leaves over half-naked wrestling matches in Chad’s cramped backseat.
On their two-month anniversary, Chad asked her to sneak out of Algebra and meet him in the boys’ locker room for a secret celebration. The girl had never done anything like that before, but it seemed a fun and exciting dare. Though they hadn’t said I love you yet, she felt it every time Chad laced their fingers together. Just a week before, after drinking her first three beers at a house party, she’d almost let it slip. But she decided to save it for a special occasion. Like a two-month anniversary.
After glancing over her shoulder, the girl slid inside the boys’ locker room and tiptoed down to the very last row of lockers. Chad greeted her with a grin. A moment later, before they’d even said hello, they were kissing. Which quickly turned into groping. It seemed as if her private school uniform had been tailored for this sort of rushed encounter.
He had his hands all over her.
All over her.
And for the first time in their relationship, she didn’t worry about where they would go. It was romantic and sexy, and everything inside her melted. Chad had more experience with these sorts of things, and she finally let herself enjoy that.
They might have gone all the way if they’d been in Chad’s bedroom, or even in the VW. But they weren’t near a bed or a backseat. They were in a stinky locker room, next to a fifth-period gym class. And with every shout for a pass, trill of the whistle, or raucous cheer that leaked in, the danger of being discovered fanned the fog from the girl’s good judgment.
“I can’t,” she said suddenly.
Not there.
Not then.
Chad tried to convince her with words, with kisses. But now she was the opposite of melting. She pulled away from Chad’s mouth and said she’d better get back to class.
Chad sagged with disappointment — a familiar posture from their last few dates, though somehow weightier in this instance. He pleaded with her to stay. After all, she’d barely touched him, and he was so turned on. It was only fair to finish what they’d started, right?
She insisted she had to get back to Algebra. Sweetly. Apologetically. And when she noticed how bummed Chad continued to look, she leaned in to kiss him. A cute peck aimed for the tip of his nose, to make it all okay. She felt three words float up her throat, ready at last to be said.
Except Chad turned his head.
The girl felt bad as she hurried back to class. She felt even worse after school, when she came upon some guys razzing Chad next to the smokers’ tree. He walked toward his car without so much as a head nod in her direction.
The girl didn’t know that Chad’s inability to get off with a freshman had become a running joke. A social liability. Even Chad himself had made light of it for weeks, thinking his friends might ease up if he played along. So he’d complain of blue balls after he’d drive her home, or hump his locker door in mock frustration after the girl hugged him good morning before homeroom. Things like that. But Chad’s participation only made the others’ comments seem more welcome. The teasing became less funny and more personal.
It was one of Chad’s friends who suggested the locker-room make-out session. “Use the anniversary,” the guy urged. “It’s foolproof.” It seemed to Chad like everyone in school had their eyes on the clock during fifth period. Everyone expected him to finally get some. And when he came up short, Chad settled on an excuse that would let him entirely off the hook.
When the girl got to school the next morning, whispers hissed like poison arrows aimed at her back. Boys who’d been nice to her at parties, senior girls who’d just started to warm up to her infiltration of their group, now seemed cold and dismissive. Even some of her own classmates, the ones she’d helped usher into the exclusive upper-classmen world, suddenly looked down on her. She couldn’t understand it. At least not until she saw Chad and he guiltily headed in the wrong direction so he wouldn’t have to talk to her.
After homeroom, the sniffing started. Someone would do it whenever she walked by. She didn’t think much of it. It was the height of cold season. But it kept happening. Sniff sniff sniff. Everywhere she went.
It wasn’t until lunch, when one of Chad’s friends commandeered the white board and named the fish stick entrée after her, that she figured it out.
She just grossed me out too much, she could imagine Chad saying. I almost gagged, she smelled so bad. So stupid. So thoughtless. So untrue. But that was all it took. It was over. They were over. She was over.
The initial wave of teasing tapered off after a few months, like any stupid catchphrase or slogan. Chad never apologized. Maybe he cleared his conscience by admitting to someone that it was only a dumb joke, but he said nothing to the girl. And someone else took the baton that spring, when a junior supposedly had a three-way in her parents’ shower with two of Chad’s teammates.
But the girl, it changed her. The way she walked. How often she raised her hand in class. What she’d dare to put on her plate at lunch. She was never the same girl again. Not really.
She was Fish Sticks.
This was why trusting boys was just like drinking and driving. Sure, some people took the risk. One or two beers never feels dangerous at the time. And not everyone who drinks and drives gets into an accident.
But to me, it was obvious: Why would you even take the chance?
So, yeah. Orientation should be something more like that. We could provide something useful, instead of policies on locker maintenance. Hearing a story like that was just as important as knowing your blood type, or if you’re allergic to bee stings. It was information that could save a girl’s life.
It was the start of our senior year, and my best friend Autumn was feeling nostalgic. She took pictures when we picked up our schedules from the guidance office for the very last time, called it divine intervention that even though we had only two periods in common, the rest were still close enough that we could always walk together. She reminisced about junior year as if it had been decades ago.
Even the state of my appearance after swim class — wet hair hanging like long brown icicles, melting pool water onto my navy cardigan — could make her wistful.
“You smell like summer,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “I wish it was still summer.”
I turned and sniffed my cardigan. Though I’d had it dry-cleaned right before school started, it already reeked of tangy chlorine, so I peeled it off and tied it around my waist. Coach Fallon never sent us to the locker room with enough time to shower. He’d rather us suffer one more lap of butterfly than have thirty seconds to shampoo. Autumn was so lucky that she hurt her shoulder a few years back and had a doctor’s note to keep her out of the pool. “Hey,” I said. “Could you give me a French braid when we get to class?” I hated the way it dried after swim class, in dull matted clumps.
Autumn’s shoulder-length hair was twisted into two perfectly symmetrical blond sections. She could make it that good without a mirror. “Here,” she said, pulling off my tortoiseshell headband before dropping a step behind me. “I’ll do it now.”
That’s how we walked through the freshman hallway, me leading Autumn by my hair, like we were elephants. I kept my head down and asked her questions from my Western Philosophy notes while she went to work, my scalp tightening with every weave. Our first quiz was in five minutes. We’d studied on the phone together the night before, so it was really more of a review, but Autumn had still gotten a few easy ones wrong.
“I can’t believe it.” Autumn stopped walking, only I didn’t realize it until my head snapped back. She sighed and asked, “Were we ever that young?”
I could tell that Autumn was trying to soak up all the excitement and possibility exuding from the freshmen