blame her—if I looked like Danielle Oliver I’d probably stare at myself all the time too. Her pale skin is luminous, her cheekbones model sharp, and she’s got big brown eyes that turn up at the corner, like a cat’s.
“You have to promise not to tell.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.” Some of the tension drains out of her. “I’m still playing hard to get.”
I bite the side of my cheek so I won’t laugh. Danielle and Chase aren’t dating yet, but they make sense: they’re the beautiful people, the ones you’d read about in the tabloids if high school were like Hollywood. It was only a matter of time before they got together. So I’m not sure why Danielle is so intent on keeping this a secret. It’s not like she was discreet earlier when she was laughing and chasing him in a circle around the kitchen, trying to draw on his face with her red lipstick.
“Didn’t he just . . . get you?” Hopefully she won’t kill me for the question. But here’s the thing—it’s pretty well known around Prescott that Danielle Oliver is—was—a virgin, and it’s not because she’s openly circulated the fact. That’s just how things work around here. Our nowhere Vermont town is so small that even if you’re barely friends with someone, you probably still know everything about them. I mean, we’ve been together—all sixty of us in the senior class—since elementary school, so secrets tend to hop from student to student like a twisted game of telephone. And the fact that Danielle has managed to stay a virgin for so long is probably Prescott’s top news story.
I’m a virgin too, but this isn’t surprising enough to be news.
I can see the moment right when she decides to tell me. She smiles and it spills over her face like light filling up a dark room, and she’s so stunning I feel it in my chest. Her eyes are sparkling as she turns to me. I can see the secret brimming in her, like bubbles in a glass of champagne.
“Okay, so maybe he got me,” she says. “Guess who’s finally a woman.”
“Wow.” I’m suddenly unable to find the right words. “That’s . . . congrats. Way to go!” I don’t know why I’ve turned into a cheesy greeting card instead of a real, functioning human. Wishing you all the best on your journey. Reach for the stars! She must not find it too weird because she continues talking like I haven’t said anything.
“It didn’t even hurt that much. Ava told me she passed out her first time, so I guess I was expecting it to be a little more extreme.” She licks her pointer finger and runs it under her eyes to fix her mascara. “Ava is so dramatic.” If Ava Adams were in this bathroom right now instead of me, she’d know exactly what to say. Ava is Danielle’s favorite. I’m just the one Danielle tolerates.
“Do you like him?” I ask, swishing the now-mostly-empty beer around in my cup.
She doesn’t answer for a few seconds, probably deciding whether it’s worth telling me the truth. Then she shrugs. “It was time. I can’t believe I was a virgin for this long. So embarrassing.”
My cheeks burn at the casual dig. Being a virgin shouldn’t be a big deal—I know that—but the fact that Danielle shared the label with me always made me feel a little better. If Danielle Oliver does something, it automatically shaves five million points off the embarrassment scale.
Ava was the first girl in our class to lose her virginity. She and Jason Ryder did it middle school grad night on the playground behind the big slide. I was horrified back then when I first heard about it. Sex was still something foreign to me, something people did in movies—and not even in the movies I watched. Then other girls started doing it too—Molly Moye lost it to one of her older brother’s best friends, Jessica Rogers to a girl she met over winter break in Vancouver. My friend Hannah lost hers junior year to her boyfriend Charlie. They spent the night at his lake house, lit a bunch of candles, and played her favorite album. Turns out, even Morrissey couldn’t save them.