Peg Cronin was the babe of the school. She excited the entire school. No, that's not right. She excited the male part of the school. It had something to do with her bust size.

The freshmen, just coming of age, would see her bust and faint dead away. You could follow Peg by the line of unconscious freshmen. The sophomore did a little better than that. You could still follow her by watching the pools of slobber left in her path.

The juniors were a little more sophisticated. All they did was sweat profusely. Some, a mite less mature, would have to reach up and push their eyeballs back in place.

The seniors, more used to seeing her, concentrated on keeping their tongues from hanging out. They all wanted to date her, even Josh McClelland, and he was planning on being a priest. Peg wanted to date them all too. She would have dated them all in the same night if enough buses had been available.

The male teachers marked A on her scores, reports, and everything else. They didn't know if she learned anything in the class or not. They didn't care. They'd look at her and wish they were still in high school.

"Jeez", one teacher said to another, "they didn't make girls that way when we were in high school."

"Are you kidding? They don't make girls like that now. Peg is, uh, exceptional."

The one guy who wasn't affected by Peg was Artie Marker. Artie was what later would be called gay. Her chest size didn't mean a thing to him. That's why he was the only one to notice that it changed from day to day. One day she'd be a 38c, the next day she'd be a 34B.

Peg was a 32A. She was a 32A when she left home. By the time she got to school she'd be whatever she had time to stuff into her bra. Usually tissue paper. Sometimes newspaper although that chafed her. It also gave off a crinkly sound as if anyone was listening.

At the Senior Prom it all came out. They had a hypnotist for entertainment. He put her to sleep. He gave her a paper clip and told her to put it in the one place no one would ever find it. His plan was to wake her and have her try to find it. This was always a winner.

She put the paper clip in her bra. Everyone laughed at that but they didn't know why. No one had ever gotten to her bra. The hypnotist woke her up and told her what he'd done. He told her to try to find the clip.

Peg thought long and hard about it and then smiled. She knew where no man had ever gone. She reached in and pulled the paper clip out. It was stuck on something. She yanked.

She yanked out yesterday's newspaper.

That's deflation for you.