Private (Private 1)

It was done. My virgini

ty. Officially gone. Lost. Given away. As I against mine.

walked up the hill to soccer practice the next day, I tried to wrap my

“No. It’s not that.” I looked up the hill at our teammates who were brain around it. Tried to decide how I felt about it. In all my life I a good ten yards ahead, chatting and laughing. “I’m not looking had never thought that I would be a person who just let it happen. I forward to it either. It has nothing to do with him.”

always thought there would be build-up, conversations, long, ago-

“Oh. Trouble at home?” she asked facetiously, sticking out her

nizing decisions. But instead, I had just gone with it. I had just bottom lip.

made the decision in the moment and let it happen. In a way, I was

“Thanks a lot,” I said, with a little more venom than I intended.

proud of myself that I’d been so bold. But on the other hand, I knew Noelle’s eyes lit with surprise. “Look. If you don’t want your

it was perhaps not the wisest move in the world. Letting something parents here, you don’t have to have them here. It’s your life. You that big just happen was very unlike me.

don’t owe them anything.”

But whenever I thought of Thomas’s hands, his kiss, his scent, I She was wrong. I owed my father everything. But I knew he wasn’t smiled and shivered and wished I was with him again. Alone. In his coming here without my mother. He clung to the idea that we could room in the dark. And that was all I needed to make any misgivings be a normal, happy family. Besides, she would grumble about the fade to the background. Thomas and I had been together. He was

expense and inconvenience of taking the trip, but the fit she would my first. There was no going back now.

throw if he tried to come without her would be level five all the And I liked that idea.

way—even though she didn’t actually want to be here. The depth of Of course, there were a million things to consider now. Should I my mother’s psychosis was staggering.

get birth control? Could I be the kind of girl who carried condoms

“I just don’t know how I would tell him . . . ,” I said, thinking

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aloud, then flushing. Noelle looked at me expectantly. “Never

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” she replied.

mind.”

My mouth was hanging open. “There’s no way I can accept this.”

Another thing I wasn’t ready to do with Noelle was trust her with

“You already have,” she said with a shrug.

my secrets.

“But what about the . . .uh . . .”