Taking His Virgin
By: Lila Younger
Ava
“You should wear this one,” my best friend Macy says, holding up a pink top covered in sequins.
It’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and instead of being outside, enjoying the sunshine, I’m at a dinky mall with my best friend Macy. Not exactly how I would enjoy the afternoon, but I haven’t seen Macy in forever. She’s on her spring break, and for once she isn’t jetting off to Cancun. I have a feeling it has something to do with her new relationship. It hasn’t gone past six months yet, but it’s getting close, which would be a miracle for Macy.
She puts the top up to my chest and squints at it.
“Ken won’t be able to miss you in this.”
I wrinkle my nose, both because the top is way too loud for my taste, and because of the mention of Ken. No thank you. I don’t need a football player with no neck and no conversational skills. Correction, an ex-football player, since technically we’ve already graduated high school and Ken no longer plays football. That doesn’t stop girls from swooning over the guy anyways, but he’s not my type at all.
Plus I’ve given my heart to someone else already, even if they’ll never know it, I add silently to myself.
“That’s not my style and you know it,” I say as I take the top and shove it back into the rack. “Come on. We’re not going to find what we want here.”
“You don’t know that,” she says, fingering a second top. “This is nice.”
I give an exasperated sigh. It’s a gauzy chiffon with zebra print. Is she shopping for me or for herself? That’s the thing with Macy. She’s got a good heart, but she is just the teensiest bit self-absorbed. But hey, maybe that’s not a bad thing. It’s not like I wanted to shop for clothes to begin with.
“Macy, why don’t you try it on? I bet it would look good on you,” I say encouragingly. “Here, I’ll help you find a size.”
She gives me the side eye.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she says, hands on her hips. “You’re trying to distract me. It won’t work today. We’re here for you, and that’s that. I mean, when was the last time you’d gone out anyways? On grad night? Before that? This is Nikki’s birthday. You can’t not go out for that.”
Nikki is my other friend. We’ve been nicknamed the Triplets by our teachers since we found each other in the fifth grade. We’re all brunettes, with the same bottle green eyes and ski slope nose. Of course, the resemblances end there. I’m quieter, a bookworm who has no problem staying out of the spotlight. Macy is the one who happily takes all the attention. And Nik is somewhere in the middle. Maybe that’s why we’ve gotten along together so well. We’re symbiotic. Point is, Macy is right. Even though the three of us were going to celebrate on the actual day of Nikki’s birthday, it would be ridiculous to skip the weekend celebrations of my best friend.
“Okay,” I say at last. “I’ll come to the bonfire at least.”
“Good,” Macy says with a smile. “That’s more like the old Ava I know. Now come on. We have to hurry if we’re going to find Nik’s gift and get back in time.”
We head out of Penney’s and down the broad walkway of the mall. It’s not a very big mall, but it’s the best we’ve got if we don’t want to drive almost two hours to a major city. That’s the crappy thing about living in a small town. There’s nothing there except for a Wal-Mart. So when we want to buy things like gifts, we have to drive to the next town over. And even this isn’t that great. Half the lots are empty or the stores look like they’re about to close. If I went to college with Macy in Boston or Nikki in Providence I would have an endless choice of clothes probably. But I’m not ready for college. I want to help my parents out with their B and B first, or maybe forever. Is it really that bad to want to do that? They seem to think so.
We wander along until we get to the Victoria Secret/Pink store. Nikki loves the hoodies and leggings here, so we head inside and buy her a cute pink and black set from the both of us.
