"You'd think she was eighteen the way she dresses, high heels and bleached hair and all that lipstick. And only twelve years old! I could get boys that way too. Ma won't let Molly walk to school with her."
The harassed theatre manager walked down the side aisle peering at the young people and snapped his fingers to quiet the boys. Lucy and Frank, sensing his approach, separated. Irritated, the manager turned back and snapped splenetically at the two plump girls.
"And you two, all you can do is to chew gum and talk, talk, talk—Keep quiet!"
They looked at him dumbfounded, jaws drooping. Self-pity accented their torment. All night they would dream—not of Douglas Fairbanks but that they were being kissed like Lucy Claudel.
When the lights came up Frank ran his hand over his dark brown hair and glanced about uneasily to make certain there were no grownups he knew.
"Let's go out the side door," he said.
Lucy laughed a disappearing mockingbird trill, a mischievous sparkle in the enormous slanting blue eyes that gave her pale oval face its precocious beauty.
"You've lipstick on your chin."
He wiped it furtively with his hand so there would be no telltale marks on his handkerchief for his mother to discover. Gee, Ma didn't miss a thing.
Lucy rose lazily, cool and fresh.
In the alley she drew on an exaggerated cupid's bow with a dimestore lipstick. Frank watched her fascinated, unaware it was a signal that kisses were over.
"I'm awfully hungry." Her voice was coaxing as she put her arm through his. "Buy me a soda?"
All I would have to do to make her scream would be to crush her arm on my ribs. Maybe it wouldn't break. Maybe it'd just bend like—like a wet wishbone, thought Frank. I'd like to take her arm like a wishbone and wish and wish. I'll bite off her lip so no one else will kiss her.
He pressed his foot down on a big June bug and squashed it with a long, grating drag along the pavement. Lucy shuddered, and drew her arm from his.
"You're nasty!" She stuck out her little pink tongue in distaste.
