Firsts

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  “Sorry,” I say under my breath, holding my books protectively over my chest. But he doesn’t move out of my way and doesn’t let me past.

  “You’re Mercedes, right?” he says. I look up, wishing my face wasn’t in such close proximity to his armpit. He’s wearing gym clothes, and the basketball under his arm means he’s probably on the team, although I don’t recognize his face. It’s a good-looking face, though, with a strong jawline and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and really dark eyes, the kind where you can’t tell what color they are until you’re inches away.

  “Yes,” I say, letting him trail behind me to my locker. I open the door and busy myself putting my books in. I can tell from my locker mirror that he’s staring at my chest.

  “I hear you can do things. You know. Help guys like me.” He crouches down to my height, like he’s afraid someone will see him, even though we’re the only two people in the hall.

  “Guys like you?” I say innocently, not meeting his eyes. I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I’m not letting anything on. Yet.

  “I’m a virgin.” He says it almost inaudibly. “And I could use some help.”

  I close my locker door with more force than I have to. I don’t exactly know how to tell him that my legs are closed for business. Ten guys was my absolute ceiling. It’s in the double digits.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. “I can’t help you.”

  He looks down at his scuffed sneakers. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate,” he says in a small voice. “It’s just, Laura expects that I’m this stud now. I talked myself up to cover up how scared shitless I am that I’ll disappoint her. I think I made a huge ass of myself.”

  I turn to leave, not wanting to look at his face. I can’t get attached to his story, but I’m anchored in place at the mention of her name. Laura. My former friend, the one who still wanted to play with her Barbie Dreamhouse long after I outgrew toys.

  “What’s your name?” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  “Trevor,” he says. “Trevor Johnston.”

  I know I should keep walking down the hall and let Trevor Johnston figure things out for himself. He made a rookie error by pretending to know what he’s doing and might have ruined things for good. It’s not my problem. But when I think about Laura’s teary voice and the smudged mascara wiped across her cheek, I talk myself out of it. Laura might be a bit flaky and she’s terrible at conjugating verbs, but she deserves a perfect first time. Maybe if I help Trevor, he and Laura will have the future Orlando and Clara apparently won’t. It’ll be a double-pronged good deed: I can erase my loathing for the Watcher and do Laura a favor at the same time.

  Besides, Trevor’s cute. This won’t be a complete hardship.

  I clear my throat. “Trevor Johnston,” I say. He looks up hopefully.

  “Five twenty-four Silverberry Run. Be there at nine tomorrow night.”

  He breaks into a huge smile and extends his arms like he wants to hug me, but I keep walking, and when I’m far enough away I smile, too. It’s not like going from ten to eleven is going to make that much of a difference. The line will still be basically intact.

  I’ll just blur it a little.

  4

  I’m surprised to see Kim’s car still in the driveway when I get home, parked haphazardly, the wheels on the right side halfway into the flower garden, which would mean nothing except the dining room lights are on, too. Coming home to a darkened house is part of my routine, but that doesn’t change the flurry of hope in the pit of my stomach when the lights are on. Maybe Kim has finally realized that I’ll be out of the house after this semester, so if she doesn’t get to know me now, she might never get a chance to.

  Or maybe she just wants to pick my brain about the hot date she has tonight.

  “Honestly, I never thought he’d be interested,” she says, throwing her coat over a high-backed leather chair as I enter the foyer. “I mean, I lied about my age, but I don’t really look thirty-eight, do I?”

  I drop my backpack on the floor in defeat. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to equate the lights being on with Kim actually having dinner here or wanting to spend time with me.

  “You’re not thirty-eight,” I say, watching her lips curl into something resembling a smile, or at least as much of a smile as her most recent Restylane injection will allow, and deflate when she hears the end of my sentence. “You’re forty-five, Kim. Actually, forty-six in a month.”

