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and innocent as I seem.”
    “Well,” he said, “thank God for that.”
    She laughed. The drink was working now, loosening her up, letting her unwind. And the music, the insistently pulsating jazz, was also working. She looked around the room, deciding that she felt at home here, that she was comfortable. She looked at Craig and decided that he was the most exciting man she had ever met. She could not imagine why he would want to waste his time talking to her. He could have any girl in the world, she told herself. And he could do more than talk to them.
    “All right,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell you.”
    When she had finished, he stood up from the couch, took her empty glass and carried it to the bar. He dropped two fresh ice cubes into the glass and added a healthy splash of scotch. He made a drink for himself, brought back the two glasses and gave her one.
    “To the new April North,” he said.
    They touched glasses and she took a drink. She was somehow much calmer now. And glad that she had told him.
    “April,” he said, “if you run away to New York you’re a silly damned fool.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Exactly what I just said. Don’t you see what you’ll be doing? You’ll be accepting the judgment of this godforsaken little town, living by its values and tolerating its opinion of you. Antrim thinks you’re a tramp. Right?”
    “Right.”
    He sighed. “Do you think you’ll change their minds by running away? Do you think you’ll show much backbone by creeping out of town like a thief in the night? That won’t stop them from talking about you, April. It will only reinforce their opinions. God, don’t you see what a stupid thing you’ll be doing?”
    She stared at him. She had not thought of it that way at all. Running away had looked like the perfect solution to her. But now, listening to him, she saw that he was right. You could not change things by fleeing from them. You escaped everything but yourself.
    “Then—what should I do?”
    “Stay here.”
    “And sleep with every pimple-faced pig in the senior class? Is that an answer?”
    “No,” he said. “That’s not an answer.”
    “Then—”
    He sighed again. “April,” he said, “you’re a big girl now. You have managed to discover something that few girls realize in the course of their entire fives, and that very few come to realize while they are your age. You’ve found out that most people are narrow-minded fools and that their standards are absurd. Do you feel that you’ve done anything wrong?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Craig stared hard at her. Then his eyebrows went up a notch to mock her. “Don’t you know? All you did was admit that you were a woman with the desires of a woman. You gave in, you let your desires express themselves. Does that constitute a sin?”
    “No,” she said.
    “Then did you do anything wrong?”
    “No.”
    He sighed. “If you run away,” he said gently, “you’ll be admitting that you’ve done something wrong. You’ll be running away from Antrim and from the ideals of Antrim.”
    “Then what should I do?”
    “Stay here.”
    “But I hate it here.”
    “Do you?” He grinned. “I thought you liked my house, April.”
    “I mean that I hate Antrim. And—”
    “Stay here,” he said firmly. “Stay in Antrim. But don’t stay as a child—that’s as bad as running away like a child. Grow up, April. Grow into yourself. You can’t act like a little girl because you’re not a little girl any longer. You’ve given up the right to be a little girl. You’re a woman now.”
    He was silent. She sipped some of the scotch, thinking about what he had told her. Despite her earlier feelings, she knew that Craig Jeffers was right. She could not run away. To run was to give up, and to give up was wrong.
    But how could she stay in Antrim? If she went on with the life she had been leading, she would only manage to serve as the butt of every off-color joke told in the Antrim High locker rooms