“Hey baby,” I attempted to pick up the chick next to me.
“Uh, do I know you?”
“No, but you could...”
“No thanks.” She wandered off.
I had been at the rave Cambridge brought me to for about three hours, and was high as a kite. I had been trying to pick up every chick I had seen for about an hour now.
I spotted another one and walked over to her. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Well, that was unsuccessful. I walked over to Cambridge, intent on asking her if she knew any girls who weren’t so prim.
“Hey, Cambridge.”
“Hey, Zac.”
"Zac, this is Cynthia," She informed me. She turned to Cynthia and said, “This is Zac. He’s my man.”
Cynthia traced her right index finger down my chest and said, “Hey, Zac.”
Cambridge removed Cynthia and said, “Hey, watch it with my man! He’s my man!”
Then she kissed me and we walked off, me not exactly clear on the concept that she wasn’t Cate.
“What’s your problem, Jenna?” Isaac asked me, putting his pants back on.
“I don’t have a problem! I just don’t wanna go having sex before I’m married, that’s all. I don’t think that constitutes a problem, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, you have the problem.”
“Well, at least I’m not fucking prim!”
“I don’t think you can be fucking and prim at the same time,” I retorted.
“It’s an expression!”
A moment later he added, “And you can be fucking and prim at the same time if you’re married and doing it for, like, five minutes, using standard order of operations.”
“Well, maybe that does count as prim, but, that’s not the point!”
“Well what is?”
“That I don’t want to have sex before I’m married, and you don’t respect that.”
“Jenna, no one waits anymore. That was the fifties. No, wait, not even the fifties. That was the seventeen hundreds.”
“Well, maybe it was the seventeen hundreds, but I still have a belief that I want to be respected.”
“Can’t we compromise?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we have been going out for, like, a year, and we are eighteen, and I kinda bought you this.”
He reached in his pocket and retrieved a gorgeous diamond ring. “Will you marry me?”
“Oh my God!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Jenna! God! People are going to think I’m murdering you or something!”
The phone rang. He picked it up. “Hello?”
“No.”
“Fine, whatever.” He turned to me and said, “See? This guy wants you to say you’re okay and I’m not doing anything to you.”
I took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Are you okay in there Jen? I heard you screaming.”
“I’m fine, Mr Miller. I screamed because Isaac just asked me to marry him. Thanks for caring though.”
“Alright, just checking. Oh, and, congratulations, fine catch.”
“Thanks.”
I turned back to Isaac and said, “Yes!”
He put the ring on my right Apollo finger. We kissed.
“So, now, about that compromise thing, I was wondering, since we’re engaged now, can we do it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you could just do me a few times and then walk out.”
“Jenna! I’m surprised you could ever even think I could do that!”
“Yeah, well, it’s happened before.”
“To you?”
“Yes,” I admitted grudgingly.
“Oh my God.” Isaac wrapped his arms around me. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Not really, but I’ll tell you what went down, just so you know.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I had just turned seventeen, and I mean just barely, by about a week, and I had been seeing this guy, Brad...”
“Cate? Do you have any intention of making breakfast, or should I heat up some pizza?” I asked my girlfriend almost as soon as I woke up, not bothering to roll over and look at her.
“Who’s Cate?” Cate asked in a suspicious voice.
I rolled over to look at her, and realized it was Cambridge, not Cate that I was talking to. “Uh, I said Cam. Short for Cambridge. You must have misunderstood me.”
“Oh. Could you get me a glass of Sunny D?”
“Sure.” I quickly got up and went to Cambridge’s fridge to retrieve some Sunny D.
Oh God. She probably thinks I’m Zac. Where is Zac? He’s gonna kick my ass when he gets back. Oh God.
I poured the Sunny D with a shaky hand, but then had a brilliant idea. I drank the Sunny D down and strolled into the bathroom, taking advantage of the fact that she was still half asleep anyway.
I went in the medicine cabinet, hoping to find some Tylenol PM or something.
Even better. Sleepinol. I read the dosage chart.
Under 16. 4 capsules. She’s probably heavy as a sixteen year old, with all that muscle. Better go for six.
I got six capsules, deciding that even if she didn’t weigh as much as I anticipated, it probably wouldn’t hurt her anyway.
I emptied them into my hand, and then walked back out into the kitchen area. I poured the powder into the bottom of the glass, and then filled it with Sunny D.
I walked over to where Cambridge was laying, half asleep already. “Cambridge?” I asked gently.
She rolled over, her eyes half closed, and took the juice from me. She drank it down.
I walked over to the sink and put her glass back, then wordlessly excused myself from talking to her or anything by pouring myself a glass and drinking it very, very slowly.
When I heard her breathing become rhythmic, I downed the rest, put the glass in the sink, and walked out the door, all very, very quietly.
“And all that happened within a month of your seventeenth birthday?” I asked Jenna when she wrapped her story up.
“Yep. Every last detail before the newness of my birthday gifts wore off.”
“That was a really bastardly thing for that Brad guy to do.”
“I know it was. And I haven’t trusted guys since.”
“You actually went through with having an......abortion?”
“Well, I had to, I mean, what was I supposed to do, not have one?”
“I dunno, I guess it’s to be expected. It’s just not something I would have done.”
“Isaac, you aren’t even female.”
“Well, I could be!”
“Huh?”
“Someday...I could be...I mean...uh...”
“Are you implying that you might grow up to be a woman?”
“Uh, yeah!”
“Okay then...”
Chapter Twenty Back to the Chapters
