Thwack

Thwack! A Teenage Love Story is a novel about the joy and pain of first love. Caryl, about to turn fifteen, admires her beautiful older sister, Dawn, who is "doing it" with her boyfriend, Justin. For Caryl "it" seems far in the future until she falls in love with the Ecuadorian paper-delivery boy. Early every day she hears the thwack as the newspaper hits her front door. Their mother, distracted, is still mourning for Caryl's father and is crushed when the tree under which he used to sit must be cut down. Caryl meets Luis in the local park, where on Saturdays he sails his miniature sailboats, and she falls hard for him. Justin begins to cheat on Dawn, which fuels her suspicions of all boys, but her warnings about Luis fall on her younger sister's deaf ears. At every opportunity, Caryl and Luis "make out," but their meetings are innocent, until Caryl accepts a job babysitting for twins. Things go further than she wants them to, and when the twins' mother reports to Caryl's mother that her daughter invited her boyfriend over, her mother forbids Caryl to see Luis ever again. There are further complications which make it seem Dawn was right about all boys' faithlessness.