Strip Shakespeare

By Jacqueline Jillinghoff

When I started at St. Agnes last fall, I had two interests in life: poetry and getting off. I discovered masturbation when I was eleven or twelve, and for a while I was afraid it would take over my life. Then I decided I don’t care. I do it all the time — mostly in my room, in the morning before I get dressed, or in the afternoon when the uniform comes off. But if I really can’t wait, I sneak a wank in the girls’ room between classes. Or on the bus on the way home.

I know I’m dead if the nuns find out. They think it’s perversion. They’ve actually said so. It figures that anything that feels so good would damn you to hell. That’s how nuns are. It’s their job to take the joy out of life. If they ever catch me, they’ll probably call my dad and then hold my hand over an open flame or something.

I took care of my poetry jones by joining the English Club. There are only eight of us, and I’m the only freshman this year. But it’s great. We read a lot of books besides the ones we’re assigned in class — which is why I guess there are only eight of us — and we plan theater trips and events like the Christmas revels and the Maypole dance. It makes me feel like part of something in a big, strange school, but the real attraction for me is Julie Scanlon, on whom — see? I can do grammar — I have a mammoth crush. Julie’s a junior, and she’s everything I want to be: confident, curvy, and, well, blonde. My body is brown, my eyes are brown, and my hair is black. I could never be a cheerleader. Julie could, easily, if our teams had cheerleaders and if she wasn’t too smart to hate them and everything they stand for. She’s got blue eyes and the kind of layered blond hair I love — gold on top and sandy underneath — that hangs to the middle of her back. Her legs are muscular and always naked. She wears her skirt just long enough so the nuns don’t hassle her about it, and ankle socks. And her breasts are just the right size for her body, high and kind of tilted up. I’ve never seen her wear anything but the uniform, but she’d look great in anything.

One of the club’s projects this year has been to memorize as many of Shakespeare’s sonnets as we can, one or two a week, for fun. (OK, we have a strange idea of fun. Get over that part.) We’re not doing them in order. Someone picks out one she likes and we all work on it. By the end of March we’d gone through about a third of them.

After school on the first really warm afternoon in April, the cruelest month with his shoures soote, five of us went up to the student lounge for a meeting. We were supposed to plan the Maypole dance, but we got to talking about the sonnets instead.

Trish — she’s a senior and the club president — thought maybe we should put on a recital at the end of the year, and Beth, a sophomore, said we should recite a few of them, to see how much we remember.

“Let’s make it a contest,” Julie said. “Strip Shakespeare, right now.”

Beth, Trish and Dana groaned. They’d been through this before, whatever it was. As the frosh, I was the one who had to ask Julie what she was talking about. I hate that. I hate feeling left out.

“We did it last year with Emily Dickinson,” Trish said. “There were like ten us hanging out with nothing on. But we were in Julie’s basement. And we were all wasted on her dad’s beer.”

“So? There’s nobody around,” Julie said. “The only kids left in school are down in the gym. And the damn robotics club. And God knows what the nuns are doing.”

“But what is it?” I said.

“Tell the kid,” Trish said.

“We sit in a circle and recite a sonnet,” Julie told me. “Everybody does one line at a time, and if you mess up a line, you have to take something off. Everybody who ends up naked has to do a dare.”

“Let’s do it,” Beth said.

“I’m in,” said Dana.

“God, you two are such sluts,” Trish said.

“What sluts?” Beth said. “You did it last year.”

“Did you hear what I said about beer?”

“Besides, we haven’t seen Olivia naked yet,” Julie said.

“What it’s what, like an initiation?” I said. I was trying to sound mature, like Julie, but my legs were weakening, and my pussy was leaking popcorn butter.

“Oh, yeah,” Trish said. She winked at me.

“And it’ll be fair,” Dana said. “At least now we’re all wearing the same number of things.”

I did a quick mental countdown: loafers and white socks (three pairs up to the knee, Julie and Trish in anklets), pullover white shirt, the obligatory khaki skirt, bra, and —

“Unless one of us isn’t wearing panties,” I blurted out.

They looked at me like I’d peed on the rug. Julie lifted her skirt, showing us her underwear — pink cotton briefs with a lacy waistband. She has a flat tummy, and her mound swelled against the crotch.

“Everybody show,” she said.

