The first week of being back in Hartford had been fun. But Connie Steffano had studying to do, and all her old friends had got on with their lives. Moreover, both she and they remembered that they hadn't really been such great friends a year before. The second week was wearing, what with the constant bickering between Andre and Helen these days.

"Helen, can't I go up to the cabin with you?" she asked. Her parents had taken to alternating the weekends each spent in the vacation 'cabin' they owned in the woods. That cut down on the bickering, at least.

"Now, dear, you have work to do." And so she did; she would have to study a great deal that summer if she were going to be a junior as St. Wigbert's the next fall. It's just that Connie didn't see why she couldn't do the studying up at the cabin.

When Helen had gone, Connie turned to her father. "Andre, you'll take me with you next week, won't you?"

"Sure, Princess." And he did. "Really," he said when he saw her suitcase. "I'm only taking a change of underwear. Where will you find to wear all that stuff up there?"

"Some of it is books, after all. And the rest is just summer clothes. You know. Jeans and all."

He quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing else. Saturday morning she rose early and fixed him a western omelet for breakfast. He could cook, had taught her how to make the omelet for that matter. But he didn't like cooking for himself. He was grateful for the meal.

"If you want something else for breakfast tomorrow," she said that afternoon, "We'll have to go to the store." He drove her there, and paid for her purchases without a murmur. He even helped carry the stuff in. He disappeared at dinner time, though, leaving her to eat from the new stores of food. She cooked pancakes Sunday morning.

"Can I stay up here?" She asked that evening when he was ready to drive back. "Just for the next week and come back with Helen?"

"'May I,' Princess."

"May I stay up here?"

"You sure you have everything you need?"

"I think so."

"I'll tell Helen," he said. She had expected an argument, was prepared to run off and hide in the woods.

She'd done a little work that weekend; but Andre's presence, even the expectation that he would come back when he was gone, had inhibited her. Now, she had no interruptions. She worked seriously on Monday, found she'd overdone it, goofed off most of Tuesday. By Thursday, she'd settled into a schedule.

Instead of changing from one subject to another like they did in school, she would study only history. She would read a chapter in the morning, fix and eat lunch, and do all the assignments connected with the chapter in the afternoon.

When Helen came up, she was angry. "It's just like Andre to let you stay up here, and interfere with my weekend."

"I don't want to interfere with your weekend. Leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. Tell me which meals we'll eat together, and I'll fix them."

"You know how to cook what? Five meals?"

"Seven, not counting cold cereal and opening cans. You'd go out to eat, anyway. Were you planning to cook for yourself up here?" Helen wasn't the sort to cook much on the electric stove at home; she cooked less on the bottled-gas stove at the cabin. "I'm offering more convenience, not less." By Saturday, Helen came around. She even drove Connie to the store again, understanding that she was stocking up for the next week.

That established a pattern. Connie would study by herself weekdays. One parent or the other would come up on the weekend, and visit around. Connie would cook a meal or two for them, more for Andre who liked home-cooked breakfasts if he didn't have to man the stove, fewer for Helen who didn't like breakfasts at all. Whatever studying Connie would get done on weekends was a bonus. During the week, she got a lot of studying done. One thing she dropped was the quatrain she had written each day all spring. The days at the cabin were of three sorts: weekends, rainy days, and clear days. It was hard to write a different rhyme every day about the same schedule.

She would ship one load of dirty clothes home with Andre, and he would bring them back clean his next weekend.

She couldn't figure out her parents' use of the cabin. It was nice and quiet in the woods. Connie went whole weeks without seeing anyone from waving goodbye to one parent on Sunday to greeting the other the next Friday. Why come up here to go visiting? They left Hartford, full of people they knew; they drove a long way to a nearly-deserted area; then they spent their time visiting. Andre, at least, took a notebook for long walks in the woods.

Connie started off studying in the cabin, staying inside almost all the time. She goofed off for long walks once or twice. Then she moved her studying outside. She got out an air mattress and lay on that while she read. At first, she dressed completely to do the reading. She moved to going barefoot, then to reading topless on weekdays. She kept a shirt, if not a bra, with her by the air mattress. Nobody ever came by, though. Her tan was better, once she got over the sunburn which came from overdoing it, than it had ever been before.

Connie moved on from history to English. "You should keep out of the sun," Helen said on one of her weekends. "You're getting much too dark." Connie didn't think there was such a thing as too dark, but -- on weekends -- she dressed completely and mostly stayed inside.

