do.” A few nights later, in her bedroom on the second floor of the Zeiglers’ Georgian colonial on Castle Creek Drive, Suzi, though wearing Norm Zeiga’s onyx signet ring on a chain around her neck, was wakened by a sound in her bedroom and looked up to see a tall figure standing over her bed—“I was too scared to scream. I seemed to know, even before he knelt beside me, and kissed me, who it was. ‘Don’t be afraid, Suzi, I won’t hurt you,’ John Reddy whispered. ‘And if I do, forgive me.’” Evangeline Fesnacht came to school pale, moist-eyed, strangely silent. When Mr. Lepage tried to engage her in their customary witty banter, as the rest of us looked on, Evangeline sighed, lowered her gaze meekly and made no reply. “Have I, Miss Fesnacht,” Mr. Lepage said in a voice heavy with sarcasm, “a rival for your thoughts this morning?” In the back seat of his brother’s Dodge Castille, as Art Lutz kissed her eagerly with his opened mouth, and awkwardly tried, with his left hand, to unhook her bra beneath her sweater, Tessa Maypole burst into guilty tears, saying, “Oh, Artie, I can’t. I can’t. I’m in love with someone else, it wouldn’t be fair to you.” Lee Ann Whitfield, our fat girl, was observed in the school cafeteria pushing around, on her plate, a large portion of macaroni-and-cheese, with the look of one who has lost her appetite, or her soul. Ritchie Eickhorn noted in his journal, under the new, heady influence of Pascal We yearn for eternity — but inhabit only time. Miss Flechsenhauer noted with suspicion an unusual number of girls asking to be excused, with “cramps” or “migraine,” from gym, swim class, team practice. “What is this, girls, an epidemic?” Miss O’Brien, our school nurse, a chesty, dour woman with a perpetual sinus snuffle, noted, with suspicion, an unusual number of girls requesting Bufferin and Midol and to be allowed to lie, with heating pads on their lower abdomens, on cots in the peaceful, darkened infirmary. “What is this, girls, an epidemic?” John Reddy Heart was said to have been seen at nine A.M. Sunday church service at the United Methodist church on Haggarty Road. “But nobody goes there, who would’ve seen him?” John Reddy Heart, as spring progressed, was looking, at school, more and more exhausted, as if he no longer slept at night. His eyelids drooped as our teachers droned on; he was having trouble, it seemed, staying awake in his classes. His left eye was blood-shot and leaked tears. His jaws were sometimes stippled in tiny cuts from careless or hurried shaving. Some mornings, he didn’t shave at all, evidently. His longish hair, separating in greasy quills, exuded a frank, pungent odor, sharp as that of his body. Girls swooned if they passed too close to him. It was known to be particularly dangerous to pass too close by John Reddy on the stairs: Several sophomore girls nearly fainted. In fourth-period English, Miss Bird, leading a discussion of Robert Frost’s “After Apple Picking,” stared at John Reddy Heart who was gripping his textbook and frowning into it as if the secret of life might be located there, in a few teasing lines of poetry; she sniffed his scent, and for a long embarrassing moment lost the thread of her thought. We’d realized for some time, uneasily, that Miss Bird no longer wore her hair skinned back from her face in that unflattering style but curled and fluffed out, “feminine” in the way that women are “feminine” in late-night movies of the Forties. Her small, pursed lips were a savage red. Her slightly bulgey brown eyes, fixed on John Reddy, who may have been glancing shyly up at her, appeared to be shifting out of focus. “Miss Bird? I’ll open a window,” Ken Fischer said quickly, leaping to his feet. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.” For a precarious moment—“I held my breath, oh, God, she’s going to faint!”