Mina knew what he wanted her to do now, because he’d shown her the previous day. She had to stroke his thighs and his groin while she murmured his name over and over. When he closed his eyes, that was the signal: then she had to unzip his jeans and free his penis, which Star called his cock. The word embarrassed her and made her blush, because apart from Star and Cassandra, no one else she knew ever used that word. Fortunately, she did not have to use it herself; she just had to stroke him, holding his penis in her hand. She was to continue saying his name while she did so; she had to breathe quietly, and lie very still; he would tell her when to stop.

When he first asked, pleaded with her to do this, Mina had thought that perhaps this was how sex could begin sometimes. She had always expected it to begin with kisses, but perhaps this was a prelude to making love which some men liked. She told herself that she knew what would happen next. It would be the way Cassandra whispered, the way it had so clearly been explained in biology class. Star would become aroused, then blood would engorge his penis, then he would have what her teacher called an erection and Cassandra called a hard-on—and then he would certainly kiss her, and then they would make love.

Behind all this mist of confusion and words, Mina thought she was prepared for this. She did not want to go on being a virgin, but she wanted the loss of her virginity to be special—not some rushed fumbling of the kind Cassandra had described, but a glorious occurrence she would never forget: she wanted it to be her gift to a man she loved—and she loved Star. As soon as he first began talking to her, she had known that at once.

No diagrams or descriptions, however, had prepared her for this. She knew she was flurried and nervous, and was perhaps making some technical mistake, but when she unzipped his jeans and took Star in her hand, even when she began to stroke him, nothing happened at all. Star’s eyes remained closed, but he did not protest, or correct her, so gradually she lost her fear. She stroked his beautiful, taut flat stomach, then laced her fingers in his dark pubic hair. Timidly, she ran her index finger along the length of his penis: its large size surprised her, and so did the extreme tenderness of this skin. She traced a vein, then held this lovely thing in her hand. She might have liked to bend forward and kiss it, because she felt overwhelmed with love for Star, and with these secrets of his body, but she did not quite dare. She continued to stroke, and once she felt a tiny quiver of life pass through this soft flesh, but then it lay inert once more, cupped in her hand, and she began to feel desperate.