"Summer," Ryan says, causing the girl to look up. They had been partnered together for a history project, and until this point, had been working quietly in the library.
"Hmm?"
"What is it, exactly, that causes you to be so rude to Seth?"
Summer drops her pencil onto the spiral notebook in front of her and gives him a sort of death glare, an oh-no-you-did-not-just-ask-that look that makes him immediately regret bringing the subject up. In fact, he isn't really sure why he had brought it up at all. Maybe he's just sick of the way she treats Seth. That is most plausibly the reason, but for a split second, he's more scared of the way that she's looking at him.
She doesn't say anything right away. Instead, her eyes glaze over with a strange fog that Ryan interprets as her thought process in work, explaining to her exactly how to explain it to Ryan or if she even should at all.
Finally, her eyes return glossy and reflective as they assume position on Ryan's face. He stares back at her, and all he sees is a miniscule version of himself in each eye. His face looks dark and troubled, and he isn't sure if it's because in the reflections, his face is directly over her pupils, or if it's because he's afraid of her answer.
"Undoubtedly you've heard the myth that Seth's a virgin, correct?" Summer finally says, sending Ryan into a minor coughing fit, having been so surprised at her reply that he inhaled so quickly that he swallowed his saliva in an unpleasant manner.
"Seth is a virgin," he tells her, wiping at his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.
"So you think," Summer answers dryly.
"Okay, obviously I'm not getting it. Or maybe you're not. I'm talking about Seth Cohen, here." He stares at her, sure that she'll tell him she was talking about Seth Smith or Seth Johnson or Seth Jones or some other Seth that he doesn't know about. He's sure that she'll say something like, Oops; I thought his name was Scott.
But as he stares at her, he knows that she is talking about Seth Cohen.
"As am I," she says in a slightly chilling tone.
"Wouldn't I know that Seth wasn't a virgin?"
"It's not as if the whole world knows, Chino."
"Are you saying that you've slept with him?" Ryan asks, awestruck.
"Don't even go there. No, thankfully," she says. And, noticing the confused look on Ryan's face, she adds, "Before you got here, Seth had… a slight… reputation."
"Excuse me?" he manages to choke out.
"It stopped a couple of months before you get here. I mean, it had to."
"Please elaborate," Ryan requests softly.
Summer rolls her eyes, which sends his reflection hiding behind her eyelids for a infinitesimal instant, and Ryan realizes that he's been so depending on staring into her eyes and seeing those two miniature Ryans that the sudden departure has snapped him back into complete reality.
"Seth is by no means a virgin. He… slept around. I guess that's the nicest way to put it. He wasn't popular, but his social standing amongst Newport youth was much higher than it is now. I used to tolerate him more so than I do now."
Ryan's stare is blank. All Summer sees in them is her own reflection, somehow radiant even through the bleakness of her current mood and the dullness of Ryan's icy eyes.
"It just went too far. He got a girl pregnant, and she had an abortion. We were all against abortion. She was, he was. I was, too. Still am. But that was the only way, y'know? If any of their parents had found out, they would have killed them. She wasn't too hurt, socially, by the whole event, but people shunned him. Obviously those two knew about the pregnancy and abortion, and I knew, and a couple of other people knew, but when we rejected him, so did everyone else, even those that didn't know about it all."
She pauses. His blank stare is still there; his eyes beady with her reflection still, until [blink] they close with a slow, monotonous motion, only to open right back up again.
She sighs. She can't read him; is he accepting it, disbelieving it? Is he even absorbing all of what she's saying?
"Anyway, this all happened a few months before you got here. And that's why Luke seems to hate him more than all of the rest of us."
"Why's that?" Finally, he says something. Although, Summer thinks, it's not exactly her choice of question to ask.
Well, she knows that this was inevitable and he would be asking it soon. "Luke hates him so much because…" she pauses again, then, quickly, "wasmrsathaddeegaprgnt"
"What?"
"It um… was Marissa that he… got pregnant." She averts her eyes, scared that her reflections will be engulfed by the flames that she is positive are about to form in Ryan's own eyes.
"What?" he repeats, though more surprised. A long pause, most of which is filled by Ryan's mouth open and moving as if trying to say something but just not being able to spit out the words. "But… but… Marissa was a virgin until Luke."
"Secondary virgin."
"What?" he says, yet again.
"Secondary virgin. I don't know, that's what she calls it, though I don't really consider this a secondary virgin situation."
"Okay, color me stupid, but what's a secondary virgin?" Ryan asks, oddly timid given the topic and whom it's about.
"It's where… like, hmm," Summer says, trying to figure out how to explain it correctly. "Like, since Marissa was sexually active, she wasn't a virgin. But if she were to realize that it wasn't right or whatever, and decided to wait until marriage to have sex again, she'd be a secondary virgin. But she considers the whole Seth thing a mistake and she stopped having sex for the whole of what, like, a few months?
"Wait, then why don't Seth and Marissa seem weird around each other, if this is true?"
Another eyeroll. "Honestly, Atwood," she says, calling him Atwood instead of her usual choice of Chino, possibly showing that she's warming up to him. "Haven't you found it odd that they live next door to each other and barely say a word to one another? And have you ever seen the way they greet each other? It's this weird, awkward hug that looks nerve-ridden and sloppy."
"I… how could I have not known about this?" Ryan asks.
"Like I said, not everyone knows. If—"
"But Seth's my best friend," Ryan interrupts.
"Seth used to be one of Luke's… well, good, not best… friends. But Marissa and Luke were an item. Have been since fifth grade. Yet here Seth was, sleeping with her."
"But Luke cheated on Marissa…."
"Yeah, afterwards. He thought it was fair, since she did it to him. Don't ask me, I don't get it."
"So you're saying the reason that Seth is socially inept is because he got Marissa pregnant?"
"Sure thing, Chino." Back to Chino again. Damn.
"But—"
Summer's turn to cut him off. "It's the truth, Chino. I could sneak her diary away if you wanted, for proof. I know that Seth used to keep a journal; he might have written it down, too."
"But… that… wow," he says, finally settling on a word.
"Could you picture Seth and Marissa as parents?"
"No," Ryan admits softly, wiping his mouth again.
"Neither can I. I don't know what would have happened if Marissa wouldn't have aborted it. I mean, a little Seth, Jr."
"I still can't get over the fact that he's not a virgin, and that he got Marissa pregnant."
"Well, get over it, Bucko. It happened. It's done, over, history. Speaking of which," she says, picking up her pencil, "we need to get to work on our project."
"Just like that? After you pour all this on me?"
"Get used to it. This is Newport, after all," Summer tells him, resuming her tidy notes.
Ryan carefully picks up his pencil and chews on the eraser. How? Why? It just doesn't make sense. He shook his head. His reflection had been broken when Summer looked down, and his reflective view on Seth had been not just broken, but shattered, when he asked that oh-so-simple question.
End