Chapter 1

Cheryl Burke awakened with a muted groan and sat up in bed, shaking uncontrollably. Broken images, fragments of the dream floated through her mind, and she clenched her eyes tightly shut, trying to erase the stark pictures. The dream was part of her, like a tape that kept replaying itself in her mind. The dream had haunted her many times, but recently-since she had moved away from home and into the college dormitory-hardly a night went by without a trembling, tortured awakening in the middle of the night. When would it end?

She had been thirteen years old, a slender, pretty, shy Negro girl, the color of coffee and cream. She had been walking home from school on a warm and fragrant San Francisco day, making her way down the length of Golden Gate park to her home in the avenues. She had been in a dreamy, wistful mood. Deciding to leave the main walkway through the park, she had been exploring the hidden paths and garden labyrinths of the place. She was a child given to daydreaming, and she had been immersed in some romantic fantasy of her own, curled up beneath a huge eucalyptus tree with her schoolbooks strewn on the grass beside her when she realized that there was somebody nearby-only a few feet away on the other side of the tree.

There was soft talking. Cheryl was about to slip away, to find another spot, when there came a sound that made her freeze with terrified uncertainty. A girl moaned-a funny, catlike mewing sound that was unlike any sound that Cheryl had ever heard.

What was going on? Was somebody being hurt.

Trembling, tentatively, she peeked around the tree.

What she saw made her freeze with shock and horrified fascination.

There was a couple on the grass. The girl was tall and slender-with long, straight blonde hair. She didn't look too many years older than Cheryl herself. The boy was dark and swarthy. He was kissing the girl, hard, holding her tightly up against his muscular body. With his free hand, he was tugging hard at her skirt, yanking it up around her sleek white legs, until Cheryl could see the lacy fringe of the girl's black panties. The girl was twisting back and forth, but Cheryl couldn't tell whether she was resisting the boy, or urging him on.

Then Cheryl saw the blonde girl drop her hand into the boy's lap and begin fumbling quickly with his zipper. He parted his legs a little to give her better access, and she reached into his fly and pulled his nude penis out into the cool air. Then she began to rub the length all over, tugging it quickly up and down until it became enormous, like a young tree growing from between the boy's beefy thighs.

Cheryl felt sick in her stomach. She wanted to run, to forget what she was watching. But her body wouldn't respond, wouldn't move, and she watched, frozen in a fascinated trance. With the girl still tugging at his huge, white, stiff organ, the boy managed to lock his fingers in the elastic waistband of her black bikini panties. He jerked them down roughly, and the girl fell back on the grass, her legs falling apart and flailing spasmodically.

Then the boy pushed his body over on top of the girl, and while Cheryl bit hard into the heel of her hand to keep from screaming, he stuffed his huge, meaty pole into the damp blonde gash of the girl's vagina.

Cheryl jerked to her feet, like a puppet, and ran, ran furiously through the park, ran until her chest burned from the effort, ran until she was safely locked in her room.

And, it seemed, she had been running ever since.

Now, five years later, she sat up in her bed in the dormitory at San Francisco State and she tried to forget the dream.

There was a sigh from across the room. Cheryl glanced at Annie, her roommate. Annie was a white girl. For the first time it occurred to Cheryl that t Annie looked a lot like the girl in the park. Annie had boyfriends, lots of them. Cheryl found herself wondering how far Annie went with her dates. The two girls were very different. Cheryl was determined to make something of herself. She had come to college to be educated. She didn't know Annie very well yet, but Annie's attitude was very different. She seemed almost indifferent to schoolwork. She seemed to spend most of her time going to parties and having a good time.

Cheryl drew a deep breath and lay back down. She had an early class, and she simply had to get some sleep. Just before she dozed off, it occurred to her that Annie was the reason that she had been having the dream so frequently. Annie looked so much like the girl in the park.

Cheryl was coming out of the science building when she saw Bobby waiting for her. Bobby was her brother. She recognized the ill-at-ease expression that he wore whenever he came on campus to visit her. He was twenty-two, but he had never wanted to go to college. It had hurt their parents that Bobby seemed to have so little ambition. In fact, it was partly because of Bobby that Cheryl felt compelled to make something of herself. Her father had worked hard and had managed a good life for his family. They weren't wealthy, but they lived comfortably. His dream had been that his children would do better than he had. He himself hadn't had much to work with-having to drop out of high school to help support his family. It wasn't easy for a Negro to better his lot, but he had worked hard, and now Bobby seemed content to throw it all way. Bobby liked fast company, sharp clothes and beautiful women, but he didn't like work or responsibility.

