Firsts (2 page)

He pulls his boxers and pants back on. His movements are more measured, not the bumbling, terrified movements of the Evan Brown who entered my bedroom an hour ago. Even his voice seems deeper, like he came here a boy and is leaving as a man. I suppose that’s not far from the truth. I allow myself a little smile, a real one this time. It’s easy to reaffirm what I do. What happened to Evan in my bedroom will change him, make him into a more considerate lover, even a better boyfriend. Moments like these are what made that line in the sand so easy to obliterate.

Moments like these, I could see an eleventh, even though I promised myself that’s not going to happen. I’m starting the second half of senior year with all of my good karma already under my belt.

“I don’t know where you came from, but you saved my life, Mercy. I mean, Mercedes. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“You would’ve ripped five condoms by accident, and you might’ve drowned the girl in saliva. But now, you’re going to nail it. Literally.”

He tugs his shirt over his head. “When Gus told me how you helped him, I didn’t believe it. But he was right—you’re an angel.” He pauses. “But can I ask you—”

I cut him off midsentence. “No, you can’t. Don’t spoil it.”

“But you didn’t even let me finish,” he protests.

“Oh, I let you finish,” I say. “The one thing you can do for me is not ask me any questions.”

He nods. “Fair enough.”

“Goodnight, Evan,” I say.

“Goodnight, Mercy. Uh, Mercedes.” He gets to my bedroom door and pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

“This won’t be awkward at school tomorrow, will it?” he says, looking back at me.

“Of course not,” I say, folding my arms over my chest. “It’s not going to be awkward at all, because what happened in this room becomes just a figment of your imagination the second you walk out that door.”

He gives me a tight-lipped smile and pulls the door shut after him. I can see his shoes underneath, can tell he’s lingering there, wondering if he said too much or not enough, not entirely convinced that his secret is safe with me.

But he has nothing to worry about. His secret, like those of nine of his fellow seniors, is safe with me. At Milton High, I’m my own statistic. People fail to see the great equalizer, the one thing the band geeks, the drama nerds, the jocks, and the preppies all have in common.

Me—Mercedes Ayres.

The girl who took their virginity.

2

My mom’s car is still in the driveway when I head out the door in the morning, which means I have to maneuver my Jeep around it to avoid hacking a side mirror off. Despite the time it takes, I’m relieved. The obnoxiously yellow Corvette convertible in the driveway means my mom made a smart decision last night and didn’t drive her car to happy hour at the martini bar. Kim’s DUI last summer cost her a three-month license suspension and would have entailed a couple days in jail if not for her excellent lawyer. Kim would never admit it, but I know she’s secretly proud of her DUI. Now she shares an extracurricular activity with D-list celebrities everywhere.

Needless to say, Kim fits in perfectly with the housewives of Rancho Palos Verdes, gossiping relentlessly and spending the money from her divorce settlement on expensive champagne and the kind of plastic surgery that everybody gets but nobody admits to. She blends in, but I can’t wait to get out, and this particular morning marks the start of my last six months here. I know exactly where I’m going and how I’m getting there. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT. The mecca, the holy grail of chemical engineering. It will be a fresh start, as far from Southern California as I can get, in a state where people wear black instead of pastels and the seasons actually change. My grades will get me in, and once I’m there, I’ll work hard to stay there. No guys. No distractions. Nobody there will know who I am or what I have done or how many people I’ve slept with.

When I have safely cleared the driveway, I gun my Jeep down our suburban road, hoping to make up some time with my lead foot. Angela hates when anyone is late for prayer group, and I don’t like making my best friend upset.

The great thing about getting to school this early is a guaranteed prime parking spot, which I slide the Jeep into. After a breathless run down the hall, I dump my extraneous textbooks in my locker. That’s when I see it in my locker mirror—a small hickey at the base of my collarbone, no doubt Evan Brown’s handiwork, most definitely unintentional. I swear under my breath and duck into the bathroom to cover it with a blob of concealer, knowing that despite my best intentions, I’m going to be late anyway. But covering this up is worth a scolding from Angela.

