Read April North for Free Online Page B

knees were shaking and she could barely breathe.
    Suddenly he released her. She floundered for a moment, then regained her balance and stepped backward slightly. She wondered what he was going to do next
    He said, “You’re sweet, April.”
    She was silent.
    “Very sweet,” he said. “Do you want to go to bed with me, April.”
    She nodded.
    “And I want to go to bed with you, April. But not now. Tomorrow night, April. When we have all the time that we need.”
    He laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to take you April.”
    She went with him.

4
    THERE was only one point where she felt foolish. All the way home, her neat buttocks cupped by the bucket seat of the low-slung Mercedes, her suitcase propped again upon her knees, everything seemed perfectly logical, perfectly free and easy. And when Craig leaned over lazily in front of her house to brush her lips with a fleeting kiss, everything was still quite perfect and quite sensible.
    But when the Mercedes roared like a lion and headed back for Craig’s home, and when she was left to enter her house alone, suitcase in hand, everything was not quite so perfect or logical or sensible any longer. Alone now, she was a little girl who had been trying to run away from home, and who was now returning with her suitcase in her hand and her tail between her legs. No matter how sensible her actions might be when viewed from a distance, here she was with her silly suitcase and there was her house, looming ominously at her, and there was just no way to get the suitcase into the house without looking like several different kinds of a damn fool. The hour was quarter to eight—she had missed dinner and she was getting home just in time to tell Jim Bregger that he could go to hell for himself because she was not going out with him, after all. Perhaps some people could have felt perfectly calm about coming home under such circumstances but April was not one of them, not by any means.
    The front door was ajar. She gave it a shove and walked in, hoping that no one was home. But just as she stepped into the hall her mother materialized, dishcloth in hand and worried look in eyes.
    “April—”
    “I meant to call,” she said, improvising furiously. “I tried once and the line was busy, and then it was time for dinner. And after dinner I figured it would be just as quick to come home as to call, so I didn’t. Call, that is. I’m sorry, Mom.”
    “Where were you?”
    “Judy Liverpool’s house,” she said. “I went over there after school and then they asked me to stay for dinner and I figured it would be all right.”
    “You should have called, April.”
    “I know,” she said. She managed to remember the suitcase before her mother noticed it. “I was going to stay the night,” she lied neatly. “But I changed my mind. Besides, I’ve got a date tonight and he’s coming any minute, so I have to be home to tell him that I won’t go out with him.”
    The words came too fast for Mrs. North—the sentences changed direction too chaotically and she was hopelessly lost. “A date,” she said weakly. “And you aren’t going?”
    “No, Mom. It’s with Jim Bregger, and he has a terrible reputation with the girls, only I didn’t know about it when I made the date, but Judy Liverpool told me and I know about it now. So I’m not going.”
    “A bad reputation?”
    April nodded slowly. “They say he tries to get girls to do things,” she said. “You know what I mean, Mom.”
    Mrs. North could guess. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “Don’t you dare go out with him. I know you wouldn’t let him do anything, April—”
    “Of course not.”
    “—but you have to safeguard your own reputation, you know. When a girl dates a fast boy, even if she’s completely innocent, folks begin to talk. You have to guard against that sort of talk, April. Evil tongues do the devil’s work.”
    “Yes, Mom.”
    Mrs. North turned and carried her dishcloth back to the