Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [50]
Maddie had a boyfriend back home in London. He was called Giles. They hadn’t done It yet, hadn’t Gone All the Way, but they’d gone a good part of the distance. Maddie’s detailed accounts of their swoony gropings and fumblings enthralled and horrified her roommates in equal measure.
“Gosh, Maddie, you never!”
“Urgh! Doesn’t that feel horrid?”
“No, actually. It’s rather delicious.”
One late afternoon, Frankie and Maddie found themselves alone, walking back to school along the short and shadowy avenue from the playing fields. They were in sports kit. The wind off the Fens goosepimpled their skin.
Apropos of nothing, Maddie said, “God, I love snogging. I miss it like mad. I can’t wait for Christmas.”
Frankie nodded sympathetically. “Yes, it must be awful. Giles sounds like a brilliant snogger.”
“He is, actually.”
Frankie considered this for a few paces. Then she said, “I . . . When you and Giles. I mean, when you’re snogging . . .”
“Come along, Mortimer. Out with it.”
“Yes. Sorry. What I mean is, Maddie, you seem to do it for hours and hours. What’s actually so good about it?”
Maddie stopped walking, so Frankie stopped, too.
“It gives you the most wonderful sort of a flutter. Down There. Do you know what I mean?”
Frankie shook her head. Maddie sighed. Then she grabbed hold of Frankie’s hair (which was tied back in a ponytail, for hockey) and tugged her face to her own and pressed her mouth against Frankie’s, which had opened in surprise, or possibly protest. And then Maddie’s tongue was wriggling about in it, as if urgently searching for something valuable it had lost among Frankie’s teeth. Maddie’s other hand slid down Frankie’s back, pressing her belly into hers.
“Mnnn . . .”
Frankie tried to push Maddie’s tongue away with her own, which only encouraged it. After this wet battle had gone on for some time, Maddie’s teeth fastened on to Frankie’s lower lip and nibbled at it.
Eventually Frankie fought free, and the two girls came apart and stood looking at each other, breathing hard.
Frankie wiped her mouth on her wrist and said, “Bon Dieu.”
“Exactement,” Maddie said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel a bit of a flutter downstairs, darling.” She adjusted her sports bag on her shoulder. “That’s called French kissing, by the way. Did you know that?”
On the first day of the summer term, Maddie walked into the dormitory and tossed her blazer and her beret onto the floor. Somehow the other girls knew and were agog.
“Maddie?”
“Tell us, Maddie.”
She fell cruciform onto her bed.
“I am no longer a virgin,” she declared to the ceiling. “In fact, Giles and I have been at it like billy-o the entire hols. I can’t imagine how I’m going to get through a whole term without it. I expect I shall get Frustration Migraine. Which is an actual medical condition, incidentally. The Victorians suffered terribly from it.”
The girls considered this in silence.
Then serious bespectacled Teresa Candless said, “Aren’t you worried about, you know, getting pr — in the family way?”
Maddie waved a hand languidly. “We take precautions, naturally.”
Veronica gasped. “Maddie! You don’t mean birth control, do you?”
Maddie laughed and sat up. “Birth control! God, what an expression, Drewe. Sounds like something on a spaceship or something. Switch on the birth control, copilot. We’re going in!’ Ha!”
She regarded poor Veronica with benign contempt.
“If what you mean is, do we use contraceptives,” Maddie said, “the answer is yes. Of course we damn well do.”
This was awesome. Venial sin compounded by defiance of the Holy Father’s sternest prohibition! The girls’ shock was sharpened by incomprehension. It was Frankie who asked the question.
“How, exactly?”
After a long moment, Maddie got off the bed and went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered up and down the corridor. Then she went to her suitcase, unbuckled its straps, and rummaged. She brought out her toilet bag, opened it, and sat back down on the bed. She opened the bag and produced a little yellow package, displaying it on the palm of her hand.
“Behold,