realized what Lynnette meant, about this girl who’d really liked her, she felt her body flush again, this time with jealousy.
“She had something that she let me borrow.”
“What?” Jo asked. “What is it?” She felt envious of this counselor, angry that Lynnette had waited all this time to tell her, and, above everything else, desperate to keep Lynnette talking.
“I can’t tell you.” Lynnette giggled. She’d turned a color past pink, closer to red. “But I can show you. After school,” she said, and gave Jo a saucy smile. “My house. I am going to change your life.”
* * *
Lynnette’s family had once lived in a house like Jo’s, but when Lynnette was in junior high, her father, who’d been working at an accounting firm in Detroit, got promoted. He moved his family into a much bigger house, a four-bedroom redbrick mock Tudor with a finished basement and an in-law suite. The Bobecks’ house had a kitchen with two ovens and creamy white Formica countertops, a living room with a bricked-in wood-burning fireplace and a big color television set, a card table with padded chairs and special lighting where Mrs. Bobeck played bridge. The basement featured pine-paneled walls, a pool table, and a wet bar. Lynnette planned to host the senior class for a party after they finally graduated.
After school, Lynnette and Jo bypassed the kitchen, where normally they would stop for a snack (apples if Lynnette was dieting, cinnamon toast if she wasn’t). They went right to Lynnette’s bedroom, which had pink and white patterned wallpaper, a dresser, a bookcase, and a nightstand all made of the same painted white wood, and a lacy white canopy over the queen-sized bed. Lynnette locked the door, even though the house was empty—both of her brothers went to the Boys’ Club after school, her father worked downtown, and her mom volunteered at the Hebrew Home for the Aged most afternoons. As Jo watched, Lynnette took the chair that sat in front of her desk and wedged it underneath the doorknob. She crossed the room, bent down in front of her record player, and put on a Connie Francis album. Finally, with great care, she slid her hand underneath her mattress and removed something that looked like a handheld eggbeater, complete with an electrical cord and plug. The body was encased in hard tan plastic, but in the space where the beaters should have been there was only a hard rubber disk.
“What is it?” Jo asked, and Lynnette whispered, “It’s a vibrator!”
Jo stared. She had only the vaguest idea of what a vibrator was, thought she’d heard the word but wasn’t one hundred percent sure of its meaning, and she’d assumed that something meant for sexual pleasure would be shaped more like a penis than a kitchen utensil. “And it’s for . . .” Jo gestured vaguely toward the lower half of her body, feeling the strangest combination of excitement and fear as Lynnette nodded.
“Carla—she was my counselor—she showed it to us, and she told us how to use it, and we decided every girl in our bunk would get a turn. You get it for two weeks, and then you have to wrap it up and mail it to whoever’s next on the list.”
“You wash it first, right?”
Jo felt like her entire insides were contracting, squeezing tight around the space between her legs, making it throb. There was an ache in her belly, and she wanted to take her friend by her rounded, cashmere-covered shoulders and kiss her. She knew, somehow, that instead of feeling wet and wormy, Lynnette’s lips would be firm and sweet, and that instead of feeling faintly revolted, she’d feel happy and content. Had Carla, the camp counselor, kissed Lynnette? I’ll kill her, Jo thought, feeling jealousy fighting with desire, and both of them at war with shame, because she wasn’t supposed to be feeling this way about her best friend, or any girl at all.
“See, look,” said Lynnette, unfurling the cord, plugging the little machine into the wall.
Jo’s heart was beating hard. “I don’t know if we should do this,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse. “Maybe it’s, you know, bad for us or something.”
Lynnette looked amused. “Just wait,” she said, “until you find out how good it feels.” With that, she flicked a switch. The little rubber cup began humming. Jo could see that it was, indeed, vibrating, so fast that its motions were almost imperceptible. She imagined how that humming cup would feel against her and