The rest of us followed her lead, flashing each other in a twinkling of pink, white, blue, black and orange. The black panties were Dana’s — a transparent mesh with a solid patch over her public area. It was obvious she shaved, which didn’t surprise me. She’s a real, professional model, even if she’s only a sophomore like Beth. She’s like six feet tall — her parents are giants — and thin as a pencil with endless, grasshopper legs, and she spends her weekends traipsing the runways up in New York. She got a hundred thousand dollar contract this year that made the local paper. Seeing her naked was going to make me hyperventilate, if it didn’t actually kill me.

My panties were the white ones, and the only ones with a decoration: pink rosebuds. I felt like a little kid in footie pajamas.

“So we’re even,” Julie said. “Trish and Olivia, you in?”

“Yeah, what the fuck,” said Trish. Reading is so great for your vocabulary.

Everyone looked at me. The last thing I wanted was to strip in front of Julie, but then, she was going to strip in front of me. And I did know my sonnets.

“OK, yeah,” I said. “What does the winner get?”

“The winner goes home with all the losers’ panties,” Trish said.

“Oh, my God!”

“Jesus!”

“That’s perverted!”

“No, it’s cool,” Julie said. And to me, anything she said was cool, was.

Geekiness and horniness — my two worlds were colliding.

The lounge is just a classroom on the second floor nobody uses for anything else. It’s got an old carpet in the center with two sofas and a pair of armchairs arranged in a rectangle, with the armchairs at the ends. Four of us sat down on the sofas. I wanted to sit next to Julie, or across from her, but I didn’t get either privileged position. She took one of the chairs, so we were sitting in a kind of flat-bottomed “U.” Beth was to my right, Julie to hers. Trish was across from Beth, and I was looking right into Dana’s dark eyes.

“Who starts?” Beth said.

“Olivia’s the cherry,” Julie said. “You can pick any sonnet you want.”

With that gesture, Julie made me, the only one of us who hadn’t played before, a member of the group, even though I didn’t know what “cherry” meant. I figured it was a like a newbie, but I didn’t want to knock myself down in her eyes by asking yet another question.

“Um,” I said.

“‘Um’ is not a sonnet,” Trish said. “Come on, kid. Pick one you know. This is a freebie for you.”

“Uh...”

“If you don’t start, you have to take something off,” Dana said.

“Give me a second!”

“One!” Dana said.

I picked the line that made me think of Julie.

“Being your slave,” I rattled off, “what should I do but tend / Upon the hours and times —”

“No, Beth does the next line,” Julie said. “Keep it going to your right.”

“Upon the hours and times of your desire.”

Julie was quick and flawless: “I have no precious time at all to spend...”

Trish: “Nor services to do, till you require.”

“Nor dare I —,” Dana began. “Nor dare I ... child...”

The cry went up.

“You blew it,” Julie said. “Let’s go.”

Dana took off one shoe.

“You know the rules,” Trish said. “Shoes and socks count as one. They both come off.”

Dana set her shoes on the rug in front of her, neatly, side by side.

“You do the line she missed,” Trish said.

“Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,” I said. I knew it cold. In my secret heart, it was our sonnet.

It went around, and it didn’t take long. Dana didn’t know the sonnet at all. By the end of the round, she’d missed three lines. Her feet were bare and her shirt was off, and we all had a stunning view of that long, taut stomach between her bra and the waistband of her skirt. Her bra was black mesh, too, too, like her panties, but with no patch to hide her nipples. The fashion people must pay her in clothes.

Beth had taken off her shoes.

I was still all dressed when Beth said, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds...”

Everybody froze for a second.

“Go on,” Julie said.

“No, that’s the end of the line,” Beth said.

“She’s right,” Trish said. “ ‘Admit impediments’ is in the second line.”

“Ugh!” Julie grunted. And she pulled off her shirt and dropped it on the floor.

“My feet get cold,” she said when she saw me looking at her. “Besides, everybody starts with their shoes.”

She was wearing a plain white bra that showed the slopes of upper breasts. As the game went on, it was going to be harder to think.

My shoes came off at “Or bends with the remover to remove,” and we went on from there, laughing and making up lines and throwing our clothes into a pile on the rug and laughing some more.

