I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

A little electric shock flared through me, and I sat quite still. Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.

I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn't hide the truth much longer. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.

I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn't pure after we were married, [...]? I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.

It was the day after Christmas and a grey sky bellied over us, fat with snow. I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.

I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

Usually after a good puke you feel better right away. We hugged each other and then said good-bye and went off to opposite ends of the hall to lie down in our own rooms. There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a catholic, which ruined it for both of us.