Free Family Secrets by Rona Jaffe

This was because Melissa was so popular, and Lavinia was a little annoyed that such unnecessary advice had been given to innocent, prudish little Melissa when she was the older one, the one who was about to go away from home into the dangerous world. Did Papa think she was that ugly, that boys wouldn’t want to take her out?
    The one to whom Lavinia had been closest was Aunt Becky, and now that Aunt Becky had three children she would have been the logical person to ask about such things, but the truth was Lavinia couldn’t bring herself to do it. Besides, Aunt Becky was so old-fashioned, she probably didn’t know what she had done to have those babies. Lavinia, in fact, would rather not have known, when she came to college and discovered that there were girls who did know; not only knew, but had done it, and were willing to talk about it to their closest friends.
    These girls claimed to like it, but Lavinia suspected most of them were lying. How could you like something that was so furtive, so forbidden, so dangerous? She couldn’t figure out why those girls had not become pregnant. When she had a class with one of the boys who had slept with a girl in her dorm, Lavinia could hardly look at him. He must be a skunk. If he had slept with that girl and wasn’t in love with her, then he must have slept with lots of other girls. Who would ever marry those girls now? Certainly not a skunk like him. A nice boy would never marry them if the word got around. Why, he wasn’t even handsome. And when one day after class he actually came up to her and tried to start a conversation, Lavinia just stuck her nose up in the air and walked away, leaving him staring after her. That was how she treated skunks, gave them what they deserved.
    She did not date much. Some boys asked her to football games and dances, and sometimes she went, but she did not particularly like any of them. She went to the games and the dances because they were a part of college life. She had a slight crush on one of her professors, but she would never have dreamed of having anything to do with him because he was married. That was another thing Lavinia discovered at college that shocked her: some married professors sneaked out with girls. She could understand admiring a man, but what had happened to decency, to self-control? She was terrified of all these new things she was discovering. The old safe world she had grown up in was vanishing before her eyes. She had lived all her life with her family, with their friends, with the girls on the block and around the corner, whose parents were friends of her parents. Now she was in a community of strangers from all over the United States. If a boy whose life before this moment was a total mystery to you wanted to come up to you after class and ask for a date, he was allowed to do so. And you could accept, and find yourself alone at night with a strange man—yes, they were men now, not boys—and you had to rely on your wits and your natural decency to see that he treated you with respect. But some of these strangers were only after one thing. Papa would have had a fit if he had ever known, he would have dragged her right out of college. But Lavinia had a natural reserve, and there was something about her that seemed to frighten off the boys with the worst reputations. Perhaps it was her own good reputation.
    A girl didn’t need to go out with a boy to have a good time. You could go out in groups, which was more fun anyway, besides being safer. And you could go places with your own clique of girlfriends. When Lavinia was pledged to the sorority she most wanted to join, she was delighted. Now she really belonged, and she felt safe. The sorority house was so much nicer than the dorm, and the girls were all like sisters to each other. Most of the boys in their brother fraternity treated them with respect. You knew, at least, that they weren’t total strangers.
    She kept up good marks and studied hard. When she came home for