Dana, the death-dealing model, was the first one out. She flubbed something in “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow.” I guess she can’t imagine herself getting old and weedy, with deep trenches in her beauty’s field. Anyway, with the three other girls hooting, and me staring, she stood up, and, bending double, slid her panties down those long legs. She was shaved — completely. Probably for when she models swimwear. Her tits were small and set well apart, and she was supernaturally long in the waist. She made me think of a clay figure that’s pinched at both ends and stretched. Who’s that sculptor we saw the art museum? It’s a long Italian name.

She dropped her panties on the free wing chair, which we designated the “panty depository.” They would pile up there for the winner to claim at the end.

“Olivia, you’re staring,” Trish said.

“Who wouldn’t stare?” Julie said. “God, I envy her.”

“Stop it. It’s just a body,” Dana said as she flopped back into her seat.

“A million dollar body,” Beth said.

“Just a hundred thousand dollars,” Dana said.

“Oh, my bad!”

“What’s her dare?” Trish asked, but Beth already had her cell phone out of her book bag. She pressed a couple of buttons and handed it over to Dana.

“Hit the number on the speed dial,” she said, “and when the guy answers, tell him who you are and what you’re doing. And you have to stay on as long as he wants.”

“Who is it?” Dana asked.

“What do you care? He’s a guy.”

The “guy” picked up after a couple of rings.

“Hello?” Dana said. “No, Beth gave me the phone and told me to call you ... We’re at school playing a game.”

“Tell him you’re naked,” Beth mouthed.

“It’s a strip game, and I was the first one out,” Dana said. “I’m sitting here totally naked ... He wants to know my name.”

“Tell him,” Beth said.

“Dana. Yeah, I’m that one ... Six one, really. Everyone else has something on, but not much. Beth is topless, and so is another girl.” She meant Trish. “One girl” — Julie — “took off her shirt and panties, but she still has her skirt and bra on. And her shoes and socks” She looked at me. “And there’s a freshman here in her bra and panties ... No, I’m not that big ... Thirty-four B.”

The other three girls giggled into their hands. Dana handed the phone to Beth. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” she said into the phone. “Everybody does a dare ... Oh, God! No. You promise? OK, hold on. — Dana, stand up and do a model pose.”

Dana snapped into position automatically — hands on hips, hair across half her face, and those lips in a to-die-for pout — and before she knew what was happening, Beth took her picture with the phone and sent it off to the guy.

“You bitch!” Dana yelled. “Gimme that!”

The other three were laughing.

“Too late, he’s already got it,” Beth said.

“What if he posts it on the Internet? If they see it, it could ruin my modeling.”

“He won’t. He’s cool,” Beth said. She talked back into the phone. “Get it? Yeah, she’s amazing. OK, that’s only for you, no sharing. I’m serious. OK, see you later. Love you, too.”

She closed the phone.

“Who was that?” Dana asked. “It sounded like a kid.”

Beth just grinned. Enigmatic. That’s a word I learned this year.

Trish was the second one out. She messed up on something in “O thou, my lovely boy.” Of all of us, she’s the only one who has what you would call knockers: big, soft breasts that need only a little lift to make deep, dark cleavage, which she got with her silky push-up.

Dana told her to lick her own nipples. I still can’t do that — and I’ve tried — but it was easy for Trish. Her brown buds grew and glistened with spit. She went back and forth, lapping one and then the other. Her eyes closed and she breathed louder, huffing through her nose.

“God, she’s really getting into it,” Beth said.

“Mmmm-hmm,” Trish said.

“Now you might as well get yourself off,” Julie said.

Trish’s hand flew to her bush. She had a way of just rubbing herself with her fingertips at the top of her mound, not inserting her fingers into her cunt or anything, just pressing on the part that feels best with a slow up-and-down. I was learning a lot this afternoon.

It didn’t take her long to come. When she finished, suddenly, her tit popped out of her mouth and she slumped back into the corner of the sofa with her knees open and her eyes closed.

Trish, Beth and I went on with the game. Beth only had her panties on, but she came back strong and kept them. Nobody seemed to notice when I lost my bra, but then, in the moment I’d been waiting for, Julie lost hers. She twisted her arms behind her back and easily unsnapped the hooks. I can’t forget the instant the straps and cups suddenly popped went slack, and the thing came off. Herr tits were smaller than I’d imagined, looking at them through her shirt all year, but they were beautifully shaped. The upper slopes were short. The rounding underneath was heavy and full. And in between, the pink nipples tilted upward like swirls of strawberry soft-serve.