Weekends interfered with playing with herself, too. She, who had done it in a room with four other girls, felt inhibited by anyone else in the same cabin. On Friday and Saturday nights, she would abstain. On Sunday through Thursday, she would rub herself every night, experimenting with ways to prolong the pleasure. It was the middle of July before she realized how ridiculous it was to lock herself in a room when she had all that privacy. At first, she went out in her nightgown in the dark and watched the moon while she rubbed herself. The sky and the voices of the night birds added a mystery to that pleasure.

When she started on Latin, the studying became more demanding. Memorizing vocabulary had never been terribly difficult for her, but it had always been boring. Here, she had to memorize nine months' worth of material in one month. She motivated herself with imagining how Kristen would feel as a sophomore when Connie lorded over her as a junior. But that was far in the future, and boredom with memorization was now. So, she developed a current motivation. When she'd memorized an entire day's list, she would rub herself to pleasure that night.

She goofed off one Thursday, and scrupulously abstained that night. She went back to work that Friday. She even did loads of memorization Saturday and Sunday in between periods of Helen's presence. Surprisingly, Helen was even willing to test her on the week's work. "Very good, dear," she said. "I knew you said you were studying up here; but, frankly, I didn't expect to see much progress, especially with all the sun you've been getting. Do your studying after dark?"

"Sun tans don't take that much concentration. You can study and tan at the same time."

"And I can't persuade you that tanning is a mistake? You'll regret it when you get wrinkles." But, still, she said that Connie had learned her Latin.

Sunday, before Helen started for home, the weather broke. It rained for hours. Connie rubbed herself in bed that night, but she felt she deserved more pleasure than she got lying in bed to the sound of drizzle. The next morning was magnificent, however. The woods looked fresh-scrubbed after the rain, and the air was cool.

She wore sneakers for once, though. On her first trip from the cabin, she dumped the air mattress on the wet grass. On the second, she brought out her Latin book. She only spent a little time on enjoying the view before starting on the grind. When she had the first memorization done, her schedule allowed her to go in and fix lunch. But it was still early for that, although the sun was hot on her. She moved the air mattress into the shade of a tree. Looking up through the leaves, she could see the sun glinting and diffracted through tiny drops of moisture. One of those drops fell on her, hitting her left boob.

She wiped it off. That felt good, and nobody was going to see. Moreover, the left boob was still smaller than the right one. She wiped it again. She pulled the nipple out very gently. That felt good. She lay there playing with her boobs until the sun shone directly on her again. Then she put on her shirt, gathered her materials, and returned everything to the cabin in two trips. She had sometimes left the air mattress outside, but the recent rain had reminded her of the danger of that.

Even though she opened a can of spaghetti for lunch and didn't bother heating it, she didn't sit down until after 2:00. She had to work hard at her afternoon studying. She didn't want to skimp on it, though. She was quite eager for the rubbing, and it gave more pleasure when her conscience wasn't nagging her that she had promised herself that she'd finish the studying before she started.

It was still light out when she finished her Latin. She resisted her desires through dinner. (The rest of the spaghetti, but heated up and with a salad and vegetables.) Then she changed into her nightie and took the air mattress out to view the sunset. She pulled on her nipples again, both of them this time. She stroked her labia while trying to delay the climax until the sun was down. She broke off to stroke her nipples again, but she'd gone too far. She stroked her labia and then her clitoris until she spasmed. She pulled her nightie down and watched the sky turn crimson and then darken. She didn't go in until it got uncomfortably chilly.

She felt wonderful when she woke up, remarkably early, the next morning. She changed her pattern. Now, she would play with her boobs as soon as she finished her morning studies. When Andre came up, she asked him to test her on the Latin. She was fairly confident she knew it, but she was always scrupulous to ask each parent for as much parenting as the other. She had enough problems, and she wasn't going to increase them by taking sides.

She also asked him for one of the tablets he kept in the cabin. "They're right there," he said.

"Yes." Connie said. "But I want it to be mine, not something of yours I wrote in."

"I would never peek. Here, take these two."

She wasn't afraid that he would peek. She wanted the tablet for plane geometry, and having him look at that was laughable. But she had a notebook without a purpose. She started her quatrains again. This time, she described one room or one outside location each day.

When she got a day ahead of her schedule, she stopped rubbing herself at night. Instead, she would come out early in the morning and enjoy herself. Dressed in the nightie, she would haul the air mattress and the book out in the dawn chill. Then she would lie there and play with her nipples. She got to feeling free enough that she would dance naked between the trees. Then she would bring herself to completion slowly as the sun rose.

On days like that, she did a half day's studying before eating a quite late breakfast. She did another half day's studying before an even-later lunch. She reviewed something she'd read previously, and wrote her quatrain. She read one of Andre's books before and during dinner. Dinner became her lightest meal of the day. Then, she read herself to sleep. She started marking the sexy parts in his books, and taking them out to the air mattress in the last light. She surprised herself by getting completion twice a day, but the studying was getting done. That, after all, was what mattered.