—Miss Bird swayed groggily in her spike-heeled shoes. Then she smiled wanly at Ken, touching the back of her thin hand to her forehead, and the sinister spell was broken. Yet the following morning in Mr. Dunleddy’s biology class, where John Reddy sat in his prescribed corner, first row, extreme right, Sandi Scott, usually so poised and droll, astonished us by bursting into tears in the midst of a recitation of the steps of mitosis: “‘Prophase’—‘metaphase’—‘anaphase’—‘telophase’—Oh, God, it’s so relentless! So cruel.” Mr. Dunleddy, short of breath even sitting, overweight by fifty pounds, who would be the first of our teachers to die, a few years later, of a stroke at the relatively young age of fifty-six, stared at the weeping girl with middle-aged eyes of dolor and regret. That night, Evangeline Fesnacht typed the first line of what would become, eventually, after numerous metamorphoses, her first published novel (“wild, dithyrambic, dark, riddlesome”) I woke from a dream so vivid I would search the world for its origin — in vain. Ritchie Eikhorn noted in his journal We inhabit time but remember only “eternal moments.” God’s mercy. Dexter Cambrook impulsively called Pattianne Groves. He was flooded with excitement as with an intoxicant in his normally calm veins—“My acceptance just came from Harvard!” He waited with sweaty palms, pounding heart for Pattianne’s kid brother to call her to the phone and asked her point-blank if she’d go with him to the senior prom and was met with, after a moment’s startled silence, “Oh, Dexter? Did you say — Dexter? Cambrook? Oh, gee, thanks. I mean, that’s so thoughtful of you Dexter. But I’m sorry, I guess I’ll be going with—” Verrie Myers and Trish Elders, closest friends since kindergarten, who, in recent weeks, had scarcely been able to look at each other, each feeling a deep physical revulsion for the other, found themselves walking swiftly, then breaking into a run, like foals, onto the vividly green playing field behind school. Each girl grabbed the other’s hand at the same instant. Their uplifted faces were luminous, radiant. Their eyes shone. We watched, a haphazard and unknowing trapezoid of (male, yearning) observers, one of us from a second-floor window of the school, another from the parking lot and the third as he was leaving the building at the rear, as the girls in maroon gym shorts and dazzling-white T-shirts ran, clutching hands; at that moment the sun burst through the storm clouds, and a diaphanous rainbow appeared in the sky, near-invisible, an arc of pale gold, rose, seablue shimmering over open fields beyond Garrison Road—“like a wayward, tossed-off gesture of God” (as Ritchie Eickhorn would one day observe). It was John Reddy Heart toward whom those girls were running, we knew. Yet we were resigned, not bitter; philosophical, not raging with testosterone jealousy. He won’t love them as we love them. One day, they will know. Unknown to any of us, John Reddy Heart was having, at that very moment, a near-encounter with an “older woman.” Sexually rapacious, stylishly dressed Mrs. Rindfleisch, Jon’s problem mother (a “nympho-mom” we’d been hearing lurid rumors of since we were all in sixth grade), her hunter green Mazda parked crookedly, idling at the curb, hurried swaying into Muller’s Drugs to pick up a prescription (for Valium: Mrs. Rindfleisch described herself as a pioneer of state-of-the-art tranquilizers in Willowsville in those heady years) and nearly collided with a display of hot water bottles, staring at the tall, rangy classmate of her son’s, what was his name, the Heart boy, the boy with the astonishing sexy eyes. Mrs. Rindfleisch heard her husky voice lift lyrically, “John Reddy! Hel-lo.” She somewhat surprised herself, cornering a boy Jon’s age who so clearly wanted to escape. (What was John Reddy doing in Muller’s? Some of us speculated he was stocking up on Trojans for the weekend, he must’ve run through rubbers like other guys run through Kleenex.) John Reddy appeared startled that Mrs. Rindfleisch knew his name. Or maybe it was the lilt of her voice, her gleaming predator-eyes and shiny lipsticked lips. He must not have recognized her though he and Jon had been on the varsity track team together and she’d come to a few meets, eager to see her son excel and proud of him even if, most times, unfortunately, he didn’t, and she wasn’t. “Well, um, John — lots of excitement imminent, yes?” Still he regarded her blankly. “I mean — the end of the school year. The end of — high school. Your prom, graduation. Such a happy time, yes?” Politely John Reddy murmured what sounded like, “Yes, ma’am.” Or possibly, “No, ma’am.” Mrs. Rindfleisch