Maybejavascript:void(0)

"So did you do it?" she asked excitedly. We were cruising down a back road in her beat-up old bug. There were holes in the floor, in the backseat. If you weren't careful you could fall through them to the rushing pavement below. But we sat in the front.

"Yeah." I adjusted one of the magnets on her cluttered dashboard. It was a rainbow that ordered me to have a nice day.

"Tell me everything."

"I don't think I can. There's nothing to tell really."

"So it sucked."

"No. I mean I don't know. He had to leave right after."

"WHAT? I thought he would plan it better."

"What? You knew?"

"I talked to him last week." She gave me a sideways glance, quickly inhaling off her cigarette and flicking it out the window. "Cause you said you wanted to."

"That's not what I said. I said that it had been over six months and that probably it was do or die pretty soon."  I lit a cigarette though I had just put one out. "I said that it was going to be his eighteenth birthday. And I said I was seventeen and a half and what was I waiting for. I never said go tell my boyfriend it's time to pop my cherry. I think I even said maybe we should just break up!"

"I was just trying to help." she pointed out. I thought of the way her face melted on acid. The hurt in her clawing out at me.

"Did it bother you? That I was a virgin?"

"Noooo. Why would that bother me?" She played it off as though I was crazy and I dropped it before my foot could go through the rotting bottom. "What were you going to do? Be a virgin forever?" I didn't say anything. "So it sucked?" she finally asked but continued through my silence. "It sucks for everyone, the first time, you know." she was desperate for our usual easy vibe to be back, needed it more than I needed to be annoyed at her.

"I don't want to be everyone." I told her. And then. "Well. I didn't have anything better to give him for his birthday anyway. Where are we going?"

"The Casa?"

"No. Not today. Let's go up to the caves and wander around."

"Okay. Do you feel different?"

"yeah. Not really. I mean. I feel like I gave up or something.

She shifted the gears after we made a corner "So. He just left?" she asked incredulously and I laughed.

"Yeah. He had laundry or dinner or something with his parents"

"He's such a jack-ass."

"I know."

"They're all jack-asses."

"Maybe."