The Truth About Alice(28)

I was scared and excited at the same time. Right then I knew. I was going to lose my virginity to Tommy Cray.




Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not stupid. I don’t think I ever thought that by sleeping with Tommy I would make him my boyfriend. Even as I followed him to his bedroom wordlessly, even as I let him peel off my cover-up and untie my bikini top before we’d even shut the bedroom door, even as all of this was happening to me, I knew that Tommy Cray would be gone in a few days. I knew he would soon be meeting gorgeous college girls who would want to mess around with him immediately. I knew that he thought I was a Stalker Girl. Easy access. I knew all of this, but it was like I had to do it. That had been the whole point of the entire afternoon. Maybe even the entire summer.

Tommy Cray had a huge poster of Jimi Hendrix on one wall of his bedroom. It was bright yellow and purple and in loopy, trippy font it said “Are You Experienced?”

Well, Kelsie—are you?

I wasn’t, but Tommy Cray was. He leaned into me, the chlorine scent of his skin slipping over my body.

“Kelsie, you’re so beautiful,” he said. “I’ve noticed you all summer long.”

I just smiled back and nodded, unable to talk. I tried to memorize everything about that moment. The way the hair on his chest was so fine and blond and curled just so, just like the hair on his magnificent calves. The way his lips tasted like Sonic and vanilla Carmex. The way he put his hands on me wherever he wanted to, and I let him.

I’m doing it. I’m actually doing it. Right now at this moment I’m doing it.

It hurt. Like hell. And it was over in three minutes.

Afterward, all I wanted to do was put on my clothes. It had all happened so fast that my bathing suit was still damp from swimming in the pool that afternoon. I yanked my cover-up over me and sat up on the bed, not sure what to say. Tommy reached over and grabbed his shorts. The little whisper in the back of my head that reminded me we hadn’t used protection got louder all of a sudden, but I told it to shut up. Tommy hadn’t mentioned using anything, and I guess I just followed his lead.

“You didn’t tell me,” he said.

It hurt between my legs. Ached, actually.

“I didn’t tell you what?” I asked. His room was a mess, I noticed all of a sudden. Even though he was leaving for school soon, he hadn’t packed a thing, apparently. A sandwich that looked about five days old was sitting on his desk. I was pretty sure it was growing mold.

“That you’d never done it before.” He wasn’t looking at me. It was like he thought I was going to freak out. I think at that moment I wanted to, but I knew I wouldn’t ever let myself freak out in front of him.

“So what?” I said like it was no big deal. “Everyone has to have a first time at some point.” I wondered how he could tell. I guessed whatever I was supposed to have done, I didn’t do correctly.

No, I wasn’t experienced. Not at all.

Tommy Cray picked at a mosquito bite on his ankle, and then I caught him glancing at the clock radio by his bed. I saved myself some embarrassment and said, “I should be getting home.”

“‘Kay,” he said. He seemed relieved.

We’d hardly even kissed.

I told Tommy to drop me off a block from my house so my mother wouldn’t see his car.

He leaned over and gave me a quick peck before I got out of the Toyota.

“Well, good luck at school,” I said. I was desperate for him to say something sweet or romantic. Something to make me feel like maybe it had all been worth it.

“Thanks,” he said. “You should text me sometime.”

“Cool,” I said, and I got out of the car and walked home. Halfway home I realized I didn’t even know his number.




I didn’t tell Alice. I know. Half the reason I probably even did it with Tommy was because there was this weird little part of me that wanted to prove to her that I wasn’t some inexperienced virgin. Of course, after I did it with Tommy, I mostly felt like an inexperienced non-virgin, so I wasn’t sure much had changed. But the thought of telling Alice that I had slept with a guy who wasn’t even my boyfriend—just a guy who’d picked me up at the pool for God’s sake—was just too weird. Too embarrassing. Sure, Alice had fooled around with Mark Lopez under similar circumstances, but she hadn’t slept with him.

For days after it happened, I kept waiting for Tommy to call me or text me, and I kept walking around the house those last few moments of summer, staring at myself in mirrors and thinking, “I’m not a virgin anymore.”

He never texted me or called me.

But that’s not The Really Awful Stuff.

Not even close.




So what do you think happens to the girl from the Christian family who only does it once? Do I actually have to spell it out for you?

By the time I found out I was pregnant, Tommy Cray was a freshman at Texas Tech and I was a month and a half into my sophomore year at Healy High. Everyone was focused on the start of school, on who they were going to take to the first Fall Dance, on the likelihood of the Healy Tigers taking state … and I was trying not to throw up in my breakfast cereal every day.

It can’t be, I thought to myself. But it was. All those True Love Waits rallies my mother had dragged me to, all those lectures about saving myself for my future husband, all those reminders that Jesus prefers virgins … it was like some sort of ridiculous joke. Who gets pregnant from doing it one time?