  “Well. Age is all about how you feel, right? And I don’t feel a day older than twenty.” She arches an eyebrow and taps a long crimson fingernail on the granite counter, chipping away at an invisible stain. I stifle a laugh, wondering how far up her forehead her eyebrows would go if she knew what happened this afternoon.

  “And let me guess. Your date is really twenty? Is it the Pilates instructor?”

  She cocks her hip and narrows her eyes at me. She’s going for a sarcastic expression, but the amount of Botox in her forehead prevents it from being fully formed. But the most disheartening aspect of her stance is how much I can see myself in her. We have the same green eyes, the same cheekbones, although Kim’s eyes are rimmed in too much dark makeup and the hollows in her cheeks are more pronounced. People always tell me how much I resemble my mother, but really I think it’s the other way around. She resembles me, thanks to her eternal quest to look younger and younger.

  “God no, sweetie. He’s out of the picture. My date tonight I met at the bar.”

  “That sounds promising,” I say, opening the fridge to a total lack of food. I stand there anyway feeling the cold air on my hot cheeks.

  “Don’t be so cynical,” Kim says. “He’s a great dancer. And you know what I say about great dancers.”

  I shut the fridge door and stand in front of it with my arms crossed. “I don’t know, Kim. What do you say about great dancers?”

  Her face sags just a little bit. She hates when I call her Kim, but that’s the name she was born with. Mom is something she has yet to earn.

  “Great dancers are better lovers,” she says, smacking her lips together. “So I probably won’t be home tonight.”

  “That’s fine,” I say. “Maybe I won’t be, either.” This is a lie. I have absolutely no intention of leaving the house tonight, but she doesn’t need to know this. It wouldn’t hurt Kim to actually worry about me from time to time.

  But instead, she fluffs her hair and slides her feet into a pair of black Manolos. My black Manolos, probably plucked from my shoe rack while I was at school. I make a mental note to padlock my bedroom door during the day.

  “Honestly, honey, now’s the time to live a little. You’re never going to be as young and beautiful as you are right now. I don’t know why you don’t have boys over more often.” She straightens the hem of her dress, which doesn’t do any good. It still hugs her thighs too tightly, and when she sits down, I’m sure her date will see everything under it. The thought is enough to make me gag.

  “I do have boys over,” I say, leaning over the granite countertop, the scene of today’s crime. “You’re just never home.”

  It’s meant as a jab, but she doesn’t take it that way. She just laughs, the raspy laugh of somebody who smokes but pretends she doesn’t, and kisses the air beside my cheek, because actually kissing it would mess up her lipstick. And when a car horn sounds impatiently outside—apparently her date is too afraid to come to the door—she’s gone, in a flurry of cloying perfume and hair spray.

  I walk upstairs to my room slowly, my eyes pricking with tears. I hate how I even still care, how even my shock tactics are completely lost on Kim. I could probably tell her exactly what Zach and I did on her countertop and she would give me a high five.

  I should be working on homework, writing the essay on moral ambiguity in Hamlet that’s due next week or typing up this week’s chemistry assignment, which I’ll finish by myself and slap Zach’s name on. But instead, I
pull the white book out of my nightstand and flip absentmindedly through the pages. I read it backwards, starting with Evan Brown—who I decided to call the Gamer—and end on page one. The only one without a nickname.

  His name is Tommy Hudson. He didn’t come to me—I found him. It was only a few months ago, though it feels so much longer. I have passed him in the hall almost every day since, but he never makes eye contact. Probably because he’s always holding her hand. Jillian Landry, willowy, long-limbed Jillian, who most likely doesn’t even know my name. But I know her.

  Jillian will never know this, but she is the reason I started doing what I do. Or did. After Trevor it will be did. Honest. Jillian planted the seed on the very first day of senior year, when she burst into the girls’ bathroom with her sobbing friend in tow. Annalise was Jillian’s sidekick, the chubby best friend who never got out of Jillian’s shadow until she made one huge mistake.

