title: "What's Happening to Me?" A Guide to Puberty
author:  Peter Mayle 
description: Peter Mayle spent fifteen years in the advertising business before escaping in 1975 to write books, including his bestselling "A Year in Provence "and "Toujours Provence". His work has been translated into seventeen languages and he has contributed to a variety of newspapers and magazines. He lives with his wife in Provence.
zlib_text: ### CHAPTER XIX
  
  
  TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said to him
  showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising market:
  
  
  "Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"
  
  
  "Auntie, what have I done?"
  
  
  "Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an old softy,
  expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage about that dream,
  when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that you was over here and
  heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I don't know what is to become of a
  boy that will act like that. It makes me feel so bad to think you could let me
  go to Sereny Harper and make such a fool of myself and never say a word."
  
  
  This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had seemed to
  Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked mean and shabby
  now. He hung his head and could not think of anything to say for a moment.
  Then he said:
  
  
  "Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't thi