I stared harder than I did at Dana, and before I could get my focus back, Beth started “They that have power to hurt and will do none.” I hardly knew where I was when it came around to me, and my white-and-pink-rosebud panties joined the pile. I was left with the gold cross around my neck, which I guess didn’t count as clothes.

Losing my last shred of covering, I was finally comfortable enough to curse.

“Shit, and I know this one, too,” I said.

“You weren’t fast enough,” Trish said. She’d woken up from her orgasm.

“Look at that,” Julie said. “No tan lines. How does she do that?”

“I’m just naturally dark,” I said.

“She’s Puerto Rican,” Beth said.

“Salvadoran,” I said.

“What’s her dare?” Trish said.

“She’s got to go pee,” Dana said. Her humiliation with the cell phone inflamed her desire to embarrass everyone else.

“You mean —” I said.

“You go into the corridor, walk down to the girls’ room, and you take a pee,” Dana explained, slowly, like she was talking some kid in the lower tracks.

“But —”

“Naked, yes,” Dana said. “You’re catching on.”

“Wow! That is bitchy,” Julie said.

I looked at her pleadingly, but my God had had forsaken me.

“No, you have to do it,” she said.

Beth, still in her panties, walked over to the door and opened it, looking up and down the corridor.

“It’s clear,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I stood just inside the door, goose bumps turning my skin to sandpaper.

“The faster you do it, the faster you’ll get back,” Trish said.

I was still making up my mind when two open hands hit me hard in the back and I half slid, half tripped into the corridor. The door slammed shut behind me, and the lock clicked.

I whirled around and rattled the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. I stood terrified, with one hand over my crotch and the other trying to hide both nipples as four pretty faces laughed at me through the window. I had never been more alone, more exposed, more turned on.

“Go on! Hurry!” Trish shouted, pointing to her right. I took off running and was almost down to the end of the hall when I remembered the girls’ room was in the other direction. Trish faked me out! They were all laughing harder when I ran back, and they cheered me on like a racehorse.

I kept my hands vaguely over my body, one over my tits and the other back and forth over my cunt and bottom, as if it would do any good if a nun walked by.

The girls’ room was an empty haven. I locked myself in a stall and sat down. I could have just run back. I mean, how would they know I actually took a pee? But I was sure they’d think of something, so I had to stay long enough to make them believe it. I had to go, anyway, keyed up as I was.

I pulled my legs up and balanced my feet on the edge of the toilet seat as I streamed. I was scared to death a nun would barge in and see my bare feet under the door. They didn’t use the girls’ rooms, but they were always sticking their noses in to make sure we weren’t doing something wrong, like smoking — or wanking between classes.

Not stopping to wash my hands, I charged through the door and streaked back to the classroom. The door was still locked, the girls still teasing me. I rattled the doorknob and banged on the glass.

“Let me in!” I demanded. “Come on, I did it.”

Nothing but laughter from inside. Somewhere a door opened. I danced on my bare feet, flapping my hands the way we did in penmanship class. “Hurry up! Somebody’s coming!”

“Let her in,” said a muffled voice. I could tell it was Julie. Trish popped the doorknob, and I tumbled through the open door.

“Have fun?” Trish said.

I was panting. My nipples were solid black bullets. My cunt was heavy with juice. I was dying to get off, but I managed to keep my hands off my pussy. I couldn’t do it in front of everybody, even though Trish had. God, if I had been alone —

The game had gone on while I was out. Julie had moved to a sofa, and she and Beth were sitting across from one another, looking hard into each other’s faces. They were down to their last scraps. Beth was still in her panties, and Julie had only her socks on. The shoes and the skirt had come off while I was running in a panic through the hall. It was hard to see her pubic hair while she was sitting down, but the little patch I caught was a light brown. A natural blond, the beautiful bitch.

Julie started “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun...” The lines bounced back and forth between them, but Beth, who had started, was confident, and Julie was nervous, laughing too quickly and too loudly every time she did a line. They almost reached end, threatening another face off, but Julie muffed it on “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare.” She said, “I think she is as rare,” and it was over.

