It All Started With Him

:: 2 :: The First

Annie Allen had been standing there by the jeep. Wait. No she wasn't standing. She was leaning against my jeep. Her arms tucked under one another. Her school uniform formed a V- formation as she leaned up against it. The dust is most likely collecting on the back of it. I doubted she cared. I knew what she had come to see me for, and I knew it wasn't to collect dust from my jeep.

"Are we doing this out in the parking lot now?" I ask, my brow, raising as I scout Wesley Henderson walking with his jock friends. My mind timelines back to the moment where he and I secretly hooked up in the cemetery behind the abandoned church, just on the outskirts of town. He was high as fuck, but honestly, I didn't and still don't care. He was the first. I still don't have the guts to talk to him in school. As far as the social ladder goes, he don't know each other. In my head, I countdown the seconds when he'd be texting me.

Before I can get any further in my thoughts, Annie pulls me from them. "We're only hanging out. Is that a crime?" she asks me as she places her hand on the handle, waiting for me to unlock it so she could get in. "I have to change first, of course. What girl wants to hang out with Christian Day with her school uniform on?" she asks as an early era Fall Out Boy song makes its way across the speakers.

"Yeah, it would be a crime if," I start, but I can't think of what to say next. If she found out you were hooking up with Wesley Henderson the thoughts inside my head scream at me. Despite him fitting every stoner jock stereotype; this town would talk. His parents would send him to the closest conversion camp, or take him to church with them every Sunday. As a queer teenager, would it be his reputation or his parents' reputation on the line.

"We didn't get high on Mary J and watch Orange is the New Black," Annie tells me as she changes my teenage angst and sex playlist. "It's hot lesbian porn, and come on, you need to loosen up now and then. No teenager has died from mari-juana and having steamy sex for the first time," she tells me, cracking open a bottle of Coke and placing it between her legs. "How else are we going to figure out our sexuality? It's tits and pussy, or cock and assholes," she adds as we pull into the driveway. Seeing my parents not home makes me relieved. Yet, at the same time, I'm nervous. This is when the not so innocent Annie comes out.

******

Annie walks around my house with nothing but her newly dyed mauve hair, a baby doll tee of a nineties grunge band, which reveals her pierced belly button, and underwear that she calls her "sex" underwear. Great Annie would be crashing at my house tonight, and homework wouldn't be getting done. "I ordered us pizza. Pepperoni, extra cheese," she announces from the kitchen; now wondering what she had done while she was out there.

"Want to add some pants to the mix?" I ask as he crashes on the couch beside me. Her messy hair, wrapping around her shoulders and landing on breasts, not quite covering her nipples. If I hadn't been so sure I was gay, I would have wanted to possibly have sex with her. My parents weren't home, and calculating by our pizza order I knew she would be using my room later for her stuff. Maybe that was what she had been wanting me to do. I never asked, and I knew if either had wanted to use each other for sexual experimenting, we would give full consent first. Either before or after a high. There was no during.

She crosses her legs on the couch, as Netflix comes to life on the TV. "Maybe later," she tells me, as she lights up a joint. Offering me a hit, scrolling down to our continue watching queue. I don't hesitate, bringing the comfort zone to my lips. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. "You're parents aren't home," she tells me the obvious as she had just noticed this.

"I have no idea when they'll be home. I'm a teenager. They put me in teenage time," I tell her as the effects from it find their way to my head. My anxiety stops at the moment, like it's supposed to.