"It was an orgasm," Lyla Lee said, and she tilted her head while her laughter came in a series of short snorts and barks. Her chipmunk cheeks puffed out, and she squeezed her watery blue eyes shut as though she was savoring the sounds she made.

"An orgasm," she repeated, as if I hadn't heard her the first time. "That's what you had. An orgasm, for cripes sakes. And your mother sent you to the family doctor? Well, that's a good one. If you or your mother had a lick of sense, you'd both have died on the spot from embarrassment."

I sniffed and tried to look proper on that summer night in 1962 as I sat on Emma June Laybourne's bed. I tugged my nightgown down around my knees and wished I'd brought a longer one, not this shortie baby doll thing. I also wished that Emma June's sister hadn't walked into the bedroom right in the middle of our conversation. It was none of Lyla Lee's business how or what it was I'd felt, although I had to admit to a certain amount of excitement in discovering I'd had an orgasm, even though I didn't know how it had happened.

Why hadn't my mother explained? I'd described the sensations to her, but she'd sent me to the doctor. Lyla Lee was right. It had been very embarrassing. And now it was even more embarrassing.

"So the doctor thought this ooh-ah feeling you had was caused by the pulsation of an artery close to your uterus. Is that right, Jeanette? Oh, God, this is rich! This is really too beaucoup." Lyla Lee's pasty lips split wide to reveal a very wet, pink tongue.

"How was Jeanette supposed to know?" Emma June demanded. "After all, she's not married like you, Lyla Lee." The words were more of an accusation than an explanation, and Emma June drawled them out slowly until it seemed that they weren't words at all but some kind of ancient and mystical runes.

I loved the way Emma June's voice sounded. Even when she talked about my orgasm, her accent was a sweet Kentucky lilt with the soft hint of Virginia. It held no hillbilly twang as mine did.

"No. Neither of you is married. But I'm no smart-ass college girl like you. Never went and never intend to. Waste of time," Lyla Lee said. "Damn, Emma June, didn't the two of you learn anything? It cost Daddy less to get me married and have Baby Byron than it did to send you last year to that university. But you think I'm just a dummy, huh? Looks to me like you two are the ones who don't know much. At least I know an orgasm when I feel one."

Lyla Lee turned to me. "You say this happens to you when you're menstruating? Well, sure, Jeanette. That'd be right. You have an orgasm because the pad rubs your clit. Don't you know anything? Don't you ever touch yourself down there? Shit!"

In addition to orgasms, Lyla Lee knew all about swearing. I was impressed with Emma June's older sister, who had been married a year and had a baby and a black eye to show for it. Her husband had hit her when she'd accidentally let the baby roll off the bed while she was changing diapers. "Husbands do that sort of thing when it's necessary," Lyla Lee had told us in her matter-of-fact way. "It's not like he hits me all the time. Only on occasion."

I'd swallowed hard when I heard that. I wasn't too sure I wanted a husband who chose that kind of sport to punctuate occasions.

Lyla Lee had come home for a rest during the same week I'd been invited to Emma June's. And at that very moment their mother was rocking Baby Byron to sleep downstairs while the three of us sat in Emma June's bedroom and talked girl talk. We'd already found out things about ourselves that I'd decided might be better left alone. Still, that didn't make me any less curious.

"But I've woken up in the middle of the night. Not menstruating or anything. And I've felt that," Emma June said. "It's just like Jeanette described. You know, a heartbeat. Down there. Wonderful. Almost painful. A spasm. But nice. Maybe her doctor's right."

"Her doctor's a quack." Lyla Lee's chins multiplied as she peeled paper from a Payday candy bar. "God, I love these things. They're almost as good as an orgasm." She paused and chewed. "Sometimes they're better."

"Lyla Lee didn't use to be fat," Emma June told me, and it was almost as though she were apologizing.

"It's just baby fat." Lyla Lee bit into the bar, and a spray of peanuts spewed from her mouth. "I can lose it. I know I can. But I don't want to right now. After all, I just had a baby."

"Lyla Lee, Baby Byron's six months old," Emma June said.

"So?" Lyla Lee stared at us beneath fat-lidded eyes, then lumbered away clutching at the candy bar as though she were a drowning woman hugging to a life line.

"You think she's right? About the orgasm?" I asked after Emma June closed the bedroom door behind her sister's plodding body.

"Who knows? Who cares? You've felt it. I've felt it. And it feels good. That's what's important. You've got to figure on what's important here, Jeanette." Emma June gave an elaborate shrug and looked down at her fingers.

She constantly gazed at her fingers. They were long and slender with brightly polished nails. When she spoke, she stroked the air and the nails glistened as if they had a life of their own.

Emma June had her heart set on being a concert pianist. I guess she thought that if she stared at those perfect fingers long enough, they'd play the way they looked, the way she wanted them to play. But they didn't.

Everything else about Emma June Laybourne was beautiful, though. She had masses of shiny dark hair, innocent blue eyes, a squiggle of a nose, and a generous mouth that could curve into an extraordinary smile. She was tall but gave the illusion of being delicate and fragile. Of course, she was neither delicate nor fragile but everyone treated her as though she were.

If she hadn't been my best friend, I would have thought that she was spoiled and disgusting. But she was my best friend, and I loved her.

Emma June knew she was beautiful, too. She accepted her beauty the way a queen accepts power. But that wasn't enough for her. She wanted it all. She wanted everything. The only trouble was that she usually got what she wanted.