Julie drew her knees to her boobs, flashing her gaping pink pussy through her kinky blonde muff, and swept off both socks at the same time. Beth, in triumph, grabbed the panties from the chair and waved them over her head.

“I am da queen!” she said. “Mistress Marvel of Shakespeare, and the boss of all you naked losers.”

In the land of the nude, the girl in panties rules.

“What’s Julie’s dare?” Dana wanted to know, still out for revenge.

“She has to—” Trish began.

“My win, my call,” Beth said. We looked at her in silence as she thought. Then she said, slowly, “Make out with Olivia.”

“Yeah, gotta be,” Trish said.

“Perfect,” Dana said.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Beth said to me. “You’ve been following her around like a puppy all year. We know you want it. You know you want it.”

For once, Julie stepped out of the game.

“No. She’s a nice kid. Think of something else.”

“Make out with her,” Beth insisted, “or you go outside and hitchhike home.”

They had her, or she thought they did. It didn’t occur to her that both dares went too far.

“Let’s get it on,” Trish said. “Sweet lovers love the spring.”

Julie — soft, naked Julie — patted the sofa cushion next to her. I sat down stiffly, my hands folded over my scanty black bush.

I was staring straight ahead, and my whole body was rigid: mouth, neck, arms, legs — even my boobs, if that’s possible. To reach my face, Julie had to kneel on the sofa cushion and sort of twist around in front of me.

She planted hard kiss on my mouth, but our lips were shut. No feeling came through.

“This is boring,” Beth said. “I want to see some tongue.”

Julie put her mouth to my ear. “Relax, sweetie,” she whispered. Her breath sent a tingle down my side, raising goose bumps all the way to my thighs.

She stroked my neck, my legs, my breasts — if you can call them breasts. When she touched my dark nipples, the tension began to soften. She drew my hands apart and placed one of my arms across her shoulders. She tickled my thighs, and my legs parted.

“God, her bush is so black,” I heard Dana say.

“But you can see her pubes sticking through it,” Beth said.

Julie’s lips touched mine again, and this time I opened for her. If I was ever going to kiss her, it would have to be now, and so what if everybody was watching? Who would they tell? I turned my head toward her to make it easier. Our tongues touched. She pressed down on one of my nipples with her fingers, and a quiet moan rose in my throat.

“Here we go!” Beth said. “Now it’s getting interesting.”

Julie and I frenched hungrily, and I cupped a hand under one of her tits. Her fingers wandered down my breasts, and my side, and my legs. Her touch was feather-light. It made me dizzy. Finally, she found the sensitive, wonder-girl flesh under my black curls. She hesitated. I broke the kiss and put my lips to her ear — the ear that was turned away from the other girls.

“Do it,” I breathed. I prayed no one could tell how hot and desperate I was.

Julie’s fingers circled my clit.

“God, she’s wet,” someone said. My eyes were closed, and the voices ran together. Julie raised my hand to her mouth. She sucked my fingers, then returned them, wet, to her boobs. I rubbed my spit into the nipple. My pussy oozed as she played with it. We kissed some more, and I moved my hand from her tit to her pussy. She was just as wet as I was.

It was like a dream. While my tongue and Julie’s were coiling together, I felt something warm and wet on my left breast. I thought it was Julie’s hand until it tightened around the nipple and sucked. Another mouth. My eyes opened, and I saw Trish’s short black hair under my nose. She smelled like strawberry shampoo.

Someone else pulled Julie’s hand away, and another tongue washed over my swollen cunt, slipping into the hole and flicking across my clit. Beth.

Hands touched me all over, massaging me, pulling at my legs and my shoulders. I felt myself moving, floating like a balloon. My ass bumped a hard, scratchy surface, and my shoulders followed. I was lying on the carpet. All the better for them to get at me.

Beth settled between my legs and tongue-fucked me. Trish sucked one of my tits. Julie sucked the other. They were licking me all over, each to a side. Legs and arms and tummy and hips. My feet. My toes. My God ...

I was wondering where Dana had gone when those long legs folded down on either side of my head, and a hairless pink and white ball touched my lips.

I never ate pussy before, but I know what feels good to me, and I had Beth giving me a lesson right then. I lapped at Dana from her cunt hole to her clit. My nose was up her ass, and all I could see were her white bouncing cheeks, and a whisking brush of brown hair up above.

