Chapter 1

Amy Westerhill glanced across the classroom to where Alex Daniels sat a couple of rows over and two seats forward. He poured over the notebook on his desk and didn’t seem to suspect her fawning over the side of his face. She sketched the outline of his cheekbone and nose with her smoke-gray eyes while his busy pen scrawled lecture notes.

The last time she tuned in, their US History teacher yammered on about Nathan Hale and his heroic contribution to the Revolutionary War. At least she thought that was today’s subject. For now, the din from the front of the classroom might well have been the monotone drone from the living room television while the local anchor read the evening news—just a murmur in the background. What did she care about some guy who died over two hundred years ago when the rest of her life sat just across the room?

She tore her eyes away from Alex long enough for a time check. Her heart took a heavy leap and she caught a deep breath. This class period ended in minutes. The next bell signaled the end of the school day and launched the next stage of her life. And that couldn’t come soon enough.

Earlier that week, while she helped her mom snap string beans from the garden for canning, Amy had asked for the day off from her chores on Friday so she could spend the afternoon with a friend. Of course, since dating wasn’t allowed until she turned sixteen, she didn’t admit the friend was a boy. In fact, when her mom asked her friend’s name, Amy tried a skill she had been working on—misdirected facts. Her mom was not easily tricked but Amy forged ahead with nothing to lose but privilege for a week or so—such a small price for such a promising prize. Amy drew her eyes toward the green beans in her lap, snapped the stem off one, and tossed it in the pile destined for compost.

“Alex,” she said. At the top edge of her vision, as she felt for the other end of the bean, she watched for her mother’s reaction. As expected, she jerked her head up and glared at Amy. Amy rolled her eyes up with an innocent, dimpled smile.

Her mom snarled, “Alex?” The weathered creases of her face preached contempt and judgment.

Now the true test came, bare-faced eye contact while telling a full-on lie. Pull this one-off and a new world opened up for the fourteen-year-old. “Oh, not that Alex, Mom,” she said and stretched her smile a little broader. She shook her head side to side as if her mother’s assumption was without merit. “She’s a girl in my history class.”

Actually, it was that Alex. Amy had known him for three years but he had always ignored her. She thought it because she was scrawny, immature, and two years behind him in school. Her mother had said Amy was a late bloomer and seemed happy about it. If she could dress Amy and fix her hair so she imitated an elementary school-girl until the day she graduated high school, so much the better. Since Amy got her first period a few months ago and, saw in the mirror the rapid changes her body had undergone, she also noticed the same boys who used to strut past her in the hall like she didn’t exist, now turned when she walked by and undressed her with their leers. This didn’t qualify as a date anyway. It’s not like we’re going as a couple to Dairy Queen, the county fair, or a school dance, she had justified. They were just going to take a bike ride together.

After the bell rang ending class, she and Alex walked to the bike rack. Amy had thought about this moment all day—all week, really—and had a vision of him holding her hand or at least talking to me. Rather, Alex, a step ahead, went straight to his bike like he either had a fire to go to or maybe he was edgy. She understood the latter as nerves had taken her as well. She tried to keep them in check with a sweet smile she hoped appeared genuine. If he’d look at me anyway.

“Everything alright?” Amy asked when she caught up with him at the rack.

“Yeah,” he answered brusquely and then retrieved a key from his pocket. Once he unlocked the wheel, he grunted, “Follow me,” and tore out of the schoolyard.

Amy watched puzzled for a couple of seconds while she fumbled with her lock. When she got to the street, he was waiting, one foot on the pedal and the other on the pavement.

“Ready?” Alex asked. He gave her an odd grin she had never seen on his face before.

She ignored it and pulled the pins holding her hair in a tight roll. With a shake of her head and a shoulder shrug, she said, “Sure, let’s go.”

She sped off ahead of him down State Street, passed her church, Henry’s Hardware, and Two Brother’s Grocery. The wind tousled her shoulder-blade length blond hair as it flew behind her like golden angel wings. The afternoon’s dry heat blew across her freckled cheeks and chapped her lips. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Once they reached the edge of town, Alex took the lead, and, for the next several miles they raced along country roads lined with cornfields. Ahead of Amy a couple of bike lengths, he made a sudden right turn she didn’t expect. She trusted him, so she kept in tight and followed him between two rows of young corn plants. She drew a breath of warm air expecting to smell the familiar fresh scent of the immature stalks but rather got a lung full of dust from the dirt kicked up by Alex’s bike-tires. She coughed and peddled faster, gaining on him.

