Spring Fire Read Free Page A

spike-heeled silver shoes to glisten clean and clear. She was picking up records from a stack there on the top of the piano, reading the labels, and dividing them into two piles. When she felt Mitch's fixed look, she answered it and Mitch grinned, looking back quickly at Kitten, who was explaining how the Tri Epsilon house had been redecorated over the summer. For several minutes Mitch knew that the girl was staring at her now, and a warm flush rose to her face. There was something about the girl. She had never seen her before, but there was something familiar in that fast second when they had looked at one another.
    In a moment the phonograph was turned on, and throughout the room girls paired off and moved to the center of the floor. Kitten grabbed Mitch's hand. "Do you like to dance?" she asked, pulling her forward. Mitch nodded, and as they danced, Kitten held her off so that she could talk and watch Mitch's face.
    "How do you like Tri Epsilon?" she asked.
    "Fine," Mitch told her, and naively, "but of course, I haven't been to the other houses yet."
    Kitten said, "You will come back, won't you, Mitch? We all hope you'll save your most important dates for us. Try to save two and eight."
    "I didn't know there was a difference."
    "Yes." Kitten smiled and pressed Mitch's hand. "There certainly is. Will you try?"
    Mitch said she would. At the hotel she had heard the rushees talk ecstatically about the Tri Eps. They were rated tops nationally, and the Cranston chapter was the leading sorority on the college campus. A hot stir of pleasure enveloped Mitch. She had not known the fear her father had known for her when she had thought of rush week, but there was always the subconscious worry that she might be too uncut and plain for sorority sophisticates. During the summer the college catalogues and booklets had come through the mail, and she had flicked through the pages, seeing the pictures of debonair, glamorous young people her own age. But not like her. Mitch knew that then —and again when Kitten talked to her and Marsha walked with her, and Marybell Van Casey sat beside her and smoked long cigarettes and talked about tennis and swimming and things Mitch understood. Still different, all of them. Mitch was aware of that fact, but she no longer pondered the differences. They liked her anyway. They wanted her to join Tri Ep.
    Jane Bell danced with Mitch. Casey. Kitten again. Marsha. The lilting lyrics of "Temptation" filled the room. Suddenly Mitch felt a wave of uncanny turbulence, relieved then when she turned and saw the girl standing next to her. The beautiful girl who had stood at the piano. Marsha laughed and said, "Mitch, I don't think you've met Leda Taylor."
    Susan Mitchell was taller than Leda Taylor. Leda held her and led her along the waxed floor. Mitch was conscious of her own breathing, corning in gasps and causing her chest to heave uncomfortably against Leda's She smelled the faint pungent perfume that Leda wore, and her hand on Leda's bare shoulder was hot and rough. The words to the song sounded loud in her ears, and they embarrassed her, dancing to them close to this girl.
    "So you're Susan Mitchell," the girl said, and Mitch could not hear her own answer. She did not talk for those minutes when they were together before the music ended, and Leda Taylor did not talk again. When it was over, a note sounded on the piano, and Marsha Holmes hummed the note.
    "Form the loving circle," Marsha said. "Join hands."
    Leda grasped Mitch's hand tightly. As the Tri Eps hummed the melody, there was a slow swaying motion in the circle of girls, and when the words came, Mitch could feel Leda's eyes on her.
    "Love you, I love you,
 Come be a Tri Ep girl.
 Love you, I love you,
Come be an Ep-si-lon pearl."
    Mitch looked down at Leda and then away toward the French doors and the drapes and the sun outside.
     Let me make my-message clear.
 Love you, I love you,
Come be a Tri Ep girl.”
    "I suppose," Leda said when the song