Welcome to the June edition of First Monday Free Fiction. To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month. It will remain free to read on this blog for one month, then I’ll take it down and post another story.

This month’s story Lovers’ Lane is part of my The Day the Saucers Came… series:

June 9th, 1956, known all over the world as “the day the saucers came”. Now, for the first time in print, read these sensational eyewitness accounts from people who were there and lived to tell the tale. Prepare to be shocked and horrified, as you read what it was truly like – on the day the saucers came…

Today, we present you the thrilling tale of Betty Miller, then sixteen years old, who drove out to Lovers’ Lane with her highschool sweetheart Cody Barrett on…

…the Day the Saucers Came.

Lovers’ Lane

June 9th, 1956. It was the night I drove out to Lovers’ Lane, the night my life changed forever.

Looking back, I really should have known better than to drive out to Lovers’ Lane with Cody Barrett. After all, everybody knew what happened at Lovers’ Lane, what the boys and the girls who went there did.

Not that I really knew what went on at Lovers’ Lane — no, I was far too naïve and innocent. But I knew that what the boys and girls did there was bad and sinful. Good girls like me, girls who wanted to go to college and marry a good husband one day, didn’t go to Lovers’ Lane and they didn’t do that sort of thing. Only sluts and hussies did. Not that I really knew what sluts and hussies were either. But like every good girl, I knew a slut when I saw one.

But I was young, barely sixteen years old, and so very much in love with Cody Barrett. Cody and me, that was true love — the kind that lasts forever. Or so I thought.

That night, Cody and I had gone to the sock hop in the gym of Herbert Hoover High School. I was wearing my very best dress — white polka dot organdy with a petticoat and a wide belt of shiny red vinyl. I wore bobby socks and saddle shoes polished to a high gloss, my hair was in a ponytail and I looked pretty, as pretty as I’d never looked either before or since in my life.

I danced with Cody all night long. During a break, we sneaked outside to catch some air and Cody used that opportunity to give me his high school ring. I was sporting it on my finger, wrapped with a rubber band to make it fit, and showed it to everybody who wanted to see it and many who didn’t. For this ring, this ugly thing of gilded pot metal and rhinestone that didn’t even fit properly, was the symbol of our love, the sign that made it official. Cody and I were going steady. We were in love. And come graduation, we’d get engaged and eventually married.

And so, when Cody asked me if I wanted to drive out with him to Lovers’ Lane that night, I said, “Yes, I do.”

For even though the girls who drove out to Lovers’ Lane with their boyfriends were all sluts and hussies, that didn’t apply to me. After all, Cody and I were in love. We were as good as engaged and one day, we would get married. And if you were engaged or as good as, then there was nothing wrong with driving out to Lovers’ Lane. Nothing at all.

Cody had an old powder blue Chevrolet. We both got in, he in his baby blue tuxedo with matching cummerbund and me in my best polka dot dress. The skirt was so wide that it got caught in the door of Cody’s Chevy, soiling the delicate fabric with grease. I was really angry about that, too. Because back then, I still thought that soiling my best dress on the door of Cody Barrett’s Chevrolet was the absolutely worst thing that could happen to me that night.

“Don’t worry yourself,” Cody said after examining the soiled hem of my best polka dot dress, “The grease will wash out. After all, your folks have got one of them new washing machines, don’t they?”

I nodded, because my Mom did have a washing machine, a true miracle of technology that was supposed to clean even the worst stains.

And then we drove out to Lovers’ Lane. All the way, Cody had the radio on. There was a baseball game on and — more importantly — music. That sweet hot rock ‘n roll music that my parents wouldn’t let me listen to, let alone dance to, because good girls didn’t do that sort of thing. But then, good girls didn’t drive out to Lovers’ Lane with Cody Barrett either. And if I was about to do the one, then I could do the other just as well.

***

This story was available for free on this blog for one month only, but you can still read it in Lovers’ Lane. And if you click on the First Monday Free Fiction tag, you can read this month’s free story.

Check back next month, when there will be a new story available.