It

He glanced over at Richie and Bev sitting together on the bench and chanted, 'Richie and Beverly up in a tree! Kay-Eye-Ess-Ess-Eye-En –Gee! First comes love, then comes marriage — '

' — and here comes Richie with a baby carriage!' Marcia finished, cawing laughter.

'Sit on this, dear heart,' Bev said, and whipped the finger on them. Marcia looked away, disgusted, as if she could not believe anyone could be so uncouth. Gordon slipped an arm around her and called back over his shoulder to Richie, 'Maybe I'll see you later, four –eyes.'

'Maybe you'll see your mother's girdle,' Richie responded smartly (if a little senselessly). Beverly collapsed with laughter. She leaned against Richie's shoulder for a moment and Richie had just time to reflect that her touch, and the sensation of her lightly carried weight, was not exactly unpleasant. Then she sat up again.

'What a pair of jerks,' she said.

'Yeah, I think Marcia Fadden pees rosewater,' Richie said, and Beverly got the giggles again.

'Chanel Number Five,' she said, her voice muffled because her hands were over her mouth.

'You bet,' said Richie, although he hadn't the slightest idea what Chanel Number Five was. 'Bev?'

'What?'

'Can you show me how to make it sleep?'

'I guess so. I never tried to show anyone.'

'How did you learn? Who showed you?'

She gave him a disgusted look. 'No one showed me. I just figured it out. Like twirling a baton. I'm great at that — '

'No conceit in your family,' Richie said, rolling his eyes.

'Well, I am,' she said. 'But I didn't take classes, or anything.'

'You really can twirl?'

'Sure.'

'Probably be a cheerleader in junior high, huh?'

She smiled. It was a kind of smile Richie had never seen before. It was wise, cynical, and sad all at the same time. He recoiled a little from its unknowing power, as he had recoiled from the picture of downtown in Georgie's album when it had begun to move.

'That's for girls like Marcia Fadden,' she said. 'Her and Sally Mueiler and Greta Bowie. Girls who pee rosewater. Their fathers help to buy the sports equipment and the uniforms. They got an in. I'll never be a cheerleader.' ,«

'Jeez, Bev, that's no attitude to take — '

'Sure it is, if it's the truth.' She shrugged. 'I don't care. Who wants to do somersaults and show your underwear to a million people, anyway? Look, Richie. Watch this.'

For the next ten minutes she worked on showing Richie how to make his yo-yo sleep. Near the end, Richie actually began to get the hang of it, although he could usually only get it to come halfway up the string after waking it up.

'You're not jerking your fingers hard enough, that's all,' she said.

Richie looked at the clock on the Merrill Trust across the street and jumped up, stuffing his yo-yo into his back pocket. 'Jeepers, I gotta get goin, Bev. I'm supposed to meet ole Haystack. He'll think I changed my mind or some –thin.'

'Who's Haystack?'

'Oh. Ben Hanscom. I call him Haystack, though. You know, like Haystack Calhoun, the wrestler.'

Bev frowned at him. 'That's not very nice. I like Ben.'

'Doan whup me, massa!' Richie screeched in his Pickaninny Voice, rolling his eyes and flapping his hands. 'Doan whup me, I'se gwineter be a good dahkie, ma'am, I'se — '

'Richie,' Bev said thinly.

Richie quit it. 'I like him, too,' he said. 'We all built a dam down in the Barrens a couple of days ago and — '

'You go down there? You and Ben play down there?'

'Sure. A bunch of us guys do. It's sorta cool down there.' Richie glanced at the clock again. 'I really gotta split for the scene. Ben'll be waiting.'

'Okay.'

He paused, thought, and said, 'If you're not doing anything, come on with me.'

'I told you. I don't have any money.'

'I'll pay your way. I got a couple of bucks.'

She tossed the remains of her ice-cream cone in a nearby litter barrel. Her eyes, that fine clear shade of blue-gray, turned up to his. They were coolly amused. She pretended to primp her hair and asked him, 'Oh dear, am I being asked out on a date?'

For a moment Richie was uncharacteristically flustered. He actually felt a blush rising in his cheeks. He had made the offer in a perfectly natural way, just as he had made it to Ben . . . except hadn't he said something to Ben about owesies? Yes. But he hadn't said anything about owesies to Beverly.

Richie suddenly felt a bit weird. He had dropped his eyes, retreating from her amused glance, and realized now that her skirt had ridden up a bit when she shifted forward to drop the ice-cream cone in the litter barrel, and he could see her knees. He raised his eyes but that was no help; now he was looking at the beginning swells of her bosoms.

Richie, as he usually did in such moments of confusion, took refuge in absurdity.

'Yes! A date!' he screamed, throwing himself on his knees before her and holding his clasped hands up. 'Please come! Please come! I shall ruddy kill meself if you say no, ay-wot? Wot-wot?'

'Oh, Richie, you're such a fuzzbrain,' she said, giggling again . . . but weren't her cheeks also a trifle flushed? If so, it made her look prettier than ever. 'Get up before you get arrested.'

He got up an d plopped down beside her again. He felt as if his equilibrium had returned. A little foolishness always helped when you had a dizzy spell, he believed. 'You wanna go?'

'Sure,' she said. Thank you very much. Think of it! My first date. Just wait until I write it in my diary tonight.' She clasped her hands together between her budding breasts, fluttered her eyelashes rapidly, and then laughed.

'I wish you'd stop calling it that,' Richie said.

She sighed. 'You don't have much romance in your soul.'

'Damn right I don't.'

But he felt somehow delighted with himself. The world seemed suddenly very clear to him, and very friendly. He found himself glancing sideways at her from time to time. She was looking in the shop windows — at the dresses and nightgowns in Cornell-Hopley's, at the towels and pots in the window of the Discount Barn, and he stole glances at her hair, the line of her jaw. He observed the way her bare arms came out of the round holes of her blouse. He

saw the edge of her slip strap. All of these things delighted him. He could not have said why, but what had happened in George Denbrough's bedroom had never seemed more distant to him than it did right then. It was time to go, time to meet Ben, but he would sit here just a moment lo nger while her eyes window –shopped, because it was good to look at her, and be with her.

9

Kids were ponying up their quarter admissions at the Aladdin's box– office window and going into the lobby. Looking through the bank of glass doors, Richie could se e a crowd around the candy counter. The popcorn machine was in overdrive, spilling out drifts of the stuff, its greasy hinged lid jittering up and down. He didn't see Ben anywhere. He asked Beverly if she had spotted him. She shook her head.

'Maybe he already went in.'

'He said he didn't have any money. And the Daughter of Frankenstein there would never let him in without a ticket.' Richie cocked a thumb at Mrs Cole, who had been the ticket-taker at the Aladdin since a time well before the pictures had begun to talk. Her hair, dyed a bright red, was so thin you could see her scalp beneath. She had enormous hanging lips which she painted with plum-colored lipstick. Wild blotches of rouge covered her cheeks. Her eyebrows were drawn on in black pencil. Mrs Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.