As Beth ate me, and Julie and Trish licked me, and my orgasm built up, I moaned into Dana’s cunt. She grunted and yelped.

“Shut her up,” Trish said. “Somebody’ll hear her.”

The cries were suddenly muffled. I couldn’t see, but I figured Dana must have put her hand over her mouth, because everybody else still had their mouths on me. Dana humped my face. Her toes tangled up in my hair, which was spread out across the floor. Her perfect model’s body stretched, rose, stiffened. She peaked for a long, still moment. Then she suddenly broke down, shuddering in a loose, flowing climax.

My own orgasm lifted my ass off the floor, and I pushed my cunt up into Beth’s face. I screamed, louder and longer than Dana, but Dana’s pussy absorbed the sound like a wet gag.

“Shhh!” Julie said, half-laughing. “You’ll bring in the nuns.”

But it was too much. I went on screaming, not afraid, not caring. I only wanted to come more and more. Beth hummed into my clit, sending that wonderful buzzing through my body and out my mouth into Dana.

Somewhere in there, I found Julie’s pussy with one hand and Trish’s with the other, and I shot my fingers into their holes and masturbated them with a mirror-image motion, left and right.

Those fucking incredible girl-feelings looped back on themselves, spiraling up, and then my state, like to the lark at break of day arising, — oh, sweet fucking Jesus! — sang hymns at heaven’s gate.

“Did anybody here not have an orgasm?” Trish said.

She, and Julie, and Dana and I were scattered around the floor like our cast-off clothes. We didn’t feel like moving. Beth stood over us like a cop at a four-car pileup. She was still wearing her sky-blue panties, but a wet stain was creeping up the front from under her crotch.

“I didn’t,” she said. “Nobody took care of me.”

“Well, it’s too late,” Julie said drowsily. “You don’t have any dares left.”

“Mmm. I’m gonna come again,” Dana said. “Everybody watch me come again.”

She didn’t sound mad anymore. She was on her back, rubbing her cunt slowly with both hands, puffing up her tits between her down-stretched arms. This time she was quiet about it. The only noise she made was a self-satisfied sigh.

“I really like Shakespeare,” Trish said, and we all burst out in giggles.

“Come down here, Baby,” Julie said to Beth. “Let’s do you.”

“That’s OK,” Beth said. “I got somebody waiting. And I’m so hot right now it’ll be fantastic.”

“Who, that little kid on the phone?” Dana said.

“Maybe,” Beth said. “Maybe somebody else. We should get dressed.”

“How do we know whose clothes are whose?” I said. Ever practical. It was the first thing I said since the end of my endless orgasm.

We all rolled over and pushed ourselves off the floor.

“Just take whatever fits,” Julie said.

We put our stuff back on, clumsily, swapping the skirts and shirts and socks and shoes that didn’t feel right, and in a few minutes we were good little Catholic girls again. A little disheveled, maybe, but decent enough.

When Beth got her skirt back on, she stripped her panties off.

“These things are soaked,” she said. “I think I’ll wear Dana’s.” She pulled Dana’s mesh panties on over her socks, then slipped her feet into her loafers.

“Hey, those are expensive,” Dana said.

“Yeah, and they’re mine now,” Beth said. “These feel good. Really sexy.”

“Dana’s just a sexy bitch,” Trish said.

Beth stuffed our underwear into her book bag, and we walked down the hall to the stairs. It felt good to be naked under my skirt, after everything that went on. The air felt clean on my cunt. In the gym, we could hear shouts and a thumping basketball, and somewhere the robotics team was getting ready for a big tournament. I wondered if they ever played strip games. They have a rep in the school as cutthroat competitors. Stripping would keep them sharp.

Trish, Dana and Beth headed out into the sunshine and went three separate ways without even waving goodbye, but Julie held back inside the front door and motioned me over.

“You OK?” she said. “We all like fucking raped you.”

“No, it was ... Oh, God it was great,” I said. “Do you think ... I mean...”

“My parents will be home soon,” Julie said.

“My dad always goes drinking after work,” I said. “We could go back to the apartment for some sandwiches.”

“Sure,” Julie said “And we should work on some sonnets — for next time.”

We walked out of the building and across St. Agnes’s broad front lawn, holding hands for anyone to see.

The End

© 2012 by Jacqueline Jillinghoff