  “I’m so screwed,” Annalise had whined. I could see her thick ankles from my vantage point on the toilet, clad in those stupid juvenile jelly sandals she always insisted on wearing. At that point, I still only knew her as Jillian’s friend. I lifted my Converse-clad feet soundlessly off the ground and tucked them onto the toilet seat.

  “Seriously, Annie, it’s going to be okay. I’m sure it’s a false alarm. Everything’s going to be okay.” She hesitated a moment. “Are you sure you want to do this here?”

  “It’s not like I can do it at home. My mom’s always watching.”

  They didn’t even check to see if anyone else was in the bathroom, or maybe they didn’t care. I knew exactly what they were doing. If the rustling of the paper bag or the sound of pee coming in awkward spurts didn’t give them away, Annalise’s terrified little whimpers would have. I should have gotten up, flushed, and left, but by that point I didn’t want to give away that I was there, and I was way too intrigued to go.

  “You look,” Annalise had said to Jillian when they exited the stall. “I can’t.”

  A long silence. I think I even held my breath.

  Jillian didn’t say anything. Through the crack in the stall door, I could see her shake her head in the mirror. Annalise burst into tears, giant sobs that wracked the whole bathroom.

  “Now what?” she said. “My mom won’t let me finish high school here. She’ll make me go to some special school for pregnant fuckups. She’s going to kill me!”

  “Can’t you get an abortion?” Jillian had said quietly.

  “No way.” Annalise’s red face was quivering, but she shook her head defiantly. “I might be a fuckup, but I’d never do that.”

  In the stall, I started to feel heat creeping up my neck. I put a hand on the toilet paper dispenser to steady myself and remind myself to breathe.

  “I can’t believe it,” Annalise said, blowing her nose into a giant wad of paper towels. “Matt never wanted to wear a condom, but he said it would be okay. And it’s not!”

  “You didn’t make him wear a condom?” Jillian said, her voice raised at the end. I had a pretty good idea then, not from the question itself but the question in her voice, that Jillian and Tommy hadn’t ever done the deed.

  “He said it desensitized his cock. God, I’m such an idiot!”

  Jillian rubbed her friend’s back, but I could see her staring into the mirror at her own reflection. “I’m making Tommy wear one next weekend,” she said.

  “Wait. You’re doing it next weekend? Don’t do it, Jill. Wait till you’re married or something.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever get married. But Tommy and I have been together for ages. I trust him. I’ll be safe, Annie.”

  I heard the hesitation in her voice, but I’m not sure Annalise did, because she just broke into a fresh fit of tears.

  I stayed in the stall long after they left the bathroom, so long that both of my feet fell asleep and I forgot about meeting Angela for lunch. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jillian for the rest of the day. I had a nagging feeling that I would play some sort of role in her story. I didn’t know Jillian, but I knew I didn’t want her to end up like Annalise.

  The next week, Annalise was pulled from school. I guess she was right about her mother putting her in a special school for pregnant fuckups. She went from anonymous to the most whispered-about student at school overnight. And while everyone was busy talking about Annalise, I figured out what I wanted to do. Or, who I wanted to do.

  Tommy Hudson.

  It was easy. I waited until after class and trailed him into the photography darkroom, alone. I pretended I was interested in the pictures he was developing, which were all of Jillian. I asked him about her, read his tense facial expressions and noticed the way his hand shook just a little when the topic of sex entered the equation.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he said. “I guess it’s not like I can talk to the guys about it. They’d call me a pussy and tell me to just bang her and get it over with. And I can’t talk to my folks. They’d freak out and try to homeschool me.” He hung his head and chewed his lower lip.

  “What if I had an idea to help you get rid of your anxiety?” I said.

  “I’d owe you, big time,” he said.