Still, he loved his sister.

"Well, if it isn't little miss coed," he said grinning.

"Well, if it isn't Mr. unemployed," she snapped back. She felt tense and irritable that morning-she didn't feel like taking his teasing. He looked a little stung by her remark, and she instantly regretted having made it.

"Come on, big brother," she said, softening her voice. "You can buy me a milkshake . . . " She knew that he would have money. Somehow he always did-and sharp clothes, too, but how he got it was a mystery.

Despite his aggressive, bantering remark, Bobby seemed strangely subdued, preoccupied.

"Have you called the folks?" she demanded, when they had found seats in the booth of a nearby coffee shop. He grimaced and looked away. Cheryl knew that he didn't want her to pursue the subject. It was a sore point between them. Something in her made her push on, anyway.

"Bobby," she said. "It's been over a month."

"Get off my back," he snapped. "I don't need a sermon."

"But they worry about you," she persisted. "It wouldn't do you any harm to . . . "

"Goddam it," he hissed, with an intensity that made Cheryl jerk back from the table, "I told you to get off my back. Forget it. You can play the dutiful daughter with your own life, but don't preach to me about life."

She looked at him silently, and she was aware of the great gulf between them. Words formed in her mind, but she sensed the futility of speaking them. As close as they were in many ways, there was something, some cleft of the spirit that seemed to be growing wider each time that they saw each other.

Cheryl forced a smile. "Okay then, big brother," she sighed, "what have you been doing with yourself?"

He grinned. "Been educating myself," he said. She waited for him to go on, but he just grinned at her.

"I don't suppose you've been taking correspondence courses," she said.

He snickered. "No," he said. "I like to get my education firsthand . . . On the job experience, you might say."

She looked away. "What do you know about jobs?" she asked.

"More than you think," he said. "There's more than one kind of job."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, looking him in the eyes. She didn't like the drift of the conversation. She knew that Bobby had been hanging out with a group of people that always seemed to have money, but without visible means of support.

He regarded her intently for a moment. Then he shrugged.

"Never mind, little girl," he said. "You're not old enough to know about some things."

She looked away, feeling her chest go tight. At the same time, however, she felt relief that he had dropped it. He was right in a way. She didn't want to know. If he had to do whatever it was that he was doing, she wanted to be left out of it. She had her world-her studies, her career. Some day she would be a teacher-maybe even a college teacher. Then maybe she would have some respect, some influence with her brother-if it wasn't too late. Now she was just a little girl to him, and he wasn't about to take her seriously-even if deep down inside he knew that she was right.

After Bobby had left, Cheryl found herself wondering why he had come in the first place. They had never really managed to loosen up with each other, but she had the feeling that he wanted to tell her something, or ask her something, but that he couldn't bring himself to do it.

There was a freshman English class, and then a biology lab in the afternoon. It was dark when she finally got back to the dorm.

As she closed the door of her room behind her, she saw Annie, lying naked across her bed, except for a tiny blue pair of bikini panties. She looked away from the girl's slender, milky-fleshed form, but Annie didn't seem at all self-conscious.

Cheryl dropped her books on her desk and sat down on her own bed. It was rare that the two girls ran into each other in the room. Cheryl spent most of her daytime hours in classes and in the library. Annie was just plain gone most of the time-until very late at night. Her books sat in their places on her desk for some times two or three days at a time with no sign of being used. Annie certainly didn't seem to take her school-work very seriously.

"Hi," the blonde girl said, propping her face up on one hand. "You look like you've had a hard day."

Cheryl groaned her agreement, kicked off her shoes and sat on her own bed. Her eyes flickered over Annie's ripe body quickly, then she looked guiltily away, feeling a flush in her cheeks. Annie was . . . well, more developed then she appeared to be with her clothes on. Her breasts were round and stuck out like mounds of cream. Her skin was so white. There was a kind of feline sensuality about the white girl that made Cheryl feel almost sick with embarrassment. Maybe she could find a new roommate next semester-someone more studious, someone more like herself.

"Aren't you cold?" Cheryl asked.

A faint smile appeared on Annie's pale lips. She sighed and stretched, raising her arms above her head and pushing her firm breasts out in front of her. "Not at all," she said softly. "I love being nude."

There was a stiff silence.

"How do you like your classes?" Cheryl asked.

For a moment, Annie seemed not to have heard. Then she glanced at Cheryl and shrugged. "They're okay, I guess," she said. "For the most part, they're a bore. Although my English prof is beautiful."

"What do you mean?" Cheryl asked, faltering. "You mean he's a good teacher?"

