1
JESSIE
I knowthree things for certain about myself.
One: I am going to be a doctor someday and have the best color-coded notes that I write out by hand.
Two: I make the world’s best carrot cake muffins from scratch. There’s no recipe, just the memories of my grandmother when she showed me how to make them when I was seven. Ineverforget anything anyone has ever bothered to teach me.
Three: I have no clue what my friends are shrieking about right now.
“Jessie!” Becca is gawking at me like I just told her I’m an alien from Planet Washkatarian. “You’ve got to be joking. Say that again.”
“I…I’ve never used one,” I reply, my cheeks heating up as I look down at the object in her hand. It’s pink and shaped like an architecturally designed zucchini. I look back at her frowning face. “Is that bad?”
Everyone goes quiet.
And not just the regular pause-in-the-conversation quiet. The kind of quiet that falls over a crowd when somedrunk person at a wedding just said something completely inappropriate.
Becca, Dani, and Lourdes are staring at me with their jaws on the floor. The overly-sexy techno song blaring from the Bluetooth speaker seems suddenly extremely loud and inappropriate for the gravity of this moment.
We’re having a girls’ night out. It was Dani’s idea, which means there’s Boba tea and wine that she stole from her older sister. We’re sitting on the floor in a pile of blankets. It’s the kind of night I usually love because I love Boba, and I love my friends. I’m eighteen, so I shouldn’t technically be drinking, but it’s Friday, and school’s just started. No exams in the near future.
“Jessie,” Lourdes says very slowly, the way you talk to someone who has just told their family they think the Earth is flat. “Do you…know what this is?”
In a desperate attempt to save face, I shrug. “It’s a personal massager.” That is technically correct. It said that on the packaging when Becca pulled it out of the box.
More silence.
“Apersonal…”Dani laughs, unable to finish the sentence. She flops over sideways onto the couch, one hand pressed against her chest like she’s having a heart attack. “Oh my God. There’s no way.”
“Be nice!” Becca scolds her.
“What?” I ask. “What did I say?!”
Becca scoots closer and takes a seat on the coffee table, looking down at me the way moms do when they’re ready to have a serious conversation. She sets the pink zucchini-like object beside her.
“Jessie,” she says slowly. “Sweetie, I need you to tell me something. And I need you to becompletelyhonest with me.”
“Sure, Becks.” I smile awkwardly. “I’m almost always honest with you.”
She takes a deep breath, then glances at the other girls and back at me. “Have you ever…” She pauses, blinks, and restarts. “Have you ever…explored…your…body…?”
She looks to Lourdes for help. She jumps right in. “Have you ever had an orgasm!?” she blurts out. Lourdes is from Miami and has no patience.
My eyes go wide at her question. I think genuinely and watch as Dani sits up from her couch collapse and looks at me with an expression that could only be described asgrief.
“I mean—I know what oneis,”I reply finally. “But I don’t think I’ve everhadone. I’d know it if I did, right?”
“Yes,”all three of them say at the exact same time. Embarrassed, I pull my blanket up a little.
“Oh. Then no.”
Dani slams her face into a throw pillow and lets out a long scream of terrible anguish. Lourdes hops up, grabs her hair, and starts pacing the length of the room like a lawyer getting ready for the trial of the century. And Becca—she leans in, grabs both of my hands, and looks at me like I’ve just emerged from solitary confinement where I’ve been the last ten years.
“Jessie,” she says. “You are beautiful.”
“Um, thanks?”
