The Pact Read online

  "You," James said against her temple, "are thinking too much."

  Gus smiled against his neck. She was rarely accused of that. "Maybe I ought to just feel, then," she said, slipping her hands up under James's shirt as the muscles in his back tightened in sequence, like a tide. She pushed him onto his side, slid down his zipper, and took the heat of him into her hands.

  Then she looked up, eyes sparkling. "Mr. Longwanger, I presume?"

  James grinned. "At your service."

  He moved over her, into her. She drew in her breath, and then she was not thinking at all.

  Dear Diary,

  The class guinea pig Blizard is having babys.

  Today in school Mona Ripling said she kissed Kenny Lawrence behind the wall mats during gym. Which is totaly crazy cause everyone knows Kenny is the grossest of all the other boys in 4th grade.

  Except for Chris but Chris isnt like all the other boys.

  Chris is reading an autobiography of Muhomad Alli for his book report. He asked what I was doing and I started to tell him about Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur but then I stopped. He'd probaly want to know about the knights and those are the parts I've been skipping.

  The best chapters are where Guinevere spends time with Lancelot. He has dark hair and dark eyes. He does things like lift her off her horse and call her MY LADY. I bet he treats her like the kristle egg Mom has that she won't let anybody even BREATHE near. King Arthur is an old guy and a jerk. Guinevere should just run off with Lancelot because she loves him and because they were meant for each other.

  I think its very romantic.

  If Chris knew I was crazy over fairytales I'd just die.

  Later that week, on a dare from Emily, Chris stole The joy of Sex from the library stacks.

  He hid it under his coat until they were home, and at their secret place. The boulder was shaped like an upside-down right triangle, the broad slab of rock at the top providing a ledge to perch on or cower beneath, depending on one's imagination. At different points in their childhood, it had been home base for hide-and-seek, a pirate's cave, an Indian's lean-to. Chris scuffed away some of the soft pine needles on the ground. He pulled the book out and sat down beside Emily.

  For a moment neither said a word, tilting their heads to take in the drawings of twined limbs and grasping hands. Emily ran her finger over the pen-and-ink flanks of a man rearing over a woman. "I don't know," she whispered. "I don't see anything joyous about that."

  "It must be different when you're really doing it," Chris answered. He turned the page. "Wow," he said. "That's like gymnastics."

  Emily flipped back to the beginning of the book. She stopped at a page that showed a woman on top of a man, stretched along the length of him, their hands clasped together over their heads.

  "Big deal," Chris said. "You've pinned me a million times."

  But Emily didn't hear him. She was captivated by the facing page, which depicted a man and woman joined but sitting up, their legs splayed like two crabs, their hands holding on to each other's shoulders for purchase. Their bodies, together, looked like a big bowl, as if the whole reason for having sex was to create something that could hold all the feelings they had for each other. "It must be different when you love somebody," Emily reasoned.

  Chris shrugged. "It must be," he said.

  GUS WAS CHANGING the sheets on Chris's bed when she found The Joy of Sex hidden between his mattress and box spring.

  She picked up the book and leafed through the pages, finding positions she had long forgotten existed. Then she hugged it tightly to her chest and walked outside, heading toward the Golds'.

  Melanie opened the door with a mug of coffee in one hand and took the book Gus held out wordlessly to her. "Well," she said, studying the cover. "This certainly goes beyond the call of neighborly duty."

  "He is only nine," Gus exploded, dropping her coat on the floor of the kitchen and sinking into a chair. "Nine-year-olds are supposed to be thinking of baseball, not sex."

  "I think they're mentally linked," Melanie suggested. "You know, getting to first and second base and all that."

  "Who let him check this out at the library?" Gus demanded, turning to her friend. "What kind of adult lets a child do something like that?"

  Melanie scanned the rear of the book. "No one," she said. "This was never checked out."

  Gus buried her face in her hands. "Great. He's a pervert and a thief."

  The kitchen door swung open again, and Michael came through, carrying a large box of veterinary supplies. "Ladies," he greeted, dropping the box heavily to the floor. "What's up?" He peeked over Melanie's shoulder and, grinning, took the book from her hands. "Wow," he said, flipping through the pages. "I remember this."

  "But were you nine when you read it?" Gus asked.

  Michael laughed. "Can I take the fifth?"

  Melanie turned to him, surprised. "You were aware of girls that young?"

  He kissed the top of her head. "If I didn't start early," he said, "I wouldn't be the dynamo I am now." He sat down in the chair across from Gus and slid the book toward her. "Let me guess. You found it under his mattress. It's where I used to keep my Penthouse."

  Gus rubbed her temples. "If we ground him again, Child Protective Services is going to show up at our door." She glanced up miserably. "Maybe we shouldn't even punish him," she said. "Maybe he's just looking for answers about girls."

  Michael raised his brows. "When he finds them, will you tell him to come talk to me?"

  Melanie sighed sympathetically. "I don't know what I'd do, in your shoes."

  "Who says you're not?" Gus pointed out. "How do you know Em isn't in on this? Everything else those two do, they do together." She looked at Michael. "Maybe she's the mastermind."

  "Em's nine," he said, appalled by the thought.

  "Exactly," Gus said.

  GUS WAITED UNTIL she heard the sound of her son tearing his room apart. Then she knocked on the door, to be met by a whirlwind of clothing, mitts, hockey sticks, and anguish. "Hi," she said affably. "Lose something?" She watched Chris turn several rich shades of red. Then she drew her hands out from behind her back. "Lose this?" she asked.

  "This isn't what it looks like," Chris said immediately, and Gus was astounded. When had he learned to lie so easily?

  "What do you think it looks like?"

  "Like I've been reading something I shouldn't have?"

  Gus sank down on his bed. "Are you asking me, or telling me?" She gentled her voice, stroked her palm over the cover of the book. "What makes you think you shouldn't be reading it?"

  Chris shrugged. "I don't know. The naked pictures and all."

  "Is that why you wanted to read it?"

  "I guess," Chris said, looking so miserable she almost--almost--felt sorry for him. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

  She stared at the crown of her son's head, and remembered how, when he was born, a labor nurse had held a mirror between her legs so that she could see it appear, dark and downy, for the first time.

  "Can we just forget about it?" Chris begged.

  She wanted to let him off, seduced by the way he was squirming beside her, a butterfly on a pin. But she chanced to look down at his hands, clenched over each bony knee. They were no longer toddler-soft, each digit puffy, like the hands on the balloons at Thanksgiving parades. At some point when Gus was too busy to notice, they had turned knuckled and blue-veined, larger even than hers, hands that already reminded her of James's.

  Gus cleared her throat, aware that this boy sitting in front of her, whose face she could have identified by touch alone, whose voice said her name before any other word, was someone she did not recognize. He was someone who heard the word woman and no longer thought of Gus's features and a mother's embrace, but of a faceless girl with breasts and curved hips.

  When had this happened?

  "If you have questions, you know, about ... this ... you can always ask your father or me," Gus managed, praying he'd hit up James. S