“You’re being paranoid. She knows nothing. She just wanted to check out the pit like every other underclassman.”
Freshmen and sophomores aren’t allowed in the pit. It’s not an actual school rule, but rather a social construct created by juniors and seniors of our high school long before our time here.
“She was staring at me.”
“Because all of the freshmen know who we are, Jules. We’re seniors. I’m the loud one. You’re the pretty one. I’m a badass–”
“And I’m notorious.”
Karen rolls her eyes.
“You are not.”
“I hate the guys in this town.”
“Yeah, sometimes they can be straight up douchebags, but what’s a Penn Washington girl to do? Until we escape this town, they’re all we’ve got.”
“Not for me.”
"So you're never going to date? Never going to have sex again? You'd only be punishing yourself, Jules.”
“Well, it’s a punishment which I’ll gladly accept.“
Juliette
For the rest of the morning I move from AP English, to gym, and to calculus basically numb. The only thing I was paying attention to was the fact that just as I suspected, gossip moves lightening fast through our school, and certain girls were staring at me out of the sides of their eyes.
This isn’t me being paranoid.
This is real.
They know.
I take special notice of the smug stares of two girls that I have been longtime frenemies with–Carla Ritter and Marie Puzzini. Two ringleaders of a group of girls who have what Karen has coinedThe Franklin Package:bad attitudes, big mouths, and parents with money. These girls love running people’s names through the mud. They did it to poor Marion until she couldn’t take anymore and switched to another high school.
Now don’t misunderstand me, I realize that we aren’t living in the nineteenth century or anything. Obviously I’m not a whore just because I had sex one time with David, but it’s the fact that there are witnesses. That he permitted them to watch as if it were a peep show. Like it meant nothing to him. LikeImean absolutely nothing.
Karen tried to reassure me throughout the day by passing me folded notes, sealed with smiley faces, that everything is going to be okay and that barely anyone knows or cares about my night with David. I don’t think she is telling me the complete truth though, but it doesn’t matter. I truly appreciate her effort to make me feel better.
In fact in some small way, I now feel guilty that I didn't share my momentous, once in a lifetime news with her first, and that she had to hear about it through a second hand source. Especially because she called me right away and told me about her first time with her boyfriend, Bobby Wagner, when we were sophomores.
I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t tell her. Maybe because as soon as David and I were finished–I regretted it. Having sex was not something I necessarily was dying to have, but it was more like something I wanted to check off my list. Something that was a right of passage. Something that David had been asking for repeatedly. In other words, I did it for all the wrong reasons just as my mother feared I would.
Today is an early dismissal day for seniors. I usually stay after school and work on college applications in the library, but today I’ve decided to head home for the obvious reasons. I plan on crawling into a pint of butter pecan ice cream and then into my bed until graduation day.
I’m only midway down the school’s old stone staircase when I spot the very last person that I want to see is waiting for me.
It’s the jerk.
"What do you want?” I ask coolly.
“Jules.”
I can tell by the hesitance in his voice that he suspects that I already know what he’s done. He isn't his usual confident, cocky, self.
“What's up?” I ask with a hand on my hip and the corner of my mouth turned up in an accusatory manner.
David pauses like cowards often do when they’re about to lie.
