The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta Page B

leave. She could feel the frustration in his eyes as she headed for the door. It waspainful, like being trapped in a bad dream where all you had to do was say one thing, but you didn’t know the words.
    RUTH LAY down on her towel in a purple one-piece bathing suit and pretended to read. It was a kind of torture, knowing how close he was, how simple it would be if she could only find the courage to take matters into her own hands, to walk across the lawn and ring his doorbell.
    He was playing his trumpet again, but it was just scales, no more songs that might be secret messages, and the mechanical up-and-down-and-up of it started to drive her a little crazy, as monotonous as a chain saw or an ice-cream-truck jingle. She rolled onto her stomach, sealed her ears with her index fingers, and forced herself to concentrate on the novel. The story was ridiculous—something about a girl with big thumbs and her friend named Bonanza Jellybean—and it suddenly seemed like Paul had made a fool of her, convincing her to lie outside in a bathing suit and read this stupid book for nothing.
    For nothing.
    She cried out in frustration and scrambled to her feet, leaving the towel and the book behind as she hurried across the lawn to her house. She had just reached the patio when she heard a window being raised. Paul poked his head outside, peering down at her from the second floor.
    “Ruthie,” he said. He’d never called her that before, and she felt a warm blush spreading across her face.
    “Yeah?”
    “The back door’s open.”
    WHAT AMAZED her wasn’t that she went to him, crossing the lawn in her bathing suit, letting herself in, and climbing the stairs to his bedroom. That part of it was a foregone conclusion, all she’d been waiting for since the first day they had walked home together. What amazed her was what she did when she got there.
    It was mystifying, really. She was a month away from her sixteenth birthday, and still fairly innocent, at least compared to a lot of girls she knew. She’d played a few rounds of spin-the-bottle in junior high, and had kissed three different boys in her first two years of high school. The most recent one, Scott Molloy, had touched her breasts, but only briefly, and only through her bra.
    Ruth really didn’t know how to account for the recklessness—the complete absence of fear—that came over her the moment she stepped into his room. He just looked so harmless—so sweet and nervous—sitting on the bed, the trumpet resting on his bedside table next to a bag of Ruffles, his injured foot propped on a pillow. He started to say something complicated—it was part apology for keeping her waiting so long, mixed in with guilty mutterings about Missy—but she shushed him with a kiss and started fumbling with his belt. His mouth tasted like tuna on rye.
    “Ruth?” His voice trembled slightly, as if she were about to burn him with a cigarette. “What are you doing?”
    “Let’s find out,” she told him.
    It had something to do with Mandy, Ruth understood that much, because she had the distinct impression that her sister was watching her, an invisible third person in the room, smiling with approval as she unzipped Paul’s fly and tugged his pants down to his knees, nodding in encouragement as she peeled off her bathing suit and tossed it on the floor.
    “Ruth?” Paul said again. “Are you sure—”
    She pressed a finger to his lips as she climbed on top of him.
    Go ahead , Mandy seemed to say. Don’t be afraid. It’ll only hurt a little, and then it’ll get better .
    “It’s okay,” she whispered, reaching down and guiding him inside. And it did hurt, a lot more than she’d expected, though she tried not to show it, still keenly aware of the sensation of being judged by her sister, of proving herself to a beloved teacher.
    Because, of course, that was how Ruth had learned everything she knew, lying in bed at night, listening drowsy and aroused to Mandy’s half-sheepish,