Chap­ter 3, The GIRL was heart-wrench­ing­ly, impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful. Desire weak­ened his stom­ach. A water­fall of blond hair splashed on her bare shoul­ders. He stud­ied the pho­to­graph sur­rep­ti­tious­ly and then closed the mag­a­zine and put it back where it belonged, on the top shelf. He glanced around to see if he’d been observed. The store own­er pos­i­tive­ly pro­hib­it­ed the read­ing of mag­a­zines and a sign said NO BUY NO READ. But the own­er was busy at the far end of the place.

Why did he always feel so guilty when­ev­er he looked at Play­boy and the oth­er mag­a­zines? A lot of guys bought them, passed them around at school, hid them in the cov­ers of note­books, even resold them. He some­times saw copies scat­tered casu­al­ly on cof­fee tables in the homes of his friends. He had once bought a girlie mag­a­zine, pay­ing for it with trem­bling fingers—a dol­lar and a quar­ter, his finances shot down in flames until his next allowance. And he didn’t know what to do with the damn thing once it was in his pos­ses­sion. Sneak­ing it home on the bus, hid­ing it in the bot­tom draw­er of his room, he was ter­ri­fied of dis­cov­ery. Final­ly, tired of smug­gling it into the bath­room for swift perusals, and weary of his deceit, and haunt­ed by the fear that his moth­er would find the mag­a­zine, Jer­ry had sneaked it out of the house and dropped it into a catch­basin. He lis­tened to it splash dis­mal­ly below, bid­ding a wist­ful farewell to the squan­dered buck and a quar­ter. A long­ing filled him. Would a girl ever love him? The one dev­as­tat­ing sor­row he car­ried with­in him was the fear that he would die before hold­ing a girl’s breast in his hand.

Out at the bus stop, Jer­ry leaned against a tele­phone pole, body weary, echo­ing the assault of the foot­ball prac­tices. For three days his body had absorbed pun­ish­ment. But he was still on the ros­ter, luck­i­ly. Idly, he watched the peo­ple on the Com­mon across the street. He saw them every day. They were now part of the scenery like the Civ­il War Can­non and the World War Mon­u­ments, the flag­pole. Hip­pies. Flower Chil­dren. Street Peo­ple. Drifters. Drop-Outs. Every­body had a dif­fer­ent name for them. They came out in the spring and stayed until Octo­ber, hang­ing around, call­ing taunts to passers­by occa­sion­al­ly but most of the time qui­et, lan­guid and peace­ful. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by them and some­times envied their old clothes, their slop­pi­ness, the way they didn’t seem to give a damn about any­thing. Trin­i­ty was one of the last schools to retain a dress code—shirt and tie. He watched a cloud of smoke swirl around a girl in a flop­py hat. Grass? He didn’t know. A lot of things he didn’t know.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that one of the street peo­ple had detached him­self from the oth­ers and was cross­ing the street, dodg­ing cars deft­ly.

“Hey, man.”

Star­tled, Jer­ry real­ized the guy was address­ing him. “Me?”

The fel­low stood in the street, on the oth­er side of a green Volk­swa­gen, his chest rest­ing on the car’s roof. “Yes, you.” He was about nine­teen, long black hair brush­ing his shoul­ders, a curl­ing mus­tache, like a limp black snake draped on his upper lip, the ends dan­gling near his chin. “You been star­ing at us, man, like every day. Stand­ing here and star­ing.”

They real­ly say man, Jer­ry thought. He didn’t think any­body said man any more except as a joke. But this guy wasn’t jok­ing.

“Hey, man, you think we’re in a zoo? That why you stare?”

“No. Look, I don’t stare.” But he did stare, every day.

“Yes, you do, man. You stand here and look at us. With your home­work books and your nice shirt and your blue-and-white tie.”

Jer­ry looked around uneasi­ly. He con­front­ed only strangers, nobody from school.

“We’re not sub-humans, man.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you look it.”

“Look,” Jer­ry said, “I’ve got to get my bus.” Which was ridicu­lous, of course, because the bus wasn’t in sight.

“You know who’s sub-human, man? You. You are. Going to school every day. And back home on the bus. And do your home­work.” The guy’s voice was con­temp­tu­ous. “Square boy. Mid­dle-aged at four­teen, fif­teen. Already caught in a rou­tine. Wow.”

A hiss and the stench of exhaust announced the arrival of the bus. Jer­ry swung away from the guy.

“Go get your bus, square boy,” he called. “Don’t miss the bus, boy. You’re miss­ing a lot of things in the world, bet­ter not miss that bus.”

Jer­ry walked to the bus like a sleep­walk­er. He hat­ed con­fronta­tions. His heart ham­mered. He climbed aboard, dropped his token in the coin box and lurched to his seat as the bus moved away from the curb.

He sat down, breathed deeply, closed his eyes.

Go get your bus, square boy.

He opened his eyes and slit­ted them against the inva­sion of the sun through the win­dow.

You’re miss­ing a lot of things in the world, bet­ter not miss that bus.

A big put-on, of course. That was their spe­cial­ty, peo­ple like that. Putting peo­ple on. Noth­ing else to do with their lives, pid­dling away their lives.

And yet …

Yet, what?

He didn’t know. He thought of his life—going to school and com­ing home. Even though his tie was loose, dan­gling on his shirt, he yanked it off. He looked up at the adver­tis­ing plac­ards above the win­dows, want­i­ng to turn his thoughts away from the con­fronta­tion.

Why? some­one had scrawled in a blank space no adver­tis­er had rent­ed.

Why not? some­one else had slashed in answer.

Jer­ry closed his eyes, exhaust­ed sud­den­ly, and it seemed like too much of an effort even to think.