Free Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor

right."
    "Oh God, I hope so."
    Edith turned back the top sheet, smoothing it. "You can stay all night if you want to," she said, "if you don't mind sharing the bed. I'm rather afraid to have you in your own room as long as you're in a confessing frame of mind, that sexy little slut you room with will have the whole story out of you and she'll spread it all over school in no time."
    Remembering some of the case histories she had had from Mary Jean, Joyce was afraid this might be so. She didn't want to move, anyway; it was quiet here, the air was lightly scented and it felt good to lie still. She followed with her eyes the movements of this slender, quiet woman. Miss Bannister took her dress off and put it on a padded hanger with a precision that was like Mimi's. She tied a thin flowered robe around herself and went into the bathroom, and there were the sounds of water running into a basin, towel whispering across skin, cabinet doors clicking. She came back no less tidy, only with her hair flowing loose instead of knotted. She was the first person Joyce had ever seen with really long hair; some of the girls at school wore theirs loose on the shoulders, but the ends had been trimmed. It gave Miss Bannister an old-fashioned, feminine look.
    She sat down on the edge of the bed and took off her slippers, then snapped off the light and got under the covers. Joyce was acutely conscious of her body, not touching, but close enough for her to feel its warmth. She shut her eyes, feeling truly secure and cared-for at last.
    Edith Bannister stirred. "You'd better stay in bed tomorrow," she said calmly, "and it might be a good idea to sleep down here tomorrow night."
    That was all right, too. Joyce fell asleep, feeling completely happy.
    A confused and blurry day ensued, made up of alternate sleepings and wakings, and food on trays, but then she was too sleepy to eat. She went to sleep with bars of yellow sunshine lying across the floor, and woke to deepening shadows in the corners of the room. It was a sort of convalescence, she thought.
    Now it was night, and Edith Bannister's warmth and delicate fragrance, familiar since yesterday, was in the bed beside her. She must have slept after she became aware of that, because when she opened her eyes again there was a late-night feeling in the air. She lay still, not quite sure where she was or what had happened to her. A spot of warmth—someone had rolled over against her and a hand lay on her breast. She realized that it was Edith Bannister lying against her, and that Edith was awake. Joyce moved closer, impelled by a loneliness she couldn't define.
    Edith whispered, "Afraid?"
    "No."
    Joyce felt fingers stroking lightly, a warmth and comfort she had never dreamed of, and then a stirring, an awakening. All over her body sensations arose she had never known before. "Please," Edith Bannister said in a queer husky whisper. "Please."
    Joyce wasn't sure what was happening or going to happen. Whatever it was, she liked it. This had no relation to being with a man, the touch and smell of a man. She nestled closer, feeling the fingers unbutton her thin, borrowed cotton nightgown. Electric shocks now, wherever there was contact. She whispered, "Oh, yes."
    There was no fatigue or worry left. No yesterday or tomorrow and no world beyond these night-dark walls. Nothing but the stroking hand, and Edith's accelerated breathing at her ear, and the feeling that flooded through her.

Chapter 7
    Mary Jean had a theory about love which she expounded practically every time the subject came up, over cokes at the Honey Bee and tonight in Holly Robertson's room. Love, she said, is rugged enough even when everything is in favor of it. Even when all four parents are for it, Mary Jean declared, romance is certainly hell on the nervous system.
    "When you have to sneak around and take it on the run," she said sadly, "you don't even have to diet to stay thin. Whether you do or don't," she added as a sop to