I rush into the library right when Angela is about to start reading. She smiles at me over her Bible and gives me a little shake of her head, almost like she expected me to be tardy. I take a seat beside Angela’s boyfriend, Charlie, the only other person who attends prayer group on a regular basis. Charlie’s eyes flicker over my face, and I swear they come to rest on the hickey, although I must be paranoid.

I met Angela at prayer group in grade nine, which I only started going to because Kim was pushing me to find a boyfriend and naturally, I told her I wanted to join a convent instead. Angela is why I kept the charade up. And this year, the bonus has been that it makes an excellent cover for my pay-it-forward scheme. Even if there were a rumor or two, who would suspect the girl who’s almost a nun?

But I would never tell this to Angela. Angela thinks sex is a sacred gift that you only give to your husband on your wedding night. She has been dating Charlie for nearly two years, and the farthest they have gone is “petting on top of the clothes,” and that was only the night he gave her a promise ring.

In today’s prayer group, Angela has a revelation. Literally. As in, Revelation 1 of the Bible. “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’” She asks what this means to us. Angela is big on making prayer group interactive.

Charlie spouts out something about the suffering of Christ, which I tune out.
Who is, and who was, and who is to come
. Angela would freak at my answer, because for me, that’s a loaded sentence. Who is: today, Zach is. Who was: I would have to refer to the notebook I keep in my nightstand under the boxes of condoms. The notebook has a white pearly cover—it was a gift from Angela for my last birthday. Angela would be horrified that the pages are filled with details of my sex life, although I think of it not as a record of my conquests but as a remembrance of my good deeds.

Angela and I walk to chemistry together after prayer group. It’s our first class of the day, and the only one I consistently enjoy.

“You should tutor me,” Angela says.

I shake my head adamantly. This has been happening every semester for the past two years: Angela asks me to be her lab partner, and I turn her down.

“You’ll distract me,” I say. “We’ll spend too much time talking about the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and not enough time talking about the quadratic acid compound.”

I stop in the middle of the hallway, suddenly wanting to throw up. It was meant as a joke, but the third name might as well have reached up and punched me in the face, like it always does when it comes up during prayer group.
Luke.

“The what?” Angela scrunches up her face and keeps walking, not noticing my momentary panic.

“Exactly,” I say, readjusting my armful of books and pasting on a wide grin.

I don’t like mixing friendship with anything else. If I’m thinking in chemical terms, friendship is an undiluted solution, something weakened by adding more to it. Unlike Kim, I’m a firm believer that the different compartments of your life should be kept separate—I can’t just up and switch schools the way she changes gyms when the backstabbing gets too intense to bear. This is why instead of Angela I sit with Zach Sutton during chemistry, and why every Wednesday at lunch, Zach and I slip back to my bedroom to make chemistry happen there. And if sex with other guys is a science that I teach them, sex with Zach is more like art.

Zach is not my friend, nor my boyfriend, although he has asked at different times to be both. It’s not like I haven’t toyed with the notion of us becoming a couple, but we have absolutely no base upon which a relationship could be built. We’ve had sex more times than we have had conversations. I don’t know Zach’s middle name or even where he lives, but I do know that he wears boxers with goofy cartoon characters and loves when I wear thongs.

“What am I, then?” he always asks.

“My chemistry partner,” I always say.

After our morning classes, Angela and I walk down the hall and stop in front of her locker. “You’re doing lunch with your mom today, then?” she says, turning her combination lock and swinging the door open.

I nod. Ever since Zach and I started sleeping together, I have let Angela believe that I have a long-standing lunch date with my mom on Wednesdays. She thinks it’s cute. I think it’s just far-fetched enough to actually work.

“See you later,” Angela says, pulling out a brown bag lunch from her locker. “Have something fancy for lunch that I can’t pronounce.” Her lips curl into a smile. I wave and head out toward the parking lot, trying to shake off my nagging guilt.

