Free The Checkout Girl by Susan Zettell Page B

him instead. She ignored that too. George periodically asked her for dates until she consented in grade nine. They’ve been going out ever since.
    In grade eleven Darlyn decided to have sex with George. She and Kathy found a doctor in Guelph who would give girls under twenty-one the birth control pill without permission from their parents. Kathy and Darlyn went to the doctor together and both got prescriptions, even though Kathy wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone at the time. They were sixteen-and-a-half and had borrowed Connie’s car. Said they were going swimming at Elora to account for some of the miles.
    It was a good thing they’d gone because Kathy decided that seventeen was the exact right age to have intercourse with Donny, her new boyfriend, who was exotic not only because he was Protestant, United Church of God, which was really like having no church at all, Connie told Kathy when Kathy told her, but also because he was old — almost twenty. And he could skate; all Kathy’s boyfriends must be able to skate. Donny’s dark eyebrows bushed over his cheerful chestnut eyes, his heart-shaped mouth nestled right in the centre of dimpled chipmunk cheeks.
    He was ambitious, an apprentice drywaller. Drywallers are the up-and-coming tradesmen, he told Kathy. With all the new suburbs and shopping malls popping up, he’d never be out of work. He wanted to start his own contracting company; that was his goal. He was saving his money. Even after a shower, Donny’s hair was chalky, his skin pale with residues of gypsum.
    Older and working, a man with goals, a good skater, surely he was experienced at sex, Kathy thought. But Donny turned out to be a virgin, a hesitant one. And even though he told her he loved her, he loved somebody more than Kathy, but he didn’t tell her that until later. The first time they tried, which turned out to be the last time, Donny stopped halfway between getting in and being out and rolled onto his back, his damp penis quickly wilting and flopping over on his naked leg.
    â€œIt’s doesn’t seem right,” he finally said, after saying nothing for a long time.
    By then they lay side by side on their backs looking at the poster of Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy, tacked to Donny’s bedroom ceiling. His parents had gone to their cottage, taking Donny’s younger brother and sister, so the house was empty. Donny still lived at home so he could save money for his business. He took Kathy’s hand, and lifting her fingers one by one he listed his reasons: What if Kathy got pregnant? I’m on the pill, Kathy said. He was too nervous (two); she was too young (three). I’m not too young if I say I’m not too young, she said, but the nervous part surprised her.
    â€œWhy are you nervous?” she asked him.
    â€œI’ve never done this,” he said.
    â€œNone of it?” she asked.
    â€œThe last part,” he said.
    â€œComing?” she asked.
    â€œNo, before that, getting in there,” he said.
    â€œShit,” Kathy said. “I thought all boys knew how to do that. Don’t you practise?”
    â€œMaybe. Sometimes. Not on girls.”
    â€œPractise on me.”
    That’s when Donny told her he loved her, but he loved somebody else more. And now that he was supposed to be having sex with Kathy, all he could think about was Janet Stuebing. So he thought he had better stop and tell Kathy.
    â€œJanet Stuebing?” Kathy asked. “From the Chuckling Hen?” She had started to cry, but quietly.
    Yes, that Janet Stuebing, he told her. Janet was his girlfriend before Kathy. He really loved Janet. He wanted to marry her. She broke up with him, and he was never sure why. Maybe because they didn’t have sex, maybe that was it. Janet had nice breasts, he said. Her nipples were purple and there were little black hairs growing around them. Those little hairs made him horny, just the