She wished now that it was Sunday and that she and Hank had made up (somehow) and were down by the river, Hank bare-chested, in his faded blues, and she in the outfit that Daddy didn’t like her to wear in public.

The wish became real and she stood there quietly, following it as if it were a film.

Ella was small and compact. Her flesh was firm. Its pigmentation was such that she seemed always to have a slight tan. Whereas the legs of the other schoolgirls were white, straight, with little bruise marks showing at the ankles, hers were almost golden, and the calves tapered downward to squared-off tendons.­ For this reason, she disliked wearing the regulation white socks; but she had to, anyway. Even with grown women, it was considered brazen in Caxton to go about with naked ankles.

She hid her breasts, usually, in the loose-fitting white silk blouse that was part of the unofficial school uniform; and a plain dark skirt concealed, though with less success, the slender waist and sharp, curving hips. A sexy haircut was about the only allowable concession, and she worked on this continually.

Sixteen years exactly showed in her face; however, with some effort, and the application of make-up, she was occasionally able to look older.

She thought of herself as the Doris Day type, as opposed to the Marilyn Monroe type, and she guessed that it was this youthful quality that made Hank so shy around her. It was understandable, of course. Seventeen-year-old boys were almost always shy. Still, she was missing out on an awful lot; she knew that. Cora Dillaway, who wasn’t nearly so pretty, had been practically raped by Jimmy Sorentino one night at the Star-Lite Drive-In, she knew, and Sally Monk was keeping very quiet about the date she had with Thad Denman.

A sudden anger filled her, as it had so often in the past week; and a certain small sadness. She could have put up with the whole thing, all right, because Hank was certainly the most popular boy at Caxton High. But when she learned that he’d taken Rhoda Simms to Rusty’s and that they hadn’t got back until one in the morning, that ruined everything. Rhoda was loud and the boys whistled at her, but her underwear wasn’t always clean, and she had a habit of spitting pieces of cigarette tobacco out of her mouth. She had other habits, too.

Well, it only proved one thing. Hank might be big and handsome, but he was still a little boy. He was a little boy and Ella was a woman, and that was the trouble right there.

Vaguely she wondered if all women had to just stop and wait for boys to catch up with them.