"You've known me for quite a while, Rel, through my three years in high school and college this year. It hasn't been a friendly friendship you banged me around in High but it has been a friendship. Maybe it's just tonight, your last night, that makes you say the things you do," she breathed deeply. "If I said yes, I'd just be saying it for effect because it's your last night because we're young and, I suppose, pretty foolish. Why, when you reach wherever they send you, you'll forget that Shelly Norris ever liver." "I suppose you re right, Shel; you always are." He took her in his arms. "But it's so nice just to hold you. Gee, Shelly, it's so awfully nice to hold you. It's never been that way before with any other girl. You say our acquaintance has merely been a friendly one. It has up to now, I admit that. But I've wanted to make it more all year. Ask Brad if I haven't talked to him about wanting to take you out. I've just been too darned scared you'd turn me down. I could ask some of the others for dates. Didn't matter to me if they refused, because they don't have much sense about how it hurts a fellow's ego to be turned down, but you're different, Shel; you understand. And it would make me feel awfully silly to be turned down by a girl like you." "You never used to want to take me out in High. It's probably because you discovered other boys paying attention to me that you got the idea. Can you remember the way you used to bang me over the head with your briefcase, and the way you used to bawl me out in front of my friends about that dress I had with the large, gaping sleeves. You called it a green gunny sack. And the way you used to name, one after another, all the cute girls in the school to inform me that you didn't consider me to be among the attractive," she finished tauntingly. "Sure, I remember. How could I forget? The last was the time you told me I was acting like a three-year-old. I'll bet you lectured for at least an hour. That's always left a vivid impression on me. I think it hurt me more than anything anyone's ever said." "You deserved it, Rel!" Shelly cocked her head to one side and added, "If it will make you feel any better, though, I think you've grown considerably mentally and wouldn't be surprised if your mental maturity matched that of your physical before long." Rel laughed weakly. "You'll wait for me, Shelly? I mean, when I come back you won't be married or anything? I'll look you up." His arm slipped around her waist, and he held her like a small boy holding fast to a limb that was about to break. "Everyone's left or leaving. Not much chance of marrying now. Besides, I made a bargain with myself not to marry until I'm over twenty. I'll probably be waiting." He kissed her. It was slow and deliberate and lacked the confidence of an experienced kiss. "You're so lovely, and cute, and little it's so nice just to hold you." He took her hand in his and began bending the fingers toward the palm. "I was talking to Jon Bishoff the other day. He told me he, a couple of other guys in school, and myself are emotionally dead. He said we'd never find a girl because we don't know how to treat a girl that girls like love and things we can't give them. Wonder what it is I'm feeling now, if I'm emotionally dead. Do you think any girl could ever love me?" She gripped his hand warmly. "I'm sure of it, Rel." Rel jerked to his feet. The thick, murky tone in his voice was gone, and anger took its place. "Oh, damned, but you're a different sort of girl. That wasn't the kind of answer I wanted, and you know it. You're probably laughing hysterically inside. It's just the atmosphere, I guess; the night, the still house, the moon, and you I suppose it's you. And you're so lovely, and I'm so miserable!" Shelly remembered how young and helpless he had seemed. She wondered if it had been Shelly Norris whom he had loved, or if she merely represented all those things which he held dear to him and was forced to leave. She was something real with substance to cling to. "He said he'd write me every day," she mused. "I've had one letter in three months, and the only personal thing in the long line of chatter was, "This is but a short letter to let you know my mind returns to home. I think of you! I will write soon to give you my permanent address. Don't bother to write until I do!" She quoted in a sing-song rhythm, mocking Rel's slow, deliberate speech. "Don't know when it is he thinks of me," she laughed. The needle was grating tunelessly on the outside ride of the recording when a horn sounded three times from the driveway outside the house. Shelly jerked the "pick-up" off the record, and turned the switch. 6 "Must be Jeff. With all the lights off hell think no one's home." She hurried to the door and called, "Come on in Jeff. Nobody's home but me. Got some new jazz you might be interested in." "A bunch of the gang's gathering at Christie's for some dancing, Shel. Thought you might want to come along," he called, as he opened the car door and started toward Shelly. "Jeff's awfully good looking," Shelly thought, admiring the easy way his lanky body contracted as he climbed the steps. "I wish he thought as Rel does." "Got a new arrangement of Blow; Wind Blow," Shelly told him enthusiastically as he followed her into the music room. She clicked on the light. As she hunted through the record case, Jeff inspected the records already on the phonograph. "Hum, symphony. I didn't know you were interested in classical stuff, Shelly." "Oh, that. It's a friend's; a friend; you know Rel Wiley? He left for the army; I've got to take them to his mother. I've had them here for months. Keep forgetting," Shelly lied, confused and embarrassed. "Take them in and put them on the dining room table, will you, Jeff, so I won't forget them in the morning?" Jeff unsuspectingly gathered up the records, and Shelly put the jazz piece in their place. She twisted the knob and it began to play. "Turn off the light when you go by the switch, will you, Jeff? Listen to that drummer play!" On his way into the dining room with the load of records, Jeff stumbled. An involuntary swear escaped his lips as his thigh bone struck the cross-section of a chair. "Look out, Jeff. If you don't watch your step, you'll hurt yourself. You should have turned off the light on the way back." Why in curses didn't you tell me. I'm quite capable of taking care of myself in daylight." His sentence was punctuated by a highly motivated statement as the lower part of his hip hit the sharp corner of what seemed to be the dining room able. Shelly heard the records clatter to the floor with a dull, painful thud. When she turned on the lights, Shelly found Jeff standing over the broken pieces with the expression of a stray mongrel. She wanted to scream at him and pound her fists against his back. She only said, "Shall we pick up the pieces?" Jeff stooped and began mumbling something about being sorry. "I'll buy a new set tomorrow. I suppose Rel would be pretty sore if he knew. I guess you're sore too, Shel." She smiled. "I don't mind," she said. "I don't think Rel will either!" 7