Touch by Francine Prose Page A

something restful and sweet—almost arelief—when you finally gave in and let the person pull down your arm. I had every reason to be furious and no reason to want to protect my friends—none of them, not even Shakes.
    The windshield wipers were making a racket. Slog slog, groan, and creak as they pushed aside the heavy, thick sheet of wet snow that followed them halfway back across the window. I was glad we were in the car. It was always easier to talk when you didn’t have to look at the person.
    I said, “Joan, I need to say something. It’s not exactly true that nothing happened on the bus.”
    “I figured that,” said Joan.
    Meaning what? Meaning that she was lying all that time she’d claimed she believed me? It was too confusing to try and figure that out now, especially when Joan was saying, “Maisie, I just want you to know that nothing you can say will shock me. People do…unusual things all the time. Especially when their hormones are pumping, and they don’t know how to read the new signals their bodies are sending. I’ve seen that so often in my practice. Especially young people your age. They’realways experimenting. There is nothing you could have done, nothing you could have said—”
    Nothing I could have done? Wait a second! Wait a second ! Did Joan mean she thought it could be true that I had wanted the guys to touch me and had asked if they knew anyone who would pay me to touch my breasts? I tried not to sound angry. I tried to stay controlled.
    I knew I had to sound scared and hurt. I was faking it, I had to. But what made it more believable was that I wasn’t faking it completely. Anyway, I was saying exactly what Joan expected and wanted to hear. She could have made it up herself. She hardly had to listen.
    Nor did I have to work that hard. In order to get a catch in my voice—that wobbly, wounded tone—I just had to think about Shakes or Kevin or Chris, one of them, or all three of them, deciding what they would say if Daria told and they got caught. Maybe Chris imagined it would make Daria stop being angry at him for whatever she thought she saw the four of us doing at the back of the bus.
    Maybe the guys thought that saying that would get them out of trouble. This was more than my saying yes,more than yes meaning yes. This was please, please, it feels so good, and by the way, can you find someone to pay me? That would make me so despicable they’d look like total innocents.
    How could that not make someone mad? How could that not hurt a person? I wanted to tell Joan to pull over and stop the first hundred people we passed and tell them the story and ask: If this happened to you, how would you feel? But there weren’t a hundred people on the streets of our town. And certainly not in a snowstorm. There were more than a hundred kids in our school, but I could hardly ask them. I thought about it, and thought about it, and I felt tears come up behind my eyes and leak down into my throat.
    I said, “It was the day of the senior trip. So we pretty much got to sit wherever we wanted on the bus.”
    Joan turned the radio down and sat up straight. I could tell she was being patient until I got to the good part—the part about touching and boobs.
    “At first I thought they were just kidding around. And I kind of went along, even though it wasn’t exactly my favorite subject.”
    “What wasn’t your favorite subject?” said Joan.
    “My breasts and the guys touching them,” I said.
    “Had this gone on before? The boys asking to touch your breasts?”
    I took a deep breath. If I said yes, it would be the first big lie. They’d only asked that one day.
    “Yes, they had,” I said, and waited for lightning to strike, or the sky to fall. But nothing like that happened.
    “So this was repeated behavior? Repeated harassment?”
    “They kept on saying it,” I told Joan. “But they wouldn’t stop joking, until someone—probably Kevin or Chris—came out and asked me if they could