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FOREVER Judy Blume

For Randy as promised … with love

1

Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys. She told me herself, the last time she was visiting her cousin, Erica, who is my good friend. Erica says this is because of Sybil's fat problem and her need to feel loved—the getting laid part, that is. The genius I.Q. is just luck or genes or something. I'm not sure that either explanation is 100 percent right but generally Erica is very good at analyzing people. I don't know Sybil that well since she lives in Summit and we live in Westfield. Erica and I decided to go to her New Year's party at the last minute for two reasons—one, because that's when she invited us, and, two, we had nothing better to do. It turned out to be a fondue party. There were maybe twenty of us sitting on the floor around a low table in Sybil's family room. On the table were a couple of big pots of steaming liquid Swiss cheese and baskets of bread chunks. Each of us had a long twopronged fork, to spear the bread, then dip it into the cheese. It tasted pretty good. I had gotten about two bites when this guy said, "You've got some on your chin." He was on Erica's other side, sort of leaning across her. "You want me to wipe it off?" He held out his napkin. I couldn't tell if he was putting me on or what. So I told him, "I can wipe my own chin," and I tried to swallow the bread that was still in my mouth. "I'm Michael Wagner," he said. "So?" I answered, and Erica shot me a look. She introduced herself to Michael, then tapped me on the head and said, "This idiot is my friend, Katherine. Don't mind her … she's a little strange." "I noticed," Michael said. He wore glasses, had a lot of reddish-blond hair and a small mole on his left cheek. For some crazy reason I thought about touching it. I looked away and went back to spearing chunks of bread. The guy on my other side said, "My name's Fred. I live next door to Sybil. I'm a freshman at Dartmouth." Unfortunately he was also a creep.

After a while I tuned him out but he didn't know and kept blabbing away. I was more interested in what Michael was saying to Erica. I wondered where he went to school and hoped it was some place close, like Rutgers. Erica told him that we're from Westfield, that we're seniors, and that we're spending the night at Sybil's. Then Michael introduced her to somebody named Elizabeth and I turned around in time to see him put his arm around this pale dark-haired girl sitting next to him. I pretended to be interested in Fred the Creep after all. At midnight Sybil flashed the lights on and off and Fred wished me a Happy New Year, then tried to stuff his tongue in my mouth. I kept my lips shut tight; while he was kissing me I was watching Michael kiss Elizabeth. He was much taller than I first thought and thin, but not skinny. After the party we helped Sybil and her parents clean up and somewhere around 3:00 a.m. we trudged upstairs to bed. Sybil conked out as soon as her head hit the pillow but Erica and I had trouble getting to sleep, maybe because we were on the floor in sleeping bags, or maybe because Sybil was snoring so loud. Erica whispered, "Michael's a nice guy … don't you think so?" "He's much too tall for you," I told her. "You'd only come up to his belly button." "He might enjoy that" "Oh, Erica." She propped herself up on an elbow and said, "You like him, don't you?" "Don't be silly … we barely met" I rolled over, facing the wall. "Yeah … but I can tell anyway." "Go to sleep!" "He asked me for your last name and your phone number." I turned around. "He did?" "Uh huh … but I guess you don't care about that." She buried herself inside her sleeping bag. I gave her a half-hearted kick. Then we both laughed and fell asleep.