hide in the girls’ bathroom. I stole a glance at Sam. He didn’t quite have the decency to blush, but he slunk down in his seat, obviously displeased at getting caught.

With her reprimand delivered, Mrs. Leverson busied herself locating the handouts for our next novel.

The second she turned her back, Sam hissed in my ear, “Shit, Ellie. Are you trying to scar me for life?” He pointed to the marks on his inner wrist and had the nerve to look indignant.

I fought for a retort that wouldn’t get me in trouble. All I could come up with, though, was the really bitchy glare my sister had perfected on my parents, my brother and me.

“Leave me alone, Sam,” I managed to say, attempting to replicate the glare. “I mean it.”

Of course, I didn’t mean it. And Sam knew this.

He was too bright not to have noticed the way I’d studied him all semester, how I sparkled like a mirrored disco ball whenever he paid attention to me. Even getting to second base might’ve been okay if his interest in me were genuine. And if we were somewhere private.

But Sam did not exude earnestness of any kind, and his motives were nothing if not a complete mystery. He had what the adults called “an attitude,” and he was copping it big-time that day.

“You…don’t…want me…to…touch you?” Sam said, his tone indicating disbelief. He knew I knew that virtually every other girl in our grade would’ve gladly agreed to be manhandled by him.

But I whispered, “No.”

As if guessing the hypocrisy of my words, he narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth. I turned away before he could speak.

Why? Because even then I craved this silly romantic thing. Craved it despite knowing it was stupid. I wanted my first real boyfriend to write me love notes that I could hide in my pocket and reread later. Or hold my hand and dance with me to the latest Journey ballads. Or refuse to tell his friends the exciting things we might do in the back row of a dimly lit movie theater.

I didn’t want some guy playing with my emotions for in-school entertainment, especially not the very guy I’d had a secret crush on for eons. No. I wanted pure romantic fantasy. And I got it.

But not from Sam Blaine.

“Our next novel is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, ” Mrs. Leverson informed us, waving her handouts in the air before plopping them on Tanya Hammersley’s desk and motioning for her to distribute them. “While Tanya passes these out, take a moment to look at your new novel.”

I picked up the book again, flipped to the back cover and scanned it doubtfully: The sparring of an opinionated young couple in nineteenth-century England creates the classic and enduring romantic theme of Pride and Prejudice.