Jane Smiley - Early Warning

She had a rule that he couldn’t come during horse shows (and there were lots of horse shows in the summer). Two nights she had been sick, and he had stayed away for a week after spraining his ankle playing baseball. What with taking all his stuff to the university and then some orientation classes, he hadn’t been here for six nights. He lifted the elastic of his shorts over his erection, dropped them to the floor, and slid in next to her, partly under the sheet. She kissed him. Her lips were always sort of flat and hard to begin with, then they softened and warmed. He pressed his erection against her stomach, and her leg came over his, drawing him closer; then she put her hands on either side of his head and slipped her tongue into his mouth. His cock got harder — too hard, he thought. If he entered her now, he knew he would come quickly. He decided to think of something, and then he thought of burning his tongue on hot soup. He thrust once, and then another time, and then he stopped. Her eyes were closed. She turned him over on his back and rose above him, smiling, in the moonlight.

She moved slightly, smoothly. The bedsprings creaked one time, and she stopped. Crazy as she was, she had never done anything that might disclose to her parents (fortunately, upstairs and at the other end of the hall) what was taking place in her bedroom. She said that they were sure she was still a virgin and “occupied her time” so thoroughly with the horses that she didn’t have a moment for boys. It was true that, since the beginning of the summer show season, they hadn’t gone on a single actual date — not eaten a bite together, seen a movie, been to a party. Did anyone know they were even friends? Tim had said nothing to Steve or Stanley Sloan. Thinking of this secrecy made another thrust irresistible. She groaned, hardly louder than a breath.

She smiled a beautiful smile that he almost never saw, except in the framed picture on her desk of her on a horse, seven years old, her hair sticking up and her grin delirious with pleasure. Her smile made her eyes crinkle upward and revealed her inner mischievousness. He pulled her down and kissed her again, two or three times. Burning soup. Burning soup. His cock, just for a moment, stopped throbbing, but his balls made themselves felt, hard between his legs, ready to ache.

She froze, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked toward the door of her room. Then he could hear it — a footstep in the hall. Her father’s voice said, “Fiona?” Then, “Fiona?”

Fiona’s head turned and she stared down at him, made an O with her mouth, and said, as if she were just waking up, “Huh? Everything okay, Daddy?”

“I thought I heard you.”

“What?” Just exactly as if she had been asleep.

Then, because he moved, because she moved, Tim ejaculated. His back arched, his entire lower body shook and throbbed, and his mouth opened. At the very moment that he felt the usual scintillating thrill run into his brain, her hand, a large hand, covered his mouth. He opened his eyes and put his own hand on top of hers. As best he could, he stilled all movement. She said, “I’m fine, Daddy. I must have fallen asleep reading my book.”

“Your door is locked.”

His muscles seemed to vibrate, but he wasn’t moving.

“Oh, I did that by mistake. I’ll unlock it in the morning.” She yawned loudly. “I’m just so tired. Night-night.”

“Night-night, honey. Just as long as you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, Daddy.”

Tim realized that he hadn’t pulled out.

Now they were absolutely still, listening to the retreating footsteps — three, four, then up the stairs. Tim felt a belated urge to flee, but she had him pinned. Her strawberry-blond hair was in her face, and she was looking down at him with, it must be said, an adoring look in her eyes.

They slept until dawn. Tim woke up when he felt her move beside him. It was the first time he had ever spent the night with her. She looked good even in the early light, even as she whispered, “It’s after six-thirty. When I go down to breakfast, you need to leave.”

He nodded.

She dressed methodically. She made a fat ponytail and wound a rubber band around it. She kissed him on the forehead, then on the lips. She went out the door; he waited until all footsteps had quieted, and slipped out the window, down the tree, across the ditch, and up the road, without looking back. If someone saw him, he figured he would hear about it soon enough.

—

AT THE MADEIRA SCHOOL, not four miles from Aunt Lillian and Uncle Arthur’s (though she could only go there once in a while), Janny informed the other girls that her name was Janet, and after that, she felt older, smarter, and prettier. It didn’t matter that Tim was gone to the university and Debbie was busy with her last push before college applications, or that Aunt Lillian herself seemed a little distracted. Whenever Janet got leave, there was so much going on — all of Dean’s friends splashing in the pool; Tina at the easel in her room, or wandering around talking to herself (when Janet asked her what she was talking about, she said she was telling a story); Aunt Lillian cooking enough for ten, adding plates for friends until someone had to sit at the counter, with Uncle Arthur’s colleagues in and out (once, she opened the door of the hall bathroom, and a man in a hat was sitting on the toilet; when she gasped, he smiled and said, “Peekaboo”) — that she felt wonderful for days, just knowing she loved them and they loved her. Since she could not imagine anything better than being related to the Mannings, she was not intimidated at all by this fancy boarding school or the other girls she met.

She took English, French, geometry, biology, and ancient history. Whereas her roommate, Cecelia, groaned every time she hefted a textbook, Janet set hers on the left side of her desk and worked through all her lessons one by one, the minutes ticking by, and in every single one counting out her pleasure that she had left her father, mother, and two numbskull brothers behind. She was not the smartest girl in any of her classes, but she was the most methodical, the most grateful. Likewise on the hockey field: if a girl on the other team was dribbling toward the goal, or passing to another girl, Janet never took her eye off the ball — she was so effective that the goalie got bored and started yawning. By October, the teachers would not call on her anymore. Was she ambitious? Did she want to get to Radcliffe, or even Vassar? Not at all. If you took a string and a pin and poked the pin into Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where her parents and the twins were, the farthest college from the pin that was still in the United States was the University of Hawaii, which was fine with Janet.

She was friendly to everyone, even to Cecelia, whose heart had been set on Chatham Hall, where her best friend had gone. Cecelia was making herself disagreeable so that they would send her home; she refused to bathe or wash her hair. When Janet told this story at Aunt Lillian’s, everyone laughed and said bring her over and we’ll throw her in the pool. And, Janet knew, Cecelia would enjoy every minute of it. Madeira, like every high school, was fraught with cliques and gossip, but Janet didn’t care. She did not dread being ignored; she did not dread being talked about; she did not dread having the wrong hair or braces; she did not dread breaking the rules and being punished, though this was unlikely. The only thing she dreaded was Christmas vacation at home.

She began her campaign at Halloween. As she wrapped Tina’s head in her mummy costume (careful to leave openings for her nose and eyes), she said, “What day does your Christmas vacation start, honey?” Tina went to public school.

Tina had insisted that Janet wrap her mouth. She mumbled, “We onry hab a wik.”