All of this came to a crashing halt when she finished Latin and started on plane geometry. She had learned the Latin vocabulary and the rules of grammar, quite complicated rules of grammar, in less than a month. She learned the axioms and theorems of the first week's plane geometry just as quickly. But the book wanted her to make up her own proofs, proofs of things she'd never seen. And mostly they were things that didn't need proof at all; they were perfectly obvious.

For the second week, when she didn't meet any of her goals, she conscientiously denied herself the rewards. When Andre came up, she didn't have the privacy she needed, and she knew better than to ask him for help on math. The night after he left, she tossed and turned. When she brought the air mattress out that morning, her will power had dissolved. She didn't even bring the geometry book with her. She was exhausted when she put her nightie back on and went in for a very late breakfast. She did some more studying of geometry the rest of her time there, and she reviewed the other three subjects, too. She didn't get to the middle of the geometry book, though. Well, she'd taken a gamble and lost. If she'd be in the same room with Kristen for the next year, she'd get her fun over the summer. She started playing with her nipples a dozen times a day. She even rubbed herself three or four times a day.

Two weeks before she was scheduled to start school, Andre and Helen drove up together. "You're coming back now," Andre said.

"This Sunday? You didn't give me any warning."

"Not this Sunday," Helen said. "Tonight. Come on. I'll help you pack." And help, at least supervise, she did.

Neither Andre nor Helen pretended that she had the least choice. Before this, for years before this, one or the other had talked her into things. Sometimes she figured out that the talk would go on until she gave up, but they pretended that it was her decision. This time they didn't even give her reasons.

Then, too, the two of them had agreed on this decision. It was the first time in years she could remember them agreeing on anything. They would bargain and trade to make some sort of accommodation, but agree? As she dozed on the ride back, they were utterly silent in the front seat.

Connie couldn't tell which shock was the most extreme.

Miss Perkins, the headmistress of St. Wigbert's, had written that Connie should come to school several days early. The girls were going to come in on a Thursday, see their new teachers on Friday, and actually start in class on Monday. Andre drove Connie to school on the previous Monday. Tuesday, she spent all day taking one test after another. The last test was plane geometry, and Connie was lost. Wednesday, she had an appointment with Miss Perkins. Mrs. Grover, the geometry teacher, was also there.

"Well, Connie," said Miss Perkins, "overall, you did very well."

"Yes, ma'am." Connie knew Miss Perkins was going to tell her that she couldn't be a junior that coming year. Well, she'd still be the youngest sophomore.

"The same can't be said for your results in geometry."

"No, ma'am."

"Well, it was the last test you took. If you want, Mrs. Grover will give you another test."

"No, thank you, ma'am. I'd have done better if it had been the first test of the day, but I wouldn't have actually passed it."

"Well, Connie, we have a suggestion. You'll have to take plane geometry this year."

"Yes ma'am." For that matter, so would all the other sophomores.

"At St. Wigbert's we have a rule that the student who fails a course the year before may not take five major courses." Connie had hoped to take both third-year Latin and first-year French, but that was when she'd been planning to be a junior. "There is good reason for that rule. If you couldn't handle five majors the year before, if -- in some cases -- you couldn't handle four majors, then why try five majors this year? Mrs. Grover has a suggestion."

"You'll have to take plane geometry," Mrs. Grover started out. "So will several other juniors." Juniors! She was saying that Connie had made it. "They won't be taking advanced algebra, though, for the reasons Miss Perkins laid out. I'm going to suggest that you take both math courses. That would mean that you couldn't take both Latin and French."

"You mean that I get to be a junior?... Ma'am."

Neither woman commented on the delay. "Why yes, Connie," said Miss Perkins. "You did quite well in three courses. You'll probably have to get up to speed a little bit, but nothing compared to what you have to have done over the summer. And we think you can handle five majors, getting up to speed or not. Now, though, if you can't take both Latin and French, which do you want to take?"

"French, ma'am." She'd already planned that out. Taking five majors as a junior had always looked uncertain.

"And you'll take both algebra and geometry? That's a lot of math for someone who is weakest in math. Though I will say that having that as your weakest subject doesn't make you one of the weaker students in that subject. It will be a lot of work."

"Yes, ma'am."

"But not so much work," Mrs. Grover said, "as making nine months' progress in three subjects over the summer. Connie's thinking that, even if she's too polite to say so. And she's right."

"All right," Miss Perkins said. "We'll have to get your schedule figured out."