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school?”
    â€œRight here at school,” said Anne.
    â€œHm-m. I wonder if Miss Fenwick knows about that. Do you imagine so, Anne?”
    â€œDon't threaten me,” said Anne angrily. “You wouldn't dare go to her with anything like that.”
    â€œMaybe,” said Jennifer. “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. I'm not like you and you know it. Go ahead and get yourself someone else. Boston is full of young men who, I'm sure, will find me just as attractive as you ever did.”
    Anne snorted. “I know your kind,” she said. “You'd never have anything to do with a man now. You put too high a value on your virginity to give it away for less than a wedding band.”
    â€œDarling, don't be naïve,” said Jennifer with a little laugh. “I've been doing a lot of reading since I found out about you. All kinds of reading. A man is the easiest creature in the world to fool. I'm not worried about my virginity or the lack of it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘lack of it’?” demanded Anne furiously. “Have you already been with a man?” She grabbed Jennifer's shoulder and shook her. “Have you?”
    â€œTake your hands off me, Anne,” said Jennifer coldly. “You have no need to be concerned about my affairs. You said yourself that you could find plenty of others to take my place. Well, go ahead.”
    â€œOh, God,” cried Anne, “I didn't mean it, darling. Please forgive me. I didn't mean it. Tell me it isn't true about your being with men.”
    Jennifer pushed Anne's arms away.
    â€œNot yet, it isn't true. Not yet. But don't annoy me, Anne, or I might just have to go out to discover if I've been missing anything.”
    Anne Harvey and Jennifer Burbank were “best friends” all the rest of the school year and during the next summer. Jennifer dated frequently, but she had answers for every one of Anne's miserable questions.
    â€œI have to,” she told Anne. “What would my parents think if I never went out with men?”
    â€œI can't stand it!”
    â€œOh, don't be so sloppy,” said Jennifer impatiently. “You bore me when you go all weepy like this. I go out with men because I have to. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it, Anne.”
    When Jennifer denied intimate knowledge of men, Anne found it easy to believe. Not only because she wanted to, but because Jennifer's very appearance lent truth to her words. Anyone would have believed her. There was nothing of the voluptuary in Jennifer's appearance, none of those obvious points that men look for. She did not have the big breasts, the swinging hips, or the rich mouth that most men think adds up to a “good piece.”
    Like most frigid women, Jennifer needed men. It was not, on her part, lust but hatred that motivated her actions. To her, the sex act was not an act of shared communion; she shared nothing and only used men. When they were finished, she pushed them off with disgust. Not disgust with herself, but with them. She had her first man the summer she was seventeen. He was a Portuguese fisherman nearly forty years old with hard hands and a dark, sharp face. She met him on the beach every night for a week.
    After that there was a long series of college boys in the back seats of cars or at a motel. She never went with the same one twice, and after she had had a man she never spoke to him again. He ceased to exist.
    Even the college boys who had stroked her breasts and thighs, even they sometimes doubted, seeing her, that they had really succeeded. It was not that her manner was shy and virginal, she had too much style for that; it was that she looked unapproachable, like a girl one would hesitate even to kiss. She held her head high, her features were fine and revealed not a hint of coarseness; she had small breasts and hips. The boys who had known her in the back seats of their cars had a difficult time believing this was the