Annie giggled. "No, silly," she said. "I mean he's hung like a horse."

Cheryl looked away, fighting down the tension in her chest.

"How . . . how do you know?" she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

"He wears tight pants," Annie breathed. "I always sit on the front row and cross my legs a lot. He likes to look at me . . . And, then I like to look at him, if you follow me. Maybe something will come of it."

Cheryl coughed to cover her embarrassment. She had known girls in high school who were "boy crazy," who didn't seem to care about anything else. But she had never met a girl that was so cool and unabashed about her fascination for men. It made her blood run cold to hear talk like this. To signal that she didn't want to pursue the conversation, she reached over and took a book off her desk and opened it in front of her face. She didn't want Annie to see how distraught she was. She didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

"You're kind of a prude, aren't you?" Annie asked softly.

Cheryl lowered the book slowly. "Just what do you mean by that?"

Annie shrugged. "You're beautiful," she said. "But you seem ashamed of it . . . The way you dress . . . " Her eyes flickered over the plaid skirt that Cheryl was wearing. "It's fashionable, but not very foxy. You could be dynamite if you wanted to, with your skin and your body."

Cheryl felt her ears burning. She felt like an insect being studied under a microscope.

"What if I don't want to be dynamite?" she said, her voice thick. "What if I don't want to be foxy?" She glared at Annie with a fury that she could barely control. She forced herself to draw a deep breath. She felt a little dizzy.

Annie didn't seem at all upset by Cheryl's reaction. In fact, she seemed a little amused. She smiled sleepily and slowly licked her lips.

"No offense," she said. "It just seems like a waste . . . "

"Isn't there more to life than just sex?" Cheryl asked, her voice almost pleading.

Annie lifted her hands slowly up to cup her milky breasts. She caught her little puckered nipples between her fingers and sighed. Then she grinned saucily and stuck out her little pink sea-shell of a tongue at Cheryl.

"I suppose there are other things," she said. "But sex is my favorite thing."

Cheryl watched her with a horrified fascination for a few seconds. Then again she hid her face behind the book that she was holding. She just couldn't believe that anyone could be so guiltless, so unabashedly straightforward about her own sexuality, her own animal nature. Cheryl had been brought up to believe that girls like Annie were the shame of right-thinking people. And yet Cheryl was somehow made to feel ashamed of her own decency.

Or was it decency?

After all, times were changing. Moral standards were changing, and Annie was a perfect example of the change. Cheryl flinched at the thought that there were those who would explain her own attitude as the result of guilt and repression, rather than decency. Maybe she was the abnormal one. After all, she was a physically beautiful eighteen-year-old girl, and she didn't have any boyfriends. Oh, she had been on dates. She had even been kissed a few times. But that had been expected. It had been the thing to do.

The thought that her whole attitude toward Annie, and toward sex, was a front, an elaborate rationalization, upset Cheryl and depressed her, and she tried to concentrate on the book in front of her.

But, for once, it didn't work.

Annie slithered off her bed in a few minutes and began to dress. Despite her resolve, Cheryl kept peeking over the top of her book, fascinated by the milky nudity of the slender blonde girl.

Annie dressed slowly in front of a mirror, her eyes scrutinizing her body with unashamed interest. She slipped into a tiny leather skirt that barely came to her crotch. Then she slipped into a brightly colored slipover top that was barely more than a T-shirt. Her breasts pushed out with insistence against the material of the blouse. Her nipples were prominent, and, as Cheryl watched, she wondered-feeling a funny itch in her own breasts-what it felt like to dress like that.

Annie stood in front of the mirror, brushing her long, fine hair, and Cheryl watched her until her own nipples were stiff and aching with a strange tension.

She was grateful when Annie finally left. She seated herself at her desk and tried again to concentrate on her book. But for a long time, her mind was swimming with images and thoughts which filled her with a strange, sick excitement.

Finally she gave up and slipped into a nightgown.

Before she turned out the light, she walked in front of the mirror and stopped. Feeling guilty, she looked at her own image. She was a tall, slender girl. Her hair was soft and black, framed her face in a modest Afro-style. Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, she reached down and slipped the nightgown up her sleek, brown legs until it was gathered around her waist. She tried to imagine what a man would think of her. Many times she had been told that she was beautiful, and she supposed that it was true-yet, she did not want to be beautiful. She hated the way that men undressed her with their eyes.

And yet, why was she breathing so hard now, watching her body like this? It felt so shameful to indulge herself this way. But why was there this hot restlessness in her body? Disgusted with herself, she turned away from the mirror, flicked out the lights and fell on her bed.

But it was a long time before she fell asleep!