Free Justin Kramon by Finny (v5) Page A

she made them wash their hands with soap and warm water. “For your own sake,” Poplan said. She fought colds with a military vigilance, and at the first sign of a sniffle or a sore throat, she would quarantine a girl in the guest room for a week. “There’s no negotiating with a fever,” she would inform the girls. “Your lives are in my hands.”
    Finny’s favorite time was the night, once she and Judith were shut up in their little room together, the hallway dim, the black sky pressed against their window. There was a cozy companionship to these moments, a luxury of time, as if life spread out before them, an endless and dazzling sea. She felt such exhilaration in Judith’s presence that Finny had to check herself from becoming too giggly, too overwhelmed with pleasure. So she fell back on her wry delivery, that deadpan way of making jokes. It was the sense of humor Finny would hold on to, even as an adult.
    Judith seemed to know everything about everyone in the school. She stood a head taller than most of the girls, and there was a kind of authority in her walk and demeanor. At night Judith told Finny all the gossip, about who’d snuck off with which boys at the last dance. About the girls who stuffed paper in their bras. And other things. More intimate, sexier things than Finny had ever heard talked about before. Judith told her about how Cynthia Bunswaggel had once gotten her period when she was in bed with a guy, and in the morning he’d woken up in a puddle of her blood and thought she was dead. And Halley Klein, who put condoms on carrots and used them to masturbate, only one time the carrot broke off and Halley had to go to the nurse to get it extracted.
    Teachers, too. They weren’t safe from Judith’s swath of knowledge. Finny had heard the music teacher singing opera at night in her room, and when Finny told Judith how beautiful it was, Judith said, “It’s because she uses a vibrator. She sings to cover up the sound.” Which Finny found hard to believe. She wasn’t even quite sure how a vibrator worked, but she started listening for the sound of it beneath Mrs. Polczek’s singing. Poplan dated women, Judith said. She never brought them around because she was afraid of losing her job. For some reason Judith didn’t like Poplan, Finny had discovered. But when she asked why, Judith just shrugged and said, “She’s not my type.”
    Finny never knew how much of Judith’s stories were invented, or exaggerations of what had happened, tales that had been dressed up by so many tellers that it was impossible to make out their original shapes. But under the canopy of Judith’s voice, a garden of images and incidents bloomed. The world of Thorndon became alive and teeming with secrets.
    Then there was the game. When Finny thought back about it, she wasn’t sure exactly how it had started, but it became a pattern that every couple nights one of the two girls would offer the other a dare. They alternated dares. It began simply enough. Go outside the room after lights out. And then the next time: Go outside after lights out and say the word “penis” in the hallway. Each time a step further, a little more dangerous. Stay outside for five seconds. Do it with your pants off.
    Finny no longer had to wear the purple shirt because Mrs. Barksdale realized that she couldn’t make a rule that none of the other girls could wear purple shirts. So Finny felt a little freer at night. Some nights they both put on Judith’s black clothing, and her lipstick, called each other “draculady” and “phantom” and snuck into other girls’ rooms to show off their looks. Judith’s “dark” wardrobe was extensive, and she told Finny that when they were in the upper forms they’d go to clubs in New York where they could wear these clothes “for real.”
    They talked about their lives at home. Finny told Judith about her mom’s social pointers, her dad’s lectures and the way he popped handfuls of Pepto like an