They had ridden several hundred yards into the field and, about the time her front wheel came even with his back tire, Alex slammed on his brakes. His bike skidded broadside to a stop. She braked, too, and the dust following her billowed over them. When the air cleared, she could see they were in a small clearing in the midst of the corn. She glanced out over the top of the three-foot-high plants. The same soft breeze tossing her hair rolled the stalks like an endless sea of green waves.

He dropped his bicycle to the ground, caught her eye again with that peculiar smile, and said, “Well, here we are.”

Her dad was an Iowa corn farmer, so she grew up between the rows. This didn’t look like anything special, just a patch where the corn hadn’t sprouted. “Why here?”

He stepped toward her. “You know,” he said and twitched his eyebrows. His hands slipped over the chrome handlebars of her bike.

A tentacle of panic cinched her throat, but she checked the threatening tremor behind her voice and commanded, “Let go of my bike!”

With a sudden twist, he pushed her bicycle over throwing her to the ground. Her knee slammed first into the bike’s frame and then the dirt.

“Ow,” she yelped as she rolled from under it. She stopped on her back and grabbed her knee. “What’s the matter with you?”

Before she could sit up or roll away, he jumped, straddled her with his legs, and pinned her upper arms to the ground with his hands. She read the intentions in his face and the reason he chose this isolated spot came clear. A scream rose from the center of panic but out here her protests would be pointless. Not to give him the satisfaction, she choked the cry back. She squirmed but, since he outweighed her by at least twenty pounds and played varsity football, she couldn’t throw him off. She watched his eyes. They danced with anticipation.

He slid his hands across her forearms until he grasped hold of her hands and then brought them together over her head. She tried to resist but he was too strong. He ground them into the dirt and snatched both her wrists in his left hand. With his right, he released the snap on her blue jeans and lowered the zipper.

“I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me lately,” he said as he grabbed for the waistband of her jeans. “I know you want this as much as I do.”

“Did you have to attack me, Alex?” she asked and forced a demure smile. “It didn’t have to be like this. You could have asked.”

Alex's mouth dropped open and he cocked his head with a “you’re kidding me” expression slithering behind his eyes.

“You think I don’t want it?” Amy continued. “Don’t you think I’m curious?”

He rolled back onto his knees and slowly released her hands.

“You’ll need to take your pants off, don’t you think?” she asked and brought her hands to rest on his thighs.

Alex continued a wary glare but reached for his belt buckle.

“You can’t take them off if you’re on your knees.”

Alex stayed where he was, finished unbuckling the belt, and asked, “What about you? You need to take yours off, too.”

“You’re sitting on me, Alex.” She shook her head like “really.”

His eyes, she read, wavered between “I can’t believe my luck” and “If I move, she’ll run away.” When he rose to his feet, his hands hovered over her as if prepared to restrain her again. Amy stayed on the ground. Once he slipped off his shoes and jeans, dropping them to the dirt, she stood and took a step toward him.

“Can I help you with those?” she asked and reached for the waistband of his underwear.

He stood motionless and looked to his hips where she placed her hands. As she slipped her thumbs beneath the elastic band, he closed his eyes and rolled his head back.

With a swift jerk, she thrust the full force of her right knee into his groin.

“Ah,” he shrieked. As limp as boiled spaghetti, he doubled over and collapsed to his knees in the dirt. He moaned and rocked and massaged the pulsating agony. After a few seconds, he drew his eyes up to hers, his cheeks wet with tears, and fixed a desperate glare on her.

Amy scowled back. She thought Alex was her friend but now to see his true nature filled her with disillusionment. His morals weren’t a step above others as he pretended. He was just as exploitive as the other boys who had so recently begun to objectify her.

“I don’t believe this, Alex,” she said as she snapped and zipped her pants. “You! Of all people.”

Alex struggled to speak. “Don’t . . . tell . . . my dad . . . mother.”

She shook her head, grabbed his jeans, and righted her bicycle. When she pressed her foot hard on the pedal, the back wheel spun and threw dirt and pebbles into a rooster tail showering Alex.

“I won’t need to,” she shouted over her shoulder as she tore toward the street through the cornrow. “I think your dad will have lots of questions when he hears you’ve been riding around town in your underpants.” Through the dust she could see he probably didn’t hear—he still clutched his crotch, now rolling in the dirt—but it didn’t matter. She had made her point.

Twenty minutes later, as she passed through town on her way home, she stopped just long enough to toss his denim pants on the steps of State Street Church.