Star curled her lip up and narrowed her eyes.
"So then what happened?" she queried like some cross-examiner out to prove perjury.
"He just sat there, a little shocked, I think. I really felt like shocking him, I suppose. So, I started to unbutton my blouse. He looked frozen and I guess I felt so powerful because of what I was doing to him that I continued."
Cathy lifted her head and looked at me with new interest in her eyes.
"My heart was pounding, but I reached back and unclipped my bra. I just sat there with it hanging loosely. His face got all red.
"'Well?' I asked him, `Do you want to see and touch me or not?' "
"You were really playing with him," Star commented. "Like playing with a Yo-Yo or something," she added, nodding at Jade who rested her chin on her hand and stared at me, barely breathing.
"It felt like I was an actress in a play
performing a role. He nodded and I took off my bra."
It was so quiet in the office, I could hear the water running through the pipes on the other side of the house.
"What did he do after you took off your bra?" Star asked breathlessly.
"What do you think'?" I tossed back at her.
"You did it in his room the first time you were there with him!"
"No, not that time. A different time," I said, "but only once."
"Only once? Why?" Star asked.
For a long moment, I couldn't bring out the words. It was like swallowing a wad of gum and waiting for it to go down. They stared. Finally, I had enough air in my lungs to speak.
"Because I found out he was a bigger liar than all our parents put together," I told her.
I didn't know I was crying until the tear dripped off my chin.
Doctor Marlowe wanted me to pause here and take a break for a few minutes.
"Whether you want to or not," she said. "I need a bathroom break myself." She stood up.
The others were all staring at me, Cathy just as directly as Jade and Star.
I rose and followed Doctor Marlowe out of the office. The three of them sat quietly, watching us walk out, no one so much as taking a deep breath.
And that included me as well.
5
When I returned with Doctor Marlowe, I could see from the expressions on the other girls' faces that they had been talking about me. They had trouble looking directly at me, especially Cathy. I sat and waited for Doctor Marlowe, who put on her glasses to read something on her pad before turning back to us. She crooked her right pinky finger as if holding a thought around it and then smiled when she was finished reading.
"Do you want to continue, Misty?" she asked. I glanced at the others. All three of them looked worried that I wouldn't.
"I don't care. Sure," I said and started. It was almost like having eaten something bad and needing to get it out of your system.
"A few days after I had gone with Charles Allen to his home, I brought him home with me after school so he could meet my mother and she could meet him. I had spoken about him a few times at dinner, and that was enough for her to start calling him my boyfriend.
"'I should meet your boyfriend,' she insisted, putting on that official mother's face she hated because it made her look older. 'I should know what he's like since you're spending so much time with him and have even gone to his house and met his mother.'