Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [30]
No fear. Hy and I will never be more than casual confidants.
While I’m off the subject of virginities and lack thereof, how do you feel about me getting together with Scotty? I’ll let you decide whether that’s an April Fools’ joke.
Cryptically yours, J.
april
the sixth
Prom fever has already hit PHS with a vengeance. I will lose it if I hear one more chirpy voice say, It’s pink, and it’s cut down to here, with a layer of chiffon that starts about here, and goes just a squinch above the knee …
As a sophomore, I shouldn’t be forced to listen to this talk about the junior–senior prom. I certainly shouldn’t be forced to feel bad about it. But enough girls in honors are going with upperclassmen that I feel like a loser because no junior or senior boy wants to get me drunk off Boone’s Strawberry Hill so he can cop easy sex off me in the backseat of his parents’ SUV.
Jesus Christ. What’s wrong with me?
Rob asked Hy. She said yes, then took it back when she found out from Sara that he was suspended for jerking off into a Milky Way wrapper during study hall last year. Hy’s refusal shocked everyone but me. If anyone has the guts to dis the captain of the überjock triumvirate on account of his sexually deviant behavior, it’s Hy.
A few days later she was asked by a junior in her Economics class. Once she did a background check ("Okay. Has he waxed his jimmie in public?"), she surprised all of us by saying yes. Especially me.
"Won’t Fly get jealous?" asked Bridget.
"Nah, he knows he’s more dope than any high-school shorty."
"What I really want to know," I said, "Is why an NYC club queen would want to go to Pineville’s lame-ass prom."
"I wanna see what a Pineville throw-down is like. Is that okay?" She sounded a wee bit annoyed.
"Hey. Fine by me," I shrugged. "But you’re the one always dissing Pineville’s social activities."
"That’s because I haven’t given them a chance yet." Hy slowly broke out into a smile. She has very white, very even, very perfect teeth. "Besides, I missed a lot of my friends’ Sweet Sixteens and need to do some flossin’. I wanna rock a new dress."
The Clueless Crew loved that one because it’s exactly the type of thing they would say, minus vocab cribbed from The Source. It was very weird. Is this what promaganda does to people? Makes them think it’s perfectly normal to wear a corsage or a crinoline?
Bridget is going with Burke. Yes, they’re still together, uniting daily before Chem for a pre-third-period dry-hump against Burke’s locker.
I can’t believe they haven’t had sex yet. But I’ve known Bridget since birth, and she has never told a lie. Whenever we committed a kiddie caper—like plucking all the American Beauties off old Miss Weinmaker’s prized rosebushes, or scarfing a box of Thin Mints that we were supposed to deliver to the Girl Scouts supporter who rightfully bought it—she always copped to the truth before I could even begin to launch into our (false) alibi. I’m not kidding. I think lying would complicate things too much for Bridget. She wouldn’t be able to keep her stories straight.
Anyway, because the prom is a special occasion, Manda is breaking her "Seniors Only" rule by agreeing to go with Vinnie Carvello, a junior who just happens to be P.J.’s older brother. This nearly drove the younger Carvello to commit hari-kari with a bottle opener. ("Oh, now she decides to freely give out hummers?") Manda is also going to Eastland’s senior prom with some guy she’s "known forever," which probably means she let him feel her up under the boardwalk last summer. Manda is a pathological prom goer. These will be her fourth and fifth. Promming for her is like low-level prostitution. She gets all dressed up. They pay for everything. She gets them