Read Online This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Free Book Online

with her cap off and her hair sorta mussed”—her hands clutched at her hair—“Oh, leave it, it looks good.”
    They drifted up the stairs and Myra led the way into the little den of his dreams, where a cosy fire was burning before a big sink-down couch. A few years later this was to be a great stage for Amory, a cradle for many an emotional crisis. Now they talked for a moment about bobbing parties.
    “There’s always a bunch of shy fellas,” he commented, “sitting at the tail of the bob, sorta lurkin’ an’ whisperin’ an’ pushin’ each other off. Then there’s always some crazy cross-eyed girl”—he gave a terrifying imitation-“she’s always talkin’ hard sorta, to the chaperon.”
    “You’re such a funny boy,” puzzled Myra.
    “How d’y’ mean?” Amory gave immediate attention, on his own ground at last.
    “Oh—always talking about crazy things. Why don’t you come ski-ing with Marylyn and I to-morrow?”
    “I don’t like girls in the daytime,” he said shortly, and then, thinking this a bit abrupt, he added: “But I like you.” He cleared his throat. “I like you first and second and third.”
    Myra’s eyes became dreamy. What a story this would make to tell Marylyn! Here on the couch with this wonderful -looking boy—the little fire—the sense that they were alone in the great building—
    Myra capitulated. The atmosphere was too appropriate. “I like you the first twenty-five,” she confessed, her voice trembling, “and Froggy Parker twenty-sixth.”
    Froggy had fallen twenty-five places in one hour. As yet he had not even noticed it.
    But Amory, being on the spot, leaned over quickly and kissed Myra’s cheek. He had never kissed a girl before, and he tasted his lips curiously, as if he had munched some new fruit. Then their lips brushed like young wild flowers in the wind.
    “We’re awful,” rejoiced Myra gently. She slipped her hand into his, her head drooped against his shoulder. Sudden revulsion seized Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to be away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss any one; he became conscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wanted to creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in the corner of his mind.
    “Kiss me again.” Her voice came out of a great void.
    “I don’t want to,” he heard himself saying. There was another pause.
    “I don’t want to!” he repeated passionately.
    Myra sprang up, her cheeks pink with bruised vanity, the great bow on the back of her head trembling sympathetically.
    “I hate you!” she cried. “Don’t you ever dare to speak to me again!”
    “What?” stammered Amory.
    “I’ll tell mama you kissed me! I will too! I will too! I’ll tell mama, and she won’t let me play with you!”
    Amory rose and stared at her helplessly, as though she were a new animal of whose presence on the earth he had not heretofore been aware.
    The door opened suddenly, and Myra’s mother appeared on the threshold, fumbling with her lorgnette.
    “Well,” she began, adjusting it benignantly, “the man at the desk told me you two children were up here—How do you do, Amory.”
    Amory watched Myra and waited for the crash—but none came. The pout faded, the high pink subsided, and Myra’s voice was placid as a summer lake when she answered her mother.
    “Oh, we started so late, mama, that I thought we might as well— ”
    He heard from below the shrieks of laughter, and smelled the vapid odor of hot chocolate and tea-cakes as he silently followed mother and daughter down-stairs. The sound of the graphophone f mingled with the voices of many girls humming the air, and a faint glow was born and spread over him:
    “Casey-Jones—mounted to the cab-un
Casey-Jones—’th his orders in his hand.
Casey-Jones—mounted to the cab-un
Took his farewell journey to the prom-ised land.”

Snapshots of the Young Egotist
    Amory spent nearly two years in