There was one sad fact about her, however. She was a music major and wanted to play Bartok and Brahms and Bach with the best, but she wasn't very good. She wasn't even mediocre. In fact, she was embarrassingly bad. Yes, she played the notes, and often as not, they were the right notes. The time was the right time, too. But she had no passion, no style, no flair, and she definitely had no ear for music.

I wondered how long it was going to take her professors to discover her lack of musical ability, but they seemed far too busy looking at her to listen. Looking at Emma June was a major accomplishment in most men's lives.

On the other hand, very few men bothered to notice me. Of course, I wasn't exceptionally pretty like Emma June, nor had I any desire to excel in music. She and I had been roommates our freshman year; otherwise, as dull as I was, we might never have become friends.

"I want to try something," Emma June was saying now, fluttering her fingers. They might very well have been playing some secret song for all the movements they made when she was excited. It was this kind of music, this silent airiness that she played best.

"Let's try something different. Just the two of us, Jeanette. When you go back home this weekend, I want you to think very hard about one particular thing everyday." She frowned. "At three o'clock in the afternoon, no matter where you are or what you're doing, you must stop and think."

"I always think."

"Yes, but at three o'clock you must concentrate on something special. Write down the date and what you're thinking. Do this on odd days, and I'll do the even ones. Then we'll see."

"See what, Emma June?"

"Why, we'll see if we can send our thoughts to each other. Won't that be fun? I just know it will work, Jeanette. I know it will. It has to work. You see, we're like sisters." She chewed her lip. "No. We're closer than sisters. And that's even better. I'd never do this with Lyla Lee. But you and I will do it, won't we? Here. Let's concentrate. I'll see if I can tell what you're thinking. Come on, Jeanette. It'll be almost as much fun as an orgasm." She giggled. "Besides, anybody can have one of those silly things. Takes real talent to read minds."

I wasn't too sure anybody could have an orgasm. I was fairly certain my mother had never had one, or else why had she sent me to the doctor. It was also reasonable to assume that the doctor knew very little about women's orgasms. So much for his wife.

Dutifully, though, I began to concentrate on Emma June's pink bedroom. Pink curtains and pink walls with pictures of pink seashells. I supposed it was better than all my blue ballerinas at home were. It was simply a matter of getting used to it.

Emma June squinted her eyes shut. Finally, she shook her hair and her fingers fluttered. Dark curls fell across her forehead in pretty disarray, and I knew I could hate her if I tried.

"It's not working," she said, as though she were announcing the end of the world. "Oh God, it's not working." She wasn't nearly as successful at swearing as her sister, and her curses sounded more like prayers.

"Well, it doesn't have to work, does it?"

"Yes, it does. How else are we going to keep in touch when both of us are at different schools this fall?"

"There's always the telephone. Besides, you're the one who's transferring. Remember?"

"They've got better music professors at Lexington. I've got to have good ones. The best. Now, let's try to make this work, Jeanette."

"I don't see why we can't just use a phone."

"Jeanette, get serious. Really. Let's see what we can come up with. Open your mind. Relax and go blank."

"That's easy enough for you to say." I laughed, but she didn't. She was closing her eyes, sealing them so firmly that tiny veins streaked across her lids like pale etchings.

I sat cross-legged on the bed and watched, and I suddenly felt an immense loathing for Lyla Lee. The hatred came so quickly that it frightened me. And I knew.

"Quit it, Emma June. Don't do this. I don't like it. I don't want to play any more. Stop it right now."

Her eyes opened. They were bright and wet and wide with triumph. "It's not a game," she said, and her voice was barely above a whisper. "You did it, didn't you? You really did it, Jeanette."

I squirmed. "I don't know. Were you thinking about Lyla Lee?"

She whooped and jumped and whooped some more. "We did it! You did it! You can do it!" Then she sat on the edge of the bed and took my face in her hands, her fingers flitting against my cheeks like moths, her hands brushing at my hair like hummingbirds.

"Listen to me, Jeanette. This is important. To both of us. Think about it, Jeanette. Think about it."

But all I could think about was Emma June's hatred. It swelled inside me. My orgasm was a small quivering of little consequence in comparison to the intensity of her hate.

Later that night after everyone had gone to bed; Emma June and I sneaked down to the front porch. We sat wrapped in quilts and watched the fog swirl against the side of the mountain. It lay in gray valleys and clung to black trees and to the bright street lamp close to the house.

"I love it here," I said, shivering in the dampness.

"Stay longer," she said. "Lyla Lee goes on Friday. She only stays long enough to fill her belly. She's a pig. There's no need for you to leave, though."

"I can't. My parents." I dropped my head and heard my voice fade into the fog.

"It's a damn shame," she said and she glared at me. "Here we are. Almost nineteen. Still listening to our parents. Still doing what they say. Let's face it, Jeanette. We're sheltered. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to let my parents mess me up. Just because my stupid sister got married when she was four months pregnant doesn't mean I'll do the same thing. But everybody around here keeps me on a tight leash. I stray just so far, and somebody gives that leash a quick jerk. Then I'm right back where I started. Tongue lolling. Eyes bugging. They can't keep me this way. At least, not for long."

I nodded. "You're right. It's the same for me." I wasn't so sure, though. After all, I didn't have a sister or a brother, and I'd never thought of my parents as the enemy.

"Trouble is," she said, "what happens when we finally get out on our own?"

I shivered harder.

"There'll be hell to pay, Jeanette," she whispered. "You wait. You just wait and see."

But I didn't believe her. How could I believe things like that when nothing had ever gone wrong for me?

I should have known, though. Bound to her as I was then, I should have sensed the bad times coming.