The Books of Fell by M.E. Kerr Page A

smiling at me, her eyes always coming back to me.
    We danced out on the big deck, without sitting down, for about an hour.
    Then we went into the bar, got some cherry Cokes, and took them outside to the little deck and talked for another hour.
    She told me she was from Atlantic City. Her father had once managed a big hotel there when Atlantic City was still pretty much a summer resort.
    “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to wait for winter, when all the tourists would be gone. Then my mom and my sisters and I could move into one of the big suites that looked out on the ocean. That’s why the ocean here affects me so. It reminds me of when I was little.”
    A red-faced, crew-cut older guy began playing piano on the little deck.
    Delia said, “Let’s dance here. On the lawn. It’s slow. We can take off our shoes. It’s wet on the grass.”
    We did.
    I knew the song the fellow began singing. It was an old, old Billy Joel one, from before he’d met Christie Brinkley. It was one he wrote to his first wife about not changing, and it used to get Mom mad. It said he didn’t need clever conversation, he wanted her to stay the way she was. Mom would say, “Stay dumb, huh? Is that the message, Billy Joel?”
    But it sounded really romantic with this old saloon singer doing it. He sounded as if he were an inch away from having lung cancer. He was smoking, no hands, the way Pingree often did. He was singing “Don’t go changing.”
    We were dancing out there on the wet grass by ourselves, in the dark. I kissed her near the end of the song. She kissed me back.
    I think we both felt changed, never mind don’t go changing, because we didn’t smile or joke as we walked back toward the deck. You could cut the tension with a knife. It was sex. It was this great physical thirst that had come over us, and that we knew was coming, but weren’t sure what to do with after its arrival.
    We sat down on the steps and picked up our cherry Cokes.
    Delia said, “I have a chance to go around the world in the fall. On a ship. I’m going to take it.”
    “Will you be an au pair?”
    “Not for the Stileses.”
    “Did you just decide?”
    “Not just About a month ago. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go away for such a long time.”
    “How long?”
    “A year at least.”
    I let out a low whistle instead of a wail. “I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I was going to wait to tell you, but now I think you should know.”
    “A year?”
    “Yes.”
    She put her hand over mine. “I feel things, too, Fell. The way you dance.”
    “The way I dance,” I said.
    She took her hand away and reached for a cigarette.
    “Thanks for not being mean about my smoking, too.”
    I smelled her light up. She smoked those long brown Mores.
    I finally said, “I might go away myself.”
    “Really? Where?”
    “I told you. Switzerland. Prep school.”
    “Oh, Fell, you’d be a preppy after all.”
    “Don’t laugh.”
    “I’m not. I told you. I like that.” “I like you,” I said, “and I think I know what you’re saying.”
    “What am I saying?”
    “You’re saying we both feel something.
But.”
I took her hand and brought it up to my lips, and let my tongue play lightly between her fingers. Then I put her hand back. “You’re saying we can’t help feeling it, but we can’t expect to make anything out of it. Nothing permanent for now.”
    “Nothing permanent. Exactly. Because I’ll be away a long time.”
    “I will be, too,” I said.
    I decided then and there to go to Gardner.
    We danced an hour longer. I never danced that way before with anyone, never felt that way with anyone while I was dancing.
    Then we drove down to the beach. We were still there when the sun started coming up.
    Tuesday was her day off.
    I said, “Come home with me. I’ll make us breakfast. You can meet my mother and Jazzy.”
    She ran her finger down my lips, then pressed them together with it. “Hush, Fell.”
    She had the collar of the blue blazer