He sat next to me. He began taking out sandwiches and we started eating.
He sat with his legs crossed. I couldn't sit comfortably in that damn dress. I tried sitting the way he did, but it made my skirt ride up. I kept thinking he was going to laugh at me, but he didn't.
After we were done, he stretched out on his back, with one arm to the side. We didn't have much room there, so I stretched out next to him. I was lying on his arm, accidentally.
"Sorry," I said.
"That's all right," he said, and lifted me up and over with one arm so I was lying right on top of him!
Then all of a sudden he grabbed me by the neck, pulled me closer to him, and kissed me!
And it was weird, but I didn't hate it, you know?
Tom was very good looking, with a lot of girlfriends, and I'm not so good looking. I've never had a date, and I've certainly never kissed anyone before. And suddenly, there we were, kissing. It was incredible that somebody, anybody, wanted to kiss me. So I didn't stop. I even kissed back a little.
It was probably only about ten seconds.
And then I remembered who I was and what I was. I pushed myself away from him and looked at him in horror. He smiled at me.
I stood up, brushed off my dress, and strode away from him as fast as I could. I couldn't run in those high heels, but I was walking pretty fast. He called to me to come back, but I kept going.
I avoided him all the rest of the day. I was so confused I didn't know what to do, and there was no one I could talk to about it.
The next day, I begged Mom to let me wear one of her dresses, instead of Melanie's. She let me put on an attractive lavender dress of hers. My sisters didn't make fun of me quite so much when I got to dress like a grown woman instead of a young girl.
I had to avoid Tom. I didn't want to be alone with him any more, after what had happened. I grabbed a book and began to read it. It was by some Russian author, dull as a newspaper, but I pretended to be interested. I sat down somewhere in my lavender dress, crossed my legs, and kept reading, not even daring to lift my eyes off the page.