Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
Let's make it clear right now that nobody actually has sex in this book (at least that we see). However, we do have to say that for a novel about high school kids, there's a heck of a lot of nudity. Yes, yes, we know it's the 1970s and this was pretty normal—we still maintain that there's a lot of nudity.
In particular, on the Sunday of his five-day adventure (if you want to call it that), Karl is in the presence of two naked girls in one day. First, there's Darla, for whom sex and nudity are just a tool for being outrageous. "I'm not going out into the world as Little Missy Good Grades from Lightsburg, Ohio," she tells Karl as she confesses her reasons for wanting him to kill a cat in front of her and then have sex with her. "I'm going as the wildest, most interesting b**** […] they've met […]" (23.40). So, just to recap, Darla thinks her life is boring and that taking her clothes off in front of people will change that.
On the other hand, though, there's Karl's encounter with Marti in the hotel room, where the two of them are about as platonic as two naked people can possibly be. Even when a thunderstorm begins and Marti confesses to being afraid of storms, it still remains chaste. "We fell asleep holding hands," Karl says. "If married couples got to do this all the time, s*** if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights" (23.65). In other words, they might be naked, but this is simply a sweet interaction.