Pretty maids all in a row

THE LIST

1. JILL FAIRBUNN

2. MARJORIE EVANMORE

3. HILDA LINDER

4. JEANNIE BONNI

5. MARY HOLDEN

6. PEGGY LINSKI

7. ROCHELLE HUDSON

8. ANNE WILLIAMS

9. MARIE AMIS

10. SALLY SWINK

11. KATHY BURNS

12. YVONNE MELLISH

13. SANDRA SEYMOUR

14. ALICE PATMORE

15. SONYA (SONNY) SWINGLE

16. MONA DRAKE

17. BARBARA BROOK

18. BETTY SMITH

19. HETTY NECTAR

20. LOOBY LOO

21. MRS. MORTLAKE (?)

Ponce de Leon found the body. It happened this way: he had excused himself, politely, from Miss Smith’s Eng Lit class to go to the lavatory and masturbate. Or, more precisely, find a suitable and relatively private receptacle for the torrent of stuff that screamed to leap out of him. For Miss Smith drove him wild. With those gorgeous, soft curves under those gorgeous outfits she wore—the sweaters!—and that gorgeous smell, that fragrance of hers, which you could always tell a few corridors off and could only be her, Ponce just about went off his rock. He sat as long as he could in her class. Then, panting practically, he just had to excuse himself from the class, almost always, and no fighting it. He was in love with Miss Smith—often referred to by the kooky elements in the school as Miss Snowy-Paws and by certain other plain crude elements as, and Ponce hated the thought, Miss Purry-Twat. These latter elements were an extremely tiny minority, needless to say. But they bothered Ponce, nevertheless. For he never, never could have that kind of thought. He was in love with her, and had always been, since the day he had first set eyes on her. She filled his dreams. He was her Lancelot. That gorgeous hair! His heart thumped, he flushed, he blushed, he was extremely warm and bothered whenever he saw her. And when she talked to him! He lost all contact. He was in space, far, far out, orbiting Venus. He was mad about her. He had just entered the lavatory. He was just about to plunge into a cubicle, with his heart throb, unzip himself, and haul out the redhot, when he spied the body. Not that at that precise moment he realized it was a body. He stopped in his tracks, puzzled, then, astounded. And he had a conflict. For the matter was hot, and urgent. There was the cubicle. He wanted to go into that cubicle, no doubt about it, body or no body, the pressure was not trifling. But—he didn’t. He stood there, gazing at that sight, and things gradually eased inside, and

matters started taking a descending course, leaving him freer and freer to stand and ponder, at the sight Which was: the rump of a female form jutting out of a cubicle, her head stuffed down the head as far as a head can get no less. Ponce stared, taking in more details. Her feet were more or less flat on the floor, her knees against the toilet bowl, she was propped up that way, she might have been trying to touch her toes. Ponce stared and stared, he was in a minor panic by now, for he was well aware that here, before his innocent eyes was a catastrophic happening, not to mention tragedy, of gross proportions. But he was extremely curious, also. He was that kind of boy. It was the school Guidance Counselor himself, Mr. McDrew, Tiger, of course, who always said he was a lad whose mind, and eyes, had to know. At the moment, his eye was on that rump, sticking curiously up in the air, exposed to any and all eyes that might care to stare. Ponce stared. Her dress, he noted, was pulled up over her waist. Her panties were a very pleasant pastel shade, not unlike a rose that had caught his eye only this morning, on his way to school. But something more. There was something pinned to the flimsies—a sheet of paper, Ponce noted, finally, after his eye had traveled up and down the exposed posterior, the shanks, the flanks, the thighs, the ankles, at least half a dozen times, or more. What’s more, Ponce noted, something was written on the paper—in capital letters, three words at least, and if he wanted to see them he would have to move closer, no doubt of it— No easy thing to do, transfixed as he was, rooted there where he stood. But—he moved, after a terrific effort of will, he moved, however hesitantly, for he was no lad, as everyone knew, to be pinned down by that arch tyrant, that ancient enemy of man, though at times friend too, well he knew: Fear. He moved, or rather stumbled, his way toward that rump, nicely rounded, and the paper. Who was the girl? The question, at this point, began to arise in him. It had a certain academic as w^rell as human interest to him. Who could it be? Certainly, from this angle, in that position, he could not really see. He couldn’t tell by the panties. He was closer to the paper. It was just an ordinary sheet of school paper, plain, unlined. State-supplied. Eight by ten inches, at least. And written on it—now he could see—

