Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [65]
When I think about sex in the Scotty-and-Manda sense, I’m so relieved that I’m still a virgin. The fact that I haven’t done the nasty things (and with them it is nasty, because it’s them) that they have done and continue to do with shocking regularity gives me a sense of peace.
I’m not like them.
But then I get really horny and I know I’m just kidding myself.
At least Hope understands what I’m going through. She’s the only other virgin I know. I mean, I think she is. Sometimes I worry—insanely, irrationally—that she’s done it, too, and just hasn’t told me. She’s dated a few guys in Tennessee. but none have been serious enough to warrant a devirginization, she says. And the fling she had with a Parisian last summer didn’t go any further than the kind of kissing France is famous for. But if Hope has had sex, she’d keep it a secret, not out of shame, but because she knows the news would be a devastating blow to our friendship. It would be one less thing that distinguishes Hope and me as the us against them. Sometimes loyalty requires lies. Think of all the things I’ve neglected to tell her over the past two years.
The point is, I’ve waited this long, so I might as well just keep on waiting. Waiting for the right person, the right time. When it makes sense to have sex, that is, when the timing is right, and timing is almost everything, I want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one else should be inside me.
This is why I am going to die a virgin.
The right person is not Len, that’s for sure, his homecoming deadline be damned. I thought Marcus was right. And I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I must have been insane. I read that temporary teenage insanity can be attributed to an overproduction of cells in the cerebral cortex, the “thinking” part of the brain. Our gray matter gets all clogged with new cells and we can’t possibly make a rational decision.
My cerebral cortex must have been gridlocked last New Year’s Eve.
Combine brains gone all gunky with cells with bods jacked up on hormones and it’s no wonder we drink and drug and screw and get body parts pierced that should be nowhere near a man wielding a gigantic needle.
Oh. By “we” I mean teenagers. But it’s really more accurate for me to say “they,” isn’t it?
A joke to get my mind off my nonsexed status.
Q: How do you make a hormone?
A: Tell her you’ll wear a suit to the Anti-Homecoming Dance. Har-dee-har-har.
Ack. I’m losing it.
Everything but my virginity, that is.
Har-dee-har-har.
the twenty-second
Run! Flee! Before little G-Money, Jr., starts his eighteen-year reign of terror! Oh, Christ! What if it’s a girl? A baby Bethany—just like Dr. Evil and Mini Me!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Yes, it’s true. Bethany and G-Money have made a little monster! Boy or girl, it’s bad.
Mr. and Mrs. Doczylkowski barely got their coats off before making the announcement.
“We’re expecting!”
I can’t describe the deafening screech of joy that came out of my mother.
Dad clasped G-Money on the arm in a manly-man, male-bonding gesture.
Gladdie turned to Moe (whom she had insisted on bringing because “he’s like family now”) and said, “I told you Sonny’s boys could swim!”
I just stood there, dumbfounded. This news was really the last thing I was expecting to hear out of my sister’s mouth. Mommy Bethany was a ludicrous concept. She’s too self-absorbed. And lazy. I mean, this is a person who recently got her eyelashes permed so she wouldn’t have to endure the tragic inconvenience of curling them manually with a Maybelline doohicky.
Bethany