Before Zach, and before the virgins, Angela and I spent more time together. Nights spent sprawled on her bed, drinking tea, and reading the celebrity gossip magazines her mom loves to buy. Afternoons in my kitchen, trying to make chocolate-chip cookies but mostly just eating the dough instead. Sleepovers where we argued about which movie to watch—always romantic comedies for Angela and action for me—and talked about everything.

Almost everything.

Not lately, though. Now I can barely open my mouth without a new lie slipping out. And Angela never doubts me, because I haven’t given her a reason to.

But the Kim excuse is convenient. It gives me ample time to meet Zach in the parking lot, smuggle him into the back of my Jeep, and drive to my house. Chemistry class is all the foreplay we need. Zach considers himself the master of sexual innuendos.

“You’re getting my beaker all wet,” is his favorite line, even though it makes no sense whatsoever to somebody who actually pays attention in class and knows that a beaker is in fact a receptacle.

But as bad as his sense of humor—and attention span—is at times, Zach knows exactly where and how to touch me without being told. His first time was definitely not with me. According to Zach, he lost his virginity back in the eighth grade to his older sister’s best friend. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but I don’t ask questions, and neither does he, which is one of his best qualities. Zach knows when to shut up. Considering all the vocal instructions I give the other guys I sleep with, it’s nice to be completely nonverbal with Zach.

“You looked so hot today,” he says as he drops his backpack at the front door and kicks off his shoes. Shoes at the door aren’t a problem in my house, since Kim never comes home at lunch. Lunch is always reserved for manicures and gossip with her equally divorced and equally Botoxed friends. And probably for boning her Pilates trainer, too, although I’m not one to judge.

“Don’t you mean I still look hot?” I say, throwing my coat on the floor. “Looked implies past tense.”

“Your level of hot is omnipresent,” he says, coming up behind me and biting my neck.

“I see you learned a new word.” I turn around and meet his mouth with mine.

“I don’t think I can make it upstairs,” he says as he pulls my shirt over my head and expertly unhooks my bra. His fingertips alone send jolts of electricity through my skin, and he trails them down my back, starting feather-light and getting harder as he nears my tailbone. I grab Zach’s hand and pull him down the hall into the kitchen. Behind me, I can hear him undoing his belt and unzipping his fly.

“The kitchen?” he says when I press him against the stainless steel refrigerator. “I never did it in a kitchen before.” He grabs me around the waist and lifts me onto the granite counter, where he puts his hand up my skirt and pulls my panties off. The counter happens to be the perfect height for sex, a fact I never noticed until yesterday morning, when I bent over it to paint my nails and purposely mess up Kim’s daily ritual of polishing the granite. This has been on my mind ever since, taunting me in prayer group and distracting me all through chemistry. This is a regular occurrence for me, using Zach to play out my little fantasies. Somehow I don’t think he minds being a guinea pig.

“These are my favorite,” he says, clutching my pink lace panties in his hand. All of my panties are either lace or satin or sheer—no dingy whites or high-waisted monstrosities. I don’t even want to know what those would do to my reputation. Lucky for me, Kim tossed out all my childish floral panties back in elementary school, the day I got my period and she decided I needed something more grown-up.

Zach lets his own pants fall to the floor and abruptly closes the gap between us. He stands right between my legs, ready to go—until I reach out and slap him in the face.

“Condom, Zach,” I say, snapping my fingers. “You didn’t want to make it upstairs, so you should be ready.”

“Come on,” he says, leaning in to bite my lip. “I’m clean, you’re clean. I got tested six months ago. And we’re not sleeping with other people. It would feel so good without it.”

I reach out like I’m about to slap him in the face again. “No condom, no love, Zach,” I say. “Those are the rules.”

He exaggerates a frown, but there’s a smile behind it. “Hit me again,” he says. I roll my eyes. I forgot that Zach likes when I get rough with him.

“Lucky for you, I come prepared.” He bends over and rummages in the back pocket of his discarded jeans. When he stands up, he’s holding a condom in a purple packet. I recognize it as a Trojan Ecstasy. I have a box upstairs with one missing from last week’s devirginization of Bobby Lewis.

“You’re the one who’s lucky,” I say, opening the packet. “Come prepared or don’t come at all.”