Getting Dirty(14)

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I say, righting the ship.

She shoves her short yellow bob behind her ear and glares out the windshield. “You’re supposed to be all, like, ‘Oh my God, Zoey! Give me all the deets!’”

“Oh my God, Zoey! Give me all the deets!” I cut her a glare as I take the right out to the main road. “You spend way the hell too much time on social media. You know I’d never actually say ‘deets,’ right? That’s not even a word.”

“You should at least have a Snapchat,” she grumbles.

“Why? So I can be brainwashed along with the rest of you?”

I boycotted social media in junior high when I discovered it was just hive mentality—a crash course in unoriginal thinking.

She rolls her eyes and drops back into her seat. “Whatever. Just forget it. I’ll tell Jessica when we get to school.”

“It’s not like you cashed in your V-card or anything, Zoe,” I say, starting to feel a little guilty. This is what friends are supposed to do, right? Tell each other this shit? “Sorry. I just don’t get what the big deal is.”

She throws a hand at me. “Your mystery boy must have fucked you wrong, because otherwise you’d know what the big deal is.”

And…there goes any guilt I might have been feeling. “Bitch.”

Zoey’s pretty much the only friend I have outside Marcus and Nate, though she’s cultivated a wider circle than me. I honestly have never related well to people my age. I can’t do the standard fashion critiquing and boy watching that goes on in lunch circles and end up drifting into my own mind, so the rest of Zoey’s friends think I’m socially stunted.

Maybe I am. Maybe it’s in my genes to not be quite right socially. Or maybe it’s what Mrs. Erikson said. Whenever she read anything I wrote last year in English she would say I have an old soul. But Zoey tolerates my social ineptitude. Usually.

I’d been at Marie’s since I was a few weeks old, but Zoey started there for preschool and she sort of latched onto me. She cried the second day of public kindergarten when they advanced me to first grade and told her she couldn’t come with me. I tell her more than I tell anyone else, but there are some things—okay, a lot of things—that I keep to myself. She knows I lost my virginity last summer. She just doesn’t know to who. I told her it was a guy from our rival high school and made up some random name.

I wouldn’t have told her anything, except she’s been on my case to “just do it” since she fucked Jon Fitzmeyer last spring after prom. I think she just wanted someone who’d been through it to share the gory details with, because after I told her, I heard every detail about Jon. Such as, his penis curves out when he’s hard, he doesn’t kiss while he’s fucking, and he looks like he’s having a seizure when he comes. She thinks it’s because he’s concentrating so hard.

She’s been dating Kevin since the beginning of the school year. They’ve traded oral, but that’s it.

“He’s bigger than Jon, in case you care,” she says huffily, her arms crossed over her chest. “Not longer, but thicker. I felt it stretch more.”

“I’ll remember that for when I’m fucking him,” I say, turning up the radio. It’s Caiden’s Arctic Monkey’s song from last night. Zoey pissed me off when she said Nate fucked me wrong, so she doesn’t get to dump all her shit on me now.

She glares at me. “I just thought you might find it interesting. You never really know what a guy is packing.”

I turn onto the street that leads up the hill to school. “You’ve sucked Kevin’s dick, and you’re just now discovering it’s different than Jon’s?”

“Jesus, B! What the fuck is with you today?”

Fucking Caiden, that’s what. He’s got me so hot and bothered that I can’t think straight. And talking to Zoey about having sex isn’t helping. I appreciate what Nate and I have even more now, because he’s never left me feeling this sexually frustrated.

“Sorry. I’m just in a shitty mood,” I admit, hoping she won’t ask why.

“Well, you don’t need to bring me down with you.” There’s my Zoey. Always the narcissist.

“Sorry,” I say again. “So, tell me everything.”

She does, and by the time we climb out of my car in the school lot, I know more about Kevin’s junk than I ever wanted to. But as I walk to first period calculus, I can’t help wondering what Caiden might be packing.

∞

I’m particularly vicious in water polo practice this afternoon. Near the end, I take a shot that leaves our goalie with a bloody nose.