Kissing Is the Easy Part

Chapter 4 The condom

Flora

Since I wasn't having any luck with Sean, I'm going to digress a little here and talk about my best friend Sandra Jenkins. Sandra was your average Ice Princess with a head of irritatingly perfect blond hair as if she had her own personal stylist, and on first impression she seemed like a snob. After I got to know her, however, I realized she wasn't only snobby, she was also mean and egotistic, but one thing I liked about her was how she always gave her brutally honest opinion on everything. Anything she said behind closed doors she would be comfortable sharing with the world, because that's just how sure of herself she was. You don't expect her to wear a fake smile, the way you don't expect a knockoff Prada bag on me.

I just got over a huge fight with her lately and the process was pretty embarrassing. Usually she thought high schools boys were too immature for her highness and declared that she didn't have time to waste on them, but a while ago she strangely started to develop feelings for Daniel Patterson, the artist. He was the type of person who'd rather talk to the grass as he took photos of it, than to people. Naturally I wouldn't have guessed Sandra's interest, and I only remarked lightly during lunch one day that Dan was kind of cute. He was good-looking in a shaggy, unkempt way if you know what I mean.

Ah, sprezzatura. That's the word. It's like he spent a lot of effort on looking effortless, kind of like the way Sandra weighed her food so that she could calculate the calories, keep fit, then tell people she was a natural size two.

I had no idea Sandra would go berserk, though.

"I thought your recent target is Sean Foster," she said. In retrospect her tone was dark, but at the time I'd failed to notice.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't mind a bit of side dish," I said carelessly. It was only meant as a joke, and I didn't really want Sandra to know how serious I was about Sean. Sandra was always kind of a frenemy and if she knew how Sean brushed me off it'd only delight her. "Dan looks like an easy target. I think I can get him to take me to the homecoming dance just by walking over there right now and snapping my fingers."

Sandra practically ordered me to stay away from him, like I was infected and should be quarantined. She also said lots of nasty stuff which I'll not go into details here. Anyway normally if I knew Sandra liked someone, I let her work her magic. When we met a fresh supply of new guys I always let her choose first. I mean, I wasn't picky (to me there were only Sean and the rest anyway). But this time something about the way she said it (either that or due to the frustration of not getting Sean, since Janet flat out told me he wasn't interested) ticked me off.

"I won't." I glared right back at her.

"You try it and you'll be sorry." Sandra sneered. She stormed off and left that line hanging ominously in the air like a thunder cloud. For the next three days, she completely ignored me to the point that it started to sting. I had always been good to Sandra, and as I smoldered in indignation, I drew up a list about just how fabulous a friend I was:

a. always letting her be boss and deciding what to do, even if she wanted to watch a pretentious French film with subtitles when we could be watching The Avengers instead.

b. handing over the position of cheerleading captain (although to be fair it was too much work for my taste)

c. pulling out of nomination for homecoming queen because I knew she really wanted it (again, too much work, not to mention I didn't wear fake jewelry. Don't get me started on how ugly the tiara was!)

d. supporting her with all my heart even when she was clearly in the wrong (like making Regina cry during cheerleading tryouts)

e. defending her when people called her a bitch (because let's face it Sandra really could give that kind of impression sometimes)