Outcast by Adrienne Kress Page B

firm grip on my shoulder when she finally asked it. Maybe she’d said all that stuff about Pastor Warren to disarm me, lull me into thinking she could actually be interesting. I mean, of course she hadn’t. She was too drunk to make a complicated plan like that. Still, it caught me off guard.
    “So you have to tell me about losing it, Riley,” she said.
    Panic. “I do?”
    “You promised.”
    Yeah, I know, I’ve been thinking about it all day. “What do you want to know?”
    “Who was it?”
    “I told you, some friend of my cousin’s, Jeff, up in Rochester this summer.” I thought that if I threw a name in there casually it would make it seem more real. It worked.
    “What did you think?”
    “Of what?”
    “It.”
    Oh “it.”
    “It was okay.” I was starting to feel pretty ridiculous now. I’d had one stupid kiss my entire life and all everybody else my age wanted to talk about was sex.
    “Riley.” She grabbed my shoulders with her hands and looked at me seriously.
    “Yes?” I wanted to laugh, her expression was so intense.
    She blinked at me a few times. “What?”
    “It sounded like you were going to say something to me.”
    She nodded. “Oh yes. Riley, it gets better.”
    “What does?”
    “Sex.”
    “Okay.”
    “The first time is always a bit…Hurts you know?”
    “I know.” In theory.
    “But it gets better. But make sure you want to do it, because if you don’t want to it isn’t fun.”
    “Obviously.”
    “No, not ‘obviously,’ don’t be such a bitch.”
    “Lacy…”
    “Oh, shut up, you’re just so smart, aren’t you? Don’t care what anyone else thinks, in your stupid outfits and still looking like this. Never having to try. I was just trying to help, but whatever. At least I didn’t lose it to some loser up north.”
    “Lacy…”
    She was already staggering off before I could say anything. Not that I knew what to say. I kind of felt like I’d been ambushed, but sort of a reverse ambush, if that made sense. I felt like somehow she’d made me hurt her, and I didn’t like the idea that I’d upset her, especially when I hadn’t wanted to. So weird. In one short bizarre drunken conversation with a cheerleader my entire perspective on life had changed. Well, on cheerleaders at any rate.
    Who the heck was Lacy Green? Who the heck were any of them?
    I went back to watching my classmates. Some had climbed out of the water now, two of the guys were roughhousing in a way that looked like any second it would turn into a real fight. Who were these people? I’d grown up with them but barely spent any time with them. I knew them as lists of features, but that was it. I didn’t know them at all. Not really. Felt kind of stupid about that. Kind of bad.
    Then again, it wasn’t like any of them had tried to get to know me either.
    My brain felt loopy. Was I drunk through osmosis? What was being drunk like anyway? There were so many things that normal teens knew about. Here was Lacy acting all jealous of me, and she didn’t have any idea how not worth it it was, that I was just some crazy girl who had no idea how to feel like a real teenager. I should just drink and get it over with. Should just have sex.
    Even though I didn’t want to…not…yet?
    “Hey, sweetheart.”
    A quick intake of air. “Hey, Gabe.”
    And here he was appearing out of nothing again. He’d come up behind me, and I felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist. I got all tense.
    Just think of it as a hug. It’s just a friendly hug, nothing more. When his chin hit my shoulder I kind of died a little. “You look a little sad,” he said.
    “I’m not,” I replied trying to sound casual. “Just tired. I hate parties.”
    “This one’s pretty square, that’s for sure.”
    I shook my head, took the opportunity to disentangle myself from his grip, and looked at him, hands on hips. “What are you talking about? You totally hooked up with Charlotte!”
    “She kisses like a fish.” He dismissed it like it