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"Everyone knows Kittredge," Miss Frost said neutrally; I couldn't tell what she thought about him.
"I have a crush on Kittredge, but I'm trying not to," I told her. "Is there a novel about that?"
Miss Frost put both her hands on my shoulders. I knew she could feel me shaking. "Oh, William--there are worse things, you know," she said. "Yes, I have the very novel you should read," she whispered.
"I know why Atkins comes here," I blurted out. "He's not looking for me--he probably has a crush on you!"
"Why would he?" Miss Frost asked me.
"Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't any boy have a crush on you?" I asked her.
"Well, no one's had a crush on me for a while," she said. "But it's very flattering--it's so sweet of you to say so, William."
"I have a crush on you, too," I told her. "I always have, and it's stronger than the crush I have on Kittredge."
"My dear boy, you are so very wrong!" Miss Frost declared. "Didn't I tell you there were worse things than having a crush on Jacques Kittredge? Listen to me, William: Having a crush on Kittredge is safer!"
"How can Kittredge be safer than you?" I cried. I could feel that I was starting to shake again; this time, when she put her big hands on my shoulders, Miss Frost hugged me to her broad chest. I began to sob, uncontrollably.
I hated myself for crying, but I couldn't stop. Dr. Harlow had told us, in yet another lamentable morning meeting, that excessive crying in boys was a homosexual tendency we should guard ourselves against. (Naturally, the moron never told us how we should guard ourselves against something we couldn't control!) And I'd overheard my mother say to Muriel: "Honestly, I don't know what to do when Billy cries like a girl!"
So there I was, in the First Sister Public Library, crying like a girl in Miss Frost's strong arms--having just told her that I had a stronger crush on her than the one I had on Jacques Kittredge. I must have seemed to her like such a sissy!
"My dear boy, you don't really know me," Miss Frost was saying. "You don't know who I am--you don't know the first thing about me, do you? William? You don't, do you?"
"I don't what?" I blubbered. "I don't know your first name," I admitted; I was still sobbing. I was hugging her back, but not as hard as she hugged me. I could feel how strong she was, and--once again--the smallness of her breasts seemed to stand in surprising contrast to her strength. I could also feel how soft her breasts were; her small, soft breasts struck me as such a contradiction to her broad shoulders, her muscular arms.
"I didn't mean my name, William--my first name isn't important," Miss Frost said. "I mean you don't know me."
"But what is your first name?" I asked her.
There was a theatricality in the way Miss Frost sighed--a staged exaggeration in the way she released me from her hug, almost pushing me away from her.
"I have a lot at stake in being Miss Frost, William," she said. "I did not acquire the Miss word accidentally."
I knew something about not liking the name you were given, for I hadn't liked being William Francis Dean, Jr. "You don't like your first name?" I asked her.
"We could begin with that," she answered, amused. "Would you ever name a girl Alberta?"
"Like the province in Canada?" I asked. I could not imagine Miss Frost as an Alberta!
"It's a better name for a province," Miss Frost said. "Everyone used to call me Al."
"Al," I repeated.
"You see why I like the Miss," she said, laughing.
"I love everything about you," I told her.
"Slow down, William," Miss Frost said. "You can't rush into crushes on the wrong people."
Of course, I didn't understand why she thought of herself as "wrong" for me--and how could she possibly imagine that my crush on Kittredge was safer? I believed that Miss Frost must have meant merely to warn me about the difference in our ages; maybe an eighteen-year-old boy with a woman in her forties was a taboo to her. I was thinking that I was legally an adult, albeit barely, and if it were true that Miss Frost was about my aunt Muriel's age, I was guessing that she would have been forty-two or forty-three.
"Girls my own age don't interest me," I said to Miss Frost. "I seem to be attracted to older women."
"My dear boy," she said again. "It doesn't matter how old I am--it's what I am. William, you don't know what I am, do you?"
As if that existential-sounding question wasn't confusing enough, Atkins chose this moment t