SO LONG, HONEY

He stared, pondering the message. Never in all his life had Ponce encountered such a reality. Who was Honey? Should he go even closer, take a look down there—and see? Her legs were lovely. He saw the paper. He inched his way closer, heart pounding, until he was less than a foot away from the undeniably well-formed behind on her. He stopped. His heart was bounding, pounding, he was aware that at any moment anyone, someone, could burst upon the scene, through that lavatory door, for the lavatory in his school w^ras a place that was religiously frequented, almost. His highly developed sense of discretion, not to mention propriety, was now a high-pitched whine within him—a siren almost. It was no use though. He couldn’t help it. An opportunity like this presented itself—how many times in a lifetime? Up to now, Ponce hadn’t met it. It just was something which in his wildest moments he couldn’t have dreamed of. Was it something God in his wisdom in collusion with Lucifer had arranged specifically for him, to supremely test him? Was it his very own special trial? Ponce, in those few moments oscillating between wildness and lucidity, tried to think of it, some sort of answer to it. His mind flicked back a few weeks to Sunday School. It was a rather shadowy memory, mixed up as it w^ras with a dance at the high school the night before, but somehow it seemed apropos. Not that Ponce was fanatically religious. In fact, at this point in his life curve, he was experiencing a not insignificant amount of soul-searching on the entire issue. What was the score? Was there any meaning or significance at all to it? But, the memory had jogged up in him. The voice of the Sunday School teacher jogged and jogged in him, bizarrely. And he saw a hand, near him. God's way, His way, Testing us. Ponce saw the hand, moving. While his head bounded, and rebounded, and spun, and pounded, he definitely saw the hand, his hand, nobody else’s, slowly, irresistably, moving. He understood it. Moving. It reached the panties. Trembling, the fingers touched them. Just lightly, brushing them. Ponce’s heart hammered. His fingers never wavered. They moved across, and upward. The flesh still radiated a certain warmth through the panties, the flesh was white and soft and lovely, he knew, this was a true fact of life, indisputably—astonishingly. Upward. Skirting the weird piece of paper. The very top of the silkies. His fingers reached the elastic edge and tremulously, mysteriously, slipped under it, coming into direct contact with flesh, without a doubt still warm. Lovely, warm flesh. Whoever. And now his heart, his whole being thundered, his rock was a rock again, hot, crying out for expression, life, action. His hand moved under. Wonder. His hand, wandering, sliding under. He felt the marvel of it. He wasn't dreaming. The smooth, soft, indescribably beautiful feminine rump under it. He trembled. His hand glided. A violent trembling. The reverberations in his body blinded him, for the first time in the whole of his life he had his hand on one. A hot, brilliant, white light was enveloping him, as his hand, magnificently, unhindered, gloriously, glided, slowly. The smoothness of it. The utter wonder of it. More than he had fantasied it would be. Hundred, thousands, of fantasies, at least Miss Smith’s is like this. It must be like this. He was totally enveloped in the white light he was aware only of his hand, wandering. How it wandered. He thought he would come apart with a violent explosion there. The lavatory, the whole school would be blown to bits by it the force, the heat of it. Seismographs would register it. He shook like a paint mixer. He was about to do something. His other hand was definitely trying to reach out, take hold of the silky frillies, pull them away from the lovely hump, down, down, over the lovely shanks, the flanks, down, down, if he could, if he could only control the shaking. His hand reached out. He heard a strange sound. In the white light his hand was gaining ground. Definitely, this strange sound—and his hand lost ground. The sound registered. Someone was approaching the lavatory. The hot light receded. There was the outer door of the lavatory, just opening. The ever-alert, ever in contact part of himself had heard it. And, with that astonishing presence of mind so characteristic of him, he panicked. His hand flew out from under the panties. He was sweating now, as. well as trembling. The force of the swift withdrawal was just enough to upset the uniquely precarious postural balance of the unknown but greatly admired young feminine. She tumbled sideways, grotesquely, as Ponce, horrified, frozen, and intensely curious, stared. Her head popped out of the

toilet, she fell like nothing he had ever known. For now she was known. Ponce, in that split second, full of terror, staring at the blond hair and familiar features, had crossed the unknown. It was Jill Fairbunn, Ponce tried to hang on, Sawyersville High’s Head Cheerleader, Ponce fought like a lion, hanging on, and he turned, knowing he had to turn, in the next bit of that second, for there was the door, opening, and Ponce knew what to do, suddenly: He rushed for it. He rushed with all the power and strength at his command for it, bowling over a figure he fleetingly recognized as Mr. Mummer, among other things Mathematics teacher, Programmed Instruction champion. . . . He rushed howling, in a wild charge, and Mummer never stood a chance. He trampled over him and shot out like a bullet, or Sawyersville’s ace halfback at least, which he wasn’t. He hit the hallway, skidded, pivoted, got his balance, and tore down the long, long hallway, screaming, all the way. It was one long echoing howl, terrifying to one and all, as he raced down that hall, for one destination: The Principal’s office—Mr. Proffer . . .