Behold, this Dreamer. Charlotte Miller

      “Having a tantrum, are we?” Phyllis Ann asked, a vicious smile on her face as she came farther into the room.

      “Yes, we are,” Elise snapped, staring at her.

      “My, my—it must come from being locked away here all day long, all by yourself—”

      “Where have you been?” Elise was in no mood for the game—Phyllis Ann had gotten her into this in the first place; it had been her idea to go out riding with the boys, her idea to stay out as late as they had stayed out. “I’ve been sitting here having seizures every time there was a sound in the hallway, afraid old lady Perry would come by to make sure we were both here. I don’t know what I’d have said if she had checked and found out you were gone—”

      “You’d have thought of a convincing lie.”

      “Or maybe I’d have told her the truth, that you slipped out because you were bored out of your mind with staring at the four walls?”

      “Of course not. You know you’d never squeal on me. You’d have thought up some excuse.”

      The conviction in her voice and in her expression irritated Elise all the more. “Well?” she asked after a moment, a little too sharply.

      “Well, what?”

      “Well, where have you been?”

      “Into town. I went shopping—couldn’t find a thing to buy—”

      “That’s fortunate, or how would you have explained a new dress in the chiffonier with supposedly no way you could have bought it?”

      “We’d have thought of something.” Phyllis Ann smiled.

      Elise ignored the remark. “Where else did you go? What is it you’re hiding behind your back?”

      The other girl grinned and slowly brought out a small package wrapped in brown paper. “I came through the kitchen on my way in. Brought back the plunder—” she said, peeling back the wrappings to reveal two large pieces of chocolate cake that had recently been covered with a thick, dark icing, icing that now mostly adhered to the brown paper. “I felt sorry for you, sitting here all by yourself all day. I thought you deserved a present—” She sat down on the bed beside Elise, and the two set about enjoying the cake, eating it with their fingers straight off the paper, until the last bite was finished and the last bit of sweet icing licked from sticky fingers.

      “Did you go anywhere else?” Elise asked, licking chocolate off her thumb, but receiving only a secretive smile in return.

      After a moment Phyllis Ann rose and pulled a small book from a pocket of the coat she still wore, then shrugged the coat off and tossed it carelessly onto the back of a nearby chair.

      “I thought you said you didn’t buy anything—”

      “I lied.” Spoken easily enough. Phyllis Ann was good at lying.

      “Is it—” Elise began, but did not have to finish; she already knew the answer from the look on Phyllis Ann’s face. She accepted the small book, turning it over in her hands, already knowing what it was—a novel, like one of the many that made the rounds of the girls at the school, considered shocking by the instructors on the few occasions when they had been found, but gloried in by the students. Miss Perry had caught them with one a month or so before, and had burned it right before their eyes once she had read several of the passages— “risqué” she had called it, and Phyllis Ann had rushed to look the word up in the dictionary, disappointed to find out that it meant only slightly improper, when the girls considered the books to be so much more.

      The novels were the most popular reading material on the campus, above French texts and the fine literature the girls were expected to read. Often they were little more than suggestive, poorly-written tales of young virgins in bustles and pantalettes, girls eager to be deflowered; other times they were the popular novels of the day—Fitzgerald, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Cabell—bestsellers, for it seemed everyone was interested in sex these days; at other times they were nothing less than pornographic, with little else but page after page of the sex act—Elise knew her mother would die of mortification if she even thought her daughter knew such novels could exist, much less that she had read one. But, at the moment, her mother’s opinion did not seem to matter. The books were highly interesting, as well as instructive—besides, all the girls were reading them, and there could be nothing wrong with that.

      “We haven’t had it before, have we?” Elise asked, examining the cover and then opening it to skim through several of the pages.

      “No, they said it was new—” Where Phyllis Ann got the books Elise did not know or care to ask. Phyllis Ann and several other of the more daring girls easily kept the school supplied, and it did not seem to matter.

      Phyllis Ann took the book out of her hands and sat down on the bed beside her, opening the slim volume to a page at random and beginning to read, her lips moving silently with each word. Elise moved closer and read along, having to wait at the bottom of each right-hand page for her friend to turn to the next, for Phyllis Ann read much the slower of the two.

      After several pages, Elise sat back, feeling her cheeks color with even the idea of—“I wonder if it’s really like that?” she mused aloud.

      “What, little girl—a man, or sex?” Phyllis Ann asked coyly, looking closely at her until Elise felt her cheeks grow even hotter.

      “You know what I mean.”

      Phyllis Ann closed the book and moved to her own bed to stretch out on her back with her hands crossed beneath her head, staring up at the white-painted ceiling overhead. “It’s all the same anyway, men and sex—and it’s even better—”

      “Oh, you wouldn’t know—”

      “Oh, wouldn’t I, little girl?” Phyllis Ann looked over at her with clear meaning in her eyes—but Phyllis Ann was good at that.

      “I don’t believe you. You haven’t done anything any more than I have—”

      “I frankly don’t care what you believe,” Phyllis Ann said, looking at her again, and Elise did not know whether to believe her or not. She could say the most shocking things in the most convincing manner, whether they were true or not, until Elise never knew quite what to believe of her.

      She decided now that it was best to change the subject, kicking off her shoes to stretch out on her stomach on her own bed, her arms crossed beneath her chin. She lay quiet for a moment, thinking. “I wonder if married people do it all the time?” she asked, staring at the headboard—somehow she could not imagine her parents “doing it,” though she knew they must have at times in the past; she and her three brothers were evidence enough of that.

      “They do it more with everybody else than they do with each other,” Phyllis Ann said, and Elise looked over at her, shocked again. “That’s why I’m never going to get married. I’ll take rich lovers instead—men spend more money on their mistresses than they do on their wives, anyway—”

      Elise stared at her for a long time, unsure as to whether to believe her or not. After a moment, she decided to change the subject again, resting her chin back on her crossed arms to stare at the headboard once more. “Oh, I’m going to get married,” she said. “I’m going to have a big wedding, with all the trimmings and tons of flowers, and a beautiful dress—”

      “And who shall you marry, little girl?” Phyllis Ann taunted, looking over with a smirk. Elise ignored the tone in her voice.

      “Oh, he’ll be tall and handsome, and rich of course. He’ll be a college man, and a poet, and he’ll write long, romantic letters to me if we’re ever apart. He’ll help Daddy in his business, and we’ll build a big house on the hill not far from my parents’ place—”

      “And there’ll be a baby every other year, and you’ll get fat and old, and he’ll leave you—”

      Elise gave her friend an angry look, which seemed