Maggie Sweet Read Free Page A

But don’t come to me when her tail gets full of burrs and expect me to curry them out.”
    So Mama Dean quit following me and tried to be satisfied with reading my diary, listening in on my phone calls, and getting Miss Skurlock, my homeroom teacher and one of our boarders, to spy on me.
    And after a year of just kissing and petting (above the waist but not under the clothes) my outlaw poet was making his own demands.
    “Do you love me?” he’d ask, trying to get his hand under my angora sweater.
    “You know I do,” I’d say truthfully, slapping his hand away.
    “Then prove it,” he’d say. “I’m only human. I’ll still respect you.” And his hands went everywhere and wrestled me to the car floor.
    I’d end up crying, and Jerry would say he was sorry. But the very next date was another pure wrestling match.
    It finally got so bad that during our senior year we broke up almost every weekend. All this had my nerves so torn to pieces I cried all the time.
    Then on Monday, after breaking up Saturday night, there he’d be, waiting for me at my locker, like always. Even though he never said it, I could tell he was sorry. Why, three separate times that spring he gave me a rose and a Baby Ruth. Just like that old song from the fifties,“A Rose and a Baby Ruth.” Now if that’s not sorry, I don’t know what is.
    Our last date, the week before graduation, was prom night. Because of my curfew we’d left the prom early so we’d have time to make out at Belews Pond. But this time, when one thing led to another, Jerry wouldn’t stop, even though I cried several times. It got so bad, I just couldn’t control myself. The only thing I could do was to get out of the car and start walking up that dark country road in my turquoise prom gown and strappy high heels, turning my ankles on every rock and crying my eyes out.
    The next thing I knew, Jerry was following me in the car, driving real slow, staying even with me. But I was too broken up to so much as look at him. Then I heard his voice. It was so low and hoarse I could hardly tell it was him.
    “Get back in the car, Maggie Sweet. For the Lord’s sake, please get back in the car.”
    I will never, in all my life, forget how he sounded that night.
    When we got back to my house, I told him we couldn’t go on that way and gave him back his class ring.
    I cried all week, even in school. I waited, hoping he’d come to my locker like always. But this time he didn’t. I lost five pounds and was jumpy as a cricket. Kind of like Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass when Warren Beatty wouldn’t take “no.”
    All I could think of was getting Jerry back, so I made up my mind. If I wanted him back I had to do something daring. Even if it meant hardening my heart to Mama Dean’s tragic broken figure, and the hurt in Mother’s eyes, graduation night, I’d do it. I’d give myself to Jerry.

Chapter 2
    Graduation day dawned hot and bright. I woke early, too excited to sleep. But even after I was awake, I stayed in my room a long time trying to memorize every detail of this important day. I heard the whir of the electric fan, Mother and Mama Dean’s voices coming up through the kitchen air vent. The curtains stirred at the opened window and the sun cast shadows on the blue forget-me-not wallpaper. I breathed in the crisp new smell of the yellow polished-cotton graduation dress Mother and I had bought on a shopping trip to Lerner’s in Charlotte. My face in the mirror was pink with excitement, and I told myself to remember the light, the sounds, the heat, the very air of this June morning. Because tonight, when I came back to this room, nothing would be the same.
    After I dressed, I dabbed Tangee Natural on my lips and Vaseline on my eyelashes. Then I thought about the Maybelline cake mascara and Firecracker Red lipstick Mary Price and I had bought at Woolworth’s and hid in the back of my chifforobe. It would be the perfect day to try them.
    Then I remembered our