  And I gave him my address and told him to meet me there the next night. I didn’t tell him what I planned to do or give him any more information. I don’t know if he had a clue, and I didn’t even know if he would show up. I spent a long time on my hair and makeup that day, trying to make myself into Tommy’s dream girl, even though I lack Jillian’s long legs and tiny waist. For the first time, I was glad Kim had bought me a matching bra and underwear set for my birthday every year since I turned thirteen. And when Tommy rang the doorbell, I took him up to my bedroom without saying a word. I was nervous, but I didn’t want him to know that. I wore my hair down for a reason. The loose waves covered my trembling shoulders and gave the impression of a level head.

  “Guide yourself,” I said as I lay underneath him. “This is your turn to take the lead. Don’t make her do it.” I pulled him closer to me, watched his eyes widen and his lips tremble slightly.

  Tommy took direction perfectly. When I told him to use his hands to cup my face, he did it and added a kiss on my forehead. When I let him know that he bit my neck too hard, he left tiny kisses over the bite. He listened to everything I said and put his own spin on it. As his confidence grew, so did mine. I told him to make eye contact and smile, not manically but sweetly. He responded by holding my gaze and remembering to blink.

  It might have been the longest and most vocal two minutes of my life.

  Afterward, I could practically see the tension removed from him, the way he seemed to stand taller when he put his shirt back on. I helped him plan a dream date for Jillian, a night she would never forget, starting with her favorite flowers—carnations—and ending with a candlelight dinner and the perfect first time.

  “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you,” Tommy said before he left, hugging me at the front door just a little bit too tight.

  “Just make it special for her,” I said with a smile.

  He turned around again when he was halfway down the driveway. “Why me?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Why Jillian?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, because I honestly didn’t know. Tommy and Jillian were no more familiar to me than just about every other student I passed in the halls every day. I didn’t have an answer, and I still don’t, so I told Tommy the next best thing.

  “I just saw a chance to make myself useful.”

  What I couldn’t tell him was that I wanted, for some desperate reason, for Jillian’s first time to be what mine never was. Jillian was everything I wasn’t—pure, innocent, and unaware of how much pain the opposite sex could inflict, physically and emotionally. I wanted her to stay unaware. I watched them in the days following, watched their interactions with each other. Tommy was so respectful, carrying her books and holding doors open for her. Jillian would put her hand in the back pocket of his
jeans and muss up his hair playfully. I was watching, waiting for some kind of sign that they had done it. And one day I could tell by the little smile they shared, a new smile that told a secret and held a deeper kind of love.

  I thought I would be happier than I was. After all, the whole end goal was to make sure Jillian got a perfect first time. But I was sad that I never had a guy like Tommy to give my virginity to, and sad that I would never be a girl like Jillian for somebody to deflower. Mostly I was just empty, like the high had evaporated and left a cheap aftertaste in its place.

  And that was when another guy in the photography club approached me wanting the perfect time for himself. I could have played dumb and said no, but I didn’t.

  I told myself that five would be my absolute maximum. Five good deeds, five pay-it-forwards. The guys were specifically instructed to tell no one, unless they knew another virgin who needed the service. But they were even more concerned about the secrecy of the whole operation than I was. They had more at stake—girlfriends and reputations. No guy wants to admit he’s a virgin and lose face, especially when his friends know he has been seeing a girl for ages and assume he gave it up the first chance he got. I really feel for guys. They have the hard part, physically and emotionally. Virginity is supposed to be something a girl gives up only when she is ready and feels comfortable, something a girl discusses at length with her friends and flip-flops over a million times in her mind before actually doing it. A guy is expected to be born ready.

  But what I realized after Tommy is that they’re not. They’re just as scared as their girlfriends, maybe even more so because the onus is on them to be gentle, make it last, make it memorable. And most of them haven’t a clue. But thanks to me, five of them would.

  When five turned into ten, I thought of it solely as a science. There’s logic behind everything, and the secret to my formula for success was two parts instruction, one part passion, and one part planning. I operated under the unshakeable knowledge that they needed me more than I needed them.