queried brightly, “And will your family be attending your graduation, I hope?” John Reddy shook his head, pained. “Why, that’s too bad! No one?” Mrs. Rindfleisch moved closer, emanating a sweet-musky scent like overripe gardenias. She tried not to lick her lips. “Why don’t you join us, then? I’m hosting a lavish brunch that day. Family, relatives, friends, scads and scads of Jon’s classmates — your classmates. Will you join us? Yes?” Not looking at the woman’s heated face, John Reddy mumbled he might be busy that day, but thanks. Flushed with her own generosity, Mrs. Rindfleisch said, “Well, John Reddy, know yourself invited. Chez Rindfleisch. Any time. In fact—” Her second Valium since lunch — or was it her third? — had just begun to kick in. That delicious downward sensation. Sliding-careening. A spiraling tightness in the groin. In the juicy crevices and folds of the groin. She had a quick, wild vision of how her pubic hair (not graying for the same shrewd reason the hairs on her head were not “graying” but shone a fetching russet-red) would appear to John Reddy Heart’s staring eyes, flattened like italics glimpsed through the pink-satiny transparency of her panty-girdle and believed it was a sight that would arouse him; she laughed, effervescent. Teeth sparkled. Asking the edgy boy if, um, would he like to join her in a Coke? a cup of coffee? a beer? a slice or two of zingy-hot pizza with all the trimmings? next door at The Haven or, better idea, her car’s right outside, ignition already switched on for a quick getaway, they could drive to Vito’s Paradiso Lounge on Niagara Boulevard, no trouble there, him being served. “What d’you say, John Reddy? Yes?” But John Reddy was mumbling, not meeting her eye, “Ma’am, thanks but I gotta go, I guess. Now.” Mrs. Rindfleisch was astonished to see her hand leap out, as long ago that very hand might’ve leapt out to forestall her swaying, toddler-age Jonathan from falling and injuring himself, now it was a beautifully maintained middle-aged hand, manicured, Revlon-red-polished nails scratchily caressing the boy’s hairy forearm, brushing against the boy’s taut groin, she saw a flicker of — what? — helpless lust in his face? — or childish fear? — “Ma’am, thanks, no.” Quickly then he walked away, about to break into a run. Mrs. Rindfleisch stared after him, incensed. How dare he! What was this! As if everyone didn’t know the brute animal, the lowlife fiend, sexy boy! As if she hadn’t one of her own, a handsome teenage son, at home! Watching John Reddy exit Muller’s as if exiting her life, steadying herself against a rack of Hallmark greeting cards. His lank black greasy hair was long enough for her to have seized into a fist, and tugged. God damn she should’ve. The way he’d insulted her. A hard-on like that, practically popping out of his zipper, and cutting his eyes at her, sending her unmistakable sex-messages with his eyes, staring at her breasts, at her (still glamorous, shapely) legs in diamond-black-textured stockings, then coolly backing away, breaking it off, teasing like coitus interruptus, the prig. Like all of them, God-damn prigs. Tears wetted Mrs. Rindfleisch’s meticulously rouged cheeks. Tears wetted Mrs. Rindfleisch’s raw-silk champagne-colored blouse worn beneath an aggressively youthful heather suede vest ideal for mild autumn days and nights. She stumbled in her high-heeled lizard-skin Gucci pumps to the door, or what appeared to be the door; she’d forgotten — what? Some reason, some purchase to be made, she’d come into Muller’s for, what was it, God damn who cares, that beautiful boy was slipping through her outstretched fingers like my very youth, my beauty, you wouldn’t believe how lovely I was, my perfect little breasts so bouncy and so free-standing, just hated to strap myself into a bra. Oh, but there he was, waiting for her — on the sidewalk — he hadn’t stalked off after all — no: It was her son Jon, glowering Jonathan, he’d sighted the Mazda crooked at the curb, motor running, left-turn signal crazily winking. “Oh, Jesus, Mom, what the hell are you doing?” this boy yelled, grabbing at her arm, and Mrs. Rindfleisch who was crying screamed, “You! You and your dirty foul-minded ‘John Reddy Heart’! Don’t any of you touch me.”