Beyond Clueless by Linas Alsenas

Xiang had arrived.
    As we trudged down the stairs, I could not stop beaming, and a song started playing somewhere in the back of my head:
Felix and Marty, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .

S pill, sister,” I said the minute my bedroom door closed.
    Xiang, Oliver, Jimmy, and I had retreated up to my room after dinner. My mom and dad were downstairs clearing the dishes (What? I had guests to entertain!), so we slipped upstairs to get the scoop on what, if anything, had happened between Xiang and Parker at their orchestra rehearsal.
    “Yeah, but hurry, because my dad will be here to pick me up any minute,” said Oliver, checking his watch. “I can’t
wait
for my birthday in a couple of months,” he muttered.
    “Oooh, then you’ll be our very own personal chauffeur!” I purred.
    “I’ll take you anywhere and everywhere you wanna go,” he said, grinning in that way that really highlights his jawline.
    “Hello? You wanna hear this or not?” Xiang barked at us.
    “Yes! Yes! Do tell!”
    Xiang’s eyes shone, and she looked like she was about to explode into a million pieces.
    “It. Was.
Awesome
.”
    We leaned forward, grinning stupidly with anticipation.
    Xiang lowered her voice to a whisper. “We hooked up in one of the classrooms.”
    Silence.
    “Hooked up—you mean, kissed?” Jimmy finally said.
    “Yeah . . . and a bit more than that,” she replied, grinning widely.
    Jimmy swallowed hard, and Oliver looked a little green.
    Me? I knew Xiang too well to fall for that. Xiang? Making out with some guy she barely knows? At our nun-run school? Please.
    “Riiiiight. And now I suppose you’re pregnant with his baby,” I said, rolling my eyes.
    Xiang sighed. “Well, not a possibility yet,” she said, “but I could totally see us going a lot further in the near future. I mean,
I
want to.”
    She looked really serious. My disbelief started to fissure.
    “Xiang. You’re kidding. I know you’re kidding.”
    “Nope. We totally hit it off, and all the awkwardness just melted away. It just seemed so natural, the way we were talking and connecting, and then all of a sudden we were in this classroom, and . . .” She looked at each of us with that bright, shining expression she’d had all throughout dinner (now that I thought about it). “Well, you know.”
    Oh, boy. She really wasn’t kidding.
    “But . . . um, how . . . ,” I sputtered, by now completely bewildered. Shock doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling. I mean, I knew that some fifteen-year-olds supposedly start having sex, but somehow the idea just seemed really abstract and far away, something that happened to other people I didn’t
actually know
. Jimmy and Derek were probablydoing
stuff
, but he and I hadn’t ever talked about it. Oh, God—what
had
they done together?
    And here I was all day, obsessing over the fact that some guy had
said
he thought I was beautiful, while everyone else apparently was going at each other like . . . like . . . rabbits in heat!
    “I dunno, it just kind of happened,” Xiang said breezily. “I mean, we snuck into the room after the audition to talk, and then the next thing I knew . . .” She shrugged.
    “Man, Kirby’s gonna regret not having been here for
this
,” Oliver breathed.
    “I know. It’s crazy, right?” squealed Xiang, clearly delighted to be the center of attention. “It’s weird how it’s changed the whole dynamic with Parker. I mean, before I was all jittery around him, but now it’s just, like, I’m not hesitant at all. I just want to grab him and, like, you know?”
    No, we don’t know
, I wanted to say. She was really pissing me off, and I wasn’t exactly sure why.
    At least she wasn’t using that high, babyish voice anymore.
    Just then we heard a car pull into the driveway, and Oliver sprang up to look out the window.
    “Yup, that’s Dad. I gotta roll. Congratulations again on getting the part, Marty. You deserve it.” He gave me a solid hug. What a cutie.
    Then he